Betrayal of Trust

Chapter 28

Much later it was the sound of Mel’s key in the lock that woke me. She came into the sun-filled room carrying a tray loaded with a coffeepot, two cups, two salad plates with silverware, a pair of napkins, and an enormous bowl of cut-up fresh fruit-several different kinds of melon, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.

“Ready to sit up and take nourishment?” she asked. She looked great.

“What time is it?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“I guess we missed checkout time.”

“I guess so,” she agreed. “But we don’t have much time. Ross expects us at Josh Deeson’s funeral, which starts at two. He wants us there for the funeral and for the press conference afterward.”

Ross is our boss, and an order is an order. I took two Aleves. I drank coffee. I ate fruit. Then I crawled out of bed, limped into the bathroom, and took a long hot shower.

Josh’s simple service was accompanied by mountains of floral arrangements and was conducted in the open air on the lawn outside the governor’s mansion. It was pretty much a standard funeral service. When the minister opened the microphone for comments, I was surprised to see Zoe Longmire slip out of her spot next to her mother and make her way to the podium.

Her words were simple and heartfelt. “Josh lived with our family,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t know him better. I’ll miss him.”

It was graceful. It was charming. It set the tone, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised because Zoe, like Gizzy, is her mother’s daughter.

Once Zoe sat down, a pimply-faced kid who said his name was Chipper Lawson stood up and talked about how Josh Deeson had helped him learn to play chess and that he was grateful. It cheered me to know that Josh had had at least one friend at Olympia High, someone who wasn’t Sam Dysart. And I made a note to myself to pass Chipper’s name along to the Sex Crimes guys in Olympia. If Dysart had made a habit of targeting socially needy kids, Chipper would have been another likely target.

There were several kids present, some of whom I recognized as having been at the scene of the Janie’s House fire. The only one of those that I knew by name was Greg Alexander. Dressed in a white shirt and tie, he stood to one side after the graveside service, talking quietly with Zoe.

Of all the kids we had met in the past few days, Greg seemed the most upright. Considering his troubled family background, I knew he was coming from a long way behind go, but somehow I sensed that he was going to make something of himself no matter what.

Giselle had been arrested the night before, but because she had not yet been formally charged, her name had not made it into the papers. I would assume that people at the service were puzzled by her absence, but no one mentioned it in my hearing.

It was late in the afternoon when we finally trooped back to the governor’s mansion where, flanked by Gerry Willis, Ross Connors, and Lieutenant Governor Roger Sikes, Governor Marsha Longmire stood in the shade of the mansion’s front portico and faced an army of microphones and cameras.

The press release announcing the briefing had given no indication of what was about to happen and didn’t contain any advance notice of the governor’s remarks. All it said was that she would be making an important announcement and that she would take no questions.

I watched Marsha Gray Longmire take her place behind the microphones with her customary grace and with her head held high. She waited for silence, then cleared her throat and began to speak.

“As you know, our family has been beset by tragedies this week, not only by the death of our ward, my husband’s grandson, Josh Deeson, but also by learning that our daughter Giselle has been taken into custody here in Olympia due to her part in some illegal activities that went on without her parents’ knowledge or approval. We are deeply saddened by the harm that her actions may have inflicted on other people and other families.

“In view of that, I can no longer function in this office. I thereby resign the post of governor, effective immediately. I have presented my letter of resignation to Attorney General Ross Connors and have notified Lieutenant Governor Sikes of my intention. My family will be moving out of the governor’s mansion as soon as those details can be arranged. In the meantime, I hope you will respect our need for privacy as we deal with these appalling events. Thank you.”

With that, she turned away. Then both she and Gerry Willis disappeared through the mansion’s massive front doors, closing them firmly. By the time the group of stunned journalists rumbled to life, she was gone, and newly installed Governor Roger Sikes, with Ross Connors’s capable help, was left to deal with the media fallout.

“Come on,” Mel whispered in my ear. “Let’s check out of the hotel and go home.”

And we did.

“I asked Ross for next week off,” Mel said as we rode the elevator up at Belltown Terrace. “We need to go to Texas. We can fly commercial or we can bite the bullet and take the jet. Which is it?”

I thought about the money the jet would burn, flying cross-country like that. Then I thought about my limping through airport concourses, getting on and off car-rental shuttles, and sitting for hours with my knees jammed up against the seat in front of me, while the guy seated there flew in full-recline mode.

Based on that, it wasn’t a tough decision.

“We’ll take the jet,” I said.

We flew out of Boeing Field twenty-four hours later on a Citation X. On the flight Mel and I spent most of the time talking about what the rest of the state was just now learning-that a group of supposedly well-respected “good” kids, terminally bored “good” kids, had gone bad and transformed themselves into a bunch of hoodlums. Giselle Longmire and Ronald Darrington Miller weren’t the only ones who would be facing charges.

Owen Wetmore, one of the Janie’s House houseparents, had been a full partner in Ronald Miller’s filming venture, and they had used Owen’s keys and security code to come and go at will. According to Gizzy, as soon as Josh died, Ron realized that the subsequent investigation might lead back to him. He had decided on his own that Rachel had to go. And then, when Owen started freaking out afterward, Ron decided that both Owen and the Janie’s House computers had to go as well.

Gizzy hadn’t been present when Rachel died and she hadn’t lit the match that started the Janie’s House fire, but she had driven the getaway car. She had known about the planned fire in advance and had done nothing to stop it. I thought it was likely that she would face homicide charges of some kind in regard to Rachel Camber’s death as well as Owen Wetmore’s. She also had admitted stealing Josh’s original watch-the one from Gerry Willis-just to bug him, just because she could. That day after the Janie’s House fire, Ron had gone to the governor’s mansion intent on retrieving what they both thought of as their trophies. They had been shocked to find the watch missing. He’d had the bracelet in hand and was on his way to Gizzy’s father’s house to pick up the thumb drive when Mel and I took him into custody.

It seemed to me that Gizzy and Ron deserved each other in every sense of the word-a twisted match made in hell rather than heaven. So far the judge had denied requests for bail from both defense attorneys. That had to come as a huge surprise, to Ron especially. For the first time in his life his parents’ position in the community wasn’t working for him. A denial of bail was only the first step in the process. Mel and I both knew that legal proceedings against the pair would take months.

We had obtained Giselle Longmire’s confession without striking any kind of plea agreement. We had every reason to believe that her confession would withstand legal scrutiny and that they both would be going to prison for a very long time.

Between now and then, both families were living in an ongoing media nightmare. I wondered if Marsha and Gerry’s marriage would survive all the strife. Gizzy’s actions had torn holes in the fabric of their marriage that would probably never be mended.

As for Josh? The smoking gun had been found not in his cell phone records but in Sam Dysart’s. A call from his phone to the governor’s mansion landline had evidently summoned Josh on that out-of-character jog that had so puzzled his grandfather. Olympia police officers, executing a search warrant, had found the torn gift-wrapping paper and the box that had held the replacement watch we had found on Josh’s wrist. Dysart had gone to great lengths to track down that particular model. I like to think Josh went to his death expecting that his grandfather would believe the ruse that the watch on his arm was the one he had given him.

Was the watch a bribe on Dysart’s part in exchange for sex? Or was replacing Josh’s missing Seiko a thoughtful gift? So far there was no clear answer to those questions. Regardless, Dysart’s relationship with Josh had crossed the line. He had further victimized a kid who had already suffered far more than he should have. I was glad the man was dead. Dysart’s death spared Gerry Willis at least one painful legal proceeding. And it probably kept Chipper Lawson, the pimply-faced chess player at Josh’s funeral, from being Dysart’s next victim.

“All of this makes me incredibly thankful that I don’t have to be in high school anymore,” I told Mel.

She nodded. “And it makes me grateful I never had kids,” she said. “Kids today do stuff we never considered doing.”

“Not all of them,” I said, thinking about Greg Alexander, a kid who, despite a troubled home life, would one way or another make it where he was going.

A bell rang in the aircraft’s cabin. We were starting our descent into Beaumont. It was time to raise our seats to their full upright position and fasten our seat belts.

When I had called my cousin in Texas to let her know our plans, I originally told her that we would rent a car. She wouldn’t hear of it.

“Someone will be there to pick you up,” she had said firmly.

Three and a half hours after leaving Seattle, when we landed at Southeast Texas Regional Airport, a shiny black Suburban limo was waiting for us next to the Fixed Base Operation. The Suburban drove out onto the tarmac to meet our plane. When the driver stepped out of the car next to the plane, he was wearing a gray suit with a starched white shirt, a bright blue tie, a gray felt Stetson, and a pair of highly polished black cowboy boots.

The pilot opened the hatch, letting an ungodly combination of the heat and humidity roar into the cabin.

“Welcome to Texas,” he said.

I knew in that moment that I never wanted to live in Texas. If this was what Texas was like in June, I wasn’t interested in seeing July or August.

The driver and our copilot took care of transferring our luggage from plane to vehicle while Mel and I settled into the backseat of the Suburban and reveled in air-conditioned comfort.

“I hope you know where you’re going,” I said jokingly to the driver when he got behind the wheel. “I have no idea.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m glad your plane was on time. Miss Hannah usually don’t make it past seven o’clock or so. Sad to say, she’s doing poorly. It’s breaking Miss Sally’s heart.”

I had thought Sally would hire a local shuttle service to come to the airport to do the ferrying honors. Instead, she had sent someone who was clearly a longtime family retainer. When we pulled into the driveway on Shadow Bend Avenue, we saw that the house was huge. My first thought was that we were pulling up to a hotel rather than a private residence. The driver popped the back hatch and then hopped out onto the baking driveway.

Mel reached over and squeezed my hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“It’s a little bigger than I anticipated,” I said.

The driver opened the car door and helped us out. Once I was upright, I needed to stand still for a moment or two to let my knees straighten out. “Has Mrs. Mathers lived here long?” I asked.

“Long as I can remember, that’s for sure,” the driver said, handing Mel out of the vehicle as well.

While he was grappling with the luggage, a woman came flying out the door to greet us. She was blond with big hair and dressed like she was about to hit the roundup trail, complete with jeans and boots. This was someone who, like Julie Hatcher, knew her way around horses.

“You must be Sally,” I said.

“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed, launching herself at me and grabbing hold of my neck. “Bless my soul if you don’t look just like your daddy.”

Of all the words I never expected to hear in my lifetime, those were at the very top of the list.

“This is my wife, Melissa Soames,” I said.

“People call me Mel,” Mel said, extending her hand. Sally Mathers ignored the proffered hand and wrapped Mel in a bear-hug embrace.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome!” Sally gushed. “I just can’t believe you’re really and truly here. Please, do come in.”

She ushered us into a grand foyer that made the one in the Washington State governor’s mansion look like a cheap reproduction.

“Bobby, please take their luggage up to their room,” Sally said. “You’ve had a long trip. If you want to freshen up first, that would be fine, but I really want to take you to meet Mama. She usually has good spells late in the afternoons like this, but they don’t last long. And I haven’t told her you were coming. First I was afraid it might not happen, then I decided I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“You’re sure it won’t be too much for her?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Sally said. “Mama’s tough as nails.”

Mel took her purse and ducked into a powder room just off the front entry. She came out with her lipstick refreshed and her hair combed, which, in my opinion, was more than she needed to do. Then Sally led us through the house. The artwork on the walls had names I recognized from my college humanities class. It made me smile to think that my first thought-and Ralph Ames’s thought as well-was that Sally Mathers was running some kind of game in hopes of scamming me out of some money. Not.

Hallways fed off one another, as though the house had been enlarged over the years simply by adding another section. Finally, at the end of the last one, Sally opened the door on an enormous bedroom. It was unrelentingly pink. There were froths of pink curtains at the windows and a cloud of pink material crowning the four-poster bed. There seemed to be a whole houseful of furniture arranged in the spacious room: a flowered sofa along with several matching easy chairs and several pieces of high-gloss cherry furniture-coffee tables, end tables, and dressers.

A tiny white-haired woman lay in the middle of the bed, propped up by a mound of pillows and wearing a pair of amazingly thick glasses. She looked downright ancient.

“No company, Sally,” Hannah Greenwald grumbled disapprovingly. “I told you very clearly that I was too tired for any more company today.”

“He’s come a long way to see you, Mama,” Sally said respectfully. “This is Mr. Beaumont.”

“Sure he is!” Hannah exclaimed. “Beaumont-that’s not a fit name for a chicken. And if he’s Mr. Beaumont, then I’m Miss Dallas.”

Sally shot me a sympathetic glance, but I deserved it. After all, hadn’t I made fun of Ronald Darrington Miller?

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, suppressing a chuckle. “I suppose it is a silly name. Some might even call it pretentious.”

That’s all I said-those few words, but suddenly there was a sea change in that appallingly pink room.

“You come closer, young man,” Hannah ordered. “Let me get a look at you.”

I stepped forward. She reached out a bony hand and pulled me to her, peering up at me, her eyes huge behind those ungodly glasses. She studied me for a long time. Then she dropped my hand.

“There you have it,” she said. “I guess I’m done.”

“Mama. .” Sally began.

“Yes, I’m dead already, and Saint Peter has sent Hank to take me through the Pearly Gates. Believe me, I’m ready.”

“You’re not dead,” Sally scolded. “This is your brother’s son, Jonas. He and his wife, Melissa, have come here all the way from Washington just to see you.”

Hannah squinted at her daughter. “Are you sure? Are you just playing a trick on me?”

“I’m sure, Mama,” Sally said. “It’s no trick.”

With that, Hannah Mencken Greenwald, the beloved aunt I never knew I had, broke down and sobbed like a baby. And I admit it-so did I.

Hannah stopped crying abruptly and looked at Sally. “All right then,” she said. “Tomorrow first thing, you get Leroy over here. Tell him I need to change my will.”

“Yes, Mama,” Sally said. “I’ll call him as soon as his office opens up in the morning.”

Hannah frowned. “What year is it again?” she asked.

“It’s 2009, Mama,” Sally said. “June.”

“All right then,” Hannah said. “You-all had better hope I die this year or next. After that, the damned estate taxes are going to be sky-high, and I don’t want you to give Uncle Sam one more nickel of my money than you have to.”

I guess there wasn’t much question about Hannah Mencken Greenwald being of sound mind.