“Ashley?”
“Yes, Devon?” Here it comes …
“Ashley, I do believe your omelet’s getting cold.”
Way to blindside me with trivia, asshole.
I looked down at my cholesterol special. “So it is.”
“Did I not prepare it to your satisfaction?”
Screw this, let’s cut through all this nervous fumbling crap and get to the point, okay?
“Devon, are you sick?”
“Excuse me?”
A fork-speared chunk of bacon stopped halfway to his mouth. He raised one eyebrow, he pulled his head back a bit, and he looked like a man who’d just been presented with absolute proof that two plus two equals sixteen.
“Big guy, do you have … I don’t know, cancer? Something heart-stopping and final and incurable, is that it? If it is, we’ll get through it somehow, I promise. I don’t quite know how, but –”
“Ashley, I undergo two complete physicals a year – you know that, because you schedule them. An entire stable of doctors pokes and prods me, blood is drawn and X-rays are taken, and you would be the first to know if they found anything amiss, but they never do. To the best of my knowledge, I am in perfect physical health.”
He finished sending the forkful of bacon to his mouth, chewed and swallowed, and then added, “My mental health, of course, is another matter entirely.”
“Smartass. So anyway, if it’s not cancer or mad cow disease or rabies, what is it? What do you need to tell me? Is your entire financial kingdom about to explode in a spectacular meltdown that will crash the world’s economy? Do you have a secret identity as a serial killer who lures curvy girls to remote rural cabins? Was it you on the grassy knoll in Dallas?”
I dumped a spattering of ketchup onto my omelet, tossed a couple of slices of bacon on the thing for good measure, and dug in. Calories always take the edge off bad news, right?
“Ashley, I know you and Uncle Sheridan likely discussed me and my peculiarities at great length in that McDonald’s, over caffeine and industrialized food products –”
“We talked about how someone we both loved had been fucked over by life, Devon. And by the way, never diss the honor of alleged meat and yummy synthetic glop, because that’s how girls like me grow big and strong and badass, okay?”
“Understood. Did Uncle Sheridan tell you how my father died?”
Great, that. I wanted to know, I didn’t want to know, and I needed to know. So I washed down a mouthful of my real, non-industrialized omelet with a swallow of orange juice that was probably mostly real while I looked through my mental files.
“He said you told him what happened to your dad. He said he was pretty sure you’d be fine with him telling me about it, but then he clammed up and refused to unveil the big, bad secret.”
“And did Uncle reveal why he chose not to tell you that ghastly tale?”
“He said I needed to hear it from you. I said I felt like you’d already gone above and beyond when it came to telling me heart wrenching stories, but he wouldn’t budge.”
I searched my memory, then added, “He also said it was pretty messy, but he didn’t get into specifics as to why – just implied an open-casket funeral was out of the question, and the guy had to be cremated.”
“Messy is putting it mildly. My father’s death was pretty messy in the same way the Pacific Ocean is rather damp. I had nightmares for weeks, months … I still have the occasional heart-stopping black dream about his death.”
“So how did it happen?”
He sidled around my question while pouring a generous dollop of Canadian maple syrup over his bacon.
“Pictures were taken, both by the coroner’s office and one or two bystanders with strong stomachs and an appetite for the grotesque; I understand that the images may in fact be found within the darker recesses of Google, but I would not advise searching for them.”
“Well, I was all over the internet hunting for details about his death after Uncle Sheridan took off that morning …”
My voice trailed off as I remembered that was the last time I’d seen him, but then I booted that memory aside and moved on. “Um, anyway, I didn’t think to look for pictures, because I got bogged down just trying to uncover the basic facts of what happened. All the articles and video links just kept repeating something about a riding accident, that it happened on Long Island, that the family was heartbroken – ”
“His family hated him with a passion.”
“ – that the list of high-and-mighty types attending the services was a mile long –”
“Strangers hated him too.”
“ – and that he was survived by a single son.”
“Everyone hated me.”
“You hate you, that’s the problem here.” I didn’t plan to say that, it just sort of blurted out of my mouth without permission, but that’s not to say it was wrong; the idea of how Devon would react was kind of scary, but he took no more offense than if I’d said he hated Hitler, or shooting puppies, or Christmas sales starting six months before Christmas.
“I have many excellent reasons to hate myself, so I don’t see my being logical about it as a problem, but I grant that you might feel differently.
“In any case, you’re right about the mystery – the Killane scandal machine went into overdrive after my father died, as my uncles called in favors left and right and sideways, and so the matter slipped into the news and out again as quietly and with as few details as possible.”
I should have known this would be like pulling teeth. I polished off another bite of my omelet, and then volunteered the best guess I’d come up with during my online investigation.
“So, if it was a riding accident … did he crash his motorcycle? Was that it?”
Devon stopped midway through gathering another forkful of scrambled eggs, answering my question with the same raised eyebrow and look of honest puzzlement that had greeted my oh-so-wrong guess that he was terminally ill.
“So far as I know, my father never owned or rode a motorcycle. Where did that idea come from?”
I shrugged. “Well, ‘riding accident’ suggested something involving a horse, but your dad didn’t strike me as being the horsey type. But from what I did know of him, he seemed very much like the type who’d think it was a swell idea to get blind stinking drunk, climb onto some huge crotch rocket of a motorcycle without a helmet, and then splatter himself all over the highway. But I take it I’m all wrong about that?”
And he shrugged. “Not as such, since had the idea occurred to him, that sounds exactly like something he would have done – perhaps even if he knew he’d crash, because he was just that contrary.”
He returned to devouring his scrambled eggs, leaving me to wonder if I’d have to use an industrial block and tackle to pull this story out of him.
“Fine, so we’ve established that one Kevin Killane, drunken asshole extraordinaire, did not in fact gun his Harley off a cliff and into eternity while screaming defiance at the heavens – got it. So, it was a horse after all?”
Devon put down his fork. He sipped his orange juice, and then set the glass to one side. He stared past my shoulder at the wall.
“It was a horse.”
“Devon?”
“Yes, my Ashley?”
“Uncle Sheridan said you told him what happened, but he also said he was pretty sure you didn’t tell him everything.”
Devon smiled a sad, haunted, tired smile. “You won’t let me get away with anything, will you? You will hunt down the truth and turn it out into the daylight no matter where the trail takes either of us.”
“Devon, I know this is beyond hard on you and on me too, but everything is what I need to hear.”
He sighed out a long breath. He turned from staring at the wall to peering down at the table, as if it might have some helpful advice. Then he looked into my eyes.
“Very well.”
He leaned back in his chair, he crossed his arms, he adopted his crisp, precise,
professor-lecturing-on-a-dull-topic voice, and he told me everything.
36. The Tree of Death
“My father owned racehorses, Ashley. He did not love or even like them, he did not appreciate their beauty, he was ignorant of their moods and personalities, he did not care about their wants or needs, and surprisingly enough, he had no interest in making money off their efforts – but in his world, they were one of the shiny ornaments that adorned the lives of the rich, and so he owned them.
“He owned them for the same reason he owned limousines and yachts and the jewelry he draped around the throats of women – it gained him respect, status, pictures on the society pages, all that awful nonsense.
“I loved racehorses. I’d never seen one, only pictures, but I adored their sweaty, shining beauty, their deep glowing eyes, their courage, their determination to persevere even when their legs shattered beneath them – they were heroes to me, and I read about their exploits just as eagerly as I devoured Uncle’s Civil War books.
“One day, when I was ten years old and reading a book about Man o’ War, my father suddenly loomed over my shoulder from out of nowhere.”
“This was at your father’s place?”
“At one of his summer homes, yes – this particular one was on Long Island, in New York. I’d taken my book to a distant corner of the house where he rarely appeared, because avoiding my father’s notice was my primary goal whenever I was under his roof – but that day, he found me.
“He looked over my shoulder at what I was reading and said, ‘You like racehorses, kid? Want to go see some?’
“Experience had taught me to be extremely shy of going anywhere at all with him, but racehorses? Real ones? I couldn’t resist, and I said yes.”
He paused. He paused, and he looked at the past, looked at what might have been. We all do that, of course – not that anything good ever comes of it.
“Ashley, he came upon me completely by chance – I learned later he’d gone looking for a maid he meant to talk into his bed, a maid who was sensibly trying to keep away from him. It was chance that he found me instead, merest chance that I happened to be reading about a racehorse and not something else entirely, and I’m quite sure it was no more than a chance, mad impulse on his part to offer to take me to see his racehorses.
“He met my mother by chance, he met his death by chance, and do you think if he’d known when I looked up at him and said ‘yes’ that it would lead to his death only a few hours later, he still would have gone?”
“Well, no, right? I mean, assuming he didn’t have a death wish or anything?”
A smile flickered across his face and vanished. “Ashley, are you familiar with the Edgar Allan Poe story ‘The Black Cat’?”
“I’m guessing it involves a black cat who suffers a horrifying and gruesome fate?”
“Yes, and it is also where Poe speaks of ‘the imp of the perverse,’ the human impulse to do things that are hurtful and wrong for their own sake, for the sheer fascination of bringing down destruction and ruin, even upon oneself – and Ashley, when I think of my father knowing his fate in advance, knowing that if he took me out to the racetrack that day he would destroy himself, me, the future of the Killane family, and unleash a storm of hatred and ruin stretching far and wide over many years?”
Another ghost smile passed over Devon’s face. “He’d have done it in a heartbeat, sweet Ashley. He’d have gone to his death laughing, delighting in the thought of the heartbreak and devastation that would follow in his wake, and he would have told his chauffeur to floor it and get us to that racetrack as fast as possible. I’m certain of it.”
A question occurred to me. “Devon, do you own racehorses? I mean, seeing as how you liked them so much as a kid?” I’d never heard of his having a racing stable, but since the big guy had more shiny, expensive toys than any sane person could keep track of, he could have owned every horse in that year’s Kentucky Derby and I wouldn’t necessarily have known about it.
He turned pale, and shook his head without an instant of hesitation. “God, no. Not after what happened. Never.”
I leaned forward and took his hands in mine. I held his hands, I squeezed them gently, and then I let go, I leaned back, and I looked into those lost blue-violet eyes.
“Devon, tell me what happened. Tell me, and I swear you’ll feel better once you get it out.” I had no idea if that was true or not, but I so needed it to be true. We both did.
“Ashley, I am so far beyond the possibility of feeling better that there are no words to describe that much distance, and not enough light-years to measure it. But I will tell you what happened anyway, because you deserve to know the truth.”
“Belmont Park is a magnificent place, Ashley, so grand that calling it merely a ‘racetrack’ seems cheapening and small. When it was built on Long Island ever so many years ago, back when people care about grandeur and style, it was modeled after the great, sweeping racecourses of Europe, and it is enormous. The main track is one-and-one-half miles in circumference – the largest dirt track in North America, and for all I know, the world – and it holds not one but two turf courses within its infield. Another entire track a mile around and used only for training stands nearby, and the stables are a warren that stretches on forever.
“My father led me into that stable area, into a world of horses and people, dogs and cats and chickens, a thousand different fascinating accents humming in the air, and his breath was stinking with alcohol.
“ ‘Follow me, kid, my horses are around here somewhere in this damn hole …’
“I trailed after him, keeping well back of his stumbling, swaying steps, and darted glances at all the rows upon rows of stalls we passed, and at all the hundreds of beautiful, regal horses who lived in them – some turning their curious long faces to stare at the newcomers, some eating, others sleeping, and many standing outside being groomed or bathed.
“The pictures from my books were alive and right in front of me, and I’d never been so excited – if that limousine had deposited us right outside General Lee’s tent minutes before battle was joined at Gettysburg, I could hardly have been more excited.
“My father led me closer to his death, down one tree-lined path after another between the barns, and I itched to sprint off and explore on my own.
“Heroes with four legs stood wherever I looked, their coats shining in the sun, and I wanted to meet every last one of them – but I did not dare disappear out of my father’s sight just yet. When he was drunk, his concentration on a goal – such as beating me, shouting at me, or getting me to follow him somewhere – was fierce and single-minded; but once we reached the stables where his horses were quartered, he was likely to lose focus and be distracted by something or other, and then I might be able to slip away without being noticed.
“It was even easier than that. We turned a corner into yet another lane flanked by stables on either side, as more curious heads poked out of stalls to look us up and down. My father stopped, looked around at me, and waved at the peaceful, tree-shaded kingdom before us.
“ ‘These are all my horses, kid, so go look at ‘em …’ His voice trailed off as he peered about, and then he added, ‘Think I’ll go find that stupid trainer of mine – bastard needs to be reminded that as the guy who pays the bills, I’m the one in charge of this fucking pony show.’
“He stalked away, I was dismissed and forgotten, and that was quite all right with me.
“The last two hours of my father’s life were a paradise. I petted velvet noses, fed carrots into greedy mouths, and I didn’t even mind when some of the horses snapped at me or slung an angry kick my way – the stress of racing and of being confined to a stall for upwards of twenty hours a day makes some of them a bit temperamental, but it was all the same to me, I was in heaven.
“Dogs sniffed at my heels and cats aimed lazy stares at me, chickens scattered out of my way and a goat nibbled at my sleeve – the companionship of other creatures soothes horses whose nerves hav
e been rubbed raw by competition and travel, and so any racing stable will have a small army of furred and feathered animals wandering about.
“I met them all, and every clucking hen and shrieking rooster might as well have been some exotic denizen of Africa or Asia. I threw sticks for the dogs, I talked to several unimpressed cats, and once when I heard a sudden huffing breath behind me, I turned and looked right into the eyes of a llama, of all things.
“The people were even better.”
He paused to sip his orange juice, while I picked at the remains of my cold omelet and wondered just what variety of Technicolor nightmare was waiting at the end of this story.
Devon forged onward, setting his orange juice aside. “You see, Ashley, the greater part of the people working at the stables of any American racetrack are much like the people who raised me, all those countless maids and cooks and servants – they work long hours for little pay, and they are a world unto themselves. Many of them are Hispanic in origin, and so I heard bantering and gossip and discussion in Spanish all around me. It was like coming home.”
“Bet you talked their ears off, huh?”
He smiled, and it was a lifetime before I saw him smile again.
“I did. As you might expect, they were rather surprised by the sudden arrival of a pasty white boy who spoke fluent Spanish and in more than one dialect, but soon they were answering my thousands of questions, showing me each horse in their care, and telling me all the individual peculiarities of their charges.
“I carried blankets, washed out leg bandages, handed sponges to a groom giving a bath to a restless, anxious filly, and filled enough water buckets to drown an army. I could not have been happier.
“Fifteen minutes before my father died, I helped a young woman from El Salvador scoop grain into a series of feed buckets. She explained which bucket went to which horse, why different horses received different portions and types of grain, and somewhere in the distance I heard the familiar sound of my father shouting at someone.
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 42
