FORGET ME NOT (Mark Kane Mysteries Book One) (25 page)

“So you assumed her identity to deceive her
mother? How did you get all her documents?”

“It was her idea, Susan’s I mean. She gave
them to me. It wasn’t difficult to make the necessary changes. I
knew all about her past of course. She blamed her real mother for
not trying to be part of her life. She knew all about Gloria’s
privileged life and she got pissed about it. She’d had a crap life.
For a long time she talked to me about contacting Gloria. It was
kind of a mixture of anger and frustration, wanting to show her
that you just can’t abandon people like that. Then she got real
sick, and she knew she’d never have the chance to see her real
mother so she came up with the plan. I would contact Gloria and
pretend to be her. She made me promise I’d do it. I had no option;
I loved Susan, see?”

She was silent for a minute or two.

“I didn’t really have a plan, except to
embarrass Gloria and make her feel guilty about abandoning her
daughter. But it didn’t quite work out like we thought. When I met
Gloria I couldn’t vent Susan’s anger on her. She was kind,
apologetic. She’d been devastated by the loss of her daughter too.
She explained to me that she hadn’t meant to abandon me and it was
a terrible wrench, but she just wasn’t in a position to care for
me. She thought that a clean break was in my interest and that of
my adoptive parents, otherwise she thought I would never bond with
them. She was just a person – an ordinary person − who thought that
she’d done the right thing. She wanted to make amends. So that’s
how the game played out. She was in such emotional turmoil; she’d
had to bottle it up all those years, and she was sick. She wasn’t
so sick when I first met her but I knew from Greg what her
condition was. So I became her daughter, and I tried to give her
comfort. It was almost like I was her real daughter for a while,
because I’d been so close to Susan. I knew that if Susan was still
alive it’s what she would have wanted if she’d ever actually met
Gloria.”

“You told me you didn’t know about the will
until after she died.”

“That was mainly true. She told me she’d take
care of me. She said that the time would come when she wouldn’t be
able to look after her own affairs and that she would make
provision for me in her will. She never told me what kind of
provision, and even though she eventually became unable to
communicate I didn’t expect her to die so soon. She didn’t tell me
about the details of the will; that was a genuine surprise. She was
trying to compensate for what Susan had never had. You probably
think I’m an evil person, but really I’m not. I developed a genuine
affection for Gloria, and I thought that since Gloria was dying it
was nice for her to think she’d found her daughter. It gave her
peace of mind.”

“And the money?”

“What I did for Susan was never intended to
be about money; that’s just the way it turned out. I don’t know
really what I’d have done with it. I felt guilty that it was so
much, but I couldn’t tell Greg. I couldn’t tell anybody. Probably I
would have used some of it to buy a small condo somewhere. I
haven’t got anything and I’m not getting any younger; maybe I’d
have given some of it back to Gloria’s family if they needed it. I
had no reason to want them to suffer.”

“And the plane crash?”

“Oh that?” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “It
was stupid, right? I know these things are easy to check these
days. The fact is it’s just something that popped into my head. I
couldn’t tell you the truth, that Susan’s adoptive parents are
still alive. I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I said it, but
afterwards I just hoped you wouldn’t bother to check, you wouldn’t
think it was that important. But you did, huh?”

“My assistant did. But you were vague enough
about the date and place to cover your slip. Although we didn’t
find any news of the crash we couldn’t have disproved it.”

“But you know? A lot of what I told you was
true, only it related to me not to Susan.” She gazed at the trees
trough the side window and was for a moment lost in thought. Then
without turning her head towards me she said: “I was adopted too,
you see? What I said about my own experience of growing up with
adoptive parents was all true – well, almost all. Maybe that’s why
Susan and I had such a close bond. My own adoptive parents really
are dead, although they didn’t die in a plane crash. And my father
really was a salesman of aircraft parts. The bit about moving
around a lot when I was growing up was also true to some extent but
I exaggerated it. I knew I had to keep you from pinning me down. So
I sort of used some of the things from my own life when you came to
meet me first. But Susan’s adoptive parents are still alive; at
least they were when she died because they went to visit her in the
hospital. But I didn’t really know anything much about them because
Susan never wanted to talk about it. I know she didn’t have a close
relationship with them. She really wasn’t told about her adoption
until she was sixteen and she blamed them as well as Gloria for
keeping the truth from her.”

“Did you tell Gloria that your adoptive
parents were dead?” I asked her.

“No, that was all stuff I made up for you, to
stop you digging around.”

“You were taking a chance,” I said. “Gloria
might have contacted the adoptive parents and then your deception
would have been exposed.”

“Gloria never doubted that I was her
daughter; why would she? She was just happy that she’d found me
before she lapsed into dementia. She knew perfectly well what her
fate was.”

We rode on in silence for a while longer.

“Josette doesn’t know. She thinks I’m Susan.
I know you talked to her. I suppose I’ll have to tell her the truth
now as well.”

I wondered whether what she had just told me
was the truth. It was almost an idle thought since it didn’t much
matter. I’d been hired to find out if she was Gloria’s daughter, no
more no less. Whether she had really known about the will or
whether she had manipulated Gloria in some way was something I
would never know for sure.

“If you tell it to her the way you’ve told it
to me maybe she’ll understand,” I said. “Is it important to
you?”

“We’re not in a serious relationship, if
that’s what you mean. But I don’t want her to think badly of me.”
She sat in silence for a while. “Is it really a crime to pretend to
be someone else if they’ve given you permission, or asked you to do
it?

“Probably, but I’m not a lawyer.”

Sara looked at me sideways, with a slight
smile. “You told me you had good news when you called me this
morning,” she said.

“I didn’t say it was good news for you.”

“But it was, in a way,” she said. “In spite
of everything, I’ve been fighting with my conscience for the past
few weeks. I’d kind of dug a hole for myself. It’s a relief now
that it’s all over.”

We were drawing into a parking space near
Saunders’ office. I told Susan to sit in the reception and I went
upstairs to have a quick word with Saunders. I gave his secretary a
handwritten draft affidavit I’d prepared for her and Saunders
checked it over after it was typed up. I handed him Sara Bennett’s
real documents so that he could fill in the spaces that had so far
been left blank.

“The end of the nightmare,” I said wryly, but
not so wryly that he’d notice.

“Hmmm, he said.”

“I want you to go easy on her,” I said to
Saunders. “There are reasons for that which I may let you know
about later, but I am sure that Greg will agree.”

“Whatever you say, Kane, I just want to put
this one to bed. Oh, and well done by the way.”

I went downstairs to collect Sara. She signed
the completed affidavit and Saunders notarized it. Our little chat
in the car had proved fruitful. Sara was able to provide Saunders
with a copy of Susan Granger’s death certificate, which would
enable him to move rapidly now to wind up Gloria’s estate for
probate. The question of Gloria’s mental competence at the time she
signed the will was an irrelevance now. I would never know
precisely what passed between Sara and Gloria. It didn’t matter
anymore.

Less than thirty minutes later we were
outside again.

“Will you explain to Greg?” She said. “Tell
him I’m sorry. I never meant to cause trouble to him. He’s a nice
man. It’s just that things kind of spiraled out of control.”

“I’ll tell him.”

She turned to walk away, then stopped and
turned back towards me.

“You’re not so bad yourself, either,” she
said, “for a man.”

And then she was gone.

It was time to report back to my client, so I
headed straight over to Greg’s house. He was expecting me because
I’d called ahead from Saunders’ office. I hadn’t told him anything
since I’d left him earlier in the week, and I asked Saunders not
speak to him about the latest developments until I’d had a chance
to tell him myself. I’d given Susan an assurance on behalf of Greg
and I wanted to make sure he understood my reasons.

It was early afternoon. The sun was shining
as usual as I approached Greg’s house. I felt strangely ambivalent
about what was to be our last meeting. In the past few weeks I’d
probably got as close to Greg as anyone ever had, barring his own
family, and I’d miss our little get-togethers in spite of him being
my client rather than my friend.

Greg was pruning roses at the front of the
house next to the garage. For the first time since I’d met him he
was not dressed like someone about to attend an English cricket
match, but then I was calling on short notice. He was wearing a
pair of loose-fitting beige corduroy pants and a white T-shirt with
paint stains of various colors. He waved cheerily as he came over.
He hadn’t been told the result of the DNA test yet and a look of
eager anticipation was etched into his face. He’d probably been in
the sun all morning because his tanned face was suffused with a
pinkish glow. I noticed he was breathing rather heavily as he
approached me.

“I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, they
say that time passes more quickly that way.”

“They do and it does,” I said. “Shall we go
inside?”

We took our usual places in the living
room.

“The test was negative,” I told him. “Susan
isn’t Gloria’s child, nor any other relative.”

“Well, well,” he said, “extraordinary.”

“Her real name is Sara Bennett. I’m afraid
the real Susan Granger died early last year. There’s no doubt about
it, Saunders has a copy of the real Susan’s death certificate.”

“So how…”

I related the story that Sara had given me in
the car. I told him of our appointment with Saunders, the affidavit
and the fact that Saunders was of the opinion that things should be
able to proceed now without delay.

“I’m inclined to believe her account,” I
said, “or at least I’m willing to give her the benefit of the
doubt. It doesn’t excuse her behavior, but it does put it in a
different light. She asked me to extend her personal apology to
you. I think she got taken over by something that she didn’t know
how to deal with. I don’t think she was motivated by greed. Of
course, that’s only my opinion.”

Greg thought it over for a while.

“It’s a bit like truth of mood I suppose,” he
said. I wonder if you’ve read Forster? It’s a recurring theme in
his novels. It’s when the actual truth is superseded by a fiction,
but done for a kind or benign motive. Her account shows what I
suppose I’ve always suspected. Although the adoption was never
mentioned between us for all those years it was something that
deeply troubled Gloria. Her belief that she had been reunited with
Susan must have been a great comfort to her, as well as her belief
that she could help to make some kind of amends by leaving her
money. In that sense it was a good thing, no matter it was a
deception. Isn’t that odd?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes people do things
that are wrong – either legally or morally wrong – with a good
intention. They are not necessarily bad people. Life is seldom
black and white.”

Greg looked at me. “Yes,” he said, “there are
many grey areas.”

“In the circumstances I gave Sara my
assurance, on your behalf, that the matter will be taken no
further,” I said.

“I quite understand. I agree
whole-heartedly.” He stood there shaking his head. “Extraordinary,”
he said again, this time mostly to himself.

Greg decided that the news called for a
celebration, but for me there was no cause to celebrate. I told him
I’d sit with him a while on the patio, where we had enjoyed so many
drinks and chats together, but that I couldn’t stay for a drink
this time.

Greg opened the glass doors and we sat
quietly for a minute or two, drinking in the smells of summer
rather than alcohol.

“All’s well that ends well,” I said.
“Gloria’s at peace and she died believing that she’d done the right
thing by her long-lost daughter. She’d be relieved to know that her
sons will be all right now financially, and that you are secure in
the family home for as long as you are able to manage it.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. It wasn’t a
pleasant way for Gloria to leave us I’m afraid, but it was a
blessing that in the end she went quite quickly.”

“A blessing?”

“Well, yes I mean she could have lingered in
that dreadful half-house between life and death for years.”

I knew the time had come. I hadn’t been
looking forward to it.

“I think I’ve got to know you well enough in
the short time we’ve spent together, Greg. I hope I’m right in my
assessment of you. I believe you are an honorable man, so I hope
you’re not going to disappoint me.”

Greg looked at me quizzically. “I’m sorry I
don’t…”

“I know how Gloria died, Greg. I know about
the poison.”