Bones of Contention (14 page)

Against a backdrop of bright green trees, a black man with a painted face and chest was demonstrating the art of spear throwing. The target was at least 120 feet distant and he hit the bullseye with a powerful thud. Dinah took off her sunglasses and stared at him. How strong, how deadly accurate, how motivated did a man have to be to ram a spear through another man’s body? As murder goes, it was the very antithesis of poisoning, which required no physical strength. Maybe she’d been overthinking things. Surely there could be no connection between two murders so disparate in method and location as the Melville and the Fisher cases except for the fact that Jacko was investigating both at the same time.

She spent another sweaty hour sitting on the steps of the reception building shooing flies and ruminating on the myriad ways in which she wasn’t having fun. When Lucien finally reappeared, she was in a waspish mood.

“Your leg looks fine to me. I’d like the pleasure of your company in the passenger seat. Or else.”

He grinned. “Or else what?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

He climbed into the front seat, she tossed his crutches into the back and before they had cleared the gate, she hit him with the Secret Man/Woman Business that had been burning inside of her all day. “Wendell and Neesha are lovers. They plan to marry as soon as Cleon’s dead.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched, baby sis. You’ve been sitting in the sun too long.”

“I’ve definitely been sitting in the sun too long, but I know what I know. And Wendell’s a beneficiary under Fisher’s will.”

“That’s no surprise. The doc set Wen up as a junior partner in his business.”

“Well?”

“Well, what? You want me to think that Wen killed Fisher for his money?”

“Why not? It’s thinkable.”

“No, it’s not. Wendell’s a big wuss.”

She maneuvered the car around a couple of immovable donkeys and almost offered an unflattering comparison to present company. “It doesn’t take a he-man to poison somebody, Lucien. And unless Seth Farraday had some beef with Fisher that we don’t know about, Wen’s the only one with a motive to kill him.”

“Why not Dad? He and the doc mixed it up pretty good once or twice.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Who listens to a pair of old roosters ripping each other? Politics maybe. Cleon called Fisher a goddamn bloviating gasbag. Fisher called Cleon a sodding bloody autocrat. You couldn’t say either of them got it wrong.”

She dismissed Cleon as a suspect. “Cleon needed Fisher to assist his suicide. And anyway, creepiness by itself isn’t a motive for murder. Not like money or sex.” She thought about Wendell and Neesha necking outside that armoire and Neesha’s little sob of revulsion that Cleon might go on for weeks.

“Lucien, Cleon’s life may be in danger.”

He laughed. “You’re a regular stitch, you know that?”

“Okay, he has terminal cancer and he wants to commit suicide. But he doesn’t want to be murdered.”

“Maybe he does want to be murdered. Maybe that’s why he’s been needling us.”

“Why are you being such a dick? And why does he think you haven’t played straight with him?”

“Who knows? Some youthful peccadillo.”

“What peccadillo would he hold over your head to his dying day? Stolen hubcaps? A shot-up mailbox? Erotic graffiti on the Welcome to Georgia sign?”

“He’s a spiteful old man, Dinah. I know him better than you do. There’s plenty you don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, you could remedy that problem. What don’t I know?”

“Look, Dinah, I’ve seen Dad’s dark side. He’s a user. He’s using Farraday, he’s using that clown Newby, and he’ll use you.”

“Use me how?”

“To get at me.”

“Lucien, I would never take sides against you. You’re my big brother. In my book, you hung the moon and stars.”

“Don’t turn me into a paragon of virtue, little sister. The last star I hung was the tinsel doodad on last year’s Christmas tree. And I thought you’d learned your lesson about men with feet of clay.”

“Thanks for the reminder. I just hope Jacko doesn’t misinterpret your secret peccadillo as a motive for murder.”

“Jesus! You know what your problem is, Dinah? You turn everything into a crisis, like it was fucking nine-one-one. I don’t know what lies your dad told to cover up his illegal sideline or what lies Nick told to cover up his redhead, but I’m not your lab frog and if you want to dissect something, go and dissect your own fuck-ups.”

She drove the rest of the way to Crow Hill with her throat choked from road dust and what felt like the smoke from burning bridges.

Chapter Twenty-three

Dinah hid out in her room during dinner and when K.D. returned at ten with a moony look in her eyes and began rhapsodizing about Seth, she closed her book, sprayed her neck and arms with DEET, and hoofed it downstairs to hide out on the veranda.

The great room was quiet as a morgue. Apparently, everyone had turned in early for a change. She stopped by the bar, poured herself a snifter of brandy, and went to the back door and looked out. The coast was clear. There was a small, battery-powered lantern next to the door. She turned it on and went outside.

The cool night air was like a tonic. She lit citronella torches and walked gingerly around the perimeter holding the lantern. Seeing no snakes, she set the light on a makeshift wine-box table, brushed off a deck chair, and lay down to unwind.

She sipped her brandy and reflected on the day’s developments. If she were Cleon, she’d want to know if her spouse was cheating on her. Would he? What was it he’d said? When you’re near the end, it may be better to shade the truth for your own peace of mind or somebody else’s. Maybe it was better to let him die with his illusions intact. But were they? She thought back to his toasts, to Neesha for keeping her chin up, to Wendell for being loyal to a fault. Was he being ironic? And there was that business of the spoon pointing and his comment about everybody getting their just deserts. Was he warning the lovebirds that they’d pay a price for their infidelity?

She spotted a pack of cigarettes on the floor next the table. Winfields. She picked it up and held it under the lantern. The package showed a hideous gangrenous foot with putrefied black toes under the caveat
Smoking Causes Peripheral Vascular Disease
. The Aussies didn’t mince words. I’ll quit tomorrow, she thought, and leaned over to a citronella torch to catch a light.

It was a beautiful, star-studded night. Cicadas chirred and fireflies flickered. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a firefly. It seemed years. She and Lucien used to capture them in Mason jars when they were kids. They’d had a lot of fun together. Now they were virtual strangers.

She blew smoke rings like little white lassos around the stars and watched the smoke evanesce. Like all her human bonds. She couldn’t hold onto the people she loved anymore than she could hold onto a star.

Well, so be it. She could be philosophical. What was one more disconnect? She wasn’t going to cry about it. The brandy and the vessel-destroying cigarette had cauterized her throat.

“That’s the Southern Cross up there.”

Jerusalem. Seth Farraday was quiet as snow.

He appeared out of the shadows at the edge of the veranda and pointed upward. “It looks more like a kite than a cross. The Aborigines here in the Top End say it’s a stingray being chased by a shark.”

“Sailor, photographer, astronomer. You’re like that old nursery rhyme, Tinker, Tailor.”

“I couldn’t tailor a suit, but I’m a pretty fair hand with a yurt.”

His exaggerated opinion of himself was becoming irksome. “It must be heady to excel at so many things.”

“I’m just a dilettante. Like you.”

The back door opened and a bright light strafed the darkness like a heat-seeking missile.

“Well, looky who else can’t sleep.” Cleon stepped outside and shone a flashlight in their faces. “I’ve been exiled from the conjugal bed, y’all. Neesha’s up walkin’ the floor and boohooin’ to beat the band. Wants to send the children home to her mama. Thinks their little lives are gonna be permanently blighted by poor ol’ Desmond’s murder.” He shined his light on a chair at the far end of the veranda. “Drag that chair over here for me, Seth.”

Seth brought the chair over and set it down next to Dinah.

“Thank you, son.” Cleon turned off his light and lowered himself into the chair. “Well, what do y’all think? The young’uns seemed sprightly enough dealin’ with
my
death.”

“Children are a lot more resilient than their mothers given them credit for,” said Seth. “I know I was.”

If there was an implied criticism, Cleon ignored it. “My opinion exactly. Kids got their own agenda in this life and their own modus operandi for gettin’ what they want. They ain’t apt to fall apart because a couple of old farts cash in their chips.”

Seth shook a Winfield out of the package, caught a light off one of the candles, and sat down across from Cleon. “Aren’t you going to ask me what my agenda is?”

“I reckon you’re about to tell me.”

“It’s to take you for a shitload of money and forget you ever existed.”

Dinah became acutely aware of a chorus of frogs. She listened to them for what seemed an eternity before Cleon spoke.

“At least you’re honest,” he said.

She tried to see his face, but it was in shadow. She felt a swell of sympathy for him. He had done so many good things for her over the years. He hadn’t been a faithful husband or a model father to Wendell or Lucien, but he hadn’t molested anybody or let them go hungry and there was such a thing as forgiveness. With so little time left to him, it seemed ineffably sad that he would reap nothing but resentment and enmity from his sons. He was lucky to have K.D., who would never forget that he existed or let anyone else forget.

“Yes, four strange children already and now I got me a fifth. Interestin’ all the odd things you’ve done. Tell us what you did at that monastery. Did y’all distill spirits and herbs like some of ’em do, or make cheese, or bake little loaves of nut bread?”

“We got by mostly on alms.”

“You were a beggar?” Cleon was shocked into subject-verb agreement.

“A monk’s needs are simple—a bowl of rice, a straw mat to sleep on.”

“Lord love a duck.” Cleon laughed so loud it must have woken the house. “It goes to show, don’t it? Enough temptation and a man’s agenda can turn on a dime.” He pushed himself out of his chair, still laughing. “I’m gonna go and have me a nightcap. Gotta gentle my nerves for the big meetin’ in town tomorrow.”

“What big meeting?” asked Dinah.

“I’ve arranged a consultation with a young estates and trust attorney who used to do some work for me down in Sydney before he moved north and hung up his shingle in Katherine. I recommended him to Dez and evidently they got on like a bush fire. Not only did Dez have the boy prepare his will, he chose him to be the executor. It’ll be a good while before any of the assets are released, but at least we’ll get a general idea what Dez had in mind. Me and him bein’ old cronies, he’ll have left somethin’ to me.”

“Too bad you won’t have time to spend it,” said Seth.

Cleon had no comeback.

Dinah watched him disappear inside the house and got up to go in, herself. At the door, she turned around. “You don’t know anything about him, Seth.”

“I know he walked out on my mother.”

“Then you should ask him why while you have the chance. Maybe his reasons are forgivable. Understandable, anyway. Take it from one who knows, it’s a terrible thing to go through life hating your father.”

He didn’t answer and she went inside and climbed the dark stairs to her room.

Chapter Twenty-four

“There you are! I been lookin’ high and low.” Cleon found Dinah in the great room playing solitaire. “You look tight as a string on a fiddle. Something worryin’ you?”

“Oh, no.” Since absurdity knew no bounds.

“Your motor’s been idlin’ too long, child. Ride into town with me for the readin’ of Fisher’s will. Neesha’s gone on ahead to do her shoppin’ and I could use some female companionship.”

The day had unfolded on a geologic timescale. Breakfast was epochs ago, in the Precambrian period. While the earth’s crust slowly solidified, she’d read one of Mack’s mythology books and struggled with the concept of song lines. At ten, she phoned the number Jacko had given her, but he wasn’t in. Sometime during the Paleozoic period, she decided to accost Lucien and tell him just what she thought of his hurtful outburst yesterday, but she chickened out at the door to his room and took a jog instead. At two o’clock, she’d tried Jacko again. The woman she spoke to said he’d be in the Katherine office around four. The world seemed determined to make her wait.

“Cat got your tongue? What d’ya say?”

She wasn’t sure if he was inviting her to the reading or just for the drive, but either way she had no desire to sit around here waiting for the dinosaurs to come and go. And if she did attend the reading, she’d have even more information to pass on to Jacko. “A drive into town would be lovely.”

“Then let’s roll.”

In no time at all they were on the road, tooling down the rutted dirt track in Cleon’s plush, black Mercedes with Dinah rethinking Lucien’s advice to hold onto the paintings until the market improved. Why should she follow his advice? So what if she didn’t wring every last cent out of the sale? If she didn’t net the max, it would be, as Lucien so churlishly put it, her fuck-up.

She thought, I’d get more from the sale of just one of the paintings than I ever dreamed of having. I could hold one back until a more propitious time and if Lucien apologizes and shows a little respect for my needs and my opinions, he can keep it for me in his house.

Of course, a painting that valuable would have to be insured. That would cost a pretty penny and eat into her profits from the sale of the other one. But no, even if the timing was wrong, she would sell them both. She wondered what an apartment in London would cost. Or Paris. She visualized her life in Paris. It wouldn’t take long to dispel the noir of Nick in the City of Light.

Dispelling the noir of Lucien would be harder. He and Cleon had banged heads many times before and, up until now, they’d found a way to smooth things over. But she and Lucien had never fought and his hostility came as a shock and a betrayal. Again, she was beset by the thought that he wanted the Homers for himself. It couldn’t be for the money they’d bring, because he had oodles. Did he read Cleon’s decision to give the only good art that he owned to her as a repudiation of him? Surely their wires weren’t that crossed. But even if Cleon was dissing him, how could Lucien be so flippant about her fear that Cleon might be murdered?

A film of dust enveloped the Mercedes. Cleon turned on the windshield wipers.

She didn’t want to offend him or start an argument. But if giving the Homers to her was what had stoked Lucien’s resentment, if that was Cleon’s intention, she needed to know.

She said, “Lucien told Mack that Winslow Homer is America’s greatest artist.”

“That should make you feel good about your pictures.”

“It does, only…Has Lucien said anything about wanting them himself?”

“Naw! He thinks they’re blah.”

“He can’t have said that.”

“Yes, he did. Changed his mind since, I reckon.”

“But why would he say they were blah one time and miraculous the next?”

“Could be he was just showin’ off his superior ah-tistic discernment for Mack. It don’t matter. You and me like ’em and we ain’t feebleminded.”

You and I, she thought reflexively. You and I like them. She gave up on delicacy. “Uncle Cleon, if you’re using those paintings to get at Lucien by giving them to me, I won’t stand for it. If he wants them, I’ll give them to him after you’re dead.”

“Listen, doll, I know you think I’m a shit-stirrin’ old bastard and I oughta kiss and make up with your brother. But Lucien and me, we’re at loggerheads right now. We’ll thrash things out before I croak. It ain’t my purpose to stiff him out of what he wants. I swear on my life, what’s left of it, that Lucien’ll be very happy with his legacy. Wendell, now. Wendell may not fare so well.”

She studied his face. “Why? Why won’t Wendell fare so well?”

He mashed her hand in his big, red-knuckled mitt and winked. “You know, it ain’t as much fun defendin’ corporate crooks and tortfeasors as it was defendin’ regular folks. Did I ever tell you about Luther Jones?”

“No.” He was obviously avoiding her question, but that wink kindled suspicion.

“Luther was a tenant farmer, worked a few acres of corn and collard greens outside of Mayday, Georgia. He was a deacon over at the Baptist church, never caused any trouble. Everybody thought well of him until he got drunk as a wheelbarrow one night and shot his wife dead. There was never a question he’d done it.”

“Did he get the death penalty?”

“Naw. I get a letter from him every once in a while. Says prison ain’t half bad. He’s too old now for hard labor and the prison dishes up three squares a day.”

If this story had a point, he was taking his sweet time getting to it. She said, “There must have been extenuating circumstances.”

Cleon chuckled. “At the trial, the jury looked kinda mean-eyed and I didn’t have much choice but to call Luther to the stand to see if he couldn’t cultivate a little sympathy. I asked him, ‘Why’d you do it, Luther?’ He said, ‘She took up with a back-door man.’ ‘And who was this back-door man?’ I asked. Luther scrunched up his face, mournful as a whipped hound, looked straight at the jury and said, ‘It was my brother.’ After that, you could’ve heard a pin drop.”

Dinah stared at him. The point of the story was, he knew. Cleon knew about Wendell and Neesha.

“I reckon Luther would’ve killed his brother, too, if he hadn’t run like a jackrabbit. Yessireebob. The fact it was his own brother is what saved Luther from the needle. That and Luther’s winsome way of speakin’. He said, ‘I shot her, all right, and no denyin’. But I pulled the trigger real slow, bein’ as how I’d had tender feelings.’”

Dinah’s thoughts weltered. Was it conceivable…well, of course it was conceivable because she just conceived it, that Cleon had tried to kill Neesha and killed Desmond Fisher by mistake? Or more diabolical still, did he poison the doctor to foil his suicide and confound the adulterers?

“What have you done, Uncle Cleon?”

“About my will, you mean?” He took a card out of the glove box and handed it to her. “That’s the bub we’re goin’ to see, Stephen Geertz. When I get around to it, he’s gonna videotape me readin’ my will. I was thinkin’ I’d leave the Mercedes to Eduardo. He enjoys the trappings of wealth and if things don’t work out with him and Lucien, he deserves a souvenir of his time with the Dobbses.”

She tried to erase the thought of Cleon as murderer. It was hysterical. Against all reason. But there was no doubt in her mind that he was wise to Wendell. Maybe cutting him out of his will was Cleon’s way of pulling the trigger real slow. “You promised Margaret that you’d divide your money fairly among the children.”

“Fair means different things to different people. You heard Wendell say how he don’t care about money. I should take him at his word. That’ll teach him not to palter.”

Dinah no longer took anyone at his word, Cleon included. She said, “Margaret takes it for granted that Wendell will get all of Dez’s money.”

“Does she now? That’s a right strong motive for murder.”

“Not so sure anymore that you were the intended victim?”

He screwed up his face and rubbed his jaw. “Old moneybags like Dez and me, it coulda been either one of us. I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t say I was right pleased to wake up and smell the coffee this mornin’.”

Margaret was right about his improved outlook. Fisher’s death seemed to have given him a new lease on life. She said, “You don’t seem much distressed by your old friend’s death.”

“Our friendship was wearin’ thin since he became such a Johnny-one-note on death and politics. A man ain’t got much sense of humor about his own demise.”

Dinah had seen no aspect of Fisher’s character that would appeal to Cleon. It was a strange relationship, made stranger by Margaret’s affair with Fisher. “When did he become so enamored of euthanasia? And why?”

“First off, he was enamored of a young nurse. Married her and, before they had time to get sick of each other, she came down with a rare wastin’ disease. No cure, no letup from the pain. Watchin’ her shrivel up and die a slow death and not bein’ able to help her put Dez off doctorin’ for a while. I think it made him a little careless of his own life.”

That snippet of history explained the man’s obsession, but it didn’t make Dinah like him any better. “How,” she asked, “did an Australian doctor come to own a fish processing plant in Georgia?”

“He had a fair amount of money and he was always on the lookout for investment opportunities. The Brunswick plant came on the market at a time when he was in town visitin’ Maggie. He bought the controllin’ interest, ponied up fresh capital, and handed over the runnin’ of the place to the people who knew what they were doin’.”

“Not Wendell?”

“Dez wasn’t that boneheaded. He let him put in a few dollars and call himself an owner, but Wen couldn’t pull the fire alarm without a memo from headquarters.”

She began to wonder if she’d misread that wink. If he believed Wendell was so timid and inept, would he think him ballsy enough to seduce Neesha?

Cleon said, “As his drinkin’ got worse, Dez started to lose his rudder in more ways than one. He quit takin’ care of business like he oughta have done.”

That rang a bell. “At dinner that last night, he said something about not taking orders from you anymore. Were you in business together?”

His face contorted. Either he was in pain or the question required a grueling intensity of thought. After a while, he said, “We threw in together from time to time.”

He clammed up for the next mile and she took another tack. “Dr. Fisher mentioned that he went hunting with my dad. Did you introduce them?”

“I seem to recollect your daddy joinin’ in a quail hunt with us one time. Wouldn’t shoot the birds, but got a kick out of watchin’ the dogs work. Hart didn’t have much of a stomach for huntin’. Miss Margaret now, she’s a huntress if ever there was one. She went on a number of hunts with Dez and me. She could outshoot the both of us.”

“I gather she and Dez were an item once upon a time.”

“It’s true. Maggie set her cap for him a long while ago, but Dez never requited her affections, not to the point of matrimony anyways. I toyed with the notion that she’s the one who tried to poison me. She’s got a backlog of mighty hard feelings against me. But maybe I’m too self-centered. Maybe she got the right man. A woman scorned is apt to do something drastic, especially if it gives her only son a big payday.”

Dinah didn’t doubt the siren song of money, but if being scorned could send Margaret over the edge, she’d have murdered Cleon years ago. “Do you really believe Margaret’s capable of premeditated, cold-blooded murder?”

“I don’t know if you could rightly call Maggie cold-blooded, but she can do what needs doin’ and not bat an eye. She’s got sangfroid.” He pronounced it correctly, without the drawl, absent-mindedly erudite.

He stopped at the intersection with the Stuart Highway and turned his face to her. He might be grateful for a brief extension of his lease on life, but age and illness had etched deep lines in his forehead and for the first time, she saw the pall of death behind the mask.

“I’ve agonized over this, Dinah. Whoever that poison was meant for, I hope to God it wasn’t one of my children that served it up.”