In-Laws and Outlaws (21 page)

“That wasn't exactly what I meant. I meant that the sudden emergence of a total stranger as the killer … well, it neatly defuses any suspicion that it might be a member of the family, doesn't it?”

Tom came over and took me by the shoulders. “Gillian—do you have doubts that Matthew Zeitz is the killer?”

I almost told him right then that I knew Joel had killed his son Ike and what's more
he
knew it. But I chickened out. “No, not really. It's just hard for me to maintain any perspective on all this.”

He gave me a big hug; my arms slipped around his waist and I hugged him back. Tom was so warm and solid and concerned; I didn't want to let go. But one of us had a serious character flaw. Either Tom was every bit as untrustworthy as I feared he was, or else there was something wrong with me for not being able to trust.

He led me over to the bed, where he patted the mattress affectionately. “You're going to help me break this in, aren't you?”

I wouldn't have minded jumping into bed right then, but I said, “Better wait until Connie's gone.”

The evening meal was a catch-as-catch-can affair. I made some iced coffee; Tom and Connie threw together a hasty salad; and after that it was every man for himself. I found some cheese and cold cuts in the fridge, while Tom put something frozen into the microwave. Connie barely ate a bite.

She was all atwitter; Mrs. Vernon had a meeting lined up for them in East Chop that evening, but what really had Connie excited was the coverage given their activities by the
Gazette
, the only newspaper on the island. “The front page, Gillian—look at that! And our picture, too!” Connie with her above-average height and gnomish Mrs. Vernon made a Mutt-and-Jeff pair; both wore suitably sober expressions.

“You look very serious,” Tom said.

“We
are
very serious. Look what it says here. It says the fact that this time the battle against McDonald's is being led by two West Choppers shows exactly how serious the threat is.”

That was true. West Chop itself didn't have to worry about a hamburger heaven appearing in its midst; the tennis club would never permit it. The tennis club—the very one where I'd stopped by to talk to Michelle—acted as a sort of governing board for West Chop real estate; nobody bought land or built a new house without the tennis club's approval. West Chop normally did not involve itself in the affairs of the rest of the island; it was a private world inside the rest of Martha's Vineyard. West Chop was Bostonian; East Chop thought it was; Oak Bluffs was nightlife for the tourists; Edgartown was opera singers, newscasters, and movie stars. And writers lived all over the place. But two West Choppers emerging from their citadel of privilege in order to Save the Island was front-page news indeed.

As Connie chattered on, I watched her with wonder and pleasure. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who not too long ago had complained so bitterly about newspapers and front-page photos. Of course, her privacy wasn't being invaded now, and that made all the difference. Connie truly was a changed woman, and I couldn't have been happier for her.

But my excuse for staying on was gone now; Connie didn't need me. Now I was staying because of Joel.

Our lovemaking was less frenetic than the first time; Tom was more relaxed and I wasn't fighting the screaming-meemies after having just learned the Matthew Zeitz story was a hoax, the way I'd been before. We were in my room, and we took our time. It was more like real
love
making this time.

After a while Tom got up and made us both a drink from the tray of necessaries we'd brought upstairs with us. He stopped and looked at the photograph of the four kids I had propped up on the mantelpiece. “Great picture. Who took it?”

“Raymond.”

He picked it up and studied it closely. “It looks … lovingly taken.”

“That's a surprise?”

He didn't answer but put the picture back and came to sit on the side of the bed, saying nothing. Unexpectedly coming across a picture of his dead son had shaken him. I pulled him down and kissed that place right between the eyes. “It's hard without him, isn't it?”

“Harder than I would ever have thought possible. I look at Joel running along the beach healthy and free and I …” He trailed off.

And you want to kill him
. “Did Joel and Ike get along well?”

“Did they ever. You'd think they were brothers to see them together. Ike kind of liked playing big brother, since he was an only child. And Joel—well, Joel is everybody's kid brother.”

“Didn't he ever feel left out?”

“Left out? Ike?”

“No, Joel. He was younger than the rest of them. Tagalongs usually end up feeling like outsiders.”

Tom shook his head. “The only outsiders here are you and I.” Then he laughed. “I doubt if Joel has any idea of what alienation is all about. He's been an insider all his life.”

“Come on, Tom, he's an adolescent boy! He must be loaded with insecurities.”

“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” he answered ambivalently.

This wasn't exactly the happy postcoital love talk I'd anticipated, but Tom had provided an opening I'd be a fool not to follow up. “How close was Joel to Theo Decker?”

Tom shrugged. “They were all close. They were a happy pack of kids, a closed circle. Too closed, I sometimes thought. They had other friends, but the five of them together were something special.”

“So when Theo was killed …”

“The other four were devastated. It was their first contact with death, you see, and Theo was sort of their leader.”

History was repeating itself in reverse; first the leader of the younger generation was murdered, then the leader of the older. Leaving a wake of resentment and grief in both instances. I took my courage in hand and said, “Tom, I just learned today that Raymond wasn't able to pay the entire amount of the ransom.”

He nodded, said nothing.

“Why, Tom? Twenty million! Among all of you, you couldn't raise twenty million?”

No answer for a moment, and then he murmured, “‘First, do no harm.'”

“What?”

He sighed, suddenly sounding very tired. “It's the opening line of the Hippocratic oath. ‘First, do no harm.' At the time Theo was kidnapped, I was with a patient. I wasn't even at home, I was …” He smiled wryly as he remembered where he'd been. “I was in Chicago. I was inserting a new kind of valve into the heart of a twelve-year-old girl suffering from bacterial endocarditis … alpha streptococci had shrunk her own valve beyond repair. New technology, new procedure—very tricky. If I'd left the girl then, she could have died … and I would have killed her. I told Annette to do whatever was necessary to raise the money—we had each other's power of attorney. By the time I was able to get away, it was all over. Theo was dead.”

I was silent a moment. “What happened to your patient?”

Tom smiled. “She's now a healthy, happy sixteen-year-old. I hear she plays basketball.”

So he'd been able to save one of them. “How much money was Annette able to raise?”

“Only a couple of million. I'd thought it would be more.”

So did I
. “You said the other four kids were devasted by Theo's death—Joel too?”

“Joel especially. He loved Theo almost as much as his brother Bobby. Why do you keep asking about Joel?”

Careful
. “Because he seems to have adjusted so well to the deaths of his brother and Ike and Lynn.”

“This is bad?”

“No, but it is unusual, isn't it?”

“Well, he's four years older now. He was only eleven when Theo died.”

“No survivor's guilt?”

“No sign of it. Joel has a healthy ego-structure. Good thing, too—did you know the Kurlands were changing their name?”

“No! To Decker?”

“A compromise. Decker-Kurland. But what do you want to bet the ‘Kurland' part drops off before too many more years have passed?”

“Not one penny. Whoo, a semi-identity change on top of everything else. I don't think I could have handled all that at fifteen.”

“Don't worry about Joel, Gillian. If he needs help, he'll get it.”

I wondered if that was Tom's way of telling me to butt out. No, on second thought he probably meant exactly what he said:
Don't worry
. As far as Tom was concerned, it was over.

I wished I felt the same.

I slipped out of the house early the next morning, in case Joel should get it into his head to show up as he'd done a couple of times before. I still hadn't figured out a way to talk to him or even look at him. If he was psychotic, he was
sick
, not evil. But it was hard to remember that whenever I thought of Bobby, Lynn, and Ike. And Raymond. Dear, protective Raymond, who'd died trying to save his nephew from himself. The trouble with that was that Joel didn't
act
sick. He acted like a kid, an ordinary kid. But … process of elimination. Would the adults protect one of themselves who had killed his or her own child? No. But they would conspire to protect Joel.

Oscar was in his kitchen creating an omelet; Elinor was still in bed nursing her cold, he said. “When you reach our age,” he added, “little illnesses tend to hang on about four times as long as they used to. Have you had breakfast?”

I said no, and he cracked a couple more eggs over a bowl. I waited until he'd served the omelet (it was delicious) and asked, “What about Nancy and your campaign people? Don't they get any?”

“This morning they scrounge for themselves. We're flying our cook in from Washington this afternoon. She's going to have her hands full.”

“Lots of people to cook for?”

“Only three of my aides so far, plus Elinor and me. And Nancy—almost forgot Nancy. But people will be coming and going for the rest of the summer.”

I asked an impudent question. “Tell me, Oscar—do you look upon the Senate as your
ultima Thule
or is it only a stepping stone?”

“To the White House?” He laughed easily. “You know, Gillian, at one time I did have my eyes set on the Presidency. But that was a long time ago, and the country has changed considerably since then. For one thing, the world is no longer run by governments, it's run by corporations. Now I can have the most effect making the laws that restrain the corporations—or cooperate with them, whichever is better for the country in each case. No, I no longer want to be President. I'll have more real clout in the Senate than I would in the White House. The Presidency is almost as much show biz as it is executive power.”

No wonder only mediocre men sought the office now. “Are you going to introduce any antiterrorist laws?”

He grimaced. “Laws can't do anything about terrorists without the muscle to back them up.”

“So you just pay them off? Or
not
pay them off?”

Oscar regarded me coolly across his empty plate. “The tone of this conversation has suddenly taken a turn toward the decidedly unpleasant. What's bothering you, Gillian?”

“Theo is bothering me. The fact that the rest of you didn't help Raymond raise the total amount demanded by Theo's kidnappers.”

He looked surprised. “But we did help!”

“Not much. Not enough.”

“We were able to scrape together seventeen million, all of us together. That was only three shy.”

“Yes,
only
. Only three million more to save Theo's life—and you couldn't come up with it?”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “Good god, Gillian—don't you understand? That boy was dead the minute those Asian hoodlums first laid their hands on him. If we'd paid them two hundred million, they'd still have killed him!”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “And so you decided that since there was no hope of saving him, why throw good money away? You all chipped in just enough to make Raymond think you were trying to help?”

Now he was really angry. “Who the hell do you think you are, Miss High-and-Mighty? You turn your back on us for ten years and then you come waltzing in here and start pronouncing moral judgment?”

I counted to ten and then said, “Oscar—I'm sorry. I know that's what it must look like. But I'm just trying to understand. Help me understand.”

Politician-like, he regained his composure instantly. He got up and went over to lean against the kitchen counter where he could look down at me, still sitting at the table. “I've always felt it was a mistake to pay off terrorists,” he said in a meditative tone. “It's a form of cooperation with the
fact
of terrorism, a reinforcement of that way of doing things. You pay ransom money, and you're saying, ‘I recognize your right to lay claim to my money.' The minute I learned Theo had been taken, I called Raymond in Norway and tried to prepare him for the fact that most likely he'd never see Theo alive again.”

“You tried to talk him out of paying the ransom.”

Oscar ignored that. “Have you ever tried to raise twenty million dollars in eight hours, Gillian? That's how long the kidnappers gave Raymond.
Eight hours
. Don't you see? They
wanted
him to fail. That's all the excuse they needed to go ahead and do what they'd planned to do from the outset.”

“Kill Theo.”

He nodded. “Kill Theo. Those thugs got more money than they'd ever seen in their lives
and
the chance to maim and kill. A real red-letter day. They liked killing, Gillian, don't kid yourself about that. The killing was the main thing. The money was just a wonderful bonus. Well, now do you understand? Have I cleared things up for you?” In his paternalistic mode.

I was quiet for several moments and then asked, “Did you help Raymond at all? Did you contribute anything to the ransom?”

“Of course! What a question.”