“Yes,” she laughed. “I do.”
“Do you like it enough to marry me?”
Cassandra blinked. “Well,” she laughed, “I guess I’m not going to have to be the one to ask, after all.”
Rocco and Cassandra slept late that next morning. When they finally rose at eleven, they threw on robes and went out into the living room. They found Apple, with a serious expression, sitting at the kitchen counter. The morning edition of the Herald was spread out before her.
“You look glum enough,” said Cassandra, taking mugs from the cupboard.
“I am,” Apple replied.
“What’s wrong?” asked Rocco.
Apple glanced at Cassandra. “There’s something in the paper that concerns you.” There was an ominous tone in Apple’s voice that caused Cassandra and Rocco to exchange glances.
Cassandra put the mugs down and walked slowly, reluctantly over to the counter. Apple flipped the paper around, folding it back to the front page. Cassandra pulled it closer. As she read, she drew in her breath sharply and folded her hands into fists against the counter. She felt a sensation of coldness pricking down her spine. She lifted her eyes from the newspaper and stared across to the plate window, through which she could glimpse the bleak gray skyline of Boston. She let her breath out slowly and closed her fingers tighter against her palms. But she could find no words.
Later that Saturday afternoon, Cassandra drove grimly the familiar route to the mansion in Brookline. Louise’s lime-green Toronado was the only car in the drive. A light snow had begun to fall, and the car was dusted completely white. Broad tire tracks were faintly visible farther up the drive. Those belonged to Bert and Ian’s van, she supposed. They must have already left for the Orpheum, to start setting things up for the evening performance.
Cassandra folded the Herald and took it with her when she got out of her car. Inside the front door, she instinctively tossed her car keys into the basket on the marble table in the hallway. Then she stopped, and thoughtfully retrieved them. She thrust them into the pocket of her coat.
In the living room, the stereo was softly playing a Frank Sinatra album from the sixties. Cassandra peered into that room, and also opened the door of the study. Finding no one, she went through the dining room and straight into the kitchen.
Louise stood in the corner of the room, almost hidden behind the stacked electric ovens. Her black hair was bound tightly in a net. She wore no makeup but bright red lipstick. Her black corduroy shirt with red buttons had belonged to Verity. Louise’s flushed face was gleaming with sweat. A streak of grime daubed one cheek.
“What are you doing?” Cassandra asked automatically, placing the still folded newspaper on the counter.
Louise wiped a trailing bead of sweat from her temple with the back of a yellow rubber-gloved hand. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cleaning house. Since you fired the servants, and won’t let me hire any more, I have to do all this drudgery myself.”
“You’re scrubbing the floor,” said Cassandra.
“Brilliant. Just brilliant. Is that what you majored in at Radcliffe—logic?” Louise leaned wearily against the ovens. “Ida was a layabout—you ought to see the grime down in the corners over here. And what’s under the refrigerator!” She glanced at the expanse of tiled floor. “I don’t think she’d waxed this floor since it was put down. By the time I finish with it, it will shine.”
“Louise, this is quarry tile. You don’t put wax on quarry tile—ever. It ruins the finish. Just a damp mop.”
“What?”
Cassandra stepped around the corner and sighed as she looked at the space Louise had already sponged with wax. It had begun to discolor.
Louise stood up. She wore a pair of black corduroy slacks and wooden clogs that had also been Verity’s. She slapped the wet sponge down on the counter by the newspaper there.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t bribed the servants to desert me. How was I supposed to know?”
“I didn’t bribe anyone. Besides, Louise, you sell luxury accommodations—I just figured you’d know what quarry tile was.” Cassandra opened one of the cupboards, evidently looking for something. “Is there any coffee?”
“There would be,” replied Louise acidly, “if you hadn’t closed the account at the market. I was in there yesterday and I was never so humiliated in my life.”
“You can hardly have expected me to pay your food bills,” said Cassandra. There was a tone of argumentativeness in her voice.
Louise picked up the bottle of wax from the floor, recapped it, and crossed over to the sink. She peeled off the gloves and tossed them aside. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, “I’ll get down there again on my hands and knees and scrape all that wax up. Your precious floor won’t be harmed.”
Cassandra looked at her stepmother, and said, in a quiet voice, “Don’t bother.”
Louise had taken a small tube of hand cream from a drawer and squeezed a dollop into her palm. She paused now, glancing curiously at Cassandra. The lotion began to drip. Louise rubbed her hands together vigorously.
“Why not?” Louise asked suspiciously. “You mean that I can hire somebody to take care of this place now? I hope so. Do you have any idea how much of a favor I am doing you by just living here? Thieves watch houses like this. I’ve seen them parked out just on the other side of the stone fence out front, waiting for this house to be empty. If there weren’t anybody living here, they’d walk right in and cart everything away.”
Cassandra didn’t answer. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of mineral water. She unscrewed the cap, and poured it into a glass she took from the drain board.
“It’s bad enough,” Louise went on, glancing apprehensively at Cassandra all the while she spoke, “to have that band out here all day. It was so nice and quiet before they came back from wherever it was they had gone. That’s not music they play, that’s—”
Louise had grown more and more nervous as Cassandra maintained her silence. Finally she trailed off altogether.
Cassandra still said nothing.
“Eugene spoke to you, didn’t he?” asked Louise. “You are going to let me hire somebody, aren’t you?”
“Louise,” said Cassandra slowly, “you’re going to have to be out of this house in five days. By Thursday.”
Louise’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Five days,” Cassandra repeated. “By Thursday. Everything out.”
“I have told you: I have nowhere to go.”
“Then you’ll have to find somewhere,” said Cassandra calmly. “Won’t you?”
Louise’s mouth tightened and became ugly.
“Why? So you can move in with your Italian? As if everybody in Boston didn’t already know why you’re walking around with that satisfied grin on your face.”
Cassandra put her glass down and said, “Louise, you have to get out of here. I’m selling the house.”
“You can’t sell it,” Louise whispered.
“I am.”
“No, you can’t,” Louise cried. “Half this house belongs to Eric. He inherited it from Verity. Verity and Eric were still married when she died, and he gets everything that belonged to her.”
Cassandra looked at Louise strangely. “Yes,” said Cassandra, “everything that belonged to her. He gets the Lotus, and her jewelry, and all her clothes. The Lotus is in the garage—he can pick it up any time.” Cassandra glanced at Louise’s outfit. “It looks as if you’ve already cleaned out the closets.”
“The house—”
“The house was left to Jonathan, Verity, and me. When one of us died, it went to the other two. Spouses were not part of the business. Of course if I died, the house would become part of the estate. It would be yours then, and so would the rest of the fortune that Mother left us. But the fact is, I’m not dead. I’m very much alive. I have every right to sell the house, and that money is mine to do with as I please. It doesn’t go back into the estate. Th
at’s the way the will was set up, Louise. I thought you knew all that.”
“You’re a liar! The house is Eric’s!” cried Louise vehemently. “You can’t sell it. It’s not legal.”
“I’m passing papers on Thursday. I’m selling it to Richard Lake; he’s a friend of Ben James’s. He’s paying cash, and I told him he could take possession immediately. So you’re going to have to be out.”
“This is illegal,” Louise protested weakly. “Who handled this deal?”
“Richard Lake himself. He’s a lawyer.”
“I’m going to call Eugene! You’re just trying to pull a fast one on me. Well, you’re not getting away with it!” Louise shouted hysterically. “I’m your father’s widow, and this was his house, and I’m going to live here for as long as I like. I don’t care if you do own it, or if you say you own it. Eugene will throw the whole business in court, and you’ll be an old woman before anything’s decided. I’m staying right here, right in this house where I belong, and you can go to hell!”
Louise grabbed for the telephone.
“There’s no point in calling Eugene Strable,” said Cassandra.
Louise dropped her hand. “You don’t want me to bring in Eugene, do you? You aren’t really selling the house, either. You’re lying. You don’t need the money. You get that huge allowance from the estate. I’m going to call Eugene. He’ll put a stop to the whole thing.”
“Eugene’s telephone is disconnected,” said Cassandra dispassionately. “But go ahead and try.”
“What? I think you’ve gone crazy, Cassandra. I think you’ve gone right off the deep end.” She took the receiver, and quickly punched out a number. The telephone rang many times without being answered. “I don’t know why I’m calling,” said Louise, hanging up the telephone. “It’s Saturday, there wouldn’t be anybody there anyway.”
Cassandra reached over and in one gesture flipped open the newspaper on the counter. She pushed it around for Louise to see. Down the entire front page, the bold headline screamed, LAWYER SKIMS SCAMS & SCRAMS.
Cassandra struck her knuckles against the paper. “That’s why Eugene Strable is not answering his telephone,” she said. “He’s skipped town, Louise, with something over five million dollars of someone’s trust money. I guess you and I can figure out whose, even if the reporters haven’t found out yet. And apparently the rest of the trust was sunk into some completely disreputable waterfront scheme.”
Louise stared at the headline in a daze, then looked up at Cassandra.
“Wha—what?” she said weakly.
“The full story is on page two,” Cassandra answered shortly. “I suppose all the names involved will be released in another day or two. Then you and I will have to deal with reporters, and the news cameras, and so on.”
With trembling hands Louise turned the page. At the top was a portrait photograph of Eugene Strable, smiling confidently for his thirty-fifth Harvard reunion.
“He’s skipped town,” Cassandra repeated, “and he’s robbed me of nearly everything.”
“This is a lie,” Louise said distractedly. “This is a joke. . . .”
“I only found out about it this morning,” said Cassandra. “I’m selling the house on Thursday of next week. I got four hundred thousand for it, furnished—and that includes permission to continue to use the rehearsal studio for the band.” She shrugged, and said bitterly, “I guess I’ll need that money now.”
“He took everything?” Louise whispered.
“I spent this afternoon with Richard Lake. He’s representing me. He’s already hired a detective agency to get on Eugene Strable’s trail. And of course the police and the FBI are going to be after him as well.” Cassandra looked closely at her stepmother. “That’s why I came over here, Louise. The newspaper says that a well-known Back Bay realty firm was involved in this scheme. I hope that wasn’t you, because it would be too bad for the family honor if it turned out to be my own stepmother and her lover who cheated me out of my fortune. Wouldn’t it, Louise?”
“You’re making all this up! All of it! You’ve come over here and read me a pack of lies!”
“I’ll be back on Monday and Tuesday, to pack up all my personal things. It’s strange to think . . . ,” began Cassandra.
“What?” asked Louise blankly.
“. . . that soon you’ll be the only Hawke left.” She turned, and walked out through the swinging door.
Louise, after a few moments, looked down at the article before her. Her hands trembled slightly against the paper, and her ruby nails cut into the paper as she violently crumpled it between her hands.
28
At Cassandra’s request Rocco and Apple had said nothing of the loss of her fortune, either to Bert and Ian, or to Ben James when he appeared at the Orpheum that evening with his friend from Columbia Records. Her name had not yet been released to the press, and she felt that for now it was easier to deal with the loss than with the sympathy for the loss.
She was backstage with her future husband and Apple in the dressing room before the show.
“I can’t believe you’re taking it like this,” said Apple. She was applying lipstick and watching Cassandra in the dressing-table mirror. “I think if I had just lost five to eight million dollars, I’d be in a coma.”
Cassandra shook her head. “I nearly was, when I first read that article. But at least I’ll be getting good money for the house. Richard Lake’s buying it as an investment. I imagine it will be sub-divided into ‘luxury estate condominiums.’ When I made the decision to sell, I didn’t realize that I’d actually need that money. But don’t waste your sympathy on me for that. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re being very brave,” said Rocco, kissing her cheek.
“What else can I do? The law is after Strable. And if they catch him, then I’ll get some of the money back—I hope. But this band is going to make a fortune, and since the drummer has asked me to marry him, I think I’m going to make out. Louise is the loser, and she brought it all on herself. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she’s in on this scheme and that Eugene Strable has left her holding the bag. If that’s true, then she’ll be indicted.”
“The poor thing,” said Apple tonelessly, twisting the lipstick back into its tube. Setting it aside, she picked up a comb. “Well, like you said, Louise brought it all on herself. I just hope she really does get what’s coming to her. There are some people who always seem to escape punishment. They always scramble up onto dry land somehow. That’s Louise.”
Cassandra smiled. “This time, though . . .”
“This time?” echoed Rocco curiously. “You do know something, don’t you?”
“I just talked to that private investigator I hired. He found Eric in New York this afternoon. That is to say, he and half a dozen drug cops found Eric in New York this afternoon. Eric had expanded his operations—-he wasn’t just dealing cocaine to his ex-wife any more.”
“Heroin?” said Rocco, frowning.
Cassandra nodded. “And angel dust. And just about everything else. And they told him they had the vial of cocaine and angel dust Verity had died from. And the note that he had written to her. And they asked him about it. And you know what he said?”
“ ‘I didn’t do it,’ ” suggested Apple.
“Right,” said Cassandra. “Eric said, ‘I didn’t do it. Ma did it.” ’
Rocco shook his head. “Those two are a pair, aren’t they?”
Cassandra nodded. “And you know what else the detective discovered?”
Apple shook her head. “What?”
“A wrench. A very heavy wrench. In the toolbox in Jonathan’s boat. It still had traces of blood, and hair, and skin on it—Jonathan’s. Eric evidently didn’t wipe it off well enough. Jonathan didn’t hit his head on the bottom of the boat. Eric beat him over the head with that wrench, and knocked him unconscious. That’s why he drowned.”
Cassandra closed her eyes, and tears welled out from behind the lids. Rocco took her by the sho
ulders and sat her down in the chair next to Apple’s. “You’ll be all right,” he whispered. “You’ll be all right.”
Cassandra wiped away her tears, opened her eyes, and stared into the mirror in front of her. The naked bulbs surrounding it were violently bright.
“Louise killed Father,” she said.
“Why?” asked Rocco curiously. “Wasn’t she better off with him alive?”
Cassandra shrugged. “She wanted the trust fund money. Probably she asked him to set up the waterfront scheme as a way to defraud us, and when he said no, she killed him. On impulse, probably. That’s how Louise worked. She did something utterly stupid just on impulse, and then she spent all her energy covering her tracks. So when Jonathan found out about her killing Father, she had Eric kill him. And when Verity found out about it, and accused her of it, she killed Verity. And she and Eugene Strable got together and tried to rob us of every penny we had. And probably she would have tried to kill me too, just to get her hands on that house and that money.”
“Louise will get hers,” said Apple.
Cassandra shook her head. “You were right the first time: we can’t be sure. Louise isn’t the type to go under without a fight. I just want to get out of here. I just want to go somewhere where I don’t have to think about that house, and Louise, and Eric, and Eugene Strable. I don’t want to have to think about any of it ever again.”
Rocco dropped his chin onto the crown of Cassandra’s head, and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. “That’s what honeymoons are for,” he said.
Louise sat at the desk in the chill, damp study. At her back the snow fell softly against the black windowpanes. She punched out a number on the telephone, reading it from a scrap of paper. While the line was ringing, she turned out the light so that she sat in darkness. With one hand she held closed the collar of her sable coat.
“Hello?”
“Barbara?” asked Louise in surprise. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it is,” replied Barbara harshly.
“I’m surprised to hear your voice again. And none too pleased either. Would you please put Eric on.”
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