Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (20 page)

I could see how Chase had figured it: damaging insinuations had been traded for money.

But perhaps money hadn’t been the motive.

“Burton could be the one. He’s what we used to call maladjusted.” Every decade has its pseudo—social science lingo. I knew Chase would remember the
gray-flannel-suit days when the epitome of success was to be well-rounded, a figure of speech as revealing of its times as any I’ve ever heard.

Here at least Chase and Haskell were in strong agreement. “Burton’s a wimp.” Chase’s tone was dismissive. “He would p—” He paused, and I was amused when I realized he was rephrasing to avoid offense. “He’s scared to death of me. He’s so afraid hell be blamed for anything that goes wrong that it’s pathetic. Sure, I know he’s resentful. He looks at me and thinks I’m a rich bastard who gets to do anything he wants to do while he has to work his guts out for pennies. That’s true. It’s the difference between talent and mediocrity. And I know he’s tickled when something like that damned book comes out. He loves to see me squirm. But he’d never take the risk himself.”

I took the last sip of liqueur. “Enrique takes risks.”

Chase looked at me warily. “So you’ve picked up on that.”

“Yes. Feeding information to a writer wouldn’t bother him a trifle. After all, a man who beats his wife wouldn’t stick at selling information about his employer.”

There was a strained silence.

Chase’s eyes shifted away from mine.

I felt very tired. “Chase, you know how that man treats Rosalia, and you haven’t done a damn thing about it.”

He shrugged. “All right, sometimes I’m a bastard. I never said I was perfect. But why the hell does she put up with it?”

It didn’t surprise me. He had the arrogant confidence
of a rich white male who had never been dependent, never in his life. No one had ever physically hurt him or threatened him. The world belonged to him and to men like him. They had a trigger-quick disdain for anyone who wouldn’t fight back. They didn’t believe in a victim’s resigned acceptance of abuse, the victim’s pitiful sense of punishment deserved.

“She puts up with it …” I began. Then I shook my head. “She’s scared and cowed and emotionally crippled. But you aren’t, and you’ve got the chips. You’ll remedy it?”

He shot me an exasperated glance, then quickly said, “Oh, hell, yes. I understand—you’re making that a condition. I’ll see to it.”

I didn’t leave it at that. “What will you do?”

“Oh, she has a sister. I’ll send her to visit and arrange for some counseling. I’ll talk to Enrique, make it clear he’s out on his ass if it ever happens again.”

“I will talk to Enrique, too.” And he’d listen. If he wanted to keep his job, he’d listen. Hating every minute of it, fingers itching to strike out at me, Enrique would listen.

“Enrique.” Chase fumbled for another cigarette. “Frankly, I’d be delighted if it was Enrique. He’s a hired hand. He’s not my wife or son or stepson. But I can’t see why the hell he’d do it. He likes money, sure, but would he take a chance on losing his job? I pay handsomely, more than he’d ever make anywhere else. No, I don’t see him as the source for that garbage in the book. I had him looked over because I
don’t trust him. He’d do anything that would advance himself, but he’s not stupid.”

“Maybe he’d like to get his hands on what you’ve left him and Rosalia.” I reached up and unclasped an earring that was beginning to pinch.

Chase’s face was fully illuminated by the bronze floor lamp behind his chair. I studied the dark hollows beneath his eyes, the straight, patrician nose, the firm jaw and determined mouth. I saw the swift appraisal in his eyes, followed by almost instant negation.

“If I were fool enough to broadcast the contents of my will, yes, Enrique might be tempted. But no one knows what’s in that will, Henrie O, except my attorney, myself—and now you.”

“But that isn’t true of the infamous insurance policy, is it?”

“No.”

“As for the will itself, family members have no reason to assume they aren’t included, right?”

“I guess that’s right.” It was a grudging assent.

He knew it was right.

Any rich man’s will can provide a motive for murder if there is a legatee greedy enough to trade a human life for money or power. Chase’s will was no different. Under it, every person on the island—including myself—might have good and sufficient reason from the police’s point of view to commit murder. And Chase’s statement to the contrary, none of us could prove we were unaware of its provisions or, at the very least, unaware of the likelihood of receiving some kind of bequest. Especially the family members.

Chase had certainly put me in the soup—if anything
happened to him—along with all the other legatees.

Now was as good a time as any to bring that up.

“I wish to be removed from your will, Chase. Immediately.”

The stubborn resolve in his face answered me.

“No.” His answer couldn’t have been simpler or less equivocal.

I tried to keep my temper. “I don’t want your damn money.”

“I know that. But I shall decide who receives a part of my estate—a part of
me
, Henrie O. I have that right.”

I didn’t want to talk about rights.

Chase knew that.

He regarded me steadily. “Henrie O, now, after all these years, I want an answer. Why did you run away?”

I didn’t want to look back. It reopened wounds that I had thought long since healed.

“Whenever I see an Indian summer day, Henrie O, I think of you and what you took away from me.” There wasn’t so much anger as great sadness in his voice.

I clasped my hands together and stared down at them, but I was seeing the office, jammed with desks, typewriters, a teletype. We had worked for a news bureau for a midwestern daily, and we had covered Capitol Hill. It had been the most exciting, demanding, exhilarating, passionate year of my life, and the most heartbreaking.

“The House Un-American Activities Committee. That college professor from Connecticut. A Hollywood
actor claimed he was a Communist. It was the height of the witch-hunt. Before McCarthy took on the army—and lost. The professor’s wife came in.” I could see her as if it were yesterday, a woman in her early thirties with anxious eyes and a shaking voice. “She begged you not to run the story, said it would ruin her husband. He was up for tenure. She said he’d only gone to a couple of meetings when he was in college, that it didn’t amount to anything. But you wouldn’t listen.”

I looked at Chase, at his intelligent, determined, puzzled face.

He didn’t remember.

But I’d never forgotten.

“Agnes Moran, Chase. Her husband was Thomas Moran.”

The name kindled no recognition.

“She was terribly upset.” How paltry the words were. Even now—more than forty years later—I remembered so vividly the desperate fear in her eyes, the slight, musical voice ravaged by urgency. “She’d found out that you were going to break a story on her husband. She begged me to help persuade you not to do it. She said his career would be ruined. She swore that he’d never done anything to hurt his country. I asked you to talk to Moran, get his side of it.”

Chase squinted, then smacked his fist against his palm. “Oh, yeah, Moran. He was one of those saps that got mixed up with the Reds when he was in college. Hell, I had letters he’d written to some Russian official. I don’t remember the details now, but he was so glowing about the new world order, that kind of thing. Oh, God, that was hot stuff then. That was
the series I did that first caught Elizabeth’s dad’s attention. That series set me up.”

The series had resulted in a subpoena to Thomas Moran. That had gotten lots of headlines. His college had refused him tenure. The day Moran was to answer the subpoena, he had driven to Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and put a bullet in his brain.

Chase didn’t remember that part of it.

When I reminded him, he merely looked surprised.

“I covered the funeral.” The maples had blazed like fire, the oaks had been as brilliant as dollops of gold. “His widow saw me. She pulled away from the family, and she told me that you and I had killed him. She said she hoped we were satisfied to see a good man destroyed for no reason.”

“I wrote a story. The facts were true.” There wasn’t an iota of regret in Chase’s voice.

“Moran was served up like a fatted calf to satisfy the paranoia fanned by the malevolent senator from Wisconsin.” Even after all this time I was angry, angry at the warping of freedom, the mind-jacketing the McCarthy years had begun.

Chase shrugged. “Moran should have had the guts to defend himself.”

“But you didn’t care whether he was innocent,” I continued steadily. “All you cared about was a big story—no matter what it did to him or to his family.”

“Big stories.” He smiled faintly, and his eyes challenged me. “That’s my business, Henrie O. I thought it was yours.”

Big stories. Yes, I’d had more than a few. And so
had my husband, Richard. But neither of us had ever—knowingly—broken a story for our own advancement or broken a story when we knew the official attack was politically motivated. Yes, we had had to cover those kinds of stories when they became news, but we had never originated them. I had no Willie Horton stories on my conscience.

I’d left the cemetery that long-ago morning and gone to my apartment and packed. I had made up my mind. I couldn’t love a man who sacrificed human lives for his own advancement.

Chase sighed. “I suppose I should have known. You’ve always had a quixotic streak, Henrietta. But I thought—hell, I thought you’d been seeing Richard, decided he was the man for you. And I wasn’t going to come after you—if that’s the way you felt.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s not what happened. I went back to Kansas, to my mother’s sister. Richard followed me. He tracked me down—and he asked me to marry him.”

I had been honest with Richard when he came. He had still wanted to marry me. I had said yes, and it had been the best decision I’d ever made.

“I called and called your apartment.” Chase sat up straight and leaned toward me, his eyes blazing. “Finally I knew you were gone and not coming back. Nothing’s ever hurt me that much.”

He was so close to me, close enough to reach out and touch. He still radiated that animal energy, that high, intense enthusiasm for life and success and power. He was still extraordinarily handsome with his high-bridged nose and deep-set eyes and full lips and firm chin.

Different indeed from my equable, steady, honorable husband, Richard. Richard’s face had been broad and open. He had had reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes and a crooked grin. And he had been a loving husband and father.

Chase slumped back in his chair. “You never knew it, but I kept track of you through the years, you and Richard and Emily.”

I didn’t answer.

“The three of you made quite a team.”

“Yes. Yes, we did.”

I had made a choice years ago.

I stood and so did Chase.

We looked at each other without pretense.

“I came here, Chase. I will do my best for you. But that is all I will do.”

He walked with me to his study door.

As I started to leave, he reached out, caught my hand. “I wish,” he said softly, “that I had been Richard.”

I managed a smile though I felt close to tears. “Oh, Chase, it wouldn’t have been the right kind of life for you. Richard and I never had a dime. Richard and I never owned a newspaper or a television station. We had a lot of laughter, but we scrimped from payday to payday.”

“You had fun.”

“Yes. But then, be honest, Chase. So did you.”

He grinned at that. “By God, so I did. And I built an empire. An empire, Henrie O.” It was almost as if a trumpet sounded behind his words.

•     •     •     •

I slept fitfully, images of past and present intertwined: the agony in my heart as I’d packed so long ago and caught a train to Kansas City; Richard’s face when he found me the next week; Emily as a newborn, so tiny and delicate and dark; the many, many years and many, many journeys. I was in an airplane, a propeller-driven twin engine, and it bucketed and banged its way through the sky. Rain streamed against the windows, and there was an odd, harsh thumping sound—

I came awake abruptly. Somewhere a shutter banged in the wind, and rain splashed steadily against the windows.

I twisted and turned, wishing for the thick, black, comforting curtain of sleep but miserably aware that it would be hours before sleep would return.

Finally I gave up and snapped on the lamp next to the bed. Three-thirty. With a sigh I got up and went to the alcove. I made some decaffeinated tea and found a fresh, small loaf of pumpkin bread. At least I would always remember Dead Man’s Island for its exemplary hospitality.

I got a pad from my purse. I’m fond of To Do lists.

Explosions shattered the night.

First a series of rapid, harsh cracks in quick succession, then an enormous, concussive burst of sound. That horrendous boom rattled the windows, assaulted the eardrums, a huge, tearing, roaring, mind-numbing detonation.

By the time I reached the window and flung aside the shutters, the blaze was far beyond anyone’s control. Not the finest fire-fighting equipment in the land could have saved the
Miranda B
., captured in a round and glowing ball of flame. The lovely yacht writhed, blackening in her incendiary prison as tongues of fire fed by diesel fuel sparked high in the night sky and swiftly spread from the shattered boathouse to the pier. As I watched, the skeletal frame of the boat collapsed inward.