Liar

36

Without Ezekiel Brennan’s help, I’m convinced we wouldn’t have been able to get home as early as we did, which was noon on Monday.

We didn’t call the police until Rachel had retrieved and hidden all of her illegal tools. Travis insisted on going with us to the garage to help, even after we warned him about the Camry. Deeny, it turned out, was awake, and not a little angry. When Travis saw the window, he said, “The hobo sign for ‘This is not a safe place.” You gave her fair warning, Irene.“

When Rachel opened the car door, Travis said to Deeny, “Your husband controlled my father the same way he controls you. If you want to talk to the lawyer who helped my father, maybe he’ll help you.” He paused, then added, “You’re going to need a good lawyer.”

We saw the wisdom of it ourselves, and called Brennan right after we called the police.

We didn’t tell the entire truth to the Los Alamitos Police, but we kept our stories straight. We had come to the house to look for the El Camino, a vehicle which might contain traces of the explosives used to destroy Travis’s camper. Rachel supplied Richmond’s photos of the El Camino taken on the day the bomb was put in place. When she mentioned that Harold Richmond was involved, there was a change of attitude-his infamy lived on in the department.

I told them that they might contact Detective McCain of the LAPD about Mr. Richmond’s whereabouts. This was a success, and reached while being interviewed in Detective McCain’s office, Richmond confirmed that he sometimes talked about his business to the cocktail waitress at the Wharf. No, he didn’t know what her last name was.

McCain was pleased to hear where he could find the Camry. We knew, from what we had shown them when they arrived on the scene, that the Camry would prevent Gerald from walking out of the station.

The police were still curious about our activities, especially given our attire. On that subject we said nothing. Mr. Brennan’s arrival resulted in Travis’s release; he was not being charged with any crime, and Mr. Brennan insisted that Travis receive immediate medical attention. Deeny, who was being released by the hospital into police custody as Travis walked in the Emergency Department doors, called out, “I want to talk to my lawyer!”

“I’ll be right with you,” Mr. Brennan replied.

Her cooperation led to first my release and then Rachel’s-and oddly, Deeny did not seem to recall much of anything that happened just before she was hit on the head, but specifically denied seeing any special burglary tools on Ms. Giocopazzi’s person, no matter what was claimed by Gerald. By then McCain and Detective Reed Collins from Las Piernas had made the trip to Los Alamitos, and Gerald was officially placed under arrest.

I called the paper and phoned in a story that made Morey decide I could be excused for another day or two while I healed a little. The acting news editor told me he was assigning a couple of other people to write follow-up stories from less personal angles. Fine with me.

Mr. Brennan drove Rachel over to the hospital, where she arrived not long before Travis was ready to go home with us.

“I want to grow up to be like my cousin,” he said to me, walking stiffly and trying to act as if the broken ribs, black eye, fat lip and lump on his forehead were nothing. He held up his cleanly swathed right hand. “And look, you don’t have to change the bandage for me today.”

“We have a specially air-conditioned Volvo to take you home in,” I said, and after we all thanked Mr. Brennan again, we were on our way, sans driver’s side window, but happy.

We arrived at my house to see two men getting out of a Yellow Cab. “Oh shit,” said Rachel. “Now we’ve had it.”

“Who is it?” Travis asked.

“Our husbands.”

But she was wrong if she thought they were angry. After several hours of trying to reach us at every possible number, they were so glad to see us, they didn’t even bitch about the cab fare from LAX.

I awakened at about seven in the evening, as the last of the early summer sunlight was fading. After a few moments of enjoying the sensation of being held possessively by my sleeping husband, I gently extricated myself from his grip. He rolled over but didn’t awaken, and soon was snoring again. I stood and listened to it for a while after getting dressed.

I checked on Travis, who was sleeping soundly, despite being propped up at the angle the broken ribs required. Uncomfortable, but better than getting pneumonia, the doctors said.

I fed the animals and started making dinner. I put a chicken in the oven and started straightening the living room. I came across the Virgin Mary night-light and smiled. It reminded me of one my mother had once had, too. I tried plugging it in, but it didn’t light up. I unplugged it, and unscrewed the base-no bulb.

I went into the kitchen, checked on the chicken and, after a brief search, found a spare night-light bulb. My husband came out of the bedroom, and I became distracted by some nuzzling until he said, “Uh-oh. What papist trappings are you decorating the house with now, Catholic girl?”

I laughed and told him that the night-light was apparently the one gift that had survived the years during which my aunt purged her home of every other reminder of Arthur, save Travis himself. He cocked his head to one side for a moment, but made no wisecracks, so I went back to replacing the bulb.

Travis came slowly down the hall and Frank, who had already taken a liking to him, offered to help him get settled in a chair.

“No thanks,” Travis said. “The thought of trying to get up again makes me want to stay on my feet.” He saw what I was working on and smiled a misshapen grin. “What are you doing to the Virgin Mary?”

“I was going to surprise you,” I said, trying to concentrate on what was becoming a frustrating effort to reattach the base to the statue. “You know-replace the bulb and set this in your room-have you wake up to a glowing religious night-light.”

Frank groaned.

“Hey, Mr. Episcopalian,” I said, handing the two parts to him. “Instead of making rude sound effects, why not see if you can get this back together?”

Frank took it from me as Travis said, “Well, you do almost have to grow up with it, Irene.”

“Tell that to her sister,” Frank said, peering up the hollow Virgin Mary’s plastic gown. “She keeps trying to talk me into converting.”

“Maybe I’ll put off meeting Barbara,” Travis said, and Frank laughed.

Frank started poking a finger into the statue. “Hold it,” I said. “There’s a limit-”

He looked back into the bottom of the statue, ignoring me. “Get me a pair of tweezers.” Tweezers!

“Please.”

Well, it was the magic word, after all.

With tweezers in hand, he began picking at something inside the statue.

“What is it?” Travis asked.

“The reason the bulb won’t fit. There’s something rolled up inside here.”

Travis looked over at me.

“Travis, you said this was the only thing among your mother’s possessions that your father had given to her…”

“And he gave it to her to protect her,” he said softly. “To protect her from Gerald?”

Frank soon began complaining that if we didn’t give him some elbow room, he wouldn’t be able to get the object-something made of metal wrapped in paper-out without tearing the paper.

But a few minutes later he succeeded, and handed a short flat key and what at first appeared to be a scroll of thick paper to Travis.

“Is that a safe-deposit box key?” I asked.

“Too short,” Frank said. “Maybe a cash box, something like that.”

Travis, who had taken a seat next to Frank on the couch, handed the scroll back to him. “Could you help me unroll it?”

Frank carefully unrolled the scroll, which turned out to be a small envelope. It was the size of the envelopes invitations and thank-you notes sometimes come in, about four-by-six inches, and it was addressed to Arthur Spanning at an address I didn’t recognize at first, but marked “Personal.”

The address was written in black ink in a rough hand. There was no return address, no stamps, no postmark, but at the top of the envelope, a different hand had penciled in the number twenty-five and circled it.

“The office address?” I asked Travis, finally remembering.

“Yes. He told me that he had most of his mail sent there, not only because W would read it to him, but because it was the one place he would be every day-otherwise, he alternated between our house and the farm, and later between his apartment and the farm. But even if he couldn’t get into the office during the day, most evenings, he stopped by to check his mail.”

“Ulkins was there all the time?”

“No. Ulkins would tape-record the mail, usually just summarizing it. See this number twenty-five? Ulkins wrote that. He numbered the envelopes, then said on the tape, ”Letter one is from so-and-so, regarding x and y…‘ and so on. My father would listen to it as soon as he got a chance, whenever he had a moment. Sometimes that was in the afternoon, but usually it was late in the day.“

He explained who W/Ulkins was to Frank as he turned the envelope over. There were two red ink marks on the back, from a pair of rubber stamps. One was the figure of a hand.

“Hand-delivered,” Travis said, pointing to it.

The other stamp was a date-all numerical. “Date received,” he said.

“The day Gwendolyn DeMont was murdered,” I said.

“Should I-should I be handling this?” Travis asked.

“Probably no prints, but just to make sure, here,” Frank said, and using the tweezers but making the barest contact otherwise, he removed five index cards and the page of a calendar from the envelope. All were as curled as the envelope, but using the eraser end of a pencil to hold down one end and the tweezers to hold the other end, Frank held them open.

The calendar page was from the same date, the day of the murder. On it, someone had drawn a crescent moon.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with the actual phase of the moon,” Travis said. “It means ‘This night.”“

On each of the five index cards, symbols had been drawn.

“What do they mean?” I asked Travis.

He pointed to a simple house shape with other symbols within it.

“I’m not sure. The symbols on the inside of the house shape mean, ”Rich people live here.“ When we used to leave the notes for one another, our house was drawn like this, but with a heart inside.”

“Maybe it was a symbol for the DeMont farmhouse,” I said. “Especially if Gerald and your dad devised it before your dad lived in it.”

Frank held the next one open. “A zero?” I asked.

“Yes, in a way,” Travis said. “It means ‘Nothing to be gained here.”“ The next one also seemed familiar. ”A diamond?“ Frank asked.

“No, see the little protrusion at the bottom?” Travis pointed to it. “It’s a hobo sign for ‘Hold your tongue.”“

Neither of us guessed at the next one.

“This means ‘A crime has been committed here,”“ he said. ”And this last one means ’Be ready to defend yourself.“”

“He killed her,” Travis said. “Gerald kept hinting about this great favor he had done my father, but he didn’t really admit killing her.”

“He warned your father with hobo signs. These papers are what he was looking for,” I said. “And this key.”

We had told Frank about our encounter with Gerald, but only the basics. Now Travis filled him in on the details, then said, “I know he’ll be convicted of murdering my mother, and maybe even charged with attempted murder for trying to kill me. Killing Ulkins, the way he hurt Irene, and tried to kill her-there may be convictions for that, too. He should go to jail for a long time, and I should be satisfied.

“But if Gwendolyn’s murder is left as an open case, it isn’t enough.” He paused, then added, “I feel sorry for her, but I’d be kidding myself if I said I wanted justice for her sake. It’s more selfish than that.

“I want to clear my father’s name. I mean, he was a bigamist, yes- that I admit. But he didn’t kill his wife. My family-my father, my mother and I-we paid for that murder. We were punished for it, even though my father was innocent.” He stopped himself, shook his head. “No, that’s not true. He didn’t kill her, but he wasn’t innocent.”

“Your father protected Gerald,” Frank said.

“Yes,” Travis said. “He protected the killer.”

“His only brother,” I said. “A man who had raised him.”

“His brother’s keeper,” Travis said. “And God knows, Gerald was his keeper in every sense of the word.” He turned to Frank and said, “Is there any hope of using these to convict him of murdering Gwendolyn?”

Frank looked at the curling papers in silence for a time, then said, “Using them as evidence? There are some problems. Even if you could find prints or DNA on the envelope, there’s the problem of where the evidence has been all this time, who’s had a chance to tamper with it, and so on-not that I think they’ve been anywhere but in this night-light, but a defense lawyer would probably have them thrown out in no time.”

“Oh.”

“But that doesn’t mean the police can’t make use of them,” Frank said. “I know some of the guys over in Los Alamitos. Let me talk to them about it. Gerald was obsessed about getting these from your mother and you. A good interrogator might be able to show this to him without saying a word, and maybe he’ll give it up.”

Travis didn’t say anything.

Frank said, “Used to be, we could use the methods of some of these wild women private eyes out there, and smack the bad guys around until they confessed-but those days are over.”

Travis smiled a little.

“Fortunately for us,” Frank went on, “Rachel made him polish her shoes with his face, ribs and ass, so I think his spirits will be a little low. Trust me, I have experience dealing with this kind of turkey.”

The next day, Travis asked me to go with him to St. Anthony’s to see Father Chris, to learn where Arthur had been buried. As we drove to the church, I thought of our last visit there, and of the housekeeper’s warm welcome. That in turn reminded me of things she had said then, and suddenly several pieces of information I had heard over the last few days fell into place.

I looked over at my cousin, whose errand had put him in a somber mood. He was sitting stiffly, his injuries undoubtedly making the ride uncomfortable.

“Travis,” I asked, bringing him out of his reverie, “do you remember when Mrs. Havens was your family’s housekeeper?”

“We never had a housekeeper at our house,” he said. “Mrs. Havens kept saying she worked for my father. She must have worked for my dad after my parents separated.”

“I think she may have worked for your father and Gwendolyn, before Gwendolyn died.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“Father Chris called her ‘Annie.” The housekeeper at the DeMont farm was named Ann Coughlin. Different last name, but maybe she remarried, or changed it. I just think it’s unlikely that your father had two different housekeepers named Ann.“

“But that would mean she was the one who found Gwendolyn’s body…”

“More than that. Suppose she hadn’t mopped the floor where your father walked, or disturbed the place on the bed where your father put his hand into Gwendolyn’s blood?”

“He would have been arrested for murder. Dad’s alibi wouldn’t have mattered much if Richmond had found that evidence intact.”

I shrugged. “Richmond might have blown it in some other way. I’m beginning to doubt that Mrs. Coughlin was just some befuddled old lady who messed up a murder scene, though. I think Richmond assumed that’s all she was, and she took advantage of that.”

She greeted us at the rectory door, again fussing over Travis. Father Chris had been called out to a sick parishioner’s house, she explained to us. Would we please wait? Travis and I exchanged a glance. We were brimming with questions for her; Father Chris’s absence would make asking them less awkward.

“I’m so glad you’re safe!” she said, seating Travis in the most comfortable chair she could find. “I read the stories in the paper.” She gave me a wink. “If I wasn’t gray already, that would have done the trick.” She propped a pillow behind him, then looked between us.

“She may be your cousin,” she said to him, “but I don’t see much of your mother’s side of the family in her. And I still say you look just like your father. Oh, I don’t mean all bruised and so, but I thought so even when I saw you as a baby.”

“You saw me as a baby?” he asked warily. “But my father didn’t have a housekeeper then.”

She hesitated only slightly before saying, “Oh, he did, just not at your mother’s place.”

“You worked for him at the DeMonts‘,” I said.

She sighed. “Yes, you’ve figured that out, haven’t you? Well, I don’t guess I’m obliged to keep these secrets after all that’s happened. Yes, I worked for Mr. Spanning at the DeMont place, and for Papa DeMont and Miss Gwen before him.”

“Ann Coughlin?” I asked.

“Yes, that was my first married name. Mr. Coughlin died and I later on married Mr. Havens. Mr. Havens, God rest his soul, died a few years back. Mr. Havens was always good to me.

“But Mr. Coughlin! He used to lose his temper with me every now and again, and he wasn’t above using his fists on me. Called it ‘teaching me a lesson.” Probably would have killed me one day, except young Arthur-oh, he must have been about eighteen then-he found out about it and put a stop to it. Told Mr. Coughlin there’d be none of that on the DeMont place, or he’d give him a lesson of his own-one that would make him feel like he’d been to college.“ She laughed. ”Mr. Coughlin never laid a hand on me after that. Well, all I’m saying is, I knew who helped me, didn’t I? And I never forgot it. And I was proud to be able to help him whenever he needed it.“

“When Gwendolyn was murdered-” Travis began.

“Yes, I helped him then, too. I was shocked, of course, but I knew he wasn’t the one that had done the killing.”

“But you couldn’t be certain!”

“Who on earth could be any more certain, I ask you? I spent more hours in that house with the two of them than I did in my own home. Arthur was never anything but kind to Miss Gwen. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. And he never would have done anything to harm her.” She paused, then added, “I knew your daddy and I knew his brother, too-from the time your daddy was a little boy.”

“If you saw Travis when he was a baby,” I said, “you must have known about Arthur’s other life.”

“Yes. As I say, you can’t hide much from the person who cleans your house and washes your clothes. I’m sure there are plenty of people on this earth who will judge him harshly for what he did, but I won’t be one of them. That’s all I have to say about that. He helped me when everybody else just pretended not to see anything wrong-that man got me out of a living hell. I would have done anything to try to repay him for that.”

She turned to Travis. “I was always begging him to work it out so that I could see you, so proud he was of you. So one day, I told Miss Gwen I had some shopping to do, and he told your mother he had some shopping to do, and I got to see you! Oh, I was thrilled. You could just see how much he loved you, how precious you were to him. I told him then and there, he was right, having you was worth the world. The very world.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Havens,” he said softly. “For telling me that, and for-well, thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

“Travis,” I asked, “do you have the key with you?”

“The key!” she exclaimed. “But surely you can’t need it now! I read where they caught him! He’s locked up, right?”

Travis pulled the little key from his pocket. “Gerald? Yes, Mrs. Havens, but we want to make sure he stays locked up.”

She frowned, then said, “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

By the time she came back, her new boss had returned. That’s how it worked out that when we opened the small strongbox, a Catholic priest happened to be present. I wasn’t surprised to find a knife with a broken tip and dark stains on it. But I was surprised to see it resting on a pair of stiff, blood-stained gloves.

“Don’t touch anything in that box,” I warned the others.

“How did my father get these?” Travis asked.

“Well, you don’t have an older brother, so there’s no way you could know,” she said. “But one thing a younger brother always knows about an older one is where he likes to hide things. Arthur found these that Sunday, he told me, and I helped him hide them before the police even knew she was dead. Gerald was fit to be tied, of course, but Arthur told him if he ever brought any harm to you or your mother, someone else would turn that over to the police, along with some notes. I was the someone else!”

“But-but Mrs. Havens!” Father Chris said, looking at his elderly housekeeper in an entirely different way. “This was evidence! The woman lay there murdered for a full day after you knew about it!”

“I loved Gwen, Father, but she was dead. Wasn’t going nowhere, right? And what was more important, to protect three innocent people’s lives, or let the likes of Harold Richmond use that evidence to hurt them? And before you say another word, Father, ask yourself if Arthur Spanning could have possibly paid a higher price for loving his brother as himself. If anything, that man loved his brother too much!”

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked out. She was back less than a minute later to say, “Two weeks notice, Father. Time I retired. Travis, you call me.”

I’m still not sure if it was the notes, the knife, or Reed Collins’s bold assertion (made without checking with any lab) that DNA could easily be lifted from the inside of Gerald’s gloves that made the difference. Reed liked my theory that Gerald’s wetsuit trick indicated a certain fear about leaving DNA around, and put it to the test.

Personally, I think having his ass kicked by a woman so disordered Gerald’s way of looking at the world, he took one glance at the notes, knife and gloves and started unburdening his conscience. This, I’m told, took the form of a lot of ranting about bitches who could have been happy with him, traitorous brothers, whores and bastards-but the district attorney, a judge and a jury of his peers were able to sort it all out and find him guilty.

I took Travis to meet Leda DeMont Rose and her granddaughter. They quickly set him at ease, and by the end of the visit, they were well on their way to becoming friends, even though Laurie’s first glimpse of my badly mauled cousin must have made her believe I had lied about his good looks.

Horace DeMont died the day after Travis visited them, and I have still not convinced him that it was not his fault.

Robert DeMont, though disappointed that he had not found a way to get his hands on the small remaining portion of the DeMont fortune, was able to sell an improved version of the toilet-seat invention to a novelty manufacturer, and realized enough from the sale to work on other innovations, as well as to pay an auto body shop bill.

I envied him, as well as Rachel and Frank, and everyone else whose car came back from the body shop. Like Travis’s camper, the Karmann Ghia was gone forever. I still miss it.

Long before any of that came to pass, Frank and I made another visit to Holy Family Cemetery. We stood near my parents’ graves, but we weren’t alone. Great Aunt Mary and her caretaker friend, Sean Grady, were nearby. My sister Barbara, and Rachel and Pete were there. Travis was there, too, as were Zeke Brennan, Father Chris and Ann Havens, the latter two having forgiven one another. Father Chris presided over a re-burial of Arthur’s remains, next to those of Briana. They had been in the same cemetery, as it turned out-but separated from one another. Now there was a new stone in place, their names together. Though tears were shed, it was, on the whole, a celebration.

I thought I saw McCain’s car in the parking lot, but I may have been mistaken.

Travis was staying with us for a while, having realized that we really didn’t care that he could afford to stay elsewhere. What you can afford in money, we had learned, you can’t always afford in time.

That day, putting fresh flowers on my parents’ graves, I felt sorry that they had lost time with Briana and Travis, had not welcomed Arthur. Perhaps if we had offered our family’s strengths to him, or a little more forgiveness, we would not have been lost to one another in that tangled, strangling web of pride and shame and deceit.

I looked out across the cemetery and set aside my regrets. No time, no time for regrets. Who teaches that better than the dead? All that lingered was the first real sense of peace I had felt at my parents’ graveside. Something has been made right, I thought, some wound healed.

It was at that moment that my sister, Barbara, knelt down next to me.

I looked up at her, saw the expression on her face and said, “Don’t say it, Barbara.”

“Well, I did want that spot. Now where am I going to be buried?”

“Next to me,” I said.

“Next to you!” She stood up, clearly appalled. “Then don’t bother writing ‘Rest in Peace’ on my tombstone!”

“As if death could calm her down,” Frank said, watching her go.

He took my hand and we walked back to the car, speaking, as lovers will, of the benefits of cremation.