Carl, sitting so close beside her she could feel his heat through the fabric of her skirt, was staring at the floor between his knees, his face a pale mask. She didn’t know why he was even here, except that he seemed to have become indispensable to Dolph.
Kate cleared her throat. “Please, Mr. Bodge.”
Bodge put his handkerchief away. He didn’t look up. “‘All other property and interests, both real and personal.’ “ He started to cough then seemed to decide against it. “‘I bequeath to my natural son, Carl Teague.’”
The first thing Kate was aware of was Mina crying wetly against her shoulder. With both hands, she held Mina away and tried to look into her face, but Mina avoided her eyes. Through the shock of what Bodge had revealed, Kate began to understand so many things. The rest she wanted to know right now. She lifted Mina’s chin. “Did you know?”
“No.” Mina sobbed. “Not until Helga came.”
“Mina!” Dolph had a dangerously unhealthy-looking pallor. “What does this mean?”
“Shut up,” Mina snapped. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Then whom does it concern?” Kate got up and backed away from the sofa, her glance passing between Carl’s face set in stone, and Mina’s dissolving into puffy wrinkles. Reece came up behind her and tried to embrace her, but she shrugged him away.
“Kate.” Carl edged away from his seat and came toward her. “Is it really so terrible? Cousins marry all the time.”
“Cousins marrying? Is it as simple to you as that?”
“If it’s the money,” he said, his arms reaching for her as he moved closer, “you can have my share.”
“You bastard.” Kate backed away from him, repulsed by the thought of him touching her, of ever having touched her. “When you married me, you knew Miles was your father?”
Dolph groaned behind her and distracted Carl.
“Did you know?” Kate demanded.
“Yes. I always knew.”
Dolph stood behind her, his hands trembling with barely controlled fury as he faced Carl. “How could you marry Kate and not tell her?”
“I didn’t want to marry her.” Long ovals of perspiration stained Carl’s starched shirt. “At first, I mean. Miles wanted me to marry Nugie, so I would be part of the family and we could be together more.”
“Then why didn’t you marry Nugie?” Kate challenged.
“She wouldn’t. I told her the truth when she got pregnant and she didn’t want any part of me.”
“You?” Mina roared up to Carl and slapped his face. He flinched, but didn’t back away as she raised her hand to hit him again. Reece caught her hand in midair. She sagged against him, saying, “He killed your sister.”
“No, he didn’t.” Reece smoothed Mina’s hair. “It was Nugie’s decision.”
Carl exhaled loudly. “Thanks, pal.”
“Don’t thank me for anything.” Reece’s voice was low, more threatening than Mina’s fist.
Mina looked up pleadingly into Reece’s face. “Take me home.”
Reece shook his head. “I can’t leave Kate here alone.”
“I’ll be okay,” Kate said. She looked at all the stunned, angry faces around her. “Will you all leave us, please? I need to speak with Carl alone.”
“No,” Dolph said simply.
“Reece, Mr. Bodge,” Kate pleaded. “Please, take Dolph and Mina home.”
“Okay,” Reece said. “But if you aren’t out of here in five minutes, we’ll be back.”
Kate took Dolph’s hand. “Five minutes?”
He nodded. Dolph didn’t so much as look at Mina as he left, and Kate understood the depth of his feelings of betrayal. How much would Mina tell him in the end?
When they were alone, Carl took a step toward Kate, his arms reaching out to hold her.
“No,” she said. “Just talk, and nothing else.”
He slumped into Bodge’s chair. “There’s nothing more to say.”
“Who broke into Miles’s house? Sorry, your house now.”
“Mom.”
“I thought so,” Kate said. “She was trying to protect you?”
He nodded sadly. “Now that you and I are divorced, she was afraid Miles would die and you would go through his things and find out about me. If it got out, my career would be over.”
“Is that why you hung around so long after the funeral, to get access to Miles?”
“No, Kate. I’m here because I love you. You have to believe me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Do you know anymore what the truth is?”
“I don’t deserve that.” His anger, always just under the surface, bubbled through his pretence of hurt innocence. “Really, how were you harmed? We had a pretty good life together for a lot of years.”
“Did we?” She thought about it for a moment, trying to remember the beginnings. All the images from that time seemed blurred by her grief for Nugie. Is that what they had shared? She looked at Carl. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth in the beginning, before it was too late?”
“The truth cost me Nugie. I couldn’t risk losing you, too.” He leaned forward, the expression on his face intense, committed. “Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I needed you. I missed Nugie as much as you did. You were so much alike, the way you talked about things, the people you knew. Sometimes, just sometimes, I could close my eyes and you were Nugie.”
“Maybe that’s where you made your mistake. I never was Nugie. Not for an instant.” His words had cut deep, excising any feelings she had left toward him. He had invalidated all their years together and she needed an emotional toehold somewhere.
“Kate.” Carl came to her and held her rigid body.
The arms around her felt like home. But when she looked up into that handsome face he was like a stranger. Suddenly he seemed shabby, like the Ratcher house, as if his trim paint was chipped and faded. She backed out of his embrace.
“What about our children?” she asked. “Didn’t you worry that it might be dangerous for them, our being cousins?”
“I guess we were lucky, then, that we never had kids.”
“No,” she said, feeling a hot rush of sadness. “That’s the one thing I regret.”
“Hey, look. I’m not completely without character. After Nugie died I vowed I was never going through anything like that again.” He looked her right in the eye. “I had a vasectomy.”
It came like a physical blow that left her gasping. To save herself, she had to get away from him. She headed for the open front door and fresh air.
He followed her. “Where are you going?”
“Your five minutes are up.” No matter how fast she walked, she couldn’t shake him. Dolph’s keys bounced against her leg as she broke into a run. They were in her hand by the time she reached the Mercedes at the curb.
“Kate, wait.” Carl jogged across the courtyard behind her.
Without turning to look at him, to see how close he was, she slid in behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
“Come on, now.” He was at the window, reaching for the door handle. “Running away isn’t going to help.”
“Neither is staying,” she said as she held the window-up button.
“Please.” His hot breath made foggy patches on the window as he gripped the door handle. She pressed the automatic door lock and it made a satisfying “thunk,” sealing her in the car.
“We have to talk.” His face was inches away from hers on the other side of the glass, getting redder and angrier as he pulled fruitlessly on the door handle. Out of frustration, he banged a fist against the window. He hit the window again and something inside the door popped. She had to get away before he broke the glass.
She put the car in gear, released the parking brake, and eased away from the curb.
Hanging on to the door handle, Carl jogged along beside her. “Stop it, Kate. You’re acting like a child.”
She accelerated until he was forced to let
go. He tumbled away from the car, rolling just the way his football coach had taught him. In the rearview mirror she saw him sitting in the middle of the courtyard, his knee shining through torn slacks, his perfect hair mussed appealingly. He looked like one of the lost children who sit under the lifeguard station at the beach waiting for their mothers to retrieve them.
Kate turned sharply onto Ocean Boulevard, somehow getting through the Saturday morning beach traffic, turning, stopping, avoiding cars and pedestrians without making conscious decisions. Everything outside the car was a blur, every sound muted by the hot anger of betrayal that filled her. Esperanza, Mina, Carl. Who else kept secrets from her while she was being attacked, first with stones, then with her mother’s car? And what was it all about, anyway?
Kate opened the windows and let fresh air blow across her face, trying to clear the fog in her brain. Who and why? If Carl had managed to eliminate Kate before she changed her will, assuming he knew that he was Miles’s heir, he might have been able to claim two of the three pieces of the Byrd estate. No, she thought, it wouldn’t work. If she died, as soon as Miles’s will was read, Carl would be the chief suspect. Convicted or not, it would ruin his career, a fate Carl would never risk. Anyway, Carl didn’t give a damn about money. In fact, inherited money would be an embarrassment to him.
Then again, she thought, dodging around a group of cyclists, maybe the attacks were meant only to scare her so that she’d beg him to stay, to protect her. It was possible; he had such an overinflated ego and such a low estimation of her ability to take care of herself.
She drove aimlessly for a while, taking the path of least resistance through traffic. Sometimes she turned only because the way was clear, or raced a yellow light rather than move her foot to brake for a red. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t going anywhere in particular.
Caught at the light behind an armored car, she drummed her fingers restlessly against the steering wheel, half-expecting an automatic to appear at the gun-hole and aim for her head. Stranger things had been happening.
The light changed and the armored car turned one way, Kate the other. If it wasn’t Carl, she thought, bogged in traffic approaching a shopping mall, then maybe it was someone who knew about Miles’s will and wanted to eliminate both Kate and Carl. If Kate were murdered and Carl was convicted of the deed, who would benefit? Dolph, and through him, Mina.
Reece maybe, as the only member of the younger generation to survive. Or Esperanza, for services rendered. Kate shuddered. Whatever the answer, it meant years of treacherous betrayal by someone she loved and trusted.
Like an old stable mare, the car seemed to know where it was headed. Gradually, Kate became aware of familiar things outside; the sounds of Saturday activity in a neighborhood of neat, postwar stucco houses. She was on a short, tree-lined street with a school at the end of the block. Beside her there was a trim green house with a tricycle parked on its small patch of grass, and she stopped, realizing with a start where she was. But why had she come here? And where was Tejeda?
SEVENTEEN
KATE SLOUCHED DOWN in her seat, wishing she could be invisible for a few minutes, until she could sort some things out. Like, what was she doing here? And where else could she go? But a woman with a black eye parked in a Mercedes wouldn’t go unnoticed long on this street with Toyotas and station wagons in the driveways.
She wasn’t sure how she had managed to find Tejeda’s house again. But what now? It was Saturday, Tejeda’s day off. Time to be with his daughter. Maybe he wasn’t even home.
At least she was somewhere and there was no traffic to dodge. Kate closed her eyes and tried to think where to go next.
Then Tejeda was beside her, reaching through the open window to unlock her door. “What happened?” he was asking, but she didn’t know why he was so excited.
Feeling light-headed, drugged almost, Kate looked at him dumbly. He wore nothing but a saggy pair of gray knit shorts stenciled “property of S.A.P.D.” She wanted to laugh but he seemed so upset. In the back of her mind she recognized the symptoms of shock, and tried to shake them off.
Tejeda opened the car door and pulled her out. He hurt her arms because she couldn’t cooperate. As he would a drunk, he stood her on the sidewalk, holding her to keep her from falling. All that time he kept nattering away, asking what happened and was she hurt.
She reacted slowly, trying to work around the fog in her head. “It’s okay,” she said, looking up at his unshaven face. “I found Miles’s bastard.” She tried to swallow. “It’s Carl.”
Tejeda held her tight against his bare chest while she tried to summon tears that weren’t there. Bits of cut grass stuck to his sweaty skin and fell onto her shoulder. She put her arms around him, but the lines of his body against her felt strange, uncomfortable. She held him tighter, as if she could mold him into the right shape. His erection pressed against the thin fabric of her skirt and she looked up at him, surprised.
Embarrassed, he stepped back. Taking her arm like a Boy Scout, he walked her across the street to his house, past the idled mower in the middle of the lawn.
“Theresa,” Tejeda called as he ushered Kate inside.
Theresa looked up from the table she was dusting.
“Theresa, this is Mrs. Teague.”
“We’ve met.” The twelve-year-old gave Kate a worldly grin. She spread her dustcloth over the undusted half of the table she was working on. “I’m all through, Dad. I’m going to Kirsten’s, okay?”
“When will you be back?” he asked.
“Later.” She looked at Kate again, eyes wide. “Much later.”
“Kids think they know so much,” he said as Theresa slammed the door behind her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
He was looking her over, as if taking inventory. “You aren’t hurt anywhere?”
“Not physically.”
“Will you be okay here for a minute? I need to clean up.”
“Go ahead. I’m all right.”
Tejeda took three neckties off a doorknob on his way out of the room.
In the quiet ordinariness of Tejeda’s house, she began to feel calmer, though her mouth still felt wadded with cotton. She knew in which general direction to look for the kitchen, and went to find it. Breakfast dishes were draining in a rack by the sink. She filled one of the glasses with tap water and drank it, feeling it slide into a cold lump in the pit of her stomach. Then she wet her hands and put them over her face and at the back of her neck. Slowly, things around her began to come back into focus, including the ugly scene with Carl.
She found her way back into the living room and sat in the same big chair she had used the first time she was there. She stretched her legs out and began to relax, feeling that this place was really the safe harbor. No one had ever been here before, not Carl or Dolph or Mina or any of them. Then she realized why she had come; they would never find her here.
In a few minutes, Tejeda, looking scrubbed and damp, came back into the room. With one hand he carried white tennis shoes, with the other he tucked his knit shirt into his jeans. She again noticed the slight, comfortable-looking roundness around his middle that she found tremendously appealing.
“Okay.” He sat on the edge of the sofa and bent over to put on his shoes. “Start at the beginning.”
Kate told him about the portrait in Esperanza’s alcove at Rosa’s and about the reading of the will. He leaned back with his hands folded across his stomach and listened, his dark eyes focused somewhere left of her chin.
“I have to go back to Rosa’s,” she said finally. “I have to find out what Esperanza knows. It’s the only way I can save myself.”
“Good idea.” He stood up and reached for her hand. “It’s my day off. I’d like to pay a little unofficial visit to Esperanza myself. Can you find Rosa’s again?”
“Yes.” Kate held up Dolph’s car keys. “If you’ll drive.”
In the car, Kate turned in her seat so she could see Tejeda while she talked to him. S
he was glad he wasn’t carrying his police revolver.
Once they were on the freeway, Tejeda said, “One cricket bat tested out. It’s now the murder weapon of record.”
“Have you any doubts about Miles using it?”
“From what we’ve found, no. But I think he either had help or someone has carried on where he left off.”
“I just left a houseful of candidates.”
“Who’s at the head of your list, Mrs. Teague?”
“Mrs. Teague? That sounds so strange.” Kate drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, feeling jittery from postshock letdown. “I don’t feel like I ever was Mrs. anything. Just Kate.”
“Are you all right?” His hand covered hers. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine.” She watched his vaguely Indian profile for a moment. “I was just thinking, Miles did have two babies, his child with Helga and his grandchild, Nugie and Carl’s baby. He said both his babies were safe. Is that what he meant?”
“But both his babies weren’t safe,” Tejeda reminded her. “Carl’s baby was aborted.”
“Did you know Miles had his first breakdown the day Carl and I got married?”
“Interesting.”
“Of course I didn’t associate the two things at the time. Do you think he recognized Helga? It just occurred to me that he had his last seizure the day after she arrived for her visit.” She covered her eyes, holding the tears behind her lids. “Poor Miles. What he must have gone through over the years.”
“Did your mother know about Carl?”
“No,” Kate said. It was nice for a change to be sure about something. “She saw secrets as debts to be collected. She would have called that one in a long time ago.”
Tejeda glanced at her. “As in blackmail?”
No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1) Page 19
