E is for Evidence (26 page)

So far she wasn't telling me a thing I didn't already know. “What happened?”

“That year . . . when Lance came home and things were going so well . . . that year . . . it was New Year's Day. I remember how happy I was things were off to such a good start. Then Bass came to us with the most preposterous tale. Somehow, in my heart, I suppose I've always blamed him. He spoiled everything. I've never really forgiven him, though it was hardly his fault. Bass was thirteen then. Sly. He knew about wickedness even at that age and he enjoyed it all so very much.”

Still does, I thought. “What did he tell you?”

“He said he'd walked in on Lance. He came straight to us with that sneaky look in his eyes, pretending to be so upset when he knew exactly what he was about. At first, Woody didn't believe a word of it.”

“He walked in on Lance doing what?”

There was a silence and then she pushed on, her
voice dropping so low I was forced to lean closer. “With Olive,” she whispered. “Lance and Olive. In her room on the bed. She was sixteen and so beautiful. I thought I'd die of the shame and embarrassment, the loathing at what was going on. Woody was crazed. He was in a towering rage. Lance swore it was innocent, that Bass misunderstood, but that was nonsense. Absurd to think we'd believe any such thing. Woody beat Lance to within an inch of his life. A fearful beating. I thought he'd kill him. Lance swore it only happened once. He swore he'd never lay another hand on her and he honored that. I know he did.”

“That's when Olive was sent away to boarding school,” I said.

Helen nodded.

“Who else knew about the incident?”

“No one. Just the five of us. Lance and Olive, Bass and Woody and me. Ebony was off in Europe. Ash knew something dreadful had happened, but she never knew what it was.”

There was a silence. Helen smoothed the frayed fabric on the arm of the rocker where she'd picked strands loose. She glanced at me. Her expression seemed tinged with guilt, like an old dog that's piddled somewhere you haven't discovered yet. There was more, something she didn't want to own up to.

“What's the rest?” I asked. “What else?”

She shook her head, her cheeks turning pink in patches.

“Just tell me, Helen. It can't matter now.”

“Yes, it does,” she whispered. She'd begun to weep. I could see her clamp down, forcing her feelings back into the box she'd kept them in all these years.

I waited so long that I didn't think she meant to finish. Her hands began to shake in a separate dance of their own, a jitterbug of anxiety.

Finally she spoke. “Lance was lying about the two of them. It had gone on for years. Woody never knew, but I suspected as much.”

“You suspected Lance was abusing her and you never interfered?”

“What could I say? I had no proof. I kept them away from each other whenever I could. He'd go off to summer camp. She'd stay with friends of ours in Maine. I never left them alone in the house. I hoped it was a phase, something that would disappear of its own accord. I thought if I called attention to it . . . I don't know what I thought. It was so unspeakable. A mother doesn't sit a boy down and discuss such things. I didn't want to pry, and Olive denied the slightest suggestion that anything was amiss. If she'd come to me, I'd have stepped in. Of course I would, but she never said a word. She might have been the one who initiated the contact for all I knew.”

“How long did this go on?” I was having a hard
time keeping the judgment out of my voice, afraid if she sensed the full range of my outrage, she'd clam up.

“Lance was obsessed with her almost from infancy. He was five when she was born and I was so relieved, you see, that he didn't resent her. It was just him and Ebony until Olive came along. He'd been the baby so I was delighted he seemed taken with her. It must have started as childish curiosity and advanced to something else. It did end once they were discovered. They could hardly tolerate each other's company these past few years, but by then the damage had been done. She had terrible problems.”

“Sexual problems, I'd assume.”

Helen nodded, cheeks coloring. “She also suffered deep depressions that would go on for months. All she did was run, run, run. Anything to escape the feelings. Play and spend. Spend and play. That's how she lived.”

Rapidly I sorted through all the things I'd been told, processing the trivia I'd picked up in passing. “Olive said she and Bass had a falling-out when he was home for Thanksgiving. What was that about?”

“Something silly. I don't even remember now what the subject matter was. One of those ridiculous spats people get into when they've drunk too much. Bass was furious and wanted to get back at her, but it wasn't
about
anything. Petty temper, that's all.”

I watched her carefully, making my mind a blank, trying to let the sense of this filter in. It had started with Lance, with Wood/Warren, talk of a takeover, evidence of insurance fraud. Someone had set Lance up and I'd been caught in the same trap. When Olive died, I'd assumed it was business-related, an accident. It was meant to look like that, but it wasn't. I felt the answer leap at me, so obvious once I knew what had gone on. “Oh shit,” I said. “Bass told Terry, didn't he?”

“I think so,” she said, almost inaudibly. “I don't think Terry's like the rest of us. He's not a well man. He doesn't seem right to me. Even when they met, he seemed ‘off' somehow, but he was crazy about Olive. . . .”

“ ‘Obsessed' is the word I've heard applied,” I broke in. “That he worshiped the ground she walked on.”

“Oh, he adored her, there's no doubt of that. It was just what she needed and I thought it would all work out. She had such a low opinion of herself all her life. She couldn't seem to sustain a relationship until Terry came along. I thought she deserved a little happiness.”

“You mean because she was ‘damaged goods,' don't you? Tainted by what Lance had done.”

“Well, she
was
tainted. Who knows what bestial appetites Lance had wakened in her?”

“That was hardly
her
fault.”

“Of course not, but what nice boy was ever going
to look at her if the truth came out? Terry seemed like a godsend.”

“So the two of you decided not to say anything to him.”

“We never spoke of it between us,” she said tartly, “so we could hardly speak of it to him. Why stir up trouble when everything was going so well?”

I got up abruptly and went to the phone, dialing Lieutenant Dolan's number at the Santa Teresa PD. The clerk said she'd put me through and I waited for Dolan's line to ring. Helen was right. What was done was done. There wasn't any point in blaming Bass. If anything, the blame lay with Helen and Woody. Olive died because Helen was too bloody polite to deal with the truth.

“Where's Terry now?” I said to Helen over my shoulder.

She was weeping openly. It seemed a little late for tears, but I didn't say so. “He was here a short while ago. He's on his way home.”

When Dolan answered, I identified myself and laid it out for him, chapter and verse.

“I'll have him picked up for questioning,” Dolan said. “We'll get a warrant so we can search the premises. He put that bomb together somewhere.”

“He might have assembled it at work.”

“We'll check that,” he said. “Hang on.” He put his hand across the mouth of the receiver and I could
hear him issue an order to someone else in the room. He came back on the line. “Let me tell you what we have on this end. We got a match on the prints we lifted from the rental car Lyda Case was found in. They belong to a fellow named Chris Emms, who was charged with the murder of his foster mother twenty years ago. Blew her up with a package bomb he sent through the mail. The jury brought in a verdict of temporary insanity.”

“Oh geez, I get it. No prison for him.”

“Right. He was committed to the state hospital at Camarillo and escaped after eighteen months.”

“And he was never picked up?”

“He's been free as a bird. I just talked to one of the staff docs and they're hunting up the old records to see what else they have on him.”

“Was he really nuts or faking it?”

“Anybody who does what he did is nuts.”

“Will you let the family know as soon as he's in custody?”

“Will do. I'll send somebody over in the meantime just in case he decides to come back.”

“You better beef up security at Wood/Warren, too. He may make a try for Lance.”

“Right,” Dolan said. He broke off the connection.

I left Helen huddled in the rocker. I went downstairs, looking for Ebony, and told her what was going on. When I let myself out, she was on her way upstairs
to see her mother. I couldn't imagine what they'd talk about. I had a flash of Olive sailing through the air, flying to oblivion. I just couldn't shake the image. I drove home feeling low, my perpetual state these days. I get tired of digging around in other people's dirty laundry. I'm sick of knowing more about them than I should. The past is never nice. The secrets never have to do with acts of benevolence or good deeds suddenly coming to light. Nothing's ever resolved with a handshake or a heart-to-heart talk. So often, humankind just seems tacky to me, and I don't know what the rest of us are supposed to do in response.

Under the bandages, my burns were chafed and fiery hot, throbbing dully. I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. With my hair singed across the front and my eyebrows gone, I looked startled somehow, as if unprepared for the sudden conclusion to the case at this point. Quite true. I hadn't had time to process events. I thought about Daniel and Bass. Mentally I had to close the door on them, but it felt like unfinished business, and I didn't like that. I wanted closure, surcease. I wanted peace of mind again.

I pushed through the gate, pulling mail out of the box as I passed. I let myself into my place, and slung my handbag on the couch. I felt a desperate need to take a bath, symbolic as it was. It was only 4:00 in the afternoon, but I was going to scrub up and then go
pound on Rosie's door. It was Tuesday and she was bound to be back in business by now. My neighborhood tavern usually opens at 5:00, but maybe I could sweet-talk her into letting me in early. I needed a heavy Hungarian dinner, a glass of white wine, and someone to fuss at me like a mother.

I paused at my desk and checked my answering machine. There were no messages. The mail was dull. Belatedly, I registered the fact that my bathroom door was closed. I hadn't left it that way. I never do. My apartment is small and the light from the bathroom window helps illuminate the place. I turned my head and I could feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. The knob rotated and the door swung open. That portion of the room was in shadow at that hour of day, but I could see him standing there. My spinal column turned to ice, the chill radiating outward to my limbs, which I couldn't will to move. Terry emerged from the bathroom and circled the couch. In his right hand he had a gun pointed right at my gut. I felt my hands rise automatically, palms up, the classic posture of submission guns seem to inspire.

Terry said, “Oops, you caught me. I expected to be gone by the time you got home.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I brought you a present.” He made a gesture toward the kitchenette.

Trancelike, I turned to see what he was pointing to.
On the counter was a shoe box wrapped in Christmas paper, white HO HO HO's emblazoned on a dark-green background with a cartoon Santa swinging from each O. A preformed red satin bow was stuck to the lid. Surprise, surprise. Terry Kohler wanted me to have a box of death.

“Nice,” I managed, though my mouth was dry.

“Aren't you going to open it?”

I shook my head. “I think I'll just leave it where it is. I'd hate to give it a bump.”

“This one's on a timer.”

I managed to loosen my jaw, but I couldn't form any words. Where had I put my gun? My mind was washed absolutely blank. I reached for the edge of my desk, supporting myself with my fingertips. Bombs are loud. The end is quick. I cleared my throat. “Sorry to interrupt you,” I said. “Don't stick around on my account.”

“I can stay for a minute. We could have a little chat.”

“Why kill me?”

“It seemed like a good idea,” he said mildly. “I thought you might like to go out with a bang, as opposed to a you-know-what.”

“I'm surprised you didn't try for Lance.”

“I have a package just like it in the car for him.”

Probably in the bottom of my handbag, I thought. I'd meant to take it to the gun shop. Had I stuck it in
the briefcase in the back seat of my car? If so, it was still out there and my ass was grass. “Do you mind if I sit?”

He did a quick survey of the area, making sure there weren't any rifles, bullwhips, or butcher knives within range. “Go ahead.”

I moved to the couch and sank down without taking my eyes off him. He pulled my desk chair closer and sat down, crossing his legs. He was a nice-looking man, dark and lean, on the slight side. There was nothing in his manner to indicate how nuts he was. How nuts is he? I thought. How far gone? How amenable to reasoning? Would I trade my life for bizarre sexual favors if he asked? Oh sure, why not?

I was having trouble appraising the situation. I was home where I should have been safe. It wasn't even dark out. I really needed to pee, but it sounded like a ploy. And honest to god, I was embarrassed to make the request. It seemed advisable to try opening a dialogue, one of those conversations designed to ingratiate. “What's the timetable here?”

He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes, more or less. The bomb should go off at four-thirty. I was worried you wouldn't get home in time,” he said. “I can reset it, but I don't want to mess the wrapping paper up.”