Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  He cleared his throat, then went on. “My father, rest his pathetic soul, couldn’t see beyond a single day. If I hadn’t taken over the business, and if he were alive today, he’d probably be doing penny ante drug running from South America. The poor schnook could have been living high off the hog as a major drug retailer here if he’d had the brains.”

  “You should be grateful he didn’t.”

  “I suppose,” Jack mused. “If it hadn’t been for your mother, God only knows what he would have done with the business while I was off fighting the war.”

  “She’s a good manager.”

  “She’s a good person. This thing with Mark shouldn’t have happened. If I could make it up to her somehow I would.”

  “I don’t think she needs another car. The Mercedes is less than a year old.”

  The look Jack shot him was caustic. “God, you do think the worst of me, don’t you?”

  “I only think what I’ve been led to think.” Since this was supposed to be an honest conversation … “You define happiness in terms of material goods and holdings. And power.”

  “You don’t seem to be doing so bad along those lines. I don’t see you donating your entire salary to the Ethiopian Relief Fund.”

  “I give to charities.”

  “But you live damn well. Don’t try to deny it, Jordan. I can see the clothes you wear, the car you drive. And I’ve seen that fancy condo of yours in New York. You spend what you want where you want. You’re not hurting.”

  “Not in the material sense.”

  “Ahh. That’s right. You’re lovesick.”

  The muscle high in Jordan’s cheek jerked. “And you still haven’t given me an answer.”

  Once more, though, Jack posed a question of his own. “What about Katia? What does she feel about all this?”

  “All what?”

  “Does she love you the way you love her?”

  “I think so.”

  “She’s never said anything?”

  “Not in words.”

  “She doesn’t think of you as a brother?”

  Jordan hesitated for a split second, then shook his head.

  “Have you discussed it with her?”

  His eyes widened. “The possibility of our being related? Hell, no! How can I suggest that her mother was unfaithful to Henry? Or that the man she thought was her father wasn’t? She may not have been close to Henry—and she may not even have been aware that he treated her any differently than he did Kenny, because all that happened before she was born—but she’s never gone looking for reasons. At least, not that I know of.”

  “Maybe she’s the one who’s right,” Jack said with a shrug. “Maybe she’s simply accepted Henry for what he was and gone on with her life.”

  “But her life—and my life—are hinging on what Henry was or wasn’t! Can’t you see that? Why can’t you just look me in the eye and give me a straight answer? It’ll never go any further than me. If you tell me that Katia and I are related by blood I’ll have to accept it and steer clear. If we’re not, I can go on seeing her. In either case she’ll never know that we had this discussion.”

  “If you were to suddenly stop seeing her, wouldn’t she wonder?”

  “Are you saying it’s true?”

  “I’m simply asking a question. Wouldn’t she grow suspicious?”

  “No more so than she is right now.” He drew his open hand down his face and left it to mute his voice. “I swear, she must think I’m a eunuch.”

  Muted or not, Jack heard every word. He had the gall to laugh. “A eunuch? No son of mine is a eunuch.” He sobered abruptly. “Have you tried it with her? Tried it—and couldn’t make it?”

  Jordan removed his hand from his face to place it rigidly on his thigh. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “It sure as hell is. I don’t want that girl hurt. If something like that happened she might think there was something wrong with her.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her, and there’s nothing wrong with me,” Jordan muttered. “No, I haven’t ‘tried it’ with her. I’ve come close, but each time I wondered if I’d be making love to my own sister.” His face grew red, but from frustration rather than embarrassment. “Would I have been? Answer me, damn it!”

  “No. You wouldn’t have been.”

  It came so quietly and with so little fanfare after such a prolonged debate that at first Jordan wasn’t sure he had heard right. “Excuse me?”

  “Katia is not your sister.”

  He had heard right, but he was afraid to believe it. “You’re not her father?”

  “No.”

  The tight black glove around his heart began to loosen. “Are you sure?”

  “For God’s sake, Jordan,” Jack scoffed, “I’m not that indiscriminate that I make love blindfolded! I have never made love to Cassie Morell. Period. That’s it.”

  “That’s it?” Jordan’s voice was an octave higher than usual, and a slow smile was dawning on his face.

  Jack cast his gaze heavenward. “God help me. He’s either deaf or stupid or impossibly stubborn.”

  At that moment Jordan didn’t care what names his father called him. He felt as though the life sentence he had been given so many years before had just been commuted. With a drawn out sigh of relief he stretched his legs out and lounged back against the bench. Not even the hard wood could make a dent in his euphoria.

  “An imbecile,” Jack was saying, scowling sidelong at his son. “But so help me, if I’ve given you the go-ahead to do what you want with her, what you want had better be good. That girl deserves a kind husband and a good home. I don’t want to see her get anything else. And if she says that she loves you too, and if you two decide to get married, if I ever hear that you’ve been unfaithful to her, I’ll personally see that you’re whipped.”

  “Double standard?” Jordan mused. His head was back, his eyes shut. He was thinking of the irony of his father, who had cheated on his mother for years, making such a statement.

  Jack followed his thoughts precisely. “Where Katia’s concerned, yes. I feel that way about Anne, and I feel that way about Katia. Even if she’s not my own daughter,” he tacked on for good measure, but that good measure brought one of Jordan’s eyes open a slit.

  “Whose daughter is she?” he asked nonchalantly.

  His father’s response was equally as nonchalant. “Henry’s.”

  “Then why would you feel a responsibility toward her?”

  “Because she’s been practically a member of the family since the day she was born. Because she’s a lovely girl. Because your mother loves her. Because her mother helped us out many times. Because—”

  “All right,” Jordan interrupted with a raised palm and a grin. “I get the point.” For the moment, he did. He didn’t believe for a minute that his father actually thought Henry could sire as fine a person as Katia, but it was enough to know that he was free, that she was free, that they were free … so hard to believe. “You are telling me the truth, aren’t you?” he asked in the last flicker of a fading skepticism. “There is no blood relationship between Katia and me?”

  Jack pushed himself up from the bench. “I have to get back to work,” he growled, “and I’ve already answered your question. If you want to sit here asking it a dozen times more, I’m sure the birds and ducks and squirrels would love to listen.”

  With that he turned his back and set off for Arlington Street, leaving Jordan to savor the sweet smell of freedom.

  * * *

  Robert Cavanaugh was feeling distinctly boxed in. The room—a private screening room on the ground floor of Mark Whyte’s Beverly Hills home—was dark. It was stuffy, thanks to the cigarette that Sharon Webber had only moments before stubbed out. It was warm, since the central air had been off until they had arrived two hours before.

  “Okay,” he sighed, uncrossing his knees and pushing himself from his chair. “Let’s label that one and take a look at the next.” He ejected the V
CR tape from its slot, tossed it to Sharon, then knelt and fished a new one from the random assortment in the slide projector case.

  A slide projector case. Who would have thought that it hadn’t contained a slide projector? He had come across it late the afternoon before, after he and Sharon had spent hours searching the house for something they might have overlooked. Ryan had been right, damn him. There were tapes. Private tapes. Whyte must have had the same delusions of grandeur Nixon had had. Either that or he had been obsessed with his trade. He had filmed any number of private exchanges in his home—in the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen.

  Personally, Cavanaugh couldn’t understand why his guests had allowed it. There was enough incriminating evidence on the tapes to send more than a dozen people to the can on cocaine charges alone. He could only conclude that they hadn’t known they were being filmed, which was incredible to Cavanaugh, who was uncomfortable whenever a camera was aimed his way, but also made some sense given the personalities involved. These people were every bit as arrogant as Mark Whyte must have been. They loved being filmed. They loved flaunting the law.

  But wouldn’t they have been worried by such concrete evidence of felony? Wouldn’t they have wanted to get their hands on the tapes, if not before, then after Mark’s death? Granted, Mark’s hiding place had been clever. But wouldn’t they have ransacked the house in their search?

  Apparently they hadn’t known the tapes existed, which, the more Cavanaugh thought about it, could be rationalized. With a guy like Mark, a filmmaker by profession, the presence of a tripod-mounted camera in the room might well have been taken for granted. It was a silent participant. No one had to know that the film was running.

  Mark Whyte may have known that the tapes gave him the power to wheel and deal with the cops if he was ever arrested himself, but he had evidently kept that knowledge to himself. So far, Cavanaugh recognized the faces on the tapes as belonging to people that either he or Sharon or Buddy had interviewed. There were airtight alibis all around. Coupling that fact with the absence of any signs that someone had come after the tapes, Cavanaugh had to assume that neither the existence of the tapes nor their contents were related to the murders.

  Of course, Deborah had to have known about the tapes, Cavanaugh mused. But even if she had been disturbed by their existence, even if she had argued with Mark about them, even if she had threatened to use them in some context herself, there was no reason why Mark would have resorted to murder. He could have simply destroyed or erased what he had so clandestinely captured on film.

  With more force than necessary he shoved the next cassette into the machine, then stepped back, sank into his chair, propped his elbow on its arm and his fist against his mouth.

  “This is getting pretty boring,” Sharon said, shifting in her own seat. “Do you really think we’ll find anything?”

  “Dunno.” His reply was muffled. “Maybe.”

  The oversized television screen lit up then, and they both focused on the picture. After several minutes, Cavanaugh gave a growl of disgust. “An orgy. I don’t believe it. Of all the fuckin’ stupid things to film.”

  Sharon smiled. “Sit back and enjoy it. The kiddie things were worse. And be grateful Scrumfitz isn’t here. He’d be putting on a show of his own.”

  Cavanaugh snickered. Scrumfitz was the lecher of the department. With antennas attuned to anything and everything sexual, he knew the minute the latest newly seized smut tape began to roll. With uncanny precision he homed in on the interrogation room being used for the showing. He sat back and stared. While other cops offered ribald comments, he never said a word. Just squirmed. And breathed hard. Then raced for the men’s room the minute the show was done.

  Scrumfitz would have enjoyed this one. Naked bodies were everywhere, a writhing mass of arms, legs, buttocks and breasts.

  “Recognize any of ’em?” Cavanaugh joked against his fist.

  “Hard to see faces when there’s so much else.”

  “You’ve been away from home too long, Shar. When this is over you’ll have to take that husband of yours and lock yourselves into a suite at the—” He sat forward. “Who is that?”

  “Which one?”

  Snatching up the remote control, he rewound the tape for several seconds, then let it roll again. “The brunette … there … way on the right, with the dark-skinned guy.”

  “Like her looks?” Sharon teased.

  “She looks familiar. Have we seen her somewhere?”

  “We haven’t interviewed her.”

  “Maybe she’s been on TV, or in a commercial?” He repeated the rewind-advance sequence. “I feel like I ought to be able to place her, but I can’t.”

  Sharon shrugged. “Just another pretty California face.”

  “Nothing rings a bell with you?” For a third and final time he replayed the scene.

  “Nope.”

  “Okay,” he sighed, letting the tape continue on, but holding the remote ready in his hand.

  He didn’t use it again. Not for that tape or the two that followed. By the time the next tape was midway through he was too enthralled with what he witnessed to even think of the control, at least, not until the tape had run its course. Then he rewound the entire thing and played it a second time.

  “Jordan told me he had argued with his brother,” he said when the second showing was over. “That was putting it mildly.”

  Sharon reached back to switch on a light. “We’ve got a death threat, Bob. ‘So help me,’” she quoted, “‘if any of this gets out I’ll kill you.’ The tape will stand up in court. A jury will go for it.”

  Cavanaugh should have been elated, but he wasn’t. He had come to respect Jordan. He could have sworn the man was being honest when he declared that he would never have lifted a finger against his brother.

  “And his alibi’s shaky,” Sharon went on. “Jordan left his office at five-thirty on the night of the murders. No one knows where he was between that time and the time he showed up at the office at nine the next morning. That would have given him plenty of time to drive up to Boston, do his thing, then drive back.”

  Cavanaugh nodded slowly. Strangely he was thinking of Katia, of how she would be crushed to learn that Jordan had done anything deadly. Though Cavanaugh had meant what he had told Jordan, that he had no personal designs on her, he couldn’t deny the protectiveness she inspired in him. He remembered that day at the funeral, how her hair had shielded her face, how she had looked up at Jordan with such pain in her eyes.…

  “Well,” he said, taking in a large breath, “it’s a possibility.”

  “Possibility? It’s the strongest thing we’ve come up with so far! Between that tape—”

  “Words, Sharon. How many times have you been so furious at someone that you’ve threatened to kill him?”

  Sharon paused, then pulled a face. “Sam and I talked about buying a new car last week. I told him that I’d kill him if he got a pick-up. But it was just an expression, Bob. Sam didn’t think any more of it than I did.”

  “But you’ve made my point.”

  “Come on. Buying a new car is slightly different than being run in for making vulgar films of kids.”

  “Still, people say things in anger that they don’t really mean, especially to people they’re close to. You can’t get much closer than a brother. Jordan and Mark probably said the same thing to each other a million times while they were growing up.”

  “They’re not growing up now. They’re not arguing about who reached first base first or who called who a name or who was going to tell on who when a window broke.” She pointed to the blank TV. “On that tape they’re arguing about something very adult, very dangerous and potentially far-reaching. The motive is there, Bob. Between that tape and Jordan’s questionable whereabouts at the time of the murder we could have him cold.”

  “Circumstantial evidence. We’ve got no one who saw a thing on or near the boat that night.”

  “Many a conviction has been based on
circumstantial evidence.”

  Cavanaugh looked at Sharon. “You’re pushing it.”

  She looked right back. “You’re evading it.”

  “Uh-uh. I’m only trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. There’s still plenty of doubt here.”

  “There’s always doubt. But reasonable doubt? A jury will have to decide whether what we’ve got goes beyond that.”

  He rose from his chair and headed for the VCR. “Right. But we’re not at that stage yet. There are still,” he rummaged through the slide projector box, “five more cassettes in here. I think we ought to see them through.”

  Sharon shrugged, let out a long sigh, then reached for a cigarette. “It’s your game. You’re the one who’s calling the shots.”

  Unfortunately, Cavanaugh knew that wasn’t completely true. When push came to shove, Ryan had to be considered. He would have to see the tape, though Cavanaugh knew what his reaction would be. Unless he came up with something else soon, Cavanaugh feared that the Whytes and Warrens were in store for far greater pain than that which Jordan, for one, maintained they were feeling now.

  Chapter 14

  Henry Morell’s death wasn’t Cassie’s only source of grief in 1965. The war in Vietnam had begun to heat up, and her reaction to it was visceral. Her stomach knotted during the evening news; her palms grew moist over the morning paper. She suffered flashes of memory—leaving home in the darkness, running from one hiding place to another, fearing for those left behind, terrified of what was ahead—and she identified with the peasant families who were feeling the brunt of the conflict.

  The Warrens weren’t. Nor were the Whytes. Gil carried clout with the head of the local draft board, who had guaranteed him that, even when their student deferments expired, none of the Whyte or Warren boys would be called into service.