by Gregory Ashe
“That’s enough,” Bing shouted. His drink—something coppery in a tumbler—sloshed over his hand, and he wavered, clutching at the sideboard for support. “Let it the fuck alone.”
“You think she was sleeping with my father,” Somers said, and now Hazard could hear those seismic shiftings in Somers’s voice again.
Daisy gave him a pitying look and didn’t answer.
“Do you have any proof?” Hazard asked. “Why didn’t you bring this to the police? Statutory rape—”
“Isn’t exactly the sort of thing that the Somersets get dragged into,” Daisy finished. “Or the Binghams, for that matter. It never would have gone anywhere.”
“Because she wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Bing said.
Daisy gave a helpless shrug, the kind of shrug that said, What can I do? “It doesn’t matter anyway. To answer your question, no I don’t have any proof. Although—”
“She doesn’t have any proof because there isn’t any.” Bing was trying to steady himself, trying to take a drink, but more of the coppery booze sloshed down his chin and shirt than made it into his mouth. “Look, Hadley had her problems. She needed help. But what she didn’t need—”
“She needed help.” Daisy’s mouth curved into that cold, icy smirk. “That’s rich. When I wanted to—”
“You wanted to send her to a—a prison. Not a shrink. Not anyone who could help her. You wanted to send her to one of those places where they lock them up and throw away the key. We wouldn’t have seen her again until she was eighteen, and you—”
“She burned down our house,” Daisy shrieked. Her sultry composure had gone up like a sulfur strip. “My house, she burned it down, and the little cunt laughed about it. And you wouldn’t do anything, all you’d do was cover up for her, make excuses.” Daisy got to her feet, suddenly as unsteady as her husband, looking like she was fighting against a strong wind or a strong sea—something elemental throwing her world out of balance. “You wanted to pretend it was something else. You wanted to pretend we could come back here and it would all be all right because your daddy would—”
She never finished saying what Sheriff Bingham would do because Bing threw his glass so hard that it exploded against the wall. Hazard half-rose, hand on the .38 holstered under his arm, but Somers drew him back into his seat. Neither Bing nor Daisy moved again, both locked in a tableau. There was no sense of shock, Hazard realized, and that realization shocked him in turn. The whole scene had a feel to it. Not practiced. Not studied. Not rehearsed. But—familiar? Like they’d played this out so many times that they could do it blindfolded. He wished, again, that he had a better grasp of the social subtleties he usually missed. Was this a trick? A performance? Or was it something more? He glanced at Somers, but Somers’s normally cheerful expression had vanished.
Another minute had passed. No one had moved.
“Sit down,” Hazard said. “Both of you. You can sit on opposite sides of the room if you have to, but sit down and shut up.”
“You can’t—” Bing began.
“Shut up.” That was all Hazard said, but he knew how to say it. The fight that was stirring in Bing’s face suddenly liquefied, and he slumped onto an ottoman and stared at them blankly. Daisy, for her part, curled up into the wingback chair, pale fingers toying with the negligee again.
Hazard studied them for a moment. Ever since Daisy had entered the room, the conversation had gone wild, bucking away from Somers’s attempts to control it. Now, for the first time since they had entered the house, Hazard had a moment to reflect. And one thought was the loudest and clearest: they assumed that someone had intended to kill Hadley. Not Glenn. Hadley. Why?
More importantly, could they be right?
Somers, for his part, looked like he had regained control of himself. He let out a slow breath, and in his best Somers manner, he said, “We wanted to talk to you about the party. Anything you noticed. What you might have seen. We’re trying to put together a full picture of what happened that night.”
Shaking amber drops from his fingers, Bing spoke without looking at them. “What do you want to know?”
“Can you walk us through what happened that night?”
“It was a party,” Daisy said. “People like the Somersets, they only know how to throw one kind. If you’ve been once, you’ve been to them all.” Flashing teeth at Somers, she added, “Apologies.”
“Where were you when Wayne Stillwell—the man dressed as Santa Claus—arrived?”
“In the front room,” Bing said. “Both of us.”
“And what happened?”
“He was naked except for that stupid hat,” Daisy said. “And he was singing. The sheriff and Bing—”
“That’s all,” Hazard broke in. “Just the hat?”
“What?”
“He didn’t have anything else? He wasn’t carrying anything else?”
“A bag,” Bing said, glancing up. “He had one of those Santa Claus bags, you know, for presents.”
“No,” Daisy said. “He didn’t.”
“Yes, he did.”
Daisy shook his head. “I’ve got an excellent memory. He was naked except for that hat. Then you and—”
Laughing, Bing spread his hands. “Wait. Wait a minute. So, what? I’m making this up? He didn’t have a bag, and I just imagined it?”
“I didn’t say you imagined it. I said he didn’t have a bag.”
“Are you sure?” Somers asked, and Hazard resisted the urge to kick his partner again. “Not doubting you, Mrs. Bingham, but are you positive? Think carefully.”
“I don’t need to think carefully,” she said coldly, her hands dropping from the negligee to knot tightly at her waist. “I know what I saw.”
“So do I,” Bing said. He waved a hand at Hazard and laughed again. “He had that bag.”
A frown creased Somers’s mouth, and he after a moment, he shrugged. “What happened next?”
“What color was the bag?” Hazard asked.
“Red. I mean, white trim, but red. You know, like in all the pictures of Santa.”
“He didn’t have a bag,” Daisy said, examining her nails.
“Let’s move on,” Somers said, with a stern glance at Hazard. “Tell me what happened after Mr. Stillwell came into the house.”
Hazard wanted to growl, but he quieted himself. Jeremiah Walker had claimed to see a pink bag. Bing saw a red bag. And Daisy had seen no bag. Were those simply the inconsistencies of eyewitnesses? Eyewitnesses, contrary to common belief, were notoriously unreliable. The brain simply filled in things. Was that had happened here? Jeremiah Walker had also claimed to see that bag outside the TV room, just before Stillwell had come out shooting. There was something happening here, and Hazard didn’t know what it was.
“Bing rushed him.”
“Not alone,” Bing said.
“But you did rush him. It was very brave, sweetheart. Bing is always brave. Very manly. Wouldn’t you agree, Detective Somerset?”
The question was so odd that it pulled Hazard from his thoughts in time to see the red rising in Somers’s cheeks. Somers, however, simply continued in the same tone of voice and said, “Not alone? Who else helped?”
“My father,” Bing said, casting a dirty glance at Daisy. “And yours.”
“You grabbed him? You punched him? What exactly happened?”
“They were going to throw him out of the house,” Daisy said. “He was still singing. He didn’t even seem to notice them.”
Bing agreed with a shrug and a nod.
“And then?”
“And then someone shouted that he had a gun,” Bing said. “It was absolute chaos. Everyone was screaming and trying to get away.”
“Who said that he had a gun?”
“I don’t know,” Bing said with another shrug. “It happened so fast.”
“Don’t be silly,” Daisy said. “It was your father.”
“It wasn’t my
father.”
“Of course it was.”
“You were running just like the rest of the rats, Daze. You don’t have any idea who said it.”
“I know what I heard. That was definitely your father.”
Bing spread his hands helplessly and shrugged.
“All right,” Somers said. “After that?”
“We took him to the back room,” Bing said.
“Did he have a gun?”
“No.”
“Did he have a bag?”
“Jesus, it’s like a rodeo. Yes. I already told you.”
Daisy opened her mouth, obviously eager to pick a fight, but Somers forestalled her with a hand.
“What then?” Somers asked.
“Your dad called you. We decided to wait it out.”
“Why didn’t your father handle it? He’s the sheriff.”
“He said it’s city jurisdiction. City means police.”
Hazard held back a snort. That might technically have been true, but it didn’t hold any real water. The sheriff covered the entire county; he still had jurisdiction within the city. What Sheriff Bingham had likely meant was that he’d had a couple of eggnogs and didn’t want to leave a warm, pleasant evening to drag a naked Santa to the county jail.
“Anything else before we got there?”
Daisy rolled one shoulder. “I was having a wonderful time.”
“She was so drunk she could have put a boy on fleet week to shame,” Bing said. “But no, nothing happened. We just stood around with our dicks in our hands.” He smirked at Hazard. “Sorry to get your hopes up. Just a figure of speech.”
Hazard didn’t respond. To his surprise, though, Somers didn’t rise to the bait either. Normally, a comment like Bing’s would have gotten Somers fired up. Anybody else would have been lucky to walk away with their nose intact.
Instead, Somers just said, “What about the rest of the evening? I made sure that Mr. Stillwell was handcuffed to a chair. Did you see anyone go near the room?”
Bing hesitated, as though about to speak, and then his mouth snapped shut.
For a moment, Daisy studied her negligee’s strap. Then she said, “Hadley.”
“What?”
“Hadley went back there. With those two horrible boys.”
Yes, Hazard remembered that. The boys had practically ripped her away from Glenn Somerset and dragged her into the kitchen. But why would Daisy bring it up? In a stream of cold analysis, Hazard noted that for the second time Daisy had assumed—and suggested—Hadley’s involvement: first, as the intended victim; and now as the culprit. That suggested either an inconsistency or a much more complicated explanation than Hazard expected.
Somers must have noticed the strangeness too because he leaned forward, his taut frame bent intensely, and said, “It sounds like there’s a lot we don’t know. You think Hadley was involved?”
“We know she was involved. She finally got caught up in one of her own games.” For a moment, anger glimmered under Daisy’s frosty surface. “She never thought about anyone. She never even really thought about herself. She was—she was just wild. All she wanted to do was ruin everything she could touch.”
“Stop it,” Bing snapped.
“No. No, they need to hear this. They need to know who she really was—not Daddy’s little girl.”
“You’re loving this,” Bing said. He twisted his fingers around each other, his dark complexion mottled with red. “Finally you’re getting exactly what you want: Daisy the victim, Daisy the long-suffering mother, Daisy who didn’t deserve any of this.”
“They’d find out anyway, Bing. And they can judge for themselves.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Somers said.
“From the beginning?” Daisy flicked the strap free from her creamy shoulder. “Eighteen years ago. That’s when everything went wrong.”
“That’s what you always do,” Bing said, exploding out of his seat. “Always. You pin it on her. You act like you never did a thing wrong. Like you’re some kind of goddamn martyr. But you were against her from the very beginning. You didn’t want a daughter. You wanted a boy, and you didn’t know what to do with a girl.”
“I wanted a child. I didn’t care if it was a girl.”
“You wouldn’t breastfeed her. You wouldn’t even look at her.”
“I was sick. You know I was sick. And she didn’t want anything to do with me.” Daisy spoke slowly, evenly, as though Bing were a particularly stupid child, but red mottled her throat and the expanse of chest exposed by the negligee. “She only wanted you. Eight days old or eighteen years old, she was always your little girl.”
“That’s because you—”
“This isn’t productive,” Somers said, his smooth voice slicing through the anger. “Did Hadley have a history of behavioral problems?”
“History?” Daisy smirked. “Enough history to fill a textbook.”
“She—” Bing began, and then he broke off. “She had oppositional defiant disorder.”
Hazard recognized the term, and Somers must have as well because he nodded. “How did that manifest? Hostile behavior? Arguing? Resentment?”
“Check, check, check,” Daisy droned, ticking off invisible boxes in the air. “Check every box on the list. She couldn’t take responsibility for anything. She was hurtful. Hateful. She wanted to make everybody else as miserable as she was. Everything I said was an argument.”
“Everything you said?”
“Oh yes. Daddy never made his precious little girl do anything.”
“That’s not fair. She was sick. I made accommodations.”
“Yes, accommodations. She kills the neighbors’ cat, and we pay them off. Accommodations. She cuts up every piece of clothing she owns, and we buy her more clothes. Nicer clothes. Accommodations. She hires a lunatic to beat up a boy at school, and we have to be happy that we’re not all in jail. Accommodations. She—”
“What?” Somers said, leaning forward in his seat. “That last part. What did she do?”
“That wasn’t her,” Bing said. “There was never any proof.”
“He had an email from her. What more do you want?”
“I think you should tell us the whole story,” Somers said.
Daisy flipped a hand, as though the effort exhausted her. “There was a boy at school she was seeing. Very polite. Very attentive. From the look of his swim trunks, very well endowed. But as soon as he got to know the real Hadley—the one who slashed the tires on his car, the one who punched out every window in the house with a shovel—he decided he wasn’t interested in staying around. Of course, Daddy’s princess couldn’t stand that. She hired some madman from Craigslist to—”
“That’s enough,” Bing said. “That’s enough, goddamn it.”
“We need to hear the rest of this,” Somers said, holding up a hand to forestall Bing’s objections. “What did she hire him to do?”
“To beat that boy to a pulp. Too bad, really. Those swim trunks.” A smoky smile lurked on Daisy’s face, and she flipped the negligee’s straps again. “Of course, the guy she hired was coked out of his mind, and he only got in a few punches before he lost interest and wandered away. Good thing, too. He had a gun. He could have killed the boy.”
“What happened then?”
“Hadley had to get help,” Daisy said. “The police had the emails from her account. They could have dragged her to court, but instead, they let her work out a deal. Daddy’s money helped with that, of course. Part of the deal was that she had to get therapy.”
“What did you want me to do?” Bing said. “Let her go to prison? Have her life ruined? You would have let her.” He turned his gaze towards Hazard and Somers, as though proving his point. “I honest to God believe that. She would have let her own daughter go to prison.”
Daisy didn’t even seem to hear him. “You know, I think that’s why Hadley burned down the house. I think she co
uldn’t stand that she’d lost. She couldn’t stand having to go to a shrink, take the pills he prescribed, and toe the line for once in her life. She lost, and she wanted to punish me.”
Hazard had his own thoughts about who was being punished in that situation; Daisy Bingham didn’t sound like she had much of the milk of mother’s kindness in her ample, creamy breasts. But he kept that to himself.
“This guy, what happened to him?” Somers asked.
“God, who knows?”
“He went away. Locked up.” Bing’s face was dark with shame, and when he spoke next, the words had false hope. “Maybe he’ll get cleaned up. This might be a good thing for him.”
“He’s still locked up?” Somers said.
“What? I don’t know. Why? What’s this about, John-Henry?”
“Is there anything else you can think of? The boyfriend, the one she paid to have beaten up, what was his name?”
Bing shook his head.
“Peter,” Daisy offered. “Something with a J. Jennings? Peter Jenkins? And she didn’t pay to have him beaten up.”
“What?” Hazard said, surprise forcing him to break his silence.
“She didn’t pay that lunatic.”
“How do you know that?”
“It all came out. Every excruciating detail.”
“Hadley told you that she didn’t pay?”
“No,” Daisy said, adopting the same slow, simple tone she had used earlier with Bing. “Hadley denied everything, right up to the end. But that crazy man went on and on about how he was just doing her a favor.”
Inside Hazard, something clicked into place. He couldn’t put his finger on it, not yet, but he knew it was important. Wayne Stillwell hadn’t been paid either, as far as Hazard knew. There had been no mention of payment in the emails. And no mention of—
“Did she ask that guy to beat up Peter?”
Somers glanced at Hazard, the faintest surprise registering in his brow.
“I told you: Hadley kept insisting she didn’t do it. She never admitted—”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” Daisy flinched at the brusque tone. “In the email, did she ask him to beat up that boy, Peter?”
“Yes, of course. Haven’t you been listening?” Daisy glanced at Somers, as though he might make more sense.
