Liar (23 page)

“We managed to get home before my mother came back from wherever she was. He was still shaken by the whole ordeal. So I gathered my courage and told him I already knew he couldn’t read, and I’d teach him if he wanted me to. He started crying. I had never seen him shed a tear before then. It scared the hell out of me.”

I called to the dogs, and we turned, heading back toward the house.

“He told me about a nightmare he used to have all the time,” Travis said. “In the dream he would be driving alone in the car to a place he had been to many times, but then the car breaks down along the way, before he gets to his next landmark. Tough-looking men are watching him- he’s in a rough neighborhood. Suddenly he’s near a phone-it appears out of nowhere, as things do in dreams-and so he calls the operator and asks for help. She puts him through to the police. The police say, ”We’ll send help right way. Where are you?“ He has to say, ”I don’t know.“ They say, ”Read the address on the phone,“ and he panics. He lies and says it isn’t on the phone, that it must have been torn off. The police say, ”Read the street sign,“ and he can’t. ”Read the signs on the stores,“ and he can’t. He finally has to tell everyone, ”I can’t read,“ and the police start laughing at him and hang up. The tough men are laughing at him, too. Everyone is pointing at him, jeering, and then walking away from him, leaving him, as if he isn’t worth bothering with.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Again we walked in silence.

“This morning, you asked about the time just after the murder,” he said. “It was this strange time when we-my father and my mother and I-were actually closer than we had been just before Gwendolyn died. We pulled together to protect my dad. Richmond was the enemy, this monster outside our gates.”

“Your mom already knew about the marriage between Gwendolyn and your dad?”

He nodded. “She found out-I never knew how, but she did. She was devastated. I can remember her staying in her room for days on end, not eating, not sleeping, just staring at the ceiling, crying. Wouldn’t answer the door or the phone. I took care of things the best I could, did the shopping, things like that. I got her to call my school and tell them I had the flu. Maybe it was just a kid’s way of looking at it, but I was afraid to go to school, afraid she’d kill herself if I was away from her too long.”

“But you were only-”

“Eleven. I finally told her I was going to get the priest-she begged me not to. She was so ashamed, thought of herself as everything from the world’s most gullible fool to a home-wrecker. I guess the threat of my telling anyone about it snapped her out of the worst of the depression. I started going back to school, life settled into a routine. But I don’t think she was ever the same after that.”

“Your dad-”

“I was angry at him, of course. She wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed. When she made him move out, I was glad. At the time, I didn’t want him to come anywhere near us. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

“They had hoped to settle everything quietly-for my sake, they said. Mom was going to sell the house, move to where no one knew us, tell everyone she was a widow.”

“Did Gwendolyn know?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think she knew. Mom made him swear he would never tell Gwendolyn. She believed they had both wronged Gwendolyn, but that no good would come of revealing the truth to her. It could only hurt her.”

“Did your father ever try to explain why he didn’t just divorce Gwendolyn? Why he tried to lead a double life?”

He was quiet for so long, I began to regret the question. He looked out over the water.

“He gave different explanations for it over the years. I suppose there is no one answer to that question. He was very young when he married Gwendolyn, and I think his brother pressured him into it-or pressured her into marrying my father, by threatening to expose her as a seducer.”

“What?”

“Gerald Spanning. My uncle. When I was becoming-oh, let’s call it
reacquainted
-with my dad, he talked a lot about his younger days, the days before he was married. I’ve never met Gerald, though.”

“Not even when you were little?”

“No. Gerald was part of my father’s other life. Introducing us would have meant revealing his secret family.”

“But after the secret was out in the open-”

“I don’t think Gerald had much to do with my father after the murder. The Kellys weren’t the only ones who disowned us.”

I let that go by. “Gerald was his older brother?”

“Yes. Gerald is a lot older than my dad-about ten years older. There had been at least a couple of other children born in the years between, but those children had died. They were poor. My grandparents were migratory farm workers.”

He smiled at my look of surprise.

“Yes,” he said. “A hard life. My dad said that when Gerald was barely out of short pants, my grandfather taught him how to ride the rails. They’d go all over the country, looking for farms that needed workers.”

“Are your grandparents still alive?”

He shook his head. “They were killed in an accident on the sugar beet farm. Papa DeMont-that’s what my dad called Gwendolyn’s grandfather-felt sorry for Gerald and my dad, and let them stay in the house they had been living in on the farm. He also gave Gerald a permanent job. I think Gerald was still a teenager.”

“How old was your dad?”

“My dad was very young. Still in elementary school. Gerald wanted him to stay in school, but he dropped out when he was twelve-he was already hopelessly frustrated with it because he couldn’t read. He wasn’t stupid-in fact, when I think of all he had to do to cope with his illiteracy, his strategies for hiding it… well, that’s another story.”

“So he went to work on the sugar beet farm.”

“Yes. I guess Papa DeMont saw that my dad could learn in other ways and took him on as sort of a challenge. My dad used to swear that was how he got his real education-following Papa DeMont around, listening to him talk, watching him work. My father had a natural ability with plants, so I don’t think Mr. DeMont regretted hiring him as a gardener.”

He cast a quick glance at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

“I don’t remember much about your parents’ home,” I said, “but I do remember the beautiful plants and flowers. I think my mother was jealous of her sister’s gardens-Arthur’s gardens.”

His brows drew together, and he looked away again. After a moment, he said, “Your husband-Frank?”

“Yes.”

“You said he planted the garden in your backyard?”

“Yes. Unlike me, he has a green thumb.”

He smiled. “My father didn’t pass his abilities on to me. I like Frank’s garden. When will he be back?”

I shrugged. “Soon, I hope.”

I called to the dogs, who were getting a little too far ahead of us. “I’ve forgotten now-how old was Gwendolyn when they married?” I asked.

“Forty-five. My dad was sixteen.”

“She was almost thirty years older than Arthur.”

“Yes. They were already friends. I never learned a lot about their marriage, but he did tell me that he was her only real friend. When Papa De-Mont-her grandfather-died, she was grief-stricken. I guess she did seduce my father, but he said he thought she turned to him because she was so lonely, so sad. He never seemed to feel angry at her about it.”

“But he came to regret marrying her?”

“I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it. By the time he married my mother, Gwendolyn was about fifty. He was twenty-two. He said he fell in love with my mother when he was old enough to know what it meant. He said he loved her then, and he would love her all of his life. I believe that-I think that was the truth.”

He stopped walking and turned to me. “I don’t really know the truth about why he stayed married to Gwendolyn. Sometimes he said it was because she was so lonely, and he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. Sometimes he said he loved her in a different way. Once he told me he owed her a kind of debt-one that money couldn’t repay. He told me that he was still paying on that debt, but wouldn’t explain what that meant. Another time, he just said it was too complex to explain, and we should just get on with our lives.”

I didn’t say anything, but with his next sentence, he spoke the accusation I had held back.

“It could have been that he wanted the money,” he said, “and that divorcing her would have meant giving up a fortune.”

“Do you think that’s it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to believe that’s why, but I don’t know. He didn’t like talking to me about her, or his life with her, or her money. But I never got the sense that his reluctance to talk about her was because he hated her; it was the habit of keeping those worlds separate, I suppose.

His marriage to her was always divided from his life with my mother and me.“

I whistled for the dogs, who were wrestling with one another a short distance behind us. Deke and Dunk broke apart, then went barreling past us.

“Your parents were separated,” I said, “but he was with you on the night of the murder?”

He hesitated only slightly before saying, “You’ve seen the scars-the old ones-on my hand. My father was at our home when I cut myself. He carried me into the emergency room. If you don’t believe me, there are all kinds of people who witnessed that.”

“I’m not accusing you of having lied about that night,” I said.

He smiled a little.

“I’m not,” I insisted. “I just wondered what he was doing over there if Aunt Briana was so hurt and angry.”

“He missed us. He needed us.”

“He was trying to patch things up?”

“No,” he said slowly, considering the question. “I think he was trying to accept the fact that his whole world was falling apart, but he wanted it to fall apart a little more slowly.”

“But the investigation brought you back together?”

“Briefly. Technically, the investigation is still open, of course. But even when the case was actively being investigated, Harold Richmond always refused to believe there was any possibility of another suspect. That was another reason he got demoted-he just didn’t do enough to investigate other suspects.”

“So he kept pursuing your dad.”

“Right. He added to my mother’s misery. He would corner her when she was, say, out shopping. During hours I was in school. He’d start out cajoling, then he’d get frustrated and angry with her-sometimes he was drunk. He’d tell her that he knew she had been paid off to lie for my dad, or tell her that he knew my folks had plotted to kill Gwendolyn, and that my mom had better not try to get back together with my dad.”

“Why didn’t she want her name on that restraining order?”

He shook his head. “She said Richmond was part of her penance. No priest ever assigned it, of course. It was her own idea. She spent a lot of years punishing herself.”

“For what?”

He looked down at his hand and shrugged.

I waited.

“For sleeping with a married man.”

“She didn’t know he was married!” I protested.

“Then for still wanting him, I suppose. For having brought shame to her family. For having a bastard child.”

“I don’t believe that she was ever ashamed of you.”

“How would you know?” he asked.

“Are we back to that again? All right, because I saw how much she wanted you before you were born. Because-”

He held up a hand. “Okay, you’re right. Maybe she wasn’t ashamed of me. Not of me, personally, but she was ashamed that I wasn’t legitimate. She blamed herself for my being a bastard. Every time I got in trouble at school for fighting someone over it, it was her fault-all her fault, she would say.”

“But Richmond wasn’t really a part of that. Why did she decide he was her punishment?”

He stared at his bandaged hand again. When he looked over at me again, he seemed to be studying my face.

“What?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The night of Gwendolyn’s murder. Do you really want to know the answers to all your questions? What if it means your aunt Briana helped Gwendolyn’s murderer to escape? Or that your newly rediscovered cousin is also an accessory after the fact?”

I didn’t answer right away. “Maybe you did something wrong when you were very young. Maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. I do know someone tried to kill you last night, and I’m also certain that the hit-and-run accident that killed your mother was no accident at all. That’s what concerns me now. And yes, it all seems to have something to do with Gwendolyn DeMont’s murder.”

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly and went on. “I don’t have much family left, Travis. You’re my cousin. That’s true whether or not you’ve done something wrong. But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything you can about anything that has a bearing on the DeMont case.”

He stopped walking, studied me again, and said, “All right, Irene Kelly. I’ll tell you the truth.” He held up his bandaged right hand, and at first I thought he was going to mimic a courtroom oath. But he said, “I saved my father with this hand. That wasn’t my idea at the time. In fact, I was enraged with him.”

“I don’t understand-”

“On the night of Gwendolyn’s murder, when he came to our house, my father touched the pane of glass, the one I broke with my fist. He touched it before I broke it. He left a bloody handprint on it.”

“A bloody… was he hurt?”

He smiled and dropped his hand to his side. “Kind of you to ask that first. No. He wasn’t hurt.”

“Gwendolyn’s blood.”

“Yes. For years, I thought perhaps he had murdered her, despite his denials. But one day, he got me to listen to him long enough to ask me a question. And that question made me change my mind.”

I waited.

“Let me back up a little-that night, I was watching my father through a window before he tried to come in the house. I watched him for some time. I saw him close up, and after I was hurt-when he came into the house-he held me in his arms.” Again he looked out over the water. “My father’s question was, ”Before I touched you, did you see blood on me anywhere other than the palm of that one hand?“”