Hers the Kingdom (84 page)

     "Kit knows the risk," Sara put in roughly. "If she is forced to choose, she will choose Connor."

     I sat down, hard.

     "Do you know what you are saying?" I asked Sara. "More than that, do you know what you are doing? My God, Sara. That would be a terrible blow, terrible."

     Connor spoke up, "She's right, Sara. Listen to Lena. I think I know what you have in mind, but I tell you the risk is too great. I do not want to disturb Katharine's relations with her mother, or her memory of her father."

     "She has no memory of her father," Sara said, rudely. "We haven't much time now, Lena. You will simply have to trust me. I feel certain that I am doing the right thing. Are you coming, Connor?"

     "Please, Sara—please do not ask me to do this." He was pleading, which shocked me.

     "I am asking," she said, "you owe it to me."

     I could not believe Sara could be so unrelenting.

     "I've sent your car away long ago, Connor," she said, "we'll go in mine."

     On the drive down Sunset Boulevard, west toward the ocean, I asked: "You said Philip was with Kit. Why Philip?"

     "Because he has been putting this puzzle together for a long time," Sara answered. "He knows a good deal, and I understand he shared what he knows with Connor. Philip is such a profound fellow, you know. He tends to linger over little pools of injustice, to worry them. He did not, however, know about Rose until I told him a few days ago. Then he felt something more than abashed, especially upon learning that the result had sent you bolting for Ireland, Connor. He figures little short of a thunderbolt could have sent you tearing for Mother and Country."

     My head was swimming. "I think you should tell me what went on in San Francisco," I said to Connor. In short, clipped sentences he recited the events that led to Kit's appearance at Wildwood. He talked about the incident at the beach, about Philip's visit, and Chinatown, he spoke of evenings at the symphony and drives through Golden Gate Park, and the dance Porter arranged. He did not embellish, but it was not difficult to sense, from his voice, how much Kit had come to mean to him.

     As we drove alongside the sea, a quiet fell over us. While I dozed off, Connor and Sara spoke in low, guarded tones.

     The yelping of the dogs brought me full awake. They would know we were coming now, there was no turning back. I remembered then that Joseph and Arcadia would be there this weekend.

     "Good," Sara said, when I told her.

A fire had been lit in the great fireplace that filled one end of the dining hall.

     Since the evening was cool, we gravitated there, drawn together for what Sara had spoken of as a "reckoning."

     Joseph and Arcadia sat near where Willa stood. Kit joined me on an antique church pew Willa had discovered in her travels— it was hard, polished wood. I took a certain perverse pleasure in feeling it rub against the bones of my buttocks. Philip, Sara, and Connor positioned themselves somewhat apart, the men standing and Sara perched on a fireplace stool. Her face was set, purposeful, strong.
Please Sara
, I prayed silently,
please know what you are doing.

     Connor had a fixed look on his face, while Willa seemed to be making an effort to control a rising anger. Kit, for her part, seemed dazed. She could not take her eyes off Connor, yet she had made no effort to speak to him. I took her hand in mine and squeezed it, but she didn't squeeze back.

     Sara cleared her throat. "I need to say some things I have never said before, at least not so publicly. I shall try not to be maudlin." She smiled, a tight, dry smile. "Since the day in 1887 when I met Owen and Willa on the train that brought them West, I have been engaged—hopelessly, wonderfully, blessedly—with this family. I have made myself one of you, I suppose I could put it that way. This is my family, and I care deeply for each of you. I like to think not entirely for my own purposes.

     "At times I have acted to preserve this family, and to protect my place in it. More often of late, I have thought that to be a major flaw in my character—that I have been so concerned with protecting my place that I have not always acted wisely, for the greater good. I have not wanted to risk upheaval . . . I suppose what I am saying is I have not wanted to risk an upheaval at the expense of my place. But that is what I am about to do now. I have been silent too long, and events have caught up with me. Now it is necessary to take that risk."

     She took a deep breath. "It's time now for some plain talking. Willa . . ." She hesitated, shrugged, and in the end did not say what she had been about to say.

     Philip had been leaning against an Italian refectory table. Now he stood and, as if by prearrangement, began to speak. His years on the bench had given him dignity, a courtly bearing. "Joseph, Arcadia," he began, "I suppose you are the only ones in this room who have very little idea of what this is about. Perhaps we could all benefit if I attempted to explain it to you—to tell you the story in as much detail as I can. If I seem to wander, I can only ask that you bear with me. I have spent the past twenty-odd years putting together what I once called a 'puzzle.' Later, I came to think of it as a mystery. In its most recent chapter, I suppose it might be called a love story."

     Philip looked at Willa, but she was staring at some point above the fireplace, her expression icy. "In the beginning," he went on, "my interest was purely professional. In time it became
purely personal. For our purposes here tonight, however, let me tell you that the story begins on an afternoon in the year 1895. The month was August, late in August. Owen Reade had only the day before returned to Los Angeles from a protracted business trip East, during which he had fallen gravely ill. There was a reason why his family did not meet him at the train. Charles Emory had telegraphed to request an urgent, private meeting in Los Angeles, immediately upon Reade's arrival."

     Philip paused and, for the first time, seemed to falter. Willa would not look at him, but maintained her gaze into the fire. "Emory met Reade's train, and he told him . . . he told him that his wife was engaged in an illicit liaison with the man he had hired as foreman—McCord."

     Willa's neck whipped back, her eyes flashed with anger. She stood as if to leave, staring at Philip with something akin to hatred. "I am sorry, Willa. Terribly sorry to have to say this. But you must not leave until you hear what else I know, and you do not. What I should, I believe now, have told you long ago. Owen Reade was a sick man, he was extremely weak and he came home to confront the possibility that he could lose his wife. Charles played on that fear by suggesting a way to get rid of McCord. Reade agreed. Emory had already made the arrangements, and they were put into effect the very next night.

     "Emory had a man in the Treasury Department—one Amos Proctor—who would arrange, for a price, for McCord to be arrested for smuggling."

     Willa found her voice. "How dare you?" she gasped, "I do not believe this, I will not, and I will hear no more. What can you be thinking, Philip . . . dear God, Kit is here . . . what are you doing?"

     "Willa," Philip said, softly, and again, "Willa . . ."

     "I do not believe any of this. Owen was ill, yes, but he could never . . . he was not capable of . . . No."

     Philip persevered, calling her name in an effort to get her attention. Finally she was quiet.

     "I am sorry, but I have proof if you need it. Ignacio helped Reade. It was necessary to get McCord to a certain spot at a certain time. A great deal of opium smuggling was going on, and Point Dume was a favored spot—just as they are running whiskey there now. Ignacio's job was to make sure McCord was found with the gold on him, and to testify against McCord in court, perjuring himself."

     Trinidad was standing outside the doorway listening. She lumbered in, carrying her heavy body like a great burden. "Is true, is true," she gasped. "
El Patrón
, he is so sick, is so sad to see, he say to Ignacio, 'You give gold to McCord, tell him is bonus for working so good. Then say McCord do one last job only, go to meet wranglers in cove with Ignacio late that night.' Ignacio say to McCord that our cousins from Mexico need work, they come by boat so
policía
not find them. Lies, all lies. Ignacio goes to court and swears to God in heaven that he say nothing to Mr. McCord, but always Ignacio is ashamed for what he do. He go to priest to confess once, twice, every week. God have mercy on his soul."

     "That's enough, Trinidad," I said, not harshly, and I sent for Aleja to take her mother to their rooms.

     For a time, the room was empty of sound. Connor stood staring out the window. He had said no more than two or three words since our arrival.

     "I believed him," Willa said, "I believed Owen—your father." She was talking to Kit.

     Kit answered, "Yes, Mother. You believed him that night, and in doing so you made your choice. But Connor was innocent."

     Connor turned and addressed the two, the mother and the daughter. "No, Katharine. I was not innocent. Few of us there that night were. Your father was ill, and afraid, and he did what he thought he had to do. I don't know that I would act differently, under the same circumstances. Your mother . . ." Connor turned now to Willa, moving a few steps toward her, for the first time confronting her. "That night, as soon as I saw that you believed I
was capable of smuggling, I understood something else. Whatever I might have thought was between us, whatever understanding, had no foundation, no firmness, as Katharine said, by believing Owen Reade you made your choice, and you did it without a single doubt. Now that I've said that, I would like also to say that enough people have suffered for the events we set in motion, you and I, that summer, and it seems to me now that this should end. Sara, what good can it do to go on with this?"

     Sara answered, "Just what you've said—the innocent should not suffer, and Katharine is innocent. And so, I believe, is the love you feel for her."

     Joseph cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. Arcadia gripped his hand. Philip returned to his narrative.

     "I think Connor's point is well taken. Unless some good can come of this . . . revelation . . . Sara and I have made a terrible error in bringing you together like this. I think we must continue, let's have it all out now.

     "The baby Rose . . . that is, I think, the saddest part of the story. Joseph and Arcadia know about Rose, and unless I miss my guess they suspect that Connor was the father. If you are wondering how I came to know all of this, since I appeared on the scene somewhat later, I will tell you. I was one of T.R.'s boys charged with investigating corruption within the government. Amos Proctor had been under suspicion for quite some time. T.R. happened to be a friend of Owen's from their college days, so when we uncovered what we thought to be a connection, T.R. arranged for me to meet the Reades. I was here the night the century changed—along with some of you, and a couple hundred other partygoers . . . including Amos Proctor. At about that time we were getting closer, and he was getting more desperate. He needed to leave the country, and for that he needed money. Fast.

     "He didn't get it. I found him, two days later, in his rooming house in Long Beach, dead. He was murdered—quite professionally. No clues, no weapon, no murderer. What I was able to discover,
however, about Proctor's various 'clients' I was able to put to use, some years later, in our campaign to rid the state of influence peddlers, men like Charles Emory, and the Southern Pacific.

     "As for our gentle Sara here," he said, attempting a smile, "when she saw that I was about to confront Willa, she gave me more information than Willa could possibly provide—on the condition that I stay out of Willa's way. It was to my advantage to do so; soon enough it was no longer an issue.

     "But to get on with the story. Sara had done enough detective work to discover that Amos Proctor was attempting to blackmail both Reade and Charles Emory for their part in the McCord episode. Proctor was in deep trouble already. Since he was planning to leave the country, he had nothing much to lose.

     "Sara found out—I still do not know how—that Owen Reade turned Proctor down flat, that last night of the nineteenth century. He said he would risk exposure rather than compound a wrong. Emory was less willing to risk having his part in the plan exposed, so he had Proctor silenced permanently. I could never build a case that would see Emory stand trial, but there was enough circumstantial evidence to convince him that he should consider retiring from public service. That is how Sara kept him away from the Reades and the Malibu, and in part how Emory was convinced to relinquish control of the California legislature. So you see, Willa . . . McCord . . . what a tangled web of events were woven around what was—I have no doubt—a liaison swept along by emotion, by summer's heat."

     Willa raised her hand to her hair, a hand we could all see was shaking. "This is all so . . . preposterous . . ." she said, "I don't think I can believe . . ." But she did believe, you could tell she did. She simply hadn't been able to sift through all the ramifications.