Shadow Image (14 page)

“So they weren't legal?”

Staggers nodded. “Who knew? These people trade green cards like baseball cards. The Underhills just assumed they were paying the taxes, and when they found out we had a couple of outlaws on our hands, well, you
know
Ford would have gotten tarred with that sooner or later. Forget it was his parents, not him, who hired them.”

Brenna brushed a stray hair away from her face.

“They didn't want it becoming an issue, so they let the INS take them,” Staggers said. “Not that the Underhills even thought about defending these people, you know. They were definitely illegitimate.”

Brenna studied the man, looking for cracks in his sincerity. “So they're gone already?”

“Immigration people don't mess around,” he said, nodding. “Damned misfortunate, too. You
know
good help's hard to find.”

As they left the library on the way to her car, she noticed Vincent Underhill at his desk in the study, talking on the telephone. She hung back, waiting for Staggers to move ahead into the grand prairie of the house's foyer, then sidestepped through the study door. She smiled when the startled former governor looked up. He smiled back and motioned her to a wing chair across from his desk as he nodded his assent to whoever was on the line. She was sitting down by the time Staggers caught on.

“Something else you need from the governor?” he whispered, stepping between her and Underhill, moving his arms as if he were trying to scoop her out of the room. “I'd be happy to ask him, if you have any other questions.”

She shook her head, noticing before it became obvious that she had a vise grip on the chair's arm. She wasn't moving, wasn't about to let the house dick hustle her out the door without a few more answers. “Some things need to stay between an attorney and her client, Mr. Staggers.” She winked. “Thank you, though.”

“He's pretty busy. See?”

“Aren't we all?” she whispered. “Where does the time go? I won't take but a minute. Promise.”

“I just think you'd be more comfortable waiting out—”

Vincent Underhill excused himself from his conversation and softly replaced the handset of his desk phone, his face apparently untroubled by the intrusion. Staggers whirled and shrugged in the same motion, but Underhill waved him away. He left obediently. If Brenna had to guess from the former governor's expression, Underhill had the look of a man wondering if he was being seduced.

“Ms. Kennedy,” he said, suddenly on his feet. “How wonderful you're still with us.” He looked at his watch. “Just checking here and, yes! It's time for another drink.” He walked to the liquor cart and hoisted a crystal decanter identical to the one in the library. “Brandy?”

“I've got a full afternoon, I'm afraid. Thanks, though.”

“Small one?”

“Thanks, but no.”

He sighed, measured the liquid gold into a snifter, then toasted her. “Unemployment has its privileges. Now what can I do for you?”

“It's about the Chembergos,” she said.

Blank stare. “Enrique and Selena!” he said after a moment. “Of course.” Underhill shook his head. “Damned good people. Been with us at least two years. Quiet. Clean. She was so good with Floss.”

“But when did these INS questions come up?”

He whirled the brandy, sniffed, and sipped. “What's today? Two days ago maybe?”

“And they've already been deported?”

He laughed. “When did a federal agency ever move that fast, Ms. Kennedy? No, once we ascertained the validity of the allegations, we acted on our own in helping them comply with the law.”

“
You
sent them back to Guatemala?”

“It's a statewide election, Ms. Kennedy, and you know how these things can get twisted. We're not taking any chances. Of course, we're not unfeeling. There was a reasonable severance.”

Brenna leaned forward. The man couldn't be that stupid.

“Devil's advocate,” she said. “May I?”

“Please.”

“Okay. I'm a publicity-mad D.A. with a grudge. Ten days before a statewide election, I have reason to investigate a suspicious accident, an attempted suicide, maybe even a possible attempted homicide, at the home of the leading candidate, of whom I'm not particularly fond. My case hinges on a witness who claims the victim wasn't alone at the time she was injured. You with me?”

Underhill nodded.

“Now, right before the election, the witness disappears. I check it out, and sure enough, the witness is long gone, out of the country, along with his wife, who was very close to the victim. And they've got a fat wad of cash,
your cash,
in their pockets.”

Underhill set the glass down on the edge of his desk. “But we had to respond appropriately,” he said. “Legitimate questions were raised.”

“By whom? The INS?”

Underhill sat down in a chair across from her, studied her over his steepled fingers. “Come now, Ms. Kennedy. In the heat of a campaign, reality becomes whatever fits into an attack ad or a last-minute mailer. People we know at INS told us what Dagnolo's people were up to. Do you know what they were doing? Feeding everything they had, such as it was, to the Rosemond campaign. We know this. They didn't need proof. If they'd timed it right, simply raising the question about our little immigration problem would have been enough to smear Ford as an over-privileged lawbreaker. But in this case, they got lucky. There
was
a hole in this couple's paperwork. They weren't about to let that slide. We know that much. So as soon as we knew there was a problem, we acted.”

Brenna sat forward. “I'm the nosy D.A., remember? I'm looking at more than an election, I'm trying to bump this whole thing up to an attempted homicide charge, and I'm looking for someone in your family to pin it on. Frankly, I see you trying to solve an entirely different problem here.”

Underhill pinched the end of his nose between his upthrust index fingers. “You think it looks like a payoff by someone with something to hide.”

“I think,” she said, “it looks like hell. In the hands of an opposing candidate, it's an unpleasant handful of mud. In the hands of a D.A. building a criminal case, it's a coverup.”

Underhill leaned back and stretched his long legs, crossing them at the ankles in the space between their chairs. “You worry too much, Ms. Kennedy.”

“You're paying me to worry,” she said. “But at this point, there's not much you can do about it. But I'd like to fly down to interview Enrique Chembergo. There may be big holes in his statement, but we'll never know that unless—”

“Drop it, Ms. Kennedy. Please. What's done is done.” Underhill picked up the glass and swirled the brandy, then tipped it all the way back. He studied the bottom of the glass as his head cleared. “One of life's great lessons, Ms. Kennedy: First, make the right choice, then worry about the consequences. We did what was right. That's how this family operates, has always operated.”

Brenna shrugged. “You're the client. But I don't think someone like Dagnolo—”

“It didn't start with me, of course,” Underhill said, looser now, lubricated. “We all carry forward what we're taught. The guiding principles that my father learned from his father, Ford learned from me. We're Underhills, Ms. Kennedy. That still means something.”

Maybe a different tack, she thought. Flattery is the inquisitor's secret weapon. Stroke him. Let his ego do the talking. “So I read in the papers, governor,” she said. “I've always known there were principles behind your politics. So often they get lost.”

Underhill straightened in his chair, offered a benevolent smile. “Not with us.”

Brenna decided to push. “Gosh,” she said, “there's still so much about your family I don't know.”

By his third brandy, Vincent Underhill already had covered the proud history of three generations since grandfather Andrew. Now, he was deep into his national political aspirations for Ford. Brenna needed only an occasional nod to keep him talking. What Underhill didn't mention, though, was curious. For a man so infatuated with the notion of legacy, of great and righteous Underhillian values passed like a torch from one generation to the next, why hadn't he mentioned the obvious: With the death of his only grandchild three years earlier, the great Underhill lineage might end with Ford.

“Tragedy is the greatest test of character,” she said. “I understand you've had your share of it in the past few years.”

Underhill's eyes drifted, but only for a moment. “Alzheimer's doesn't respect much of anything, Ms. Kennedy. Not money, or power, or privilege. Doesn't give a damn about character. But we're quite involved with the Harmony Center, as you probably know. Whenever we've had misfortune, we try to learn from it, to educate others, to inspire.”

She nodded respectfully. It was time to test him. “And of course you and your wife got so involved in brain-injury causes three years ago. I remember that well.”

Underhill shifted in his leather chair, then fixed his gaze on hers. She waited in silence for a response, finally prompting: “After the accident with Ford's son, I mean.”

Brenna couldn't tell exactly what had changed, but something in the man's face softened. His eyes never shifted, but the skin around them seemed to sag, as if gravity had suddenly gotten stronger. The roots of whatever she'd hit went deep.

Underhill unfolded his hands and laid them on the arms of his chair while he traced the pattern of rivets on the front of the right chair arm with one long finger. “Pray, Ms. Kennedy, that you never experience the kind of sadness that the death of a child can bring.”

She thought of Taylor, couldn't help it, couldn't stop every mother's nightmare from bobbing up from the unspeakable depths. “I do,” she said. “It's the
only
thing I pray for. I know how painful—”

“No.” He held one hand toward her, pink palm out. “You can't know, remember?”

“Yes, Mr. Underhill, I can. You don't have to live a tragedy like that to imagine it, and no parent could imagine it
without
knowing the pain.”

Underhill squinted, slowly nodding his head. “Well argued, counselor, but I disagree.” He drew his legs up until he sat upright behind his desk, proper but not rigid. “How much do you know about what happened?”

“A riding accident,” she said.

A sad laugh. A nod. “You never think much about the word ‘accident' until something like that happens, until a child dies. Accidents happen. Everybody knows that. You accept it as part of life. But there's a whole world of guilt and what-ifs inside the word ‘accident,' Ms. Kennedy. Anybody who's been there carries it like a cross, and for the rest of their lives.”

Underhill stood up, moving now as if in slow motion, and measured himself another dose of brandy, smaller this time. “It was a Sunday,” he said, offering the decanter again. Brenna shook her head. “We weren't even expecting them, Ford, Leigh, and Chip. They just came rolling up unexpected, out for a drive or something. And Chip—God, he was irrepressible—came bouncing out of the Range Rover like a little tornado, all full of plans.”

“Chip was three?”

He nodded. “An amazing age. They're pretty sure they're running the world when they're three.”

“So I'm guessing it was his idea to go riding.”

“Exactly.” Underhill smiled. She felt she'd connected on some level. Then his face sagged again. “But it was my idea to send them out on Gray.”

“That's the horse?”

“One of Floss's jumpers. Beautiful animal. Strung tight as a banjo string, though. Skittish. Ford's a decent rider, but my gut told me to give them one of the gentle mares, something high-mileage. But there he was, that damned gelding, the only one in the stable saddled up and ready. So Ford climbed on, I handed Chip up to him, and off they went.”

Brenna smoothed her skirt, leaning forward as she did. “You can't blame yourself.”

Underhill sipped at the brandy. “Sure I can.”

“As a friend of mine would say, that's your choice.”

He nodded. “My choice, yes, because I've never shrunk from responsibility, Ms. Kennedy, although I know that's out of fashion. A different horse, who knows?”

“But that sort of second-guessing—”

Underhill set the brandy glass down with an indelicate thump. “The thing about an ‘accident,' see, is that it comes with a lifetime of second-guessing. There's no debate about what happened. It was just one of those things. But you go back and relive the decisions you made that led up to what happened, turn them over and over again, wondering what you might have done differently, how that might have changed things. And you struggle with the questions, like Sisyphus and the rock, but they roll right back. Sometimes they roll over you.”

Brenna recrossed her legs. “What did happen, governor?”

“Out there, while they were riding?”

“The horse reared or something, right?”

Underhill closed his eyes. “Do you know how Fox Chapel got its name, Ms. Kennedy?”

Brenna shook her head.

“Well, actually, neither do I.” He opened his eyes again. “But damned if there aren't still foxes running around out there on all this expensive real estate. We haven't yet taken all their habitat, or at least they seem to like what we've done with it. They stuck around. So there are foxes in Fox Chapel.”

“Foxes,” she repeated.

“Ford said there was something wrong with the one that crossed the trail that afternoon. It was dull red, not like the others we see around here, my son said, with these tired eyes, head hanging low to the ground like it weighed a ton. Sick-looking, maybe rabid. Something wrong, but we may never know exactly what.”

“Horses can sense things,” she said.

“This wasn't a trail horse in the first place. Lived its whole life in a stable or a ring. So this fox, whatever the problem with it, just spooked the hell out of him. It was a narrow stretch of trail, down in the bottoms behind the house, and Ford said he couldn't control him. When he reared, they all went over backward.”

“The horse fell on them?”

Underhill swirled the residue of his brandy and watched the teardrops roll down the sides of the glass. “Ford was able to grab Chip and jump clear. The horse got up, still agitated, wide-eyed, but everybody seemed to be all right. They thought it was over.”

Brenna imagined Ford's relief as he realized his young son was safe.

“But the fox was still there, maybe fifteen yards down the trail,” Underhill said. “It started coming straight for them, kind of wobbly-legged. Ford said it looked like a mean drunk. That's when they really knew something was wrong with it.”