When Venus Fell (7 page)

“Watch us do it,” he said. “I hope you and your sister have friends who can help you out. Because we’re about to confiscate every penny of your dad’s money and every square inch of his belongings.”

And they did.

That was my encounter with the Secret Service. Guardians of the world’s leaders. Protectors of the true-blue currency.

Who sent moving vans and carted away every piece of furniture, every china setting and lamp and couch and chair, beds, pillows, paintings, and even the linens I had folded time and again. Our diaries, our school yearbooks, letters and birthday cards we’d saved, poetry we’d written.

And Ella’s violin. And my piano.

Our music.

Our innocence. Our life.

As my shock over Gib’s past career settled into leaden acceptance, I walked a few feet away, took a deep breath, then demanded in a low voice, “Did you ever harass women and girls? Did you ever bully innocent people and confiscate everything they owned?”

“No,” he answered quietly. “I know you dealt with Treasury Department agents after your father died, and I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant, but the men and women I’ve worked with would die to protect your rights.”

“Then you didn’t work with the ones who came to see my sister and me.”

I’m sure he saw the disgust I felt. He had no nervous
mannerisms except for subtle efforts to keep his disfigured hand out of sight, and now he planted the other broad, handsome hand on his left knee, as if showing me it was safely anchored there. “Be fair,” he said. “Don’t despise me on principle alone. At least let me give you good reason to despise me. Do you know what the first week in September is?”

“It’s my parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary.” I watched him like an angry cat.

“That means it’s the inn’s anniversary, too. Thirty years ago your parents were our first guests.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t want to sentimentalize that history any more than you do. Your life’s been hard in the past ten years. I can see that. You’ve learned some ugly lessons. You’ve survived some bad treatment. You have a right to be suspicious of anyone who pokes around in your business. But there’s no excuse for your outright distrust when I haven’t given you any reason to distrust me.” He paused. “Unless you’re trying to prove you’re as paranoid as your father was.”

I leaned toward him furiously. He just couldn’t resist the subject of Pop. “I know your type. I don’t like you because you remind me of all the smug, patronizing, holier-than-thou minions of Uncle Sam who’ve deliberately made our lives miserable. You don’t give a damn about my wishes or my opinion. Go back to Tennessee and leave me alone.”

“I can’t fault you for defending your own daddy, but you could have honorably cooperated with the investigations, and you didn’t. You sacrificed any chance you had of going on with your classical career. You dragged your sister along on this odyssey to see how much punishment you could take while you thumbed your nose at the rest of the world.”

“How dare you judge me! You don’t know—”

“Isn’t it time to stop before your sister ends up back in a mental hospital for another round of treatment?” He paused, his eyes merciless on mine. “Yes. I’m talking about Detroit.”

I had a hard spine but a soft underside, and he kicked me where it hurt. I balled my hands into fists. He’d gotten Ella’s medical files.

“Go ahead. Hit me,” he urged in a soft tone. “You want to fight with the
Man?
The System? All right, I’ll take the rap. Let me have it. I won’t hit you back. I’m not the one who ruined your prospects. I’m not here to hurt you—or Ella.”

“Tell me what you want.”

He was silent for a few seconds, searching my eyes as if he needed to see my soul—to prove I had one. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “Your father left you a hundred thousand dollars. I’ve got it.”

I opened my mouth, shut it, tried to think, to absorb that unbelievable claim. Finally I simply pivoted and made my way to the concrete water fountain. I tracked the sluggish goldfish as if they were my own dizzy thoughts. Gib walked over and stood beside me, staring down into the algae-crusted water. “Surprise,” he said.

“This is a bad joke.”

“No. Ten years ago a stranger walked up to my older brother outside a building at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. My brother was there to accept an award from the College of Business. My brother—Simon. This man—this stranger—had obviously been following him, waiting for an opportunity. It was the same week your father died, after he was arrested. The stranger walked up to Simon and shoved a small briefcase into his hands. He said, ‘Max Arinelli begs you on his wife’s soul to keep this for his daughters. Just keep it until they come for it.’ The man turned and ran. My brother opened the briefcase. It was full of hundred-dollar bills.”

My head swam. “I’ve never known
anything
about money being sent to your brother. Nothing. If you don’t believe me—”

“Since you never showed up to claim it, I think you’re telling the truth.”

He studied me with a troubled expression. I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Everything my father owned was confiscated or—”

“Obviously he had money hidden for an emergency. When he was arrested he got word to somebody he trusted. Somebody willing to go to Tennessee and deliver the money to my brother.” Gib leaned toward me, a muscle popping in his jaw. “I don’t understand why your father did that, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he never forgot how he and your mother were treated by my family. No matter how much he rejected us—the same way he rejected all his old friends after your mother died—I guess when push came to shove he still thought he could count on my family for help.”

“You don’t know what this means to me,” I whispered.

“Here’s what it means to me: My brother agonized over that money. He knew he should turn it in to the authorities, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He stuck the money in his office safe and waited for you and your sister to come for it. When you didn’t, he never touched it again and he never told a soul. My brother wasn’t the kind of man who kept secrets from his family. I don’t doubt the deception worried him for years.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m still waiting for you to laugh and tell me you made this up.”

His face darkened. “My brother’s honesty and sense of duty isn’t a joke.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I wish it were that simple. The money’s dirty. Drug money. Gun money. From all that money your father laundered to serve his cause. That fact weighed on Simon’s conscience—but not as much as his compassion did. He was a father himself, and he understood what your father was trying to do. He left a letter in his safe-deposit box saying he felt like a coward for not finding you and Ella and handing you the money. He’d been afraid that somehow it could hurt our own family to be
associated with Max Arinelli’s hidden money. But he said in his letter he’d been wrong. That only God could judge your father’s legacy to you.”

“Your brother,” I said numbly. “Simon. What happened to him?”

Gib was silent for a moment. His throat worked. “He died a little over a year ago.”

My mind whirled again. “Died? You found the letter—”

“A few months later. In his papers. Now my sisters and my great-aunt know about it, too. And Simon’s wife knows. We all know. We’re trying to do what he wanted done. He wanted you and Ella to have that money.”

One hundred thousand dollars. It could be the down payment on a small music club somewhere. Or on a house. Or the start of a retirement fund that would ensure that neither Ella nor I ended up on the street playing for tips and eating out of garbage cans. I had promised Ella for years that someday we’d have the money to settle down.

“The money’s yours,” Gib insisted. “No strings attached.”

My daydreams cooled. “There are always strings.”

“Well, nothing you can’t handle.”

I stared at him. “I swear to you I didn’t know about the money before.”

“I can only assume your father intended to tell you.”

“He didn’t live long enough to tell me anything.”

“He lived long enough to pull my brother into a dicey situation.”

“I see. Anything associated with my father is automatically tainted. Including me. Including Ella.”

“Look, I’m here to fulfill my brother’s wishes. My whole family’s wishes. I’ve found you and Ella for them. The money’s waiting for you at Cameron Hall. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t exist. If you don’t come to the Hall and carry it away with your own hands I swear to God I’ll burn it.”

I turned without another word, walked back to the picnic table, and sat on the tabletop staring blindly at the plastic
wineglass I cupped in my hands. I clutched it so hard the bowl cracked. I was dimly aware when Gib sat down beside me. He took the ruined glass out of my hand and tossed it neatly into the trash can. “The money’s yours, either way,” he said.

I gritted my teeth. “I learned a long time ago that no one gives a damn about my sister and me. If I didn’t want the money for Ella, I wouldn’t humble myself to sneak into your ancestral home like a whore.”

“Interesting choice of words. Unfortunately, your plan won’t work.”

“What do you mean?”

He rubbed at lines of fatigue and tension in his forehead. He blew out a long, disgusted-sounding breath. “You’ve been imbued,” he said, “with an importance far greater than you want to imagine.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You read my great-aunt’s note. You and your sis are invited to the Hall,” he repeated quietly. “That’s what we call it—Cameron Hall. We’ve been closed for a year. I don’t know when or even if we’re going to reopen the inn. So you’ll be our only guests.”

The estate had been closed for a year? Before I could catch myself, I glanced meaningfully at his hand. “I don’t want to be anyone’s symbolic totem,” I finally said.

For a second he shut his eyes, then opened them and scanned the distant skyscrapers as if searching for an escape. “Too late. You represent the triumph of old hospitality come home to roost. And of course the rest of the family sees welcoming you and Ella as the fulfillment of my brother’s wishes.”

“What do you see us as?”

He hesitated. “A gamble,” he said.

I quickly looked away to hide my disappointment. “You’re telling me that if I want that money I have to perform. What kind of act do you want?”

“You have to visit. That’s all. Come set a spell. Kick your
shoes off. Allow yourself and Ella to be pampered. You’ve been designated as Company.”

This was no small thing, in the southern sense of that word. If a person visited a home in the South for any length of time, whether for a mere one-night stay or weeks, months, even years of habitation, that visitor achieved the status of Company, meaning he or she received deluxe treatment.

“How long is your definition of a spell?” I asked, stunned. “How long does your great-aunt expect us to stay?”

“That’s up to you. I’d say anything less than a week wouldn’t even register on her Company scale. You have to understand. Our cousin Bea came to visit when I was a little boy. She’s still there. Another cousin moved in two years ago. In your case, two weeks ought to do it.”

“Two
weeks?
That’s impossible.”

“I’m not any more comfortable with this than you are.”

“I don’t need your charity. Or your self-righteous judgments.”

“Maybe my family’s a little crazy right now. Looking for answers to make the world feel safe again.” He actually smiled a little. “Come and be crazy with them. I’ve spent most of the past year with my arm in a sling and my hand taped up like a baseball glove. All I could manage to do was type one-handed on a little laptop computer. That’s when I started hunting for you through the Internet. On days when I thought I’d lose my mind I made myself focus on that. On finding information that would lead me to you.”

His eyes were a light shade of brown, maybe hazel, flecked with gold I could see even in the shadowy light. Unrelenting. Goosebumps ran up my spine. I couldn’t escape this man any more than I could escape the past. The days that followed Pop’s arrest and death were burned in my memory forever. He’d used the Camerons to reach me with a gift of love. The money was now a bond between us all.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Wait here.” I stumbled to the RV then past Ella, sound
asleep and angelic in her bunk. I searched through a cigar box where I hid mementos and what little decent jewelry I had. When I walked back outside and held out my hand, palm up, a small, smooth quartz rock gleamed dully under the yellow streetlights. “You gave this to my mother. She named me Venus because of the story you told her about this. How it was a piece of the evening star. She loved that story. She recited it to me every night.”

Astonishment showed in his gaunt face. I thrust my hand closer to him. I dared him to touch me, but he didn’t move a muscle. My hand trembled, then sank. Holding on to my dignity was hopeless. “After my mother died I wanted to believe you’d always be special, just as she said you were. Maybe you’re not special and neither am I. We don’t have to care about each other. Just tell me if you really believe any good will come of me and my sister going to visit your family in Tennessee.” And then I waited.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, searching my eyes. “I’m not an optimist by nature. But I promise you this much. You don’t have to like me, but you can trust me. That’s more than you can say about any other ‘government man’ you’ve known.” After another awkward silence he frowned deeply and started toward his jeep. Just before he reached for the door he turned and looked at me one more time. “I like the way you take care of your sister,” he said. “Family loyalty. I respect that. I hope you’ll respect mine.”

Tears stung behind my eyes. I fought any sign of weakness. I would honor Simon Cameron’s kindness and Gib’s devotion to him.

“I’ll come and get my money,” I said without a shred of emotion.

“Good.”

He left. I strained my neck watching him drive away, even walking to the edge of the street to catch one last glimpse before he disappeared into the Chicago night.