The Heir (16 page)

“Fred wants you to call.”

“I’m sure. I’m on vacation until I walk through the front door.”

I was fully in the twenty-first century as I put into the wind, with GPS, radio, and food. Before noon I’d cleared Long Island, and the southwest wind was pushing me fast into the Sound and toward home. The last sixty miles took four hours.

I had the marina in sight at four thirty, back in my safe haven and right at the edge of cell phone range, and my cell phone rang. It was Katie.

“Jason?”

She sounded terrible.

“What’s wrong, Katie?” She was sobbing, and I said again, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Angela. She’s dead.”

17

I was holding Katie, telling her it was okay, we were okay, I was right here with her. It was like the last time, but only a little. Last time it was Melvin going over a cliff, but that was his own fault, in one way or another. He wasn’t innocent.

Here I was holding Katie again, but it was much worse. It was too terrible to think of cottony Angela writing her little note, holding the gun to her head. How did she even know how to use a gun?

The rain had begun again. Katie had finished crying, and we had been sitting, just silent. Melvin’s death had meant change, but Angela’s meant only loss. Katie was grieving for Angela’s despair that we couldn’t help with, her loneliness that we couldn’t fill, even the friendship, of some type at least, that was lost.

Eric arrived dripping, wide-eyed and somber. But this time he had experience, he could deal with it. I couldn’t hold both of them, so I left them with each other.

Who was supposed to make the arrangements? Had anyone called her sister or brother? They were all estranged, of course. Only a funeral might bring them together. But Melvin’s hadn’t.

I called Fred. Good old Fred. Yes, all the arrangements had been made long ago by Melvin. Fred was executor—everything would be taken care of.

And by the way, just for my information, this would not cause any complications concerning any Boyer interests. All of Angela’s connections with Melvin’s estate were strictly for her lifetime only.

Which was now over.

“It also means you now have full rights over the main house and grounds,” he said.

“I’ll find a demolition company,” I said back to him.

“Wait until after the funeral,” he said. “You needn’t be annoyed. I’m just advising you.” He sounded annoyed.

“Then you wait until after the funeral, too.”

“Very well. Have the police called you yet?”

“It was suicide.”

“Supposedly, but if it isn’t . . .”

I pushed the little button that made him go away. He didn’t call back.

Nathan Kern called later to express his deepest regret and sympathy. I accepted just as deeply.

It was just four weeks since the last time. That had been on a Sunday, too, that we’d sat together mourning. But they really didn’t know when it had happened, this time, Sunday morning or Saturday night. They just found her in her puffy pink parlor after she didn’t show up for breakfast, and her bed hadn’t been slept in. Three maids and a cook lived in the place. It sure took them a long time to notice she was missing.

They were all unemployed now, as well as the gardeners and other staff. Katie would fix that soon enough. We’d need a real staff for our new mansion. It was actually convenient. Although . . . Melvin and Angela, their two employers, both dead, one month apart. Before we hired these people, we might want to get references.

We had our own quiet dinner, the three of us, long after dark. It helped some, and Eric slept in the guest room. I didn’t sleep in my own bed. I just laid there in it, even after Katie finally went to sleep. I’d been looking forward to a real night’s rest, but it would have to wait.

18

We were all better in the morning. Katie wondered if we should go out to the big house, but she couldn’t think of any reason why. She just wanted to do something.

“No one else will,” she said.

“We’ll wait until afterward,” I said.

“What will happen to the house?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Somebody has to live there.”

“I’ll call Nathan Kern. He probably knows lots of homeless people.”

“Jason, be serious.” Apparently we were not quite up to sarcasm yet.

So I thought about it seriously, for about fifteen seconds. “I guess I’ll sell it.”

“It’s your father’s house!”

“Do you want to live in that place?” I asked.

I never would. I’d sell that place as fast as it was decent. It was one part of Melvin I really could disown. Maybe I actually would find a demolition company.

No, I’d sell it and give the thirty pieces of silver to the foundation.

“Maybe it would be best to sell it,” she said. “It would be an end.”

Endings are good things. The morning ended and we could eat lunch. Eric’s grief had pretty much ended, too, and he was ready to get back to self-indulgence.

“Do I need to say anything at the funeral?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I will.”

“What about Aunt Celeste and Uncle Damon?”

“I haven’t heard yet.” Angela could’ve just as easily been at peace with her siblings, but they were all more comfortable with distrust. Celeste would get in from Los Angeles that afternoon, and hopefully she’d be over her jet lag soon enough to make it to the funeral. But she might not. Damon would drive up from New York, if he could reschedule his clients’ appointments.

Probably the funeral parlor could rent us some mourners.

Eric had one more question. “Uh, Jason, could I borrow your suit again?”

“Yeah, sure.” Katie had better start on his formal wardrobe if this was going to become routine. “Rule number 88—no motorcycles when you’re wearing my suit.”

Stan Morton called to offer condolences, and I suggested that Angela would have wanted any news coverage to be very low-key.

“I’ll try to respect that,” he said. “But this whole story is reaching critical mass. First Melvin, and now this. And if the police announce it wasn’t suicide it’ll be front page.”

“Just do what you have to,” I said. “And you and I should talk soon.”

The family had dispensed with the viewing due to lack of interest, so Monday night Katie rummaged out photo albums. I pretended to remember fondly the events that had pretended to be worth remembering: Christmases, fall days, Eric and I tossing footballs after Thanksgiving dinner, family times where we were all together. Graduation from St. Martins School, from Yale. They were beautiful pictures. When I had a chance to rid myself of the house, I would dispose of these albums, as well.

“Poor dear,” Katie said over one picture of Angela and Melvin artificially lounging beside the pool. “What would she really have done with the rest of her life?”

With that, we came to the end of our own real mourning. Wasn’t it much better for her this way? Might as well believe that. It had been her own decision to end it all—and we might as well believe that, too, as long as we could, and we’d believe that Melvin had died in an accident for good measure.

When we stopped believing it, I’d have some new questions. Two weeks before Angela died, I’d forced the police to drop the investigation into Melvin’s death. If I hadn’t, would Angela still be alive?

That night I still didn’t sleep. I didn’t deserve to.

Tuesday morning Eric came over and we all got dressed in our buryin’ clothes. The big funeral limousine came to get us, the same one we’d ridden in for Melvin’s funeral. I could have sworn I smelled Angela’s perfume still in it.

The church was done up as lavishly as before, but, well, the truth is that the second time is just never the same. The flowers tried as hard as they could, and the candles glowed their little hearts out. It just wasn’t Melvin. It was just Angela.

And, good golly, the casket was pink. Another funeral and I couldn’t take my eyes off the box, but this time because it looked like a giant strawberry Popsicle. Couldn’t someone have stopped her? But who knew what she had planned? Now it was too late.

It was too late to help Detective Wilcox find this Murderer of Boyers. Obviously Angela couldn’t have decided to pull a trigger— she couldn’t even decide what shade of pink lipstick to put on. Helpless Angela had help with this job. This garish casket held a murder victim.

It was too late to stop the cute little gun. Even if I was rich and powerful and wonderful, I couldn’t buy her back. I couldn’t order my lawyer or my banker or my secretary to fix the problem.

All I’d done was speed her on her way—removed Detective Wilcox, his minions and his mustache, from keeping this person out of Angela’s little parlor.

I ran through the rationalizations. It had only been two weeks before that the police had dropped the investigation. Would they have gotten anywhere with it in fourteen days? They weren’t really trying, anyway. They were just attacking me. I’d had no choice.

And now it was obvious that Melvin had been murdered. But back then, what had been more likely—that he’d been killed on purpose, or that he’d just had an accident?

We’d all thought it was an accident, which just happened to be on the night he changed his will, driving home to the mansion he erected with all the money he pried from his rivals’ hands as he destroyed their businesses, on the road his own company built on extorted public contracts. Who would want to kill that man?

What should I have done? What would have been the right thing to do? Probably not swat down the murder investigation like an annoying fly.

The questions were the annoying flies, and I swatted them down.

What am I doing here?

“Jason?”

What? . . . I was at a funeral. The priest was looking at me. Who? . . . oh, Angela. I was supposed to say something? I stood up. I slid past Katie and I walked up to the pulpit and everyone was looking at me.

“Why am I here?” Wait, that’s what I said last time. Which funeral was this, again? Angela. “Just a few weeks ago, and now again.”

The monstrosity of a casket, everyone staring at me. Where was he? There, on the back wall, my little friend. His stone hand was still raised. He was just a rock, sure, and not alive, but what difference did that make? Being alive wasn’t helping me at the moment. Tell me something to say.

“Both of them—Melvin, now Angela. Why? Is there any reason for this? I want to know. Is there a reason any of us are here?”

If there was, I needed to figure it out quick. Time had an abrupt way of running out.

“Angela had one goal for all the years I knew her—just to be a good wife to the man she loved. She couldn’t get over her loss. I’m sorry she didn’t find a new purpose. It’s terrible to not know your purpose.”

Why was I up here, anyway? Trying to find some shred of meaning in her poor life? As if I’d ever been able to do that for anyone. Wasn’t this what we were paying the priest for, to say the proper things?

“The rest of us will go on, but it gets harder.” Not near as big a crowd as last time, and neither governor nor senator; but everyone who was there was still dressed very nicely.

Anything else to say? The little saint said no. I went back to my pew.

I wasn’t sure what anyone would make of all that, but Katie squeezed my hand and whispered, “Very touching, Jason. That was beautiful.” I don’t think she was being sarcastic.

The candles radiated, the flowers shimmered, the priest emanated somberness and suitable words and earned his money. Everyone did a good job, and we all took a well-deserved break in the cloud-filtered sun before setting out for the second half.

Nathan and Fred hobnobbed; Eric was forlorn. The siblings had come of course. Katie took on Celeste while I sidled up to Damon, mainly because we were both curious. Damon had Angela’s face, but without the makeup it looked decent. We exchanged our pleasantries. That was as far as we got, though. His mind was on the hours he was losing from the office, and I expected him to bill the estate for his time and travel expenses. My curiosity evaporated and I left him alone.

Katie had found a much deeper mine. Everything Angela was, Celeste was not—dark instead of pale in her color, straight instead of rounded in her features, sharp instead of vague in her nastiness. She spewed remembrances of her sister like a machine gun. Even I doubted Angela could have been so bad.

Katie and I finally fled toward the limo. The siblings had declined to ride in it.

“Why is she so hostile?” I said when we were safe with the door closed and the cortege forming.

“Couldn’t you tell?” Katie said. “She wanted to marry your father, but Angela snatched him instead. Wouldn’t you hate your sister for that?”

“I can’t imagine him marrying Celeste.”

“I guess Celeste could, though.”

Eric stared out the window at the thousand different grays in the sky and the grays here on the ground, which included us. Then he just stood next to me through the whole graveside performance.

I hadn’t been here since the last funeral, and I noticed how nice Melvin’s grave looked. The sod had rooted and blended with the rest of the grass. It was very peaceful, and the new grave was an interruption. But soon it would blend like the first one had, and they could get on with their eternity together.

“Jason?”

It was Eric’s first word since we’d left the church. “What?”

“Where is our mother buried?”

It took me a few seconds to climb out from that ton of bricks.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

He’d been two years old. But no one ever told him?

“We’ll go up there tomorrow.”

“Is it close?”

“No.” He had just never thought to ask? Or he’d been afraid to?

Katie sniffed and dabbed with her little handkerchief. She was in gray. It wasn’t her best color, but she’d known it was apt for the day.

Damon spun his wheels in the gravel turning onto the main road, and there could have been no more final sound to end the event.

Eric was staring at Melvin’s headstone, like an abandoned child.

Which he was.

I wondered if he’d been here since the last funeral. The monument had been set, and it was very nice. Big but not gaudy, very solid, with three chiseled lines: