Liar: An Irene Kelly Mystery Part 21

"I can't believe you got in trouble at school very often," I said.

"I did. Ironically, for the same reason he did. I was bored, but for the opposite cause. I was reading ahead of my grade level. I used my spare time to be a cla.s.s clown."

"And when he got these notes?" I asked.

"If I was giving him reason-nonverbally-to believe it was bad news, he'd smile conspiratorially and say, 'Has your mother seen this yet?' If the answer was no, he'd sigh and say, 'Well, she'll understand. And you better let her be the one to talk to the teacher. As for you and me, we both already know that you're smart enough to figure out how to do better.' And he'd hug me and tell me not to let it get me down."

"But he pretended he could read?"

"For many years. He wasn't home every day, of course, but there was a routine when he was there. Every morning, he would open the newspaper and browse through it at a steady pace. He would come across an ad which featured a woman in a dress and he'd recognize the logo of the store. He'd say, 'Bree'-that was his nickname for her-'here's something you might want to take a look at. There's a sale at Buftum's.'

"Anything like that was her cue. She'd take the paper from him. 'Oh, maybe I'll go by there,' she'd say, but then she'd go back to the front page and say, 'I see they're going to build a marina near downtown,' or comment on whatever local news was there. Sometimes she'd mention national news, but usually he'd pick that up from the car radio or from television.

"While he had been 'browsing,' she had been looking at other sections for any small items of unusual interest, so that he could, throughout the day, regale customers or vendors with these. 'Did you see that story about the bank robber who wrote his hold-up note on the back of an envelope with his name and address on it?' Stories like that."

"Did your mother always know he was illiterate?"

"Yes-I mean, she knew not long after they met. She was working for a commercial nursery. He was a friendly person, and she was shy, and he was someone who always wanted shy people to feel more comfortable. At parties, he would find the person who was excluded or hanging back, and bring them into the conversation. He had a way of doing this so that the other person didn't feel put on the spot."

"Those people skills you spoke of," I said.

"Yes. I don't mean to say he was universally popular. There were people like your father, who never liked him from the moment they met him."

I started to say, "That's not true," but it was. Instead I said, "I don't know why my father reacted the way he did."

Travis shrugged. "I think some people could sense he was hiding something from them. Some men didn't like him because women liked him so much. Most women, I should say."

"The vast majority, as I recall," I said, thinking back. "And somehow he did it without really flirting. I don't just think it was his smile or his good looks. If there were two handsome men in a room, your father was still the one with all the women around him."

Again he shrugged. "He always told me that most men would do better with women if they just listened to them. For him it was natural; without being able to read, he had to listen to people to learn what was going on.

"In any case, my mother took a liking to him. One day, her boss came in while my dad was talking to her. He greeted my dad, who was one of his best customers, and slapped a trade magazine down on the counter. It was opened to an article. 'Take a look at that!' he said to my dad. My dad did everything in his power not to panic. There were no photographs with the article.

"He did what he usually did in that kind of situation. He tried to base his response on the other man's att.i.tude. He wanted to say something noncommittal, but still have an appropriate reaction. But I guess my mother's presence made him feel fl.u.s.tered. 'Wow!' was all he managed to say.

"'What do you think that's going to mean to you and me?' the man persisted. My mother must have seen that something was wrong. She said, 'Let me see that,' and she took the magazine from my dad and read the first paragraph aloud. It was something about the sale of one pesticide company to another.

"From there, my father could manage to partic.i.p.ate in the conversation. He was grateful to her. He took her out to lunch. He admitted to her that he couldn't read."

"Who else knew that?" I asked.

"Unless someone guessed and didn't let him know they'd guessed, not many people. W, Gerald, Gwendolyn and Mr. Brennan. I think he said his housekeeper at the other house knew. I didn't realize that he couldn't read until I was about ten."

"Were you disappointed?"

He shook his head. "No. I'm not sure why not, really. It wasn't a revelation, all at once. I gradually began to realize it, and knew it was a secret. At first, I didn't want him to know I knew that secret; maybe I sensed it would hurt him, I don't know. And even then, I thought he just couldn't read very well.

"But one day, the two of us had been out somewhere together and the road he would usually take to go home was closed. There was a sign saying 'Detour, use such-and-so street,' but of course, he couldn't read the sign. When he was working, one of his workers would do all the driving. But with us, he found his way around by memorizing landmarks. Only this time, there were no landmarks. He tried making turns, tried to get back to something familiar. He got lost. I could see he was terrified. Finally, I told him not to worry and pulled out a map and figured out how to get us home. I read the street signs and told him where to turn.

"We managed to get home before my mother came back from wherever she was. He was still shaken by the whole ordeal. So I gathered my courage and told him I already knew he couldn't read, and I'd teach him if he wanted me to. He started crying. I had never seen him shed a tear before then. It scared the h.e.l.l out of me."

I called to the dogs, and we turned, heading back toward the house.

"He told me about a nightmare he used to have all the time," Travis said. "In the dream he would be driving alone in the car to a place he had been to many times, but then the car breaks down along the way, before he gets to his next landmark. Tough-looking men are watching him-he's in a rough neighborhood. Suddenly he's near a phone-it appears out of nowhere, as things do in dreams-and so he calls the operator and asks for help. She puts him through to the police. The police say, 'We'll send help right way. Where are you?' He has to say, 'I don't know.' They say, 'Read the address on the phone,' and he panics. He lies and says it isn't on the phone, that it must have been torn off. The police say, 'Read the street sign,' and he can't. 'Read the signs on the stores,' and he can't. He finally has to tell everyone, 'I can't read,' and the police start laughing at him and hang up. The tough men are laughing at him, too. Everyone is pointing at him, jeering, and then walking away from him, leaving him, as if he isn't worth bothering with."

"Jesus," I said.

Again we walked in silence.

"This morning, you asked about the time just after the murder," he said. "It was this strange time when we-my father and my mother and I-were actually closer than we had been just before Gwendolyn died. We pulled together to protect my dad. Richmond was the enemy, this monster outside our gates."

"Your mom already knew about the marriage between Gwendolyn and your dad?"

He nodded. "She found out-I never knew how, but she did. She was devastated. I can remember her staying in her room for days on end, not eating, not sleeping, just staring at the ceiling, crying. Wouldn't answer the door or the phone. I took care of things the best I could, did the shopping, things like that. I got her to call my school and tell them I had the flu. Maybe it was just a kid's way of looking at it, but I was afraid to go to school, afraid she'd kill herself if I was away from her too long."

"But you were only-"

"Eleven. I finally told her I was going to get the priest-she begged me not to. She was so ashamed, thought of herself as everything from the worlds most gullible fool to a home-wrecker. I guess the threat of my telling anyone about it snapped her out of the worst of the depression. I started going back to school, life settled into a routine. But I don't think she was ever the same after that."

"Your dad-"

"I was angry at him, of course. She wasn't the only one who felt betrayed. When she made him move out, I was glad. At the time, I didn't want him to come anywhere near us. That's what I told myself, anyway.

"They had hoped to settle everything quietly-for my sake, they said. Mom was going to sell the house, move to where no one knew us, tell everyone she was a widow."

"Did Gwendolyn know?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure, but I don't think she knew. Mom made him swear he would never tell Gwendolyn. She believed they had both wronged Gwendolyn, but that no good would come of revealing the truth to her. It could only hurt her."

"Did your father ever try to explain why he didn't just divorce Gwendolyn? Why he tried to lead a double life?"

He was quiet for so long, I began to regret the question. He looked out over the water.

"He gave different explanations for it over the years. I suppose there is no one answer to that question. He was very young when he married Gwendolyn, and I think his brother pressured him into it-or pressured her into marrying my father, by threatening to expose her as a seducer."

"What?"

"Gerald Spanning. My uncle. When I was becoming-oh, let's call it reacquainted-with my dad, he talked a lot about his younger days, the days before he was married. I've never met Gerald, though."

"Not even when you were little?"

"No. Gerald was part of my father's other life. Introducing us would have meant revealing his secret family."

"But after the secret was out in the open-"

"I don't think Gerald had much to do with my father after the murder. The Kellys weren't the only ones who disowned us."

I let that go by. "Gerald was his older brother?"

"Yes. Gerald is a lot older than my dad-about ten years older. There had been at least a couple of other children born in the years between, but those children had died. They were poor. My grandparents were migratory farm workers."

He smiled at my look of surprise.

"Yes," he said. "A hard life. My dad said that when Gerald was barely out of short pants, my grandfather taught him how to ride the rails. They'd go all over the country, looking for farms that needed workers."

"Are your grandparents still alive?"

He shook his head. "They were killed in an accident on the sugar beet farm. Papa DeMont-that's what my dad called Gwendolyn's grandfather-felt sorry for Gerald and my dad, and let them stay in the house they had been living in on the farm. He also gave Gerald a permanent job. I think Gerald was still a teenager."

"How old was your dad?"

"My dad was very young. Still in elementary school. Gerald wanted him to stay in school, but he dropped out when he was twelve-he was already hopelessly frustrated with it because he couldn't read. He wasn't stupid-in fact, when I think of all he had to do to cope with his illiteracy, his strategies for hiding it... well, that's another story."

"So he went to work on the sugar beet farm."

"Yes. I guess Papa DeMont saw that my dad could learn in other ways and took him on as sort of a challenge. My dad used to swear that was how he got his real education-following Papa DeMont around, listening to him talk, watching him work. My father had a natural ability with plants, so I don't think Mr. DeMont regretted hiring him as a gardener."

He cast a quick glance at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

"I don't remember much about your parents' home," I said, "but I do remember the beautiful plants and flowers. I think my mother was jealous of her sister's gardens-Arthur's gardens."

His brows drew together, and he looked away again. After a moment, he said, "Your husband-Frank?"

"Yes."

"You said he planted the garden in your backyard?"

"Yes. Unlike me, he has a green thumb."

He smiled. "My father didn't pa.s.s his abilities on to me. I like Frank's garden. When will he be back?"

I shrugged. "Soon, I hope."

I called to the dogs, who were getting a little too far ahead of us. "I've forgotten now-how old was Gwendolyn when they married?" I asked.

"Forty-five. My dad was sixteen."

"She was almost thirty years older than Arthur."

"Yes. They were already friends. I never learned a lot about their marriage, but he did tell me that he was her only real friend. When Papa DeMont-her grandfather-died, she was grief-stricken. I guess she did seduce my father, but he said he thought she turned to him because she was so lonely, so sad. He never seemed to feel angry at her about it."

"But he came to regret marrying her?"

"I don't know if that's the right way to put it. By the time he married my mother, Gwendolyn was about fifty. He was twenty-two. He said he fell in love with my mother when he was old enough to know what it meant. He said he loved her then, and he would love her all of his life. I believe that-I think that was the truth."

He stopped walking and turned to me. "I don't really know the truth about why he stayed married to Gwendolyn. Sometimes he said it was because she was so lonely, and he couldn't bring himself to hurt her. Sometimes he said he loved her in a different way. Once he told me he owed her a kind of debt-one that money couldn't repay. He told me that he was still paying on that debt, but wouldn't explain what that meant. Another time, he just said it was too complex to explain, and we should just get on with our lives."

I didn't say anything, but with his next sentence, he spoke the accusation I had held back.

"It could have been that he wanted the money," he said, "and that divorcing her would have meant giving up a fortune."

"Do you think that's it?"

"I don't know. I don't want to believe that's why, but I don't know. He didn't like talking to me about her, or his life with her, or her money. But I never got the sense that his reluctance to talk about her was because he hated her; it was the habit of keeping those worlds separate, I suppose. His marriage to her was always divided from his life with my mother and me."

I whistled for the dogs, who were wrestling with one another a short distance behind us. Deke and Dunk broke apart, then went barreling past us.

"Your parents were separated," I said, "but he was with you on the night of the murder?"

He hesitated only slightly before saying, "You've seen the scars-the old ones-on my hand. My father was at our home when I cut myself. He carried me into the emergency room. If you don't believe me, there are all kinds of people who witnessed that."

"I'm not accusing you of having lied about that night," I said.

He smiled a little.

"I'm not," I insisted. "I just wondered what he was doing over there if Aunt Briana was so hurt and angry." "He missed us. He needed us." "He was trying to patch things up?"

"No," he said slowly, considering the question. "I think he was trying to accept the fact that his whole world was falling apart, but he wanted it to fall apart a little more slowly."

"But the investigation brought you back together?"

"Briefly. Technically, the investigation is still open, of course. But even when the case was actively being investigated, Harold Richmond always refused to believe there was any possibility of another suspect. That was another reason he got demoted-he just didn't do enough to investigate other suspects."

"So he kept pursuing your dad."

"Right. He added to my mother's misery. He would corner her when she was, say, out shopping. During hours I was in school. He'd start out cajoling, then he'd get frustrated and angry with her-sometimes he was drunk. He'd tell her that he knew she had been paid off to lie for my dad, or tell her that he knew my folks had plotted to kill Gwendolyn, and that my mom had better not try to get back together with my dad."

"Why didn't she want her name on that restraining order?"

He shook his head. "She said Richmond was part of her penance. No priest ever a.s.signed it, of course. It was her own idea. She spent a lot of years punis.h.i.+ng herself."

"For what?"

He looked down at his hand and shrugged.

I waited.

"For sleeping with a married man."

"She didn't know he was married!" I protested.

"Then for still wanting him, I suppose. For having brought shame to her family. For having a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child."

"I don't believe that she was ever ashamed of you."

"How would you know?" he asked.

"Are we back to that again? All right, because I saw how much she wanted you before you were born. Because-"