Widow's Row

by Lala Corriere

  Dad shoved his empty beer bottle back onto the wobbly side table. It missed the edge and toppled to the floor. Of course, it was my fault I didn’t have the table near enough to him. I didn’t offer him another drink. He insisted.

  “Your mother became more aggressive in her threats. Irrational. Damn near incoherent. She was so goddamn worried about losing her social status and not receiving the next invitation to the Ball of all Balls, there was no reasoning with her. There were plenty of us with a lot more to lose, Breeze. Most of us had real balls, our testicles, hanging out on the chopping block.” He started scratching at his face, arms, then he took both hands to grasp his drink. “Adam had the most to lose.”

  All of my months of questions, investigative digging, and downright begging. Now all of it—summed up in six little words. Adam had the most to lose.

  Dizzied by his statement, we both fell silent by the long approach of a truck with a bellowing muffler and a deathbed sputter. The rusted-out, dilapidated vehicle pulled near one of Ari’s storage units and a man in a cowboy hat slipped out, punched the magic code into the security lock, and disappeared into the building.

  My mouth felt like chalk. When moistening my lips failed, I reached for my beer. “What did Adam have to do with this?”

  “I just told you. He had the most to lose. He was—is, inextricably involved with Baird and all his operations. If implicated, Adam would lose his entire political future. For Adam, and for that matter Baird, too, that future was life itself.”

  “And so?”

  “I would have readily sold my soul and taken this to a stormy grave in hell, but I guess it’s too late for that now.”

  I put the beer back down on the table, feeling the sweaty palms of my hands grip the edge of the glass table. “You’re right about that, Dad. There’s no turning back now.”

  “The Russian revolver...,” his voice broke and he swallowed hard, grinding his teeth somewhere behind thin lips. “You say you remember. It had been reported stolen from a D.C. antique arms dealer weeks prior. Easy to do.”

  He stopped, eyes fixated on the empty beer bottle that had rolled across the porch floor.

  “You need to get me that gun back, Breecie. You took it from my home and you had no right.”

  “You’re almost done, Dad. Tell me what happened the night my mother died. Please.” My hands hadn’t let go of the glass tabletop.

  “We had possession of the stolen gun.”

  “We?”

  “You know the triangle by now, Breeze. George Baird, Adam Chancellor, and yours truly. We laughed, knighting ourselves as something more dangerous to reckon with than the Bermuda Triangle.”

  My thoughts, exactly. My mind felt like sticky cobwebs. So did my mouth. “I need to get a glass of water.”

  “You stay right here and hear me out before I lose my very tongue.”

  I obeyed him like a child, drawing my hands up underneath my thighs and sealing my lips.

  “We decided if it was someone your mother knew—knew well, even if she walked in on him in her own home, she wouldn’t scream. Cause a fuss.”

  A fuss? He’s talking about a fucking fuss?

  “All of D.C. knew your mother was supposed to be at her charity fundraiser. We simply muddied up her plans and arranged for her to arrive at the hotel without her two best auction items, a Fabergé egg and some fancy emerald necklace. She’d locked them in a safe. Now, just to give you an idea about how convoluted life was back then, you might think I could have run home and retrieved them for her, but no, not so with your mother. She wouldn’t use the stair safe I built. She had her own goddamn wall-safe. I paid the mortgage, mind you, but her shittin’ wall safe belonged to her. A safe full of revenge and all the so-called evidence she was storing up against me.

  “Dumb bitch. Sorry, honey. Well, your mother found herself caught in her own trap of schemes. She had to have those auction items, and I knew it. She had to either drive home and retrieve them herself, or turn over the combination to me. If she would have just done that, maybe none of this would have happened.”

  The shiver of panic surged up my spine, not unlike the two-hundred and twenty volts of electricity I’d recently experienced. “What happened?”

  “We made it look like a botched burglary. As it worked out, your mother was at the safe she had opened herself.” his voice faded and he took a deep breath.

  “Damn it, Dad. Then what?”

  “Then Adam appeared. Like I said, she might have been a bit rattled, but she wouldn’t think to scream. It was just Adam, after all.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  My Mother’s Blood

  From that moment on, Dad didn’t mince words. He didn’t miss a beat. His mouth spieled out the truth like steam rising off simmering hotdogs at the ballpark. Only the meat was rancid.

  “I was convent, I mean... content to take the initial rap. No problem. As her spouse the police were certain to take a hard look at me. Sure enough they’d figure out it was a vol... volatile marriage. So I was at the gala surrounded by four hundred attestants. The police had a high profile case to solve, fast. It didn’t take all that long before the overwhelming evidence made them their case. A burglary gone bad.”

  He controlled the conversation as if presenting final arguments. “Homeowner returns unexpectedly, police find the victim on the floor in front of her safe, opened and cleaned out. The black powder based ammunition is like nothing out on the streets today. Equally archaic, they find a pure lead bullet with no jacketing. The police have no choice but to believe it must be the same thieves that robbed the antique gun shop a few weeks prior. No pre-meditated murder would involve a plan to kill the victim with a fucking vintage Russian revolver.”

  And then, Dad just stopped talking.

  I felt myself pale. My entire body felt flush. “Did I miss something? Did you just tell me Adam Chancellor killed my mother?”

  Dad paused. Inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled again. He spoke so goddamn slowly. “We all agreed the fewer involved, the better. No hiring a hit man, that kind of thing. The stakes were too high. So, to answer your question, it was Adam pulled the trigger. But, it was our something more dangerous than The Bermuda Triangle that killed your mother. The three of us had no choice.”

  The words invaded my flesh. And he spoke them with such a blatant tone of irreverence. The only thing he seemed to regret was that Erin McGinnis was dead. I slugged down the last of my now warm beer. The lawyer in me was all that remained grounded and somehow I fired off, “This is your so-called ‘going beyond the letter of the law’?"

  “Money and murder have always been loyal bedfellows. Maybe if you’d been snooping into my financial affairs instead of my private life, and had seen what sizeable accounts have your name on them when I die, just maybe you wouldn’t be so shitting judgmental.”

  “It’s my mother’s blood on your dirty money!” I jumped off the chair and turned away to steady myself with the handrail that framed the porch overlooking the Wahatoya. The bosom.

  I looked back at my pitiful father and spoke the only words I could find, “And you? You wanted me to marry the man that murdered my mother?”

  With a hush cloaking us, I heard the noises from inside the house. Jonathan. He would never be clanging around in the kitchen. He was making it obvious to me he stood nearby. I watched as the old wreck of a truck that had earlier been down by the storage unit made its way up toward the ranch house. The cowboy slid out of the driver’s seat without looking up.

  I first noticed the wide brim of that summer straw, then saw the man careen up the stairs toward the porch. No mistake. It was the bouncer from The Raging Bovine that had confronted Jonathan and me near Baird’s Mercedes and later verbally delivered me my warning.

  Dad glared at the man, tilting his head to suggest he should take leave.

  “Sorry, Sir. This is urgent or you know I wouldn’t be here,” the cowboy said. His hairy arm reached out. My father snatched the small envelope from his h
and and the man hopped back in his truck and drove away, never looking back.

  Still bracing myself on the rail, my words came out less snide than the angry devastation consuming me. “Looks to me like you and your ‘Triangle’ control the entire town.”

  “And the likes of much more,” my father said without regard, tearing at the seal of the envelope. He recoiled into his own world, whipping through apparent faxes and printed email messages.

  I took my pee and puke break. When I returned, Dad had one hand supporting his head, trying to steady his other hand on the table so he could shove the papers back in the envelope. The awkward movements reminded me of the tin man without oil. And no heart.

  “It’s bad, Breecie.” Dad spoke with a calm voice devoid of remorse as I sought the comfort of a chaise lounge in the far corner. He shook his head decisively, still struggling to close the envelope.

  “It’s Baird. Looks like he’s got himself in some trouble.”

  “Just what kind of trouble?” I managed, feeling a disturbing joy at the prospect of retribution.

  “Seems he might have been double-crossing some of his Russian sidekicks, and they’re going after him.”

  The darkness in his voice frightened me. “You mean physically?”

  “Definitely.”

  My emotions felt like water droplets falling toward a skillet of hot oil. I’d arranged to have dinner with Macayla the next night. Our Kate was with Baird. Somewhere in Mexico.

  Ch50

  Chapter Fifty

  The Russians Are Coming

  Fear about Kate’s welfare tore my heart and tugged at my soul. But my mind locked onto something else. The past. A legacy of lies.

  My mother was gunned down in her own home. The beautiful home I grew up in. Old newspaper clippings documented the crime I would struggle to accept. They recounted the tale of the police investigation, the ruling out of my father’s involvement, and finally, the report that the burglar Mom had walked in on closed the case when he cowardly committed suicide. Or did he? No mention of any George Baird. No mention of Adam Chancellor.

  And what was my excuse? How could I not have known—somehow sensed the truth? I loathed Adam as a cheating lover. Not as a killer. And James Lemay. I knew he was a bullheaded man, a strict father whose heavy thumb ruled even in his perpetual absence, and there was no doubt in my mind he was a horrible husband. He and my mother had a relationship of contrivance but it was built upon a sturdy wall, the kind only years can construct. So what? A lot of couples operate their marriage with as much zest as that annual visit to the tax attorney.

  My mom, Cecilia, wasn’t exactly a sex goddess. No child wants to think of her mother that way, I suppose. Still, what evil had I refused to see in her? I knew she was a social climber. I suspected she was frigid. But she was a good woman. Honest. Loyal. Had she somehow skewed those traits of honesty and loyalty, twisted them, and become a blackmailer? If she had evidence of my father’s crimes, why would she stay in an unhappy marriage with him? She didn’t need the money. Was she afraid if the truth got out Dad’s scarred image would blackball her from her high society? Was she still trying to hold on to him, no matter what, in sacred marriage? For better or worse?

  My family roots that I thought were so long and so vast now lay severed at my feet. My family tree, the great Lemays of Washington D.C., the ones that had provided years of legal stewardship and philanthropic contributions—they were frauds. Scratch that. They were criminals. Scratch that. My mother was a blackmailing bitch and my father was a murderer’s accomplice.

  I only knew that, with me, the acorn fell very far from the family tree. I would make it so. I would carve up the old tree with nothing but the poisonous truth.

  These thoughts of introspection snapped to a close when my heartstrings tugged harder. Kate. Where was Kate? Was she okay?

  In the past, George Baird usually requested private accommodations at The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Mexico City, but his relationship with the Russians had become a little dicey. Plus, he never knew when his wife might try to hunt him down and find him with a traveling companion. So of late, he liked to mix things up a bit. He stayed at the Marquis, the Gran Melia Mexico Reforma, and sometimes the Camino Real. This time he chose the quiet yet upscale Oro Real.

  The suite’s king bed was dressed in his required yellow sheets even before Baird lifted the wide belly of his King Air off the private airstrip in Colorado.

  He enjoyed his trips with Kate Vander Ark. She asked no questions, demanded nothing while appreciating everything, and managed to keep his aging pecker interested. And he didn’t have to baby-sit her the way he did some of his other bimbos. Fluent in Spanish and comfortable with the native customs, she’d spend her days shopping the Centro Historico district and walking the halls of the Palace of Fine Arts. Kate was content to be on her own as Baird attended to the concerns of his so-called pharmaceutical company, and he was content to return to the hotel in the evenings and enjoy a decent fuck.

  His daily agenda was sobering, but Baird did manage to draw out a few smiles from the assembled board members when he warned that their Viagra knock-off had some stiffening competition. The wrinkle cream division presented another problem, reporting increasing lost revenues in product returns. The solution was simple. If the company was no longer in business, the guarantee became void. All they had to do was to come up with a new corporate shell and product name, reinvent the product packaging, and put the same formula back out on the streets. Internet sales would originate from every corner of the world. They’d continue to advertise the primary miracle ingredient: Santa Gertrudis bull semen. Women were nuts after it.

  Baird found the whole idea hilarious. For centuries women made easy prey, believing in everything from the anti-aging miracles of turtle cream to human placenta potions. But there was something deliciously nefarious behind the psychology in the sale of bull semen to a mostly female consumer audience.

  The products flew off the shelves.

  On the fifth day of meetings, Baird actually felt a little guilty. They would be flying home in two days, but except for one extraordinary dinner on a private restaurant rooftop, he’d dined with Kate on room service alone. Recalling her plans to visit some local art galleries, Baird slipped away from his meetings for the afternoon.

  Finding her was easy. Halter dress, ablaze with red-orange flowers on a black background. Black CFM pumps, totally unsuitable for walking the rugged sidewalks. And a sweeping sheen of cropped blonde hair swaying in rhythm to her hips. She stopped in front of a small gallery, staring at a painting propped on a brass easel.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He whispered from behind.

  Not spooked in the least by his surprise appearance, she cocked her head to one side and continued her gaze at the Frida Kahlo painting. “Very beautiful. She mostly painted self-portraits, you know. Seems a little weird, I guess.”

  “Seems to me she knew a strong subject matter when she saw one.”

  Kate swirled around to meet the bald head and dark sunglasses. “I think you might be right,” she sighed.

  “I think you should have it, as a reminder,” Baird said.

  “A reminder? Of what?”

  “She possesses the self-confidence a girl like you should have in your life.”

  Kate blushed to crimson, easy to do in the August heat. “Possessed. She’s passed on.”

  Baird instructed the gallery owner to have the painting delivered to the concierge at their hotel.

  “No one’s ever bought me anything like this,” Kate said.

  “I’m not just anyone, and you deserve a little treat.”

  Thirty minutes later they shared a bottle of vintage Cabernet Sauvignon at an out-of-the-way establishment, sitting at a table tucked away in the corner of the patio. Baird ordered a late afternoon snack, the chef’s special—fresh prawns saturated in sizzling garlic butter.

  Baird spotted the two Russians, conspicuous as the color red in an An
sel Adam photograph, peering from behind newspapers across the patio.

  Satisfied they were of the wimpy variety and probably just sent to keep an eye on him, Baird still elected in that moment to lean toward prudence. He would change his flight plan and return home the next morning. After all, it was his King Air, and he was the king. They’d make it out of Mexico City by ten or so, when he’d be fresh, sober enough, and sexually sated.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” Kate asked between swallowing mounds of fleshy prawn meat.

  “Why would you tolerate anything less?”