The Deepest Water (21 page)

Willa praised the dinner, but with a distracted air, as if she was still considering the pages she had just read, the implications. Then she nodded, as if she had reached a conclusion, and she concentrated on the food. “This is so wonderful! Do you do this all the time? Just for yourself?”

“Of course not,” Felicia said. “That’s why I enjoy company, to give me a chance to eat what I like.” She had a vivid memory of Herbert carefully separating peas from zucchini; he never had liked things mixed on his plate, or in the pot, she added to herself.

After they were finished, the table cleared, Willa said, “Even if we know without a doubt that Jud was talking about Brice, it’s not enough. He could be in serious trouble financially—a lot of people are—but to go from there to murder is different. There’s simply no way we can connect him with it. But neither can we wait for him to try it again. We have to tell Abby what we suspect.”

“Not yet,” Felicia said quickly. “Do you think she’d accept it? Go back home and face him knowing I believe he killed her father? She might never speak to me again.”

“We have to,” Willa repeated firmly. “If it’s true, she’ll be in danger, and you know that. She has to be told.”

“I agree,” Felicia said, pleased that Willa had worked through the implications for herself. “The question is when, and how. She’ll need time to think about it, and not in his presence. And we need evidence of some sort, something to open that lieutenant’s eyes. I suspect Abby can furnish something relevant, but again, when and how?”

“What do you mean, she can furnish something?”

“When you live with a person there are a lot of things going on that you don’t consciously see, or choose to ignore, just to keep peace. Or you put them out of mind, to think about later. I’ve known Abby all her life,” she added, “and I know to what lengths she’ll go to keep the peace; she’s seen quite enough fighting for one person.” She thought of what she had told Lieutenant Caldwell: Once you know the right direction, you can find the trail. Object/ground again. “I think that when Abby puts her mind to Brice, seriously considers him as a suspect, things will surface. But she’ll need some time away from him for it to happen.”

Willa walked back and forth in the living room thinking about it, and finally said, “We could tell her you’re planning to go to the lake this weekend, and I’m going with you. I’ll ask her if I can go to the cabin. There are a few things I left there that I’d like to pick up. There really are,” she added unhappily. “She said there’s a lot more material she has to sort out, and the cabin is locked up; she’d have to give me the key, or plan to go herself. I think she’ll go; I think there are things she’s finding that she doesn’t intend to let anyone else see. If she’s willing to go back now, I imagine she’ll stay for several days, and I’ll take off from work a few days.”

“That’s good,” Felicia said. “Let’s drive up together on Friday. And we can all three get together Saturday or even Sunday.”

Abby was in the San Francisco airport, sitting in an empty waiting area. She had arrived three hours before her own flight time, but there had not been any place she wanted to go, anything she wanted to do after leaving Thanh. Now she sat as if in a trance, seeing in her mind that terrible day in Vietnam, watching in her imagination the figure in shapeless black peasant clothes and cap run from house to house, seeing her shot, and then shot again and again, her body tossed this way and that by the thrust of bullets, seeing Jud collapse.

He blamed himself for her death, blamed himself for the deaths of his entire platoon. The day she died he became a ghost.

Abby realized suddenly that in the weeks since his death, what had obsessed her was not his murderer, not altogether; it was the mystery of her father. And his written words, his act in creating a school, Thanh’s words had given him to her. Whatever doubts she had had were gone, erased by the sight of her father’s bold signature on the official bank documents that had set up the trust fund, provided for auditors, outside overseers. It was all of a piece, she realized, from Teri Frazier’s death to the death of his Vietnamese lover, all the guilt, the anguish, all one.

She recalled the old priest’s words, he had prayed Jud would find peace. And finally after so many years of wandering, of being lost, unable to kill himself since he was already a ghost, unable to live wholly, driven by guilt and regret he had found peace.

There was no blackmailer. She no longer believed in a hit man, a hired assassin, if she ever had believed in one. His killer had been someone close, not a phoenix rising from dead ashes.

When a child started to cry near her, she looked around in surprise; the waiting area was filling up. Mechanically she rose and walked until she found another waiting area without people and she sat there until it, too, began to fill with passengers waiting to board their plane.

Eventually she made her way to her own gate and found that her flight had been announced, most passengers were already aboard. She got in line.

It was raining in Eugene when she left the airport terminal to retrieve her car. For a time she sat watching the rain streak down her windshield. What to tell Brice, she kept thinking. How much? Her father had worked hard to keep this part of his life confidential, secret from her, from everyone. It had been important to him to keep it secret; she could do no less. But she had to convince Brice that there was no blackmailer lurking about. Do you swear to tell the truth? she mocked herself, and answered, some of it anyway. In evading the whole truth, she realized, she would be the one to drive the wedge that Brice was convinced her father had tried to put between them. Jud never had, but his secret would do it.

She found her parking ticket in her purse, dug out money to pay at the exit; when she put her purse back on the passenger seat, her gaze stopped at the manila envelope Thanh had given her containing the financial records and photographs of the school. Swiftly she opened the glove compartment, jammed the envelope inside, closed and locked the door; then she started the engine.

Later, in the living room at home, with Spook at her feet, a comforting fire burning in the grate, coffee on the table before her, she told Brice about the priest. “He’s so old, in his nineties, and he’s dying. He slips into sleep, wakes up… My father knew him, respected him, and through him, Dad was giving all that money to a good cause, a worthy cause. A school. That’s where he went in San Francisco, who he saw, what he did with those cashier’s checks.”

Sitting opposite her, Brice watched her face as she talked. He leaned forward, his eyes shining with excitement. “Jesus Christ, Abby! You did it! Those bumbling cops falling all over themselves getting nowhere, and you just up and did it! That’s it. An extortion ring of some sort, using a senile old man, getting money from who knows how many people. Jud said no more, enough’s enough, and they had to kill him, keep him from talking, from exposing the whole scheme. You did it!”

“It isn’t like that,” she said sharply. “Dad wanted to give them the money, he started it all himself, found them himself. The priest is old and dying, but he’s rational. No one’s using him for anything.”

He was paying little attention, she realized. His eyes had narrowed, and he nodded. “Maybe they’re using the old priest without his awareness. Maybe he believes whatever you think he does, but it doesn’t change anything. No one gives money away like that without a record, without declaring it on their tax return. And Jud didn’t claim any such charitable contribution.” He brought his gaze back to her and said softly, “Honey, face it, people have sides we can’t know. You father might have had a terrible secret from his past that you know nothing about, something important for him to keep secret. Important enough to pay out a hell of a lot of money to keep buried. But there comes a time when you say no more. He reached that point. And, Abby, whatever it was that he did, that he wanted to hide, it doesn’t matter now. It can’t hurt him now. Let the police shake down that extortion ring, maybe they can even get some of the money back.”

She shook her head violently. “Stop it! I’m telling you, it’s true. I…” She had started to say she had talked to Thanh, had pictures, records. She drew in a breath, and more quietly said, “I learned enough to know it’s true. I won’t let the police badger that old man. Let him die in peace.”

“Don’t be so naive,” he said. “A group like that, they’d have a good story, or they’d never get a penny from anyone. That’s to be expected at the very least, a plausible story, documents of some sort to back it up, and a string of suckers on the line. I know you believed whatever they told you. If you didn’t, they’d be out of business. That’s how they work.” When she shook her head again, he added harshly, “I thought you were burning with desire to find out who killed your father. You know something that could lead the police right to them. You have to tell them whatever you know.”

“If I have to, I’ll tell them I know where the money went, and that it has nothing to do with his murder,” she said, just as harshly. “And that’s all.”

“They’ll never accept that.”

“That’s all they’ll get. If you don’t tell them anything, they won’t even ask questions about it. Brice, I’m asking you, keep this confidential. My father wanted it kept confidential, and so do I. There’s no confidence game, no extortion, no blackmail. He did what he did because he wanted to. And if he had wanted it known, he would have talked about it! Can’t you even imagine that not everyone feels the same way about money as you do? Can’t you accept that it wasn’t important to him?”

“Christ!” he muttered. “I’m going to get a drink.” He stalked from the room.

As soon as he was out of sight, she opened her purse and pulled out the sympathy note Father Jean Auguste had sent her, with the return address on the envelope, her response, and the letterhead from the institute. Quickly she got up and went to the hearth and thrust them all into the fire.

She watched a paper start to curl, as if flinching from the flames, then catch fire all over all at once, and fall like a black ghost of itself before shattering into ash. Suddenly she thought of all the private papers upstairs, papers meant for no one’s eyes except her father’s, and she bit her lip.

If Brice told the lieutenant his suspicions about an extortion plot, she started the thought, then she changed that to
when
. He would. He would phone the lieutenant who would come to hear him out, and then come to question her. What if they demanded all of Jud’s papers in their search for the extortionists? A subpoena for the papers. Those in her possession, and those still in the cabin.

She was startled by the sound of Brice’s voice. He had come in with his drink. He stood very close, but he didn’t touch her. Very quietly he said, “Sweetheart, I’m sorry I upset you all over again. You’ve had a fierce day, up at the crack of dawn, damn airplanes, time with a dying man. Emotionally and physically you’re beat. Let’s get some sleep.”

“You go on,” she said. “I need to unwind.”

“Okay. You have a few calls on the machine. I got some roast beef and cheese if you want a sandwich or something. Don’t stay up too late.” He walked out of the living room.

She listened to her calls, a couple of friends, then one from Christina Maas who wanted Abby to call back at her first opportunity. Stiff, businesslike voice, brusque manner. Abby nodded, but she had seen another side of her, and that side was in her mind as she listened to the brief message. The last call was from Coop Halburtson, who sounded ancient on the phone, much more so than in person. “Abby, you there? Look, Florence and I will be heading out, down to California on Saturday. Time to pack it in for the winter, I guess. We’d love to see you before we leave, if you have the time to come out. If you can’t make it, I’ll put the key to the boat shed in the mail for you. But we’d love to see you before we take off. Give us a call.”

She thought of the old couple, looking out over the black water at the black emptiness of Jud’s cabin, knowing that this time he wasn’t coming back. And poor Coop. When he looked over now, did he see again the horror he had found, Jud sprawled on the stairs, his face destroyed, the blood? She remembered that Jud had told them he wanted to buy their house when and if they ever decided to sell it.

Slowly she walked upstairs to her room and sat at the desk. Tomorrow she had to get stamps, mail her notes, send the manuscript to Christina, and find a safe place for Jud’s papers. She leaned back, but in her mind she was gazing at the mahogany box, and she reached out to touch it. It felt warm to her touch.

It was time, she thought then. Whatever she had been waiting for no longer was compelling her to delay, forcing restraint. It was time to bury her father.

17

Brice was on the phone when Abby went down to the kitchen the next morning. He blew her a kiss as he continued his conversation.

“Right, right. I understand. Look, why don’t you come around to the office, say about eleven or so, and let’s hash it out there.” Listening to the caller, he looked at Abby and raised his eyebrows in an expression of helplessness. “Okay, I’ll wait for you.”

He disconnected the phone and put it on the table. “My clients are driving me crazy,” he said. “I think it’s a conspiracy.”

“You could always go back to school and become a… an orthodontist,” she said, waiting for toast to pop up. “I think they keep very regular hours and never give out their home numbers.”

He laughed. “That guy,” he said, pointing to the phone, “against all the advice I could shovel on him, did a crazy thing. He bought into a company heavily, used his own company’s money to do it, and now the stocks he’s holding are good for starting fires. He’d track me down if I moved to the North Pole and wore a polar bear suit. He wants someone to get him out of the jam he’s in.” He glanced at his watch. “While the phone’s all warmed up, why don’t you give the ice lady a call before I have to take off?”

She looked at him curiously, then remembered that Christina Maas wanted her to call back. And she wondered how Brice could do this. Last night he had been so upset—betrayed, furious, hurt, a whole gamut of dire emotions all acting on him at once; this morning it was as if last night had not happened, as if he had wiped the slate clean with a night’s sleep. Every day a new beginning, she thought then, and could even envy that ability, and not only each day, sometimes from one hour to the next; yesterday’s toothache, this morning’s heartache erased, gone from memory.