Widow's Row

by Lala Corriere

  I would convince him to turn himself over as an accomplice in the murder of his wife and my mother, Cecilia Lemay. Even if I had to sell him out to the devil myself, I was prepared to see James Lemay pay for his wretched participation in her death.

  He would pay for the years he could only yawn away at the heels of my agony. Subsequently the fallout would come for what he had allowed to happen to Kate. I would make him claim his responsibility in her insides getting carved out with the precision of a five-year old looped up on crystal-meth.

  And Naomi Gaines.

  And my private investigator in Washington.

  My god. How many more?

  I also intended to preside over the call I would demand he make to my twin sister. I would witness his confession of the despicable truth of his soul to the daughter who didn’t live up to his grand expectations and standards, only because she chose babies over a noble career in law.

  Jonathan insisted he drive me to my father’s house. When he turned the corner up the quiet street and approached Dad’s drive, the two side-by-side ‘for sale’ signs leaped off manicured green lawns. Johnny Yan. Mr. Real Estate.

  “I don’t believe that sonuva bitch. He’s moving?” I yelled.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to tell you over the phone,” Jonathan said. “Makes sense.”

  “The great James Lemay isn’t that thoughtful. He’s spineless.” I reached the stoop, pulled back the unlocked screen and pounded on the freshly painted door. When he didn’t answer, I looked for the spare key he’d hidden after Naomi was no longer there to keep one for him.

  “Crap. It’s gone,” I said.

  “Probably the one in the lock box,” Jonathan said.

  I peeked through the front window. Customary newspapers, pill bottles and dirty dishes, all cleared. I recognized some of the furnishings, but two new tapestry wing chairs had replaced Dad’s grungy old leather sofa, and colorful paintings dominated the walls. They were nothing like the dark and dismal hunting scenes Dad favored.

  The house had been staged for sale. No doubt, a Johnny Yan realty service.

  I punched the phone number on the yard sign into my cell while Jonathan volunteered to check out the back of the house.

  “Johnny Yan, here.”

  “This is Breecie Lemay. James Lemay’s daughter.”

  “Oh, yes,” he chuckled. “The lawyer daughter.”

  I didn’t find it funny. “My father didn’t tell me he was considering selling his home.” I deliberated over how much information to divulge. “I have important news and I can’t seem to get hold of him. I was hoping maybe you could...”

  “...Mr. Lemay is gone. That’s all I know.”

  “When is he returning?”

  The man’s pushy sales voice softened. “You really don’t know?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “This is his daughter I’m speaking with?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused, perhaps in consideration. “Ms. Lemay, as far as I understand it, your father has no plans to return.”

  Jonathan came from around the back of the house, shrugging his shoulders. He mouthed the word, ‘Nothing’.

  My body broke into an immediate sweat. It felt like my heart and lungs were shutting down. I collapsed into a small wicker chair, a prop, on Dad’s front porch.

  Ready. Aim. Fire.

  “Mr. Yan, you must know how to get in touch with him. This really is quite urgent.”

  It seemed as my voice grew terser, Mr. Johnny Yan’s diffused into deeper sympathy. “Actually, this isn’t the case. He gave me Power of Attorney to handle the sale of this property.”

  I put my free hand to the back of my head, pulling it forward into my chest, feeling the strain of stress rocket up my neck. “Okay. But what about the proceeds? You must have a forwarding address where you’ll be mailing the proceeds from the sale.”

  “That I do. It’s you. Ms. Breecie Lemay. Care of the Christenson ranch. My instructions are to divide the proceeds equally, between you and a woman in London. I believe she’s your sister.”

  Ch54

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  You’ll Always Be My Little Girl

  After some urging on my part, the sympathetic Johnny Yan told me it was a combination lockbox on the door. He rambled off the combination. I relayed it to Jonathan, and within seconds we let ourselves in.

  The smell of fresh paint replaced the more familiar pungency of Dad’s cigars and musty law books. Empty closets. Barren cupboards lined with new shelf paper. The only thing left of a personal nature was a half roll of cheap toilet paper in the main bath.

  Obvious that my father had erased all traces of his existence from the home, I began to consider any paper trail. I urged Jonathan, and we drove to my father’s bank where a sympathetic teller agreed to look up his account records.

  Checking. Closed. Savings. Closed. Safety deposit box. Closed. All accounts closed on September first.

  Remembering the absence of any papers or mail at the house, we drove to the post office. The clerk introduced us to the Postmaster. He would help us determine the status of the mail delivery, but would not reveal the forwarding address on file. Fifteen minutes later, in turn, the route sorter informed all of us at the same time. There was no forwarding address. All James Lemay mail was being marked ‘return to sender’.

  “Where do you suppose he might have gone?” Jonathan asked, as his Range Rover took the curve toward the main gate of the ranch.

  I forced a cynical smile to my drawn lips. “Someplace where a mad battery of Russians and two equally angry daughters will never find him,” I said.

  Crossing the property, I saw the cowboy, Summer Straw with the hairy arms, loading boxes from a storage unit into his dilapidated pick-up.

  “Want to go check him out?” Jonathan asked. “He might be working for your dad.”

  “If he knows anything, which is highly doubtful given his apparent measure of intellect, he’s not talking. Besides, I’ve checked out one too many things today. I can’t do any more. Nothing makes more sense to me than asking you to join me for a stiff drink.”

  He hastened me a quizzical look meant to ask if I was sure, then flashed a full grin flaunted by those dimples. “Damn, woman. You’re right. You’ve been through way too much.”

  Ari didn’t appear to be around but we found the mail sorted into the customary two stacks for Ari and me. Jonathan still had his delivered to the post office and picked it up while we were there. I grabbed my pile and nodded for him to follow me up the staircase, just in case Ari showed up.

  After tossing the mail on the counter and appeasing Benny by scratching his wet nose and rubbing down his belly, I retrieved the bottle of Gray Goose.

  “Cosmopolitans okay?”

  “I don’t have a clue what they are, but sure,” Jonathan said.

  “Vodka, Cointreau, and a splash of cranberry juice. Squeeze of lime if I had a fresh one.”

  I shifted the pitcher of juice onto the counter and knocked the mail to the floor. A plain business postcard jettisoned out from the other pieces. The handwriting, obvious. An exaggerated letter ‘m’. Dear old Dad.

  The return address was Baird Enterprises, in Denver. Of course, I very much doubted Dad was there. I doubted even the offices remained. “You read it,” I said, tossing it to Jonathan as I finished mixing drinks.

  “It’s not much,” Jonathan said from behind reading glasses. “It says, ‘I’ve left you everything you need to make things right. Just remember you’ll always be my little girl. Be safe.’” He flipped the card over. “It’s postmarked September second.”

  “Fifteen days ago. He’s anywhere from Kenya to Jakarta by now,” I said, reaching for the card and chucking it into the trash compactor. “Filed where it belongs.”

  We took the pink martinis out to the veranda, content to stand at the railing and breathe in the crisp fresh air hinting at the change of seasons.

  “I know you may not want to talk abou
t it, but you need to be thinking things through. What are you going to do with all these secret pieces, Breeze?”

  “Dad thinks that by leaving my sister and me his filthy money from the house sale it will buy our silence, but truthfully, he needn’t have bothered. I’m not going to spend years of my life chasing him down. He’s much too clever. I am, however, prepared to tarnish his reputation enough so he won’t come back. Can’t come back.”

  “He did his own brand of tarnishing.”

  I fingered the stem of the tall glassware. “Baird’s gotten his retribution. He’s probably dining with the devil as we speak,” I cleared my throat of a nervous knot, coating it with a small sip of vodka. “That leaves one more guilty party.”

  “Your ex-fiancé?”

  “The esquire, himself. Adam Chancellor. Whatever I do, my timing is going to have to be perfect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The polls show him ahead in the senatorial race by a hefty margin. And the election is only seven weeks away.”

  “I guess you have been doing some thinking,” he said.

  I flashed him a smirk. “Change of subject. Right now something else is bothering me. I haven’t thanked you for coming with me to Mexico.”

  “No need. It was the right thing to do.”

  We had spent our mornings and nights in Mexico, in hospital waiting rooms, at Kate’s bedside, and back at the hotel, conversing about everything from the virtues of ladybugs in the garden to the spiritual dogmas of karma and reincarnation. Jonathan had held my body next to his for hours. He had sheathed my fears and cradled me in his muscular arms dozens of times. Except for the one kiss at the Fourth of July party, sexual intimacy was a mist floating between us, and I was hungry.

  Some would argue it was bad timing. Others would recognize it as sexual healing. I’d say it was both and it didn’t matter to me. I took his free hand in mine. My thumb rolled across his fingers and the dewy spaces between them, searching out every unexplored crevasse. I imagined it not unlike he would strum the strings of his guitar, searching out every possible tone.

  His eyes froze on my lips, and I could tell he wanted to taste them. He lifted his gaze to meet mine, searching for any sign of objection.

  Instead, he found me eager to draw him closer. I felt waves of excitement surging as his tongue traced the lines of my lips.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  “I’ve wanted you since that night at the party.”

  “I’ve never been with a woman since...”

  “...I know.”

  “Breecie, do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  We made love throughout the late afternoon, never realizing the sun had set and the approaching Harvest Moon was the only light cast across my room. What had been dormant in Jonathan now roared, and I gasped for more. In final fatigue, I collapsed near his moist chest and drifted into a deep sleep.

  Moments later? Hours later? I wasn’t sure. I jumped off the bed and grabbed my jeans before my eyes had even fully opened. “Oh, my god!”

  Jonathan reacted with alarm, reaching for the switch of the lamp on my nightstand while throwing the blanket off his body to stand next to me. “What is it?” He followed my lead, pulling on his jeans and looking for socks under tousled bed linens.

  “The lockbox combination. Do you remember it?”

  His expression grew serious in thought. “Yes.”

  “I need to get back over to my dad’s house. Now.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The Stairstep Secret

  Jonathan drove his SUV back up Dad’s driveway as I tried to calm down and explain my illogical logic.

  “Dad never had a safety deposit box at a bank vault in his life. He didn’t believe in them. That was the first clue he left. The lady at the bank said his box had been closed out.”

  “Which means he did have one,” Jonathan said.

  I ignored him, still presenting my case. “His postcard to me read, ‘I’ve left everything you need to make things right,’ then something about me remembering I’m his little girl.”

  “Yeah. Something like that,” he said. “You threw it in the trash.”

  I ignored him again. He’d have to get used to my process of moving on. “Then he wrote, ‘Be safe’.”

  “I’m still not following you.”

  “He was leaving me a clue, Jonathan. Reminding me of my childhood.” I broke the conversation just long enough to jump out of the Range Rover and slam my passenger-side door shut. “He wrote ‘be safe’. Safe from what? If there is something or someone I need to be worried about, Dad would have spelled it out. He was telling me to get to his safe!”

  I explained to Jonathan about a single fond childhood memory, repairing a stair step with my daddy. And how it turned out to be his homemade safe.

  Jonathan tried to absorb it all as he fumbled with his key fob, shoving it into his jeans pocket. He grabbed the lockbox, straining to see the letters on the dial under the dim porch light.

  Remembering the sight of him in his reading glasses earlier that afternoon, I took over the task as he told me the combination from memory. Securing the key, I unlocked the door and walked in for a second time in less than twelve hours.

  I couldn’t remember which stair it was so my pace became deliberate up the stairs. It wasn’t the first one. Not the second one. When I reached the third step, it creaked.

  Crouching down, I lifted the board and slid my fingers underneath in search of the hidden latch. Jonathan grabbed my wrist with such a force I quailed.

  “Are you really sure you want to go through with this?”

  In spite of my heart thumping so loud Texas could dance to the beat, I conjured up a witty retort. “That’s the second time you’ve asked me that in little more than ten hours, and the first time things seemed to work out okay.”

  His eyes probed mine. “You can’t live inside that hard shell of yours forever, Breecie. Think about it. Whatever’s under this step may change your life forever.”

  The last time I opened it, I’d left it empty. I’d stashed the two boxes of memorabilia, those of my mother’s and Erin’s, in my nightstand. The gun was still in my bank’s safety deposit box.

  I took one deep breath. “It’s only starting to sink in that James Lemay is a madman and a bastard, but he’s also my father.” My hand felt tethered to the wood plank, my fingers stroking it across the grain as Jonathan sat still next to me. “He knows me. He wants me to see what’s inside.”

  He brushed several strands of long black hair away from my face. “You’ve considered all of the ramifications.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “I’ve deciphered his postcard. All of it. About this safe, and what he may or may not have left behind. What I haven’t deciphered until now is what is the most obvious.”

  My eyes blurred with tears as I spoke the words, and worse, speaking them brought those words to life. “As much as I feel like saying six degrees of separation isn’t enough from me and this man, I know I’ll never see him again and it hurts. He’s giving me the truth, along with a final goodbye.”

  I reached my fingers under the lid and fiddled until I heard the clink of the brass latch opening. I lifted up the stair step and found the thick accordion file folder with my name scribbled on top.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Hell Hath No Fury

  Still sitting on the stair step, I clenched the folder tight against my queasy belly with one arm, wiping away tears and runny mascara on the sleeve of my blouse with the other.

  Jonathan sat next to me, easing his words. “Why don’t we take it back to the ranch where we can look at this—all in good time, and where neighbors aren’t apt to call the police on a house that’s supposed to be empty?”

  Staring blankly, I shook my head. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather stay right here.” Fuck nosey neighbors! I pushed myself off the stair, down the two steps, and walked toward the living room, flipping on
more lights. “I love my apartment. I love the ranch. I don’t want it sullied by any bad memories of my dad and this package every time I go home.”

  Jonathan followed me, pulling one of the tapestry chairs up near the table. “Kind of a Feng Shui thing, in reverse?”

  I said, “Good energy—bad energy. I’d rather contaminate this dead old house than the only private sanctuary I’ve ever had.”