by Linda Barnes
“Here,” Mooney said, offering me a rag. I took it gratefully. He’d soaked it in turpentine. Chanel wouldn’t have made a dent.
Back inside, it took my eyes a moment to adjust. The tent kept out more sun than I’d expected.
“There is one skeleton,” the man from the ME’s office was saying into a tiny tape recorder, “consistent with a female body of less than twenty years.”
“The casket,” Mooney said. “Is it extraordinarily heavy or high?”
“No.”
“In your opinion, could it contain a secret compartment?”
“No.”
“A second corpse?”
“No.”
I could make out Garnet to one side, handkerchief pressed to his nose.
Mooney said, “Then keep digging.”
The gravediggers looked at each other in astonishment. From where I stood, I could see the tops of their heads, but their boots were lost in the blackness of the pit.
“Hey, now,” one of them said, “that’s enough. If we got to dig out another, it’ll be after lunch and not before.”
“I’m sorry,” Mooney said. “I didn’t mean you. You’re finished for the day. Two forensic anthropologists will be taking over.” With a few grunts the diggers heaved themselves over the side of the gaping hole.
Two of the men I’d classified as FBI entered the tent, one black, one white. The white carried a large toolbox. Both donned headgear reminiscent of miners’ hardhats, with front-mounted flashlights. I would have liked to inspect their toolkit. From where I stood I could see small handbrooms, a tiny trowel, toothbrushes, tweezers.
The black man surveyed the ground, knelt, and let a handful of dirt sift through his fingers. He said, “It would be best to winch up the casket, place it on a trolley, and remove it, rolling the cart along the uncut turf. If the rest of you will now leave the tent, we could work more easily.”
Garnet, scuffing at the dirt with a wing-tipped toe, said, “I don’t intend to move without some sort of explanation.”
Mooney, ignoring Garnet completely, said, “He couldn’t have been buried far under the casket.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Garnet snapped.
The black forensic anthropologist said politely, “Gentlemen, would you mind moving this outside?”
So the conflagration took place outdoors in the shimmering heat, ten sunny days after Andrew Manley had come to me about a manuscript written by Thea Janis, living genius, long presumed dead.
It began with the sudden exodus from the tent, but the seed had been sown as soon as Garnet left Tessa’s side. When her son abandoned her, Tessa had hurried off to inspect the opposition. Marissa tried her best to hold the older woman back, to keep mother from daughter. No use. Tessa, seemingly struck mute, placed a gloved hand under Thea’s chin, tilted her face to the sun.
“Mama,” Thea said. Just the one word with a faintly foreign pronunciation.
Tessa began babbling in Italian. She lost all color in her face. I was afraid she would faint.
“Mama, I’m sorry,” Thea said defiantly, for my ears, for Mooney’s ears, but most of all for Alonso’s. “I didn’t mean to kill Drew Manley. I know you cared for him.”
Tessa turned away, stumbling, walking past Thea’s chair onto the closely clipped grass. After four quick steps, she faltered, stopped. No place to go.
Alonso said, “Wait a damn minute. Mama? If she’s your mama, then—Mom, what are you saying?”
Thea rose and put a hand to his lips. “It’s okay, darling,” she said. “It’s a relief. I’m guilty. I have nothing to hide now. You’ll be free to go soon. I don’t blame you for any of this. Just go home. Promise me that.”
He looked at Thea, then at Marissa, thinking perhaps of other promises, kept and unkept.
“We have something here!” The voice from the tent seemed far away, muffled.
Mooney stared at me, lifted his right eyebrow. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to blow my one planned line, my lighted match, as it were.
“Thea,” I asked, “was your brother Garnet present when you killed Alonso’s father?”
“When she what?” Alonso demanded.
I knew he was chained hand and foot, still I feared he might hurt his mother, who glared at me with hatred in her eyes.
“No,” Thea said. “No!”
“She never told me who my father was,” said Alonso. “I assumed—” He stared at Garnet, looked away. “She said, just another guy on the road. A one-night stand. She wasn’t even sure of his name. After a while I stopped asking. I never stopped wondering.”
“He was a gardener,” I said, holding out the photo Beryl had loaned me in exchange for her sister’s words and pictures. He took it, his eyes glued to the image of the man who might well be his father. “I think he loved your mother,” I went on, “and possibly your mother’s sister, and I don’t think that sat well with the family, their well-bred daughters and a gardener.”
Alonso’s mouth worked. He swallowed, said, “You killed him because—”
“Bitch!” Thea screamed, staring at me. “Take me to jail, anywhere, away from here! This isn’t what I wanted. Alonso, I never meant to hurt you. I killed Dr. Manley for you.”
“You didn’t know where Manley was.” Alonso spat the words at her like they were poison. “Tell me about my dad.”
“Who knew where Manley was?” I asked quickly, shoving words into the gap.
“Marissa,” Alonso said. “She took me to this incredible house. She said if I asked for it, it would be mine. They never even used it. Can you believe that? A family so rich they’d leave a house to rot? A mansion on the ocean. I grew up in trailers, in other people’s garages. Mom took in laundry, for chrissakes.”
Thea bowed her head. “That was only for a little while, Alonso. Only a little while.”
“Long enough so I was the maid’s kid, all through school. ‘Wash my sheets, Alonso.’ And then, all of a sudden, I thought I came from a family with a fucking mansion on the ocean. Money to burn.” He gazed at his mother questioningly, but she turned away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I guess I do,” he murmured to himself. “Guess I do.”
“Did you tell him that, Marissa?” I asked.
“I may have told him the family was well off,” she said, glancing down at her nails, totally in control.
Alonso used his voice as a weapon, a crude cutting tool. Elevating his chin, he stared at Marissa as if he could see past the brim of her hat. Slowly, he drawled, “Hey, cutie pie, after your little ‘kidnapping’ adventure, did you tell your dearest husband exactly who you’d been to bed with, what a great lay I was, how much better than he ever was, how much you got off oh it? You know, the stuff you said you’d tell him if you got the chance? Or did you holler ‘rape’ instead? Is ‘rape’ why I know about that cute little star tattooed on your cute little butt?”
A flush crept up Marissa’s cheeks. Her mouth worked for a moment before she drew herself to her full height. Her voice was tight enough to quiver when she finally spoke. “You’d think the police would keep him quiet!”
Garnet snorted. “Why silence the ring of truth, Missy dear? I do hope you had one hell of a time, because you know, it’s going to cost you—”
Weakly, Tessa said, “Children—” She must have meant don’t quarrel or don’t squabble in public, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Thea’s face, couldn’t raise her voice above a whisper.
She walked back toward Thea then, stiff-legged on the uneven grass, an old woman.
“How could you?” she asked in her crow’s voice.
“How could you?” Thea answered.
“How could I what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s crazy, Mother,” Garnet said.
Thea ignored him. “You never heard me cry at night? You never heard Beryl weeping?”
“Children cry.”
“Especially when they have bad dreams, Mama.” A single tear
rolled down Thea’s cheek. “Remember how we always had bad dreams?”
“Not you. Never you. Beryl had nightmares. She was a difficult child, always.”
“It must have been difficult for her, being the sacrificial lamb. Don’t you remember her dreams? About Father? And about Garnet,” she finished slowly.
“You never had those dreams. It was only Beryl—”
“I lied, Mama. I forgot.”
“And the dreams were never about Garnet,” Tessa insisted. “About Franklin, yes. Beryl was afraid of her father. She was a fearful child.”
Tessa tried to touch her daughter, wipe away her tears. Thea drew back warily.
“They weren’t dreams. You had to know that. What could Father have said to you? That it took him an hour to tuck in his daughters at night? That he was working late? Our room was almost right above your room. Did you lock your door? Take more sleeping pills? Turn on the radio? A little soothing music to block out our cries? Beryl always told the truth. She didn’t need your pet psychiatrist. We didn’t need Dr. Drew—you never believed us.”
“You agreed with me, Thea, that nothing had happened!”
“I repressed it! I couldn’t deal with it, so I made it go away. But you lied! You said Garnet and Dad weren’t even home, and bad little Beryl made it all up to get attention.”
I said, “When Drew Manley first hired me to find Thea, he was excited, elated as a child. The next time I saw him, he was destroyed. A broken old man who knew, in this one case, that he’d done far more harm than good. Today, more psychiatrists give credence to children’s tales of abuse. They make sure the kids see a physician. They search for physical evidence—”
Mooney emerged from the green tent and cleared his throat. Such a small noise, but it turned us all around as if our bodies were on strings.
“There is another skeleton,” he said. “It appears to be that of an adult male. Unearthed sixteen inches beneath the casket, lying in soil.”
“This is absurd—” Garnet spluttered.
“Calm down. You might want to know that the remains are consistent with having lain in the ground for twenty-four years—”
“Twenty-four years!” Garnet scoffed. “What about twenty-six? Thirty? Fifty?”
“The forensic anthropologists can more accurately date the remains at their laboratory.”
“This is ridiculous,” Garnet said, drawing himself up to his full height. “Surely we’re not responsible for whatever was in the earth before we buried Thea!”
“For now,” Mooney continued, “I can say positively that the hyoid bone has been recovered, snapped in two, a clear indication of strangulation.”
Quickly I said to Thea, “Was Garnet with you when Alonso died? Were any of his friends there? Because you didn’t kill him, Thea.”
“Susan,” she spat. “I’m Susan. I’m nobody.”
“Thea,” I said, “you hit the man because he hit you, but you didn’t move him from Weston to Marblehead. You didn’t strangle him when he came to. You may have helped shove his body in the freezer in the Marblehead basement, but you didn’t bury him.”
“I didn’t strangle him! I hit him with a trowel! I told you. I told the police. I told everyone!”
I said, “He was alive when someone drove him out to Marblehead. You must have had help. You couldn’t have carried him by yourself. You didn’t drive. He was alive when you took off your clothes and buried them in the sand and dove into the sea.”
“Garnet,” she said. Two syllables and all the accusation in the world. “What did you do to me? What have you done to me?”
“It was Father,” Garnet countered, never taking his eyes from Thea’s face. “Dad killed him. Once he knew you were pregnant, there was no stopping him.”
“Dad wasn’t there!”
“It was a lifetime ago. Maybe you repressed it, Thea. How can you remember? For sure?”
“I remember, Garnet. I remember so well. I remember every moment of my last day on earth, Garnet. And you were the only one. You sold my dreams for yours. You took my reputation for yours. You took my talent and my voice, and everything I had. You stole my life—”
“I had to protect Father.”
“Two with one stone,” Thea said bitterly. “That’s your gift, Garnet, your only gift: killing. You killed Beryl’s soul, you and Father. You killed Alonso—you were always jealous of him, I see that now; you must have been jealous of every other man I slept with. Did you think you were so special, Garnet? Did Daddy give me to you? Were the rights supposed to be exclusive? When you finished Alonso off, you conveniently got rid of me, convinced me I had to disappear, die. Was I getting to be a problem, Brother dear? You must have killed Drew after I spoke to him, after he guessed the truth about what you and Father had done to Beryl and me, and then you set up my son to take the blame. Just as you set me up so long ago. I’ll see you dead for that. I’ll kill you.”
“Take him to court instead,” Mooney said.
“Oh yes,” Garnet said lightly. “Do. Judges and juries adore tales like this. Institutionalized witnesses, twenty-year time gaps, recovered memories! At the moment recovered memory syndrome may have some scientific credence, but it’s a day-to-day thing. Go ahead. Let’s do this in court.”
“They won’t need to, Garnet,” I said softly. “It’s over. Once you’re accused, what will you do? Keep running for governor while your sister tells her stories, the way only Thea Janis can spin a tale? Face it, Garnet. You’re no one. When you killed Alonso, you might as well have killed yourself—”
I could have gone on speaking, but he was walking, walking quickly down the path. With all the cops present you wouldn’t think he’d have been able to get to his chauffeured car, order Henry out into the lazy stream of afternoon traffic.
But he did.
Later, the chauffeur said he thought it odd for Garnet to order him out to the old Marblehead house, to raise the glass divider. He especially thought it strange when Garnet opened the rear window, tossing his cellular phone to the pavement, where it shattered on impact.
But Henry was accustomed to obeying orders.
He pulled over on command, saw Garnet walk around the back of the old Ocean Avenue property, barefoot. He’d left his tie and briefcase in the car, and his city shoes, socks neatly rolled within. So curious was Henry that he followed, at a distance.
Garnet set a steady pace, shedding clothes as he walked, his shirt, pants. He flung his key chain into the sand, the motion almost joyous. His underwear followed.
When he ran into the sea, it was no more than knee-high, but he started swimming immediately. Swimming straight out from shore, letting the waves break over his head, never looking to the left or the right, never looking back.
Henry said he never thought Mr. Garnet intended to kill himself until his head was a tiny dot, far away, tossed on the waves, gulls reeling and calling in the air.
57
In Thea’s second novel, the character named “d” sleeps with her brother, and bears a child by him. I wondered if Alonso had read it closely, understood what he was reading. I’d watched his eyes move at the graveyard, searching first his uncle’s face, then the photo of his long-dead namesake.
Fiction? I hoped so. I recalled Thea’s taped confession—she’d told Alonso Senior she was uncertain who the father was.
I hoped Alonso Junior would never hear that particular tape. He looked too much like his mother, like his uncle.
Better he shouldn’t know. Maybe his mother was right when she said she gave him the best father she could.
I spent most of the night in Mooney’s spartan office, listening to uninformed brass criticize him via telephone. According to various “superiors,” he should have immediately issued an all-points on Garnet Cameron, initiated a high-speed car chase through five cities and towns, endangering pedestrians and drivers alike. I sat nearby, offering quiet support with my presence, rolling my eyes whenever the phone rang. Supplying doughnuts and coffee.
I thought he’d done the right thing. A trial would never have resolved the issues at stake. Garnet’s death might make reconciliation possible, once Tessa finished grieving. If she ever did.
About the FBI: Alonso Nueves Rojas, subject of the elusive missing persons file #902869432, itinerant gardener, was a Cuban national under FBI surveillance. Ten years after the Bay of Pigs, Cuba was a hot spot for the Bureau. They’d traced Nueves as he made his way north from Miami, deciding whether to approach him as a prospective counterintelligence agent. Although he’d once fought for Castro, he now declared himself an anti-Castro patriot. The Bureau had inconclusive paper concerning his whereabouts on November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy died. The FBI hadn’t made up its collective mind, friend or foe, when Nueves abruptly disappeared.
That was all. That was why MacAvoy had been afraid to dump the Nueves file entirely, perhaps why his shaky eraser had failed to obliterate the number. Simple fear of Big Brother FBI.
Gary Reedy got to stamp “Case Closed” on #902869432. He was a happy man. He shook Mooney’s hand when he left, actually smiled at me.
58
It was over, but I didn’t feel like celebrating.
Tessa’d found her lost child, but at what cost? Her peace of mind … her lover … her son …
We finished up late Tuesday night—all the charges and countercharges, the handshakes, the stares of enmity. I’d put in a lot of night driving lately, but I knew I’d never sleep. I didn’t see how a last long haul could hurt.
I got in my Toyota and headed north in a drizzle that grew heavier as I traveled, north to New Hampshire and Paolina.
I wondered whether Thea would keep writing. I doubted she’d publish her second novel, even if she continued to revise it. Despite its promise, it had brought such pain. Shoved too many faces, both innocent and knowing, into the unforgiving truth.
As to truth, I couldn’t plumb the depth of her talent. Maybe she had lost the gift. A prodigy’s talent is often like that. It doesn’t mature with the person, just stays as it was. Thea’s words echoed: “I’m no longer ‘talented for my age.’”
