“I don’t know,” Savich said.
An old gray Chrysler pulled onto the road directly in front of the Porsche.
SIXTY-ONE
Laurel said, “Just a moment, Stef.” She looked down at Rachael. “Tell me why you didn’t make the senator’s grand confession for him last night when you had the perfect chance.”
Quincy said, “That’s clear enough, Laurel. She finally realized she’d be considered a traitor to her father, and her idea for that damned foundation she wants to run would be trashed.”
Keep them talking, keep them talking. Rachael saw it in Sherlock’s eyes, and so she said, “No, none of that. Fact is, Aunt Laurel, I decided that only Jimmy could make public a revelation with such far-reaching consequences. His decision, no one else’s.”
“Are you telling the truth?” Quincy asked her.
“I’m lying here at your feet. Why would I lie?”
Suddenly tears appeared in Laurel’s eyes. The prison matron was suddenly remorseful about murdering her brother? Tears? Rachael stared at her. What was going on here?
Laurel said, “It means I didn’t fail. And do you know, I’d already accepted that I had? I despised you so much, Rachael. Daddy would never have forgiven me if you had spoken out. Never. He believed there was never any excuse for failure.”
Daddy? Her father? That profane old man who took my father from my mother? But he was dead, months and months dead, dead before they murdered Jimmy. Daddy?
“That old bastard,” Quincy said. “How did he even find out what Jimmy did? I didn’t have a clue until Jimmy told us.” Quincy banged his fist against his palm.
“Dammit, he should have told me, too. I was his loyal son. I stayed, didn’t go haring off to the damned Senate. I was the son who did whatever he asked. Damned old bastard.”
Rachael and Sherlock barely breathed.
“Calm yourself, Quincy. Daddy never told me how he found out about it,” Laurel said. “I do know he had Jimmy followed now and again, had detectives check on him. He liked to know where all the pieces were on the chessboard—you know that was always his way. Plus, he was very angry that Jimmy ignored all his ideas for new legislation.”
“Stop your whining, Quincy,” Stefanos said. “It is really unattractive, doesn’t go well at all with your patrician image.”
“Shut your trap, you suck-up—”
Stefanos laughed. “Is that envy I hear?”
Quincy shouted, “Envy of what? That the old man invented your image to suit himself and his own purposes, and you let him?”
Stefanos said, “I always thought it was one of your father’s better ideas.”
Sherlock was working the knots at her wrists. Please, let them keep talking, let them thrash it all out, go for each other’s throats, for all I care. Three more minutes, that should do it. She worked until her wrists were raw and she felt the sting and wet of her own blood but it didn’t matter. They’d found her ankle holster and taken her Lady Colt, but they hadn’t searched her inner jacket pocket with its single Kleenex and her Swiss Army knife.
Quincy said, “Yeah, right, making a fool of Laurel for fifteen years! I never liked it. I knew what people were saying about you behind their hands. But Father used to laugh when he’d hear gossip about your mistresses, about your barhopping, your partying with hookers in this little bungalow, not even five minutes from where you lived with my sister. Did you laugh with him, Laurel?”
She said, her voice light, “I’ve always loved the theater.”
Sherlock felt her cell vibrate again. Dillon, it had to be Dillon. He’d come, she knew he’d come.
Stefanos turned to Rachael, smiled down at her. “You have no idea what he’s talking about, do you?”
“I only know you’re a philandering jerk.”
Laurel said, “But that’s only what everyone was supposed to believe. Stefanos’s reputation as a womanizer—that was my father’s idea. He got a real kick out of building that reputation for my dear Stef.”
Stefanos picked it up. “It worked to our advantage, what with business associates believing I was nothing more than a simple-minded playboy he’d bought for Laurel. I got so many of those old jackasses to invite me to their weekend retreats where they paraded their mistresses about, talked openly about the women they were screwing, about this business expansion or that merger. They couldn’t imagine I was a threat to them. All the booze, the sex, the stupid schemes. I recorded all of it, even managed to videotape some of it when those old codgers came over to my own little place here. They loved all the red velvet. They never saw the cameras. The old man was very pleased. He enjoyed watching the films I made.”
Laurel said with a smirk. “Business took a marked upswing.”
“I haven’t done so much of that now that the old man’s dead,” Stefanos said. “It was getting tiresome.”
Laurel said, “Before Daddy became really ill that last time, he told me what Jimmy had done. He asked me to promise I would never allow anyone to find out. He was worried because he said Jimmy had this tender girl’s conscience, he hated to say it out loud since Jimmy was his oldest son, but the truth was the truth. He’d bred a weakling. Jimmy had all our mother’s flaws. It shamed him.”
“Dammit, Laurel, our old man was nuts. You know what else? I think he turned on Jimmy when he broke away to run for the Senate. You know why—it was Jimmy’s idea, not his. He hated that he couldn’t control Jimmy, hated that Jimmy wouldn’t do what he told him to.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Laurel said. “Not now. When he was dying, he asked me again to promise, to accept it as my responsibility. And so I did.”
Quincy said, “And look where that’s led. Jimmy’s dead. Greg Nichols is dead. These two bitches will shortly be dead, and we’re fighting for our lives here.”
A lot of bodies piling up around you, aren’t there, Laurel? Rachael held very, very still.
Stefanos looked at his wife’s white face. “The promise you made to your father was honorable, Laurel. As to what he really was, it no longer matters, just as you said. It’s only us now, and we will do what we must to survive. To win.”
Laurel said, passion thick in her voice, “Daddy mattered. He mattered more than anyone.” She walked over to Rachael and went down on her knees beside her. “After Daddy died, your mother thought she could cash in at last, make her move, and so she sent you to the senator, and that ridiculous fool decided you were a gift from the gods.”
“He adopted the bitch,” Quincy said. “I couldn’t believe he did that, and so fast.”
“Yes, well, Jimmy never cared about money, now did he?” She looked up at her brother. “In the end, he didn’t care about the family, either. He became a threat to us.” She touched her fingers to Rachael’s cheek. “And now you will die in a car accident, just like he did, and we will survive.”
Laurel got slowly to her feet, strode over to where Stefanos was standing next to the fireplace. Without her shoes, she looked smaller, a frumpy, heavyset matron in fishnet stockings. She looked tired, old, her lipstick long gone, a spiky band of coarse hair hanging along her cheek.
Stefanos took her hand, kissed it, then smoothed his thumbs over her eyebrows. “All will be well now, matia mou. Quincy and I will take the ladies to the agent’s car and send them on their final journey. The FBI will howl and bitch, but what can they do? They have no proof against us. They have suppositions, they have a wish list, but nothing our lawyers can’t handle.”
Stefanos turned to look at Rachael and Sherlock. A dark brow went up. “Time to see if there’s an afterlife, ladies,” he said, and raised his .38.