A ruling passion : a novel (83 page)

fortable, but she had to do it. The better she was at it, the sooner they would find out what they needed to know, and then they could go home.

"You just drive Lily out here to see me?" Targus asked Nick abruptly, "or's there something else?"

"We have something to ask you," Nick replied. "Lily offered to come along and introduce us, since you're friends."

"So it's something I don't want to talk about." Targus's eyes narrowed as he looked from Nick to Valerie and then to Lily. "You know what this is about?" he asked Lily.

"Yes, but really it's just a question. We don't know anything; we just want to find out..." She faltered. "It's not a nice thing to think about, but we need to know..." She looked at Valerie, who looked steadily back, encouraging her, but not forcing her. If Lily could not do it, Valerie or Nick would.

But I owe this, Lily thought. If bad things happened, I was part of them. I always thought I could keep away from bad things; others would take care of them while I preached from my pulpit, way above everything. Oh, I feel so awful! she wailed silendy. It's so much better not to be part of things!

But if Valerie had felt that way when Lily rang her doorbell at midnight, she wouldn't have asked Lily in, and given her a bed, and listened to her and let her stay.

Lily brushed her hand across her forehead. Even in the shade, the air was heavy, and though she wore one of Valerie's tie-back sundresses she felt weak with the heat. Just a while longer, she thought, and then we'll all go home. When she looked at Targus, her eyes were steady. "We want to ask you about a flight you took to Lake Placid. You flew Sybille and me there a year and a half ago, in January. Sybille went back the next day; I stayed behind and flew home a day later."

"That was the plane that crashed," Targus said. His face was like stone.

"Yes, and Carlton Sterling, the pilot, was killed. He was Valerie's husband."

Targus's head swung around. "I'm real sorry to hear it." He swallowed; the muscles in his jaw and neck were taut.

"The investigators found water in the gas tanks," Lily went on. "Both tanks. We wondered—you were there, at least part of the time, waiting to fly us back—we wondered if you might have seen anyone at the airport who might have been tampering with the plane."

"Why?" The word burst from him like an explosion. "Why'd any-

body do that? Did he have, you know, people wanting to kill him?"

Lily flinched and closed her eyes.

"Shit, I'm sorry, Reverend... oh, Christ, I didn't mean to swear... damn it, shouldn't have said ... oh, shit..." Tangled in words he used every day but not in front of Lily, he burst out, "Sorry! Can't even talk straight! I mean, I'm sorry. Reverend Lily, I don't mean to swear around you, I'm, you know, nervous with moving and, you know, starting a new job, and ifs so damned hot! I'm sorry!"

Quiedy, Nick said, "We don't know whether someone wanted to kill him or not. But after the crash, when he was injured, he said flat out it was no accident. He was sure someone did it. And he was sure it was a woman."

'"Who?"

"We thought you might know."

"No. No, sir. I wouldn't know anything about that. I mean, I do my job, I fly people where they, you know, want to go. That's all I do."

"You pay attention," Lily said sofiJy. Her eyes were open and determined. "You're an excellent pilot; you always know what's happening around you whether you're in the air or on the ground. You don't miss anything. Bob."

He shook his head. "Sorry."

"It's very important to me to know," Valerie said. Her voice was low; Targus had to lean closer to hear her. "In all this time, I've never known why our plane crashed. If I knew my husband was wrong and it really was an accident, I'd be satisfied. It isn't that I want to know anything particular; I want to know."

"There's always mysteries in flying," Targus said.

"How many?" Valerie asked.

"Not a whole lot, but there's some things we never know. I don't know about your husband's flight."

"Oh, Bob," Lily sighed, "you're not telling die truth."

"I'm sorry. Reverend Lily."

"For lying to me?"

He did not answer.

"I don't think I've ever asked more from people than they could give," Lily said. Her voice was quiet, but it had taken on the rhythm and richness of the voice she used in the pulpit. She seemed older, and somehow taller, sitting upright in the lawn chair. "I only ask people to fulfill what is within them. I'm asking that of you, my dear Bob. You're a man with a wonderful talent for flying a great plane around the world, but that's only a small part of what you are. You're a good

man, a loving family man, an intelligent, observant man. You have integrity. You don't countenance wrongdoing. You would not let evil triumph if you saw it; you would challenge it and try to defeat it. You care about people. You love them."

Targus was shaking his head, mournfully but persistendy. "Fm not as good as all that. Most people aren't. Reverend Lily. You always think the best of people, you know, you think they're like saints, but they're not, they're little and selfish and all they care about, you know, is saving their own skins—"

'*What happened at the airport at Lake Placid?" Lily asked. "Tell us. What did you see?"

"It's awfiil hard, you know. Reverend Lily, when somebody thinks you're good. I mean, it's heavy, it, like, sort of presses down on you..."

"I believe in you," Lily said simply. "Will you tell us what you saw?"

He looked at her for a long moment, his mournful face perspiring in the heat. "She told me to do something to keep him there," he said, and there was relief in his voice at finally getting out what he had kept botded up for so long. "You know, so he couldn't fly back right away. There was a meeting, and she thought he might try to stop something she wanted to do, whatever, so she said, you know, fix his plane so he can't take off when he wants to. It wasn't to kill him, you gotta believe that. Reverend; my God, I couldn't do that, not in a million years. She wouldn't, either. She just wanted, you know, to keep him stuck there awhile. So, I figured the easiest thing was to, uh, put, you know, water in the tanks."

In the tree above them, a cardinal sang a long trill. Valerie's nails dug into her palms; she felt faint. She murdered Carl. She murdered Carl. She murdered...

Nick's hand was on hers and automatically she turned her palm to meet his. His fingers gripped hers so tighdy they hurt, and that brought her out of her faintness. A deep anger coursed through her. She sat straight, watching Targus.

Lily, so pale she looked like a wraith, watched him too. "Yes," she said; it was almost a whisper.

"So he'd think there was a, you know, a leak, something serious," Targus went on, his voice a monotone. "Ordinarily if d be real serious, to get that much water. You'd have to drain the tanks, have a, you know, mechanic check everything out, take on fuel again—thafd take most of the day. That was all she wanted."

No one spoke. "Well, I mean, how the hell could I know the stupid son of a bitch wouldn't do his preflight check? Sorry, Reverend

sorry, Mrs. Sterling... it's just that, I mean, he shouldn't have crashed! No reason in the world! When I heard about it, first thing I thought was there was something else wrong with the plane. Hell of a coincidence, but it had to be, because there wasn't any reason for the water to do it; he would've found it. Well, anyhow, thafs what I figured, until I heard the whole report, and then, you know, shit, just because he was stupid, I've got to feel like a murderer?" He put his head in his hands. "Sorry," he said again, his voice muffled. He looked up at Valerie. "I mean it; I'm real sorry. It about drove me crazy when it happened. I mean, I couldn't talk about it to anybody—what was I supposed to say? This guy died because of something I did, sort of accidentally?—but it drove me up the wall thinking about it. Couldn't talk to a living soul. Couldn't talk to her; she acted like we'd never even flown up there. There's not a lot you can talk to her about; she does her own thing and kinda lives in her own world where she can, you know, act like everything's the way she wants it. She paid me a lot of money for that litde job, but she could have kept it, you know; there's no way I was gonna talk and she knew it. And anyway, you know, it wasn't so bad... I mean, I didn't kill him. You think about it, he killed himself by not doing his preflight check."

A hot gust of wind swirled dirt across his shoes and he scuffled his feet like a schoolboy. "So what happens now?" he asked.

Sybille was in her office at Morgen Farms when Valerie and Nick arrived. They had left Lily at Valerie's house in Falls Church, then driven to Middleburg. "She's probably in the house," Nick said as they drove toward the farm. "I'll understand if you'd rather not see her there."

Valerie was looking at the landscape. Once it had been a serene haven from the clamor of the world. Now there was something ominous about its beauty, because it harbored Sybille and her plots. "I'd rather not go in, but I don't see how I can stay away..." Her voice still trembled; she was so angry, and shaken by the enormity of what Sybille had done, what she had tried to do, what she had been willing to do, that she could not setde down.

"You don't have to," Nick said. His own thoughts were in turmoil, but he knew how much worse it was for Valerie. He pulled onto the grass at the side of the road, and stopped the car. "If s probably too soon—"

She shook her head. "She murdered Carl. Murder. I keep saying that, I keep trying to understand it, but if s so incredible, so awful...

Nick, it doesn't make sense! People don't turn to killing to solve a problem!"

"Not your friends; not mine. Not most people, thank God. But for far too many if s an option. I never thought of Sybille as one of them. It's terrifying, you know; we both knew her—I was as close to her, I suppose, as anyone could get—and neither of us suspected..." He took a long breath. "Valerie, I think, after all, you'd be better off if you come in with me."

*'Yes, I know. That's what I meant. I don't see how I can avoid it. If I'm ever going to come to terms with it... Oh, my God, how does someone come to terms with something like that? She murdered Carl." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Yes, of course I'll go with you. This isn't a good time to play the sensitive maiden."

Nick turned to her. They were alone on a straight stretch of road. It was almost evening, a time when most people were home, and the only signs of life were the grazing horses in the distance, moving slowly in the heat like flowing shadows. Nick took Valerie's hands. "This doesn't seem to be a good time for a lot of things. There's too much ugliness. But I want to tell you before we go any farther how much I love you. I've been too cautious, these last few weeks; I should have told you right away, though I don't suppose I've really hidden it. My darling, I love you; I've loved you since I first met you. You've been a part of me for all these years, whatever else I've done or tried to do with my life, and when I found you again I knew how deeply I'd missed you, and how much I wanted to bring it all back. I think we've done more than that—I think we've found something much better— and all I want now is the chance to enjoy it. There are so many things I want us to share—a lifetime, to start with—and it seems obscene to begin with what we heard from Targus, but we're in the middle of it and I was afraid it might get worse and then we'd have to wait interminably for a perfect time. Damn it, I'm being clumsy; I'm sorry. But there's so much that's wonderful when we're together, I couldn't let us get any deeper into this muck without telling you."

Valerie leaned toward him and kissed him. For a moment she was able to force aside her anger and disgust at Sybille; this was a tiny space of peace and beauty for her and Nick. We'll get back to it, she thought, after today. Or after tomorrow. Or whenever this is over. "It is the perfect time. Whatever happens around us, all our own bad times are past." It was true. They had grown so close. They'd left behind all the childish squabbling and irritation that had made her think they would never be content. She wondered if everyone had to

go through a kind of childhood widi anodier person before diey could create an adult relationship. What a waste of time, she though ruefully. But maybe not; maybe it meant she and Nick had grown up together and were ready now to create something richer than either of them had known before.

"I love you, Nick," she said, her lips against his. "I love Chad and I love you and I love thinking about all the things we can do together, the three of us, the two of us, playing and working together... Oh. Oh, my God."

"What?" He held her away from him. "What is it?"

"Nick, we can't do a report on Graceville. I can't do it; your network can't do it. We can't be the ones to expose Sybille."

"Because of Chad," Nick said.

"Of course. Why didn't we think of it? We were so busy researching it, and trying to find a way to do it, but there is no way. Other people will, we can't help that; but it can't be us."

"No, it can't," he said quietly.

Valerie looked at him closely. 'Tou're relieved. Nick, why didn't you say something? You've been thinking about it and you didn't tell me."

"It's your story; I didn't know how to kill it."

They exchanged a long look, and at last Valerie smiled. "Maybe that's my real job at E8cN: to almost do reports on 'Blow-Up.' It's different, isn't it? Lx)ts of people produce and report television features; how many of them make a living by almost doing it?"

"Thank you," Nick said. "I hated the thought of telling you."

"But I couldn't have done it. How could I live with Chad if I started out that way?" Nick pulled her close again, but she held back. "How long have you been thinking about it?"

"Only since this afternoon. Until then, I thought we could do a good feature and leave her out. She's not even a board member, you know; we could report on the board, the building of Graceville, Al Speer's findings, and keep the main focus on Lily, who's been used by all of them. We could do all that and never talk about Sybille."