Gillon turned his wheelchair to face her. “Helen, I didn’t expect you.”
Her face remained in shadow. “I know Gillon. It’s been years since you looked forward to my presence.”
“No need to be snappish. It’s just that I didn’t realize you wanted to be part of this tonight.”
“Why not? After all, most of it was my idea.” She spoke to the admiral. “McLean. How are you this evening? Tense? Worried?”
“Relaxed. Why should I be anything but?”
“Of course.” Her tone suggested the opposite.
As Helen moved across the room to take the chair opposite the admiral, she staggered slightly to keep her balance. She sat to the left of me and settled herself in the chair, with the admiral now seated to our right. Gillon in his wheelchair in front of the television, between Helen and the admiral, completed the square.
“Did I do a good enough job of easing us out of the slip and into the harbor?” she asked. “Any of you notice the boat in motion? Soon we’ll be out of the harbor and the chop of the waves will pick up; then it won’t feel like we are rocking in the moored position. In fact, the autopilot has us headed directly east on a course that would take us to Portugal.”
“You?” Gillon was openly astounded. “Autopilot? What about—”
“Your boy Friday?” Helen finished for him. “Your chauffeur slash yacht pilot slash nurse? He’s back at the yacht club, probably pacing the dock, getting wetter every second, wondering where we’ve gone. I sent him away to get us some more bourbon.”
To me, she said, “There are some advantages to belonging to the moneyed set, being seen at the same parties. Not only do you pick up boating expertise over the years, but a familiar face is not questioned. Especially one as easy to remember as mine.”
She removed her hat, letting light fall onto her face.
The left side of her mouth sagged, her cheek fallen and distorted. Her left eye gleamed brightly, almost freakishly, from skin tightened across her upper face.
“I do not apologize for my pride,” she said. “I did not want you to see me like this until it was entirely inescapable.”
“I’m sorry for you,” I said.
“Stroke,” she said matter-of-factly. In the light, it was obvious by the movement of her lips how much effort she put into enunciating her words. “A year ago. Lost all the nerves to the lower left-hand side of my face. Followed by a botched job by a plastic surgeon, who failed miserably in his attempts to tighten the skin and muscle damage. Until then, I had done remarkably well, holding my beauty. Well enough that until then Lorimar Barrett still looked upon me with quite some favor. Until my stroke. I thought it was love. I was wrong. When his little Barbie doll lost her perfection, it was time to throw the doll away. Then he died of a stroke himself six months ago, an irony I would have found amusing, except that I, unfortunately, loved him.”
A wave rocked the yacht. She was forced to cling to the arms of her chair for balance.
“Enough bitterness.” Helen’s smile was macabre. Turned up on the right side. Turned down on the left side. “I’ve got center stage, and I should not digress. After all, there was a reason that I helped Gillon plan this melodramatic little get-together.”
Helen fumbled in her purse and pulled out a derringer. “Very appropriate for a southern belle, wouldn’t you agree? Not that I intend to use it, but I do want a captive audience. Because I finally want to tell you the truth about your mother, Nicholas.”
Chapter 38
The prow of the yacht banged hard into another wave. Muted thunder reached us in the depths of the saloon. As the yacht settled low in the water again, Helen continued.
“Nick, Gillon called me this morning after you spoke to the admiral about the pistol in Amelia’s possession. I must admit, the admiral has done an excellent job over the years, hiding his lack of intelligence behind a military bearing of great distinction. The admiral, of course, was still sulking that he’d lost a perfectly fine guard dog and, short of trying to kill you again, had no clue how to proceed next. Thus his call to Gillon and Gillon’s call to me. I suggested that Gillon avoid doing anything as clumsy as resorting to the heavy-handedness of killing. Not that he’s squeamish, but to kill someone properly requires too much effort, too much to cover up. As they both well know. After all, it’s been more than two decades since Carolyn’s death, and look where they are now.”
The admiral braced his hands on the arm of his chair to push himself into a standing position. Helen lifted the derringer and pointed it at his chest.
“I merely want to refresh my glass.”
“And get the pistol that’s hidden behind the bar,” Helen said. “Stay where you are. Don’t think I’m bluffing. I don’t have anything to lose by shooting you.”
The admiral let himself fall back into his chair. Slowly, he raised his tumbler to his face, eyes still on Helen, tilted ice from the tumbler into his mouth, and began to crunch on cubes.
Helen spoke to me. “Their plan, at my suggestion, was to get you out at sea, then try to convince you to leave all of this matter alone. I must admit, they did weave a compelling story, with enough of the truth in it that finding flaws would have been difficult. And the acting was superb.”
She looked to Gillon. “Did you practice it a few times? It was all I could do not to applaud from where I was standing hidden halfway down the stairs.”
Gillon frowned at her. “It is the truth.”
“Please,” Helen said, “I’m here to testify otherwise.”
Helen resumed speaking to me. “If you did believe them and agree to their requests, they were to return you, none the wiser of how close you had come to your death. But if they failed to convince you to drop it, of course, then they intended to throw you overboard to drown. Crude. But effective. With the two of them to testify that you fell overboard—and both such respected men—they would have convincingly presented it to the authorities as a tragic accident. Especially with their political connections to help them.”
Gillon smiled, the first sign that his cockiness had not been entirely destroyed by Helen’s appearance. “It’s not too late, Helen. I mean, you have your own part to protect. And with three of us to testify that this poor man fell overboard . . .”
I hid a shiver. His casual tone spoke utter conviction. This man was discussing my murder. In front of me.
“You are so tiresomely predictable,” Helen said. To me, she said, “The yacht was my suggestion because I wanted to know where they would take you tonight. I also wanted to be here so that they would not kill you. And lastly, I wanted all of us together.”
Helen casually lifted her derringer again and cocked it, a click of metal against metal terrifying in its simplicity. The admiral, who was inching out of his chair to leap forward at her, froze.
“Be a dear,” she told the admiral. “Sit on your hands. If you’re fortunate, we’ll hit a large unexpected wave and I’ll be knocked from my chair, and you can try one of your ludicrous commando techniques to stop me. Otherwise, don’t be tedious. I won’t take long to finish my little talk.”
She extended her derringer with an unwavering hand and centered its aim on the admiral’s nose. “Sit on your hands, Mac!”
He drew a breath of resignation and did as he was told.
“Nick,” she said, “you have heard some truth, but not all of it. Remember I told you that your mother visited Gillon on her final Thursday afternoon in Charleston? Remember you asked what leverage she had?”
I nodded.
“Tell him, Gillon. Tell him about her visit. The truth.”
**
It was one day after I had broken Pendleton’s nose, the Friday afternoon that my mother paid a visit to the office of a man who would later become senator on his reputation for law and justice.
I can picture my mother, Carolyn, stepping into Gillon’s office. For such an occasion, she would have worn a blue dress, hem cut well below her knees, summer hat to match, holding
a pair of white gloves, small leather purse hanging from a strap on her arm. I can picture her sitting elegantly in that blue dress, drawing from a cigarette, for back then, it was an act of rebellion for a woman to smoke.
“I’m leaving town,” she said.
Gillon moved out from behind his desk. He was proud of the size of his office. He liked to walk over to the window that surveyed the nearly abandoned harbor and some of the rusting ships at the wharves. He believed it added to his mystique that he had chosen a seedy part of Charleston to establish his working quarters. Although he was as young as Carolyn, mystique was important to him; he saw his political future clearly and it was unfolding as it should.
Gillon ran his fingers through his thick dark hair as he turned to face her. It was a gesture like walking to the window to admire the view. Or like snapping his suspenders against his strong chest. A way to draw attention to something that gave him pride.
“You cut yourself,” he said, leaving his statement open-ended to serve as a question. He pointed to her upper cheekbone, where makeup could not hide a tiny but deep slash that marred her skin.
She ignored that too. “I am here to tell you I am leaving Charleston.”
“Where are you going?”
“A ranch in Montana,” she said. “A houseboat in San Francisco. Anywhere so far away that I never again hear the Barrett family name.”
“I trust then, you want me to forward the monthly checks?” Gillon asked my mother that afternoon when she demanded the money.
“No,” she answered. “Nick is almost ten. The trust fund agreement covered him until he was eighteen. Eight years remaining at twelve months per year equals ninety-six payments. I want a lump-sum check from the family trust fund for all of it. After I leave, you won’t know where I am. Nor will you hear from me again. That is a promise I will be very, very happy to keep.”
“If that’s the way you want it,” he said. “It is Nick’s money. This may not be the most convenient time for a check that large. Monthly payments were much easier to . . .”
“To conceal?” There was scorn in her question. She found a cigarette from her purse and lit it with an elegant silver lighter.
“If you want to phrase it that bluntly, yes,” he said. He deliberately drawled his words as if that would soften the truth.
“You are the Barretts’ family lawyer. You can do what it takes to get me that check. If you don’t, what was once concealed will no longer be concealed. I’m sure you want to protect your client from that.”
Gillon smiled to show Carolyn he was not afraid. “It’s not much of a threat. No one will believe you after all this time. Especially with all the rumors buzzing about you and that navy boy.”
“Scandal has hung over my head since I married into the Barrett family,” she said. She inhaled from her cigarette, waited a beat, then exhaled. “It doesn’t hurt me at all. But we both know what the truth will do to the rest of the family. And if that isn’t enough, there’s last week’s naval base announcement.”
Gillon’s smile froze. His body shifted. While he remained seated at the edge of his desk, he was no longer relaxed.
Carolyn saw this, and it would be her turn to smile if she chose. She didn’t.
“Naval base announcement,” he said, repeating her words slowly, as if unsure he heard correctly. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Liar.”
Without realizing she was doing it, Carolyn lightly rubbed the cut on her cheekbone. She clearly wanted to be away from Gillon and Charleston and the Barrett family as soon as possible.
“Last Christmas, the society ball,” she said. “A young ensign, the admiral’s assistant that you included on the list. Eyes wide, impressed at himself for being included in such exclusive company. Remember? The navy boy you mentioned? A rented tuxedo that fit him like a cardboard box. You made a point of sitting him beside me, as if you were promising him the only single woman there. Like you wanted him to believe that all of that wonderful world could belong to someone as sophisticated as he.”
Gillon reached across his desk for a pack of cigarettes on top of a pile of legal folders. He tapped a cigarette loose. Hung it from his lower lip. The lighter he pulled from his trouser pocket was gold plated. He lit the cigarette with apparent unconcern. But the shiny gold lighter he set on the desk was greasy with sweat from his fingerprints.
“You should be warned,” she continued. “Your young pigeon needs to learn to handle his whiskey. He got drunk enough that first night to beg me to marry him. Told me he would be very rich within the year and that someone of society like me would be a perfect wife at all of the events. I believe he assumed because I have the Barrett name that I already knew what was happening. He wanted me to understand clearly that he was the one ready to deliver the information that would make swampland worth millions, if all of us treated him right.”
Now Carolyn smiled as she let her words hang there. Then she continued. “It made me wonder. Enough that I allowed him to escort me to other functions. Now you know why. I wanted to learn more from him. I wanted the biggest hammer I could get to hold over your head because I wanted to be ready for the day I arrived in this office to demand the money I would need to leave this city.”
She smiled more, staring down Gillon so he knew she was serious. “This is the day. I am ready. You see, I also went to the courthouse and checked the land records. Last January, less than two weeks after that Christmas party, you purchased land on behalf of anonymous clients. Swampland, on the edge of the Cooper River, a few miles north of Charleston, at next-to-nothing per acre. Here we are, six months later, and it is announced that the government has chosen that land as the location for its new navy base annexation.”
“Coincidence.”
“That’s not for me to determine,” she said. “But after a few well-placed letters, the attorney general may decide the coincidence worth investigating. Even if nothing is proved, won’t that hurt your own political chances?”
Gillon ground his cigarette into a clean, clear glass ashtray. “I’ll need a couple of days to get the check ready,” he said, exhaling a final lungful of smoke as he said it.
“No,” she said. “Have the check ready by four o’clock this afternoon. You’ll find a way to get it. Even if you have to take it out of the navy money you earned by using that young ensign.”
“I have no doubt I can get it. Just not that soon.”
She emphasized her words. “Four o’clock this afternoon. I have two tickets for the train that leaves tonight. I intend to be on it. With the money. And with my son.”
When she left, Gillon picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Layton,” he said, when the phone on the other end was answered, “we have a problem.”
**
“Just so I’m sure I understand,” I said. “My mother threatened to expose some fraudulent land deal unless you made it easy for her to leave town with me and my trust fund money.”
“Yes,” Helen said. “It was that simple. They should have let the two of you go. But Gillon and Layton had other ideas.”
“Helen!” Gillon said.
“I am beginning to believe that the human body does contain a soul,” Helen continued, as if Gillon had not interrupted. “A most unfortunate notion. For years, I had scoffed at it. But it truly hurt me when Lorimar Barrett ended our affair. I began to wonder why. Strictly speaking, if we were mere animals, there should be no reason for love or hate. Not a single gland in our bodies to program it that way. Lust, certainly, is gland driven. Anger, fear—adrenaline driven. But the hollowness that comes with lost love?”
She sighed. “And then there is remorse, regret. I had slowly begun to hate myself for keeping secret what I knew about your mother, Nick. I had to ask myself why I hated myself. What happened to her wasn’t my fault. I would have done anything to help her. Yet my conscience has troubled me all these years and only gets worse with time. Where and how would such an idiotic, self-destructiv
e impulse fit in the human body if not forced upon us by a soul?”
Another sigh. “A youthful body, of course, has plenty of distractions that make it easy to deny the soul. The best of those distractions were mine, for longer than most, but—”
Gillon snapped. “Helen, is this maudlin exhibition necessary?”
“For me, yes. Don’t worry, dear; soon I shall turn the attention where you crave it most. On you.”
Helen spoke to me. “When you were a boy, this was my life. Young, beautiful, rich. I did not care much for my husband, but it didn’t matter. He was old and would be gone soon. Immediately after becoming a widow, I had Lorimar, the toast of the town. We reveled in our affair, not caring who it might hurt.”
The yacht pitched sideways, then straightened.
“Where was I?” Helen asked. “Yes. Young, beautiful, rich. All of this gives one the ability to satisfy one’s immediate desires by any way possible—but only for as long as you can remain convinced that all you will ever have is this life and the body you inhabit. But when your skin becomes pitted and begins to erode, you begin to realize the same has happened to your soul. Especially when the youth and beauty and wealth are gone, and everything you once thought important seems meaningless.”
Gillon snapped again. “Helen, for the love of—”
“God?” She smiled through her distorted face. “Give me long enough, I speculate on that subject too.”
To me, she said, “In the last six months, I’ve discovered three things that have brought me to this point, here at the yacht. The first was, in another irony, cancer will take me as it did Edgar Layton. The second was that Pendleton, Lorimar’s son, had found a way to bleed my estate so that it was nearly penniless. The third, far worse, happened as I helped Claire and Pendleton sort through Lorimar’s private papers after his death. Claire had gone down to the kitchen. She screamed at seeing a mouse, which took Pendleton down there to see what had happened. So I was alone in the library as I found a carbon copy of an old police report that allowed me to understand the truth behind the car accident that had killed my only son. One that I immediately hid before Claire or Pendleton could return.”
Out of the Shadows (Nick Barrett Charleston series) Page 22
