by James Hayman
“An oxymoron I suppose, but in Deirdre’s case, it applies.”
“Deirdre’s brother, Dennis McClure, is the founder and CEO of The Orion Group. According to his bio on Google, Dennis is a former officer in the Navy Seals. He started the company when he left the navy back in the late eighties to provide physical security to both government and corporate personnel required to work in dangerous places.”
“That’s right. I met Dennis in the early nineties when Whitby was hired by the navy to design and build marine bunkering facilities in Djibouti. We hired Orion to provide security for our engineering and construction people. They did an excellent job under difficult circumstances. We’ve worked with them a number of times since. In fact, it was Dennis who introduced me to Deirdre when she was looking for a job. I hired her. Then I fell in love with her, and the rest is history.”
“A history that starts with the nearly simultaneous birth of two daughters by two different women?”
“Not my proudest moment, but yes.”
“Over the years, hundreds, maybe thousands, of former military special operations people work or have worked with Orion. All of whom are trained experts in the fine art of killing other human beings.”
“McCabe, are you suggesting someone from Orion came out to our island to kill my daughter and Byron Knowles?”
“I’m wondering about it.”
“And why do you think an Orion professional might have done that? Certainly not for personal reasons.”
“No. I’m sure not. What I’m wondering is if somebody familiar with Orion, somebody who perhaps knew its people, might have hired a current or possibly a former company operative to do the job.”
“Somebody such as who?”
“Somebody such as Deirdre.”
“That’s the most ridiculous accusation I’ve ever heard.”
“Is it? Well, let me ask you this. What if your emotionally fragile yet strong-willed wife believed, in spite of your denials, that you loved Tracy’s daughter more than you loved her own? And what if this emotionally fragile yet strong-willed woman feared that you . . . who Tracy described to me as a serial adulterer . . . might one day hand her a check for one hundred thousand dollars and kick her out the door of that white pillared mansion over there and invite someone younger and perhaps more desirable in? And what if this emotionally fragile yet strong-willed woman feared that once you had done that, you might then set about amending your will, perhaps to write her and her less-loved daughter out of it, or at least to reduce that daughter’s share of the pie?
“And a pretty impressive pie it is. According to Forbes Magazine, you were tied last year with two other lucky souls for the hundred and forty-third spot on their list of the four hundred richest Americans. They listed your net worth at roughly $4.3 billion dollars.
“Given that number, and given the fears that your emotionally fragile yet strong-willed wife might have had, and given the fact that she once worked for Orion and thus was almost certainly familiar with a number of current and former Orion operatives, is it still the most ridiculous suggestion you ever heard? If you believe it is, I suggest you ask Charles Kraft if he happens to agree with your assessment. I’d also suggest that you might want to watch where you walk and perhaps avoid riding around in helicopters for the time being.”
Whitby stared at McCabe but said nothing.
“Detective Savage and I have tried a number of times to arrange to interview your wife. So far she’s stonewalled us. I’m not suggesting that all the what-ifs I just outlined are necessarily true. But given the possibility, we do need to ask Deirdre some difficult questions. The help I need from you is to convince her to talk to us without lawyering up.”
Chapter 52
From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.
Entry dated July 30, 1924
I arrived at the house at a little after nine the following morning, hoping to surprise Aimée with my return a day early from New York. To my great disappointment, she was not there. The housekeeper told me she’d sailed out to the island the day before to paint and had spent the night there. Anxious to see her and eager to present her with the earrings that I hoped would serve as a symbol of our reaffirmed commitment, I decided to go out myself and surprise her. I asked Mrs. Simms to prepare a picnic lunch for the two of us. Cold pheasant, beluga caviar, a fresh baguette and two cold bottles of Perrier-Jouët. When the lunch was ready, I took the basket and drove down to the company dock.
Once on board my boat, I put the champagne in a net bag, which I tied to the stern. The frigid Maine water would serve to keep the bottles suitably cold on my way over. Then I hoisted sails and went out to the island. As the wind caught my sails, I felt like a young suitor, alive with joy. As lighthearted as I had been on that first day at the Académie Julien when Aimée had invited me to go to the Café Lézard with her group.
I tied up at the family dock, where I found the Aimée Marie. Since she wasn’t in her boat, I suspected I would find her at the studio.
I hurried up the path, imagining the pleasure we would have consecrating our renewed marriage vows in the island house she loved so much. When I got to the studio, I peered in the window. I instantly closed my eyes, unable to believe the scene before me. When I opened them again, what I saw utterly horrified me.
Chapter 53
MCCABE WAS STILL waiting for Edward Whitby to agree to convince his wife to be interviewed without benefit of counsel. Instead Whitby stood. “Let me get something I think you should read,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
McCabe watched him walk across the Western Prom to the big house with the white columns and go inside. Less than five minutes later, Whitby returned. He handed McCabe a leather-bound notebook. The leather was old and cracked. McCabe flipped it open. The pages inside were handwritten in pen on the kind of lined paper one uses in school.
“What is it?” asked McCabe.
“A journal written by my great-grandfather during the summer of 1924, the last months of his life before he died of cancer. In it he describes the real story of the deaths of both Garrison and Aimée on the island that day.”
“The real story?”
“Yes. Things didn’t happen quite the way we discussed earlier. Garrison did not kill the first Aimée.”
“So it was Edward?”
“Just read what he had to say.”
“Who knows about this journal?” asked McCabe. “Who’s read it?”
“Nobody ever has. Just my grandfather, my great-aunts Charlotte and Annabelle, my father and myself.”
“Not Deirdre or your daughters? Not anyone else?”
“No. I keep it in my private safe, as did my father and grandfather before him. Deirdre and the girls don’t have the combination. I don’t think they even know of the journal’s existence. I haven’t looked at it myself in several years.”
“And your father and your grandfather also kept it secret?”
“They did. As did Charlotte and Annabelle. A secret handed down within the immediate family.”
“Why keep it such a secret?”
“My great-grandfather wanted it that way. He wanted us, his and Aimée’s children and grandchildren, to know the real truth of what happened on the island that day. But no one else. Each of us in turn acceded to his wishes. The journal was written twenty years after the event, and its author, my great-grandfather, was dying as he wrote it.”
McCabe flipped the pages. “Why are you breaking with that tradition and allowing me to read it now?”
“Because Aimée’s death has convinced me that burying the truth all these years may have left a curse on this family that can only be expunged by ripping away the curtains and letting in the light.”
“Do you believe in curses?”
“I never have. But after the events of the last three days, Aimée’s death and your accusations about Deirdre, I’m beginning to think they may indeed exist.”
McCabe wasn’t sure how much more he would learn,
but he took the old journal. He handed Whitby a business card. “This is my cell phone. Call me if anything occurs to you. Anything that seems important. Anything you want to discuss privately.”
Whitby slipped the card into his jacket pocket, crossed the Prom and entered his house. McCabe watched him go, walking slowly, eyes focused on the ground, the walk of a troubled man.
Chapter 54
From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.
Entry dated July 30, 1924
I will never forget the frightful image I saw as I peered silently through the studio window on that summer morning so long ago. On the far wall, the naked body of Mark Garrison, his eyes bulging, his mouth agape, hung by a leather belt from a stout hook attached to the wall on the far side. Directly in front of me, equally naked, her back to the window, Aimée stood gazing at herself in a mirror. In her hand she held the Tanto, the ancient, short-bladed Samurai dagger my grandfather brought home many years earlier from a voyage to Japan.
Aimée brought the razor-sharp blade up and began carving a letter into the top of her own chest as carefully and deliberately as if she’d been creating one of her works of art. My beautiful wife was concentrating so completely on her task that she failed to notice the reflection of my stricken face in the window behind her. I stood for a moment, frozen in place by what I was witnessing. But then I stirred myself and went to the door of the studio. I threw it open to discover Aimée holding the blade in the air, pointed toward her own body. I rushed to grab it before she could act, but before I could reach her to wrest the Tanto from her hands, she’d already thrust it down in an arc. The blade entered her body a few inches above and to the right of her navel. Then she pulled it out and raised the blade, intent on stabbing herself once again. Before she could, I managed to grab her wrist and pull the dagger from her hands.
“Why?” I shouted, looking into her anguished eyes. “For God’s sake, why?”
She stared at me for a second and then, without a word, ran from the house, bleeding from her wounds. Stunned, I stood there, watching her go, before I finally followed. It was my failure to move faster that made all the difference. When I did at last give chase, she was well ahead of me, running far faster than I would have imagined possible, wounded as she was. She was headed directly toward the cliff. I ran as fast as I could, calling her name, and managed to close the distance between us. But then, a split second before I could reach out and grab her, she stopped and turned. She was standing at the edge of the cliff.
“Don’t come another step,” she warned me.
I stood frozen, afraid any movement on my part, any movement at all, would force her over the edge.
“Aimée, please,” I said. “Come away from there.”
“It was you, Edward!” she hissed. “It was you who killed Mark! And I helped you.”
“Please come away from there and tell me what happened.” I spoke in the calmest voice I could muster, my words as soothing and gentle as I could make them.
“You know what happened.” She spat the words at my face. “I played your fool, Edward. I did exactly what you wanted. Exactly what you forced me to do if I ever wanted to see my children again. I told the man I loved as I have never loved another that I could never be with him again. My words broke his heart. He told me that he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t go on living without me. I told him that was how it would have to be. He pleaded with me to allow him to make love to me one last time. I said yes. Afterwards I slept. Hours later, when I awoke, I saw it.”
“Saw what?” I asked.
“His body. His body hanging dead from that hook. As I’d slept, he’d taken his own life. And it was my fault. I spoke the words, the words you put in my mouth, that killed him.”
I reached out to take hold of her arm, to bring her back from the precipice. I will never know whether it was the small movement of my arm or simply her own determination to join her lover in death that pushed her over the edge.
I did my best to grab her, but my best was not, as it never had been for Aimée, nearly good enough. I watched her body fall and land hard on the rocks below.
Certain she was dead and equally certain her death was my fault, I fell to my knees and wept for a long time. Perhaps hours.
Finally I rose and walked in a kind of daze back to the studio. I stood in the room, gazing at Garrison’s lifeless body hanging from the hook, silently cursing him for ever having lived. For ever having met my beloved Aimée. And for seducing her and taking her from me.
Finally, I picked up the Tanto from the floor where I had dropped it. The blade was still red with Aimée’s blood. I held it in my hands, strongly tempted to join my beloved wife in death. But the thought of Charlotte, Teddy and Annabelle growing up as orphans, believing neither of their parents loved them enough to forgo death on their behalf, stayed my hand.
I picked up the handwritten note I saw sitting on Aimée’s painting table. She must have read it as soon as she woke from her slumber to find Garrison’s lifeless body.
My Darling Aimée,
I am so sorry for what I am about to do. I understand your reasons for wanting to break off our relationship and return to your husband. But understanding your reasons doesn’t mean I can live with them. I can only hope that we will see each other again either in heaven or in hell. Whichever God intends for us.
I read the note a dozen times and then wrote another, mimicking Garrison’s hand as best I could in which he admitted killing her in rage and then himself in remorse. I left the second note for the police, tore up the first and stuffed the pieces in my pocket.
Before leaving the island, I walked back one last time to the cliff to gaze down at my beloved Aimée. As I looked, I saw some fishermen lifting her body into their boat. Presumably they were taking her back to the mainland. I went to my own boat and sailed home. There was nothing left for me to do here.
Chapter 55
DEIRDRE WAS SEATED comfortably in an oversized chair when Edward Whitby entered the room. She was dressed in a knee-length skirt, and she had her shoes off and her legs tucked up under her. She was sipping Scotch from a large cut-crystal glass and reading a copy of Vanity Fair. She glanced up when he came in, then turned back to her magazine without acknowledging his presence.
Edward walked to the drinks cupboard, tossed a handful of ice cubes into an identical glass and poured a Scotch for himself. He took the chair opposite his wife.
“What took you so long?” Deirdre’s voice emerged from behind the photograph of whichever beautiful actress Vanity Fair was featuring on that month’s cover.
“Will you put that damned magazine down?”
“Are we angry?” she asked, looking over the top with raised eyebrows.
“Just put it down. Please.”
Deirdre closed the magazine and laid it on her lap, one finger tucked between the pages, holding her place, as if she planned to go back to reading any second. “I was in the middle of a very interesting article.”
“Please. We need to talk.”
She tossed the magazine onto the table at the side of the chair with an audible sigh. “So talk.”
“Tracy and I have finalized funeral arrangements with Bishop Crocker.” Whitby told her about the plans for the service at St. Luke’s and for burying Aimée’s ashes in the Bishop’s Garden.
“Is that it? Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
Whitby’s eyes turned away from his wife. He took a sip from his Scotch and stared down at the pattern in the antique Persian rug. The rug he had grown up with. He was struggling to find the right words to ask the question that had to be asked.
“Deirdre, how did you feel when you learned about Aimée’s death?”
“Devastated, of course. We all were devastated.”
“But what was your first reaction? Your immediate reaction?”
“Edward, what on earth are you getting at?”
“Have you ever heard how in wartime, a soldier’s first reaction when the soldier nex
t to him is shot and killed is often a fleeting sense of relief that it was the other guy and not him? Even if they were close friends.”
“Are you asking me if I felt relieved that it was Aimée who was murdered and not Julia?”
“Yes.”
She seemed to weigh her response before answering. “I suppose I did. A little. I think the reason for that is obvious. Julia is my own child. Aimée isn’t . . . wasn’t.”
“Would you say you loved Julia more?”
“I wouldn’t want to put it that way. I loved both of them.”
“But did you?”
Deirdre’s eyes turned to the large window that overlooked the ancient garden and the rose bushes growing profusely just beyond. A hundred blooms, large, luscious and bloodred. It had been a long time since Edward had brought her roses. Or made love to her, for that matter. She wondered briefly who he was making love to these days. Some ambitious young thing at the company? Or perhaps several ambitious young things.
“I suppose I did. Julia is my child. Sprung, as they say, from my loins. Aimée wasn’t. But you don’t have the same excuse. They were both your children, and I know that you loved Aimée more. You always have. Ever since they were little girls.”
“I didn’t. I swear to you I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me, Edward. Just take another look at that painting you’re so enthralled with.”
“It’s a painting of my great-grandmother.”
“No. It’s a painting of your daughter, and you know it. Aimée always had that Whitby look. Julia is a McClure through and through.”
“I have always loved both my daughters equally,” Whitby said, knowing even as he said it that it was a lie.
“Once again bullshit. Complete, utter and total bullshit. I know it and you know it. I could see it in your eyes at the party when your ‘dearest, favorite’ daughter came prancing down the stairs eager to steal the show. Julia could see it in your eyes as well. And so could every other person in the room. Julia has always adored you, and it hurt her very deeply to see that.”
