Inherit the Bones

Chapter Twenty-three

Finn waited in the Bellingtons’ driveway. He must have left the station right after our call, whereas I had to make a pit stop at the Conoco station, and then a second at the McDonald’s on the north end of town. Whatever I’d eaten wasn’t finished ravaging my insides. Both stops were uncomfortable enough to make me consider calling the visit off.

But the image of Finn questioning the Bellingtons alone, his baby blues batting at Ellen and Annika, gave me enough motivation to grit my teeth and carry on.

Finn sat in the driver side of his Porsche, a hot ride that was impractical in Cedar Valley. He drove it four months a year, and a Suburban the other eight, and every time I saw the sports car I cringed. He had a way of working that car into a lot of conversations.

I parked as close as I could to the house and together we dashed through the rain to the front steps.

“You really ought to think about getting a stick, Gemma. The Porsche handles so great on these mountain roads,” he said. He gave the car a fond look and I wondered if he was as attentive to his girlfriends, he might have better luck with his relationships.

I ignored him and knocked on the door.

After a long minute, Annika opened the door. She wore an oversize men’s navy sweat suit and tan sheepskin slipper boots. Her long pale hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she looked like she had just woken up.

“Hi, honey, is your mommy or daddy home?” Finn asked.

Annika stared at him a moment and then looked at me. “Gemma?”

“Annika, hi. We have a few questions we’d like to ask your parents, and you, too, if you all are free.”

She nodded and let us in. “They’re in the living room with Grandpa. They thought he might enjoy watching the rain. Sentimental fools, they think he can still enjoy stuff like that.”

We followed her down the same long hall that just a few days before, Mrs. Watkins had led Chief Chavez, Sam Birdshead, and me. The pouring rain and general gloom outside only served to emphasize the cold atmosphere inside and I shivered. Finn noticed and for a moment I thought he was going to offer me his jacket, but he only rolled his eyes and gave me a look.

“Mom? Dad? The cops are here,” Annika announced. The living room was silent and her words fell like thunder.

Terence Bellington jumped. He sat next to his father on the couch. The older man’s wheelchair was folded in, leaning against the coffee table. Across from them, Ellen sat with her legs tucked up under her, a coffeepot in one hand and a mug in the other. She didn’t look up, but kept her attention on the hot liquid she was pouring.

Finished, she set the mug down and said, “A call would have been appreciated.”

I nodded. “I agree, but there wasn’t time. I apologize for disturbing you, Mayor, Mrs. Bellington. Something has come up. We’ll only take a few minutes of your time. This is my partner, Finn Nowlin. You may remember him, he headed the investigation on Nicky’s accident, three years ago.”

Finn buttoned his suit jacket and stepped forward and put his hand out to Terence Bellington. After a moment, the mayor stood and shook it.

“Of course, of course. Have you found Nicky’s killer?” he asked. Like his daughter, he wore a navy sweat suit and slippers.

“No, unfortunately.”

I glanced at Frank Bellington. The elderly man seemed unaware of our existence, let alone his own. He stared in Ellen’s direction but I don’t think he really saw her. Annika was probably right; her grandfather was beyond enjoying much of anything these days.

The Frank Bellington I remembered from my childhood was a boisterous man with a naughty sense of humor and a never-ending supply of hard butterscotch candies. He was attractive and compelling; a businessman who built up an empire selling real estate and properties in what was to become a booming ski town. I wondered again at what had happened between him and Bull, why their weekly poker nights had stopped, why one day Frank was family and the next he was persona non grata.

My grandmother Julia’s words came back to me. Was Frank the man she warned me to stay away from?

“Is there somewhere else you’d prefer we talk?” I asked.

The mayor shook his head. “No, please, take a seat. Coffee? Annika, hon, bring us some more cups, would you? My father is having a good morning. He adores the rain.”

I looked at Frank Bellington again. The mayor saw my skepticism.

“Well, he used to adore the rain,” he corrected. “He’s got his good days and his bad days and lord knows, we try to make the good days count for something. Gemma, I know you understand what I’m talking about; I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother’s diagnosis. Finn, are your parents still with us?”

Finn nodded. “Yes, sir. They live down in Florida. Fit as a fiddle, both of them. They just won a bridge tournament. My dad, he’s great. He can’t keep his hands off my mom, and they’re going on seventy. It gives a man hope.”

“Well, consider yourself blessed. It’s terrible, just terrible watching a parent decline like this,” Terry said.

Annika returned with two more cups and Ellen poured for us. Unlike her husband and daughter, she was dressed to the nines. A soft gray cardigan hung on her narrow shoulders, over a white silk blouse. Her black trousers were cut wide, palazzo style, and her beaded flats looked expensive. She noticed me looking.

“I had a meeting this morning with one of the charities I’m involved with,” she said. “And this evening I’m meeting with Reverend Wyland. I’m sure you’ve heard; we have a funeral Saturday. I expect you will both be there?”

Finn and I nodded.

Ellen continued. “We’ve had an awful time with the Reverend. We are, of course, using the same plot for Nicky but the man is insisting we pay a surcharge for the re-laying of our son. I don’t know how he did things in whatever dark cave he crawled out of back home in Africa, but I simply won’t tolerate that here. It’s not about the money, but it’s the principle of the thing, you see. We have already paid for one funeral for our son.”

I swallowed and set my coffee down and turned to the mayor. I didn’t want to be in this house one minute longer than I had to.

“Sir, we’ve made an interesting discovery. I’m not sure how much relevance it has to Nicky’s disappearance three years ago, or his murder this week, but we’ve got to look at everything that comes up,” I began.

As I spoke, Ellen leaned forward and spooned something white into Frank’s half-open mouth. The substance, pale and jiggly, sat there for a moment and then Ellen pushed it in further with the silver spoon. Frank obediently closed his mouth and swallowed and I thought that age is not a progression at all, but a return. We emerge helpless and dependent and the end, for many, is marked by the same helplessness and dependency of infancy.

Terry stared at me. “Well, what is it?”

“It appears that in the months leading up to the accident at Bride’s Veil, Nicky was spending most of his free time at the local library, researching the murders of the McKenzie boys. By all accounts, he was there every day after school, and not at basketball practice, as you may have thought.”

The mayor’s mouth fell open. From her end of the couch, Annika sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. She knocked her cup of coffee to the floor and swore. Ellen continued to calmly spoon more of the gooey white curd into Franklin’s mouth. Hannah Watkins chose that moment to join the party. She came in quietly, somehow aware that she’d just missed a bombshell.

Annika spoke first. “That’s crazy, I would have known if he had been looking into that old mystery. We didn’t keep secrets from each other.”

If that was true, either Annika was lying and she already knew what I had just revealed, or Nicky had decided to keep something to himself. I watched as the same realization struck her and she slowly sank to the floor, a confused look on her face. She began to pick up the broken shards of her coffee cup.

Bellington looked as confused as his daughter. He said, “He never mentioned anything about the Woodsman murders. How do you know about this? Murders, death, mystery, that sort of thing didn’t interest Nicky at all. He was into sports, and if I remember right, that year he was obsessed with perfecting his basketball game. He was determined to make captain his senior year.”

“He may have told you he was practicing, but he was at the library most afternoons after school,” Finn said. “In fact, he quit the team right before Christmas.”

Mrs. Watkins was silent through the exchange. She shooed Annika away from the mess on the floor and pulled a towel from her pocket. She dabbed at the stain gently, careful not to rub the coffee into the carpet.

“Thanks, Aunt Hannah,” Annika said. She watched as her childhood nanny picked up the shattered pieces of china. It was clear Mrs. Watkins knew her way around broken things; she carefully stacked the shards into a tidy pile on the table and then scooped them all into the towel with the edge of her hand.

Finn finished off his coffee, reached across the table, picked up the pot, and poured himself another cup. He added a dollop of milk and dropped in a sugar cube that splashed into the hot liquid with a wet plop.

He took a slurp and smacked his lips. “This is great coffee, ma’am. Is that Starbucks house blend? It sure tastes like it.”

Ellen ignored him and scooped the last of the white gunk-I’d decided it was tapioca-into her father-in-law’s mouth. She said, “I knew he was at the library.”

Surprise hit me. If she’d known, why point me to the basketball coach, Darren Chase? Had Ellen thought she was sending me on a wild goose chase? Before I could ask, though, the mayor spoke up.

“You did? You never said anything,” Terry protested.

“Darling, you were up to your ears at the office. You had just decided to leave the private sector and make the move to politics. You were courting every person who might have a connection to someone, anyone, who would help get you elected,” Ellen said calmly. “You were kissing every ass that you could get your lips on, except mine, to be frank. You were utterly and completely distracted.”

Ellen wiped the silver spoon on a white napkin and then leaned forward and, with the same napkin, gently wiped at the corners of Frank’s mouth. The elderly man continued to stare at her; his hands idle in his lap, his shoulders hunched forward.

“So, what? He told you but not me?” Annika asked. A hurt look replaced the confusion on her face and tears welled up in her bright eyes. She glared at her mother. “He never said a word about any of this.”

Ellen sighed. I could feel the exasperation in her breath.

“He didn’t tell me. I went at the school one afternoon in, oh, I don’t know, late April or May. I thought I’d surprise him at practice and take him to an early dinner at Enrique’s. But the coach said Nicky had quit the team, to concentrate on his studies. I was shocked, of course, but you know Nicky wasn’t that great of a player. I think it helped the team to lose the dead weight,” she said.

Annika gasped and a deep bloom rose in her mother’s cheeks as she realized her poor choice of words. Ellen bit her lip, and then went on. “Well, anyway. Everyone knows Nicky was no athlete.”

She folded the white napkin she’d used on Franklin into a neat, tidy square, tucked the silver spoon into the napkin and set it down on the table, and then poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and took a sip. She noticed Mrs. Watkins was still on her hands and knees, dabbing at the carpet.

Ellen said, “Hannah, dear, don’t worry about the stain. I’ll have the cleaners work on it tomorrow. You’ve done enough. I think your father’s probably ready for a nap soon.”

Mrs. Watkins rose from her knees and picked up the towel, with the broken shards, and left the room with a nod. I watched her leave and wondered not for the first time what she thought of her sister-in-law.

As though reading my mind, Ellen said, “We’re so lucky to have Terry’s sister with us. Quiet as a mouse, she spends her days watching over my family. Such a shame she couldn’t have children of her own; she adores kids. Everyone thinks I’m the strong one in the family, but I’ll let you in on a little secret-that woman is a rock.”

Annika said, “Mom, don’t try to change the subject. Why was this a big secret with Nicky? Everyone in Cedar Valley was obsessed after you found the bodies, Gemma. They all thought they were going to solve the ‘mystery of the century.’ Why didn’t Nicky just tell us the truth?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Regardless, two days before he died he told the librarian at Cedar Valley Public Library that he was finished with his research. I think he may have found something, something big, and in between telling her that, and going over Bride’s Veil, something happened to scare him. Scare him bad enough to go on the run.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the mayor began, but Ellen interrupted him.

“Is it ridiculous? Nicholas was a puppy dog, trusting everyone, eager to please. He could never have made it in politics.”

She turned to me and continued. “If you’re right, and so far I haven’t heard anything to think you might be wrong, perhaps Nicky revealed this big find to the wrong person.”

I nodded. “That’s exactly what I think.”

“Nick was a smart kid. If he’d figured out who the Woodsman was, he wouldn’t have gone up to the guy,” Terence Bellington said. “That’s just stupid and my son wasn’t stupid. He would have gone to the police… or me.”

He stood and paced the living room, one hand rubbing the back of his neck so vigorously it turned scarlet. After a moment, he stopped pacing and jammed his hands into the kangaroo pocket at the front of his sweatshirt and stared at us.

Finn spoke first. “Maybe he wanted to blackmail the guy.”

Ellen laughed and to my amusement, I saw Finn jump at her harsh bark. “Are you completely retarded? Do you have any idea what our worth is? Nick’s allowance was more than you make in a week. Money doesn’t matter to this family. We just happen to have a hell of a lot of it.”

Finn turned bright red and my amusement grew. He’d finally met a woman who first, wasn’t charmed by him, and second, wasn’t afraid to chew him up and spit him back out in pieces. I felt like letting Finn sit there and stew in it, but that wouldn’t accomplish much.

I thought Finn might have a point, too. Maybe Nicky wasn’t as smart and sweet and wonderful as everyone seemed to think he was.

I stood up and tapped Finn on the shoulder.

“Sir, Mrs. Bellington, we’ve taken enough of your time. We’ll be in touch if anything else comes up. Thank you for the coffee,” I said. “Annika, nice to see you again.”

The mayor and his wife nodded at me. Annika stood and wiped her eyes. “I’ll walk you guys to the door.”

She led us back down the long hallway.

“Do you think it’s true?” she whispered to me at the front door. “Would Nicky keep something like that from me?”

She looked so sad, and small, in her oversize sweats, that I felt my own eyes welling up.

“I don’t know, Annika. But I do know that you guys loved each other very much, and that’s what matters, doesn’t it? The love endures,” I said. I gave her a little pat on the shoulder and then followed Finn out the door.

“The love endures?” he snickered. “You’re a bad Hallmark card.”

“Yeah? And you’re a real piece of work… I wonder if you might be on to something, with the blackmail. Nicky seems a little too good to be true.”

Finn paused at his car. He licked his finger and rubbed at a spot of mud on the rear left light. “Say he did figure out who the Woodsman was. Would he really go to this guy and threaten him? Nicky may not have been perfect but I haven’t heard anything to lead me to think he was foolish. The blackmail angle is intriguing but it’s probably a dead end.”

Everywhere I turned in this case was a dead end, it seemed.