Family Honor - Robert B Parker (26 page)

"I guess that's between me and Brian," I said.

"How come you won't tell me?"

"I don't know. I don't want to."

Millicent was radiant with triumph.

"You're always asking me stuff," she said. I took in some
air.

"I have never slept with anyone I didn't care for," I
said. "Like most adults I have sex with people I do care for."

"So you care for Brian the cop?"

"Yes, I do."

"So ... ?"

I smiled.

"You won't allow me my modesty, will you."

"You have had sex with him."

"I guess you've got me," I said.

Millicent was still intense.

"Say so," she said.

"Yes, I have," I said.

Millicent looked relieved. The tension went out of her
shoulders. I felt like there had been a test. I wondered if I'd passed.
Did she need to know I'd tell her everything? Was she trying to take me
down a peg? I felt as if I needed another take on this conversation, as
if I had botched most of my lines on the first take. But it was over, and
the quality of satisfied closure in Millicent let me know that going over
the same ground wouldn't do her any good. I'd noticed in the last few years
that getting it said just right didn't do much for anybody but the sayer.
What she had gotten was my genuine reaction. Revision wouldn't help. Help
with what? I wished some sort of supershrink would leap out of a phone
booth and explain to me just what the hell was going on. But none did.
They never do. The bastards.
 

I had already checked with Brock Patton's office at the
bank. He was there, though, of course, in a meeting where he was deciding
the course of Western civilization, and could not be interrupted. I didn't
mind. I just wanted to be sure I could talk to Betty Patton without him.
John Otis opened the front door for me as formally as if I had never had
a tuna sandwich with him on Parker Hill. He turned me over to Billie who
was just as formal, and she led me down the hallway to a conservatory at
the back of the house. Apparently the library, where I'd been before, was
Brock's domain.
 
Betty Patton rose from her little writing desk when I
came in and walked toward me stiffly to shake hands. Billie left us.

"Please sit down, Miss Randall," Betty said.

I did. The floor of the conservatory was stone and I could
feel the heat radiating gently up from it. Outside the glass walls, the
light snow fell straight down, onto the long meadow that sloped down to
the river. The room was furnished with sort of fancy garden furniture as
if to emphasize the connection between the room and the out-of-doors. There
were a lot of plants around. Since the only thing I know about plants is
a dozen yellow roses, I didn't know what kind they were, but they seemed
to be flourishing.

Betty Patton returned to her writing desk and sat and
half turned in her chair to face me. She sat very straight, her hands folded
in her lap. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was flawless. She wore a Polo
warm-up suit, in which, I suspected, no one had ever warmed up in the history
of fashion.

"You may as well know, up front, Miss Randall," she said,
"that our attorneys are preparing legal action against you for the return
of our daughter. You stand an excellent chance of being charged with kidnapping."

"I'm all atremble," I said.

I took the embarrassing picture of Betty Patton from my
purse and leaned over and placed it on the writing desk face up. She looked
at it. And looked quickly away. Her face colored slowly until it was a
full blush. Good. She was human. After a moment, she turned the picture
over very slowly and placed it facedown on the desk. The snow fell straight
down some more outside the glass walls. The heat continued to rise gently
from the stone floor. Betty Patton stared at the blank white back of the
photograph. She looked out the window. She looked past me at the door I'd
come in. She looked back down at the facedown picture.

"Many people allow themselves to be photographed naked,"
she said.

I didn't say anything.

"Admittedly this is perhaps a bit beyond simple nakedness,"
Betty said.

I waited.

"I have needs," she said. "Sometimes I can't help myself."

I nodded.

"If you knew what being married to him was like," she
said.

"You're not married to the man in the picture," I said.

"Of course not. I was referring to Brock."

I knew that, but I didn't comment.

"The man in the picture is a plumber," I said, "named
Kevin Humphries. He did some work for you once. He's dead."

She continued to stare down at the back of the photograph.
Then she looked up and her gaze was pretty steady.

"What do you want?" she said.

"This picture is just a sample. There are more." She nodded.

"Tell me about him," I said.

"The plumber?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I want to know," I said.

"And you think you can threaten me with the pictures?"

"Yes."

"He came a year or so ago to put in a bathroom in my part
of the house, off my bedroom."

"You and your husband had separate bedrooms."

"Yes. It had nothing to do with intimacy, it's just a
matter of each of us needing more privacy."

"Sure," I said. "You were intimate."

"Of course, if it's any of your business."

"Someday I'll figure out what my business is," I said.
"How did he get from plumber to lover?"

"Lover," Betty Patton said. "How quaint."

"It seemed so much more ladylike than 'fucker', " I said.

"But the latter is far more accurate," Betty Patton said,
and smiled.

At least the corners of her lips moved up. I think she
intended it to be a smile. It was awful.

"He was a big, strong man, attractive in a sweaty, capable
way, and I could tell he was interested."
I nodded again.

"I ... as I said, I have needs."

"And the pictures?"

"I gave them to him. I wanted him to remember what we'd
had."

"Did it occur to you that it might give him some leverage
on you?" I said.

"I thought we mattered too much to each other. When it
became apparent that we could no longer be together, I wanted him to have
something that spoke to him of our intimacy."

"What made you break up?"

Betty Patton looked at me as if I were far too stupid
to get in out of the rain.

"I am a married woman, if you hadn't noticed," she said.

"Did Kevin attempt to use these pictures?"

I said. "No, certainly not."

"Did you know he was dead?" I said.

"No, of course not, how would I? I told you we agreed
to be apart."

"You didn't seem to have much reaction when I told you
he was dead."

"I know, I... I should. We were very close for a while.
But you had just thrust that picture at me.... How did he die?"

"Someone shot him in the back of his head while he was
sitting in his car outside a restaurant on Route 9."

"My God."

"Would you have any thoughts on that?" I said.

"How awful."

"Any others?"

"No. You think I... because of the pictures?"

"You said he didn't use the pictures."

"He didn't. I didn't mean that. I just meant you might
be suspicious."

I nodded. We were quiet. The snow was still steady, melting
as it touched the warm glass walls, turning into glistening rivulets, that
distorted the gray light.

"There's a thing that's been bothering me," I said. She
waited.

"Many of these pictures feature you and Kevin together."
She nodded.

"This one is not your standard Polaroid nudie," I said.
"Intimate close-ups, longer full shots, interesting perspectives."
 
She nodded again. There was a deep numbness about her,
as if she were slipping further and further below the surface.

"Who took them?" I said.

She stared at me as if she didn't understand the question.
I waited. She took in some air and let it out, several times. She opened
her mouth and closed it and opened it again.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Mrs. Patton. You're in a pretty sizable mess," I said.
"The only way we are going to get you out of it is if you will talk to
me. Who took the pictures?"

She breathed some more and did the mouth-open, mouth-closed
thing again. She looked down at the blank back of the photograph, and out
the window at the snow, and back at me. She was blushing again.

"Brock," she said.

The name hung in the air between us. She tried to meet
my stare but she couldn't hold it, and finally her gaze dropped and then
she put her face in her hands.

"Your husband took these pictures of you," I said. She
nodded.

"Did the plumber know?"

"Yes."

"What did he think about it?"

"He was a little embarrassed, but. .."

"But?"

"He found me desirable."

"So he didn't care if your husband was standing there
with a camera?"

"Well, he still did, a little."
 
"And?"

"And we. .." She cleared her throat. "We gave him money."

Jesus Christ.

Betty sat with her face in her hands. I stood up. There
was no reason to stand, it was just that I couldn't bear to do nothing.
I walked the length of the room, looking at the snowfall, and turned around
and walked in the other direction, and stopped by the desk.

"Did you reciprocate?" I said.

She didn't move. Every aspect of her was angular and painful.
"What do you mean?"

"Did you take pictures of your husband with other women?"
More silence.

When she finally spoke her voice was thin and hard to
hear. "Yes," she said.

"The Asian women?" I said.

"You ... Yes. Sometimes."

"What next," I said. "You rent the Fleet Center, invite
everybody?"

She didn't speak.

"Here's some things I think," I said. "I think you know
that Kevin Humphries was murdered, because I think you agreed to his murder."

Her shoulders hunched tighter.

"Your daughter heard the conversation," I said. "Between
you and Cathal Kragan."

Her voice was a thin screech, barely audible. "Oh God,"
she said.

"Kragan works for Albert Antonioni, and Antonioni wants
your husband to be governor. Humphries threatened to go public with the
pictures, and one thing would lead to another and Antonioni's plans would
blow right out of the water. He or Kragan got wind of the blackmail, probably
from you, and that was the end of Kevin Humphries."

She was crying now, her face still in her hands. It was
hard for her to cry; the sobs racked out of her paroxysmally.

"I have that about right, don't I." She nodded.

"Millicent?" she said.

"She was in the bathroom when you and Kragan agreed to
zip Humphries. She heard it. And when Kragan came in to use the bathroom
he saw her, looked right at her, and didn't say a word."

"He knew she heard?" Betty Patton said in her strangulated
voice.

"He had to have known," I said. "So when he sent a couple
of tough guys to get her away from me, you really think he intended to
bring her home?"

"He..."

"Do you?"

Again her throat seemed to have closed entirely, and she
struggled to swallow. Then she shook her head. "I don't either."

"My daughter," Betty Patton whispered. "I want my daughter
back."

"So she could become the house photographer?" I said.

"You bitch," Betty Patton rasped.

"Yes, you're right. There's no need for that, I'm sorry."

"I don't want them to kill my daughter."

"Good," I said. "We've found common ground."