Relief.
“You're sure he doesn't have family living with him? Or visiting?”
“I followed her the next two times she went. There wasn't no car pulling out, nobody going out for a night on the town. The owner stayed in, and she stayed in.”
“Okay, fine.”
“No, it isn't,” he said.
“Right. I agree. What do you know about him?”
“He owns the building, the whole strip of buildings, where Stacie works. That's probably how they met.”
“Okay.” I was going to have to coax him along. This was clearly a topic he had no interest visiting. But I had a soft spot for jealousy today, since I was feeling it about my dad's time with Lydia. I decided to be patient. “What else do you know about this guy?”
“He's a powerful man from a wealthy family.”
“Powerful how?”
“Doesn't the name mean anything to you?”
“Not off the top.”
“You're not from around here.”
“No. I'm from New York City.”
He lit up a little. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I've always wanted to go there, ever since I saw all the news coverage from the World Trade Center. I was a kid, but I remember all those people serving food to the firefighters and first responders. I wished I was up there helping.”
I sipped coffee and sat back. Just shows, again, how you can misjudge someone.
“Is that what got you into the food business?” I asked.
He shook his head. “My mom's datin' Mr. Singh.”
“Ah. Well, then, back to Hatfieldâ” I came to a hard stop on the
d.
“Hold on.
Hatfield?
As in the Hatfields and the McCoys?”
“Yeah. See? I figured you heard of 'em.”
The whole world and all those
L Word
connections seemed to just get infinitely more complicated. “Everybody's heard of them. You're saying that these Hatfields and the dead man's bakery are
the
feuding families?”
“They are. I did a book report about them senior year, so's I know a lot about them. I have a pretty good memory.”
“Me too. I remember all the crap I shouldn't.”
He looked at me quizzically. I indicated for him to continue.
“The whole thing started in the seventeen hundreds,” he said. “There were the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky. Over the years the Hatfields did better than the McCoys financially. Devil Anse Hatfield's lumber operation was a big hit. Some McCoys worked for him. Anyway, come the Civil War, an uncle of Devil got mad at a McCoy because he joined up with the Yanks. He got a busted leg and was sent home and got himself shot by a Hatfield. It never got proved, though. Things got worse a couple years later, when the families got into a fight over a pig.”
How many men would still be alive if they'd kept kosher?
I couldn't help but wonder.
“That got another Hatfield shot,” he went on. “The hate kept rolling into the eighteen eighties with more killings and came to a head in the eighteen eighty-eight New Year's Night Massacre, when armed Hatfields surrounded a McCoy house and blew it all to hell. Eventually, one guy was hanged, and the whole thing sorta petered out at the turn of the century.”
“Do you think it's still going?”
“I don't rightly know,” he admitted. “What I do know is that Lydia is afraid of Stephen and wants to get Stacie out of Nashville. I want to get her to stay and stop seeing this guy.”
I drank more coffee, thought about what he'd told me.
“What if she did?” I asked. “Would you still want to marry her?”
“With all my heart,” he said. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“I'd like to,” I admitted.
“We met when she was a high school cheerleader and I was a center,” he said with his first real smile, “and I've loved her ever since. Because of the way she grew up, with two parents who couldn't seem to hold on to a dime between them, she's always wanted financial security. You can understand that.”
“Certainly.”
“I understand that and I forgive her, however much what she's doing is like hooking,” he said. “In fact, that makes it easier. Knowing she's seeing this guy because he can provide for her, not because she loves him.”
An enlightened cuckold.
I was even more impressed. “I'm glad to hear that, Scott. We all make mistakes, and maybe this is her big one.”
“It really heartens me for you to say that. Because you know what? I want her for my wife, and now I want you for my sister-in-law.”
That thought was so unexpected, so oddly chilling, I didn't even react. I was frozen.
“I guess the question is, Scott, what can I do? Didn't you just say she may not be so eager to meet me?”
“Yeah, but that's . . . I dunno. Pride, I guess. You own a place, and she works for an hourly wage watching kids. You've been to college and had a white-collar job, and she was all about ten-person formations and barely made it outta high school. You had an official last name, and she didn't.”
“How do you know about my education and job?”
“SearchBug,” he said. “You know. People finder.”
I didn't know.
Goddamn Internet.
“Well, it sounds to me like we've got a recipe for disaster,” I said. “Because I can't apologize for who I am and what I've done.”
“I'm not saying you have to. I
wouldn't
say that. And I'm not saying you should feel sorry for her, either. She don't.”
“Then I repeat, what can I do?”
“Talk to her, woman to woman. Sister to sister.”
I wished he would stop that. I wished both of them would. “What am I supposed to do, Scott? Say, âHi. I'm your half sister. Nice to meet you. Stop seeing that rich guy'?”
“No, that wouldn't do it,” Scott said. “But if you talk to her like you just talked to me, making me feel at ease and all, she'd respond. I know it. She wants someone she can talk to. I think that's half the reason she goes to see Hatfield. She thinks he listens to her.”
“You don't?”
He looked at me with the glummest expression I'd seen since intermission at
Starlight Express
on Broadway. “He's forty-three. Newspaper archive says he's been married twice. What's a poor kid gonna say that he hasn't heard before or could give a spit about?”
“Even if that's true, what makes you think she'd listen to a stranger just because she's got some common ancestry?”
“Because she's never had a woman in her life she really respects, other than the one who works for you.”
Perfect!
I thought. “Get Thomasina to talk to her.”
“That wouldn't help. Your lady would lecture her, like she did when she was a girl. Stacie wouldn't take to that.” He drained half the bottle of beer. “She needs someone she can respect, who maybe has had some experiences she can relate to.”
“Scott, I've never had a relationship with a guy just because he's rich.”
In fact, I seem to have a particular problem landing one who is.
“I've never even known a man as long as you two have known each other. And I don't like her mother.”
“Neither does she,” Scott said. “As mean as it sounds, I was hoping you'd say that. It's something else you would have in common.”
I considered that. “Is there some reason, other than your basic abandonment and born-out-of-wedlock issues, that Stacie doesn't get along with Lydia?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Not too many months back, she had the misfortune to find out that after she was born, her mom tried to sell her for thirty grand through an adoption agency.”
Chapter 14
Well, bombshell number whatever was not the biggest of them all, but it was sure the stiletto-in-the-heart knif-iest of them. What was worse was that Scott's little confessional had given me a very, very bad thoughtâone I did not want to entertain but couldn't get out of my head.
I rinsed my mug, put the beer bottle in the recycling bin, and closed the deli. My head felt like a balloon full of wet sand, something I'd once achieved on the Coney Island beach, thinking it would make a great flotation device. It might have, too, if I hadn't accidentally put a piece of shell in there, which popped it when I went in the water. To this day, really, wet beach sand makes me sad.
I had turned off the dining room lights but had left the kitchen area lights on, as was customaryâpolice bulletin, to help them watch for intruders. Then I put on my tan retro Members Only jacket and went out the front door. There were no gawkers, but I felt that I was another day older and deeper in dreck.
I began my block-and-a-half walk to the parking garage. I was soothed by the sound of my cowboy boots hitting the sidewalk. That was one experience I never would have had in New York, even if I'd worn cowboy boots then. The tall lip of the starchy boot hitting me mid-shin reminded me of the few youthful times I'd gone skiing in Connecticut. Ski boots weren't the easiest way to travel unless they were tucked in skis. The serious heel-toe action and the very little ankle movement in the boots were awkward, but the extra effort was worth it. Worth it knowing no one else could fill these boots quite like me. There was a worthwhile metaphor in that. I was bearing up under a lot. Good for me. And I found myself walking with that same distinctiveness that cowboys were known for, almost like I was leading with my knees and kicking with my hips. If only Mother could've seen me. She'd have rolled her eyes.
I entered the garage and said good night to Randy. The pleasant
clap-clap-clap
of my boots was amplified in the concrete garage. I reached the second floor by the stairs and walked briskly to my car on the far end of the enclosure. I pressed the unlock button on my remote, and it was only then that I heard the clacking of heels from somewhere behind me. I slowed without turning to get a better grasp on the clearly approaching sound.
High heels. I'd heard them before. Walking into my deli. I stopped and turned around.
“Hello, Lydia.”
The taut face was tauter still, with anger.
“What did he say to you?” she demanded. She didn't even ask how I knew it was her.
“About what?” I asked. “Your daughter or the fact that you lied to me?”
“Lied?”
“About not considering adoption, about your heart being, oh, so full of love.”
The woman stopped about a yard from me. She was neither repentant nor cowed. “Yes, I considered it. I wanted a good life for my baby, one I could not provide.”
“The thirty grand had nothing to do with it?”
“I didn't take it, did I?”
“Why?” I asked. “Love?”
“Yes, love. Think whatever you want of me, but don't ever doubt that I love my little girl!”
I believed her. It wasn't just her passionâwhich she obviously had an abundance of when properly motivated by a man or childâbut I reminded myself that when we spoke, she didn't ask for anything for herself.
“Let's table that for now,” I said. “I have a question for you.”
“You haven't answered mine.”
“He told me about their engagement and their love for one another. Is that true?”
“Yes,” she barked.
“He told me he thinks she's having an affair. Is
that
true?”
“We think she is, yes,” the woman said. She wasn't quite so huffy about that. It obviously hurt.
“The guy you think she's seeing is named Stephen Hatfield. Also true?”
She nodded.
“That's pretty much all he told me, so here's my question for you. Did you come to the deli to see me?”
“Of courseâ”
“I mean the first time,” I said.
“Why else?”
I moved a little closer. The fluorescent lights weren't the brightest, and I wanted to see her eyes. “Is there any part of your brain that is the tiniest bit worried that her lover put her up to murdering Joe Silvio, wife of Brenda Silvio, née McCoy?”
Her knees swayed like she was doing the Charleston. I stepped forward and steadied her as a noodly arm went out to the side. She shut her eyes. With an arm around her waist, I opened the back door of my car and helped her sit. I stepped back, looking down at her.
“There's a water in the well between the two front seats,” I said.
She leaned on the back of the driver's seat to retrieve it. She popped the cap and took a long drink.
“Let me ask that question another way,” I said. “Do you have reason to believe that Stacie did do it?”
She shook her head, still drinking from the plastic bottle. I waited for her to finish.
“There is bad blood between these Hatfields and McCoys,” Lydia said. “It has nothing to do with the old disagreements.”
“I should hope not, after more than a century.”
Lydia looked surprised. “It's been more than a century and a half since the start of the War Between the States. Folks down here are still sore about that.”
Score one for the lady in black
. “So what is this bad blood about?”
“There have been articles in the newspaper about Hatfield trying to buy the lot that McCoy's Bakery is on. It's the only spot on that street he doesn't own.”
“And Brenda didn't want to sell.”
“Worse than that,” she said. “I was doing a little online research. There is a Web site, Justia, that lets you look up legal documents. McCoy's had just filed a lawsuit accusing him of trying to monopolize the bread business. Seems there are two other bakeries among his holdings, one in Brentwood and another in Mt. Juliet.”
That would be Sam's and Alexander's Ragtime Bread.
“So we've got what? Antitrust and unfair business practices?”
“Were you an attorney up north?”
That made me mad. I was already studying accounting when my dad died. He obviously hadn't felt that was worth mentioning to his hump puppet. Or maybe he himself forgot. All of those possibilities stank.
“No, an accountant,” I said as calmly as I could. “Working on Wall Street, those are just terms you get familiar with.” I ticked through the beat points of this thing. “So you wanted money to get Stacie out of town in case she's involved somehow.”
“Yes. Oh God, she's been a sad girl but never a violent one. I don't think she's a killer, Gwen.”
I still hated hearing my name come from her mouth.
“But you're afraid someone around Hatfield is a bad guy and she may get dragged in or endangered in some way.”
“Yes.”
“Dumb question, Lydia. Why haven't you had this talk with Stacie?”
The woman looked down at her feet. “She found out about the adoption.”
“How?”
“There was a letter,” she said. “It was stuck in a family Bible, of all things. I left it there, I suppose, when I was praying for guidance about the baby. Stacie took it from the top shelf after Scott proposed. She was thinking that it would be fun to have the preacher use a family heirloom.”
“Do you think seeing Hatfield came as a result of that?”
“I wondered about that,” she said. “I cannot dismiss it. She was hurt and upset and wanted to lash out. I think she felt like she was worthless.”
“Not quite worthless,” I pointed out. “Someone was willing to pay thirty grand.”
“Except that they didn't,” Lydia said. “That was a letter from the agency, saying the couple had changed their mind. When they did, I did, too. When she read the letter, Stacie was hysterical. It was bad enough to learn about it that way, but she kept screamin', âI'm not worth anything. They didn't even want me!' I tried to tell her that Scott wanted her, but she kept cryin' and sayin' things about him bein' poor and that maybe they'd have to give away their baby if they ever had one. I tell you, she wasn't thinkin' clear.”
“I don't blame her!”
“No,” Lydia agreed. “That's partly what I've been tryin' to explain. My girl ain't thinkin' clear. Scott may think you can talk to her, get her away from Hatfield. Maybe so. That would be wonderful. But I'm not so sure, and my concern is for her safety.”
“Quick question,” I said. “Does Hatfield own dogs?”
She had recovered sufficiently to scowl at me. “What
is
your fascination with dogs?”
I told her about the canine traces in the truck. Grant hadn't said it was confidential, and this might help move the investigation forward.
“Oh,” Lydia said. It was a tiny, awful little sound.
“What?”
“I saw, in the Justia listing, that his holdings also include the Whippy Whippet Dog Obedience Schools.”
I had seen their ads on late-night TV. They had one of the worst slogans I'd ever heard, uttered by a badly animated computer-generated dog: “If you can't beat it, whippet!” The ads mostly featured hunters and outdoorsmen who looked like they'd beat their dogs.
“That's great,” I said.
“Really?”
“No,” I said. “I thought maybe I could actually rule him out.”
“Are you trying to find the killer on your own?” Lydia asked.
Lydia turned away, reached into her bag, and fished around. She emerged with a tissue. She dabbed her dry eyesâthis lady was
strange
âthen rose unsteadily, and I offered her my hand. My newly manicured nails made her hardened fingertips seem even sadder.
“Not as such,” I said. “I'm sort of friends with the head investigator. Just lifting up rocks, seeing what's under there that might help.”
“Part of me believes he is quite capable of murder, that he is a monster.”
“Which part of you believes that?” I asked.
“The overly protective mother, I suppose.” She pursed her lips. “Please think about what I asked before. She responds to money. That might be the hook we need to get her out of this.”
She didn't say it, but my astute, paranoid ears could've sworn they heard, “Like all you people” at the end of “She responds to money.” I hoped to high holy heaven I was wrong.
Lydia sniffled back hidden tears, then turned and made her lengthy exit back down the parking lot stairs. I just stood there watching her descend. She never looked back.
I got in the car and drove down the ramp, trying not to look at her as I passed. Maybe I should've offered her a lift, but I didn't want to. I was already more involved with her than I had expected, desired, or wanted to think about. The whole thing stank. My father's mistress, whom I met because someone was killed by my loading area. What good karma was hidden anywhere in that log-line? On top of which, I had a deli to run and a staff in whose lives I was involved and men who had relationship
mishugas
that didn't seem to match my own meshuga needs. Why did I need to take on three more nutcases?
Because, like all the mountains in your life, they're there.
More than that, though, I had a feelingâI don't know whyâthat somewhere through this was the exit sign to the whole matter of Mr. Silvio and his ripped-up throat.
With rush hour long over, the ride home was even quicker than usual. Only as I got out of the car and the light came on did I see that there was a brown paper bag poking from the well with the water bottle.
I picked it up. It wasn't very heavy. I realized that Lydia must have placed it there when she went into her purse and came out with a tissue. I thought that had taken a little longer than it should have.
I felt fairly comfortable ruling out an explosive device. I unrolled the top of the bag and spilled the contents onto the seat. Out spilled a small stack of photographs and scraps of paper. I wish I could say I had a sentimental “Oh God” moment, but I didn't. I think I was probably protecting myself. I put my knees against the seat and fingered through the messy pile.
They were old images. There was a photo of young Lydia outside with baby Stacie, presumably. My father was sitting on a lawn chair in the background. The next photo was taken earlier, when Lydia was pregnant with Stacie, again presumably. One hand was on her belly, and the other was being used to shield her eyes from the flash. There was a school photograph of Stacie wearing a black blouse and black barrettes in her hair, and she was smiling. She looked to be around seven years old and was seemingly content with her young life.