Identical (41 page)

Evon seldom indulged, except at parties, more or less out of deference to her father who’d never taken it up, but she thought the old woman might be more relaxed if she had company. Evon said she’d have whatever her hostess was drinking. Teri made her way with her stick to the tea cart holding a troop of brown bottles, and then handed a cut-glass crystal tumbler to Evon, while she settled herself on her overstuffed sofa.

“OK, shoot,” said Teri. “
Ti yenaete
?” Hal often used that phrase, which apparently meant ‘What’s up?’

Evon realized she had not planned what to say, but she told Teri that Tim had finally cornered Cass Gianis.

“He says he didn’t kill Dita. And I have a feeling you have a good idea who did.”

“Ah.” Teri took a healthy sip.

“The first thing-I guess the most important thing-is I need to be sure that it wasn’t Hal.”

“Hal? Oh no no no.” Teri found the idea amusing. “My nephew might be better off if he had a little more killer in him. The best I know is that he was still out necking with Mina when Dita was murdered. He walked in to find that crazy scene. He’s the one who called the police, if I’m remembering. Tim didn’t recall that?”

Tim probably never knew. By the time he took over the case a week later, the family members had all been cleared because their blood didn’t match what had been spilled in Dita’s room.

“Well, Tim’s pretty sure it wasn’t Lidia.” She repeated to Teri what Cass had told him.

“Same as Lidia told me.”

“Right.” Evon took a second. “That’s one reason I’m here. I figured from what you said last time that you probably talked to Lidia about Dita’s murder.”

“Not immediately,” Teri said. “But she finally put it all on the table with me maybe three months after Dita was killed. Lidia was just in a state. You know, we spoke every morning in those days. And every day it was the same thing. She couldn’t finish her sentences. She burst into tears over nothing. Finally, I said, ‘
Afto einae anoeto
!’ ‘This is craziness!’ ‘You have to tell me what’s going on.’ We met at St. D’s and sat in the pews in the sanctuary and talked for hours. Oh, and she
cried
. Cried and cried. And so did I, of course. Dita was my only niece and I saw more than a little bit of myself in her.”

In the church, Teri said, Lidia had told her about Zeus and the twins, and Lidia’s plan to ask Dita to stop seeing Cass. “I understood why she couldn’t tell her sons. But why not come to me? If anyone could talk sense to Dita, I was the best one to try. But I guess Lidia was embarrassed that she’d kept the secret from me for so long. Maybe she was afraid I wouldn’t believe her after all that time. Anyway, Dita had smart-mouthed her way into getting slapped. Probably would have done my niece some good if that happened more often, but not that hard. Apparently, Lidia caught her with a full swing. She shocked herself.”

Evon asked if Teri believed that Lidia had hit Dita only once. She did, Teri said, but not for the reasons that convinced anyone else.

“Lidia wouldn’t have done that to me,” said Teri. “Hal and Dita, they were all I had. She wouldn’t have taken either one from me, no matter how angry she got. But when I asked Lidia who else could have beat up Dita, I thought she was more evasive.”

“She believed Cass had killed her?”

“Well, if Dita was OK when Lidia ran out of the house and dead when Cass left, it seemed fairly obvious to me. And it must have worried her, too. When I heard a few months later that Cass was pleading guilty, I wasn’t surprised. He was always the more excitable of the two boys. My heart broke for Lidia, of course.”

“Tim doesn’t believe Cass did it either. Not any more.” Evon picked up her drink but only so she could look down into it. “I guess that means your brother killed his daughter.”

Teri didn’t answer, but even without much sight, she was reluctant to face Evon. The old woman was silent some time, which made for an unusual moment.

“Do you think we have obligations to the dead?” she asked Evon.

“I visit my parents’ graves when I go home. Is that what you mean?” That was almost a lie, since she prayed a lot longer over her father.

“Not really. Here,” she said, and raised her tumbler but only to gesture with it. “Truth told, I never knew exactly what to make of my brother. Of course, I loved him like crazy. You had to. He was the biggest thing on earth, so grand, and he carried it off. He was a good brother, loyal, always looked out for me, and a good father to Hal, who looked up to Zeus so much. Zeus had his points. But he was too much like our father, who I may have told you was just a big stinking turd.” Teri wound her head around in lingering contempt and disbelief, then paused again to reflect.

“I sometimes think,” Teri said, “we’re all sort of like twins-who we want to believe we are, and the person others see. They look alike, but you know, most folks probably make out someone in the mirror a little more appealing than how it might strike somebody else. But my brother, that was an odd thing with him. He knew the worst about himself. Didn’t face it often, and forgot it as fast as he could. But it was always there stuffed down inside him somewhere, like a loaded musket. And he was dead set on never letting anybody else find out. So do I ignore that?”

Evon told her the truth. That was Teri’s decision.

“Sure it is,” said Teri. “You bet your ass. But here’s the problem. As you might have noticed, dear, I’m
old
. And what I know-it could matter if this blame parade starts up again somehow. So I’ll trust you. But this is a truth that would hurt a lot of people.”

“Hal?”

“Especially. So you need to keep this to yourself, unless there really is no choice.”

“What if I tell Tim?”

“I’ll leave that to you. But Tim’s definitely another of the folks who would be hurt.”

Evon was too startled to respond. Teri looked up to the ceiling, where there was a gilded molding she could probably no longer see, then said abruptly, “All right. Let’s get this done.” She adjusted her position on the sofa and took another solid mouthful from her drink.

“You probably know, from the time of Dita’s death, my brother wanted to rebury her on Mount Olympus.”

“So she could be among the other gods and goddesses?”

“Whatever. He certainly thought that was where he belonged when his time came. Zeus, he really sometimes seemed to believe in the Greek gods. At least when it suited him. What he liked was that so many of them behaved so badly, so often. Nothing like Jesus. Zeus, if he got drunk enough, would tell you Jesus was a wimp. Zeus, the god Zeus? He truly was my brother’s role model. All-powerful and full of vices.

“At any rate, on the fifth anniversary of Dita’s death, Hermione and he thought they could bear the trip. Hal and Mina had three small children at home, but I went. Most of Olympus is a national park, but my people, they build churches everywhere, and Zeus had found a little chapel there with a graveyard. The old priest came out to say some prayers. It was a beautiful ceremony. A few of Hermione’s Vasilikos relatives had come up to Thessaly from different parts. And Dita’s casket was returned to the earth. In my bedroom, I’ve got some thyme I picked out of the rocks there to remember her.

“Afterwards, we went back to the villa Zeus had rented. Hermione’s relatives and some locals came to pay their respects, but they weren’t there long. Pretty soon it was Zeus and Hermione and me. My brother was in an absolutely black mood. ‘I am a bad man,’ he said as he sat there on that sofa. That was not the first time I’d heard that from him, by the way, but I doubt he’d ever made those kinds of remarks to that silly little clothes rack he’d married. But now he looks up and says, ‘I killed our daughter.’ Just like that. Like, ‘It snowed.’”

Teri, now that she’d decided to share this, was engaged by the storytelling. She had scootched herself forward on the sofa and was waving her whiskey around now and then as she spoke. Zeus’s description of the killing was brief. Lidia’s visit had caused Dita to make some awful comment about her father, which Zeus never specified, but which he admitted led him to strike his daughter in rage.

“Afterwards, of course, he was mortified he’d be discovered. So he weaseled around so that the police put your friend, Tim, in charge, figuring Tim was bound to be more unsuspecting of Zeus. And afterwards, he gave Tim a healthy retainer every year, just to be sure he kept seeing Zeus in a kindly light.”

“God,” Evon said. She now understood Teri’s warning that the truth could wound Tim. She finally took a nip of her drink. To her it would forever taste like gasoline. She said to Teri, “I know Zeus didn’t realize Cass was his son, but did he care at all that a twenty-five-year-old was doing his time?”

“Oh, he said something silly at one point, that no expert could say for sure that it wasn’t Lidia’s slap that caused Dita’s death. As if that justified sticking Cass in the pokey. But, no, like I said, Zeus was a lot like our father. He just convinced himself that bad stuff he’d done hadn’t happened. But reburying Dita had waked it all in him and he said he had decided to turn himself in as soon as we got back.

“It was a minute before either Hermione or me could react, but then she started carrying on. I’d never seen her act like that, throwing things and screaming. She spit on Zeus, smacked him. He just sat there. Not that she wasn’t entitled. He’d killed their daughter. But once she was done calling him a monster for that, she said that what he was going to do would only make things worse-abandoning her in old age, bringing shame on their family, and shattering Hal. And why? In order to spare Lidia, who Hermione always somehow felt he loved more than her.

“I just left her to the screaming, and tried to sleep. As far as I could tell, they were up all night.

“The next morning, Zeus seemed to have settled her down enough that she’d agreed to take a walk with him back to the graveyard. So off they went, and no more than an hour later, I hear all this shouting and hear sirens up the mountain. The servants in the villa were in a tizzy and dragged me out with them. And there was Hermione telling the police about these strange men who had followed Zeus and her. She said she was walking alone, fifty paces in front of him, when she heard Zeus scream. Next she sees is these men tearing off and Zeus way down below, broken on the rocks like a child’s toy.”

“Did you believe that? That strangers had tossed him down the mountain?”

“
Ohee
,” Teri said, moving her head from side to side. She actually laughed at the idea. Zeus’s enemies would not kill a father in mourning, according to Teri. But Hermione was a Vasilikos and the Greek police couldn’t wash their hands of the matter fast enough.

“Hermione never cracked. Once we came back, I saw next to nothing of her, except on family occasions. She became another one of these Greek widows, keeping company with almost no one but her son and grandchildren, and dressed in black. Designer stuff, of course. But black.” Teri cackled.

“And Cass stayed in prison.”

“Yes. That was sad. Of course, I returned from Greece determined to honor my brother’s wishes and go to the prosecutor in Greenwood County. I hired a lawyer, a fellow named Mason. Ever heard of him?”

“George?” He was a judge now, but still one of Evon’s closer friends. “You couldn’t have done better.”

“Well, he listened to all this and said, ‘Is your sister-in-law going to back you?’ ‘Fuck no,’ I said. I knew better than that. Admit she had a motive to push her husband off the mountain? Blacken his name and devastate her son? And reward Lidia, who she despised? I’m no lawyer, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Your friend George just shook his head. ‘A prosecutor is going to look at this and laugh. You come forward only after your brother dies, when you can conveniently lay the whole thing at his feet with no consequence to him. His wife, who was in the room, denies he ever said anything like that. And who do you hope to free as a result? Only the son of your best friend. We can do it, Teri, but I’ll tell you right now there isn’t a soul in that courthouse who is going to believe you. Frankly, I think I might deserve a bonus if you don’t end up charged with perjury.’ If it was just about me, I might have carried on anyway. But to tear Hal apart with no point? Cass wasn’t getting out. Your friend Mason convinced me of that.”

“And you never told Lidia.”

“How could I? She’d have demanded that I go to the prosecutor. What else would a mother do? A lot of people thought Hermione was dull, but she was a survivor. She knew I was cornered.”

The old lady emptied her tumbler. She was done.

“A secret,” she said to Evon again, as punctuation.

Evon went to set her glass down on the tea cart, but Teri reached for it when she realized where Evon was headed. She made a remark about wasting good whiskey and took a long draught.

“Forgive me for not showing you out,” she said. “I’ll probably just fall asleep here.”

Evon offered to help her to bed but the old lady was content with her bad habits.

“How is your life, dear?” she asked, as Evon picked up her purse. “What happened to Loopy Loo?”

She described yesterday’s events to Teri. “She probably got out of jail last night. I never checked to find out.”

“And how do you feel?”

“Like I got trapped in a washing machine on spin cycle.”

Teri liked the description and had a long laugh.

“It’ll probably take you a while to recover, but don’t give up hope.”

“That’s what Tim tells me. Anyway, I can’t escape my own nature. It’s what I want, deep inside.”

“Course it is. You ought to try to be happy for your own sake, but if that doesn’t convince you, then try because there were so many of us who never even got the chance.”

That thought, a new one, pierced Evon straight through the heart.

“Come give your old Aunt Teri a hug.”

She did. The old woman still smelled like she was wearing an entire cosmetics counter. Teri looked up, unseeing, and touched Evon’s cheek. She told Evon again she was a good girl.