Liar (30 page)

“What are town clowns and vag charges?” Deeny asked.

“Oh, sorry, honey. Town clowns are police. And vag charges are vagrancy charges. But they treated old Bobby like he was some kind of yegg, and as much as I don’t like him, I don’t think he was ever a yegg.”

“Which is?” she asked, not hiding her irritation.

“Well, I mentioned hoboes and tramps and bums, but there was another class of people out there, and they spelled trouble for everybody else-the yeggs. Those were the real hardened criminals-safecrackers and gangs of thieves and killers and people who did things I’d just as soon not mention. Horrible things. They were out there riding the rails, running from the law, raising the devil. They were really more dangerous to the hobo than just about anybody, but a lot of the local cops didn’t see any difference between a yegg and a hobo, so they treated us all the same.

“Anyway, Horace cried to his daddy and Papa DeMont bailed Bobby out. He brought them home and read Bobby up one side and down the other. Told him to haul himself up by the ass pockets and act like a man.

“I guess somewhere in all that Bobby heard what he needed to hear- but more likely he just had the jam scared out of him when he got arrested. But for whatever reason, Bobby got all respectable after that. Even fought in the war. And I hear tell that old Horace is still alive, but he must just be living on his meanness. Doug, his oldest boy, he died awhile back. I don’t know if Bobby’s still around or not.”

“You must have been fairly young when Bobby was arrested,” I said. “How do you remember that?”

“Oh, well, first off, because Papa DeMont liked my dad-Travis’s grandfather. And because my daddy knew his way around that part of the country, Papa DeMont sent him up there, along with Zeke Brennan-”

“Zeke Brennan?” Travis said. “He must have been young, too.”

Gerald laughed. “I’m talking about Ezekiel Brennan, Senior. He was the father of your daddy’s lawyer. Old Zeke didn’t drive, but your grandfather did. So they were going up there with the bail money and bring the two of them back. School just got out for the summer, and my dad took me with him. Papa DeMont let my dad take one of his cars, and that was my first ride in an automobile over any great distance. A big old Bentley. That was some car. I suppose that’s mainly why the trip stayed in my mind. And Papa DeMont didn’t usually lose his temper with people, so it was something to see him so mad at the two of them.”

There were a few other photos in the album, but not many. Most were of Arthur and Gerald together. A few were pictures of the sugar beet factory, apparently taken not long before it closed down.

“How long did you work there?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s see. We first came out here in 1938, when I was just about to start school. It was after the girls died; your grandmother decided she never wanted to live where it was cold again, and she found work in a cafe in the off-season, so she stayed here. Your granddad wanted me to get an education.”

“Were you able to go to school?” Travis asked.

“Oh, yes, for a time. And some of my schooling was on the road. Whenever work at the factory got a little slow, my father would take me with him and we’d go rambling, hire out wherever we could. I met some amazing fellows in those days. At the time, during the Depression, there were some highly educated men riding the rails. And the road itself will teach all kinds of lessons you won’t get in a classroom-some good, some bad. Anyway, we never left for very long at a stretch, because he didn’t like being away from your grandmother. I did go to school here pretty regular up until your grandparents died. Then it was up to me to take care of your daddy, and Papa DeMont always made sure I had work on his place after that.”

“What do you do for a living now, Uncle Gerald?”

“Oh, a long time ago, your father loaned me some money to start my own business,” he said. “I buy old houses, fix ‘em up and sell them. I’ve done well for myself, and I paid your daddy back. He wasn’t going to let me, but I did. I think he felt like I took good care of him, so…” His eyes clouded up, and he left the sentence unfinished.

He seemed to struggle with himself, then said, “I never did like the way he carried on with your mother. There, I’ve said it. I thought he was throwing his whole life away, and after Papa DeMont had been so good to us, I just figured your father had shamed our family. It was dishonest, really, and hurtful to someone who had never hurt him. Then he was mad at me, because I guess he did love you and your mother so much, and there were hard, hard words between us after Gwen was killed. We never spoke again.”

Travis slowly turned the pages of the photo album back, until the front cover was closed. “Do you think he killed her?” he asked.

“No,” Gerald answered without hesitation. “That wasn’t your daddy’s way. Never think that, not for one second.”

I looked at my watch. “We have to be going,” I said, to Gerald’s dismay and Deeny’s too-obvious relief.

“Can’t you stay a little longer?” Gerald asked.

Travis’s cellular phone rang, and he answered it, then said, “Yes, just a moment.” He handed it to me. “It’s for you, it’s Detective Collins.”

I took the phone, and said, “Hi, can I call you back in a few minutes?”

“Sure,” he said. “No privacy?”

“No.”

We hung up.

“A friend of my husband’s,” I explained to the Spannings, giving the phone back to Travis.

“We’d better go,” Travis said.

When we reached the van, Gerald gave Travis another hug, and this time, Travis returned it easily.

“Come over again,” Gerald said. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“I will,” Travis said. “Thanks for showing me the photos.”

“I’ll have some copies made for you,” he said.

“Thank you,” Travis said.

“How can I get ahold of you?” he asked.

Travis glanced over at me. “I’m staying with Irene.”

“You could stay here if you like,” Gerald said. “We’ve got plenty of room.”

Even without looking over at Deeny, who was pouting so openly she was shading her chin with her lower lip, Travis shook his head. “That’s kind of you, but I’ve got some other people to see in Las Piernas, so I might as well stay there. Maybe I’ll visit you after things settle down a little.”

“Sure,” Gerald said. “That’s fine.”

Travis gave Gerald his cell phone number. Gerald thanked him. “I’ve worked on a lot of places in Las Piernas,” he said to me. “What part of town do you live in?”

“We’re near the beach,” I said.

“You should see their garden,” Travis said.

Gerald smiled. “I’d like that. But mostly I’d like to see you again.”

Reed’s call was just a warning that Frank had already heard about today’s trouble. “But not from me,” he swore to me. “You know how it is around here; something this dramatic, the whole office is talking about it. He called in today before I could warn everybody to keep it quiet.”

I thanked him for the call and hung up.

The rest of the ride home was in silence.

“Why don’t you like him?” Travis asked as we pulled up at my house.

“Who are you talking about?”

“My uncle.”

“Your uncle appears to be a charming man. I have no reason to dislike him.”

There was a stubborn set to his jaw, but he didn’t argue.

Rachel pulled up as we were getting out of the van. She carried two big envelopes.

“Ah, just one big happy family,” she said as she reached us. I’ve never doubted her powers of observation.

“Anything interesting in the files?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’ve read through them once, but they deserve some real study.”

She quickly coaxed Travis into telling her about our adventures in the trailer park, and his mood lightened. He was a storyteller, and he told this one well.

As he went on and on about his uncle, I realized that for him, this was a vital connection-that Gerald Spanning was someone who could tell him about a group of people his father had been too young to know- grandparents and other relations. He now had a family to identify himself with, a family denied to a bastard child.

I felt the paper folded in my back pocket and found myself wishing I hadn’t seen it, wanting to be rid of it, hoping it wasn’t important.

In the end, literally, the dogs betrayed me.

I walked into the house first, listening to Travis say to Rachel-for perhaps the third time-“You’d really like him.” Deke and Dunk came forward to greet us but never moved on to Travis and Rachel, becoming quite fascinated with my rear pocket.

Their intense sniffing of one of my ass cheeks, even as I turned from them and tried to shoo them off, did not go unnoticed by my companions.

“They want whatever that is in your back pocket,” Travis said, laughing. “What is it?”

Since Deke showed every sign of being willing to pull the bulletin out of my pocket if I didn’t, I reached back and removed it, holding it high and snapping an irritable command at them to get down as I kept moving toward the kitchen.

They obeyed, skulking off with tails down, but casting reproachful looks back at me-making me believe the guilt trip was not, after all, a human invention.

There was a noticeable silence in their wake. Both Travis and Rachel were staring at me. I made myself unfold the coffee-stained paper enough to see that the date on it was the same as the one on the bulletin I had found among Briana’s possessions. I suddenly felt tired.

Rachel said,
“Che cosa e?,”
but Travis was closer and he took it from my hand.

“A church bulletin from St. Anthony’s?” he said, and I heard Rachel’s quick intake of breath.

“Where did you find it?” she asked.

“In the trash can under the Spannings’ sink.”

“What were you doing looking through their trash?” he asked sharply.

I didn’t answer. I went into the living room and tried to make peace with the dogs.

“Travis,” Rachel said, “open it up. Read through the announcements.”

He stared at her for a moment, then slowly obeyed. All the color left his face. She put an arm around his shoulders, took the bulletin from him, and led him to where I was sitting, putting him between us on the couch. He was looking at me in confusion.

“It announced my father’s funeral Mass,” he said.

“Yes. Your uncle already knew your father was dead.”

“But that means-oh, God!” he said miserably. “It means he was just putting on an act! That goddamned-” But as he said it he looked at me, and I was much handier than Gerald.
“You knew!”
he said angrily.
“You knew
that he was faking grief for my father, and you didn’t say anything to me! I asked why you didn’t like him and you said, ”Your uncle appears to be a charming man. I have no reason to dislike him!“”

This last was repeated in a mincing la-de-da tone that I have never used in my life. I ignored that, and the anger. “I saw the bulletin in their trash when I was getting rid of the beer cans. It looked like the one I found when I was going through your mom’s papers, but Gerald and Deeny came back out into the living room before I could do more than stuff it in my back pocket. I didn’t have time to check the date on it. Until just now, for all I knew, that bulletin could have been from a year ago.”

“But in the car…” He looked away from me. “Never mind, I understand.”

“I’m sorry, Travis,” I said.

“For what? Sorry that the Spannings are a pack of liars? Christ, there must be something in the DNA. A beguiler’s gene.”

Rachel laughed, surprising him into smiling back at her. “I do a good job of feeling sorry for myself, don’t I?” he said.

“Not especially,” she replied easily. “Most people I know, if they had the kind of weekend you’re having, they’d be throwing tantrums or getting drunk or locking themselves up in dark rooms for a good long cry.”

“All of those ideas sound great to me right now.”

“Nobody would blame you. How’s the hand?” she asked.

He shrugged. “If I’m distracted, it doesn’t bother me. When I was pretending I was someone else at the mobile home park, or looking at the photos…”

“You want a pain pill?”

“No,” he said. “A distraction.”

“Well, I’ve got the murder files, but are you really up to that?”

He hesitated, then said, “Sure.”

She looked over at me and said, “What about you? You’re looking a little worn down.”

“I’ll get a couple of aspirins. I’ll be all right.”

“I’ll get them for you,” she said, standing.

Travis turned to me and said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“It’s okay. And by the way, I think there are plenty of people to be proud of on the Spanning side of your family.”

For a moment I thought that little bit of understanding was going to be his undoing. I saw his eyes tear up, but he struggled to pull himself back under control. I got up to check my answering machine, just to give him a minute to himself. There was a message from Margot, saying she was back home and asking me to stop picking on Harold Richmond. Rachel, overhearing it, rolled her eyes.

“I guess I hadn’t really expected her to stay away from him,” I said.

There were two messages from McCain, requests to give him a call- polite as usual. Rachel just shook her head at those. I took the aspirin.

Travis was still thinking about Gerald. When we sat back down on the couch, he said, “Why? Why would he lie about something like knowing my father was dead?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he just wanted a chance to leave the room with Deeny, to talk to her out of earshot. When we first came in, I caught her giving him surprised looks a couple of times. Something was going on there, I’m just not sure what.”

“Or he wanted me to believe he really missed my dad, wanted the two of us to share sympathy-have something that would bring us together.”