The Mulberry Tree

by Jude Deveraux

  “One night Luke had been kept awake all night by his dad and his stepmother screaming at each other, and Luke hated turmoil among his own family.”

  “Always did,” Bailey said. “Jimmie didn’t care if the world was angry at him, but if I was, he couldn’t stand it.”

  “I think Luke felt a kinship with Gus from the beginning,” Martha said. “To get away from the arguing, Luke went down the mountain and stretched out under a tree where he could see the Garden of Eden farm. When he awoke, Gus was sitting by him, offering him food. Years later, Luke told me that it was the best food he’d ever eaten in his life—which tells you everything about my cooking.”

  “And a friendship was born,” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Martha said, “a friendship of kindred souls, a bonding between a couple of outcasts. But neither Frank nor I knew the friendship had started. Not long after that Frank got a job as a night watchman, so he was gone all night and slept all day. I was busy with household chores because I had to wash and iron Vonda’s uniforms as well as Frank’s, and I didn’t have a washing machine. I was too busy to worry about where a big boy of fourteen was all day.”

  “He was with Gus?” Matt asked.

  “Yes. Gus’s wife was at work all day and fooling around with Roddy at night, so she had no idea Luke and her husband were together. I doubt if she ever saw Luke.” Martha took a breath. “As always, everything bad started with Vonda.

  “Frank was miserable at his job. It was all the way in Ridgeway, so he had no Golden Six background with them, and Gus stories didn’t make them laugh. The other men at the job called Frank ‘Slot Machine,’ as in One-Armed Bandit, and from there it became ‘Slots.’ Frank couldn’t quit, couldn’t even fight back. He was in hell. His wife was staying out later each night; they spent hours every day fighting; and the more horrible it was at home, the more time Luke spent with Gus.

  “But of course in a town like Calburn, you can’t keep secrets forever. A few deliverymen had seen Luke with Gus, and they told what they saw. And with Vonda working in the diner, she heard.

  “Then one Sunday afternoon, Frank stopped by the diner, and he was in the middle of a Gus story and making his old buddies laugh when Vonda, out of sheer spite, said, ‘Gus is more of a father to your son than you are.’ Everybody in the diner laughed even harder. At Frank. And that’s when he knew that Gus Venters had won. Frank made people laugh at Gus, but in the end, Gus had taken away what Frank loved most in the world: his son.

  “And that’s when Frank’s hatred began. All his anger at every rotten thing that had ever happened to him came out—and it was all directed at one man: Gus Venters.

  “And all the anger came to a head on one night.”

  “The thirtieth of August, 1968,” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Martha said. “The thirtieth of August, 1968.

  “It started that afternoon when Vonda told Frank she was pregnant. I was away that day. A woman I knew was sick, so I’d gone to sit with her, but years later Luke told me every word of what was said. On that day, that woman told Luke something that not even I knew. My guess is that Frank told the boys in that”—Martha had to swallow against the lump in her throat—“that Golden Six, and one of them told Vonda.”

  “Whose is it?” Frank yelled. He was drunk, as usual.

  “It’s a man’s,” Vonda shouted back at him. “Which is more than you’ll ever be.”

  “I’ll divorce you,” Frank said. “And I’ll tell the courts what you’re really like. When I get through with you—”

  Vonda laughed at him. “You take me to court? With what, old man? You have nothin’.” At that, her head came up, and she saw Luke standing silently in the bedroom doorway. “You little sneak,” she said. “You’re always listenin’, ain’t you? Ain’t it enough that you spend all day spyin’ on that poor Gus? Poor ol’ retard.”

  “He’s smarter than you’ll ever be,” Luke shot back at her. “And richer.”

  “Are you talkin’ down to me?” Vonda sneered at Luke, then her eyes began to glitter. “Hey, Frank, why don’t you tell this ugly kid the truth about his mother?”

  “Shut up, Vonda, I’m warning you. You don’t know what I can do to you.”

  “And what are you gonna do to me that ain’t already been done?” she taunted. “Hey, kid, you chicken? Go ahead. Ask him about your mother.”

  “Shut up,” Frank said, then went after her, but he staggered and fell, and his foot got caught between the wall and the coal stove.

  Vonda looked at Luke, her upper lip curled in disgust as she looked at the boy’s misshapen mouth. “Frank here met your mother in a bar in New Orleans. He was bein’ nice to her because she had a lip just like yours. Oh, it’d been sewn together some, but it was like yours, and what’s more, she was about ten minutes away from deliverin’ a kid. You.”

  Luke looked down at his father on the floor, and as he realized what the woman was telling him, Luke’s face went pale with shock.

  “Luke—” Frank said softly, reaching out his hands, but he was still trapped and unable to move.

  Luke stepped away from his father’s seeking hands.

  “Frank McCallum isn’t your father any more than that Gus you’re so crazy about is,” Vonda said, smiling. “Or maybe ol’ Gus is your father, who knows? And you know what happened to your mother? She didn’t die right after you were born and have a pretty funeral, like Frank’s told you all these years. She took one look at you, had a screamin’ fit, and ran off. She couldn’t bear to look at your ugly face.”

  Vonda’s little dark eyes gleamed maliciously. “Frank felt sorry for you, so he brought you back here to this godforsaken hole and hid you away so nobody had to look at you.” She looked down at Frank on the floor. “And after all that trouble you went to to take care of some old whore’s deformed kid, he likes some dull-witted farmer better than he likes you.”

  Bailey had her hand to her mouth as she imagined what a proud man like Jimmie must have felt, hearing something like that.

  “Luke left the house after that, and he didn’t come back for three days,” Martha said. “But by then, it was all over. Gus Venters was dead. Hanged.”

  “In my barn,” Bailey said softly.

  “Oh, no. He was hanged from that mulberry tree in your backyard.”

  At that, Bailey clutched Matt’s hand. Her beautiful, beautiful mulberry tree.

  “You said ‘was hanged,’ ” Matt said. “He didn’t commit suicide?”

  “No,” Martha said. “They hanged him. That . . . ” She struggled over the words. “The Golden Six. All six of them were in town that summer, and Frank went to them and told them—” Martha looked away for a moment, then back. Her voice was trembling when she spoke. “My son, Frank, got them together and told them that that sweet, lovely, innocent man, Gus Venters, had . . . that he had . . . ” Martha had to pause for a moment. “Frank told them that Gus had raped Luke.”

  “May God forgive them,” Bailey said.

  “When I got home in the wee hours, Frank was a mess. He was curled up on the floor and crying hard. And what was worse, he had a gun in his hand. He was planning to shoot himself.

  “I couldn’t understand what was wrong with him or what had happened. I kept asking if Luke was hurt or was he dead, but Frank would cry harder and say, ‘It’s worse. It’s worse.’ To my mind, if Luke was all right, it couldn’t be too bad.

  “I managed to get the gun away from him, but Frank had been drinking a lot, so I went to the kitchen to make coffee. The water bucket was empty, so I went outside to the well to fill it.

  “A few minutes later I heard a shot, and I realized I’d stupidly left the gun on the kitchen counter. I dropped the bucket and ran, because I knew in my mother’s heart that my only child had just been shot.”

  Martha took a breath. “My son was lying on the floor, dead, and standing over him was Vonda, the gun in her hand.

  “ ‘They hanged poor ol’ Gus Venters tonight,’ she said. ‘Str
ung him up from a tree. Roddy said they’d better make it look like suicide, so they moved him into the barn,’ Vonda said to me, and I can still see the light in her eyes. She’d enjoyed killing my son.

  “Vonda put the gun down on the table, stepped over my son’s body like he was a sack of garbage, and picked up a metal box off the floor.

  “ ‘While they was hangin’ ol’ Gus the second time, Roddy sneaked in the house and took this.’ She opened the box, and I saw that it was full of money.

  “ ‘Roddy’s been sleepin’ with that ol’ hag, Hilda Turnbull, because he knew she had money hidden, and he wanted her to tell him where she kept it. It took a lot of pumpin’ to get the information out of her, but he did it. And tonight Roddy got the box, only he’—she looked down at my dead son’s body with a sneer—‘he took the box away from Roddy, said he was gonna give the money back to ol’ Hilda.’

  “That girl looked up at me in triumph. ‘But now I got the money, and I’m carryin’ Roddy’s baby, and he’s waitin’ for me outside. I just got the wrong Golden Six the first time around, that’s all. But now, everything’s gonna be just fine.’

  “And that’s when I picked up the gun and shot her right between the eyes.”

  Epilogue

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Bailey looked through the heavy black veil covering her face at the people gathered at Martha’s grave site. Matt wasn’t with her, for there’d been no way to disguise his appearance. And if he were seen and identified, the journalists that stood on the periphery would find Bailey. As it was now, she stood among a dozen other women, all wearing concealing black veils, all of which had been made by Patsy. The press couldn’t identify any of the women, and besides, they were looking for James Manville’s widow, a woman a great deal heavier than any of the women who attended Martha McCallum’s funeral.

  As Bailey looked down at the closed coffin, tears of gratitude and love flowed down her cheeks. Martha had sacrificed herself to preserve Bailey’s anonymity. Martha had sacrificed so Bailey could keep the happiness she’d found. She had explained that she owed Luke for keeping him to herself for so many years, and the best way to repay him was to give to the woman he loved.

  So Martha had done everything. She oversaw the lawyers and presented the evidence she held.

  Martha hired private detectives, and they found a woman who said she’d seen and talked with Dolores the day after Alex had returned to Virginia. And half a dozen girls in Calburn could testify as to exactly where they’d seen Alex Yates and when. The charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence.

  Bailey had stayed up all night talking with Matt; then she got on the telephone with Martha, and an agreement was made. If Bailey stepped forward and showed the court—and the world—that she had indeed been legally married to James Manville, she would probably be awarded what was left of his billions. But if Bailey got the money, she’d lose her privacy.

  “Do you mind?” Bailey had asked Matt tentatively.

  “Mind losing billions?” Matt asked, eyes twinkling. He smiled. “No. I don’t want the money. I’ve seen what money takes from a person. And, besides, I have everything I want right here.”

  She smiled at him, but she couldn’t keep the tears out of her eyes. She’d come to love him so very much. Through everything, he’d helped her, and he’d stood by her. Not once had he tried to hold her back from what she’d needed to do.

  Her hands had been in her lap, and once again she twirled the engagement ring he’d given her the night before.

  “Could I have a big wedding?” she’d asked, and even to herself she sounded like a child.

  “The biggest Calburn has ever seen. But—” Matt hesitated.

  “But what?”

  “If you don’t let Patsy make your dress, our lives won’t be worth living.”

  Laughing, Bailey had agreed readily.

  It was the next day that they’d spent discussing the money and what to do about it. How did one manage billions but remain anonymous?

  In the end, it was Arleen who helped them the most. For many years she’d supported herself by being, as she said, “a parasite.” “But a good one, dear, a very, very good parasite.” She went on to explain that she’d had to become a keen observer of people. “When your dinner depends on getting along with someone, you must quickly learn to like what they like and say what they want to hear.”

  To Bailey’s astonishment, Arleen made a list of the people James had trusted the most. “If you want people to run your company, use these men,” Arleen said as she handed the paper to Bailey.

  “Not my company. Not my money,” Bailey had whispered. “I don’t want it.”

  It was Martha who agreed to inherit James Manville’s fortune. She had a birth certificate showing that Frank was her son, and Frank’s name was on Luke McCallum’s birth certificate. With DNA testing and hair samples, it hadn’t been difficult to show that Lucas McCallum and James Manville were the same person.

  Martha had done it all, and she’d had to do it alone. Old, frail, and weak, she’d somehow gathered her strength to deal with lawyers and detectives and the press. No one who was near Bailey could help for fear of exposing Bailey, so Martha had had only the support of a woman she’d befriended in the nursing home, and a couple of nurses to monitor her health.

  While the highly publicized trial of Atlanta and Ray was going on, Matt had flown around the United States to meet with the men on the list Arleen had given him. It had taken him all three months of the trial to pull it together, but by the time the guilty verdict came in, Matt had set up a board of trustees to oversee the industries that James Manville had once owned.

  Through days and nights of work, Matt, Bailey, and the men on the list had set up a ten-year plan whereby the companies would eventually become autonomous. By the end of the ten years the companies would either have been sold and all the profits split among the employees, or would be run on a profit-sharing basis. The ultimate plan was that at the end of ten years, James Manville’s empire would no longer exist.

  By the time the trial was over, Martha had aged dramatically. It was as though she’d kept herself alive and healthy to accomplish this deed, and now that it was over, she wanted to rest—forever.

  After Atlanta’s and Ray’s life imprisonment sentences were handed down, two nurses helped Martha sit down on the padded chair outside the courtroom. With shaking hands, Martha read a prepared statement about the future plans for James Manville’s wealth.

  In back of the reporters and outside the courthouse, people began cheering when they heard that they would still have their jobs. But the journalists were visibly disappointed. They’d wanted Martha to leave all the money to one person. The antics of heirs and heiresses made great copy.

  “What about Lillian Manville?” someone shouted as soon as Martha had finished reading her statement.

  Martha had smiled at the man. “She has been taken care of,” Martha said, then before anyone could fire another question at her, she put her hand to her head and fell back against the chair as though in a faint. Immediately, the nurses hovered over her and a doctor came running from the wings. After a quick examination the doctor announced that Mrs. McCallum had had too much excitement and they had to leave.

  “But what about Manville’s widow?” someone shouted, but the doctor didn’t turn around. He motioned for Martha to be put on a gurney and carried out of the courthouse.

  For three days the news media swarmed outside the hospital where Martha McCallum lay in bed. The prognosis for her recovery had been good, but the doctors didn’t take into consideration that Martha didn’t want to recover. She had had enough of life, and she wanted to be with her son and Luke.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Martha passed on, and the nurses said that there had been a smile on her face.

  Bailey cried from the time Martha’s death was announced until the time of the funeral. “I can’t even go to the funeral,” Bailey had said. “And there were all t
hose years when we could have known each other, but James kept us apart.”

  “James,” Arleen said softly, lifting her eyebrows at Matt. Now Bailey referred to her late husband as “James,” not “Jimmie.”

  Matt put his arms around Bailey to comfort her, but he was smiling. At last, with the discovery of the truth, Bailey had been able to put James Manville behind her. She’d seen the good of him and the bad of him, and she was finally able to see him as a person. Her love for James Manville was no longer current. Now it was a memory.

  “I think we can figure something out,” Matt had whispered into her hair. Ten minutes later, he and Patsy had come up with the idea of dressing all the women involved in the Mulberry Tree Preserving Company in identical black veils and all of them attending Martha’s funeral.

  And now Bailey placed three white roses on Martha’s coffin. One for Martha, one for Frank, and one for James, the boy who’d been “born” on that awful day in August.

  Arleen put her hand on Bailey’s arm. “Let’s go home,” she whispered through her veil.

  “Yes,” Bailey said. “Let’s go home.”

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  Wild Orchids . . .

  I can’t say that I liked her very much, but she was the most interesting person I’d met in years. Best of all, I thought she could do the job and that she’d make no emotional demands on me. I needed some way to get back into writing, but since I hadn’t found the road yet, I thought Jackie Maxwell and her devil story might send me in the right direction.

  I’d read the gossip magazines and the Internet, so I knew people were saying that Pat had written my books. How she would have laughed to hear that! I’d also heard that my writing was linked to her and once she died, I couldn’t do it anymore.