Pick Your Poison (19 page)

“If he’s killed two people, seems to me getting rid of you would be easy, girl. Best to call the police, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” I said. But I would not be calling the police. Not yet.

“You be careful then, little lady.” She took a piece of paper and wrote the address, handing it to me just as a voice echoed down the hallway.

“Sally Jean! It’s me,” a woman called through the latched screen at the front of the house.

The door rattled. Thank goodness Sally Jean had fastened the hook, because I recognized that voice. Helen Hamilton.

“Is there a another way out?” I whispered.

She nodded and gestured for me to follow her.

I hurried out the back door, then drove two blocks before calling Sally Jean on my cell. She picked up on the second ring.

“It’s me, Abby. Is she still there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sally Jean.

“Standing near you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied cheerfully.

“Can you delay her so I can visit Feldman?”

“I’ll try. Friday sounds fine,” she said, covering for me.

“Thanks.” I disconnected and sped west. I had to make a move while Sally Jean was delaying Hamilton or miss my chance at Feldman—even though I was no longer sure I wanted to know the truth.

No, I wanted to believe in coincidences. And the kindness of the only father I had ever known and the invalid mother I had not.

But I’d been fishing in troubled waters for more than a week, and it was time to reel in that shark Feldman.

An older man answered the door after I knocked, then backed up six feet inside. He looked seventy or close to it, with thinning silver hair and piercing blue eyes. Though I’d realized Feldman would be old, a geriatric murderer didn’t quite jell with my image of a criminal.

“Terry Armstrong, Houston police,” I said, extending one of the business cards I’d been hanging on to for a moment like this. “Are you Samuel Feldman?”

I’d told the
big
lie this time. The illegal kind. But with the word
twins
battering my brain unmercifully, I really didn’t care.

“Yes, I’m Samuel Feldman,” he said, stepping forward and snatching the card before retreating again into the shadowy foyer.

I was now face-to-face with this slimeball, and though he looked frail, his voice sounded strong and self-assured. I would have preferred weak and wavering.

“I’m a consultant in the Unsolved Crimes division, and I have a few questions,” I said. “Can I come in or should we go down to the precinct?”

He hesitated a second, then replied, “What’s this about?”

“It’s about murder, sir. Would you like to discuss this here or go downtown?” I didn’t stop to consider what I’d do if he actually told me to take him “downtown.”

“I can give you a minute, but I know nothing about any murder.” He turned abruptly and I followed him inside, wondering if he’d noticed my trembling hands or an expression that surely must have relayed how sick I felt inside.

A winding staircase rose to my right, and the foyer ceiling opened up to the second floor. A gleaming chandelier hung above our heads, and this hallway alone could have housed a family of four. I couldn’t help thinking that all this wealth had been achieved thanks to exorbitant fees paid by hundreds of desperate people over the past thirty years. Had I known one of those desperate souls? Lived with him all my life?

Feldman walked briskly to the left, into a formal living area furnished with an expensive-looking modular sofa and heavy white drapes on the picture window with a bay view. A palatial room, one that reminded me of winter.

“What’s this about?” he said curtly.

He sat on the sofa near the fireplace, and I sat opposite him, seemingly a football field away. A heavily varnished coffee table fashioned from the trunk of a redwood filled the U space between us.

“I’m investigating the deaths of a couple named Grayson,” I said. “You may remember the wife. Her name was Cloris, and her children were placed in an adoptive home through your agency many years ago.”

He crossed his legs and leaned back against the white cushions. “Thousands of children came through my agency, and by the way, I don’t own or operate that business any longer.”

Maybe not on paper,
I thought. He’d no doubt covered himself there. “Let me refresh your memory. Cloris Grayson caused a bit of trouble in your life . . . before someone murdered her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. We know you placed her twins, and we know she tried to find them. If she succeeded, then you would have lost. Big-time. I’d call that motive, sir.”

He shifted his thin frame, paying considerable attention to his fingernails. “I think you’re mistaken. I don’t remember this woman.”

I guess I had expected him to fall on his knees and confess. I should have planned this confrontation better, but I was too distracted by what Sally Jean had told me to even make much sense right now. Still, I couldn’t leave without getting something out of this asshole. Maybe if I threw out a line about the judge, he’d squirm.

“You cooperated with a judge named Eugenia Hayes. We believe you made some shady deals with her, threw a few bribes her way. Is that not a fact, sir?”

“I told you I don’t know anything about your murder, nor about bribery. Frankly, I’d categorize your information as flimsy innuendos. I haven’t been in a courtroom in a long time, and I don’t recall anyone named Hayes.”

“Suffering from selective amnesia, sir?”

He got up. “I won’t be insulted in my own home. Obviously you’re grasping at straws.”

I had forgotten he was a lawyer, a “professional liar,” like Judge Hayes said.

“This isn’t the end, Feldman,” I said, knowing this was true, even if everything else I’d said was a lie.

“If you show up again,” Feldman said, “you’d better have more than speculation.”

He marched ahead of me, and I heard the phone ringing beyond a door across the foyer.

“I’ll find my way out,” I said.

He waited until I was out the front door, but didn’t come too close . . . almost as if he were afraid of what was out there. He certainly wasn’t afraid of me.

It was raining like God opened the drain, and I hesitated before closing the front door behind me. Just then a gust of wind blew me backward and the door opened, horizontal rain spraying into the foyer. I stepped back inside, deciding to wait a minute or two for the weather to let up.

That was when I realized I could hear Feldman talking in the other room. He said, “When do you think you’ll be here?”

Silence followed. I moved closer to the half-open door.

Feldman said, “I’ve had a visitor. Houston Police.”

His voice drifted closer, as if he might be walking toward me.

Damn.

I hurried across the foyer and crouched behind a large statue of some naked Greek god. I sneaked a peek and saw Feldman step out, his attention on the open front door. He maneuvered around the puddle on the floor, shut the door, and practically jumped away after doing so. As he went back into the other room, I heard him say, “Stupid woman left the door open.”

Taking a path close to the wall, I tiptoed back, stopping outside the room just in time to hear him say, “I understand. But they’re putting things together.”

Another pause before he said, “I
know
they don’t have any evidence, but she mentioned Eugenia Hayes, and she was one of the judges. If they dig deep enough, they’ll find out Rose made her step down and—Hold on; I’ve got another call.”

My knees almost gave way, and I steadied myself against the wall. Then, not caring whether Feldman knew I’d been listening in, I opened the door and ran out into the stinging rain. I didn’t remember starting the car or navigating through the downpour, but soon I found myself on P Street.

I parked in the driveway and sat there in the Camry, not bothering to even turn off the air-conditioning, my soaked clothing molded to my cold, shivering body. Rain still poured in unrelenting intensity from the swirling slate sky.

I clutched the steering wheel, my knuckles protruding white and sharp through the stretched skin of my hands. The truth, the thing that was supposed to set you free and all that crap, ricocheted between the confines of my skull, cruel and punishing.

Then tears began sliding down my cheeks and under my chin.

23

The rain let up minutes later, but rivulets continued to trail down the windshield. I watched one and then another and another meander and disappear. I could have easily run to the Victorian during this temporary reprieve, but I remained paralyzed in my car.

Those words,
Rose made her step down
, kept replaying in my head like a broken car alarm, over and over and over.

I don’t know how much time passed, but my tears had dried. I was left feeling numb and more alone than I could remember. That was when another man’s words came back. Jeff Kline’s words.
Ben Grayson was living on your property because he wanted to be there.
Yes, indeed. Ben had come to find Daddy, to find Kate and me.

“How very clever of you, Daddy,” I whispered. Was anything he’d told us true? Had there even been a fatal plane crash right before Kate and I were born? I doubted it.

And did he have any idea how much this truth would hurt when it came pouncing out from the past? How did I reevaluate a lifetime founded on deception? Where did I begin?

I felt overwhelmed and unequipped to deal with any of this. I wanted none of such a messy past. But having made the first vital connection, my synapses continued to fire. My father made Hayes step down because someone threatened to expose the judge as corrupt, had threatened to reclaim her children.

Cloris. Also known as Connie. Also known as
my mother
.

I shook my head, sprinkling the windshield with water from my drenched hair.
Don’t think about that part, Abby. Not now.

Rain pummeled my car anew, and for some silly reason—maybe denial was kicking in—I entertained the notion that Daddy could have been honoring a friend’s request when he forced Hayes to resign—simply been helping some friend protect their adopted children, not his own. After all, he had powerful business connections and measurable influence in political circles.

But I knew the truth, and the more I tried to push it away with implausible explanations, the more its presence grew. But that voice in my head came back with,
You don’t have solid proof. All you have is an overheard sentence spoken by a cruel old man.

And I had to be one hundred percent sure.

Eugenia Hayes knew everything. At least, she used to know. Could I drag the truth from the cloud of confusion fogging her mind? Maybe if I could hear the words from her, from the woman who sealed the deal, I could accept that I was raised by a man who then spent a generation lying to my sister and me.

The same curly-haired woman sat filing her nails at the information desk at the nursing home. When I marched past her, she spotted me and called out, “You can’t go up there!”

Over my shoulder I said, “I’ll only be a few minutes. I need to talk to Eugenia Hayes.”

I continued toward the elevator.

“Don’t make me call security. No visitors for her.”

I turned and went back to the desk. “Has something happened? Is she sick?”

“You upset her last time, and her son had a fit. Seems she called him and rambled on about bribes and crooked lawyers. She got so worked up she had to have three breathing treatments. After that, Mr. Hayes told the doctor not to let in anyone else.” She lifted her eyes, her withering gaze intended to shame me. “The son doesn’t come here much, you know. Of course, after you explained to me about Eugenia’s operation, I could understand his shame, but—”

“Wait a minute. I never said anything about any
operation
.”

She kept on talking, ignoring me. “Then I knew what had upset her son so much. Mr. Hayes was worried that little tidbit about his mother’s operation would get around town, don’t you know.” She paused, glanced around the deserted lobby, then whispered, “About her sex change.”

She resumed her normal tone. “I told him I wouldn’t tell—but he kept denying Eugenia started out as his father,
Eugene
. But we know better, don’t we?” She winked. “So you’re the one who got him so mad.” She smiled, pleased with this logic, and started buffing her index finger.

I had to talk to the judge. Now. So I did what lately seemed to come so naturally to Charlie Rose’s daughter: I lied.

Leaning on the desk, I said, “Eugenia told me about her son, how he keeps visitors away. How he’s embarrassed by her. She’s lonely up there. Craves company. Do you want to contribute to making her last days on earth totally miserable? I don’t think that’s why you work with the elderly, is it?”

She set her nail buffer down. “Well . . . no.”

“Please let me talk to her. I’m begging for a few short minutes.”

“Maybe I could call the nurses’ station . . . say you’re an out-of-town relative and have the son’s okay to visit.” She pointed a finger at me. “But you have to give me your word you won’t upset her.”

“I promise.” And that was probably another lie. But I didn’t care.

Judge Hayes sat with the head of the bed propped up, her eyes clear and alert. “It’s about time you showed up,” she said. “I told that man who keeps insisting he’s my son to find you, get you back here,” she said. “Did you locate him?”

“Your son?” I asked, dragging a chair to the bedside.

“No, that snake Feldman. Don’t tell me you forgot already?”

Judge Hayes was chastising
me
about forgetting? “Yes, I found him. But something he said troubles me. Do you remember the man who pressured you to resign?”

“Resign? I’ll never resign. I’ve done things I shouldn’t, but always in the best interests of the children. So many children . . . beaten, forgotten, neglected . . .”

I sighed. Reality lasted for only the tiniest interludes with her. I had another trick I’d thought of on the way up in the elevator, though, and took my address book from my purse.

“What’s that, counselor?” she said, obviously curious.

“This is evidence,” I said.

“Evidence? You’d better mark it as an exhibit, then.”

“I submit this as exhibit A. Proof Charles Rose illegally adopted the twin children of Cloris Grayson and forced you to resign when she came looking for them.”

“That’s inadmissible. Inadmissible!” Her face flushed to an unhealthy shade of purple, and she grasped the siderails of her bed.

I placed a hand on her bony knee. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll keep your secret.”

She collapsed against the pillows, closed her eyes, and inhaled feebly. “If I didn’t resign, Rose told me the truth would come out about the forgeries.”

“Were all the adoption papers Feldman presented in your courtroom forged?”

“No. But Rose would make sure every placement I’d made would be investigated.”

“And children might be returned to their mothers?” I said.

“To mothers who didn’t want them. Or they’d be forced back into orphanages.” Her cloudy eyes were filled with sadness.

“So if you resigned, he’d make sure that didn’t happen?” I said.

Her features hardened again. “He promised that snake Feldman would be out of business, too.”

“And the twins’ documents were forged?”

“Yes, yes.” She tossed her head and kinky gray wisps of hair fanned out on the pillow. “He said if his girls had to go back to their mother, their hearts would break.”

I closed my eyes, tears burning against my lids.

Judge Hayes touched my arm. “Bobbie? I’m tired. This has been hard on an old woman.”

I blinked hard, pushing down the emotion. So I was Bobbie now. “Can I get you anything before I leave?” I said.

She nodded at the water pitcher and I filled her glass. She took a sip, then handed the glass back.

“I don’t blame the man for wanting to protect those children, do you?” she said.

I shook my head no, not wanting to upset her any more than I already had. But I was lying again. I did blame him. God, how I blamed him.

I returned to P Street and waited for Steven, no longer doubting that my father had deceived my sister and me all our lives. I paced in front of the window, trying not to think, wondering how I would tell Kate, and realizing that working through the emotions that had flooded me in the last few hours might take me a lifetime. First I had to come to terms with the knowledge that Daddy could have had a hand in murdering my mother. Yes. He might have murdered her to keep her from staking her claim on her own children. Or had he helped Feldman do the job? They certainly both would have benefited from her death.

My head throbbed and I still couldn’t seem to arrange the facts in logical order. Did I know for certain Daddy had had anything to do with killing Cloris? Or did I merely fear he might have been involved?

I wasn’t sure. I only knew I would stick to this investigation until I had enough hard proof to bring Feldman and the ghost of Charlie Rose to justice. Nailing Samuel Feldman was now the most important thing in my life.

I stopped pacing and took a deep breath, aware of the stuffy room, my clenched fists, and the awful headache. Darkness had descended early, the smoky-black clouds transforming the late afternoon into night.

And that noise? What was that noise coming from above me?

I had been so distracted, I had no clue whether the sound had just begun or had been going on since I arrived. The way the wind was blowing, and with all Steven’s construction work, something could be very wrong upstairs. The repetitive banging persisted, so I climbed to the second floor to investigate. I smelled rain. A window must be open.

But when I reached the landing, the mystery was solved. The door to the bathroom was swaying back and forth, and every few seconds it swung hard enough to hit the wall.

So where was all the wind coming from? The tiny window in there couldn’t possibly be allowing these huge gusts. I walked over, grabbed the door as it swung toward me, and peered into the bathroom.

A gaping hole replaced what had once housed a commode, sink, and tub. All those fixtures were below me now, a pile of rubble resting on the mudroom ceiling. As Steven had predicted, the bathroom had collapsed and the far wall had crumbled into the yard.

Just then a violent cracking and crunching started beneath my feet. I had no time to grab for the door frame as the damaged entrance gave way.

Down I plummeted, into the saturated mound of broken wood and insulation, the journey a horrible aberration of a water-slide ride. Then everything went black.