Murder Melts in Your Mouth (20 page)

In a nutshell, I told Tierney about my parents and their flight into financial freedom at the expense of my sisters and me, not to mention many of their good friends who were suckered into lending money they'd never see again. I tried to make my voice sound light, to make a joke of it all, but by watching his face—full of curiosity, but pained compassion, too—I knew I failed to make my parents sound like anything more than what they truly were.

“So you see,” I said, “a gallant act on your behalf isn't likely. I'm afraid Daddy is the kind of man who'd swindle a dime from a nun, if he thought he could get away with it.”

Tierney said, “I guess nobody's who we'd like to think they are.”

He curled his fingers around the handle of his cup and looked into his coffee. A cloud of melancholy engulfed him as clearly as if a fog had rolled off a river.

“Tierney? Is there more I should know?”

He sighed and turned away from me to stare out the window. “There's a lot more. And soon enough, the whole world's going to hear it. I guess I knew it would happen someday, but it doesn't make it any easier. I don't understand why the police haven't told the press yet.”

“About what?”

“About Hoyt. He wasn't at all what everybody thought.”

“Yes. We assumed he was a generous philanthropist. But because he's been embezzling from clients, I'm afraid his generosity won't—”

“That's not it.” Suddenly Tierney's eyes looked glassy, and I realized he was fighting back tears. He covered his face with one hand to hide his emotion.

I reached across the table to touch his arm. “What is it? Can I help?”

He shook his head. Choking, he said, “Hoyt wasn't a man.”

My heart went out to Tierney. “Just because he couldn't father a child doesn't make him less of a—”

“No, no, I mean he wasn't a man. He was my father—at least he pretended to be. But he wasn't.”

“I don't understand.”

“Can I say it any plainer?” Tierney looked at me again. “Hoyt was a woman.”

Baffled, I sat back in the vinyl seat cushion. “He what?”

“He pretended his whole life. Surely you noticed his small size? His voice?”

“But—”

“He was a woman. He dressed as a man, acted like a man, chose to live his life as a man. But he wasn't. I don't understand the relationship he had with my mother—that was way too screwed up for me to ask about. All I know is that I discovered it when I was a teenager.” Words tumbling together, Tierney said, “I walked in on him—it was an accident. And I saw. He wasn't a man at all. He had breasts, and he was wrapping them tightly with—look, it doesn't matter. I ran out of the bathroom. Out of the house.”

My head spun with the truth of what he was telling me. If Hoyt wasn't a man at all, what did that do to the investigation of his murder? Suddenly a whole applecart had been upended.

Tierney went on, his voice rough. “Funny thing is, I think I knew long before I saw it for myself. How did I sense it? I don't know.”

I knew what he meant. I'd felt something was off about Hoyt, too, but hadn't been able to put a name to my feeling.

“Finding out the truth,” he said, “really messed me up for a while. They tried talking to me about it, but I was hysterical, completely out of control. They took me to a doctor—a psychiatrist—but I clammed up. I wouldn't speak to anybody. Then they sent me away to boarding school, and it was better there. I didn't go home for a couple of years. I went with friends on vacations and holidays, just so I wouldn't have to face my parents. That's when I started traveling in South America. It was a place nobody knew me, and I really love the people there. Nobody has any pretenses. When my mother died, I came back for a few weeks, but I—I didn't talk to Hoyt. I couldn't.”

I tried to imagine how a young boy dealt with such a bizarre family story. “You never reconciled with your parents?”

“No. How could I? A month ago, Hoyt contacted me through my business. He wanted me to come home. He said he had something important to discuss. It took me three weeks to agree, but I—even now I'm not ready to forgive him.”

“What did he want to discuss?”

“I don't know. But I didn't want to hear anything he had to say. Not only had my parents fed me a gigantic lie all my life, but he—Hoyt—was the only father I knew. The man I imprinted on, the man who taught me how to take a piss standing up, for crying out loud—I trusted him to—to be a man. A real man.”

“Have you been able to talk about this with anyone?” A therapist, I wanted to add.

His face had taken on a hard red flush. “Until today, I've never told another person.”

I winced. “And soon the whole world is going to know.”

Tierney nodded miserably. “I don't know why the police haven't revealed it yet. Surely the medical examiner took one look and knew the whole story.”

“The police probably wouldn't reveal his sex until they pieced together more of the truth.”

“Which is one reason they're looking for me now.”

“And you've given them another reason,” I said.

“Right. Waving a gun at your family. Kidnapping you.”

“I'm sorry you felt you had to go to such extremes.”

Unhappily, he ran his hand through his hair. “Things were better for me in South America. I can be myself there. I'm my own man, have a business I'm passionate about. But here—I'm some kind of freak.”

“That's not true. It's not your fault.”

My words didn't comfort him in the least. Tierney tried to sip from his cup of coffee, but he couldn't manage to swallow. We sat together, letting the truth sink in.

I could hardly accept it. Hoyt Cavendish—a woman in disguise? Did that mean he was transgender? A cross-dresser? I wasn't sure of the label. That time I'd seen him onstage, giving the violin to the young musician—I tried to envision the scene again, knowing what I knew now. It seemed impossible.

And yet. His diminutive size. His strangely weak voice. His hands.

Murusha and Donaldson, I remembered. The gynecologists who specialized in female cancers.

I had an inkling now why Hoyt had summoned Tierney home.

Suddenly my cell phone rang, skittering on the tabletop between us.

Without asking Tierney's permission to answer, I opened the phone.

In my ear, Michael's voice was an urgent growl. “Does he still have the gun?”

“What? No.”

Michael hung up. A bubble of tension popped in my chest.

Tierney looked at me, no doubt puzzled by my expression. “Who was that?”

I glanced out into the parking lot, and leaning against Tierney's black car was a familiar figure. Delmar, with his arms folded across his enormous chest. I recognized him as the sunrise glinted off the dent in his bald head.

I said, “Oh, dear.”

Like a tiger, Michael pounced into the booth beside Tierney, crowding him against the window and upsetting his cup of coffee. Instinctively, Tierney reached to dam the flow of hot coffee, but Michael pinned Tierney's right wrist against the red vinyl. He put his own arm across the back of the seat cushion behind Tierney's head. To the watching waitress, it probably looked like a friendly greeting. To me, it looked as if Michael was going to snap Tierney's vertebrae with one hand.

Every iota of color drained out of Tierney's face.

To me, Michael snapped, “You okay?”

“Yes, of course—”

Unnerved by the stealth attack, Tierney tried to bluff. “Who the hell are you?”

And I said, “How in heaven's name did you find us?”

By that time, Tierney fully comprehended how big and frightening Michael could be when he was angry. Weakly, he said, “Take it easy, man.”

“Shut up,” Michael said. “Before I break your pencil neck.”

“Michael, please. There's no need to get physical.”

“Oh, no? This idiot kidnaps you at gunpoint? And now you're best friends?”

“I'm fine. See? Perfectly healthy.”

“You sure?” He glared at me, his grip still unbreakable on Tierney.

“Yes, I'm sure.” I felt a surge of sympathy. “You've been through an awful night, haven't you? I'm sorry. I'm truly—wait, how did you find us?”

Plausibly enough, he said, “I talked to Rawlins.”

But I saw a shift in his eyes. “Rawlins had no idea where I was until an hour ago. And now I'm here. And so are you. Do you have a bloodhound? Or—good grief, did you put some kind of tracking device in my pocket?”

“Don't get mad,” he said.

“You did!”

“It was only a precaution.”

“My phone?” I guessed, snatching it up from the table.

“It's a GPS option,” Michael admitted.

“My phone tells you where I am?” I stared at the little blue screen as if it were suddenly capable of transmitting a flesh-eating virus.

“Good thing Henry installed it yesterday,” he said. “You could be dead in a ditch if we hadn't tracked you here.”

“You could have found me and I'd still be dead,” I said. “Is it legal to do this?”

The waitress came over with a rag. She mopped up the coffee and righted Tierney's cup in its saucer. She appeared not to notice Michael's seemingly affectionate grip on the back of Tierney's neck. “Some coffee for you, sir? Breakfast?”

“He'll have mine.” I pushed my plate across the table, no longer hungry. “But bring him some decaf. He has the jitters.”

“I do not,” Michael said amiably, releasing Tierney's neck when the waitress walked away. He slid over to make the requisite twelve inches of space between himself and another man, thereby declaring himself off duty. “Who's the asshole?”

“He's not an—Tierney, this is Michael Abruzzo. Michael, this is Tierney Cavendish. My brother.”

Maybe Michael's years in prison made him invulnerable to surprise. He didn't blink. He shook Tierney's hand slowly, though, and studied his face.

Wary, Tierney said, “Man, you scared the hell out of me.”

“Good,” said Michael. “You hurt her, I'll hurt you harder.”

I handed Michael my fork. “Have some breakfast. You'll feel better.”

He ate a few bites of my omelet, but stayed half-turned sideways in the seat so he could examine Tierney between swallows. I nibbled the whole wheat toast until the waitress came back, holding the handles of two coffeepots in one hand—one decaf, one regular. She put some packets of jam on the table. Ten or twelve more customers had come into the diner. Someone turned on the television behind the counter. An early newscast came on, predicting more hot weather. The place felt almost homey. Someone called the waitress by name and she went to another table.

Michael picked out a packet of strawberry jam for my toast and skimmed it across the table to me. But when I tried to open the packet, I discovered my hands were trembling. He put down his fork, reached over and took the packet back. He opened it and carefully spread the jam on my toast for me.

As if trying to get his mind around the impossible, Tierney asked, “Are you two married?”

“Not yet,” Michael said.

“You act like you're married.”

I looked across the table at Michael. My hero. My love. The man with the broken face and the heart of a lion.

But then I thought of what Tierney's idea of a marriage must be and I laughed.

Michael did, too.

“So what's next?” he finally asked me.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “Tierney needs to stay out of sight for a little while. Until we learn more about his—his father's—Hoyt's death.”

Michael didn't acknowledge the confusion about which of Tierney's fathers I meant. He said, “Out of sight of the cops, you mean. That's my specialty.”

“O
ne of your specialties,” I said. “You have many. Where do you think Tierney could go?”

Michael took no offense at my wry tone and made short work of my omelet. “Not your place,” he said between bites. “Rawlins says there was some action there last night. Paramedics and cops.”

“The police were there, too?”

“Yeah, they were very interested in your parents until somebody remembered about you getting kidnapped. So they forgot about them and started on you. And there's an APB out on him.” He hooked his thumb at Tierney. “Cops probably have a license plate now, too, so I wouldn't go driving around in his car today.”

“What can we do?”

He gave me a long look. “You mean, outside the limits of the law?”

“Yes,” I said steadily. “That's exactly what I mean.”

“That sounds like a change of heart.”

“Are we going to argue about it now, or do you have some suggestions?”

Michael said to Tierney, “You have a girlfriend?”

Tierney was eyeing his breakfast again, trying to decide if he could stomach it or not. “Not at the moment, no.”

“That must make your life easier.” To me, Michael said, “I have a couple of extra license plates in my trunk. We'll swap. I'll take the two of you in my car. Delmar can ditch the other one.”

Tierney looked up from his plate. “Ditch my car? It's an airport rental. I'm already broke. If I have to pay for a car, I'm sunk.”

Michael shrugged. “So we'll return it to the airport, no sweat.”

“Where can we go?” I asked.

He wolfed the last of the omelet, thinking. Letting the criminal part of his mind explore the possibilities.

Two minutes later, he sat back. “Hot day like this? You want to blend into a big crowd? You go to the shore.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “We'll buy some beer, one of those big umbrellas for you to sit under. Build a sand castle, maybe, and take a nice long nap in the sun. Later on, we'll have some clams or something.”

“I can't go to the beach. Libby's kids, my job—”

“Call in sick. We'll take the kids with us.”

“My father's in the hospital.”

Michael shrugged again. “Best place for him.”

Tierney said, “If we go back to the house, won't somebody call the police? Or maybe they're watching the house right now. I'll be arrested.”

Michael wasn't deterred. “So we leave now, buy some towels and sunscreen along the way. No big deal.”

A day at the beach. It sounded heavenly to me. But I shook my head. “I can't go. It's impossible to buy a bathing suit on the spur of the moment.”

To Tierney, Michael said, “You should see her at the shore. Cute little pink dress, a picture hat with polka-dot ribbons, a big straw purse full of girl stuff. And it all matches. She makes it into a production, but it's worth it. She's dynamite in a bathing suit, too. And watching her put that lotion stuff on her legs makes me want to howl.”

His delight was infectious, and Tierney smiled uncertainly.

I said, “That's my brother you're talking to.”

The waitress slapped the check down on the table, and Michael picked it up. He went to the register while I gathered up my phone and tucked it into my handbag, then dug out my sunglasses. I stood up.

Hesitating at the table, Tierney glanced up at me. “Nora, I…”

I knew what he wanted to say. He'd confided in me about Hoyt, and it had been a frightening admission that now, somehow, felt cleansing. But he still had doubts. I could see the turmoil in his face.

“It's okay,” I soothed.

He smiled warily. “Okay.” He glanced at Michael. “I can trust him? He's a scary guy.”

“You can trust him.” I put on my sunglasses and shouldered my bag. “If you want to avoid the police, he's your man.”

In the parking lot, Delmar accepted the keys to Tierney's car.

Michael told him, “Wipe down the interior. Don't forget the buttons on the radio.”

Delmar nodded.

I said, “The backseat, too.”

Michael sent me a look with a raised eyebrow. Tierney's expression was that of a teenager who'd been caught by an overprotective father.

Delmar said, “What about you, boss?”

Michael clapped him on the shoulder to send him on his way. “I'll be in touch.”

Leaving Delmar to the task of erasing all fingerprints from Tierney's rental, the three of us climbed into Michael's muscle car. When he started the engine, the rumble under the hood sounded like a jet plane.

On the road, Michael engaged Tierney in a discussion of sports—the universal language of men. I wondered how Tierney had learned such a skill. From Hoyt?

But then I fell asleep with my head on Michael's shoulder.

I woke when we arrived at Michael's home. It was a secluded, modest A-frame house—a weekend getaway he'd bought from some New Yorkers and made into a bachelor pad for himself—a stone's throw from some of the best fishing on the Delaware River. A pair of faded Adirondack chairs sat on the deck overlooking the quietly rushing water. Someone had left an empty beer bottle on the railing. Morning sunlight glinted off the river like a million diamond facets.

I stayed in the car while Michael took Tierney into the house and presumably gave him directions for a quick escape should the police come knocking.

When Michael came outside again, he was carrying something large and unwieldy in his arms. I focused and realized it was a person.

“Oh, my God!” I scrambled out of the car. “Is she hurt?”

“Just hungover, I think.” Michael hefted Emma as easily as if she were a pizza box.

My little sister lolled in his arms—oblivious or unconscious, I couldn't be sure. The white pallor of her face frightened me.

Without benefit of her coating of warm chocolate, Emma's boneless body looked thinner than ever—no longer sexy, but downright skinny. She still wore the faded T-shirt that advertised the Delaware Fly Fishing Company, over a pair of unzipped jeans. She had lost one of her flip-flops. Her toes were dirty.

My heart lurched at the sight of her.

She groaned. “Kill me. Put me out of my misery.”

Michael said, “Help me get her into the backseat.”

I opened the door and held the seat while Michael managed to thread my little sister into the car. Together we got her stretched out and buckled in.

Smoothing her hair back from her face, I looked at Emma and said, “Oh, Em. You haven't done something terrible, have you?”

She gave a slobbery moan. “Not yet.”

Michael said, “If she gets sick in my car, you're cleaning up the mess. She's been sick for a week.”

“Two,” Emma croaked. “But who's counting?”

“It's time somebody else looked after her. Don't look so worried. Under your roof, you can work your sisterly magic.”

Emma squinted up at me. “You told him, I suppose?”

“Told me what?” Michael asked.

Emma groaned and rolled over to mash her face into the upholstery.

Michael looked at me. “What am I supposed to know?”

“You can't be this idiotic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Michael,” I said, “she's pregnant.”

The astonished expression on his face could have been comical under different circumstances.

Then he blinked and said, “No shit. Who's the father?”

“What do you mean, who's the father?”

Michael began laughing. He put his hand on the roof of the car and leaned in. “What did you do, Em? Eat him afterwards like some kind of spider?”

“Leave me alone,” she muttered, clutching her stomach.

I said, “You really don't know who the father is?”

Michael swung around to look at me, still amused and surprised. “Why would I?”

I'm not entirely clear about what happened next. I remember a dazzling display of stars in front of my eyes and the earth rushing up to my face. And the next thing, I was sprawled out on the front seat of the car, with the sound of Emma retching behind me.

“Oh, hell,” Michael said. “I just had this car cleaned.”

In a little while, I was sitting upright, and he climbed into the car behind the wheel. He closed the door, but before starting the engine, he reached across and grabbed my wrist.

“About last night,” he said. “Just so you know, I don't think I can ever go through that again.”

He pulled me close and kissed me. Long, hard and desperately. My own heart skipped and thudded against his, and the lump in my throat throbbed. He hadn't betrayed me. He'd been helping my sister give up drinking.

When he released me at last and we could breathe again, I touched his face and wished I could smooth away the lines of worry around his eyes. “I'm sorry. It happened very fast.”

“I figured you were mad at me. But then Rawlins didn't answer his phone, either.”

“And you knew I was in trouble.”

“For you, business as usual.”

“I'm sorry,” I murmured again.

He hugged me close and spoke into my hair. “It took so damn long to get to you.”

“I'm okay.”

From the backseat, Emma moaned, “If I hadn't puked my guts out already this morning, you two would make me sick.”

We ignored her, but smiled at each other. To Michael, I said, “Tierney isn't dangerous.”

Michael cocked an eyebrow. “You sure about that? Did he push his father off Lexie's balcony?”

“No. And anyway, Hoyt wasn't his father. Daddy is. And there's more.”

I indicated Michael should start the car, and he did. While the noise of the engine kept my voice from reaching Emma, I told him what I knew. Although I hadn't asked Tierney's permission, I spilled the whole story. How Hoyt had been a strange kind of father to Tierney. How he'd fooled the world.

Michael interrupted once, saying, “Wait, wasn't there some famous jazz musician? A guy who turned out to be a woman?”

“I don't know. But Tierney's really weirded out by it.”

“No shit.” Michael stared out the windshield, thunderstruck. “That's the kind of thing that could really screw with a guy's head.”

“If there was ever a person who needed some counseling, it's Tierney.” I sighed. “My brother. How strange is it that I have a brother now? And Daddy? Did he know Hoyt was a woman when he agreed to father their child?”

Michael shook his head. “You've got one wild family, Nora Blackbird.”

Pondering the new development in my family tree, Michael drove us up the river, across the bridge into Pennsylvania and over to Blackbird Farm. The time on my watch read only a few minutes after nine, but it felt as if I'd been gone for days.

A silver Rolls-Royce sat sparkling in the driveway.

Looking at it, Michael whistled, long and low.

We got out into the dappled sunshine, and Michael wrestled Emma out of the backseat.

As he carried her up the stone sidewalk, she groaned. “I need ginger ale.”

To me, Michael said, “It's the only thing that settles her stomach. I bought a case yesterday. It's in the trunk.”

I dug the car keys out of his hip pocket and opened the trunk. The cans of ginger ale were warm to the touch, but they would have to do.

Henry Fineman was snoring in the hammock strung between two oak trees. His hands were arranged peacefully on his chest. He wore his hiking clothes, but he had taken off his sandals, and they were neatly placed on the grass under the hammock.

Toby burst out from under my peonies and ran over to Michael, leaping up to sniff his burden. Emma was the spaniel's favorite person, and he whined and yelped to see her. I hadn't seen the dog so energized since the moment my sister left the farm.

Michael put Emma into one of the Adirondack chairs by the hammock and tucked a pillow under her head. She gave another groan when Toby scrambled into her lap and licked her face. She tried to push him away, but she was too weak. Eventually the dog laid his head against her chest and sighed.

In her Spider-Man pajamas, Lucy sat on the steps of the back porch, keeping an eagle eye on Henry Fineman and holding a bow and arrow with a rubber tip.

I kissed the top of her uncombed head. “Good morning, Luce. Have you had breakfast yet?”

“I'm working on it.” She glared, unwavering, at Henry.

“Is Grandma here?”

“Nope. She's at the hospital with Grandpa.”

“Rawlins?”

“Sleeping,” she reported.