Tea-Totally Dead (32 page)

“So, you’re against me now, too,” he whispered.

“I’m not against you!” she shouted back. She stepped around in front of him. “I protected you. I was afraid it was you who killed Vesta, but I never said anything. I even tried to scare Kate off with a note in her purse.”

I had forgotten about that note. What had it said? Something about letting sleeping dogs lie? Now I knew why the poor woman had been crying so much. Hard not to when you suspect your own husband of murder.

“But it’s gone too far, Trent,” Ingrid insisted, her voice stern. She straightened her spine. “You need help, professional help.”

“I asked you to stay out of my way!” he hissed and slapped her with the back of his hand.

Ingrid went stumbling sideways as the sound of the slap echoed around the pool.

No, not a violent man.

He was walking faster around the pool now. He hadn’t even glanced back at Ingrid where she sat crying on the concrete. I kept pace with him, keeping the pool between us. I sure hoped he wouldn’t start running. I didn’t know if I could outrun him in my sopping clothes. But did I need to outrun him? I looked at him again.

He was at least twenty years older than me. And he didn’t have a weapon. Just rage. I shivered. Was I too water-logged for tai chi? In an instant, I knew I needed to shed the wet clothes. At least the shoes, if nothing else.

I bent down and quickly untied one shoe and kicked it off, then took a couple of uneven steps backward to make up for lost time. Trent was still stalking me and closer now. I bent over and untied the other shoe, keeping my eyes on him.

“Uncle Trent?” came a deep voice from the shadows.

I allowed myself a quick glance past Trent and saw Wayne come into the lamplight. But there was no time to acknowledge him. I kicked off my other shoe. Trent was almost to me, moving in long strides now, his eyes round and edged with white.

I was out of time.

I centered myself in a tai chi stance as Trent took a last stride toward me, his hands outstretched. When I felt his fingers touch my neck, I sank my weight into my back leg and turned away from him, raising my arm. When I turned back, my raised arm moved with me, sweeping away his hands. I sank back once more and then shifted my weight forward, bringing up both of my arms this time and pushing from my center. When my hands met his stiff torso, he toppled.

He toppled so easily that I thought it was a trick for a moment. But when I looked down I saw that Trent was just another crazy man, not unlike the patients I had cared for some twenty years ago in a mental health facility. He wasn’t a dean anymore. He wasn’t even someone who could scare me.

“Damn you,” he cursed from the ground, but his voice had no more force. “Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?” he whispered.

“Kate?” I heard.

I looked up and saw Wayne running toward us.

“It’s all right!” I called out. “Everything’s all right!”

But that didn’t stop him from running. “Uncle Trent?” he asked as he reached us. I wasn’t sure what he was asking. Or what he had heard. His brows were pulled too low over his eyes for me to see in.

Trent looked up at Wayne and began to sob.

“You were my son,” he cried. “My son! And I couldn’t tell you, couldn’t touch you, couldn’t even love you, because they might figure it out.”

Wayne’s face paled as Trent said the word “son.”

But Trent kept on, unseeing. “They would have used it against me, you see. Everyone wants to drag me down—”

“Your son?” asked Wayne slowly. “You’re saying you’re my father?”

But Trent didn’t seem to hear him. He put his head into his hands and whispered, “My enemies. You have no idea of the enemies I have!”

“You killed my mother,” Wayne said, his voice low and trembling.

Trent looked back up at him. “I had to,” he explained, sounding like the dean again. “I couldn’t allow her—”

“You’re no father of mine,” Wayne told him.

I walked around Trent and put my hand into Wayne’s. Together, we helped Ingrid up off the concrete and went inside to call the police.

- Twenty-Four -

Wayne knelt to lay a spray of white roses on his mother’s grave. I pulled my eyes away from the roses and looked out over the cemetery, resisting the pressure of rising tears. Everything was so green here. I breathed in the scent of newly mowed grass. It smelled incongruously of life, of picnics and backyard parties and softball practice. I imagined Vesta having her birthday party here, her head thrown back laughing, happy and loved by her family. Why not? It was easier than imagining her at peace. Even in death, Vesta Caruso at peace just didn’t seem credible.

Wayne closed his eyes and moved his lips silently as he stood again. Was he telling his mother that we’d found her murderer? That he loved her? That he understood and forgave her everything? This time I couldn’t stop the flow of tears. I knuckled the moisture from my eyes and wondered how I could cry so much over a woman I had never even liked when she was alive.

Wayne turned to me, his eyes open again but barely visible. His lowered brows were visible, though, squeezed together into the same intense scowl he’d worn ever since we’d called the police the night before. He had stood guard over Trent wearing that scowl, talked with various members of La Risa’s police department for hours wearing that scowl, and gotten up in the morning with that scowl. At least he didn’t seem to be feeling suicidal. Not that I actually knew what he was feeling. I figured he was angry at the very minimum. But I wasn’t sure of that. All I really knew was that he had stopped talking again.

“Would you like to be alone for a while, sweetie?” I asked him gently.

He shrugged his shoulders, scowling past me without blinking.

“Ingrid seems to be bearing up well,” I said conversationally.

Wayne grunted.

He had grunted earlier this morning too when Ingrid had come to the house to offer a hoarse but abjectly sincere apology for Trent’s behavior. How can you apologize for murder? Or for fatherhood? But I gave her points for trying. The gesture had obviously been hard for her. Lori had been there for support, her arm wrapped tightly around her mother’s shoulders. And Mandy had been there too, wide-eyed and quiet, holding her grandmother’s hand and stroking it. Three generations of Skeritt women, taking care of each other.

On the way out, Lori had whispered in my ear. A prominent criminal law attorney had been engaged to defend her father, one who specialized in the insanity plea. She was trying to forgive her father, she said. But she didn’t know if she was ready. I didn’t know if I was ready either.

I shook off the thought and brought my attention back to Wayne.

“At least Clara’s going to be all right,” I said, continuing my monologue. “All she had was a minor concussion. It was good to hear her voice on the phone—”

“He’s my father,” Wayne interrupted. I jumped in place, startled by his return to the land of the living and speaking. “He killed my mother,” he added in a whisper.

“Oh, Wayne,” I whispered back. I put my arms around him, but his body was stiff and unyielding. “It’ll be better in time,” I promised as I released him.

“No,” he said. His head swayed back and forth in slow motion like a wounded bear’s. “It won’t be better. Glad now you refused to marry me. I’m tainted—”

“Stop that!” I exploded. His brows shot up and then he looked at me, really looked at me, his eyes in focus. I knew I should be kind now that I had his attention, gentle and understanding. But I couldn’t seem to control myself. My ears were ringing with all the things I hadn’t said in the last week.

“You are not tainted!” I shouted into his face. “I didn’t want to marry you because I’ve been married before and it makes me nervous. It wasn’t about
you.
It was about
me
! And I don’t care who your parents were, you are not tainted. You are Wayne. And I love you, goddammit—”

“But look at the insanity, Kate,” he insisted, his usually deep voice high now, almost shrill. “Both of my parents—”

“So what?” I interrupted. “It doesn’t mean anything about
you. You
are still the same person, kind and loving and blaming yourself for every damn thing that goes wrong in the universe—” I paused mid-screed and lowered my voice, trying to remember what it was like to be reasonable. “It doesn’t matter who your father is, Wayne. He was your father for forty-three years and you didn’t know it. Are you any different now?”

“But Uncle Ace…” he began. He couldn’t seem to finish. His gaze dropped again to the flowers on his mother’s grave.

Trent Skeritt had told Wayne all about Ace’s sexual relationship with Vesta the night before, as Wayne and I had stood guard over him, waiting for the police. Trent’s tattling was a final act of betrayal I would find very hard to forgive. Because I was almost certain that Trent had poisoned Wayne’s mind against Ace intentionally, jealous of Wayne’s love for his younger brother. And I was even more certain that Wayne had been as hurt by the revelations about Ace as anything else he had heard from Trent last night. Trent hadn’t been the surrogate father Wayne had loved and trusted through childhood. Ace had.

“Oh, sweetie,” I murmured, my anger gone as fast as it had arrived, leaving me limp and tired. I heaved a long sigh, then made myself stand up straight. If I got depressed, where would that leave Wayne?

“Well, at least Judy and Jerry are reconciled,” I told him with forced heartiness. “She got yet another dog at the pound yesterday. And Jerry has called off the divorce. So they’re living together again, only now they have four dachshunds. Pretty funny, huh?”

Wayne didn’t answer me. He was still staring down at his mother’s grave. “Barbara and Felix are getting adjoining apartments,” I added. Wayne lifted his head slowly, only to stare past me again.

“Listen,” I said, knowing I was probably only talking to myself. “Maybe we could go on a little vacation—”

Wayne’s head and shoulders jerked as if he’d received an electric shock. Was it something I said? He was still staring past me, but his eyes were focused again.

I looked over my shoulder. Ace Skeritt was a few yards away, walking toward us with an immense bunch of daisies in his hand and a tentative grin on his clown’s face.

“Wayne,” Ace called out softly.

Wayne didn’t return his uncle’s greeting. He only knit his brows together a little tighter.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Ace whispered when he reached us. “Can you ever forgive—”

He turned his head away abruptly without finishing. I wondered why, until I heard the rasp of his sobs.

“I—” he began again, but he couldn’t seem to finish.

Wayne’s scowl loosened by a hair, the wrinkles between his brows softening ever so slightly as Ace sobbed. But still he didn’t move to comfort his uncle. He didn’t even speak.

After a little while, Ace coughed and cleared his throat.

“It’s okay, kid,” he growled, keeping his face averted. “You don’t need any more of my crap to worry about. I just wanted to say goodbye is all.”

He bent down and put his flowers next to Wayne’s on Vesta’s grave, then turned and walked away.

I peeked underneath Wayne’s scowl and saw the glint of tears in his eyes.

“Uncle Ace!” I called out. Not that I had any idea what to say as a follow-up.

Ace turned back to us. He was no longer grinning. His wet face was a sad clown’s now.

I looked at Wayne again, willing him to go to his uncle.

Wayne’s hand rose slowly in front of him as if by levitation. I doubt if he even knew he was raising it.

But Ace didn’t question the gesture. He strode forward and gripped that hand, then reeled Wayne into his arms. Now it was my turn to avert my eyes. The way they were hugging and crying and pounding each other’s shoulders, I felt like an intruder peeking over the fence into a men’s retreat.

I slunk off happily and found a stone bench to sit on. Wayne was going to be all right. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders. I could even hear birds singing and the sound of distant traffic. Sleep tugged at me irresistibly, the sleep I hadn’t had the night before. As I lay down flat on the stone bench, I told myself it wasn’t a good idea to lie down in a graveyard. But I was asleep before I could remember exactly why it wasn’t a good idea.

“I love you,” someone whispered.

I opened my eyes and saw Wayne’s battered face hovering above mine. His liquid brown eyes were visible and vulnerable under his heavy brows.

“Sorry I’ve been so distant,” he said. “I know I wouldn’t have found out what happened without you. And I’m sorry I didn’t answer you before. Sorry I’ve been such a pain.”

I opened my mouth to forgive him, but he wasn’t finished yet.

“I
do
care about you,” he went on earnestly. “And I
am
glad Clara is okay. And it
is
pretty funny about Judy and Jerry and the dachshunds. And I
would
love to go on a vacation with you. And…”

I lay there a few more moments letting the river of words wash over me. Then I sat bolt upright. Wayne was babbling! Wayne never babbled. Except when he was scared. Was he scared of losing me?