by Jeff Abbott
The room, even being one Sass occupied only as a guest, already bore her indelible imprint. Clothes lay haphazardly on the floor and across furniture, dropped where she'd shed them. Earrings lay in scattered profusion across a side table, and a forest of cosmetics bottles sprouted before a mirrored vanity.
“I hate to say it, Bob Don,” Sass began, after a hesitant glance toward Candace and me, “but she could have spiked her own drink and just claimed that she didn't mean to get drunk.”
He nodded. “But I don't believe she'd lie.”
“Alcoholics fib if they want to drink, hon. Remember that second husband of mine.” She glanced again with discom-fort toward me. “Aubrey's daddy was a heavy drinker. Very heavy. I know how hard it's been for Bob Don.”
I said nothing. Her own imbibing last night had been of epic proportions. And I was no more comfortable with seeing Aunt Sass's pain than she was showing it to me. “I think her soda was laced. She was too miserable at the thought of Bob Don finding out she'd drunk.” I tugged at the corner of the comforter. The room felt stifling hot, despite the gentle circling of the ceiling fan overhead. The air smelled of Aunt Sass's perfume—sweet and slightly smoky, like a singed rose.
“So we're left with the idea that someone spiked her drink,” Candace said. “Why would someone want to get Gretchen drunk?”
“To hurt her,” Aunt Sass answered immediately. “If she's worked so hard to stay sober, like Bob Don says, nothing would hurt her more than to tank her up.” She reached for her brother's hand. “Honey. I'm so sorry. I feel so bad for her.”
I couldn't forget the slightly sneering tone that Aunt Sass had used yesterday when Gretchen announced her new sobriety. Perhaps I misinterpreted. Or perhaps Sass was just sporting her kindest face for the sorrowful moment.
“But why?” Candace persisted. “Who'd want her off the wagon?”
“Maybe there's no motive but meanness.” I stood and went to survey the beautiful bay from the window. The ocean offered no sign of a returning Uncle Mutt. I wanted time to speed up so we could leave this island. Lolly's corpse had been removed, but a pervading sense of death still itched at my skin, like a tendril of smoke.
“I don't understand, son,” Bob Don said to my back. I faced him.
“Meanness,” I repeated. “There's more tension in this family than kindness. Someone could have tampered with Gretchen's drink just out of sheer cussedness.” I” avoided casting accusing eyes toward Sass.
“Granted, getting Gretchen inebriated would hurt her,” Sass countered, “but I don't see anyone here wanting to inflict that pain. I don't want to pick another fight with you, Jordan, but I've lived with a drunkard myself. I hate to play devil's advocate, but it's much more likely that Gretchen poured out that booze than any mysterious gloved hand with an ulterior motive.”
“You're right,” I said, and she blinked. “I would agree with you. Normally. But I've seen how hard Gretchen's fought for her sobriety, and I don't believe she'd toss it away on a whim. Either something upset her so badly she drank, and she doesn't want to tell us, or someone spiked her Dr Pepper.”
“Uncle Mutt terminally ill, Lolly dead, now this.” Bob Don shook his head. “Bad, bad days for this family.”
I, unknowing, proceeded to make them worse.
“Who's Paul?” I asked. Bob Don studied the brightly stitched rug on the floor. Aunt Sass conducted a careful examination of her flawless fingernails.
“Am I talking to myself here? Gretchen mentioned someone named Paul, thought she saw him last night.”
“Then she was drunk last night, too,” Sass said in a colorless tone. “Paul was our younger brother. He's dead. He was Deborah's daddy.”
“Oh.” The alleged murderer and suicide. “Were he and Gretchen close?”
Bob Don stood and walked out of the room. I felt a familiar pang that suggested I was tasting my own shoe leather.
“Yes, Jordan, they were. Once,” Sass answered, watching the doorway where her brother had retreated. “Paul was Gretchen's first husband.”
Bob Don had withdrawn to his own room to care for his wife. Candace claimed a headache. And I didn't feel like lingering in Sass's domain any longer than necessary. I took to the porch with a tall glass of Dr Pepper, ice, and a lime slice.
The stalwart Deputy Praisner no longer stood sentry there. Instead, I saw a bored-looking young female deputy tossing pebbles off the dock. The sunlight glittered against the gun in her holster.
I sipped at my drink and considered the latest anthill I'd kicked over.
Odd, the minutiae you unearth around the roots of the family tree. I'd never known that Gretchen was previously married, much less to Bob Don's own brother. The Goertz family Christmas must've been extra festive the year that Bob Don and Gretchen exchanged vows. Marrying your sister-in-law—the surest way to drive two brothers apart.
I sucked on my lime, dumped its scraggly crescent back into the ice, and poured the rest of my soda over it. The sun felt warm on my face and the breeze was cool and fresh. I was at the coast—I should have been happy and relaxed. Instead I felt the pulsing rhythm of a nascent headache and a homesickness for my dull, plain family. No announcements of terminal illnesses at the dinner table, no gasping deaths on the dining-room floor, no drunken stepmothers sobbing out their sobriety. Only the gentle nagging of my sister about my latest misadventure, the repeated requests of my nephew to go horseback riding, the silent perambulations of my fading mother around the furniture at our new house, where she always seemed bound on some dear and secret journey. The Poteets were downright dull compared with the Goertzes. I preferred dull.
“You stare out at the ocean any longer, you'll go mad,” a voice observed. My cousin Deborah leaned against the white wood of the porch and smiled thinly at me.
“Madness fits here.” I spoke without thinking, hoping I hadn't offended her. She simply shrugged.
“Aunt Lolly.” She sighed. “I can't quite believe that she's gone. I keep expecting her to round that corner, chirping at Sweetie to come cuddle in her lap. Or hollering at me for some imagined crime.” Deborah stared out at the ocean, watching the great, mothering waves sliding across the sands.
I said nothing, enjoying the companionable silence and the whoosh of wind and water. I waited for her to talk; I guessed she wanted to voice her burdens. Her fingers drummed a regular beat against the wooden rail of the porch, a metronome for her nerves.
“I don't want you to get the wrong idea about Lolly and me.” Deborah kept her gaze firmly on the expanse of water.
“I take it y'all didn't get along.”
She hung her head over the porch railing. “Oh, it's so complicated.”
“Hey, I'm the illegitimate kid. I'm the personification of complicated.”
It garnered a tense laugh from her. “You know Lolly took me in when my mother died.” She made no reference to her father.
“Yes.”
“Well”—Deborah ran a hand through her thick, dark hair and seemed to cast about for the right words—”that wasn't my decision. Had I my druthers, I'd have gone to live with Uncle Mutt. I've adored him since I was little. But he didn't want a child underfoot then; he was the fast and easy bachelor. So Uncle Mutt, in his grand role as patriarch, dispatched me to live with Aunt Lolly. It was kind of an arranged marriage, y'know? Neither of us were very thrilled.”
I thought about how badly Gretchen wanted a child. “Bob Don and Gretchen didn't offer to take you in?”
“No. Aunt Gretchen was … still drinking.” Deborah shook her head. “She wouldn't have wanted kids anyway.”
The child of her ex-husband. I could understand why. Gretchen, Bob Don, his brother Paul—untangling that web would take time if I relied on Gretchen and Bob Don to speak up.
“Why was Lolly not a good match for you?”
“Because family propriety matters so to Lolly—perhaps more than it should.” She still referred to her aunt in present tense and I wasn't heartless enough to correc
t her. “Brian and I weren't anything more than stains on the Goertz name to her.”
“Brian?” I asked.
Her jaw worked for a moment, reining in strong emotion. “My brother. My little brother. He's dead, too.”
“Oh, Deborah, I'm so sorry.”
Her eyes filmed with tears, but she quickly blinked them away. “You'd have liked him real well, Jordan.”
“I'm so sorry,” I repeated. I make for a lousy comforter.
“Don't listen to the lies they tell,” she stormed with sudden fury. “Because they do lie.”
“Who's they?”
“This whole goddamned family.” Anger reddened her face and she grasped my hand, her trimmed nails digging furrows in my skin. “They'll tell you my dad murdered my mother and then went off and killed himself. But he didn't. He didn't.”
I took both her hands in mine. Her skin quivered against my touch. I saw now she was too mad to cry. Fury contorted her face into a vengeful grimace.
“Do you want to tell me what happened? What's the truth?”
She didn't look at me; she stared back out at the lapping bay as she talked. “My mother—when I was just six, and Brian was only two—was found shot to death. In my father's studio. Her face had been blown off.” She stifled a shudder. “My father went missing. Later we—I mean Uncle Mutt—found a note that my father had left. He said he'd shot my mother, then snuck out here to Sangre Island and walked into the ocean. He said he was sorry for what he'd done and couldn't live with himself anymore.”
“Uncle Mutt found this note?”
She nodded. “It was taped to the door of the house. The family had gathered here for my mother's funeral. He left the note—and then vanished.”
“And you don't believe your father killed your mother?” I didn't mean for the question to sound so heartless, and I squeezed Deborah's hands in support.
“Would you?” She looked at me with tearless eyes. “My father was an art teacher, Jordan. A sculptor. He worshiped my mother's face. She met him when she was one of his regular models. Sculptors don't destroy works of art. If he was going to kill her, it wouldn't be shooting her in the face.”
Her reasoning seemed wishful to me. Why should an artist lurk on a higher moral plane? And I'd known painters who'd obliterated canvases with no hesitation. But to contradict her would be cruel. “I take it the rest of your family didn't agree with your reasoning.”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “Do you know how that feels? They didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want to acknowledge that something as distasteful as a murder had happened in our family. Tight asses, all of them. But Bob Don was kind to me, and Tom—he was really kind to Brian. Aubrey was good to him, too.” She paused to draw a restoring breath. “The Goertzes personify the delightful combination of German immigrant stiffness and Old South propriety. You just don't have murderers in the family. It's simply not done. So everyone closed together in a tight circle and pretended it didn't happen. They pretended my parents didn't matter because they died in a distasteful way.” Bitterness scored her words. I couldn't speak; I watched her bottom lip quiver with anger.
She continued: “Aunt Lolly considered Brian and me as nothing but pockmarks on the family skin. She had a warped sense of family honor. What Dad did—what she thought he did—was unforgivable. And Lolly definitely believed that the children were liable for the sins of the father.”
“Was she just horrible to you and Brian?” I asked.
Deborah shrugged. “She never laid a hand on either of us. But everything we did was wrong, a further embarrassment to the family name. As if Brian and I were defective, being the children of 'a woman who let herself get killed and a man too cowardly to face up to what he did.' “ Her voice mimicked Lolly's sugary tone. “Those are her words, not mine.”
I thought of the sick mind that could punish children for an unproven act of a parent. I could imagine her hating me now, with precise clarity—the end result being a vicious cycle of mail sent my way. Don't punish the wayward bachelor. Punish his wayward sperm instead. Make the bastard pay for the crimes of the sire. Acrid dislike for Lolly surged in me. Who the hell was she to sit in judgment of me? Or poor Deborah?
Had she treated others the way she'd treated the two of us? The sharp edge of her hate might have turned back on her. I saw her gasping, purpling face again and, coldly, could not muster much pity for her. I did not feel like an honorable man at that moment.
“The police accepted this suicide note?” I ventured.
“Yes. But Dad's body was never recovered, there was never a sense of closure.” She laughed, and it was a sickly, ragged sound. “Brian used to be sure that our father was alive somewhere, working to clear his name. Like The Fugitive.” She glanced out again toward the bay that had swallowed her father.
“If it wasn't your dad—who would have had a motive to kill your mother?”
Her mouth worked, as though restraining unbidden words from speech. “I don't know. Her name was Nora. Did you know that? You had an Aunt Nora.”
I shook my head. “It's a lovely name.”
Her mouth tightened. “I know my dad wasn't a murderer. Please don't listen to the others. They're wrong, wrong as can be.” She fostered a weak smile. “Your uncle Paul was a good man. I think you and he would have liked each other real well.” The pain of her loss was nearly tangible; I could imagine her reaching out and giving her sadness a loving stroke.
“I'm sure we would have.” I smiled back at her. A sudden thickness sat in my chest. “I wish you could have known my dad. And my mom, before she got Alzheimer's.”
“But you've got another dad now. Lucky boy,” she murmured.
“I guess. Yes,” I managed to say. She saw the doubt in my eyes.
“Oh, don't feel funny about it. Count yourself blessed. If Lolly could have been another mother to me after I lost mine—I would have given anything to have a relationship like that. I needed a mom, and a dad. You've got a second chance, Jordan. Bob Don's the kindest man I know. He was so good to me after my folks died….”
“You sound like Candace,” I cajoled, trying to lighten the gloom that had enveloped us both.
“I assume you and Candace mended fences,” Deborah offered after a long silence.
“Yes, we did. We try not to stay mad at each other.”
“Look, I've had so little luck in my life I always spot it in others. Know that you're fortunate. I like Candace. She's got a spark to her.” Deborah's voice was small.
“She's a pistol,” I agreed.
“She's lucky, too. Good-looking fellow like you.” I felt the easy weight of her arm against mine.
I didn't blink and kept my eyes firmly focused on the crashing foam. Thoughts of Greek tragedy and four-fingered babies flashed through my mind and I admit to wondering, for the briefest of moments, exactly what the incest laws of Texas were. Not that I was about to wade into my own gene pool.
My face, never a subtle instrument, betrayed me.
“Oh, my Lord.” Deborah giggled. “You don't think I'm flirting with you, do you?” Her eyes were bright with mirth for the first time since we'd begun this rather sad conversation. I think, sad stories told, we both felt the need for human touch. We took refuge in teasing each other.
I grinned, feeling utterly foolish. “Of course I didn't think that. It's just I'm not quite used to thinking of you as my cousin yet.”
“Hmmm.” Her voice was a lascivious alto. “And what if I wasn't your cousin?”
Okay, we were back on suspiciously come-hither territory—not my comfort zone with lovely women who share common ancestors.
“Then I'm sure we'd be friends,” I ventured. Right answer. She rewarded me with a beautiful smile. Her heavy burden of sadness seemed vanished, at least for a few minutes. “Surely you don't talk this way with Aubrey.”
“Aubrey? No. Aubrey is too wrapped up in his spirituality and holisticness and what all else to show much interest in romance.”
&nbs
p; “He's too busy solving everyone else's problems, I guess,” I said.
“Odd that he's that way. He was such a wild boy. Thank God for Aunt Sass's sanity he straightened himself out.”
“Aubrey? Wild?” The description didn't match my prudish cousin.
“Oh, Jordan, I keep forgetting you're not exactly privy to all our soiled family linen.” She drew back slightly and a strand of hair whipped around her face. The shape of her eyes was very much like Bob Don's and for one peculiar moment I wanted to reach out and take her hand and ask, Tell me something I don't know about Bob Don. Tell me something only another Goertz would laugh at. Make me feel like I belong here. I want to know him better than I'm ready to admit. But I didn't speak.
“I don't want to be seen as a gossip,” she said.
I shook my head. “You're right. I don't know these people and I wish I did. Tell me. Tell me whatever you want about them.”
She gazed out again at the sea. “Well, Aubrey's had a tough time. Stepfathers aplenty, none of whom ever gave a rat's ass about him. He turned bad as a kid—or maybe rancid is a better word. He ran away from home when he was fifteen and was gone for two whole years. Sass nearly went out of her mind. He showed up again at her house, skinny as a rail, high on dope, but wanting to come home and clean up his act.” She shook her head. “The men in this family tend to vanish at times. At least Aubrey came back. He never told me what happened to him.”
“You really care about Aubrey, don't you?”
She nodded. “After Brian died—I nearly had a breakdown. It was so hard to lose him, and Aunt Lolly was devastated, even though she'd never been real sweet to either of us. Aubrey took care of me. He was my best friend. Maybe that experience strengthened his interest in helping people. I hated it when he ran out on all of us. I hope you never have anyone you love walk out of your life that way, Jordan. It's God's own pain to deal with.”
