I swallowed, trying to rid myself of the tightness in my throat. “Go ahead,” I said softly. “Tell me how we got to this corner of hell.” I willed back my tears, vowing I’d never reveal how afraid I was to him. Never.
“Guess you figured out your daddy wasn’t so perfect, huh? Pure dumb luck when I stumbled on the truth. The day I found out about Feldman, I bet I could have pitched pennies down the neck of a swinging beer bottle and made every one. Charlie had a regular gold mine of well-kept secrets and would have spent every last dime to keep the truth from you and Kate.”
“I know Daddy paid you, but those canceled checks he wrote to you were dated before Ben came to work for us. How do those connect to the murder?”
“Those checks were first payments on a special insurance policy. How should I put it? Charlie was paying me for services not rendered.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I had these pesky gambling debts. Jerks in suits breathing down my neck, wanting their money plus interest. So Charlie said he’d help me out. But only as long as I kept my hand out of the cookie jar—you being the cookie jar, babe.”
“He paid you to stay away from me?”
“That’s right. Your brain’s firing like one of your damn computers. No matter what happened between us, I never doubted your smarts for a minute.”
I was aware of my chest rising and falling way too fast. I closed my eyes. Squeezed them shut. I couldn’t focus on Daddy’s betrayal. I had to stay calm, watch for any chance to escape, even though I felt like a knife was slashing at my heart. “But you didn’t stay away, Steven. You were always hanging around.”
“But I didn’t make any moves on you, either. I could have had you back in bed in a New York minute. Too risky, though. Charlie might have caught us, or you might have blabbed to him about us getting back together.”
Okay. He’s drifting into fantasyland. And he wants to gloat. So let him. “Did Daddy come to you, or was that arrangement your idea?” I asked.
“Let’s say we came to a mutual understanding. I picked up the checks at his office downtown, so you wouldn’t see me. But one weekend I ran out of cash and stopped by your house to see if Charlie would front me a little extra. By then we were better buddies than when you and I were married. I went around to the back after no one answered the door, and heard Charlie and Ben out in the greenhouse. I got quite an earful about this little illegal adoption.”
“So you started blackmailing Daddy,” I said, scanning the room. Had to escape through the back. The front door was locked.
“You could say I got quite a raise in my take-home pay,” he said. “The last thing Charlie wanted was you and Kate learning the ugly truth from the likes of me.”
He drew out a leather-covered flask from his back pocket and took a swig. “Join me?”
The more he drank, the more he’d talk. He’d get meaner, too, but I’d take that risk. I accepted the bottle, and the whiskey burned all the way down after I swallowed.
“Not your favorite chardonnay, but then I didn’t invite you to this party.” He capped the flask and propped it against his thigh.
“So when Daddy died, you took a salary cut, huh?” I said.
“Give me a little credit, babe. I’m not stupid. I had more than one iron in the fire.”
“Feldman?”
“Boy, it’s been hard staying a step ahead of you.” He laughed and shook his head. “Did you know Ben built houses up in Shade? We had some long talks when Charlie wasn’t around.”
“So you befriended Ben, and he told you about Feldman?”
“Ben wanted to find the guy and put him away for killing his wife,” he said.
Ben believed Feldman killed my mother. Feldman and not my father. He was probably right, but this was cold comfort. “So Ben trusted you,” I said. “Did he mention how he found Daddy in the first place?”
“Ben never said. Charlie agreed to help him find Feldman, and in return, Ben would wait to tell you and Kate the truth about the adoption. But then Charlie up and died from that heart attack.”
“Daddy had already found Feldman, though, right?” I said.
“Not quite. Charlie knew Feldman was still in Galveston. Nothing more. Ben told me as much at Charlie’s funeral.”
“So you’d lost one source of income, but saw another possibility. And you found Feldman first.”
“Yup.” Steven grinned and patted my cheek. “Such a smart girl. And guess what? Feldman had as much money as Charlie. When I told the old man Ben Grayson was about to show up with a uniformed cop on his elbow, Feldman realized he needed my help. I took care of the Ben problem. Got a nice down payment on what was supposed to be Feldman’s lifetime commitment to me.”
“Who will pay your bills now, Steven?” I said, and realized immediately I’d taken the questions a step too far.
“That’s none of your goddamned business.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “You’re right, of course.”
“Damn straight, I’m right,” he said, sounding calmer. He began to trace small circles on the top of my hand.
His touch, once familiar and welcome, now felt like a rattler’s tongue before the strike. “So Feldman killed Cloris himself?” I said.
He nodded. “Sounds like you’re a lot like her, babe. She was making waves. Digging around where she had no business.”
“Had no business? We were her flesh and blood.”
“She made a deal with the devil. You do that, you end up skewered on a pitchfork.” His hand moved to my knee.
I tensed. Keep him talking; then find a way out. I had to focus on those two things, or my rage and disgust might make me do something stupid.
“My mother never made any deal,” I said. “Feldman tricked her. But after years of searching she finally tracked him down, didn’t she?”
He uncorked the flask and drank, then wiped his mouth with the side of his hand. “Yeah. He told me about her. Seems she had proof Feldman forged the adoption papers and threatened to file suit. And then there’d be criminal charges. So he followed her back to Shade. Watched her house... her routine... and when he saw her pick up that cold medicine at the drugstore, the rest was easy. Her door wasn’t even locked, he said. He just walked in when she was gone, put the cyanide into the capsules, and left.”
He swigged again and continued. “After the ambulance and cops left her house, he got inside and removed the evidence. Seems they weren’t all that particular about their crime scene up in Shade.”
“Evidence? What evidence?”
“Some handwriting expert’s written opinion that the papers were forgeries. But don’t you think I bettered Feldman with my acid-cyanide deal when I doctored your roses? Ben never knew what hit him.”
“You played us all like a fifty-dollar fiddle, didn’t you?” I said.
“Aren’t you proud of me, Abby?” His eyes were red-rimmed and liquid. “But you know what’s funny about all this?”
“What, Steven?” I asked. Had to keep him talking. As long as he kept bragging, I stayed alive.
“When Ben started sniffing around, Feldman didn’t care as much about the whole world knowing he was a baby thief and a murderer as he did about having to leave his house. Geezer was a fucking nutcase.” He offered me the bottle again, almost like we were sitting at some bar, having a good old time drinking and bullshitting.
I took a tiny sip and handed it back.
“You had to snoop around, babe, didn’t you? Ruin everything. Why did you have to do that?” He took my hands between his own.
I felt like springs were uncoiling in my stomach. I didn’t like the change in his tone. “I don’t know why, Steven.”
“Every time you filled me in on your little detecting game, I had to stop and think how to stay ahead of you.” He turned my hand over, wet his finger, and rubbed at the dried blood on my palm.
It required every ounce of willpower not to pull away.
“I kept Helen and Feldman in the dark about you as long as I could,” he said. “See, Sammy didn’t know about you and me. He thought I worked for Charlie, thought that’s how I found out about the adoption. But when Kate brought that check over to Helen...” He waved his finger in my face. “Big mistake, Abby.”