Sooner or Later (6 page)

Dan kicked the bottom step, dispiritedly. Wondering which he would have to tackle first, the vines or the house, he went out to look at the winery.

The big red barn housed tall steel fermenting vats, the crushing machinery, and stacks of moldy-looking oak barrels. The bottling plant in the adjoining shed looked like a Disney cartoon, and like the house, everything was covered in a thick coat of dust.

Gloomily, he walked through the graceful arched gates into the stable courtyard. There was an old tiled fountain in the center, and scarlet petunias and purple bougainvillaea tumbled picturesquely from clay pots. A long, shady patio fronted the stalls, with a couple of old wooden benches meant for lazing away the hot afternoons. It looked exactly the way it had in the photograph when he’d lost his heart to it—a perfect rustic idyll. Betting gloomily that the fountain wouldn’t work and the roof would leak and the whole place was about to fall down, Dan took a closer look.

To his surprise, it wasn’t too bad. Sure, the paint was blistered and peeling, but the roof looked fine, and the six stalls were in good condition. Cheering up, he decided first thing, he would buy a couple of horses. He hadn’t ridden since he was a kid, but they would make the place feel more like home.

He checked the irrigation system. It looked in good shape and he thanked God for that. Water was in short supply in California, and vines needed a lot of water. Without it, he might as well quit now.

There was a satisfied smile on his face as he circled the reedy pond in back of the house, planning on installing carp and mallards and maybe a couple of geese.

He strolled round the porch, saw exactly where to place his chair for that sundown drink and the view, and began to think maybe it wasn’t such a pig in a poke after all. All of a sudden, he couldn’t wait to tackle it.

He thought regretfully of the attractive young woman at the cafe. There would no space in his schedule for romantic dalliance in the near future. Not with all this work to be done.

Arms folded, he surveyed his new home and his neglected acres, assessing the amount of money, water, time and hard labor they would need. He shook his head as Ellie’s face and that big smile flashed before his eyes again. There would be no room for romance in his life for a long, long time.

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE KILLING
, B
UCK WENT INTO THE
Madison Avenue branch of the Bank of America. He smiled, satisfied, as he caught sight of himself in the plate glass window. He might just have emerged from the portals of the Harvard Club, in his conservative tweedy jacket, his button-down blue shirt and glossy brown loafers. They always said a man’s background showed, and his mother had surely brought him up to be a gentleman. He laughed out loud just thinking about her, and he was still smiling as he swaggered confidently to the counter, presented his ID and asked to see a current statement of his savings account.

“Certainly, Mr. Duveen.”

The female teller gave him a pleasant smile, and he smiled back. No fooling around this time, though, the way he had on the train, testing his power. Today, he was practicing his charm. He was here on business and, besides, he’d kind of gotten it out of his system. For a while.

He hummed his favorite tune while he waited, thinking
how good it felt to know he was in control again. That he possessed such power. The greatest power of all, over life and death. This young teller didn’t know how fortunate she was that he wasn’t in the mood. His mind was on more important things. His future plans.

“Here you are, Mr. Duveen.” She handed over the statement. “Anything else I can do for you today?”

He checked quickly. He had exactly thirty-five thousand one hundred and twenty dollars. “I’d like ten thousand in cash and the remainder switched to a checking account right away.”

He signed the necessary papers, took charge of a temporary checkbook, pocketed the ten thousand and walked out onto Madison Avenue, feeling master of all he surveyed. Then he strolled over to the Four Seasons, where he had a couple of drinks to celebrate. He had an excellent lunch of grilled sea bass and salad, pretending to peruse a copy of
The Wall Street Journal while
taking in the power-lunch scene.

He thought, idly, how he might change the lives of any of these heavy hitters, in their European suits and Hermès silk ties. All he had to do was find out where they lived. The country house would be best … catch the wife alone … it was easy. The man opposite, for instance, with the blond trophy wife half his age, diamonds, Chanel … He studied her, eyes half closed, wondering what it would be like to have a woman like that, ripping off her expensive clothes, biting the diamonds out of her ears, as she screamed and begged …

The woman felt the heat of his gaze and looked up at him. Their eyes met for a second, then hers widened in alarm. She stiffened, said something to her husband, who swung round angrily.

Buck didn’t even glance their way. He paid cash for
his lunch, including a lavish tip, then walked past them out of the restaurant and back to Madison.

He inspected the windows at Barneys, then went to the men’s department and bought himself some clothing suitable for California. A couple of lightweight Italian suits, pants, a jacket. The salesman guided him in choosing the right shirts, a couple of interesting ties, plus shorts and polo shirts, underwear and socks.

Three pairs of new loafers later, he discovered he’d spent a small fortune, but not to worry. Soon, there would be plenty more.

He went to a nearby luggage shop, purchased a couple of bags and put his new stuff right in them.

“Leavin’ town in a hurry, huh?” The salesman grinned. “Hope the wife isn’t on your tail.”

Buck leveled an icy glare at him and the young man backed quickly away. “Just jokin’, buddy, just jokin’.”

Buck grabbed his cases and went out onto the sidewalk. A smartly dressed woman had just hailed a cab and it swerved close to the curb. He elbowed past, using his suitcases to block her way.

“My God,” she exploded, “I thought I’d seen everything New York had to offer, but this is too much….”

Buck grinned as he slammed the door. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, lady,” he promised. Then he told the driver to take him to Penn Station.

The train for Chicago left at six-thirty, so he went into the bar and had a couple more drinks. When he finally took his seat and the big locomotive pulled out of the terminal, he felt as excited as a child leaving on vacation. He was on his way to L.A., at last.

The only thing bothering him about going back to California, was his mother. Over a couple more drinks, he had plenty of time to brood over her, and their life together.

B
UCK HAD BEEN KNOWN AS A MAMA
’
S BOY IN THE SMALL
town near Santa Cruz in northern California, where they lived in a pin-neat Victorian house, painted yellow with white gingerbread trim.

People said Delia Duveen must have been in her forties when she had him, because all the other mothers at the PTA and Little League games were in their twenties and Delia looked at least two decades older.

And she never let that boy out of her sight. It was always, Buck come here, Buck do this, Buck do that. Buck was not allowed to play with other kids after school because he had to do his homework and his piano practice. And then there were the chores, bringing in the firewood and stacking the logs in the woodshed in the neat rows she liked, large ones at the bottom, small in the middle and smallest and kindling at the top.

Saturdays, he got to mow the rectangle of lawn in front of the house, and then to wash her car, an immaculately kept old Plymouth. And on Sundays, she drove him to church in that shiny, polished automobile.

He sat quietly beside her, short-cropped red hair combed flat to his head, wearing a dark blue blazer and starched blue shirt, with his striped tie neatly knotted. Plump Delia wore pastel dresses in summer, and a nice tailored gray suit in winter, and she always wore a hat. Nothing froufrou and frivolously feminine, just a plain straw with a ribbon, or a dark felt with a feather. She bought new ones every season, but somehow they always looked exactly like the old ones.

Delia and Buck never ate supper companionably at the dinette set in the kitchen. That was only for breakfast. Evenings, they sat opposite each other in the small, overfurnished dining room, beneath the blaze of a mock-crystal chandelier, sipping plain water from a glass because she disapproved of soda pop, and anyhow would never have allowed soda bottles on the table.

Her meals were carefully thought out, a different one every night of the week, she was proud to say. But it meant that each night of the week, Buck knew exactly what he was going to eat. And he didn’t like any of it. The pot roasts with watery spinach; the gray fish under a blanket of gooey white sauce, and the everlasting Jell-O with a blob of Reddi Wip—a different color and flavor Monday through Sunday. He craved burgers and fries, tacos, ice cream and hot dogs.

Buck Duveen hated his home, he hated his food, hated his life. And he loathed his mother with an overpowering force that from a young age had made him itch to kill her. But to Delia Duveen and the neighbors he was the perfect son. “Wish my boys were like him,” the neighboring mothers said to each other when their own kids were wreaking havoc.

Buck’s grades were good, he was a model student, and he worked hard. But inside he burned with a silent rage. At school he joined in the guy-talk of how far
they’d made out on the backseat, about the parties and drinking and the fooling around. And he sheltered his massive ego behind a wall of pretended indifference.

He knew a liquor store in town where the owner was so old, it was easy to steal a bottle of vodka. He’d sneak it into his room, prop a chair under the door handle, because his mother didn’t permit a lock, then lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, knocking it back, neat.

He pictured his mother naked and himself with a knife in his hand, ripping her from end to end, seeing her guts spill out. He pictured the high school sweethearts taking off their cute little sweaters for him, then screaming as he did vile things to them. He pictured his strong hands around soft throats and a surge of power rippled through him. With the vodka in him, in his drunken fantasies, he
was
power. He was omnipotent.

He’d never really known his father, Rory Duveen. His mother had divorced him when Buck was three years old. She’d implied that she had no time for what went on in the bedroom. Not in plain graphic words, because Sex was a word with a definite capital
S
in her mind. S for sin.
S
for sickening. S for shame. So Rory had left. He’d given Delia everything he had: the house and all his money, in settlement. He wanted nothing to do with her, or her child.

The only thing Buck remembered about his father was his singing in church. There was a particular hymn that was his favorite, because it was the kind you sang loud and strong.

Buck could hear Rory’s voice in his head, see that cross he sang about … somehow it made him feel like a god, crusading for his rights. To him, the cross was a symbol of his power and masculinity. The sign belonged to him, and to his father.

Buck thought he would escape from Delia when he went away to college, down the coast at UC Santa Barbara. By then, he was a clever young man, tall, strongly built with rich copper-red hair and deep-set dark eyes that shifted slyly away when he spoke to you. Still, he was attractive and he got himself a date the first week. She wasn’t available for a second date, though; told her friends he was “creepy.” Same thing happened with another girl, then another. So he found himself a hooker, paid her twenty bucks. It was over in seconds so he beat her up, took back his money and kicked her out of his car.

Hookers were easy, he was the one in control. Except not sexually. Sometimes they laughed at him and it drove him into a frenzy of hate and violence.

Delia kept him short of money and he was working two jobs to pay his way through college. He felt demeaned by his poverty, and by the shabby old wreck of a car he drove. He wanted Delia’s money and he wanted to be rid of her.

One night, after a bottle of vodka, he saw the light. A voice in his head told him all he had to do was remove his mother from his life. Then he would be free, he would inherit the house and her money. He would be rich.

He made his plans carefully, going over them again and again. He even did a test run one night, driving from the campus at Santa Barbara and sneaking up to the house, though he didn’t go in. No one was around, no one saw him. He knew it would work because everybody
trusted him. Besides, he was smarter than the local police.

When the night of the killing arrived he was excited and happy. Everything went according to plan. She never heard him come in, never spoke, never screamed. Only her puzzled eyes, bugging from her head, had fixed on his, while his strong hands squeezed the life out of her.

In that moment of empowerment, when his energy buzzed through his veins in a single electrical jolt, he felt invincible. Submitting to an overwhelming compulsion, he carved the sign of the cross into her forehead. He looked at it, pleased. It was his signature.

Before he left, he jimmied the back door, ransacked the place, took the money from her purse so the cops would think she’d been robbed. Then he headed out of town.

The next morning, he drove back again. He stopped at the local store and told the owner, whom he had known all his lite, he’d not really intended to come home this weekend, but he’d been calling his mom and gotten no reply. He was worried.

He called again from the pay phone at the store. “Hey,” he said, with a puzzled frown, “it’s really weird. She’s always there. At this time of day, y’know.”

The store owner did know. Everybody knew Delia. Her movements were regular as clockwork.