by Jan Burke
Within a few moments, though, my reporter’s instinct began to give me an itch. “Kind of strange, don’t you think?” I said to Kyle. “I mean, the kidnapping taking place on the same night?”
“You don’t know how strange it gets,” he said with feeling.
We were called in to dinner before he could say more. Helen sat between Auburn and O’Connor, while I was placed between Kyle and Warren, and Lily presided at the head of the table.
There was only small talk while we ate the meal — leg of lamb, which I must admit was gloriously prepared. We had just been served a dessert of fresh strawberries and whipped cream flavored with a hint of Grand Marnier when Kyle said to Lily, “Irene is too young, of course, but did Mrs. Corrigan and Mr. O’Connor know your son-in-law and daughter well?”
All the clatter of silverware ceased abruptly.
Lily said, “They knew Kathleen very well, yes. I haven’t broken my promise to you, though. I’m sure they’re wondering why you mention her.”
“Because he resembles her,” Helen said, openly staring at him now. “Especially when you get angry, Kyle. Or — I don’t know — seem especially determined.”
“What is this all about?” O’Connor said irritably.
“Mr. Ducane has a theory that I am his lost nephew,” Kyle said. “He’s such a believer in this theory, he offered me a substantial financial incentive to start calling myself Max Ducane.”
This announcement caused an argument to break out between O’Connor and Warren Ducane, consisting mostly of O’Connor calling Warren a fool and Warren calling O’Connor a busybody who had no say in the matter. It hadn’t gone very far when Lillian Linworth said, “I won’t say I’m without my doubts, Conn, but I’m inclined now to think that there is at least a possibility that Warren may be right.”
“Lily,” O’Connor said, in a far more gentle tone than the one he had been using with Warren, “I can see why you would want it to be true, but that doesn’t mean it is.”
“I’m enjoying being present while you refer to me as if I’m not,” Kyle said. “But I should point out to Mr. O’Connor that I haven’t said I’d accept Mr. Ducane’s offer.”
“He said no to us,” Auburn said.
“How coy,” O’Connor said.
“Lily, if you don’t mind,” Helen said, “I’ll ask Irene to take me home now. I’m — I’m not feeling well.”
“Oh, Helen, I’m so sorry,” Lily said. “I never meant for you to be upset by this, or to—”
“I know, dear. I know. Irene? Do you mind terribly if I cut this evening short?”
“Not at all—”
“I’ll take you, Helen,” O’Connor said. “I wouldn’t want Miss Kelly to miss any opportunities.”
“What are you saying?” I said.
“ ‘Substantial financial incentive’ — isn’t that the way you put it, Mr. Yeager? Or is it now Mr. Ducane?”
I stood up, grabbed my bowl of strawberries and whipped cream, and pitched it at his face. He managed to get an arm up, which deflected the bowl enough to keep it from hitting him, but its contents kept sailing and reached the target. The bowl broke.
O’Connor didn’t say a word. He just stood up and left the table. I was horrified, but tried to keep my voice steady as I said, “Let me know how much that bowl cost,” to Lily, which for some reason made Warren and Kyle laugh and applaud.
“Ms. Kelly, I’d be pleased to replace that bowl,” Auburn said.
“No, really — I — and his suit. Oh God. His suit.”
“You leave these small problems to me,” he said. “It will give me pleasure to be of service to you. Just worry about getting Helen home, all right?”
Before I fled, Kyle asked for my number. I gave him my number at work.
As I drove Helen home, I began feeling worse and worse. She didn’t say anything until I pulled up in her driveway.
“It’s Jack, you know,” she said then.
For a moment, I thought she was hallucinating, seeing the ghost of her dead husband.
She looked at me and said, “Conn’s problem is Jack.”
“I don’t understand…”
“He’s not angry with you, Irene. He’s just angry and upset because Jack died. They were… oh, theirs was some wild combination of relationships. Father and son, older and younger brother, mentor and protégé, friends, coworkers, drinking partners… and a real pair of hell-raisers. They used to back each other up in brawls — Jack would start the fight and Conn would finish it. Barbarian, some would say, but uncivilized or no, it was just one more part of the bond between them. Jack did a lot for Conn, but it’s just as true — perhaps truer — that Conn looked after Jack. Conn was one of the people with us when Jack had the stroke. I don’t think Conn has known what to do with himself since that moment. It has made him surly as hell. I’ve never seen him behave in the way he’s behaved lately. I’m worried about him.”
We sat in silence.
“What can I do, Helen?”
“Try to be patient with him. He’ll probably make that as hard as possible. But, Irene — oh, what he can teach you if you’ll let him! More than Jack or I could ever teach you. He’s got the gift. Lately, though… his writing is never poor, mind you, but his writing hasn’t been at its best since Jack died — except once.”
“The art story.”
“Yes. When he worked with you.”
“Not exactly with me…”
“Don’t quibble.”
“I keep insulting him. I … I don’t think he brings out the best in me.”
“Why are your stories better lately?”
I laughed. “Okay, you’ve made your point.”
We fell silent again, then I said, “Helen, what about Warren Ducane’s claim?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Lily is right, but a few facial features and expressions hardly prove he’s Max. Still, there’s something … something about him that truly does remind me of Katy. Wishful thinking, probably. If Lily and Warren both accept him as their heir, he’ll be the richest young man who ever asked you for your phone number.”
“Aren’t there blood tests or something that can be done?”
“If Katy or Todd were alive, they might be able to show something — although I believe those tests can only exclude people who aren’t parents, not prove that a person is the parent. In any case, it doesn’t matter — Katy and Todd are dead.”
“Kyle said their bodies were never found.”
“No, they weren’t. But believe me, the world would have heard from Katy by now if she were alive.”
Early the next morning, a press release was issued by the office of an attorney named Zeke Brennan. Kyle Yeager was legally changing his name to Maxwell Ducane, and would instantly become the wealthiest young man in Las Piernas. The release stated that he would not be available for interviews.
O’Connor tried calling his hotel. He had checked out.
Lillian Vanderveer Linworth would only say that she looked forward to getting to know the young man better, but had no plans at present to change her will. Mitch Yeager refused to comment.
Kyle — or Max — didn’t call me.
Twenty-four hours after the announcement, O’Connor filed a story noting the disappearance of Warren Ducane.
24
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” SONYA YEAGER ASKED HER HUSBAND. “ARE you cooking?”
Mitch Yeager looked at her with disfavor. “No, I’m standing here in my robe and slippers at the stove, holding onto a pan, because I lost my way to the bathroom.”
“Mitch, I really get that you’re angry.”
He clenched his teeth. She had gone to one of those est seminars a year or so ago and hadn’t been able to talk right since. I get. I get. Werner Erhard was the only one who got — he got a lot of money for telling people that they couldn’t leave the room to take a leak while he insulted them. Now, there was a racket. A fucking cult. Mitch had let Sonya go to get her out of his hair for the weekend. W
hen she wanted to keep enrolling in other courses, though, he refused — he didn’t want his kids talking like she did now.
“A man gets up to make a glass of warm milk for himself,” he said. “What’s it to you?”
“We have a cook. It doesn’t look right for you to do stuff like this yourself.”
“Who the hell is looking? And who the hell cares if they do?”
“I get that,” she said, nodding her pretty blond head. “But I could have done that for you. All you had to do was ask.”
“I didn’t want to trouble you,” he lied. He suppressed an impulse to tell her that she’d be better off spending her time with the peroxide bottle, because her dark roots were showing. She took comments about her hair to heart, and he didn’t want to have to deal with one of her crying jags.
“It wouldn’t have been any trouble, Mitch. I like doing things for you.”
Problem is, you only do one thing well, he thought to himself. Aloud he said, “Go to bed, Sonya. I’m fine.”
“Okay, I get that you want to be alone.”
“Right.” Well, if Werner could teach the bimbo that much, maybe the money hadn’t been wasted after all.
He poured the milk from the pan into a glass and took it into the larger of his two studies. He flipped a control on the Lionel train set that occupied most of the center of the room and idly sipped his milk as he watched the black steam locomotive make its way around the elaborate circuit laid out for it.
He had bought this train for that little shit who was now calling himself Max Ducane.
He tightened his fist in anger, thinking of the boy giving up the name he had given him. He had bestowed his brother Adam’s middle name on him, and now he rejected it. Rejected the Yeager name, too.
Mitch sat down in an overstuffed chair, took another sip of milk.
Some of his earliest memories were of Adam, warming a pan of milk in the small, sloping kitchen of the tiny ramshackle house downwind of the San Pedro canneries, a rented home in an area that reeked of fish processing (to this day, Mitch could not eat a tuna fish sandwich), a few blocks from the wharves where fishing boats were anchored. His father worked on boats if matters grew desperate, but mostly made a few dollars playing cards with sailors and longshoremen.
When Mitch had been a toddler and troubled with sleeplessness, Adam used to prepare warm milk for him. Warm milk was one of Mitch’s few pleasant memories from those days.
It was typical of Adam, who was seven years his senior, to act as both mother and father to Mitch, although both parents were living at that time. Their mother spent the hours she wasn’t drinking passed out on the sofa or floor. Their father, Horace Yeager, avoided the house as much as possible.
Horace had hoped that eloping with Myra Granville, the only child of his wealthy employer, would earn him advancement in the company, if not a life of luxury and leisure. Instead, the old man fired him.
Horace then sent his wife in to plead their case — she was informed that her father would not speak to her unless she was no longer living with Horace Yeager. The birth of a grandchild — thought by Mr. Yeager to be a surefire way to soften his father-in-law’s heart — only brought about a notice from an attorney, informing his wife that she would not inherit a penny.
By the time Mitch began school, Horace Yeager was living in another house with another drunken woman in another part of the country. Mitch’s mother told other people Horace was dead. Within a year, this was true — he was killed by an unknown assailant after he had won a large amount of money in a card game. The money was missing.
Not long after their father abandoned the family, a remarkable person appeared at their door. Mitch remembered looking in awe at the long black car that pulled up in front of the house. A liveried chauffeur came to the door and offered to take Adam, Mitch, and their mother “home.” Mitch was six years old. Adam, at thirteen, was less impressed, but no less eager to live at the mansion so often pointed out to him by their father.
Their mother’s response to this olive branch was to reply that the chauffeur could tell her father to go fuck himself. The man’s startled expression indicated that he was more surprised to hear a woman use such language than the boys were, but he said nothing back to her. He pulled a white envelope from his vest, placed it on the kitchen table, and left.
The envelope was embossed with their grandfather’s monogram. His mother stared at it, then said to Adam, “Open it and read it to me. I don’t want to touch the damned thing.”
There was not, as expected, a letter. There was nothing in the envelope but money.
Their mother was more than happy to touch the money. Mitch saw Adam palm five dollars out of it before he handed it to her. Adam used the five dollars to make sure they ate. The rest, their mother spent on booze.
The chauffeur continued to come by once every two weeks, always bringing an envelope. He always handed it directly to Adam. Adam and Mitch, forbidden to mention their grandfather, began referring to him as “the chief” and spent every night before the chauffeur was due worrying that the old man might change his mind about supplying money to boys he did not know and a woman who despised him.
Adam once took a greater share of the cash for their household expenses, and their mother beat the tar out of him for it. Mitch tried to help Adam fight her off, and got a black eye for his trouble.
Adam repaid her by walking to the landlord’s house and tipping him off about the chauffeur’s schedule. The landlord learned to come by the house to demand the rent within minutes after the chauffeur appeared.
Adam contrived in this way to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Mitch gathered scrap wood for the fireplace, the sole source of heat for the house. That winter, it wasn’t enough — Mitch came down with a horrible cough. Fearing pneumonia or tuberculosis, Adam used the five dollars to pay the doctor to come to the house, and to buy the medicine he prescribed for bronchitis.
As he lay recovering, Mitch worried over the burden he had placed on his brother. Somehow Adam still managed to feed them, even if it was an odd assortment of foods that now graced their table. They seemed to have a whole case of tomato soup, and a crate of oranges. To Mitch’s surprise, a week later there were two chickens and a rooster in a pen at the back of the house.
When asked about it, Adam said, “Chickens make eggs. Makes more sense to own chickens than buy eggs, right?”
“But how can we afford them?”
Adam winked and said, “I got Ma to let go of some of the chief’s wampum.”
Mitch always suspected the story of his mother’s generosity was untrue. Adam was leaving the house late at night and not getting back home in time for school. When he arrived just before dawn with a new blanket for Mitch’s bed, Mitch knew Adam had stolen it.
Adam eventually admitted it, and that he had stolen food as well.
“And don’t be mad at me, kid,” he said. “We gotta stay alive, don’t we?”
Despite a few close calls, Adam was able to avoid being caught. All the same, Mitch lived in constant fear that Adam would be sent to jail. He didn’t know what he would do if his big brother wasn’t there to help him.
Over the next three years, Adam’s thievery changed how they lived. It also changed Adam. Mitch saw him become tougher, more sure of himself. Always big for his age, at sixteen he looked as if he were twenty. He led a gang of other boys now, a group Mitch longed to join. “When you’re a little older,” Adam would promise. “But I’m going to need me a guy with an education to help out, and you won’t be getting up for school if you’re out all night with me and my boys.”
“You’re smart,” Mitch said. “And you don’t go to school.”
“There’s different kinds of smart. You stay in school.”
His mother would occasionally sober up enough to complain that she wasn’t going to have a pack of thieves living under her roof. Adam, now taller and stronger than the child she had beaten, no longer hid his contempt for her. He t
old her that he didn’t want to live with a drunken old whore, either, but they’d have to make do. If she didn’t want to live with a thief under her roof, she could damn well move.
One day she seemed to take him at his word. She told Mitch to pack up his belongings, that they were going to find another place to live. He saw that she already had an old valise half-filled with her own clothing.
“What about Adam?”
“We’re leaving Adam. That’s what.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I want to stay with Adam.”
She slapped him. “Now, you get in there and pack, or I’ll persuade you in a way you won’t like.”
To her dismay, Adam walked in the door just then. “Persuade him to do what?”
Mitch told him.
Adam looked furious for a moment, then said, “You need a drink to steady your nerves.”
He poured a glass of rye and stood by and watched as she downed it, then poured another. When she hesitated, he pushed the glass closer to her. She began crying, but drank it.
When she had downed three drinks, Adam said, “Mitch, you go into her room and unpack her bag. I’m going to take a walk with Ma and talk things over.”
Two days later, Mitch came home from school to find a policeman talking to Adam on the front porch, and felt certain that his worst fears had come to pass. He wondered if his mother, who had been sulking, had reported her own son to the police. He felt a surge of rage at the thought, rage that allowed him to overcome his dread and approach them.
The policeman’s face was sorrowful, though, and Mitch noticed that Adam seemed solemn as well.
