When Harold answered, I was almost surprised: it was like the rock suddenly talked. “It’s your story,” he shrugged.
“Is it? Anyway, a few years pass and in the midst of launching a second attempt to go to Washington, the senator dies in a car crash. So does his wife. And so does his only child-the only legitimate child, that is. Old Sy Norman has a stroke shortly after. And then someone remembered the pregnant secretary, and reminded the old man about her; perhaps she hadn’t had an abortion-perhaps she’d had the child.
“And so the Norman forces tracked down Janet Taber; or anyway, tracked down Janet’s mother. And it turned out Janet had indeed had the child, a son. A grandson for Sy Norman. Something that would outlive him. Something that came from him that would last. For some reason, Janet’s mother was used as a go-between. Was it because Janet was bitter toward the Normans? Could it be that that other time Janet had turned down the money they offered her, and had just disappeared into Old Town and became a hippie, snubbing their capitalistic offer?”
Harold turned his gaze on me and nodded.
“Okay, then. It starts to make sense. The mother acted as go-between; Janet suspected who was behind it, but since her child needed medical care, she went along-maybe lied to herself that it wasn’t the Normans paying the bills. Hoping it was some other good-hearted John Beresford Tipton type. Maybe it was easier for her to live with it that way. Whatever the case, whatever the reasons, she went along with it, and her son went to that clinic in the east.
“And now I have to guess. I can only guess. But I’m almost sure I’m right. A day or two before you pulled your scare tactic on Janet at the bus station, Harold-and why exactly you did that, I admit I’m still not sure of-a day or two before things started getting ugly, the boy died.”
Harold again turned his gaze on me. Again he nodded slowly. Sadly.
“I thought so! The little boy in the big fancy clinic died. But Janet Taber never knew that. She was never told. That’s something, anyway; that’s a burden she didn’t have to carry to her grave with her. But that’s about the only break she got. Because Stefan-and his killing machine, Davis-had decided to get rid of both Janet and her mother, before they found out the boy was dead.”
“And why would they do that, Mallory?”
I poked his barrel chest with a finger. “Because Janet and her son were both in the old man’s will! Am I right? Because Stefan wanted it all, and because news of the grandson’s death might kill the old man, and then Stefan would lose a good chunk of his inheritance. So Stefan had to act fast-a fire, a car crash-and then he stood to inherit it all again. Pretty sloppy work, if you ask me, but then it helps to have the local cops in your pocket when you’re doing work as clumsy as it is ruthless.”
Harold laughed humorlessly. “Stefan was a clumsy criminal. He was a manipulator, a schemer-but when it came to murder, he was out of his depth.”
“So much so that he ended up committing suicide.”
“Right. But the blame for that is yours, Mallory.”
“Mine?”
“Stefan’s clumsy staging of ‘accidents’ would’ve held up, but for you. Like you said, the police and the sheriff are in the Norman family’s pocket; the investigations of these events would’ve been cursory, at best. How was Stefan to know a… a mystery writer like yourself would be on hand to poke in here, and unravel there?”
The elation I’d been feeling, from putting the pieces together, suddenly faded; the wind was cold on my face but the sun had come out from under some clouds and made me squint.
I said, “So when the holes in Stefan’s not-so-grand design began to show and the local law had to start looking into things, and when his roommate Davis ended up dying for him-when it all began coming apart and falling in on him-he had an attack of despair and wrote a self-serving suicide note, apparently designed to spare his uncle’s feelings, a bit, and then put a bullet in his brain.”
Harold nodded. The barge horn blew, a foghorn sound.
“Bullshit,” I said. “You killed Stefan, Harold. Why don’t you just tell me about it? It is your story, after all….”
TWENTY-SIX
“You have to understand about Stefan Norman,” Harold said. “Stefan Norman was a snake.”
His voice was a dry whisper; so was the wind.
“Stefan Norman,” Harold went on, “was the one who told Richard Norman’s wife about her husband and his secretary and a baby that might or might not have been aborted. And Mrs. Norman, she didn’t take it so well. She developed… nervous trouble. Then she developed drinking trouble. Psychoanalysis didn’t seem to help either problem. She proved a constant source of embarrassment for the Normans during the senator’s second national campaign. Rumors about her, which she in one way or another managed to generate, were so ugly that most people refused to believe them. Dismissed them as vicious smears. Like the one about her trying to drown their daughter while vacationing at Lake Okoboji.”
“Jesus,” I said.
Harold sighed heavily. “How the senator felt about his wife at this point I can’t really say. At one time he and I were rather close. He often revealed personal things to me, but… but when the business with his wife’s drinking and her cruelty to their daughter began, the senator clammed up.”
“What in hell possessed Richard Norman to get drunk and drive his car off Colorado Hill? It wasn’t suicide, was it?”
Harold said nothing.
“I get it,” I said. “Richard wasn’t driving that night. Richard wasn’t the drunk behind the wheel, was he? It was the wife. The wife.”
Harold nodded, said, “But the senator did allow his wife to drive back from Davenport when she was so drunk she could barely walk, let alone steer a car.”
“So what are you saying? That Richard Norman handing his wife the wheel was like handing her a revolver and saying shoot?”
Harold was looking past the drop-off before us, at the river. “Stefan felt that that interpretation of the events was likely, so likely that he advised Mr. Norman to go to the trouble of instructing the local authorities to have all the reports state that the senator was driving. Still, there were those who guessed past the cover-up that followed-those who guessed that Mrs. Norman had been driving, and who just knew she’d been steering accurately when she drove that car over Colorado Hill.”
Then he turned his one eye and his black eyepatch on me and said, “But they’re just guessing. And so are we.”
“What do you think, Harold? You and the senator were close, you said.”
“I don’t believe the death of his family was a conscious wish on the senator’s part. Maybe he hated his wife by this time; I don’t know. And he may have hated himself; that I don’t know, either. But he loved his little daughter. That much I do know.”
“Somebody else loved the daughter, too,” I said, gesturing with a thumb back at the house.
“Yes,” Harold nodded. “Mr. Norman loved the little girl. He used to say the little girl would grow up to be ‘the spittin’ image’ of his late wife. I feel it was the loss of the grandchild that triggered Mr. Norman’s stroke, more than losing his son the senator.”
“Who was it that remembered the other grandchild, Janet Taber’s illegitimate child? Stefan?”
Harold laughed; it was a deep, throaty laugh, and came as a shock, as he’d been speaking in hushed tones till now.
“Hardly,” he said. “Why would Stefan remind his uncle of another possible heir? I reminded Mr. Norman about the pregnant secretary. And it was the chance that a grandchild of his might be alive somewhere that made Simon Harrison Norman want to live again. And when the recovery had taken an upward turn, he spoke again, the first time since the stroke; he spoke to Stefan.” He laughed again. “Ordered his sole heir to search for the child.”