In-Laws and Outlaws (20 page)

The food came and we dug in. Well,
I
dug in; Nancy chewed every bite precisely thirteen times. (Yes, I counted.) After thirty-nine chews and three swallows, she patted her mouth with a napkin and said in a voice so faint I could barely hear her, “You and Tom are very close, aren't you?”

Oh-oh. “The last time I saw Tom Henry was ten years ago. We didn't keep in touch.”

She stared at her salad and wouldn't meet my eyes. “He didn't want you to have dinner with Mr. Underwood.”

So she'd heard that, had she? I looked at her, her eyes still fixed on her salad plate. Nancy's bad case of puppy love for a not-interested married man couldn't be making her very happy. She must have been in seventh heaven when Tom and Annette decided to divorce, but surely she understood by now that Tom wasn't going to turn to her. Yet, hope does have a way of springing eternal … I settled on a kind lie. “Tom doesn't like Patrick Underwood, and don't ask me why—I don't know. I just know Tom doesn't want the family to have anything to do with him.”

Slowly she raised her eyes from her plate. “Oh. Then … then you and Tom aren't …?”

I pretended to be shocked. “Of course not! Why, he's still married to Annette!” God, what a hypocrite.

Nancy looked embarrassed and relieved at the same time and whispered an apology. We changed the subject and that was that.

I bit down on something nicely crunchy; the cole slaw had jicama in it. Nancy talked about what she and Elinor were working on and speculated on new directions the Decker Philanthropic Foundation might take. Elinor was thinking of expanding the fields of endeavor she usually funded. “It'll mean a lot more work for her,” Nancy said, “but personally I think that will be a good thing. It'll help take her mind off Lynn.”

“Does she dwell on what happened, do you think?”

She thought about that a moment. “I don't think so, but Elinor doesn't confide in me about personal matters. When Lynn died, she just sort of withdrew from everybody for a while. Grieving in private, I guess. Coming so soon after the deaths of Ike Henry and Bobby Kurland—well, it was hard.”

I nodded. “They've all lost a child. Starting with Connie, four years ago.”

“Oh yes, wasn't that a
dreadful
thing! That poor boy. I hadn't been working for Elinor very long when Theo was kidnapped, but I could see it was just tearing the family apart. It was all anyone talked about.”

“Did you know Theo Decker at all? How soon after you started working for Elinor was he killed?”

“About six months, but I did meet him once—here on the island, in fact. It was right before they left for Norway: Theo was a nice boy—I liked him. I was so sorry when they couldn't get all the money together. I'd have given them my own if I'd had any.”

I wasn't sure I'd heard her right. “What do you mean, they couldn't get all the money together?”

She looked at me in surprise. “Raymond was able to pay only part of the ransom—you didn't know?”

“I've been gone, remember. There was nothing about that in the paper.”

“Wasn't there? Well, no, I suppose there wouldn't be. But the kidnappers wanted this horrendous sum of money, and they didn't give the family much time to raise it—not enough to convert stock holdings into cash, or some such. Anyway, Raymond paid what he could, but they went ahead and killed Theo anyway. You'd think they'd wait for the rest, wouldn't you?”

This was incomprehensible. “But couldn't Raymond get a bank loan on his securities? And what about the rest of the family—didn't they help?”

“Yes indeed, everybody helped. Elinor had me going through the Foundation budget to see how much cash we could divert. I don't think that was strictly legal,” Nancy said softly, “but we did it anyway. Almost a million dollars of Foundation money went toward Theo's ransom. I don't know about any bank loans.”

I questioned her some more, but Nancy had told me all she knew. When the cards were down, the rich, affluent, well-to-do, moneyed, wealthy,
loaded
Deckers couldn't come up with enough cash to save one of their own. I didn't believe it. I
couldn't
believe it. Nancy must have gotten it wrong. The newspaper account of Raymond's death had said that the firm of Decker and Kurland was worth an estimated $600 million. The kidnappers had wanted only twenty (only!)—so Raymond should have had no trouble paying them off. Unless the newspaper figure was inflated. This needed looking into.

Nancy had driven Elinor's Rolls to the meeting in Edgartown, and I rode back with her. She was uneasy about driving the expensive car and never took her eyes off the road; we crept along the federal secondary highway like two octogenerians whose chauffeur had just quit. Conversation would obviously be a dangerous distraction, so I kept silent.

I kept silent and thought about Tom. I didn't like the way he'd moved in when Patrick Underwood was asking me out to dinner. Not that I was panting for a date with Patrick, although that might be nice—but it was just too damned possessive of Tom, too presumptuous. What had happened between us was too quick and too recent for either one of us to be staking a claim, not to mention the legal nicety of Tom's still being married to another woman. His cutting Patrick out like that was way out of line; I'd gone along with it just to avoid a scene. No—I'd gone along because I was chicken; I was so unsure of everybody around me that I'd simply taken the path of least resistance. Damn Tom anyway! What right did he have putting me in a position like that?

Then it occurred to me that I might be looking for excuses to see Tom in an unfavorable light … to justify my continuing reluctance to trust him. What if I simply went up to him and said,
I know that the Matthew Zeitz story is bullshit
—what would he do? Try to convince me it wasn't? Claim he didn't know anything about it? I wasn't quite ready to put it to the test.

When we reached West Chop, I asked Nancy to drop me at the tennis club. I had to see the Kurlands.

Michelle and Rob were in a doubles match with a couple I didn't know. A ball boy hovered on the sidelines, eager to earn a big tip. The Kurlands and their two opponents all played well. It wasn't the high-powered game of younger players—no lethal serves, no killer overhead smashes. Instead, their game was one of grace and finesse; at any other time it would have been a pleasure to watch them. Michelle's tennis dress was so white that the glare hurt my eyes.

Finally Rob served out the set and they took a break. Rob was the first to spot me. “Hello, Gillian! Glad you're here. We didn't get a chance to tell you at the meeting, but we're delighted you decided to stay on for a while.”

Are you, now
. “Yes, my business can take care of itself. I was getting antsy over nothing.”

“Good, good. You deserve a real vacation—after all the family trouble you walked in on. But that's over now. The best thing we can do is forget about it.”

“I suppose you're right.”
Liar, liar
.

“Michelle and I are taking the sailboat out tomorrow. Why don't you come along?”

I mumbled a hasty acceptance and started to ask him a question, but the male half of the couple they were playing came up to us just then. He acknowledged the introduction Rob made and immediately started talking about some upcoming tennis tournament. I eased away and went over to sit down on a bench where Michelle was toweling off.

“Ah, Gillian,” she said. “Connie called us with the good news. I think you're right to stay.”

Yes, yes—enough of these amenities. “Michelle, are you having money problems?”

She put down the towel and picked up a thermos. “We're in the money-problems business.”

“I mean, do you have enough money?”

“Does anyone ever have enough money?” she said with a laugh.

“Michelle. Serious question.”

My tone of voice must have convinced her. She poured herself a cold drink and offered me one; I shook my head. “Yes, I can see it is,” she said, sipping her drink. “No, I'm not having money problems.”

“The business isn't in trouble?”

“The business is doing fine. Why do you ask?”

“What about four years ago? Was it in trouble then?”

She frowned. “Gillian, Decker and Kurland hasn't been in serious trouble in all the time I've been with the firm. What's this all about?”

I took a deep breath and said, “Raymond's obituary notice reported the firm's assets to be in the neighborhood of six hundred million. Is that an accurate figure?”

“Fairly accurate. A little more right now.”

“Then will you please tell me why in the name of heaven you weren't able to come up with twenty million to buy Theo Decker's life?”

I'd never seen her look so dismayed. “Oh, Gillian, it's not that simple! We don't have huge sums of money lying about that we can put our hands on anytime we like. We—” She was interrupted by the female half of the other couple, summoning everyone back to the court. Michelle gave an exasperated laugh and said, “Your sense of timing is not the best I've seen. We'll talk later—not here.” We both stood up. “Rob and I are taking a new sailboat out tomorrow—”

“I know. I'm coming.”

“Fine. We'll talk then.” I started to leave. “Where are you going?” Michelle asked.

“To Connie's.”

“Do you have transportation?”

Oh lord—I hadn't thought of that. “I'll walk.”

“Nonsense, it's way too far. And in this sun? You'll get heatstroke.”

“What about you—out there playing tennis?”

She ignored me. “Let's see—I think the Mattinglys just finished their match.” She sent the ball boy with a message, and I had a ride home. Michelle didn't care for the unseemly notion of my walking all the way back to the Decker compound and therefore I would not walk. Was it a kindness on her part or a just a chance to arrange things to her own liking? Michelle did so like arranging things.

The Mattinglys turned out to be a middle-aged couple with skin like leather, both of them. They talked tennis all the way to the compound, assuming I was as fascinated by the game as they were. Nothing more was required of me than to smile and nod and say
Ah!
in the right places. I thanked them politely for the lift.

14

Annette was back.

She'd scored a triumph in Paris. The proposed software distributorship was safely under legal lock and key, and the personnel problems had been resolved to her satisfaction; she'd gotten rid of three of the four young men whose business she was putting Decker money into. Jules—the “obsessed” one—had been reluctant to cut his friends and partners out, so Annette had taken matters into her own hands.

“I bought them off,” she said cheerfully. “That's all they were in it for anyway, a quick payoff. Jules was
crushed
. He's such an innocent, he'd had no idea his so-called friends were riding on his coattails.”

“It sounds as if Jules could use a babysitter,” Michelle remarked.

“I've already found him one,” Annette said. “Do you remember Louis Benoit? He worked on the French telephone system …” And the twins were off into the world of business.

Annette looked vibrant; her trip had done her good. It was the first time I'd seen the twins together since Raymond's funeral, and I'd forgotten how overwhelming the two of them could be side by side. Annette's bright red dress made a dramatic contrast to Michelle's all-white outfit; you couldn't ignore those two if your life depended on it.

Tom's immediate reaction to Annette's return was to ask Connie if he could move into one of her spare rooms. My house was rapidly filling up with Oscar's campaign staff, a few of whom would be staying in the Ferguson house along with Nancy Younger. Connie said yes, of course. I wasn't sure how I felt about Tom's moving in with us. It would be convenient having him right down the hall from me—oh my, yes. And, yes, a little bit exciting as well. On the other hand, if Tom turned out to be in cahoots with Rob and whoever else was in on the Matthew Zeitz lie, I didn't want him close to me at all.

I couldn't even rule out Annette's being in on it; a little thing like an ocean wasn't enough to isolate her from what was going on here on Martha's Vineyard. She'd probably stayed in daily contact with her twin and must know more of what was happening than I did. But that was only a side issue, the Matthew Zeitz business; it told me I couldn't trust anybody. But it wasn't the real problem; the real problem was Joel. What was to be done about Joel?

The authority figures in his life were handling it all wrong, pretending as they were that life would go on as usual if they were just nice to Joel and protected him against outside harassment. But surely if he'd killed before and got away with it, he'd kill again. What kind of psychosis always showed itself by age fifteen—paranoid schizophrenia, or was I thinking of something else? If there was any hope of helping him, he had to get that help
now
; later might not do any good.

I was muddling all this over while I helped Tom move in that evening. “Did you bring your gun?”

He hesitated, and then said, “Yes. Does that bother you?”

“I don't know why you need it, now that they've caught Matthew Zeitz.”

“Habit, mostly. I'll get rid of it if you like.”

I shrugged and decided to take a mini-chance. “Do you believe Rob's story about that man?”

“Matthew Zeitz? Well, yes … is there some reason I shouldn't?”

“None that I can think of. It does seem rather fortuitous, though. All of a sudden—bam! We gottim!”

“All of a sudden?” Tom sounded incredulous. “It may be sudden for you, Gillian, but for us it's been dragging on for four months. Both the police and our private investigators have been looking for the man all that time, remember.”