In-Laws and Outlaws (25 page)

“Of course it does!” I cried. “How can you ask such a thing? But you don't murder people because they go crazy! Raymond was insane!”

Annette came up to stand by Oscar. “Raymond, I'm sorry to tell you, was in complete and constant control of his faculties. He was no more insane than you are. He knew exactly what he was doing. Raymond deliberately and cold-bloodedly set out to murder all our children.” Joel was listening to this tight-lipped and saucer-eyed. Elinor, who was nearest, placed a comforting arm around his shoulders.

And so finally the family's ugly secret was out in the open. Raymond never had forgiven the others for failing to come up with the money he'd thought would buy back Theo's life from the kidnappers. For a man whose whole existence was keyed to the solidity of a family base, the Kurlands' and the Henrys' and the Fergusons' failure to come through in time of crisis must have been unfathomable—as unexpected and inexplicable as the sun suddenly rising in the west or all the oceans of the world drying up overnight. He'd waited four years before finally figuring out what he was going to do about it; he had to have worked his way through many stages of his obsession before settling on his final, unmerciful plan. Raymond's whole idea of family must have gone through a full-blown reversal; nephews and nieces no longer meant anything to him other than a means of getting at their parents. Let
them
see what it was like to lose a child, and to lose one in such a grim and monstrous way.

I looked at Rob. “Back when you were feeding me all the various lies you'd thought up, you told me Raymond was the first to ‘suspect' the kids' accidents weren't really accidents. Why did you tell me that?”

Rob snorted. “Because, believe it or not, it happened to be true. You see what Raymond's problem was? The killings had to be staged in such a way that the police would accept them as accidents, but
we
had to be made to understand that they were not. His revenge would be less sweet if we thought it was nothing more than random bad luck that had destroyed the kids.”

So Raymond embarked on his scheme to teach the rest of the family a lesson. He'd waited in plain sight on the Vermont slope he knew Bobby Kurland would be skiing down. He'd bought a stolen car in Toronto to run down Ike Henry. And Lynn Ferguson had innocently opened the door of her hotel room, pleasantly surprised to see her Uncle Raymond in New York. What he'd had planned for Joel was not known. Then when he thought the timing was right, he'd planted the idea of murder and had the pleasure of watching them suffer.

But little by little, the various members of the family began to suspect the truth. They did some checking among themselves and found that Raymond's whereabouts could not be established for the times of any of the killings. The motive was painfully obvious to all of them. And Raymond had been … different, ever since Theo died. More remote. Less giving. On the surface, all was well. But Raymond had changed.

After the third death, Lynn's, they were sure. Raymond had said he was going to Atlanta to look into a new investment possibility, but he hadn't checked into his usual hotel. They'd called every hotel in Atlanta; no Raymond Decker had registered in any of them. About that time Raymond had begun to suspect that they were on to him; he grew restless and apprehensive. When the tension got to be too much for him, he'd fled to Martha's Vineyard.

So they'd decided to confront him. Elinor invented some errands to keep Connie in Boston and Joel was still in school, but everyone else headed for the island. Raymond was close to the breaking point; killing his own kin had put a greater strain on him than he'd anticipated. When faced with six unrelenting, accusing relatives, he'd not denied what he'd done. In fact, he eventually reached the point of boasting about it.

“He knew he was going to die,” Oscar growled. “Maybe he even wanted to die. He taunted us about what he'd done. He
taunted
us!”

I asked, “Didn't you consider going to the police at all?”

“Oh yes,” Oscar said with distaste. “About a hundred times we considered it. But all we had was our conviction that Raymond was guilty—the police want more than that.”

“There were other considerations as well, Gillian,” Elinor said in her hoarse voice. “What would Joel's life at school be like if everyone knew his uncle had murdered his brother and two cousins? What would happen to the family business? And Oscar's career would be ended, that was certain.”

“So it wasn't
just
to protect Joel.”

“Gillian, do make
some
effort to understand,” Elinor rasped. “If we went to the police, about the only thing that
wouldn't
be hurt is our philanthropic foundation—nobody's going to turn down free money. But everything else would be gone—the lives we've built for ourselves, Joel's future … all because we were too gutless to take care of family problems ourselves?”

That was the real reason, I suspected. Everyone there must have been horrified at the thought of making this family disgrace public. Of course they'd want to take care of it themselves, so that's what they'd done. They'd talked it over and decided Martha's Vineyard was as good a place as any—better, in fact, than most. With the island's history of no homicides, the Vineyard police wouldn't be so quick to suspect foul play as, say, the Boston police would. So Tom had given Raymond an injection of something to knock him out, and then they'd set the fire.

I looked at Tom. “‘First, do no harm,'” I quoted.

He turned his head away.

“Unfair, Gillian,” Annette said softly. “Tom was the one who resisted the longest, who looked the hardest for another solution. And he's suffered the most because of it. He was the one who wanted the divorce—not I.” She sat on the arm of Tom's chair and rested a hand possessively on his shoulder. “It wasn't just me he was divorcing—it was the whole family. He even told Connie and Joel he was leaving. But then he started seeing things in a different light.”

I'll bet. “You talked him out of it.”

She raised one elegant eyebrow, a smile playing around her lips. “No.”

Tom turned his anguished face toward me. “I talked myself out of it. I'm every bit as responsible for Raymond's death as the others are. They have to stay together and live with it—why should I be the only one to escape?” He pressed his lips together. “We had to stop Raymond, and we had to do it before he could get to Joel. If there were any other way, we'd have found it. This is my family, Gillian. I can't run out on them now.”

So when it came down to it, Tom couldn't break away from the Deckers after all. They had a lock on him. Forever. “Who set the fire?”

“
We
set the fire,” Michelle said.

That was probably the only answer I'd ever get. It was enough; it didn't really matter who'd actually struck the match. It was a family killing, and the family that slays together stays together. I was tired, desperately tired. “Why did you hire private investigators when you knew it was Raymond? Window dressing?”

“Pretty much,” Michelle acknowledged. “Three deaths in a row—it would have looked odd if we
hadn't
hired detectives. We informed certain key people like Patrick Underwood, to help plant the idea that an outsider might be involved.”

“An outsider—someone like Matthew Zeitz?” I asked. “Whose dumb idea was that?”

“Mine,” Rob said, surprised. “You believed it, didn't you?”

“For about an hour. Then I called the Boston police and checked.”

They all exchanged rueful looks. Tom asked, “Is that why you were throwing up in my bathroom?”

I didn't need to be reminded of that, so I asked him a question. “What was the gun for?”

“A prop. It's never even been loaded.”

“Nor mine,” Oscar said. The others all murmured agreement.

I was amazed. “You
all
have guns?”

“Of course,” Annette said. “Empty ones. You were making noises about how we weren't taking adequate steps to protect ourselves. We knew sooner or later one of us would have a chance to show you a gun.”

Was there anything they hadn't thought of? “You must be wrong about Raymond's sanity,” I muttered. “A man has to be thoroughly sick to do what he did.”

Elinor coughed a couple of times and said, “I'm growing a little tired of all this concern for
Raymond
. Since you couldn't be bothered having children yourself, Gillian, you have no idea what it's like to see your child struck down. Stop sentimentalizing Raymond. I won't stand for it.”

“Yeah,” Joel piped up unexpectedly. “Don't you like kids, Aunt Gillian?”

“I agree with Elinor,” Rob said quietly. “You've done nothing but judge us since you came back.”

“Well, somebody had better judge because all you're doing is making excuses for yourself. Look, I'm not sentimentalizing Raymond—murdering those three kids was evil and inexcusable. I just can't accept that your solution was the only possible one … for crying out loud, you've turned yourselves into
killers
because of him!”

“There,” Rob said. “That's judging.”

Oscar pitched in. “Gillian, we had a horrendous problem dropped into our laps and we took care of it in the way that would hurt the fewest number of people. One—Raymond. It's easy to go all squeamish and dainty after the fact. You never had to face it.”

“You're saying all the things you're supposed to,” Annette remarked dryly. “‘Oh, you terrible people, you actually killed Raymond!'” Her mimicry of my voice was unpleasantly accurate. “You're so conventional, Gillian. You're supposed to be shocked, therefore you are shocked.”

“I have every right to be,” I said shakily. “Of all the horrors committed in the name of family, this has to be the worst.”

“Where do you get the right?” Michelle asked in a tone of honest curiosity. “You, the expert in running away from problems! You desert the family, you lie to yourself, you bribe an impoverished museum—”

“Whoa!” I stopped her. “You're not going to say my cheating to get a job is the same as
murder
, are you?”

“I'm saying you're hardly qualified to cast the first stone, are you, now—Gladys?”

Gladys
. That stopped me cold; I hadn't known they knew. But they'd had me investigated. Probably even before Stuart and I … Jesus. Was there anything about me they
didn't
know?

But Joel hadn't known. “Gladys? What's this Gladys stuff?”

The others made a point of leaving it to me to answer him. “It's common practice in theater,” I said stiffly, “changing your name.”

Joel looked amazed. “Honest? Your name is really
Gladys
?” He snickered. “Aunt Gladys.”

“Enough of this,” Elinor said in a tone of hoarse authority. “Gillian, you know you can't go to the police. You have no evidence. They'll treat you like one of those pathetic people who are always pestering the authorities with news of imaginary crimes. The worst you can do is embarrass the family. I think it's time you resigned yourself to staying here with us
where you belong
. It's time you started accepting the responsibilities of being a Decker.”

“You want to make me an accessory after the fact,” I said bitterly. My head sank forward to my chest. I was so tired.

The twins came over and crouched down beside me, one on each side of my chair. I felt their touch on my arm, my shoulder, my knee. “We want you to put all this behind you,” one of them said; I didn't look to see which one. “We want you to stay with us always.”

“Yeah, Aunt Gillian—stay.” Oh, thank you, Joel.

I heard Oscar making some pronouncement about the museum's not being challenging enough work for me, and Elinor murmured something about the foundation's making a donation to compensate for my abrupt departure. The twins were trying to decide whether I'd be happier right in Boston or in one of the outlying towns. Rob said that could wait; I would take turns living with all of them for a while. They were planning my life for me.

I said I had to go to the bathroom; the twins helped me up as if I were an old lady. When I was finished, I stood outside the living room listening to the murmur of their low, cultivated voices; they were talking about investing some money in a play, or possibly even building a new theater. They wanted me to be happy.

And suddenly I knew I couldn't go back into that room. I couldn't just give in to them; it would be like saying
Yeah, there are times when it's okay to kill
. I had to get away from them—now, right now. If I didn't go now, I'd never get away.

I slipped out a side door, trying to think what to do. Connie would be no help; she wouldn't believe a word of what I said. I didn't have a key to the compound gate, and there was no way I could get over that big wall. So the only way out of there was by water. I fumbled my way down to the beach.

The Kurlands' boathouse was locked, as I'd expected; they wouldn't have left the keys in the ignition of the motorboat anyway. I left the pier and started along the beach toward Connie's house. So far as I knew, her boathouse hadn't been unlocked once in the time we'd been on the island; but I knew where she kept all her keys and there ought to be
something
in that boathouse I could use—a dinghy, a rubber raft. But finding the keys and getting back down to the beach was going to take time and I didn't know how much I—

Pain!
I let out a yelp before I thought; I'd banged my shin against something on the beach. I rubbed my shin with one hand and felt around with the other. What I'd run into was a sailboard Joel had forgotten to put away.

A sailboard. Was that my way out? Just then I heard one of the twins calling to me from the house; they knew I was gone.