Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (26 page)
Authors: Chris Wiltz
“I'll take that drink now,” I said.
She got up, wrapping the dress tightly across her breasts where it had gaped open. I pulled myself together and lit a cigarette. The hand that shook it from the pack was none too steady. She handed me the drink and grazed me softly as she sat back down.
“Were you in Florida looking for Lucy McDermott?” she asked. I nodded. “Did you find her?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me sadly. “I guess it was all for nothing.”
“No, I wouldn't say that. It satisfied my curiosity.” I told her briefly what had happened, and that the police were questioning Lucy now about her father's murder.
She got nervous while I talked. “Look, Neal, I don't think I want to talk about all this right now. Let's forget about it for tonight.”
“I can't,” I said. I got up. “Your mother hung by a thread waiting to get rid of her guilt before she died. And she wanted to make sure that someone would take care of you when she was gone. She chose me for both those purposes.”
Her eyes slitted. “You're being cruel.”
“No, no I'm not, Catherine. I'm trying to handle what she told me the best way I know how.”
“Have you told the police?”
“No. And I'm not going to.”
“But what about Lucy McDermott? It sounds like they're trying to hang her.”
“Let them try. They'll get her for blackmail. That's all.”
She seemed confused. “Why aren't you just going to tell them?”
“I'd rather let them figure it out for themselves.”
“But will they?” she asked quietly.
“I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe not the whole thing. I have to get it clear in my mind first.” I stopped, not knowing how to go on. I took a deep breath.
“Your mother went to the bookstore, Catherine, but I don't think someone in her state of health could kill like that. Also, I don't understand why she would wait twenty years after the fact. Because Lucy McDermott was blackmailing your father? I don't think so. She took care of Lucy in her own way. What she was trying to tell me was that she symbolically pulled the trigger. She felt as guilty as if she had. But she was at the bookstore, alright. She buttoned his coat.”
Catherine stared at me, frozen to her spot on the sofa. “I don't understand, Neal. What are you trying to say?”
I clenched and unclenched my hands to release some of the tension. “When we were talking the other night in the restaurant about Carter Fleming's son taking the books, I expected you to ask me how he had managed to get them. But you didn't. You didn't because you already knew. You went to the shop that morning and you heard them arguing outside in the alley. You already knew Lucy had been blackmailing your father. You had that note and a year to figure it out. And you were still angry about the quarrel you walked in on the day before, but it probably enraged you that your father would allow the son of a man who had cheated him to blackmail him with those books. You were so enraged that it never occurred to you that he was getting back at that man by allowing his own son to walk off with ninety thousand dollars’ worth of his property.” I stopped for breath. “Don't you see, Catherine? I didn't pick up on it the other night in the restaurant because I didn't want to.”
Her face drained. The tawny, golden skin got sallow. Her eyes were huge, gray and smoky looking. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice was a thin whisper.
I went over to her. “Because this has to be straight between us.” I took the fists she had balled her hands into and held them tightly. “It's very important. Do you understand?”
Her face looked like it was ready to fall apart, but she nodded and spoke haltingly, like she was forcing herself to speak. “He always pushed me away like he pushed Mother away, like he detested us both. I didn't want him to detest me. I wanted him to love me, but he always turned away. He always withdrew. He wouldn't let me in.” An edge of hysteria crept into her voice. “I hated him. I hated him for it.” She started to cry. “I didn't realize until he was dead how much like him I am.”
She sat there and cried and I held on to her while she did. I was glad she was crying. I pushed her head down on my shoulder and I rocked her back and forth, and I was glad that she was letting it all go. I didn't stay glad for very long. As her crying subsided I felt her body, that had been relaxed up against me, get taut. I tried to keep rocking her, but she was rigid against the movement. I lifted her head. Her face was no longer torn by the deep, tugging tragedy. Composure latched onto her features and her eyes, tears drying underneath them, were blackening. I tried to get her to respond to me, but she continued to withdraw until the light froze like hard slivers of ice deep down in the bottomless pits which were no longer seeing. If there had been any choice, I would have preferred the creepy feeling I had as I stood in front of Lucy McDermott's beach house.
I watched her until I couldn't take it any longer. I got up and turned all the lights off, then went back and sat beside her. I sat there and waited. I knew then I was going to wait for a long time. I dimly heard the cicadas outside in the picture-book forest, and I thought that the moon seemed to be struggling to send its light through the trees and into the dark room, but that was no doubt a projection of my own misery. If I was having any other thought at that moment it was that I still wanted her very much.
36
Epilogue
Just to show you how funny things will turn out—I learned sometime later that Lucy McDermott managed to convince the police that those sums of money from Garber had been bonuses, gifts for, as she put it, extra services. She presented the check for ten grand to Rankin and asked that it be returned, that she just couldn't have accepted that kind of money as a gift. Actually the money had never really left the family—either Catherine or Mrs. Garber had put a stop on it at the bank. Or had Garber himself?
When I called Chase Manhattan Jones to tell him that now was as good a time as any for Carter the Third to break out of hiding, he told me that Carter had served two days in purgatory at the farmhouse and then returned to New Orleans for the final judgment. Dante's hell probably looked tame compared to the scene that must have followed in the Audubon Place mansion. Chase, one of the last of the Renaissance men, was out to make his fortune in the contracting-promoting business: He would contract anything for a slice of change and in that way promoted himself. He gave me seven phone numbers where I could reach him if I ever required any service short of surgery. He was still with Lise André at the Broome Street loft. And Robert André not only finished his memoirs but got them published. I'm waiting for the movie.
Table of Contents
2 The Luck of the Irish—I Play Pool and Get a Case
7 A Liar Will Steal, a Thief Will Murder
11 Old Friends Getting Together
15 More About Fathers and Sons
16 What Was Stanley Garber Thinking?
18 Another Try with the Old Man
19 William Blake Finds a Good Home
Table of Contents
2 The Luck of the Irish—I Play Pool and Get a Case
7 A Liar Will Steal, a Thief Will Murder
11 Old Friends Getting Together
15 More About Fathers and Sons
16 What Was Stanley Garber Thinking?
18 Another Try with the Old Man