Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  “And second,” another finger went up accordingly, “I want you to treat Katia—and Cassie—with respect. Katia will never be known as a Warren, but I intend for her to have every opportunity in life to go places. I want her to be accepted by this family. I want her to do things with our children. And I want her to know that she has every bit as much potential as our children, because she does, Lenore. Her mother is an intelligent woman. Katia will do well in life.”

  Lenore was feeling as though she had placed second in a race she had been sure of winning. But she had won, she told herself. She would at last have the kind of financial security she had always wanted. Still, it was an effort to tip up her chin and eye her husband with something akin to triumph. “We have a deal then?”

  “Do we? Will you go along with my terms?”

  “If you’ll go along with mine.”

  “Oh, I will. But hear me well, Lenore. If I ever find that you’ve broken your word you’ll lose it all. Jack knows about Katia, and he’s going to know about our bargain. There will be a stipulation in my will that if you go against my wishes on the very personal matter that only Jack knows about, anything and everything I’ve left you will revert to Katia. You won’t want that, will you?”

  “You know I won’t,” she answered, feeling something akin to hatred for the man before her.

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “Yes. We have a deal.”

  * * *

  Taken for granted in that deal was that Lenore would do as she had said on the matter of Gil’s upcoming campaign, and later, his career in Washington. Sure enough, she was with him through the long days and nights of vying for votes, then the long day and night of the election itself. And when he was sworn in as a duly elected member of the United States House of Representatives, she was in the Visitors’ Gallery with the rest of the wives, smiling proudly and looking to all the world as though it were the happiest day of her life.

  At the reception afterward, she had more than her share to drink. Indeed, in the months to come, she found that a stiff shot of scotch or whiskey or bourbon—she wasn’t fussy—helped her through the tedium of being a political wife. She held her liquor respectably, though, and took satisfaction in the doubting looks Gil shot her from time to time. She wasn’t about to embarrass herself. Or him. Of course, Gil didn’t know that, and she savored the little bit of power she felt, perverse as it was.

  As it happened, Lenore wasn’t the only one with a drinking problem. Henry had taken to spending more and more of his free time in the Brookline bar he favored. While Gil was in Washington, which was three weeks out of every four, with the exception of congressional recesses, Henry’s driving help was unneeded, so he was relegated to doing chores around the house, which would have been fine had his presence there not struck him as being contrived. There wasn’t all that much to do. Specialty work—grounds keeping, carpentry, heavy cleaning—was handled by specialty teams who didn’t need his direction or supervision. He felt rather like a third wheel. He knew that he would have long since been let go had it not been for Cassie.

  Cassie. His wife. The woman whose affection for him was about as contrived as his job. Even the children didn’t need him. They were in school all day, and when they returned they were busy either playing with the Warrens or doing homework. He missed the times he and Kenny would do things together, but Katia … well, Katia had never been his, even in the broadest sense, and he knew it. She was drawn to her mother and the Warrens. Not to him.

  So he drank. He hit a tree one night when he was driving home in the car, and Cassie berated him for his stupidity. He slept in most mornings, and she didn’t care, because she was busy in the main house, always with something to do, someone who needed her. She refused to keep liquor in the cottage, so he took to stealing nips from the Warren’s well-stocked bar. And if Cassie knew that, she never said a word. Nor did Lenore.

  It was a game, albeit a sad one, that Henry played, for he knew that he would never be fired. His wife had an inside line to the master of the house, and precisely because of that the game went on.

  It ended on a rainy night in 1965 when Henry had the misfortune of drunkenly staggering across the streetcar tracks on Beacon Street at the very same time that an outbound trolley was trundling by. Though the officials ruled the incident a tragic accident, Cassie Morell suspected that there had been more than a slight suicidal bent to it. Her own fate in life, it seemed, was to feel guilt—guilt that she hadn’t perished with her family in the war, guilt that she had driven Henry to the depths of suicide, and guilt that she continued to love Gil.

  Kenny and Katia were her salvation, for in them she saw the chance to redeem herself.

  Chapter 12

  Cavanaugh left New York the morning after his theater date with Katia, but returned a week later to see Jordan. He had phoned in advance to set up the meeting, not wanting to arrive when Jordan was out of town, and very definitely wanting to see his office in the hope that it would tell him more about the man.

  What the ninth-floor office on Park Avenue told him was that Jordan Whyte was surprisingly unpretentious. The office—actually, a suite comprising roughly a quarter of the floor—was decorated well, but without the showiness Cavanaugh had expected. The furnishings were done in a mixture of light wood and leather, the quality high, the colors muted. There were no gaudy trinkets on coffee tables or self-serving plaques on walls or buxom blondes behind typewriters. In fact, other than an occasional bizarre piece of artwork to add a splash of color, the office was a statement in understatement.

  Jordan himself greeted Cavanaugh in response to the receptionist’s call and led him down the hall to his private office. “Excuse the mess,” he said, gesturing to his desktop, which was covered with blueprints whose corners were weighted down with miscellanea ranging from a jar of paper clips and a small cassette recorder to the telephone. “Those things are a pain to keep rolling and unrolling. I didn’t think you’d mind if they witnessed our conversation.”

  Cavanaugh smiled, but he was busy taking in the rest of the room, which was decorated in much the same style as the outer office, except for the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and pictures. Photographs, actually. Family photographs. An entire wall of them carefully and identically framed, mounted on the wall in even rows. They were impressive, if one thought of Jordan Whyte as a family man. Cavanaugh didn’t want to do that, but when he approached the photos, ostensibly to study them more closely, he saw the fine layer of dust that lay atop each frame.

  Which ruled out the possibility that Jordan had manufactured the display for his benefit.

  “These cover quite a span of time,” he noted as he focused on the faces under glass. They presented a broad assortment of Whytes and Warrens at varying periods. There was more than one shot of Katia Morell.

  Jordan was leaning against the desk with his arms folded over his shirt and tie and his creased, trousered legs crossed at the ankles. “I used to have them sitting on a credenza, but it got crowded. When I moved in here I took the old prints and had them framed. I keep extra frames in the stock room. All I have to do is to pull one out when I get a new picture.”

  Cavanaugh turned then, and Jordan gestured him toward a modern leather-cushioned chair before setting his own long frame into its mate. “What’s happening with the investigation?”

  “Not as much as I’d like. That’s why I’m here. We’ve been through every one of Mark and Deborah’s contacts on the coast and we’ve come up with zilch. I thought we had someone for awhile there, but he managed to produce two witnesses who’ll testify to the fact that he was in Reno on the night of the murders.”

  “Could they be lying?”

  “Possibly, but there were hotel and gas receipts. They don’t lie.”

  “No.”

  “From what we’ve learned, Mark wasn’t pushing dope.”

  “You’re sure?” Jordan asked, half relieved, half sceptical.

  “He bought it, used it occasionally
, offered it at parties along with booze and chips, but he wasn’t pushing.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Mmm.” Cavanaugh’s voice lowered. “You didn’t tell me about Mark’s involvement in kiddie porn.”

  “No,” Jordan answered without flinching. He had known this was coming.

  “Care to tell me why not?”

  “Didn’t Katia?”

  “Yes, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

  Jordan cast a helpless glance at the wall of photographs before returning his gaze to Cavanaugh. “I’m not particularly proud of what my brother was doing. I was hoping you’d never have to know. I’m still hoping my parents never have to know.”

  “Katia must have told you about the indictments.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know about them before she told you?”

  “No.”

  “Did Mark know?”

  “No. Or if he did he didn’t tell me. He assured me that he wouldn’t be caught.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I believed that he believed it.”

  “So you let it go at that?”

  Jordan felt his hackles rise and did his best to hold his temper. “If you’re suggesting that I thought what he was doing was okay as long as he didn’t get caught, you’re wrong. I gave him hell.”

  Cavanaugh crossed one knee over the other. “When was that?”

  “Three weeks before his death. I had business on the coast, so I stopped in to see him.”

  “That was the first time you learned what he was doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you argued.”

  “Damned right we did. I don’t condone that kind of stuff, Cavanaugh. Mark could have been a total stranger and I’d have been disgusted. He was my brother, so it was that much worse.”

  “Did you see him again after the argument?”

  “I took him to dinner that night. I thought I might be able to talk some sense into him.”

  “But you failed.”

  “In a big way.” The muscle above his cheekbone twitched. “We argued again. Mark stalked out of the restaurant.”

  “Where was Deborah through all this?”

  “She was there.”

  “Did she side with Mark?”

  “She left with him.”

  “But did she support him in the porno thing?”

  “I assume she went along with it, but I don’t know what her feelings were deep inside. She didn’t say much about it. She has always deferred to Mark.”

  It was consistent with everything else Cavanaugh had learned about the woman. “Did you see Mark again after that?”

  “You mean between that time and his death?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see him when he came to Boston the last time? I understand they were in town for two days before the murders took place.”

  “I was here. I didn’t see him.”

  He had an alibi, Cavanaugh mused. But corroboration? “Any proof you were here?”

  Jordan’s entire body stiffened. He sat straighter in his seat and his eyes were hard. “Are you trying to suggest something?”

  “I’m trying to rule something out.”

  “You’re asking where I was at the time of the murders, which tells me that I may be a suspect.”

  “I’m trying to rule it out,” Cavanaugh repeated calmly.

  Jordan was anything but calm as he struggled against disbelief, disgust and fury. “You actually think I could have killed my own brother and sister-in-law?”

  “I don’t think that. I’m simply doing my job by looking at every possibility and eliminating them, one by one. If Mark had lived, and if he’d been indicted, your family—and the Warrens—would have felt the heat. His death spared you all that.”

  Bounding to his feet, Jordan began to pace the office. “His death spared us? Great. We chose two innocent deaths over a little discomfort.” He turned to rage at Cavanaugh. “Man, you are incredible! Do you have any idea how much pain those two deaths have caused? Do you have any idea what it’s like to think of two people, your own flesh and blood being brutally murdered? Two people, two intelligent people, two people who carried a little bit of you in them because you’d spent years and years together,” he snapped his fingers, “gone, just like that? No, you don’t. You can’t, or you’d never be suggesting that we’d benefit from their deaths. What do you think we are—monsters?”

  “I’m just doing my job, Whyte.”

  “Well, I’m doing mine as a member of my family by saying that you’re way off base! Way off base!”

  “Okay. Take it easy. I just wanted to run it by you.”

  “Geez…” Jordan scowled at the ceiling, then lowered his head and took a deep breath. When he spoke his voice was calmer. Not quite its jaunty self, but calmer, though his cheek twitched again. “Why don’t you try running something else by me? Something sane this time.” Hearing his own words, he shook his head. “Okay. You’re right. I know that you’re just doing your job, but believe me you’re barking up the wrong tree.” A new thought struck then, bringing a resurgence of emotion. “Hell, you’re not going to ask the others to account for their whereabouts that night, are you? They’ll be as sick as I am that you could imagine we’d do anything to hurt either Mark or Deborah ourselves.”

  “I don’t know. We’re still looking for other leads.”

  “God, Cavanaugh. Stay away from them. They’ve been through so much with this already. My sister Anne is heartbroken that she didn’t lend Mark money when he asked for it. My brother Nick, who was closest to Mark as a kid because they were barely a year apart, is sick that he wasn’t able to foresee some kind of trouble. Deborah’s older sister is going through a mid-life crisis touched off by Deborah’s death, and poor Emily is working overtime on the stage so she won’t have to think about it.” He took a quick breath. “And as for my parents, and Gil and Lenore, they haven’t been the same since. They’re bleeding, Cavanaugh. Hell, man, don’t rub salt on the wound!”

  Cavanaugh couldn’t help but be affected by Jordan’s impassioned plea. He told himself that he was a fool, but he believed that the man meant every word he said. “I won’t point any fingers unless I have good cause.” In another tone the statement would have sounded defensive, but Cavanaugh had offered it with a touch of sadness.

  Jordan settled down some. “You won’t have cause. I can guarantee you that. For whatever else you might think of us, we’re not murderers.”

  “What about Peter Warren?”

  “Peter isn’t capable of murder!”

  “But you didn’t mention him before. How has he taken the deaths?”

  Jordan thought of fabricating a story of boundless grief, then thought otherwise. He had gone with the truth so far; his gut told him it was the best policy. “Peter was stunned. We all were. But he’s been able to throw off the shock better than some of the others. You have to understand,” Jordan urged as he sank back into his chair and propped his elbows on his knees. “I love him like a brother, and have a great deal of respect for his legal ability, but Peter is self-centered. In a nutshell. He likes to be the center of attention. That’s why he enjoys trial work, where every eye in the jury is on him. That’s why he wants to be a judge. But take my word for it,” he was slowly shaking his head, “there is no way that Peter would have raised a finger against either Deborah or Mark. He loved them too, and he’s learned to be very careful with the law. There is no way he’d do anything that would jeopardize his future.

  “Besides,” he added with a crooked smile, “he hates the sight of blood. It used to be the death of him. When we were kids and someone got a scrape or a cut, Peter nearly passed out. We ribbed him about it. He learned to run in the opposite direction at the first drop of something red. Maybe he’s like his mother in that way, I don’t know. But I do know that he’s turned down cases that are particularly gruesome. No one other than family
knows the reason.” He took a breath, sighed it out. “Does that sound like a man who could cold-bloodedly shoot his own sister and brother-in-law in the head?”

  “No. But then a scandal linking Mark to child pornography might have jeopardized those chances for a judgeship.”

  “Do you really believe that, Cavanaugh? Would Peter have been held responsible for what Mark did? Come on. Sure, there would have been adverse publicity, and it would have been painful for all of us, but harmful in the sense of affecting our occupational chances?” He shook his head quickly and firmly this time. “I think not.”

  Cavanaugh had to agree with him, if resentfully. The Whytes and Warrens had power. They could probably have taken a scandal and turned it around for their benefit, though how they would have been able to do that with this particular one was beyond him. Still, Jordan was convincing.

  “Well then,” he said, “that takes care of Peter.”

  “That takes care of all of us. I’d stake my entire future on the fact that not one of the Whytes or Warrens is capable of doing what you’ve suggested.”

  “Did you think Mark capable of child pornography?” Cavanaugh asked.

  His point was taken. Jordan chalked one up with his forefinger. “But Mark was different,” he cautioned. “Indecipherable in many ways. We’ve told you that, Katia and I.” He paused, sending a more speculative glance Cavanaugh’s way. “What did you think of her, by the way?”

  “As a murder suspect?” Cavanaugh returned, but the teasing twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

  “As a person,” Jordan said, softening up himself.

  “She’s quite a one. Beautiful, open, warm. I’m surprised some guy hasn’t come along and snatched her up.”

  “So am I,” Jordan said, momentarily distracted by the thought.

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Snatched Katia up. You two are obviously close, and you’re not related by blood. She’s clearly fond of you. I gather the feeling’s returned?”

  “You gathered that the first time we talked,” Jordan reminded him dryly.