A Brilliant Death (22 page)

Travis nodded. “Trust me, I know exactly what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do. I prayed that she was alive somewhere and in time she would get in touch with me. But, obviously, she didn’t.” Clay stood and walked to the lone window in the office, squinting into the late afternoon sun. “We kept our relationship a secret. I couldn’t even mourn her when she was gone. I was crushed. In my heart, I knew she was dead, and I believed that your dad did it. Years after your mom died, maybe ten or so, I ran into the detective that investigated your mom’s case . . .”

“Chase Tornik?”

“Yeah. That’s his name. He was out in the used-car lot looking around. You know he went to prison for faking some evidence, or something like that?”

Travis nodded his head. “Yeah. I’d heard.”

“I hadn’t seen him in years, but he interviewed me not long after he started his investigation. Apparently, your mother and I weren’t as secretive as we thought. When I saw him on the lot, he told me that he had always suspected your dad. In fact, he told me he was certain your dad had killed her. I’ve never been able to get that out of my head. It was maddening. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate at work. My dad had always kept a revolver—a thirty-eight—in his bottom desk drawer. He kept it there for protection. I don’t think it had been out of that drawer in thirty years. I got it, loaded it, and I was driving to Brilliant.” He shook his head. “By that time, I was married, had kids, and I asked myself, ‘What the hell are you thinking, Carter?’ I turned around and went home—stopped on the way and tossed the gun in the river, just in case I ever started thinking stupid again.” Clay walked back and sat down. “And I do. Every time I see your dad driving around in that Chevy, I want to strangle him.”

Travis frowned. “The Chevy? Why?”

“Oh, I assumed you knew that story, too. You don’t, huh?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, the letter I gave your mom in church, professing my love, wasn’t the only one I gave her. In fact, there were many. I told her to burn them after she had read them, and she said she would, but she didn’t. After your mom disappeared, six months or so later, I guess, your dad found the letters. My dad was still alive, and Frank walked into his office and told him about the letters—showed him a couple of them. Frank was threatening to spread the word all over the valley that I was screwing his . . .” Clay caught himself in mid-sentence, suddenly remembering who he was talking to. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so crass.”

“Don’t worry about it. Go on, please.”

“He was going to tell everyone about me and your mother. Dad was afraid that it would ruin the business and my reputation, so he gave your dad that car to buy his silence.” He forced a smile. “Your dad came back to the dealership after my father died, demanding five thousand dollars for the letters. I hit him square in the mouth. I said, ‘Go ahead, show the letters. Let everyone know that you couldn’t keep your wife happy, so she went looking for a man who could.’ I was pretty certain that Italian pride of his would keep him from ever showing them to anyone.”

Travis smiled, partly at the thought of his dad getting punched in the mouth, but mostly at the fact that someone had called Big Frank’s bluff and won. “He never gave you the letters, did he?”

“Nah. He used to keep them in his car and hold them up for me to see whenever we passed, but I don’t think he ever showed them to anyone.”

“Do you think he threw them away?”

“No. No way. Not Frank. He would hold on to them, just in case he ever got the opportunity to use them against me.”

“At least he didn’t find them while Travis’s mom was still alive,” I offered. “That would have been bad.”

Clay Carter’s eyes had the sorrowful look of a wounded animal. It was as though my comment had exposed Clay’s deepest fears. “Frank said he found the letters after Amanda’s death, but I’m not so certain. I think he might have found them before she could get out of the house. There was a lot of damning stuff in those letters. Maybe he read ’em and just went nuts. You know your dad. He might have thought, ‘If I can’t have you, no one will.’ Who knows what happened? It just about kills me to think that I could have been the one who caused your mom to be killed.”

“But he was out of town when she died. How could he have killed her?”

“Nobody knows for sure that she was on the boat. They never found her body.”

“That’s not unusual. That river can be very unforgiving.”

Clay shrugged. “I think your father is the embodiment of evil, son. I don’t know how he did it, but I just can’t believe he didn’t have something to do with it.”

“Are you sure she was going to leave my dad?”

Clay took a long, cleansing breath. “She wanted desperately to leave him, but she was afraid—not so much afraid of what Frank would do to her, but afraid that he would try to take you. You were the most important thing in her life.”

Tears welled in Travis’s eyes. He pushed himself out of the chair and extended a hand toward Clay Carter. “Mr. Carter, just to reassure you, I’ll never say a word to anyone about this.”

They looked at me. “Oh, me neither.”

Travis continued, “I really appreciate your time.”

Clay stood and draped his left arm around Travis’s shoulder. “I know your mom would be proud to know that you care enough to do what you’re doing. She was a special lady.”

Travis nodded and muttered, “Thanks.”

“Either of you boys want that janitor’s job?” Clay asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “It’s too far to drive.”

As we headed south out of Steubenville, Travis asked, “Do you think it was him on the boat?”

“No,” I said.

“Why? He could easily lie, and there is no way we could prove him wrong.”

“I don’t think either of them were on the boat.”

“Someone was on the boat,” Travis said. “The captain pushing the barge said he saw them jumping in the river.”

I shrugged. “I don’t have an explanation, Travis. Why would she go out on the river to see someone? Big Frank was out of town. If they wanted to see each other, he could have gone to her house. And no way she leaves you at home and runs out on a boat.”

“Do you think she’s alive?”

“I didn’t this morning. Now, I’m not so sure.”

The remainder of the ride home from Carter Chevrolet and Buick was silent. There are times when you know that nothing should be said, no questions asked, and that was one of those times. When Travis got out of the car he muttered “thanks” and shut the door behind him. I didn’t see him for more than a week. When he next stopped by the house, he said nothing about the visit with Clay Carter, and I wondered if this signaled the end of Project Amanda. With the cemetery mystery apparently solved, perhaps he now had all the answers he wanted.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I was on my way home from football practice the week before school began when the car pulled up alongside me. It was a brown AMC Javelin, with the wide wheel wells. Behind the wheel was Hushpuppy Harmon, Alex’s cousin, whose real name was Delmar. He was a year out of high school and an arrogant punk. I had a hard time believing that he and Alex shared the same bloodline. He was thin, with kinky yellow hair and a lame moustache that he had been trying to grow out since his sophomore year.

He pulled the Javelin to the curb and yelled at me through his open passenger-side window. “Malone!”

I didn’t say anything, but walked up and leaned into the open window. “Nice ride, Hushpuppy,” I said. He gave me a look of disgust, then handed me the envelope that had been tucked above his sun visor. “Alex asked me to give you this.”

It was a plain white business envelope. On the back was my name and the word PERSONAL, which also was underlined. Alex had signed across the flap in ink, then covered it with clear tape. “This is great. Thanks, Hush. I really appreciate it.” I started to walk away.

“Hey, Malone, what is that?”

“It’s just something from Alex.”

“No shit, Sherlock. What?”

I tucked the envelope into my gym bag. “It’s kind of personal, Hush.”

“Yeah, well I’m not going to be your personal mailman anymore. Got that?”

I kept on walking, and Hushpuppy squealed his tires as he pulled away.

The house smelled of cube steaks and fried potatoes and onions. My dinner was in a cast-iron skillet, a sheet of aluminum foil wrapped over the top. Dad asked me how practice had gone, and I said okay. I scraped the contents of the skillet onto a plate and went up to my room. Despite my name being on the envelope, I knew it was for Travis. But I was going to open it anyway. I had earned that. I tapped the envelope against my left palm several times before carefully tearing it across one end. I blew into the envelope and pulled from it a single sheet of paper. The missive had been typed, but unsigned.

It did. I slipped the letter back in the envelope, ate my dinner, and headed out to find Travis.

Jimmy Jagr left for the three-block walk to the Coffee Pot at fifteen minutes after eight each morning. He would have a cake donut and a cup of coffee, one cream, extra sugar, and one refill while he read the morning Wheeling
Intelligencer
. He would get another coffee in a paper cup to bring back to the office. The routine never varied. He would be back a little after nine.

From a side window, Travis watched his boss waddle down LaGrange Avenue until he disappeared on Risdon Avenue. When Jimmy was safely out of view, Travis pushed open the side door of the bakery warehouse and let me in. We hustled into Jimmy’s office at the rear of the cement block building and pounded out the eleven digits that connected him to a home in Asheville, North Carolina.

I leaned over the desk and put my ear near the handset. It rang twice before a male voice, cheerful, picked up the phone. “Hel-lo.”

Travis swallowed, but didn’t speak.

“Hello?” the voice repeated.

“Uh, yes, is this Ronald Virdon?”

“It is. Who’s calling, please?”

“Uh, I’m . . . are you . . . are you the father of . . . ?”

“What? The father of who?” The voice was changing from pleasant to irritated. “Who is this?”

The old man was still waiting for an answer when Travis slammed the phone back in the cradle, and the line in Asheville, North Carolina, went dead.

“Why didn’t you tell him who you were?” I asked.

“No guts. I was afraid of what he might say, or might not say.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Travis and I were walking down Second Street on the first day of school of our senior year—September 1, 1970—when he asked, “Remember the letters Clay Carter said he sent my mom?”

I nodded. “I remember him telling us about them.”

“I want to find them.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Where are they?”

Travis rolled his eyes. “If I knew that, Einstein, I wouldn’t have to
find
them; I’d just go
get
them.”

I looked over at him. “You are such a smart ass. You’re lucky you don’t get your ass beat four times a day.” He walked on as though he hadn’t heard me. “Clay said Big Frank used to flash them at him when he was out in the Chevy. Maybe they’re still there?”

Travis shook his head. “No, I checked all through the car the last time he was out of town. No luck. I figure Big Frank’s got ’em stashed somewhere in the house. We’ve just got to figure out where.”

I turned to him and said, “We?”

“We. You know, me and you. Us. Dos amigos.”

“Travis, mi amigo, just so we’re very clear on this point, there is no way on God’s green earth that I am searching through your house for those letters. No. I won’t do it. Sorry. No, wait, I’m not sorry. This is the kind of thing that could have tragic consequences. You remember, of course, the last search we made of your house?”