Blue Willow (13 page)

“I saw him go outside an hour ago,” Elizabeth volunteered timidly. “He said he was going to find fairy icicles in the woods.”

Artemas threw the book on a table and went to get a jacket. For a sickly twelve-year-old, Michael and his whimsies could be a strong pair. But he enjoyed the excuse to go outside. His uncle’s house was oppressive—filled with brooding English antiques and grotesque Victorian sculptures. He preferred the lawn and woodland stretching into the distance around it. Even though this part of Long Island was filling up with shopping centers and subdivisions, there was still open space and magnificent estates hidden among the trees, and the aura of gentrified, carefree ghosts riding tall thoroughbreds to the sound of the hunt horn.

Artemas reached the doors that spanned the old Tudor’s back terrace but then saw Michael staggering across
the snowy lawn from the woods, his jacket hanging open. His unnatural gait and splayed, stiff hands sent Artemas running through the light snow in barely concealed alarm. When he reached Michael, he slid to a stop, staring.

Dark stains covered the insides of Michael’s brown trousers from groin to knee. He gazed blankly at Artemas and murmured, “I went on myself. I s-saw … and I couldn’t help it—” He slumped to the snowy ground. Artemas scooped him into his arms and said gently, “What, Mikey? What did you see?”

“F-Father.” Michael’s head lolled.

“
Where
?”

“In a t-tree. The b-big tree by the b-bench.”

Artemas curled the fragile body close to his chest and started back to the house at a swift walk. His heart threatened to explode. “What was he doing?”

Michael’s eyes glazed over. “Hanging.” He fainted.

Artemas gave him to James with instructions to call a doctor, warned the others to stay behind, and ran to the woods. When he found Father, he gagged and sank to the ground.

The bloody corpse hanging by a chain in the tree had been gutted.

There was no bare lightbulb swinging over Artemas’s head, no beefy men wearing shoulder holsters and chewing cigars. He sat at a table beside his attorney, in a claustrophobic interview room with smooth green walls, while a pair of clean-cut detectives paced in front of him. Exhausted and emotionally drained, he found himself idly keeping count each time one of them passed in front of him. The flickering of a fluorescent light fixture on one wall made him think of the way sunlight had dappled the horrible thing he’d found hanging in the tree.

“Come on, son, talk to us,” one of the men said, bending over the table and meeting Artemas’s unwavering gaze. “You hated him. A couple months ago you tried to beat the hell out of him in front of dozens of people. Yesterday you
threatened to kill him—even pointed a gun at his head. Your mother says he told her about it on the phone.”

“If I’d intended to kill him, I would have done it then.”

The other detective sat down across from him. “You were too smart to kill him at the house. So you waited. You went to your father’s hotel this morning. No one saw your father leave the hotel. But we know from the room-service records that he ate breakfast at eight and was out of the suite by eleven, when the maid came in. I think you asked your father to meet you somewhere. I think you shot him in the back of the head—not with your grandmother’s revolver, which wouldn’t have blown his brains out quite so delicately—but with a different gun, one we’ll find, eventually.”

The first detective draped a leg over the corner of the table and settled near Artemas’s shoulder. “He was dead when you dragged him into the woods between your uncle’s estate and the De Gudes’ place. You wouldn’t have any trouble doing that. You’re what, six-three, six-four? Your school records show that you do some serious weight lifting and run track. Even as large as your father’s body was, you had the physical strength to pull it several hundred yards along a path through the woods.”

The attorney interjected, “There’s not one speck of physical evidence to link this young man to the death.”

“But there’s a helluva lot else. Enough to bring down formal charges, when we get the case together.”

The attorney snorted. “What about De Gude? The father of the dead girl had every reason to want Mr. Colebrook dead.”

“Don’t bring him into this,” Artemas said, leveling a hard gaze at his counsel. “I won’t accuse anyone else the way I’m being accused.”

The words Susan’s father had spoken to him pounded in his brain.
I’ll make you and your father pay
. But the thought of using De Gude to draw suspicion away from himself made a bitter taste in Artemas’s mouth.

“Oh, we’re going to be questioning De Gude,” one of the detectives said. “We’ll be talking to a lot of people.”

His partner sighed. “But let’s get back to our interesting little scenario here.” He leaned on the table and propped his chin on one hand. Looking at Artemas through narrowed eyes, he said, “You dragged your old mans corpse to the tree, threw fifteen feet of heavy chain over a limb, then made a little necklace for dear ol Dad and hung him up like a trophy buck.”

“Please, this is sickening,” the attorney said. “This young man’s been through hell—”

The detective continued, “Then you took a knife and unzipped him from breastbone to testicles. To add insult to injury, you cut those off and stuffed them in his coat pocket.”

The attorney choked and reached for a glass of water near his briefcase. Artemas stared at the detective without flinching, while nausea clenched his stomach and beads of sick perspiration slid down his temples.

“You need some air?” one of the detectives asked, not unkindly. Artemas shook his head. “I’ll see his body like that as long as I live. My younger brother will never forget it either. That’s the worst part. But I didn’t kill my father.”

“Look, after what he did to your girl, who’s to say you didn’t have good reasons?” The detective’s eyes were sly, coaxing. His voice dropped to a consoling tone. “I mean, he raped her right after she’d been with you, she got pregnant—who knows, it might have been
your
baby? She was too ashamed and frightened to ask anyone for help, so she took a knitting needle—” the detective stuck a rigid finger into the air—“went into the bathroom in her apartment, and—” he jammed his finger upward—“tried to fix the problem. Only thing was, she punctured an artery. She must have lain there a long time—alone, afraid, dying, maybe calling your name—”

“Stop it,” the attorney hissed.

The detective shook his head somberly. “I can understand why you’d want to leave your old man hanging inside out in a tree.”

Artemas bent his head in his hands. He could feel the detectives watching him eagerly, waiting. But the emotions washing over him were turning doubts into cold serenity. He had wanted his father dead. He should have killed him. It would have been an act of justice. But he’d chosen the family’s future over personal revenge. The welfare of the family—its preservation, its restoration, its ambitions—would always override his own desires. He had been green before, like fine clay molded into a shape but still too easily broken. Now, the form had hardened beyond delicacy, had been fired and finished.

The detectives leaned closer. “What do you want to say to us?”

Artemas raised his head and looked at them with a self-assured calm that dismissed their threats and petty theatrics. “He got what he deserved. I wish I’d killed him,” he said, bringing a gasp from his attorney. “But I have more important things to do.”

Mother returned to New York from the Schulhorns’ estate in a stupor of tranquilizers, accompanied by her maid, a private nurse, and her chauffeur. She settled in a suite at the Plaza. When Artemas visited her, he found her curled on a divan in the suite’s living room, wearing a beautiful white silk robe over a lace-drenched nightgown, her bright blond hair elegantly tousled, her eyes swollen from crying. The chauffeur—a young, pretty-faced man with a muscular build—stood behind the divan, massaging her shoulders.

“Leave us, Bernard,” she said, waving him toward an inner door. Artemas stood in the room’s center, tracking the man’s departure with loathing. The jumble of sympathy and resigned pity he’d felt toward his mother swiftly became stoic disgust. She was someone to endure, not to love.

When they were alone in the room, she clasped her hands to her chest. “
Why
won’t you let the others visit me? I need my children.”

“They don’t want to see you. It was their decision. They’re hurt because you came here instead of to Uncle Charles’s. If you want to see them, make an effort.”

“I
can’t
go there. Not so close to where your father—oh, I can’t even bear to go to the funeral home. I’ll never survive the funeral if I think of—of …” Her voice trailed off.

Artemas looked at her wearily. “Take
Bernard
with you—I’m sure hell give you all the help you need. Just remember something—James is old enough to take one look at your chauffeur and know you hired him for something besides his driving record. If you don’t want him to despise you, tell
Bernard
to keep his hands off you in front of the family.”

She leaned forward, her face contorting with fury. “Don’t you dare judge me. Don’t you
dare
make Bernard feel unwelcome at your father’s funeral.”

“I won’t be at the funeral. I don’t have any respects to pay. But the others will go—if they want to.”

“You turned your brothers and sisters against us!”

“No, the two of you did that without my help.”

“Get out!” Artemas turned and started for the suite’s doors. His mother screamed after him. “You killed him! I know you did it! And if they charge you with doing it, I’ll never be able to hold my head up in public again!”

His back stiff with pride, he stepped into the hall without answering, shut the doors calmly, then jerked the top of an ash stand and retched into its canister.

“What did Mother say?” James asked, when Artemas walked into Uncle Charles’s house several hours later. The others were gathered around him, their faces pale, their eyes hollow. They looked up at Artemas hopefully.

Artemas choked for a moment, then got his voice under control and lied as gently as he could. “She misses all of you, and if she weren’t sick right now, she’d come to see you.”

They straggled out, except for James, who waited until the rest were out of earshot, then whispered “Bullshit” to
Artemas. Artemas gave him a level, uncompromising look, then went to a chair and sat down, his head bowed. James awkwardly patted his shoulder. “She doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “We believe in each other.”

Dear Lily
. Artemas paused, looking out the window beyond the desk in his bedroom, lost in the whipping snow and darkness. The small pool of light from the desk lamp made him feel secure in a safe moment of memories and hope. He looked down at the sheet of paper and the pen standing immobile in his hand. What should he say about the past two months to an eleven-year-old girl who admired him?

Nothing about the truth. Just the hopes.

He asked about her schoolwork, her rambles in the woods, the pet squirrel she’d nurtured after finding it in a nest ruined by predators, the beef cattle her parents were raising to make extra money. He asked her to have her father write down everything he could remember about the gardens at Blue Willow, reminding her that someday he’d be back to open the house and restore the gardens around it. But he warned that it might be a long time before he could do that.

A week after his father’s funeral Artemas received her reply, on a note card printed with flowers.
Okay. I’ll wait for you
, she said.
You’ll be back. You promised
.

One morning Grandmother called him to her room. Tamberlaine and LaMieux were there. Chilling anticipation slid through Artemas.

When she saw him, his grandmother’s face dissolved in wistful affection and sorrow. But her eyes gleamed. “Susan’s father killed himself last night. With the gun he used to kill Creighton. It’s all over, my dear. Your father’s death is behind you.”

Artemas thought of Susan and her ruined family, then of his own. Unable to speak, torn by too many different emotions, he simply nodded. Tears burned the backs of his
eyes. He went to a window and stood rigidly, his fists in his trouser pockets, his head bowed.

Behind him, Tamberlaine said quietly, in a voice of deep, epic resonance, “The king is dead.”

And LaMieux added, “Long live the king.”

Seven

Mama lay in the big four-poster bed, crying. Lily heard Daddy rattling pans downstairs in the kitchen. Early-morning sunshine streamed through the upstairs window, promising a hot, muggy day even though it was only May. “Take it easy, Mama,” she begged, sitting beside her and stroking the tangled red hair back from her face. “Your back’s gonna be just fine. It’ll take a few weeks to heal, that’s all.”

Biting her lower lip, Mama got herself under control and said, “I hope the doctor’s right. I feel useless.”

Lily had never seen her mother disabled by pain before. Worse, she had never seen her look defeated. The managers at the pet-food plant said Mama didn’t qualify for full insurance, because she couldn’t prove her back problem came from her job. As if lifting twenty-pound sacks of dog food eight hours a day wasn’t good evidence.

Lily raged silently against the unfairness, but only said to Mama, “You’re not useless, because I’m gonna help you get dressed and go downstairs, and get you set up at your quilting rack, and by the time your back’s well, you’ll have a queen-sized double-wedding-ring quilt to show.”

Mama snorted. “Quilting’s for old ladies with rheumatism and bad dentures. They sew and click their teeth for
fun.” But she pushed herself upright, her mouth set in a grim line. “At least I’ve still got my own teeth.”

“That’s right. As long as you can bite and chew, you’re not too bad off.” Lily helped her out of bed and braced an arm under her shoulders. As they shuffled toward the bathroom, Lily glimpsed the two of them in the long mirror standing in one corner. The sight made her throat ache—they looked like two scruffy, redheaded angels in their long cotton nightgowns. Mama was hunched and pale next to Lily’s towering height and ruddy complexion.