Family Honor - Robert B Parker (13 page)

"We'll need to talk again, Sunny," he said about five
in the afternoon as they were cleaning up the crime scene. "Is it okay
if I call you Sunny?"

"Absolutely, Sergeant," I said.

"And I'd appreciate you calling me Brian," he said.

We were sitting at my kitchen table with Rosie plomped
on one of Brian's feet, looking up at him with her tongue lolling out.
Millicent was sitting up on my bed with her knees to her chin and her arms
wrapped around them, staring at the television.

"I'll do what I can to shelter the kid. If there's a trial
she may have to testify, but I doubt that there'll be a trial."

"You don't plan to bring old Mike into court?"

"The guy you didn't shoot?" Brian looked at his notes.
"Mike Leary. Don't know him. But he hangs around with Terry Nee, we'll
find some use for him, and he'll plea-bargain."

"Fine," I said.

"You don't have any thoughts you've not shared with me,
do you, about why they were here and what they were doing?"

"You know what I know," I said.

"Maybe," Brian said.

"Would I lie to you?"

Brian smiled at me. When he smiled his eyes widened a
little and seemed to get brighter.

"Of course you would, Sunny. We both know that."

"So young and yet so cynical," I said.

He stood and put his notebook away. I stood with him.

"Lemme get back to the station," Brian said, "and sort
of fold this up and put it away for the night. I'll call you in a couple
days."

"Fine."

"You okay?"

"Sure," I said. "I'm fine."

"You ever kill somebody before?"

"No."

"It's sort of a heavy thing," he said.

"I know," I said. "I'll be fine."

"I'll leave a cruiser out front for the night, just until
we shake this down a little."

"Thank you."

"Okay. I'll call you."

"Do," I said.

And he left. I followed him to the door and locked it
after he left. Rosie went down the length of the loft and jumped up on
the bed beside Millicent and lay down. I sat at my kitchen counter for
a while. My ears were still ringing. When the mass of buckshot had hit
him, Terry Nee's shirt had disappeared in a mass of blood. I wondered if
he felt it. He might have made a sound when he went backward. I wondered
if he had been alive when his leg was twitching, or if it was just some
weird reflex and Terry was already somewhere else. I'd have to clean the
shotgun. If you fired them and didn't clean them, the barrel got pitted.
Terry was a guy who couldn't believe a woman would shoot him, or couldn't
allow himself to back down to a woman. Whatever it was, it killed him.

They would have taken the girl. He went for his gun. He'd
have shot me. With a 10-gauge shotgun at two feet you can't aim to wound.
I had to kill him. The ringing wouldn't go away. I shook my head a little
and got up and went to the cabinet and got a green bottle of Glenfiddich
and a short glass. I poured an inch of scotch and sipped it, and poured
some more. I could feel my heart moving in my chest. I was aware of my
breathing. It seemed shallow. I took another sip of scotch, and shivered
slightly and got up and went to the refrigerator and added some ice. As
I was putting the ice in, some of it slipped from my hand and scattered
on the floor. When I bent to pick it up I dropped the glass. The glass
broke. I couldn't leave broken glass on the floor with Rosie in the house,
so I went to the broom closet and got the dustpan and a broom and cleaned
up the glass and ice, and put it in the trash compactor and closed the
compactor and turned the switch. I walked over to the broom closet
and put the broom away and hung the dustpan on the hook. It slipped off
the hook and dropped to the floor. I bent to pick it up and felt all the
strength go from me, and sat down on the floor and began to cry. I heard
Rosie jump down from the bed and trot down the length of the loft. She
came around the kitchen counter and began to lap my face. Maybe to comfort
me. Maybe because she liked salt. Then Millicent appeared around the corner
of the counter, barefooted, and stared at me. Her face was stark and colorless.
Her eyes seemed nearly black in the oval of her face.

"You all right?" she said.

Rosie lapped industriously. I nodded.

"How come you're crying?" Millicent said.

Her voice had the flat tinny sound fear makes.

I shook my head. She stood. I sat. Then I put my hand
up and took hers and squeezed it. Rosie lapped the other cheek. I could
feel control starting to come back. I was beginning to breathe more slowly.
I let go of Millicent's hand and put Rosie off my lap and got to my feet.
I got another glass and put some ice in it and poured some single malt
into it.

"Can I have some?" Millicent said.

I got her a glass and handed it to her. She added ice
and poured some scotch over it. We sat together at the counter. We both
took a drink. Millicent frowned.

"What is that stuff?"

"Single malt scotch," I said.

"Its not like any scotch I ever had."

I nodded. We were quiet. Rosie lay on the rug sideways
to us, looking at us obliquely.

"It bother you, shooting that guy?" Millicent said.

"Not at the time," I said. "Now it does."

She shrugged and stared at the scotch for a bit and took
another small sip.

"What'd they want?" she said.

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You,"
I said.

Her eyes got bigger.

"My mother sent them," she said.

"I don't know who sent them," I said.

"My mother."

The way she said "mother" was chilling. If I ever had
children, and the clock was starting to tick on me, I prayed that they
would never call me mother in that voice.

"How would your mother know men like that?" I said.

Millicent looked at my counter and didn't answer. I waited.
Millicent sipped some more of the scotch. She was five or six years below
the minimum age. I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. So what?
Everybody else had.

"How would she?" I said.

"My mom knows a lot of men," Millicent said, still staring
down at the countertop.

"And you think she would send them here with guns to get
you?"

"Sure."

"These same two men beat up Pharaoh Fox, looking for you."

Millicent shrugged.

"You think your mother sent them to do that, too?"

"Sure."

"The man I... the dead man was a known criminal. The police
knew him. He was a strong-arm man, an enforcer."

Millicent took another swallow of scotch.

"She knows guys like that," Millicent said without lifting
her stare from the countertop.

I sipped my scotch. Millicent sipped hers. The room was
quiet, except for the television murmuring in front of the bed at the other
end of the loft.

"Millicent," I said finally. "There's more to this than
that. Your mother is an affluent suburban housewife married to a very successful
man. How in the hell would she come to know people like Terry Nee?"

Millicent stared at my counter some more.

"And why would she send such a person looking for you?"
Stare.

"Does this have something to do with why you ran away?"
Shrug.

I reached over and took hold of her chin with my right
hand and turned her face toward me.

"Goddamn it," I said. "I just shot a man to protect you."

"And yourself," she mumbled.

"And Rosie," I said. "And I'm in this because of you.
And I want to know what exactly the fuck is going on."

Tears welled suddenly. She tried to shake her head. I
held on to her chin.

"What?" I said.

The tears were running down her face now. "What?"

Her breath was coming in little gasps. "What?"

"I ... I saw ... 1 saw something," she gasped.
 

"What did you see, Millicent?" I said.

Behind me was silence. I stared down at the cruiser. The
silence continued. I waited. Finally she spoke.

"My mother told a man to kill somebody."

I closed my eyes. Jesus Christ. What should I say to her?
I stared out the window. There was no comfort for this in the police cruiser.
I had to do something. Finally, I turned back. She was sitting now, swiveled
toward me on the barstool, still looking down. But now she was looking
at Rosie. And her shoulders were heaving. I walked back and put my scotch
down on the counter and put both my arms around her. She was stiff but
she didn't struggle.

"We seem to be crying by turn," I said. "Now being your
turn."

She didn't answer. She was crying spasmodically.

"This is awful," I said. "And it's probably going to get
awfuller. But we're in it and we're in it together and we're going to have
to get out of it together. And the only way is to talk, you and me, until
we know what to do."

She cried. I held.

"Take your time," I said. "Tell me in any way you want
to. No hurry. When you get calmed down. I have to know what the problem
is before I can solve it."

As I held on to her I could feel her fighting for control.
Rosie squeezed between our feet wanting to get in on the hug. I rubbed
her belly with my toe. Millicent took in some deep breaths and then she
started talking. The sound was muffled because she kept her face half pressed
against my shoulder.

She told me that Betty Patton had a suite of her own
on the first floor, bedroom, study, private bath, and shower off of it.
Millicent was never allowed in there. She was never to use the private
bathroom. She was too messy. The bathroom was for guests. Millicent of'
course took every opportunity to sneak into the off-limits suite and snoop
about. It was how she had found the sexual pictures of her mother. And,
of course, she used the bathroom as often as possible while she was in
there. On the day in question, she was in the offlimits bathroom,
and just coming out when the door to the study opened. Millicent ducked
back and stepped into the clear glass shower stall to hide. She could hear
her mother talking to a man whose voice she didn't recognize. It was a
deep voice and he spoke with sort of a low rolling purr that sounded like
some kind of big machine in good working order. There was strain in her
mother's voice. She'd never heard her mother's voice sound like that.
 
"I don't care what tingles your gonads, " the man
purred. "But when it spills over into our business, I care. "

"It won't spill over, " Mother said.

"It already has, " he said.

"We can prevent it from spilling anymore. "

"You got a suggestion?"

"You have resources, " Mother said.

"What kind of resources are we talking?"

"He'll have to be killed, "mother said. "We are too
close to what we want to let this stop us. "

"Brock know anything about this guy?"

"Brock doesn't know anything about anything, " Mother
said.

"Except shooting skeet and making money. "

"Okay, " the man said, his soft voice filling the room
with energy, "we'll clip him. "

"Quickly, " mother said. Before he damages the project.
"

"Sure, " the man said. "May I use your bathroom?"

"Of course. "

The man walked into the bathroom. Millicent was pressed
against the back wall of the shower, looking at him through the glass shower
door. He looked back at her. Without a word, still looking at her he reached
back and closed the bathroom door, and then he turned and raised the toilet
seat and used the toilet and flushed and closed the toilet seat carefully.
He was a medium-tall man with a thick body and very thick hands. His hair
was silvery and short and brushed lack. He wore a dark suit with a white
shirt and a maroon silk tie. Gold cufflinks flashed beneath the sleeves
of his jacket. He wore an important-looking diamond ring on the little
finger of his left hand.

He bent over the sink and washed his hands thoroughly
and dried them on the towel that hung on the hook beside the shower. He
stared at her some more while he did this, and then, without a word, he
turned and walked out of the bathroom.

"One other thing, " he said to Mother. "You can spread
your legs for anybody you want. We don't care. You can fuck as weird as
you want. We don't care. Long as it s private. You understand?"