“No.” The word was a whisper. It was the only sound she could make. She felt as if she were falling, whirling backward. She put her hands up to her temples, as though that would stop it.
“Oh, yes, baby! You thought we weren’t married, you stupid little bitch. Believed every word I said, didn’t you? I just wanted out, and I needed to put an end to everything that happened that summer. I couldn’t have you coming around, draining me for money, saying things that might make my trustees ask questions. So I told you I was already married. Hell, you didn’t even ask who my wife was, where she had been all that time, where my damned wedding ring was. You didn’t care. You didn’t care one damned bit.”
Slowly, Riva’s mind stopped spinning, began to function again. “You never got a divorce?”
“How the hell was I going to do that without people asking questions? Besides, the marriage was filed in Arkansas. Nobody ever checks marriage records across state lines.”
“But if I’m still married to you, then Anne—”
“That’s a laugh, isn’t it? Anne, poor straitlaced, uptight Anne, has been living in sin for years.”
She frowned in concentration. “If Erin is legitimate, then, your son is…not.”
“Never mind.” The smile disappeared from his face. “What’s important here is that you were never Mrs. Cosmo Staulet. The marriage—here’s the joke—was invalid. That means you never had any right to be here, not a damn bit of right. Cross me, and you’ll be out on your ear. Cosmo Staulet’s son out there will see to it personally.”
“You are willing to keep quiet about this if I cooperate, is that it?”
“That’s it.” His smile was snide.
“And I can, of course,” she said with delicate irony, “depend on you never to use it against me.”
“You’ll have me by the short hairs, too, won’t you? Who knows, you might get to like the grip.” He chuckled at his own ribald suggestion.
He was so confident, and so obnoxious with it. Was it all a show? Or did he really think that she could walk out there and get rid of the press, smooth things over without intolerable repercussions?
Could she? Could she possibly make up a tale of some kind, maybe of a big charitable donation, to account for bringing on the media carnival outside? Did she want to do that?
It would please Margaret and Erin. Some of the truth had been exposed, but no one need know the whole story. The furor would die down eventually and things could go on more or less as they were. She could keep all she held dear, stay at Bonne Vie. And possibly, after a time, the change in the relationship between Noel and herself that had taken place in the past few days might continue instead of turning to contempt and rejection. She could encourage that, nurture it, because she knew that she was not now, nor had she ever been, his stepmother.
Noel didn’t know it. What was worse was that she could never tell him if she placed herself in Edison’s power by doing as he suggested.
More than that, the man had to be stopped. He had hurt so many, done so much damage with so little regret. His regard for what was moral and right was so meager that for most of his life he had lived in a marriage that was a lie, thereby robbing his own son of his birthright. He was not quite sane. His lack of conscience and pandering to his own ego, his own twisted desires showed it beyond doubting. A man of his kind should not be allowed to move freely among normal people, much less to govern them.
“Is that all?” she asked.
A scowl of annoyance crossed Edison’s face at the calm that had crept back into her voice. “Yes, that’s all.”
“Then I have an appointment to keep.”
She turned away from him, but he reached out to grab her arm. “What are you going to say?”
“What do you think?”
His grasp tightened. “I’m asking you.”
“I’m going to tell them the story of my life,” she said evenly, her green gaze steady on his, “in complete detail.”
He muttered an oath and lunged, reaching for her throat with his free hand. Riva blocked his arm by bringing up her own in a quick reflex action. He caught her arm, and they grappled, staggering back and forth.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
The cry came from Margaret as she stumbled through the door that led from the butler’s pantry. Her eyes were huge in her pale and bloated face, her hair was a frizzed tangle, and her housecoat was rumpled and stained. Clutched in her hands, wavering up and down, was Riva’s small pistol.
At the same moment that Margaret cried out, the door into the hall crashed open to slam against the wall. Noel plunged into the room, then came up short as he took in the situation.
Riva wrenched herself free of Edison’s hold and stepped away from him. She started toward her sister. “Give me the gun, Margaret.”
Margaret backed away a hasty step. The pistol shook with the violent tremors running through her body but remained trained on Edison. “No, Riva. I called Edison, got him here so I can stop this thing, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop him for good. You said there was nothing else to be done, but I told you there was. I told you.”
“This isn’t going to help. It will just make things worse.”
“How? How can they be worse? I tried to get rid of him and make it look like an accident. I went to see Jimmy, Beth’s husband, you know? He still keeps in touch. He’s a mechanic out at the airport, works with electronics; he’s been there since he came out of the air force. He said he could make Edison’s plane crash, no problem, and he wouldn’t take a cent for it because he had an old score to settle. But he didn’t know Josh would be on board. Neither did I. I’m sorry, real sorry, about Josh.”
Her sister’s voice had a droning quality, as if the usual rise and fall had been smoothed out by the tranquilizers she had taken, Riva thought.
“Margaret, please,” she said, “let me—”
“No! I’m more sorry the crash didn’t work. But I can fix it. I thought about it after you told me how you got away from Edison in that hospital closet. You should have shot him then, but no. Well, I found your gun; I knew just where to look for your purse. Now I can do it. If I shoot Edison here and now, it’ll be the same thing. There won’t be any reason to tell everybody everything. That way, people won’t be talking about me. That’s right, isn’t it? Isn’t that right?”
Edison twitched, stuttering into speech. “F-for God’s sake-”
“Shut up!” Margaret ordered, pointing the pistol at his chest. “Shut your lying mouth. Lies, that’s all you ever did was tell lies. I thought you were something wonderful, but it was all a lie. You can kill people with lies. They die inside real slow.”
“She’s crazy!” Edison exclaimed in disgust. “Don’t listen to a word she says.”
“You’re the crazy one,” Margaret cried, “treating people as if they were dirt under your fine shoes! But I know all about you. You tried to kill Riva. But you did kill Beth, yes, you did, with your lies, using her for your whore as if she didn’t matter. And you shot that other girl, too, didn’t you? I saw your car that night just like Riva did. I woke up after she got out of bed.”
“Margaret,” Riva whispered, but her sister’s attention was riveted on Edison.
“You thought you were safe,” she told him, “but I saw you driving like a bat out of hell down behind the pond. I never told anyone. I never told, and I raised your daughter and loved her as if she had been my child, mine and yours. Wasn’t that silly of me? But Boots swore it was an accident, you shooting that girl. He swore you didn’t mean to do it, and I believed him. But you did mean it, didn’t you? You meant it because she laughed at you. Boots told me that, too. He tells me everything.”
Riva listened, transfixed. Margaret had sat listening to her tell of seeing Edison herself and never said a word. Why? Then suddenly she understood, saw why Margaret had protected Edison, why she had insisted on taking Erin and even pretended the child was her own. The reason was love, a twisted kind of love, but
still love.
“You can’t prove a thing!” Edison shouted. “Anyway, the bitch deserved it.”
“Maybe I can’t prove it, but I can tell what I know, and so can Boots. He will now, too. He hates you. Don’t you, Boots?”
Her husband had entered the room behind Noel. He stood frozen in place, a big, awkward man, uncertain of what to do. Still, there was remorse in his eyes as he looked at his wife, and sorrow.
Since Margaret had not shot Edison at once, it seemed likely that the greatest danger was that she might do so by accident. Riva moved deliberately between her sister and Edison. She heard Noel’s soft imprecation, heard the whisper of his footstep on the Brussels carpet as he eased closer. She refused to look at him in her concentration on her sister.
Her voice soothing, Riva said, “Think, Margaret, only think. You can’t do this, not this way. Everybody will know who killed Edison. The front lawn is full of news-people who will broadcast the story far and wide. They will want to know your name, where you live, why you pulled the trigger, plus a thousand other details. It will all come out.”
Margaret looked at Riva with confusion clouding her eyes. The muzzle of the pistol lowered a fraction, wobbled to the left. “I forgot about them. Do you think that’s what will happen?”
“I know it. Just let me have the pistol and I’ll put it away again before everybody sees it and starts asking questions.”
Another moment, and it would have been all right. Another moment, and Riva would have had the pistol in her hand. Then Edison lurched forward. He grabbed Riva from behind, dragging her against him as a shield. Margaret screamed and fired. The shot hissed past Riva’s head, thudding into the wall behind her. Noel leaped for Margaret, sweeping her gun hand upward as he wrested the pistol from her clawing fingers.
Margaret cried out, then dissolved onto the floor in a sobbing heap. Boots went down on his knees beside her, lifting her up, murmuring softly as if to a child. Margaret leaned her head on his knee and cried with the racking sobs of limitless regret.
Noel, the pistol in his hand, swung toward Riva and Edison. Black rage burned in his eyes as he looked from one to the other, and there was a white line about his mouth.
A nervous laugh broke from Edison. He let Riva go and stepped back, his hands held wide apart and palms out. “Take it easy, Staulet,” he said. “You don’t want to do anything rash.”
Noel made a soft sound of contempt. “You don’t have to worry.”
Edison relaxed visibly. He even managed a grin. “Yeah, I always did say one woman was just like the next.”
“You’re a fool.” The words had the slicing edge of a razor. Noel swung toward Riva. “And you’re doubly the fool for protecting him. Again.”
Riva felt the lash of his scorn and stiffened in disbelief. There was a pounding noise in her head, though she couldn’t be sure whether it came from somewhere outside or was only the throb of her heartbeat in her ears. Her voice thick, she began, “But I wasn’t—”
There was no time for more. Suddenly the room was full of uniforms. The five of them were surrounded, jostled, held under the cover of a half-dozen pointed guns while questions were shouted and answers demanded.
Noel spoke, his voice hard and succinct. The weapons were put away. The stances of the policemen eased and they stepped back, some of them almost to the wall. The officer in charge gave a short, almost embarrassed laugh. “Sorry, Mr. Staulet. We were called for riot duty, I know, but when we heard shooting, we got a little carried away.”
“Stick around,” Noel said, his voice grim, “the fun has just started. In the meantime, you can keep an eye on that man.”
The policeman looked startled. “You mean the candidate here?”
“That’s the one.” Noel turned to Riva. “Madame Staulet, I believe you called a press conference?”
Had he stressed the courtesy title, giving it the sound of irony, or was it her imagination? Had he overheard? Did he know? She could not tell from the closed-in expression on his features. His touch on her arm was impersonal as he guided her from the room. He walked beside her down the long length of the hall with all the stern silence of a guard leading the condemned to the place of execution. It almost seemed that if she faltered, if she tried to turn back, he might force her on. And why should he not? When she had had her say, he would be free of her, done with the woman who had been an embarrassment as his father’s much younger wife. He would be rid of a reminder of an episode he would surely like to forget, and a burden for whom his care had been entreated on his father’s deathbed. Without her, he could run Staulet Corporation as he wanted, put his own imprint on it. Without her, the wealth accumulated by his father, though with her help, would be his to use as he saw fit. Without her, Bonne Vie would be his to enjoy alone. Why should he not help her to destroy herself?
They paused in the hall near the front door. There was not enough room for all of the media people who had gathered to be accommodated in the parlor. Noel suggested that, instead of letting them into the house, she join them on the front gallery. It would be less formal, plus it might save the furniture.
She agreed. It made no difference to her where she spoke to them. All she wanted was for it to be over.
Noel stepped to the door. With his hand on the knob, he paused. “Ready?” he asked, his voice low.
Riva clasped her hands together. She moistened her lips. She wondered in a vague sort of way if her hair had been disarranged by the scuffle in the dining room and if her dress was straight. She didn’t really care. She lifted her gaze to Noel. Her expression anguished, vulnerable with her doubts, she asked in stifled tones, “Am I doing the right thing?”
His eyes were dark gray and unflinching as he answered, “I think you are. It seems appropriate that the truth should be known at last.”
He did know. Whether he had overheard or discovered it in some other way, he knew, and he despised her. There was nothing left to fear, no pain that could be greater.
Cold to the lips, she said, “I’m ready.”
TWENTY-FOUR
THE NEWS CREWS JOSTLED FORWARD, holding out microphones and minirecorders, waving pads and pens, shouting questions. There was the flash and whir of still cameras. A battery of lights bloomed hot and blindingly bright as television cameramen converged from every direction. Riva had been in front of cameras before, but never at the center of this kind of concentrated tumult. It was unnerving. She swallowed, trying to clear her throat, waiting for silence. The longer she waited, the more clamorous the gathering became:
“Was that a shot we heard?”
“Who fired the gun?”
“Was anyone hit?”
“Who were the police after?”
“Anyone been arrested?”
“What’s the purpose of this conference?”
“Any connection with the shot?”
Riva took a deep breath and lifted her chin. Raising her voice, she said, “I have a statement to make.”
The noise increased.
“If you will let me talk—”
The questions came louder and more insistent.
Noel, standing with his back to the front door, stepped forward.
“Quiet!”
The word was neither harsh nor particularly loud, but it carried the sound of command. The volume of the hubbub suddenly muted, then began to die away.
“Thank you,” Riva said, “and a special thank you to all of you for coming today. If you will bear with me, I believe I can answer everything you have been asking. The story is a long one, however, so I ask for your patience.”
It wasn’t easy. She had never realized, until she began to try to find the words to tell her tale, how private a person she was, how private she had become. To strip away years of self-protection and subterfuge in a few sentences was like undressing in public. There was honesty in it, but it was impossible not to shrink from the exposure.
It was a warm day beyond the shade of the gallery. That warmth, combine
d with the heat of the lights and press of bodies around her, brought perspiration to her forehead and across her upper lip. She became aware, as the moments passed, that Noel was still at her side, standing shoulder to shoulder with her. Whether it was a gesture of protection for one who still represented the Staulet name or simply a sign of the line he would not permit the media to step across, she did not know. Still, having him near gave her strength. It showed in her voice, making it steadier, and with its normal melodious timbre, as she spoke of the deaths of her sister and the civil rights worker; her seduction by Edison and their marriage; his desertion of her in New Orleans; the birth of her child and how her sister had taken it to raise it as her own. As she told of her despair, however, tears rose in her eyes, brought by the rise of memories long suppressed, never quite accepted, memories of the sweetness and delicate perfection of the baby she had borne and given away for the promise of a better life than she could give her.
The crowd before her was no more than a mass of red-faced and sweat-damp bodies. It was almost by instinct that she found the place where Erin stood. She managed a shaky smile as she met her daughter’s eyes. And through a film of moisture, she saw Erin give a slow nod before she detached herself from her place beside Doug where he stood with his camera slack and unused in his hands at the back of the crowd. Erin slipped around men hefting minicams, stepped over cables, murmured apologies as she pushed forward in front of people. Then she was at Riva’s side, hugging her close.
“I’m sorry,” Erin whispered, “I’m sorry.”
As Riva went on, after a brief moment, she had her daughter’s arm around her.
Somewhere in the long recital, perhaps as she spoke very briefly of Cosmo and his falling-out with his son, Noel reached to clasp her waist from the other side. It was a hold of silent support, steady, firm, asking nothing. Once more, tears threatened to choke Riva. She tried to swallow them, but they spilled over, sliding down her face, dripping in small wet spots onto the silk of her dress. By fierce concentration, she conquered them and was able to continue.
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