The Widow's Son (11 page)

Cue the violins.

I seem to be one of those unfortunates for whom trouble comes in wheelbarrows. No matter how much I try to prepare for turbulence, I always seem to find I've badly underrated the force of the winds. While my horrors haven't been the major league back-streets-of-Calcutta kind of daily misery—or the hell First Lieutenant Dietz must have experienced—they've been nasty enough at times. After all, how many can claim to have been barbequed in a Maori h
ā
ngi oven, had his ribs tickled by a crossbow dart, or cascaded ass-over-teakettle down a freezing subterranean cataract?

Not many, I'll warrant.

Problems were piling up and none looked to have promising solutions. It was going to be difficult to get a proper price on such short notice for my stock. That meant unloading far more than I could afford for Riverrun to remain a respectable purveyor of rare books. Having lost all hope of gaining membership in the ABAA, it probably didn't matter anyway. Not only had my chief sponsor died, but I was responsible for allowing a client's incredibly rare book to burn with her. A definite black mark on the résumé.

And then there was the little matter of preventing incest between my natural offspring without explaining why to either of them.

I knew there was no way I could convince Anne without telling her the truth, so I decided to do an end run and speak to Mark. But when I called his apartment in Lawrence, his roommate informed me that he'd flown to Denver that morning. He planned to rent a car and meet Anne in Aspen at the Fasching Haus condos the next day. I hung up and desperately began logging on the computer for flights to Colorado. Everything was booked, leaving me with two options: trust my rotten luck to standby or drive eight hundred miles.

Given my history, guess what I chose.

Fourteen road-weary hours on I-70 later, I pulled into Aspen just as the morning sun was kissing the top of the peaks. I found the condo nestled at the base of Aspen Mountain and parked my Jeep next to a rental Nissan. It had to be Mark's because there was a K.U. baseball cap on the dashboard. After getting Anne's room number from the concierge—it took showing my driver's license and a picture taken of her when she was sixteen that, for some reason, I still kept in my wallet—I rushed up three flights of stairs to number 312.

I knocked on the door with my heart shaking like a trip-hammer—the combined effect of oxygen deprivation at ten thousand feet, eight hundred nonstop miles in a car, and an overloaded nervous system. There was the sound of scuffling feet and a few seconds later my daughter opened the door wearing bulky flannel pajamas. She had never looked more innocent or adorable.

“Dad! Oh, my God! It's great to see you, but what are you doing here?”

“I needed to see you in person. There's something…”

“Who is it, Anne?”

It was Mark's voice and it came from the bedroom. He soon appeared by her side wearing a faded Jayhawk T-shirt and a pair of khaki hiking shorts. If he was bothered to see me, he had the good manners not to show it. Another fine quality of the lad's.

“Howdy, Mr. Bevan. You here to climb with us?”

I opened my mouth once or twice, but no words came out. Seeing them standing next to each other, I couldn't believe I hadn't made the connection before. It wasn't only that they were stunningly attractive. Each had my bearing, wide shoulders, and slight cleft in the chin; and while Anne's beauty came from Carol, and Mark's dreamy eyes from Alice, they both had the indelible Bevan stamp. I wouldn't call it style, more like an inclination toward orneriness that, while sometimes irritating, was never boring. The latter was less pronounced in Mark, but given time he'd rival Anne and me in the mischief-making business.

There was no point in lying or beating around the bush with these two. Alice might never speak to me again, but there was simply no alternative if I wished to avoid contributing to a Class C felony. Anyway, what's the point of sharing a secret if you can't betray it when it suits you?

“I'm not here to hike,” I said, failing in my effort to avoid sounding melodramatic. “Annie. Mark. There's something you need to know.”

“Really?” my daughter said with the tiniest smile as she draped an arm over Mark's shoulder.

“Uh, I wouldn't do that, honey,” I said.

“Why on earth not?” she asked as she kissed him on the cheek.

“Ah, Jeeesuss,” I muttered, sweating like a packhorse. “Because you…and…he…are…”

“Half brother and sister!” they answered gleefully in unison.

You could have slapped me with a wet dolphin and I'd ask for another. Adding to my mystification, the young degenerates had the audacity to giggle at my discomfiture.

“Look, you two,” I sputtered. “I'm no bluenose, but the last time I checked, cavorting under the sheets with one's sibling isn't condoned in this country—some mountain hollows in southern Missouri notwithstanding.”

Before I could climb higher on my high horse, however, Annie stopped laughing long enough to tell me to relax.

“Relax? How can I do that when—”

“Mark and I figured this out a year ago when I was in rehab. There were so many mannerisms we had in common, so many things we felt the same way about. We also knew how close you and Alice were at one time. I ordered a 23andMe DNA kit to confirm it. Only cost ninety-nine bucks.”

Mark slipped away from under Anne's arm and took my hand.

“Don't worry, Mr. Bevan—er—Dad. We know how sensitive this is for everyone; especially my mom. Every time Anne and I have gotten together it was to make up for lost time. It's been wonderful.”

“So no hanky-panky?” I managed.

“Oh, Father,” Anne squealed. “Don't be gross. Yuck!”

“Whew,” I said.

“There's something else, though,” Mark said. “My other dad is aware of the situation. He sensed something after I'd received the DNA results and confronted me with questions. I had no choice but to answer truthfully.”

“How did he take it?”

“Really well, maybe because he'd suspected for a long time—even before I was born. He raised me despite that and kept the secret. He can be strict and demanding, but he's been a wonderful father to me; and Mother, in her own way, loves him deeply. Perhaps you and he should talk about it?”

Ah, from the mouth of babes.

It certainly explained a few things. Over the years Tim Winter had kept me on at our law firm a lot longer than he needed to when I was overwhelmed by personal problems. After I was disbarred he even loaned me start-up money for Riverrun. All of that was probably due to Alice's influence, which must have added to his already smoldering resentment toward me.

“That leaves your mom as the odd person out,” I told my offspring. “I promised her I'd not tell either one of you. It's very important to her sense of self-esteem that she believes you don't know.”

Mark looked at Anne then back to me.

“I think Dad would prefer to keep her in the dark as well. That's if you're okay with that.”

“But she'll always insist on keeping you two apart.”

“I don't think that will be a problem, Mr. Bevan.”

The voice belonged to a statuesque woman just on the other side of thirty who emerged from the kitchen. Her high cheekbones and long legs in tailored trousers reminded me instantly of Katharine Hepburn after an afternoon on the golf course. More handsome than classically beautiful, this woman had that masterful air that first-rate artists or successful entrepreneurs always seem to have.

“I'm Lois Tamblyn,” she said, sliding past Mark and Anne to grasp me by the arm. “I've been dying to meet you.”

“My pleasure,” I said, thinking that Mark had done very nicely for himself. “Is this your condo?”

“Yes. My main house is in Los Gatos, but this is convenient whenever I wish to be with Anne.”

“Lois owns vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains,” Anne added proudly while clasping the woman's hand.

“What do you mean ‘convenient'?” I asked.

After a moment's bewilderment, followed by a lightning bolt of realization, I stood there like a marionette without a handler, an inane grin stitched on my face. Lois Tamblyn wasn't Mark's Mrs. Robinson. She was my daughter's.

“Just look at it this way, Pops,” my new son said. “Now you can tell my mom she doesn't have to worry about Anne and me.”

That afternoon, while my young'uns climbed the Maroon Bells, Lois and I spent the afternoon at the Woody Creek Tavern getting to know each other over a pitcher of margaritas. The lady was something else—Stanford grad, self-made millionaire, owner of a highly rated Northern California winery, and funny as hell. That night the kids joined us for steak and baked potatoes at the condo. As we sat at the table to eat, I raised a glass of wine to propose a toast. But due to my swelling emotions, augmented by the earlier tequila lubrication at Woody Creek, my gift of gab had deserted me. There was nothing for it, but to fall back on a rugby chant as inelegant as it was meaningless:

“Cheers, big ears! And here's to the ladies what love 'em!”

Lois, Annie, and Mark drank to it anyway. After all, we were family.

Early the next morning, I headed back to Kansas City knowing that my daughter, perhaps for the first time in her life, felt complete and truly happy.

And that, despite the loss of Stagg's
Book of Mormon
and the uncertain future of Riverrun Books, made everything seem almost right again.

What's she got those people rehearsing for? Some kind of crazy Irish play about a Jew walking around his town. He plays with hisself, pisses in an alley, and gets walloped by a whore. Disgusting. Hope she don't let her kid see it. I want my intended pure when the time comes.

The Saturday after my return from the Rocky Mountains, the drizzle had turned into a downpour when the last frenzied attack began. I held my ground before the thundering onslaught of rampaging muscle and bone as the oblong thing above the turf began its descent. Craning my neck to focus on the spiraling gray blur among the raindrops, I sprinted two meters, then leapt high into the air, turning slightly to present my back to the charge. The jump was timed perfectly, enabling me to catch the rain-slickened rubber over my shoulder just as the first three behemoths smashed into my spine and upper legs.

I landed on my feet an instant before the next wave crashed into my battered torso. Digging my heels in the mud, I desperately fought off the flailing hands trying to rip away the ball long enough for Joe Tuitama and Buck Martin to bind onto me.

Now that I had support, I dropped to the turf and did a controlled release of the ball while still protecting it in the comma-like fold of my prone body. A ruck immediately formed over me. More pushing and clawing followed until our scrum-half whisked the ball to the stand-off who crashed ahead for fifty feet before succumbing to a barrage of tackles.

No matter. The mêlée ended a second later with the blowing of the referee's whistle. With my defensive catch five yards from the St. Louis Bombers' try line, we had won by the narrowest of margins, showing yet again that that old age and treachery invariably trump youth and inexperience.

I staggered to my feet, a little the worse for wear from a cleat to the forehead. Limping like Quasimodo to my Jeep, I felt no pain knowing that I'd secured a place on the team going to Aspen.

Ahem. How I
do
go on.

As Josie can tell you, listeners' eyes dart away like moths at twilight when I start describing aspects of the pastime that I hold as dear to my heart as the book trade. But this modest digression has allowed me to introduce Leau “Joe” Tuitama, the Kansas City Blues' 260-pound Samoan prop who also happened to be a devout Latter-day Saint. I figured he might answer a few questions niggling in my brain.

The rugby team was hosting the St. Louis Bombers at The Peanut that night. Before the usual asinine revelry began I collared Joe at a corner table where he sat Buddha-like in front of a huge overflowing plate of Buffalo wings.

“You gonna eat all those?” I asked, sidling into the chair across from him.

He looked up from the plate, his olive-pit eyes suggesting I might have been a tad presumptuous.

I took a different tack.

“Buy you a drink?”

He nodded his enormous head.

I caught Pegeen Flynn's eye and held up two fingers, it being unnecessary to tell the world's greatest barmaid what her regulars wanted.

By the time she brought my Cuba libre and Joe's sixteen-quart Diet Sprite, I'd snatched half a dozen of the wings. Between delicate chomps on the tiny chicken bones, I mentioned my encounter with a couple of Joe's fellow Mormons.

“So?”

“Do you know Emery Stagg?”

“Heard of him, but he's not in my ward.”

“He owned an important edition of the Book of Mormon.”

“Good for him.”

I reached for another wing. His left paw said otherwise.

“Mind if I ask what brought you to Missouri?”

“An airplane.”

Like most of his clan, Joe Tuitama was a jokester.

“No, really. Why have so many Islanders settled in Jackson County?”

He looked at me as if I'd asked for money.

Finally, he said, “It's where Jesus will return.”

“Says who?”

“The Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. My folks came from Samoa when I was a kid to prepare for the Coming. My dad and uncles helped build the temple.”

“I still don't understand. Why would Pacific Islanders join a faith that—for the first hundred and fifty years anyway—was basically a white person's religion?”

“We're as Mormon as anyone,” Joe answered. “We come from an explorer named Hagoth, a Nephite whose people left Israel for the Western Sea.”

Was he speaking symbolically or, unlike Emery, did he really believe this moonshine? A rugby post party in a Kansas City dive bar wasn't the place for religious debate, but I couldn't resist challenging him.

“But Smith claimed the Nephites were white. I thought the ancestors of brown-skinned Saints were called the Laminites.”

He shrugged. “That's the Indians. They're descended from Lehi who left Jerusalem for America six hundred years before Christ.”

“Indians? Like the Sioux?”

Joe swiped his face with a napkin already brimming with vinegar sauce. “Sure. Commanches and Apache and all of them as well, I guess. Some say we're from the Laminites, too. We're all sons of Abraham, though, ain't we?”

It was a point that could have been made by any Christian, Muslim, or Jew.

“Yeah, Joe. Amen to that.”

I let the topic drop and ordered another rum from Pegeen.

About then, a few of the Bombers challenged the Blues to match them in rugby songs. The onset of obscene lyrics was Joe's cue to go home to his wife and five kids. Before leaving, however, he placed a massive hand on my shoulder and said, “Just so you know, Mike. There's a man come to town askin' about this Emery fella. Calls himself a Saint, but my
ta'ma
”—father—“says he has the look of a Destroying Angel. You watch your back.”

Joe was gone before I could get specifics, but by then I'd noticed someone else peripherally connected to Stagg's book.

Buford Higgins sat at the end of the bar looking more than a little disgruntled at the antics of the mud-bedecked hooligans who had invaded his favorite watering hole. I wrapped the last of the chicken wings in a napkin and made my way past the choristers who had just begun to belt out “
Charlotte the Harlot”
at the top of their leathery lungs.

“Aren't you a little old to be playing in the mud?” Buford shouted as I bellied up to the bar next to him.

“
 
‘Tho' much is taken, much abides,'
 
” I intoned, “
 
‘and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are…'
 
”

He looked at me quizzically until a light went on under his hat and he responded in kind. “
 
‘One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will…'
 
”

I joined with him on the last line: “
 
‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'
 
”

The lines we'd recited were from Alfred Lord Tennyson's “
Ulysses,”
which Josie had read at Buford's retirement party from the police force. I knew that ever since then he'd carried the poem in his wallet, but I was surprised to find he'd actually memorized it.

Not for the first time did I realize there was more to the crusty former cop than I'd given credit.

“I saw you on the news the other day,” I mentioned after we had clinked glasses.

“The Lawrence fire?”

“Yeah. What were you doing up there?”

“I'd been at the university's pathology lab that afternoon. Dropped by to offer help when I heard the sirens.” He drained his beer. “What a cock-up that investigation was.”

“What do you mean?”

“The male didn't die as a result of the fire. While I was helping to body-bag him I noticed a small round indentation at the back of his skull. I mentioned this to the Douglas County coroner, but he brushed it off at first, claiming the cause of death was from burns. He insisted the head injury was a result of failing lumber or some such shit. Finally one of his assistants checked the lungs.”

“And there was no evidence of smoke inhalation,” I volunteered uneasily.

“Bingo. The man had to have been killed by a blow to the head before the fire reached him.”

“Damn. That sure puts a different light on things. What about Miss Darp?”

“Smoke probably killed her while she slept, then the flames. Not pretty, in either case. The police aren't getting the word out until they've finished the on-site investigation…Hey, you look a little green. Are you okay?”

No. Not by a long shot and this time it wasn't my bowels. I should have finished my drink, paid the bill, and, after telling Buford I'd be in touch, headed for home.

Instead I smiled and emptied my glass.

Perhaps one day I'll learn that temperance is a bridle of gold, passion's bride and the strength of the soul. But this unwelcome news had scared the bejesus out of me and alcohol seemed a more reasonable antidote to my fear than pulling bedcovers over my head next to Josie.

So I ordered another round after Buford left and joined my rugby mates in a rousing rendition of “
Zulu Warrior
.” When following that the Blues' captain declared me Man of the Match, I was happy enough to be twins and only too ready to acknowledge the honor by the traditional chugging of ale from an old boot. The effort magically erased, for a few hours at least, all the problems in the universe.

Two hours later, I handed the keys of my Jeep to the bartender for safe keeping and walked home as legless as a cow on roller skates.

Victor ludorum
—champion athlete—indeed.