“Stefan wasn’t crazy about that, I assume.”
“No,” Harold smiled. “Stefan could hardly be expected to take pleasure in a search that would result in a decrease in his share of the Norman inheritance. But he went through the motions. He hired the necessary investigators and went himself to Des Moines to visit the girl’s mother, who hadn’t seen her daughter for several years, at that point.”
“And for a while that was as far as the search got.”
“Right. Mr. Norman got on Stefan’s case about it, from time to time, and once when Stefan said to his uncle that the search was useless because ‘the damn thing was probably aborted anyway,’ the old man flew into a rage. I suspected that Stefan was doing this to provoke another stroke-a fatal one-so I had words with him.”
“What kind of words?”
“Convincing words,” Harold said.
Harold was pressing his hands together in front of him, squeezing, like a vise of flesh. I was reminded for a moment that despite Harold’s gentle, genteel manner, this was still Punjab, still the one-eyed massive bear that I’d butted heads with at the bus station not so long ago.
“Finally,” Harold said, almost ignoring me, “Mrs. Ferris contacted Mr. Norman. Her daughter had phoned her, finally, with a tearful story of a critically ill child. And Mr. Norman-through Stefan-arranged for Mrs. Ferris to bring Janet to Port City to live, where they could be looked after. Mr. Norman thought it best to remain anonymous, being wary of the young woman’s once before having refused Norman money.”
“And old Sy Norman changed his will,” I said. “Which Stefan didn’t like one little bit.”
Nodding, Harold said, “First the young boy was written in, though a third of the estate would still go to Stefan, and Stefan would be executor, in charge of the boy’s funds and the Norman Fund, until the child reached twenty-one. But by then Mr. Norman had started thinking of Janet Taber as his late son’s ‘other wife,’ as the woman who shared his son’s love-shared it more than that ‘miserable bitch’ who drove him off a cliff, anyway.”
“And so Janet was written into the will, too,” I said. “And made her son’s executor?”
“Yes,” Harold said. “She was second in importance only to the grandchild himself. And stood to gain control of the Norman Fund, as well.”
I thought that over. “Stefan had already been forced to turn the will’s leading role over to the child,” I said, a little breathlessly, putting it together. “Now he was reduced from co-star to supporting player. After years of controlling the Norman money through the Fund, answering only to a bedridden, near-senile old man, he now had to deal with young, intelligent Janet Taber, not to mention her shrewd momma. Or the lawyers and accountants they’d bring with ’em during the takeover. And maybe Stefan’s books for the Fund weren’t any better balanced than Richard Norman’s wife when she drove off Colorado Hill, hmmm?”
Harold was shaking his head, and it wasn’t in a “no” gesture; he said, “You are a mystery writer, aren’t you?”
“Am I wrong?”
“Did I say you were? I told you Stefan was a snake. I always knew that. But I didn’t know to what extent, until I found he was putting together evidence designed to prove to Mr. Norman that the child was the offspring of Janet’s hippie, common-law husband.”
“Phil Taber,” I nodded. “So he and Stefan were connected.”
“Very much so. Taber had been going with Janet at Drake before the summer she and the senator… well. It was not a farfetched notion that Taber could’ve been the child’s father. In fact, Stefan came to me with his evidence first. Stefan knew Mr. Norman valued my opinion, trusted me as he trusted no other. So he used me as a guinea pig, though I didn’t know that at the time. I looked at the signed statement Phil Taber had made, and motel registration slips and so on, and I was convinced that the child was quite likely Taber’s. I begged Stefan not to show Mr. Norman the evidence! I felt it would only serve to demoralize Mr. Norman, perhaps even cause another stroke. I suggested to Stefan that he wait till after Mr. Simon had passed away; the evidence could then be used to contest the will, rather than now, when it would only serve to hurt the old man. And Stefan agreed to wait.”
“Why?”
Harold’s laugh was short, sarcastic. “I thought-just for a moment, mind you-that he had found some compassion for his uncle, somewhere. It’s only recently become obvious that Stefan agreed to wait only because he was creating evidence, not just amassing it, and he didn’t have enough of it put together for it to hold up under a court’s scrutiny. I am convinced now that the child was indeed the senator’s, or Stefan would’ve moved on it sooner.”
“When was all this?”
“Not long ago. A few months. And then this past Monday afternoon, a call came from the clinic out east: the boy was dead. Stefan took the call. Janet and her mother were not told. Mr. Norman was. He took it hard, as you would expect. You’ve seen him. He’s slipping away.”
“How did Stefan take it?”
Harold’s face turned cold. “Stefan went to Mrs. Ferris and offered her a considerable sum for her defection-the mother wasn’t in the Norman will, after all, and Stefan felt Mrs. Ferris was, therefore, vulnerable. It’s a common mistake of a snake like Stefan, to assume that the rest of humanity is as greedy and vile as he is.”
Harold was getting worked up; he was telling me things he had no firsthand way to know-things that only Stefan could have told him….
Harold went on, almost as if I wasn’t there: “Stefan hoped Mrs. Ferris would help him convince her daughter to make a signed ‘admission’ that the son was Taber’s, not the senator’s. Stefan had to move fast; he couldn’t keep the child’s death a secret forever, you know. So he offered Mrs. Ferris a lot of money-I don’t know how much, that he didn’t say. ‘Generous financial settlement,’ he told me, but who knows what that amounted to, in Stefan’s mind? But one of the things he did promise-and this tells you all you need to know about Stefan Norman-he promised as a fringe benefit continued clinical treatment for the child.” Harold’s eye was wet. “Continued clinical treatment. For a little boy already dead.” He clenched both fists. Suddenly I wasn’t nuts about standing on the edge of a drop-off with this guy.
“Mrs. Ferris and her daughter,” he said, “were to leave Port City at once. For good. Only it didn’t work out that way. Mrs. Ferris rejected Stefan’s overtures, and Stefan must’ve lapsed into hysteria, or violence, or something, because the upshot was the larger Mrs. Ferris was flailing the smaller Stefan, at which point Stefan’s friend Davis, waiting outside, heard the commotion, stepped in and beat her to death. The two men then set the fire, using old rags and paint cans on the back porch for fuel.”
“And then that left only Janet to take care of,” I said.
Harold covered his face with one large hand, briefly, then looked at me; it’s funny how an eyepatch can seem to stare at you just like an eye can.
“I feel… sick when I think of my role in this. I had so bought Stefan’s bill of goods, I so believed that Janet Taber was a ‘blackmailing bitch,’ so believed that her child was Taber’s, not the senator’s, that I went looking for her, the Tuesday morning after the fire. You see, I knew there’d been a fire, and her mother hospitalized, but I didn’t know the mother had been beaten. I knew only that there had been a fire, and, naively, I assumed it was accidental. A dangerous assumption, with Stefan around. And, to my discredit, I thought Janet’s distressed condition would only make her more impressionable, more easily swayed. And so, I staged that ridiculous show at the bus terminal. To scare her off, to scare her off for once and for all.”
“So that wasn’t Stefan’s idea.”