Distant Blood (42 page)

“This is crazy. Why would he want to hurt Lolly? Or Aubrey?”

“Lolly committed suicide. I ain't telling you that again, boy.”

At that moment I feared him. Implacable anger limned his words. I still found his premise ridiculous, but the heat in his tone suggested Lolly, even if suicidal, was not the only unbalanced member of the family.

“Okay, say Lolly killed herself and her death has nothing to do with Philip. Then why would he try to kill Aubrey?”

“Codes of silence, remember? Say nothing?”

“Just tell me.”

“Aubrey ran away from Sass when he was a teenager. He went to Houston. He got involved in the drug trade, as a runner. He ain't real proud of those days.”

“Good God.” Aubrey, freely dispensing advice, trying to place a mental Band-Aid on the emotional wounds we dared to show. I wondered how much human wreckage he'd seen in his days of coke and roses.

“Philip was dealing drugs, trading a lot with the other stockbrokers in town, the lowlifes who thought they were big shits. Aubrey made a delivery to Philip, not knowing his own cousin was a dealer.”

“As things go, that's not so bad.”

“Perhaps.” Mutt didn't appear convinced. “But it gets
worse. Aubrey found out Philip was dealing to Tom—his own brother. Tom was nearly dead from snorting coke. And Philip was still dealing it hard to him.”

My throat felt cold. “Feeding his own brother's addiction?”

“Yes. Philip's the most heartless animal on this planet.”

“Yet you're willing to protect him.”

Mutt shook his head. “Aubrey probably was going to write all about Philip in his new book. Philip was never arrested, never suspected as far as I know, of dealing drugs. He'd lose his business, his freedom, if this all came to light.”

Mutt turned to me, his arms open wide. “See? See how it has to be? I don't want this known. What's the point?”

“The point? How about making Philip pay for what he did?”

“When Aubrey finally broke free of that life, and went home to Sass—he told her about Tom. Sass called me, and I got Tom the hell away from Philip and got him into treatment. I done saved Tom's life, not that he's ever shown much gratitude.” He sniffled, and lightning flashed in the window like an explosion of light. I imagined a bolt piercing the bay's skin of water, burrowing into the murky depths like God's own finger.

“You're lying to me,” I said in a clear, calm voice.

“No”—he shook his head—”I'm not. God's truth, Jordan.”

“Then why do you even have Philip here? If he stole from you and he peddled dope to his own brother, why do you invite him?”

'Tom and Philip have made their peace. They're brothers again. That's probably why Tom and Aubrey have been so crossways, Aubrey trying to make life more difficult for Philip.” Mutt saw the disbelief in my eyes. He coughed. “Why do I have your father here, when he shot his own brother to death?”

“That's different!”

“No. No, it ain't. I have Philip here because this way I
can keep an eye on him. And I can hope he changes his ways.”

“Aubrey and Candace are paying the price for your hope.”

He wouldn't look at me.

“You still think Lolly killed herself—after you saw Philip slipping that book about digitalis poisoning back on your shelf?”

“I didn't see that. You did.”

I still didn't believe him. The truth was near the skin of what he said, but he was holding back. “And how do you explain Brian's death?”

Mutt looked genuinely puzzled. “Brian? That was an accident.”

“Brian knew his father didn't commit suicide. And somehow, that proof came to Aubrey. Now what the hell does any of that have to do with Philip?”

“Brian drowned. He was just a kid, nobody would've wanted to hurt him,” Mutt said. His skin had gone snow pale and the corners of his mouth whitened as he frowned. “For God's sake, Jordan. I'm awful sorry about what happened to Candace. Philip's to blame, and that's all there is to it. Now I've told you, and you know now.” His voice grew low. “You deal with Philip as you want. There ain't no cause to be digging up the past. It's just gonna hurt your daddy more.”

I stood and walked past him. The gun still lay on the bar. I hefted it in my hand and turned so Mutt was clearly in the barrel's sights.

“I can believe some of what you say. Philip selling dope and stealing money, Tom letting drugs ruin his life, Aubrey running away from home. But you're only telling me a half-truth. It doesn't all fit together, Mutt, and that's not enough.”

He raised one eyebrow. “You going to shoot me?”

I ignored his question. “Do you think we're all idiots? Oh, no doubt Jake and Sass have kept their silence. When Paul vanished, I'm sure people thought it was for the best— the wife killer's taken his own life, he can't hurt anyone, his
children don't have to bear the shame of a trial and such. Maybe even when Brian died, folks thought it a terrible accident. And when Lolly collapsed across the table, it was a little easier to say: she was nuts, she sent insane letters to me, she thought her dog was her husband reborn. So she had a heart attack or must've killed herself. Aren't you sick of the long list of lies?”

His eyes were stones. “I've told you truth.”

“Maybe half of it. That's the best lie to tell.” I cracked the magazine open; it wasn't loaded. “I see it's a specialty of yours.” I crossed to the phone and tried it again. Still dead.

The shut doors of the study rattled and Pop blustered in, fright in his face. My heart froze. “Candace?”

“She's the same. I think she's resting a little easier.” He glanced from Mutt to me. “What's going on here?”

“Your son's ready to destroy our family.” Mutt spoke sharply.

“This family was destroyed long before I got here,” I answered. I stuck the unloaded gun in my pocket. Mutt wasn't the only one who could benefit from a prop. “Excuse me.”

I left them, heading up the stairs. To Philip's room.

THE LOWING SOUNDS OF MEN SINGING GREGO
-rian chants surprised me as I leaned close to Philip's shut door. The voices rose as if a cathedral lay on the other side of the wood. Throats hummed in praise of God, baritones mixing with the cry of countertenors.

Funeral music for Philip was fine with me.

I knocked on the door. The music diminished in volume after a moment, and Philip bade me come in.

I swung the door open. He lay on his bed in a thin robe, hands on his chest in monkish repose. He barely glanced at me, then returned to considering the ceiling.

“Contemplating your sins?” I asked.

“No. I can't undo anything I've done. I just go on.” He blinked at me. “I hope you didn't beat up my brother too bad.”

“Neither one of us is worse for wear.” I closed the door behind me. I walked to the side of his bed, the vague sense of distaste I felt whenever I was near him rearing its head. A stack of tapes stood by a portable player. Palestrina, a Mozart mass, a collection of Gregorian chant, and a name I didn't recognize. I picked up the cassette. “Gesualdo.
Tenebrae.”

“He was a murderer. Aside from being a talented composer.”

“Like drawn to like?”

He fixed his blue eyes on me. “I may be many things, but I'm not a killer. How are Candace and Aubrey doing?”

“Do you care?”

He watched my face. “Actually, I do. I think you're a
pain, but Candace seems perfectly nice, if a bit too enthralled with you.”

“And no bad blood between you and Aubrey?”

“I don't care much for hypocrites, but I hope Aubrey's okay. I'm sorry it's taken their suffering to bring this family rightly to its knees.”

I sat on the bed and pulled Mutt's firearm from the back of my pants. Philip's eyes widened as I toyed with the gun.

“Candace lost a baby. I didn't even know she was pregnant.”

Philip jerked up to a sitting position. Genuine shock flushed his face. “Oh, my God. Oh, shit.” He swallowed. “Christ, Jordan. I'm so sorry.”

“Mutt's downstairs. He says you're the poisoner.”

I expected vehement denial, castigation of the accuser, and general bluster. None came. Philip stared at me, then started to laugh, a throttle of a giggle.

“That old shit. He's still trying to cover his bases.”

“Are you?”

“No, I'm not. I have no reason to hurt Lolly, Aubrey, or your girlfriend.”

“He claims you do.” I rubbed my fingers along the gun— unloaded, but Philip didn't know. He watched, fascinated, like a bird transfixed before a slithering cobra.

“Look, Jordan, I've never liked people like you—blond boys who have the world handed to them on a platter.”

“You don't even know me, Philip. You have no clue as to what my life is like. At least I never dealt drugs, got my own brother addicted, or stole money from my family.”

He raised a hand and an eyebrow. His gaze stayed on the gun, but then his eyes met mine in unexpected frankness. “Fine. You want to play priest in the confessional? Yeah, I sold drugs. I sold a lot of them. To college kids, to soulless lawyers, to bored housewives. Did I fuck up some lives? Sure. My own included.”

“Don't wait for me to weep for you. You never did jail time.”

“Only because,” he said, “Mutt found out. And he gave
me a choice. Turn over all my drug money—all of it—to him, or he'd turn me in. He ain't no saint.”

I leaned back, doubt clouding my face. Philip laughed. “Mutt's a piece. He took the money I'd made for himself. But he got Tom straightened out. It was a fair trade.” He glanced down at the stack of spiritual tapes. “My life's better now. So's Tom. He and I aren't ever going to be close again, but we're okay.”

More hurt tinged this admission than he would ever openly admit; his heavy-jawed face creased and he bit at his lip pensively. I didn't speak for a moment and the tape of chant ended with a click, and it sounded like the doors of heaven shutting.

“You stole money from Mutt.”

Philip smiled again. “Wrong. I'm trying to prove he's stealing his own.”

“You must be on drugs again.”

“Hell, I never took that stuff.” He shrugged. “You deserve to know what's happened here, the game that Mutt's played out to its end.” He leaned forward, the sly, boyish smile of a secret to be shared cutting his face. “Mutt's not dying.”

“That's crazy.”

“Dead men don't pay taxes,” Philip said. “He's decided to vanish by going into his grave.”

“If he wanted to fake his death, he wouldn't claim to have cancer. He'd fake an accident or something and drop out of sight.”

Philip nodded. “So one would think. But not our Mutt. He—and the delightful Miss Wendy—are planning on taking what's left of his fortune, heading far away, and setting up house with new lives. New names.”

“Why?”

“He wants to marry her without the family hovering, I guess. Or maybe he's just tired of Lolly and Jake being like warts on his ass.” He coughed, then stared hard into my eyes. “And I get the distinct feeling there's something bad in his life he'd like to forget and evade forever, but I don't know what it is.”

Paul's death. And Brian's.
Dead men can't be prosecuted, either. Philip's eyes betrayed nothing more. Perhaps he didn't know about the cover-up involving Paul.

“And just how have you been planning to prove this?”

“I got Mutt—finally—to let me handle some of his financial affairs. He figured he could keep an eye on me. But eyes look both ways, don't they? He's been a little lazy about not passwording some of his computer files and I noticed key investments being sold off. Dumped into banks in the Caymans and Switzerland. Mutt's slowly moving offshore, so to speak.”

“Still not proof enough.”

“No, not on hard paper. But you tell me why he's got driver's licenses and passports—for names other than Emmett Goertz and Wendy Tran—in his safe.”

“Did you see those?”

He nodded. “He asked me to get some papers out of the safe and I grabbed the wrong envelope. He was in the John off the study, talking to me while he peed. I slipped out a Canadian passport made out for Edward Grimes, but with Emmett Goertz's picture on it. I stuck it all back in before he came out of the John. I'd nearly pissed myself.”

My throat felt dry. Who to believe? “So when is he planning on jumping ship?”

“Don't know. But he's announced he's got six months to live. So my countdown's started.” He coughed again. “He'll 'die,' and suddenly the family will discover there's nothing left. No money, no land, no stocks. Damned Uncle Mutt, they'll say, he done spent it all. And Mutt'll be off lying in a hammock in Jamaica, screwing Wendy and laughing his ass off at us all.”

“So why haven't you called the police yet?”

“I don't have proof. Has he committed a crime? And maybe I'd be happier if he vanished. I'm tired of dancing to his old tunes.”

I rubbed my eyes with my hands; suddenly I felt an unforgiving weariness pervade my whole body. “So why are you telling me? And what are you going to do next?”

“Can't do anything until the storm lets up and we get the
phones back. But I'm telling you this, because Mutt suspects I've been sniffing around. He wants to discredit me.”

“So why doesn't he announce your past crimes to the world himself?”