“You did your best to make sure I couldn’t get it?”
“Naivete is refreshing, Nicholas. I rather enjoy it. I think it will be a pleasure partnering with you.”
“You did your best to make sure I couldn’t get it?” I repeated, understanding what he meant but unable to actually believe it.
“I almost decided to smother you that night behind the steering wheel. Pinch your nostrils shut and cover your mouth, but even I couldn’t stomach cold-blooded murder. I wasn’t, however, going to be much upset if natural events took you away from my world. If the ambulance had arrived a half hour later, Nick, you wouldn’t have been a problem for me ever again.”
It was not easy to remain seated as I watched that easy, charming smile.
“There,” he said. “We’ve got all of it out in the open now. Or at least I have. It’s your turn. What do you intend to do?”
I didn’t answer. I was trying to absorb all he’d said.
“Since your return, I’ve thought it through from your point of view,” he continued. “Thanks to DNA testing, I have no doubt you could prove the paternity. If I decided to fight, you’d face a long legal battle, however, just to get Father’s remains exhumed. How I wish Mother had cremated him, as I begged at the time.”
Pendleton paused to take a small silver case out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He snapped it open, revealing a row of cigarillos. He offered me one, which I declined. He shrugged, took one out, and lit it. He held it in an elegant pose as he watched me through curls of smoke.
“It may surprise you to find out that I may not even contest it. My current situation with the IRS, of course, is the main factor. As it stands, I won’t have much to keep, one way or the other. You, though, can choose to make it simple or difficult. Trust me, I’ve given this considerable thought.”
Trust and Pendleton were two mutually exclusive words.
I told him as much.
“Nicholas, you are now one of the heirs apparent of Charleston. Our standards are different. Things that apply to ordinary people don’t apply to us. It’s not about trust. Learn not to take these things personally, Nicholas. You’ll see how easy it is to fit in.”
He blew several smoke rings, appearing very comfortable in his role as my new mentor. “Here it is, Nicholas. And now you’ll understand why I made sure you weren’t wired. I’ll do everything I can to help you rightfully claim as much as possible from the Barrett fortune—under one simple condition. I want some of it back. Without the IRS knowing. There’s a couple deals on the way that I can leverage into a surprisingly large nest egg, if I have the necessary equity on the front end. I’ll even help you get in on the investments, if you like.”
“Just so I understand, Brother, you’ll help me if I kick some of it back to you. Or you’ll fight me if I don’t.”
“You do learn fast. The first way, we pull as much away from the IRS as possible. Or the second way, I spite you because I’m losing most of it anyway.”
“Interesting,” I said. “And you’ll trust me to kick some back?”
“Sure, Nicholas.”
“You were willing to let me die in that accident. I know it now. A lot of what happened when we were growing up was personal. Why should you trust me not to take my revenge?”
“That’s just it. It’s money. For money, you can forget everything. I mean, what can that other stuff matter?”
“What if I think otherwise?”
“You’ll learn differently.”
“You sound sure about it.”
He smiled. “Nick, I trust you’ll help me because when you do, you’ll finally be one of us and that’s what you’ve always wanted, needed.”
I stood. There are some truths a man never wants to face.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Until this moment, I hadn’t even been sure if I wanted to lay claim to my inheritance. Now I did.
“See you in court.” I paused in the doorway. “And please, consider it a personal matter.”
Chapter 37
An hour later by telephone, Gillon reached me at the bed-and-breakfast. He requested that I join him for a private meeting.
I was not interested.
His promise, to entice me to the meeting, was offering the truth behind my mother’s disappearance from Charleston.
Where? I asked.
I’ll find out, he said.
For my convenience, he dryly informed me, he would send his limousine.
It arrived late in the afternoon.
**
From the car, Gillon’s chauffeur pushed Gillon in his wheelchair across the parking lot of the Carolina Yacht Club. Gillon held an umbrella and shielded himself from the rain.
I held an umbrella for myself. The rain slashed at me almost sideways, and I fought to keep my balance against the wind. The walk to the senator’s yacht was mercifully quick. I did not stand on the dock and admire all seventy feet of the sleek lines—I was already soaked from the waist down—but followed the chauffeur as he guided the senator in his wheelchair across the swaying gangplank.
The yacht was equipped with a motorized wheelchair ramp to give the senator easy access to the lower level of the interior, into a saloon the size of a small apartment. Once I was inside, it hardly seemed different than stepping into the luxury suite of a hotel.
The walls were burnished mahogany, decorated with framed oil paintings. The floor was hardwood, well cushioned by Oriental throw rugs that would have been appropriate in any of Charleston’s mansions. The furniture was dark leather—couch arranged in front of a large-screen television, three side chairs in a square around it. The bar filled the back wall of the suite, with a hallway leading to bedrooms at the stern of the yacht.
Admiral Robertson stood at the bar in the back, filling a glass with ice.
I said nothing as I watched him pour a drink, gesture at me.
I refused his offer.
He shrugged.
I resisted an urge to speak. What I wanted to do, of course, was demand explanations. For the admiral’s presence. For the purpose of this meeting. And most of all, explanations about my mother’s disappearance from my life.
It felt, however, that my impatience would too easily be seen as a weakness. I forced myself to wait until Gillon was settled.
The chauffeur departed, and Admiral Robertson took a chair.
I did not want to sit; that would be acknowledging I was part of this tiny circle. I did not want to stand; I knew my leg would begin to hurt. I compromised and sat on the armrest of the couch.
I let Gillon speak first.
“We all know each other,” he said. “Let us not waste time.”
There seemed to be strength in being silent, so I remained that way.
“The questions you have persisted in asking are about to do some spectacular damage,” Gillon told me. “Damage,
I might add, totally unjustified to those of us who remain to remember the answers. My hope is that this conversation will bring all of it to a resolution.”
I snorted. “As compared to resolving it by encouraging a dog to rip my throat apart?”
Gillon nodded in the admiral’s direction. “McLean here will apologize for that to you, as he already has to me. It was shortsighted stupidity on his part. A result of premature panic. Am I correct, Admiral?”
“You are correct.” The admiral remained stone-faced.
Gillon spoke to me. “It has already been a long day. I have spoken with Amelia Layton and discovered from her that both of you know of her father’s secrets. I encouraged her to destroy the collection in such a way that I could attest to others that it is safely gone. My word to that effect, circulated among those who matter, will be the protection both of you need. Otherwise, there may be others, who, like the admiral, panic unnecessarily and in unseemly ways.”
“Pardon my cynicism,” I interrupted. “But what in that collection worries you, Senator?”
“Frankly, everything. Edgar L
ayton accumulated evidence of some of the vilest vices of an entire generation of the wealthiest and most powerful Charlestonians. It will do no good to unleash these old, irrelevant sins on the innocent wives and sons and daughters of that generation.”
“I should have remembered I am speaking to an attorney,” I said. “Let me rephrase. Pardon my cynicism, Senator, but what in that collection pertains to you?”
Gillon sipped his drink before answering my last question.
“I have been guilty of many things in my life, but not of being stupid enough to let my client Edgar Layton add me to his collection.” Gillon smiled sadly and savored another sip of his numbing beverage. “Nothing in that collection pertains to me but the Colt .45 with the admiral’s fingerprints. For that was the weapon that fired a small piece of lead, which crippled me for life on the night your mother disappeared from Charleston.”
“Not,” I said, “a bullet from a random thief as you told me earlier.”
“That was a lie. Are you ready for the truth?”
“More importantly,” I said, “are you capable of the truth?”
Gillon ignored the insult. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a silver object. He tossed it to me. Not until I had it in my hands did I recognize it. A cigarette lighter. With the initials C.B. engraved on the bottom.
“Yes,” Gillon said. “Your mother’s. She left it in my office that final afternoon. Still works perfectly.”
I tucked it into my pocket. I could remember it because of how my mother frequently complained that she wanted to quit smoking. Then, of course, cigarette smoking did not have the stigma it does now.
“That afternoon your mother came to me in my law office,” Gillon said. “She wanted the trust fund money that had been set aside for you until the age of eighteen. You, of course, were only ten years old, and it was an unexpected request. I did not find out until that night that she wanted it to begin a new life with Admiral Robertson’s assistant, Jonathan Britt, with whom she had begun a tempestuous affair.” Gillon raised an eyebrow. “Admiral?”
Admiral Robertson spoke with his hand around the bowl of his pipe. Gillon’s question had caught him halfway through lighting it. “I had had my suspicions about Jonathan Britt for some time. I believed he was the person behind misappropriation of pension funds, but I could not prove it. Not until I overheard him speaking to your mother on the telephone that afternoon. I had gone golfing, thinking my clubs were in my trunk, only to find out I had left them behind. When I returned to get them, he was speaking freely in the adjacent office, believing I would not be back for hours. He was arranging the time and place he would pick up your mother to flee town, promising to have the money. I said nothing and quietly left, intending to give him enough rope to hang himself by confronting him at the prearranged place with the pension funds in his possession. I was at the park on the outskirts of town then, hidden and waiting for her arrival.”
“The admiral was not alone at the park that night,” Gillon added. “That afternoon, he had contacted me to use as a witness.”
“I didn’t want to use a naval lawyer,” Admiral Robertson said. “Simply because the only proof I had was an overheard conversation. I was afraid of being wrong and unnecessarily dragging the navy into it until I was certain. Hence, my request that Gillon be an impartial witness.”
“Which I was,” Gillon said. “At the park, your mother showed up as arranged by Jonathan Britt. It was as they were leaving that the admiral and I confronted them. The admiral was armed with his Colt .45.”
“Every day since, I have hated myself for that.” Admiral Robertson tilted his head back and drained his glass. “The chain of events . . .”
He stared at the floor.
Gillon continued for him. “It was confusing in the dark. We stepped out from behind some bushes. The admiral was not clear in identifying himself. All we can assume is that his assistant thought it was armed robbery. He dove for the admiral’s gun. A shot was fired. It was the bullet that struck me in the back.”
Gillon gave another sad smile. “A bullet that changed the rest of my life. For obvious reasons, I’m not clear on the rest of what happened in the next seconds after that. I do know the consequences.”
Gillon paused. The admiral did not pick up the story. “Admiral?” Gillon said.
Admiral Robertson drew hard several times on his pipe. “My natural reaction was to fight to keep possession of the pistol. I fired it again, and that bullet . . .”
The admiral sighed. “That bullet tore through the throat of Jonathan Britt.”
The admiral set his pipe down. He moved back to the bar. He poured more from the decanter, took two big gulps from his tumbler, and spoke in a monotone. “The bullet did not stop there. It also killed the woman with him. With a single shot, I had killed them both.” His voice was beginning to slur conspicuously.
Gillon spoke softly. “Nick, your mother died that night. I wish I did not have to tell you this. But I hope you can take some blessing from that. She did not run away from you.”
“Twenty years is a long time to wait to deliver such wonderful news.” I stared at Gillon until the senator was forced to blink and look away.
Gillon coughed. “We couldn’t let you know. You were a boy.”
“A boy without a mother,” I said. “The admiral shot in self-defense. Trying to stop a criminal. There was nothing to cover up. How could you let a boy believe his mother abandoned him?”
“That’s where you are wrong,” Gillon said. “Jonathan wasn’t a criminal. At least not that anyone could prove. The money was gone from the pension fund. But he did not have it with him. To the world, it would look like the admiral had shot an innocent man and an innocent woman.”
Gillon pointed his nearly empty glass at the admiral, who sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees, head down. “Panic, Nick. He reacted without thinking, like the attack with the dog. He knew Edgar Layton would help, and he called Layton without thinking through the consequences.”
“There I was,” the admiral said, “with two dead and a third dying. When Layton arrived, he told me there was no sense in throwing away my career. It wouldn’t change what had happened. I hadn’t meant any wrong. It was just bad circumstances . . . bad circumst—Anyway, I was only too happy to agree.”
I was numb to such objective discussion about the death of my mother. Which surprised me. Was it because I was trying to fit this in with what Amelia had told me? Had she been confused as an eight-year-old? Or were these two men lying to me? And how could I ever determine which?
“Edgar took care of everything,” Gillon said, filling in the silence. “Found a way to hide their bodies, arranged a cover-up that would make it look like they had taken the money and fled, filed false reports that had them one step ahead of the law until they safely got out of the country. The admiral paid a steep price for it. Edgar retained the gun with the admiral’s fingerprints and knew where the bodies were buried with bullets that came from the gun.”
I pondered that, again trying to fit this in with the story Amelia had given me. Where were my emotions? Was my soul so callused now that my mother’s disappearance was merely a puzzle that needed solving?
The admiral rose for still another drink, speaking as he moved back to the bar. “Edgar Layton bled me dry over the years. Blackmailed me. Not only did I have to face my conscience every night . . .”
Gillon spoke to me in a soothing voice. “The price has been paid, Nick. By the admiral. By you. Now that Edgar is gone from this world, so is the knowledge of the location of their bodies. Even with the gun that shot them in your possession, even with the admiral’s fingerprints on the gun, there is nothing you can prove, not anymore. Not without a body. Or Edgar’s testimony. Had he not died, we would not be having this conversation now.”
Gillon finished quietly, like a trial lawyer protecting a widowed defendant who deserved the jury’s full sympathy. “So let me ask. Is the truth enough? Can you now let it rest
?”
“If you can explain to me,” I said, “why Amelia has a different story.”
“Amelia?”
“She was in her father’s car that night. Hidden in the backseat. Last night she told me her father picked up a woman and later brought her to the train station.”
Gillon and the admiral exchanged glances. My question hung. The seconds ticked past, clearly echoing from a clock on the bookshelf.
Gillon adjusted his tie. He was delaying his answer far too long.
“Obviously,” I said, “you did not tell me the truth.”
“No,” Gillon said, “not all of it. There was a woman involved. Layton did pick her up that night. It was a woman who agreed to pretend she was your mother, so that the story about her leaving town by train would seem more believable.”
“Who?” I asked.
“It was—”
Gillon cut the admiral short. “No. We swore not to reveal her name.”
“Strange time for ethics,” I said. “Especially in light of how you have presented the rest of the cover-up. Perhaps instead you’re afraid she won’t corroborate your story?”
“Not at all,” Gillon said. “She died of natural causes a few years ago. It wouldn’t be right to involve her family in this.”
There it was. A story with enough truth to serve me. With too little truth to believe. Either way, these men were completely protected.
“Will you let it rest?” Gillon asked again.
Before I could answer, movement at the stairs behind us drew our attention.
“I was the woman,” came a voice. “It was me at the train station.”
She wore a full-length black dress, shadows thrown across her face from a wide-brimmed black hat, tiny black purse hanging on thin black straps from her arm.
Helen deMarionne.
Helen moved downward, holding the stairway railing to keep her balance. She stepped into the room, the purse swaying like a pendulum.
Out of the Shadows (Nick Barrett Charleston series) Page 21
