Actually, it was probably my brain bruise, but I was almost offended that they'd only sent Lloyd. I mean, we weren't exactly small potatoes. In a minute or two, we would have had this whole thing cinched. Then I realized that a gun was a gun, and dead was dead. Whether the shot came from a lunatic or a televangelist.
"Where have you two been?" Lloyd demanded. "I've been watching this house for three days and…" He seemed to take a good look at us for the first time. "What happened to you?"
"Is this a social call?" I wondered at Aodhagan's attitude then realized that he'd been acting fairly crazy since the accident. Maybe his bump on the head was almost as bad as mine. "Because if it is, we can all sit down and have a cup of tea or something. If it's not, let's just skip the small talk and get right to the point."
"Aodhagan…" I warned under my breath. Frankly, I would rather have carried on a conversation with Lloyd Granger, no matter how absurd it was, than get right down to the shooting. Granger looked a little perplexed by Aodhagan's behavior as well.
"No, really. Let's just get down to the real issue. Where are the others?"
"The other what?" I was surprised that Lloyd was even talking to us, considering.
"The other members of the Rat Pack. Where's Dennis?"
Lloyd's lips compressed, making white lines appear at the edges of his mouth. "Dennis is dead."
"Dead?" My brain was finally waking up. "Who killed Dennis?"
Lloyd's glance in my direction was one I didn't like at all. It made me realize that he was also dangerous. Maybe even as crazy as Dennis. He clearly really had been stalking the house for days. His clothes were rumpled. His face was bruised, and his white hair looked something like Einstein's. His piercing green eyes were fanatical. "If you must know, I did."
He trained his gun on me specifically, and I was sorry that I had asked. "He was becoming a liability. He always wanted more money. I tell you, I bought that wife of his for him. Plus, he was crazy as hell." Look who's talking, buddy. "Nobody is ever satisfied with what they have. This world is so materialistic. It's such a tragedy. I mean, look at you."
He looked at me carefully. "Well, not right now. But usually. You, you, you, you. That's all you ever think about. You look like a walking advertisement for a Neiman Marcus catalog. Don't you ever feel guilty for buying an expensive piece of jewelry, when there are children starving in Arkanistania?"
"I've never even heard of Arkanistania." I guess that answered his question for him, since I could see in his eyes that he intended to shoot me first. No use in being careful then. "Anyway, are you on crack or something? Your office alone has a half a million worth of furniture and art. That could make a lot of kids real fat."
He shook his head, sadly. "This is not about money, Helen dear. Although the money is nice. Money doesn't buy happiness. It's about the prestige."
"So prestige can bring happiness, even though money can't?" Aodhagan didn't bother to hide his derision.
"It can when you've spent your whole childhood listening to everyone talk about how bad your stock is, and a backwoods country rat is all you'll ever be. My uncle had the only ticket out of this sinkhole, and I knew someday I would take it, no matter what I had to do. Then along came Norma Jean, stupid little whore. She'd hop into bed with anything with balls, and it's me she decides she wants to marry. How's that for irony?"
"So, why didn't you just marry her?" I had to ask. "I mean, you never married anyone else."
"Her?" He laughed hoarsely. "She was a loose cannon, and she didn't have the brains that God gave a garden shovel. She came to me and told me she was pregnant. Said that if I agreed to marry her, she'd have an abortion. If not, she would have it and make a big deal about how it was mine. I tried to persuade her to give up the game, but she wouldn't. Don't you see? I had to kill her. I was going up to Lubbock in the summer to start under my uncle at the radio station. It was my only chance."
"Where was Norma Jean's chance? Or your baby's?" I demanded.
He laughed again, without amusement. "Norma Jean never would have turned out to be anything but garbage, because that's what she was. She had all the chances, because she came from the right side of the track, but she was nothing inside. I had every goal right in my head and no chances because I was born in the wrong place with the wrong parents. But that baby, it wasn't mine. I never even slept with Norma Jean. I'm gay."
I was sincerely shocked by that information, but Aodhagan didn't seem phased. "So were they all taking money from you?"
"Only Dennis. He saw me do it. The little prick asked me for money first thing. Never even mentioned the police. He even offered to help me get rid of the body, for a price. He was a mercenary and a lunatic. Lord, the way that man could carry on. I want this. I want that. I couldn't have afforded to bribe the others. Kitty never knew a thing, but I know that she deduced that it had to be one of us. It was prime when I blamed it on Frank. You should have seen her face.
"Frank was just afraid to question who might have done it. It was his baby, you know. I told the truth about that part. He didn't want it coming out in the investigation. I went back there, to her house, after I lost you guys on the hills. I was happy to kill her and her lover because she'd been talking to you, and I couldn't be sure how much she knew, and frankly, just because I didn't like them. But they were gone when I got there. I didn't have time to wait around for them. I had to get back here."
"What about Penny?" I asked. "Why didn't she accuse you before?"
"I had no idea how much she knew. I don't know why she never told anyone. Suddenly, she comes into my office a couple of months ago and dangles that bracelet in my face. It was Norma Jean's. She said she found it the night of the dance, snagged on the hem of my jacket. I never even noticed. So I ask her what she wants, and she says she was going to gather enough evidence to prove that it was me.
"I decided to let her go for a while. I wanted to see what she would do. The unbelievable woman kept sending me updates of how much information she had accumulated. Then last Friday, I showed up here, and there wasn't anyone in the house."
"Did you come here to kill her?" I asked, feeling a perverse desire to know.
"No, actually. I'm not a killer. Not really. Not in my heart. I only kill when it becomes necessary. I came here to talk to her about what she really wanted. I think she was trying to blackmail me. But when I went out to the shed to look for her, there she was, passed out in a chair. I think that she'd dug up the evidence, that she had it hidden out there.
"She was going to die, anyway. That much was obvious. But in her pocket she had a picture of me from the dance with that bracelet stuck on my jacket, and I knew she had me. She always had, even though I don't know if she thought her case was strong enough. Then, I knew if she only lived one more day, it would be one day too many. So I strangled her with the scarf she had in her pocket."
Penny had never even known she was in danger. What a relief. She'd died in her sleep. I wasn't really surprised she'd strung him along that way. She had probably enjoyed it. Suddenly, the full impact of his words suddenly hit me. "She had the scarf with her?"
"Yes, in her pocket. Along with a few other things I recognized as belonging to Norma Jean. She'd dug them up from the floor in the shed. I took those things too."
"So, Penny stole the file from the police station?" I was still confused by this revelation. It didn't help that the confusion was returning, along with the headache and increasing faintness. I could barely stay upright, let alone organize my thoughts.
Aodhagan, for once, seemed as stunned as I was. "She must have thought that it would help her prove what had happened to Norma Jean. And all these years she kept it. I wonder why she waited?"
I had no answer for that. Maybe we could ask her on the other side, after Lloyd Granger shot us both in the head. Only because he had to, of course. As if he seemed to sense what I was thinking, he leveled the gun back at me. "I'm sorry to be so abrupt, but I have to go knock myself out and tell the polic
e that Dennis and I were kidnapped and attacked. I can't imagine why. It must have been for money."
My mind cleared for a hint of a second, long enough to warn me to run. I couldn't even move my fingers, let alone my legs. I blinked, desperately trying to make my brain work. Lloyd held up the gun and pulled the trigger. And I have no doubt he would have hit me, except that I blacked out and crumpled to the floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I don't know exactly what happened after that, because I was unconscious. For a long time. Apparently, Aodhagan had been engaging Lloyd in conversation to try to stall until Junior returned. It was the only thing he could think of since neither one of us had been in the position to defend ourselves.
It just happened to be to my advantage that I had serious head trauma and kept passing out. Lloyd hadn't been expecting that. He was so stunned by my theatrics that he opened the door for Junior, who'd been waiting for him to be just that distracted.
Apparently, Junior had noticed a car parked behind the house and had never left in the first place. He'd knocked Lloyd out by hitting him over the head with the string of dried sausages Penny had kept in the hallway. It sounded ridiculous, but apparently it had worked, because Lloyd had been out cold for long enough that Junior was able to tie him up and get the gun. It hadn't kept him out long, but it had been just long enough.
I was sort of sorry that I had missed a man being knocked senseless by salami. I guess it was inevitable, though, since if I hadn't gone down, neither would have Lloyd. By the time that I came to, I was in the hospital yet again, this time in Lubbock, and I didn't think that Aodhagan was going to bail me out of this one.
Even if he had wanted to, he wasn't likely to succeed. My new doctor was like Attila the Hun and lorded over me with intimidating fervor. Aodhagan himself was on bed rest in Birdwell and had some home health nurse who was watching him sleep. When I was finally released, Aodhagan and Marian came to get me at the hospital to drive me to the will reading.
Coming out of the hospital, I felt much more alive than I had the last time I had emerged from the double doors of a health care facility. The air smelled clean and flowery, tinged with the unique scent of Texas sun.
The will reading was attended by only me and Kitty. Everyone else mentioned in the will was either dead or incarcerated. Kitty didn't tell me what her letter said, and I didn't ask, even though I really wanted to. She just read it in silence, folded it, and put it in her small handbag.
She turned my way. "Helen, I'm so sorry about Joe Don, by the way."
It took me a minute to figure out what she meant. Joe Don had been the one to pepper Aodhagan's house with buckshot. "What happened?"
She sighed. "I asked him to scare you guys. For your own good. I saw you asking questions, and I was pretty sure asking questions was the quickest way to get you killed. You're Penny's niece. She would have wanted me to protect you. I'm so sorry. He's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, and even though I want to, I can't begrudge him the right to get his idea for scaring you from a movie on FX. I should have been more specific."
"That's okay," I said. It wasn't a lie, either. Comparatively, the buckshot business was the least of what had happened to us over the past few weeks.
"Hey, where did you go?"
She fiddled with her turquoise ring. "When you guys left on Saturday, we left. I thought about Frank, about how long I've been with Ari, and how we've never put a name on our relationship. We went to Vegas and eloped."
I had to smile at that one. "That's wonderful news. It probably saved your life, you know."
"I do." She touched my arm. "Thank you, Helen. For everything. I'm really glad you came."
She left me standing alone in Jamie's office to read my letter. I wasn't sure I even wanted to look at it, but Penny had meant me to have it, and the time had come to act on that. This had all started with a letter, and it was probably fitting that it would end with one. I braced myself and opened the envelope.
Helen—
You were always such a sweet girl, despite your parents. I've been keeping track of you all these years, and I know that you've become unfeeling, emotionally stunted. I'd hoped that wouldn't happen, although I feared for it, knowing your parents. I suppose it's as much my fault as it ever was June and Ward's. I was as hard and unnatural a creature as ever you could be. Just in a different way.
Lloyd Granger killed my friend Norma Jean when we were all in high school. I was never the same after that. Depending on when you're getting this letter, you may already know that. Unfortunately, he may never go to prison for it because after all these years, who would just take an old woman's word for it? The problem that I had, the thing that made me hard, is that I always knew. I knew on Halloween. And I never told anyone. I never even hinted. That kind of thing eats at you. It makes you hard.
I knew when I spoke to Lloyd at class reunions. I knew when I was flipping through the channels and saw him on TV. I even had the bracelet all this time. I knew when I saw the horror and grief in Kitty's eyes, when the boys blamed it on Frank, and still I kept silent. What kind of person makes those choices?
It's too late now for me to fix it, but maybe, if you can, you could prove what Lloyd did. I left you a number of clues just in case you don't get this letter. Of course, then you wouldn't be reading this, and I'll just have to depend on your ingenuity. If I were you, I would go find Aodhagan MacFarley. He can help you. He's dang smart. In my head, I can hear you already, saying he has a stick up his ass. It only seems that way. Inside, Aodhagan is a different man, one who's easy to love.
There's nothing he can't find out for you and no place he can't get you in. And he's a good friend. I'd like to see you friends. You were like my children to me, the pair of you. Both of you let me down, only because you became what I am, people who hide behind a front. He hates doing the things he does but still acts, and you act like you don't care, but you do. Maybe you guys can do this thing for me. That can be my real legacy. If you learned how to feel again, to tell the truth in your actions as well as your words.
One last thing, I know there's nothing that I can do about it now, and I would never try to force you into something like this, but I would like you to consider how much this town means to me when you decide how to spend my money. Birdwell needs help. Maybe that's for you as well.
Whatever you think, I always loved you—Penny.
When I finished the letter, tears pooled in my eyes, but they didn't fall on the paper. I didn't know that I had this many tears in me. Birdwell was doing strange things to me. Maybe I was already getting a little softer, heaven forbid. When I got back to Manhattan, I would need my hard shell. And no matter how much Birdwell was starting to get under my skin, I needed to return to Manhattan. There was no life for me here.
Later, once I was back at home, Aodhagan and I sat alone on the balcony. We were probably safe this time. "You know, Penny called you a good friend and a good person. She…was disappointed in both of us but not for the reason you think."
He glanced at me. "What then?"
I drew in a deep breath. "She said we hid. That we both hide our feelings, yours through a front of being stodgy, mine through a front of being arrogant and selfish."
He looked down at his hands, clenched together at his knees. "She's right."
"Yes." I didn't say anything else for a long second. "She said we were like her children."
He nodded very slightly, turning his attention back to the night. "I loved her."
"She knew."
I didn't let him see the actual letter. I didn't want his feelings hurt by her words. I also wasn't ready to share Penny's commentary on my faults with other people. Maybe seeing her criticism in writing had been just as heartbreaking for me as it would have been for him, I just wasn't capable of feeling it as deeply. And perhaps that was best for everyone.
* * *
Two days later, just before I was preparing to take Marian, per her request and Thelma Sue's, into Lubbock fo
r the mother of all shopping sprees, Junior came out to Aodhagan's and asked to see me in private. That wasn't hard to accomplish since Aodhagan was taking a nap. He'd been doing that a lot since the accident. He'd probably heal faster than I for it.
I didn't want to talk to Junior, since I was afraid there was only one reason he'd want to speak to me alone. But I couldn't think of a way to get out of it. He leaned against his truck, looking rugged and awkward. I really did like Junior. Just not that much.
"Listen, Helen. I guess you gotta know that I think you're real pretty. The clothes that you wear, well, they do something for me, ya know. I know you just had a real personal thing happen, and maybe this isn't the best time to ask something like this of you, but I was wondering if you would…"
I stopped him mid-sentence because I was embarrassed, and I just couldn't bear to hear the words. "Look, Junior, you're a real nice guy. I mean really, you are. But I can't go out with you."
"What?" Instead of devastated, he merely looked confused. Then it was my turn to be embarrassed, just for myself. "Oh, no. I don't want to go out with you. I mean not that you're not okay or whatever, but I just… Well, I mean…anyway." He shifted awkwardly. "I know it'll be a chore for you, but I wondered if maybe, you know, you could take Marian shopping."
I might have laughed, if there wasn't something just so not funny about our conversation. "It's a done deal. We're leaving for Lubbock in a little while."
"Oh." Now that he'd actually spoken and found out that was my intention all along, he was clearly embarrassed. "Well, you girls have fun."
I went to the den, waiting for Marian to arrive or Aodhagan to wake up. I needed to tell him that I planned to leave tomorrow. I hadn't told anyone yet, but he deserved to know.
Digging Up Bones (Birdwell, Texas Mysteries Book 1) Page 23
