It doesn’t.
I’m fucked.
With the bathroom light illuminating a little off the bedroom, I can see Uncle Sam roaming around in there. Glass clinks against enamel and then, he’s in the doorway. Striding toward me.
He’s nearing seventy. He’s fat, unfit, and I’m anything but. He’s coming toward me with a glass of something in his hand, and I can’t view his steps as anything but threatening, especially considering what my muddled thoughts remember of the morning’s revelation.
Sam stops before me and proffers the glass. I don’t take it. All of a sudden, I can hear my breathing, fast and hard, like I’ve been running a marathon. I try to calm down and don’t succeed.
His menacing stance over my bed has me cowering away and in a shrill voice, screeching, “Where’s Nate?”
“Downstairs. With Erick.”
I swallow and when he tries to hand me the glass, I fling myself back against the pillows. “I don’t want it.”
“It’s aspirin, Marina. If I’d wanted to kill you, you’ve provided ample opportunities over the years for a strangling.”
A squeak bubbles in my throat. The noise wakes me up, brings a halt to the timpani band playing the theme tune to ‘Jaws’ in my skull and centers me. I’ve come up against guns and mob men. I won’t be frightened of my Uncle, even if he has killed a person. Potentially two.
“You’ll understand why I don’t fancy accepting anything liquid from you, when Greta died from a drug overdose.”
“The two aren’t related,” is all he says, and I snort at him.
“Yeah, right. This morning—while looking at Greta’s corpse.—I smelled those cigars you only smoke on special occasions. The ones you put down on your expense sheets for prize ceremonies. The ones that cost ninety dollars a pop. And considering nobody on this damned commune is stupid enough to smoke cigars, especially ones at that price, the fact I could smell that god-awful stench in a dead woman’s room, means you had to have been there at some point last night.
“The night she fucking died. It doesn’t take much to put one and one together and not get three. What the fuck were you thinking of, Sam? I don’t know how I’m the only one to have smelled it.”
He chuckles. “James and Alexei were with you, and as you have quite the doozy of a black eye, I’m going to assume their thoughts were elsewhere. No one suspected anything or even scented cigar smoke, because they didn’t expect it to be there. Why should I be in Greta’s rooms? It’s your word against mine.”
I suck in a breath and grab the tumbler in his hand. I tilt it over and pour the contents on the floor. “If you think I’m drinking that, you’re crazy.”
“I’m not going to murder you, Marina.”
“No? Forgive me while I don’t trust the word of a murderer,” I hiss.
“I’m not a murderer,” he tells me, voice bland. “The world lost a piece of scum today, Marina. One less piece of scum to sully the environment isn’t a bad thing.”
“You can’t expect me to agree with you? I disliked Greta. Immensely. I thought she was a horrible person. I disliked the way she believed the world owed her a living; I thought her propensity to shit stir was disturbing. She was mean, cruel and vindictive. I have not one nice thing to say about her, and I’d say a great majority of the people on the ranch would agree...yet, I didn’t kill her. I didn’t want her to die.
“Christ, I dislike a lot of people. I don’t want them to die horrible deaths.” I croak out.
“It wasn’t a horrible death,” Sam assures me. Some fucking assurance.
Sick of not being able to see his face, I switch on the bedside light. Flinching as the light penetrates my eyeballs like a needle with a too-sharp point, I suck in a breath to will myself through the pain and glare at him. “You’d know, would you?”
It’s strange to see the man who still looks Santa Claus yet with the mind of a man who doles out drugs rather than coal to naughty children. Fuck me, how can I ever reconcile this? The man I’ve known all my life, who I’ve mocked and teased, laughed with and loved...how is he a killer? A stone-cold killer who obviously feels no remorse for what he’s done.
Where the hell has this come from?
“She didn’t roll around in agony, Marina. She fell asleep and just continued sleeping.”
I hate the fact he’s trying to make me feel better about his murdering someone. This is a conversation I don’t want to be having and never thought to be experiencing. “Why? Sam, why?” I ask, my stomach starts the hideous churning that lets me know my ulcer is in full working order.
“Because she was blackmailing me,” he tells me, voice calm, almost flat.
“What?”
He nods. “For the last twenty or so years, since John Kelly’s death.”
“John Kelly?” I repeat, astounded, and when he opens his mouth to explain, I hold up a hand. “Wait. Just wait.” I get up, forcing myself on to my quivering legs. He looks at me, his eyes odd. I can’t read them, and that’s unnerving.
Dressed in one of his ratty, plaid shirts and thick, denim jeans, he looks like the man I’ve always known. But he isn’t. He’s a stranger. Right? Or is he? “If I tried to call for help, would you hurt me?”
He huffs out a breath. “Even if you told the cops, I wouldn’t hurt you. Hell, girl, I’m not a monster.”
I want to be cutting, ask him what his definition of a monster is if a murderer isn’t included in the small description. I don’t. I will myself to be calm. “I’m going to the bathroom for some aspirin. I want the whole story, when I get back. W-we’ll decide what’s going on afterward.” Before I leave, I ask, “Does Nate know you’re up here?”
“No. I was on the verandah, heard him talking to Erick through the patio doors. Heard him mention what you’d said and knew I needed to come talk to you. I’m too old for prison. Even with my belly, I can still sneak about.” He shrugs.
“OK. Give me two minutes and get your thoughts together. I want the truth, mind you. No bullshit. If you lie to me, I’ll know and I will go to the cops. I can’t believe the man I’ve known all my life can have done all this with no real purpose. I’m going on faith, Sam.”
Without waiting for a retort, I retreat to the bathroom and close the door behind me. Nate, when he deposited me on the bed, left me fully dressed. In my back pocket, my cell digs into my butt but I have no intention of using it. Not even to let Nate hear Sam’s side of the story. I reach into the bathroom cabinet and after tossing the toothbrushes on the side of the vanity, ignoring the crusts from toothpaste stains, I fill the second tumbler, the twin to the one Sam used, with a little water. My headache won’t allow me to care about hygiene. I plop an aspirin into the water and hearing the same fizz as earlier and spotting the foil wrapper in the bin, I realize Sam really had been trying to give me an aspirin. He hadn’t been trying to poison me.
Some confidence boost or what?
Closing my eyes, I shake my head at the impossibility of this situation. I gargle with the aspirin-laced water, needing my headache to disappear five minutes ago, and return to the bedroom. Sam has taken to standing; he’s looking out the bedroom window. I retreat to the armchair Nate uses to spank me. There’s no tingling, no vicious thrill as I sit down. I’m too freaked out to think of anything sexual.
“Talk, Sam,” I whisper as I settle into the cushions.
He turns to look at me, his eyes somber now. “I loved John Kelly. Not like a brother,” he amends at my agape mouth. “Like a lover. First met him at a convention in Florida, of all places. He was one of the most diverse men you’ve ever known. Capable of citing Voltaire and then, discussing the theory of relativity before going on to complain about the soccer scores in Britain. He was unique, and I loved him from the start. You couldn’t be gay, back then. It wasn’t done. Christ, it isn’t all that accepted now so you can imagine what it was like in the early eighties. If you were gay, you had AIDS. The two were synonymous. Or at least, it felt that way.
; “Even here, where people aren’t bothered so long as your IQ is high enough, it wasn’t approved of. Blue Ridge folks are more accepting now. In a way, it pisses me off. Selfish, I suppose. I had to hide my love for someone who meant more to me than chemistry and guys like Mark and David, who can fly off and get married... I’m bitter. So goddamned bitter you wouldn’t believe it.” Hunching his shoulders, he blows out a breath.
“I-I never knew. Did father?”
Sam grunts. “Didn’t you ever wonder why your dad took over as guardian and not me? I’m the elder brother. You grandfather did disapprove. I revolted him.”
“God, Sam, I’m so sorry.” I can’t help it. I stand and walk over to him, pressing my hand on his arm and squeezing.
“Thanks, honey.” His top lip twitches in a faint smile. “What’s done is done. I managed to be guardian while you were away and it wasn’t my thing. But I got my chance at it, thanks to you.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No. That’s life though, sweetness. I’m not telling you this for pity. I can’t tell you just half the story, not if you're to understand it all.”
“Okay. Sorry for interrupting.”
“No bother.” He shrugs. “I invited John here to live, and he loved it. Said it was the only place he didn’t feel like a martian. And he loved the horses, loved being with them and caring for them.”
“Hang on a minute, is that the reason you’ve been hung up on this goddamned Thoroughbred stock?” I demand.
He shrugs. “It was one of John’s dreams. He was Irish, you know. Said it was in his bones to breed horses. Your father would never have let me do it, but when you were out of the way, I saw an opportunity and seized it.”
“I can’t say I’m any happier about it, Sam. At least it makes sense now though,” I admit, rolling my eyes at him then gesturing for him to continue. I’m not lying, I’m still mad, but now I know from where this weird desire to have a costly stable full of volatile stock has appeared. It wasn’t just a whim. An expensive one at that. It was for the man he loved.
Sam’s gay. Gay. How did I not know that? How did no one know that?
“We had a good life on the commune; sure, we had to keep it a secret, but it was good as good could be and nobody ever really guessed. When Greta came, she was fabulous cover. Especially when those two jackasses took one look at her butt and fell head over heels in love. Alexei and James were dead certain John had to be too, they couldn’t believe anything else and their jealousy destroyed a friendship John missed.
“Perverse as it might seem, he liked Greta. Never understood it myself, but John did. She amused him, he said. He liked the way her brain worked. She was cunning and sly, and it intrigued him. When your dad threatened to kick her off the commune for nearly wrecking every damned marriage on here, John had been working on something and he gave it to her. To keep her here. Without Alexei and James, without a public friendship with me, he was lonely, I guess. She was someone to talk to.”
“Did dad have a thing for her?”
Sam snorts. “You bet your damn ass he did. Your mother was about as sexual as an amoeba, but they were a good fit, because he was too. Greta came and that all seemed to change. He took one look at her, and just like the other schmucks here, drooled. He was jealous of everyone and there was no damned reason, because as far as I know, even though she teased and taunted, she never slept with anyone. She never fulfilled any of the promises she made. She strung them all along, used them, and manipulated their stupidity. In a way, I can see why John admired her. She was so damned amoral, to a man like him, she was something to study.
“She took the credit for that bit of kit John cooked up, made her name and took the funds for it too. Never offered him a cent, even though he didn’t want anything. He gave most of his earnings away to charity. He was like that. Material things never mattered to him. Things were okay, rolling smoothly, and we were happy, then weird things would start happening. He’d forget where he was. Think he was back home in Naples and he’d start trying to call his mother, who’d been dead for at least thirty years. He accused me of stealing his diary once, and he’d left it, hidden in his usual place under the mattress, but he couldn’t remember. I tried to get him to go to a doctor, but he wouldn’t. He refused to believe anything was wrong.”
“Did you get him to go eventually?”
Sam nods. “He was in Sheridan one day when one of those episodes happened. Forgot where he was. Greta was on her way to meet him in town, don’t know why, but I’m grateful for it. She saw him walking out of Sheridan. When she stopped him, asked where he was, she told me he didn’t know and didn’t remember her. She took him to the hospital. Thought he’d been in an accident or something.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“Alzheimer’s,” he chokes out. “Can you imagine? A man like John with Alzheimer’s? It’s bad enough for regular folks, but John had the mental capacity of four different people. How the hell could he live with Alzheimer’s? Losing everything he knew, forgetting everything he learned.” Sam shakes his head, and I can see tears coursing down his cheeks. “Greta knew, John told her. I wish to God he hadn’t trusted her, because she made my life hell after he died.”
“How did he die? Why didn’t I know he had Alzheimer’s?”
He turns away from the window and looks at me. “We kept it a secret for as long as we could. Then, the episodes got longer, and he spent more and more time lost inside himself. People thought he was focused on his work, and we played on that.”
“Why didn’t I notice?” I ask myself. “I always wondered why he’d killed himself. Never understood it. He didn’t seem suicidal.”
Sam blows out a breath. “If you’d seen him in those episodes, he was just vacant. Usually smiling. He seemed basically normal unless you spoke to him about work, and then, he’d get mad, really quick. It was like a part of him knew he should understand, and that part was so angry at being forgotten, he just raged and raged.
“Greta and I managed to cover it up. When he was lucid, he wanted to end it. Hated not being in control and the fact both of us had to lie for him. One week, I found him...” He breaks off to rub his eyes. “I had to take him to the hospital for to have his stomach pumped. He had over three bottles of Scotch swirling around his gut. When he woke up, he told me he’d tried to end it, but couldn’t do it. All the Scotch had been for courage.” He snorts. “John wasn’t the sort to end it all. He was too pig-headed. We both knew it. When he asked me to help him, knowing what lay ahead and how much worse he was going to get, how much he was going to lose, I agreed.”
Sam’s pinched voice and tears clog my throat with emotion. I feel his pain in a way I’ve never known before. He literally throbs with his agony.
“I didn’t want to. But he wanted to shoot himself of all the damned things, and I knew he’d pickle himself if I didn’t help. He told me he’d just keep on trying if I refused and so I helped. That last night, he was in an episode. Couldn’t remember the ranch or me. Thought I was a maid from his parents’ house. Erma. Made it easier for me. It was a reminder that a man like John couldn’t endure much more. You have to understand his genius to understand my viewpoint. But I pretended to be Erma and gave him a drink loaded with barbiturates. He drank it, thinking it was hot milk, and that was that.”
For a minute, he doesn’t speak. I can see his throat working, and despite myself and the admission that he’s killed two people, I embrace him.
His tremors make me rattle, and the honest reaction touches me in a way nothing else could. The sheer honesty of his love for John, a love that helped him free himself from the prison that John’s brain was becoming... I don’t have to agree with euthanasia or believe in the sanctity of life to understand Sam’s pain.
“Greta knew, of course. Just like she knew every damned thing. When they found his body the next day, she came to me. She knew I didn’t like her, even though she helped me hide John’s illness from the commune. She
said if I kept my mouth shut about the software John created and passed off as her own, she’d keep quiet about my part in John’s death.
“I agreed, knowing that John wouldn’t mind. He’d just be amused by her, of all the damned things. He expected shit like that from her, and I just let her.”
“What changed?” I ask, my voice soft.
“That goddamn algorithm. When John died, in the eyes of the commune, I had nothing to do with him. We weren’t even close, so I couldn’t clear out his things. Had no right to them. Greta, on the other hand, was his friend. She must have gone through his stuff and found the last studies he’d been working on.
“During those lucid times, it was so ironic. He was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. He glowed with it. It was like his genius knew it was dying, but before it blew out, it had one last piece of magic to work on. I took as much of John’s things as I could that last night, knowing I wouldn’t be allowed access to it again once they found him.” He chokes at that, and I squeeze him a little harder.
“I assume you missed something?”
“Yeah. Didn’t realize until the last goddamn moment that I’d missed his last notebook. She stole it. Stole it, kept it and made it a part of her deal with me. I had copies of my own of the algorithm. She told me to keep quiet or else. And God help me, I did. Then, two years ago, it popped out. She and her two sheep started working on that damned prosthetic and they merged it with the bionics. I knew, as soon as that happened, she’d get prizes for the algorithm. Prizes that should have been dedicated to John.
“I hated her for that. Hated her and wanted to do something, anything, but I didn’t. I’m a goddamn coward, but I’m old. I don’t want to go to prison. I just let things lie, and then, you came back, and she was on edge. Last week, you evicted her, and she threatened me. Threatened you. Came out with all this hogwash, demanding I stop you from evicting her. When I told her I couldn’t, she demanded I pay her the earnings she was going to miss. Inside, something just exploded. I kept it quiet. Agreed. Told her I’d try to talk to you, try to convince you to let her stay.”
Sinfully Mastered: Naughty Nookie Page 41
