Rosie O'Dell (61 page)

That first afternoon, in swaggered Marmaduke and Cornelius. They went right to
Rosie and embraced her. Her five foot six, hundred-and-twenty-pound form was
swallowed up by the six foot three, two-hundred-
and-ten-pound, broad bodies and apelike arms. I was standing on the other
side of the room and saw Duke or Neal mutter something into her ear. They stood
by the closed coffin for a second, and then with baleful glowers at me they
left.

I went over. “What did they say to you, Rosie?”

“Duke said, ‘We want a sit-down, bitch.’” Rosie looked at me and stifled a
titter. “Let’s talk about it later, Tom. I shouldn’t burst out laughing at my
own husband’s wake.”

“Yeah, okay, but what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Sure, Duke. You can sit down on this any time you want.’” She flashed
me a fairly sharp fingernail on her extended middle finger.

“And?”

“And he said, ‘We’ll be back.’ I think they think they’re the Terminator. Then
I ran out of sophisticated repartee and they just left.”

“They did not look happy.”

“And they’ll be less happy when we’re finished with them. I expect they’ll be
waiting for me when this is over this afternoon. And then we can get together
with them as we planned.”

“Right.” I smiled at her. Even as I shivered inwardly, she made me smile. But I
wondered how happy she and I would be when this was all finished.

THEY WERE WAITING FOR
us outside, leaning against the wall of
the building, smoking. Rosie went right over to them. “Okay, let’s talk. Follow
us to the house.” She turned away and then turned back to them. “The two of you
are lovable, but you’re also dense. So I need to explain a couple of things to
you. One, the exterior and interior of the house have security video cameras
left over from Granddad’s day, surveying everything, and two, we have left
written messages with several different people to go directly to the local
police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police describing everything you did to
Gramps and your threats to us if anything happens to us, and to nail you two for
it. Everyone clear on all that? Yes? No gaps or grey areas? No? Okay, let’s go,
then.” The boys looked at each other for a long few seconds and then, as if
under duress, made their way to their car.

At the house, we four sat in the living room. The place was empty and we were
alone with the boys. “Tea, anyone?” asked Rosie.

“I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,” said one of the boys. “Is this place bugged—I
mean with audio, too?”

“When you hear what I have to say, you will understand that I would
be crazy to bug the place. I’ll put the kettle on and then
we’ll talk. We can have our tea when we’re finished… if you still want it then,
which I doubt.”

“What are you talking like that for, Rosie? We only want fair play. We think
you and your lawyer friend here took us for a ride.”

“Hold that thought,” said Rosie and went out to the kitchen.

While she was gone, one of them said to me, “I hope you can make her see some
sense here and what’s in everybody’s best interest. She seems to be stressed out
by Dad’s cancer.”

I said, “Shut the fuck up until Rosie gets back. She’s the interested party
here. And I have no interest in small talk with you two.” I looked up at a
corner of the ceiling as one of them stirred aggressively, and continued, “The
images from the video cameras have remote, off-site backup.” The other rested a
hand on his arm.

Rosie glided back in looking like a flower. “All right,” she said. “You were
just complaining that you were hoist with your own petard.”

“What? Hoist what?”

“You were bitching that you were blown up by your own bomb. You were
bellyaching that the murder of your own grandfather you committed to get some
quick money blew up in your own faces and you ended up screwed.”

“This guy screwed us. He sweet-talked us into doing it. And we want it
straightened out.”

“All this guy did,” said Rosie, “was follow the written instructions of your
father to give you information so that you could plan your lives. It was your
father and I who screwed you. He and I, especially I, planned it all. I got your
dad to agree with it. We knew you would be greedy enough to fall for it. And you
did—hook, line, and sinker. Nobody can be conned if they’re not greedy. Now,
what’s your problem with what happened again?”

“Rosie, we just want the money we would have had if you didn’t trick us. Then
we will leave you in peace. We might even give you a couple of million more if
you co-operate.”

“If not?”

“If not, we will off you and this guy. And you know we will do it. I don’t care
what you told the police here. We will keep an eye on you and follow you
wherever you go outside of here, and when it’s right for us, we will kill you.
That is a promise. You can enter that in your Blackberry scheduler. Even if you
never leave here for the rest of your lives, we will find a way to do it here.
We met some coke dealers here the last time who would kill their own grandmother
for a grand.”

“Duke, is it? Or Neal, or whoever, let me tell you something
about me,” said Rosie. “I kill people too. I don’t threaten them and then do it.
I just do it to get revenge or get rid of a threat. This guy here and I killed a
brilliant doctor when we were sixteen years old. We clobbered him over the head
with a steel pipe and we pushed him and his car over a cliff. We set it up so
that it was ruled a mishap, for God’s sake.”

“What’d you do that for?”

“Revenge for making my little sister commit suicide because he had sexually
exploited her. And I can tell you, he was a lot smarter than you guys. But I can
kill stupid guys, too. I killed a guy, before I was twenty, who threatened to
get in my way. Tom will remember Cory the Moose. A big strapping professional
hockey player, a friend of your father’s, who was planning to beat up Tom here,
or worse, when he got back from his studies in England. His death was ruled
acute alcohol poisoning and hypothermia, death from exposure.”

Hearing that, I took my eyes off Rosie and studied my shoes.

“Then I took a little break because no one was bugging me too much until your
rotten old grandfather became a fly in my ointment. Then I arranged things so
that you two patsies would kill him, which you did right on cue, and it was
ruled death by natural causes. I’m used to killing people in the proper way and
getting off with it, smart people as well as stupid, so killing you two assholes
will be a breeze. Especially with fourteen million dollars to work with.”

Honest to Christ, she was so good, I was starting to get turned on.

“We’re not listening to any more of your bullshit,” said one of them. “We did
that once before. So now it’s a question of who kills who first, unless we get
our money.”

“Just one little difference in our two situations,” said Rosie. “Tom, do you
figure we got all that?”

“Let’s see,” I said. I went into the next room and turned on a switch, went to
the beginning of the recording, and played it. Our words came out of a speaker
in the bookcase in the living room. “Yup, loud and clear—all with off-site
backup too.”

Rosie said, “Your grandfather never had any friends, but even so, he never,
ever felt lonely. How come? Because if you’re paranoid, you never feel lonely.
You always think someone is nearby trying to get you. That was good old Granddad
to a tee. Hence his cameras and mikes.”

“You lying bastards,” said one of the boys. “You said you didn’t have the
place—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” said the other, and turned to Rosie.
“That recording is no good to you. It’s got you implicated in everything
too.”

“Yeah, but if it ever has to be used, we’d already be dead, see, Einstein?”
said Rosie. “The recording will be in place for the police to find if anything
ever happens to us. On the other hand, if you two turn up dead, there’ll be
nothing to implicate us. We’ll destroy it all.”

“More bullshit.” But the protests and bluster were getting weaker.

“And when the police were questioning us about your grandfather’s death, we
told them that Tom here informed you two a couple of hours before your
grandfather ‘died’”—Rosie made scare quotes with her fingers— “all about the
money you would get in your grandfather’s will. Don’t be surprised if you’re
detained by the police here for some serious questioning. You know something,
boys, and this is your loving stepmother speaking, I’d get the hell out of here
today if I were you and never come back.”

“What are you talking about? We have to stay for Dad’s funeral—and what about
the reading of his will?”

“You’re about as interested in your dad’s funeral as I would be in yours. And
as for his will, I have to tell you that I talked him out of leaving anything to
you. You’d probably use any money to put me in harm’s way, I told him. So
whatever he was planning to leave to you, he left to me instead—a couple of
million each, I believe it was, Tom?”

“Two and a half million each, actually,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, Rosie. That’s going too far. You can push someone over the edge,
you know, and they might do something desperate even if it’s not in their own
best interest.”

“Like that’d be something new with you guys.”

“We’re done here,” said one, as if he were a lawyer for the villain in a TV
whodunit.

“Don’t forget your tea. The kettle is out there whistling Dixie too.”

“Let’s go,” said the other. And not to be outdone by his brother’s TV
dramatics, he growled with great emphasis, “
Now
!”

“Before you go, boys, can I make a deal with you?”

“We’ll listen. Who was it said he’d make a deal with the devil to beat Hitler?
Napoleon, Nixon, Socrates,
some
one from the olden days said it.”

“I’m glad you have developed a great interest in history. Because that’s part
of my deal, getting you fellows involved in the better things in life. If you
two keep your noses clean and get yourselves trained and into half-
decent jobs, I’ll give you each another million dollars in
two years. And after that, we’ll see. There could be more.”

“Extortion? I thought little miss goody two-shoes was beyond all that.”

“Beyond giving my stepsons money to help them lead the sensible, civilized life
they should be leading, anyway? Yeah, that’s awful.”

“Come on, Rosie. What would you do that for? What’s in it for you? You figure
you can buy us off and keep us from killing you?”

“Keep you from doing something equally stupid and ending up in the slammer for
life, yes. I do feel somewhat responsible for you. I loved your father, and you
are your father’s sons. If your father had not left your mother when you were
young, maybe you would have turned out better. It wasn’t my fault he left her—I
never encouraged him in the least—but he told me he did it because he wanted me.
And because of me, your own mother would not let him have any kind of a normal
relationship with you. If you’d had him around as an example to follow, maybe
you would have developed some character and some common sense. I may be wrong on
that—I kind of believe I am—I’m inclined to think you are probably two
dyed-in-the-wool, bred-in-the-bone criminal oafs, and fated to be so forever.
But I am willing to give you a second chance for Brent’s sake and for your poor
mother’s sake, if you want to take it. It’s entirely up to you.”

“Oh, it’s up to us now, is it? That’s very nice of you. Well, here’s my
decision. Fuck you, you gold-digging whore. Come on, Neal.”

I jumped in on cue. “Just before you go, boys, I’m going to give you a way to
get off the hook with the police here. I take it you haven’t talked to them
yet.”

“No, they called our lawyer in Nevada, but he advised us not to talk to them.
He even advised us not to come here. But we came anyway. That’s how fucking
pissed we are.”

“You should have followed his advice. But let’s try to make the best of it now
that you are here. When the police ask you questions, tell them you knew of your
own father’s terminal illness before Gramps died and that you knew what was in
Gramps’s will. In other words, you knew that if your grandfather outlived your
father, you would get it all, not just a couple of million. That removes all
motive for killing your grandfather. Their entire case collapses. I’ll be
telling them the same thing, by the way, and that I was present when your father
told you he was dying fast, before your visit to the nursing home.”

As the boys cogitated, I saw the little smile on Rosie’s lips. This simple and
brilliant little plan was hers. I’d been so preoccupied with my own anxieties, I
hadn’t even thought about it.

Duke now leapt to his feet and reacted to it. “You slimy,
weaselly cocksucker,” he said to me. “Fuck you too, and fuck the whore you rode
in on.” He gestured at Rosie.

“Wait now, Duke,” said his brother. “What’s the good of that? Let’s think it
over.”

“Okay, you move over with them, you backstabbing wuss. I’ll just make sure that
you’re in the car with them when the bomb goes off.” Duke strode out of the
living room and out the door.

“Aw, Jesus, Duke. Don’t get like that.” Neal ran out the door after his
brother.

Rosie and I sat there looking at each other. Then she shook her head slowly and
laughed a little at the absurdity of it. I said, “What now, you figure?”