“So, your daughter would own the business?” I said.
“Yes, yes. Can we make this quick?” Bower was fidgeting, lines creasing his brow. Due to Georgia Lee’s randiness? Was that how they met?
“I understand Marsha’s gone. Do you still intend to leave her the business?”
“Frankly, I’m … at a loss. She’s my only other heir. I want to keep the business in the family. Junior, well … you’ve seen for yourself. Marsha’s got the smarts. I tried to be a mentor to her. I tried to help her get into the right university. I tried to get her onto the right career path. But ever since her mother died, she wouldn’t listen to me. She’s hated me ever since.”
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
Bower shook his head, eyes glistening.
“Marsha’s an idiot,” Lisa said. “She could have it all.” She waved a hand around the room. “But she took her trust fund money and split.”
“You wouldn’t know where she is, would you?”
“No, and I couldn’t care less.”
I nodded and stood. I handed each of them a card, including Junior.
I leaned over the slumped figure in the chair, tossed him the card and murmured, “How about it, Junior. Any idea where your sister went?”
For a moment, his eyes flickered with an unidentifiable emotion. But he said nothing.
I rose, turned, and addressed the room. “I think I’ve heard enough for now.”
*****
I left the three of them, closing the door and fleeing down the hall. You’d have thought I was being pursued by monsters or evil spirits. In a sense, I believed this to be true. I hit the zig-zag stairway, bounding downward two steps at a time. Evil pervaded these people, I could feel it emanating from Lisa’s cold smile. From her calculating eyes. I could feel it in Bower’s lack of empathy for his own son. In his lack of willingness to listen to what his own daughter wanted. In his need to shape everyone and everything into what he wanted them to be.
Junior, meanwhile … Jesus! Talk about a pawn. Sure, he was a nitwit. Even so, the price he’d paid for twenty minutes of pleasure—oh, let’s get real, probably five, if he was lucky—was his life. As I made my way to the door, my disgust grew. Bile rose in my throat. Years of working with the Public Defender’s Office had never made me feel this wretched. At least, the criminals there didn’t hide behind phony respectability.
Before I left, I spotted an umbrella stand beside the door. I took a moment to clear my throat of the bilious phlegm, gathered it in my mouth and hocked a loogie into the stand before I walked out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I felt the wind in my hair as I scootered down the drive, trees sweeping past in a green blur. The gate swung open as I neared it. I hit the accelerator hard.
About five miles or so later, I let off the gas. God, what a relief.
My thoughts turned to Danni Beranski. Little wonder she’d broken things off with Billy Ray. Who’d want Marshall Bower for a father-in-law, let alone sweet Georgia Lee as mother-in-law? And Junior? Could he have made a pass at her? Not hard to imagine.
Now, with Lisa pregnant, I could just picture Thanksgiving. Georgia Lee drunk off her ass, Lisa not far behind, Bower Sr., carving the turkey and spouting platitudes, Junior in the bathroom jerking off between doing lines of coke. Lisa’s brat (or two or three) running around, wreaking havoc. Straight out of Norman Rockwell.
I aimed the scooter toward Berlin and Danni Beranksi. I had a few follow-up questions.
*****
By the time I eased the scooter to the curb before Danni’s old Victorian and marched up the steps, it was nearly 3:30. Where had the day gone? I rang the doorbell. No answer. After a minute, I tried again. The chime rang faintly and faded out. No answer. The trees made shushing noises in the yard behind me, as if the bell had disturbed them. Their limbs creaked like those of arthritic elders.
“Sorry,” I said, aloud, smiling at my own silly thought.
I opened the screen door and knocked. I was pondering how people always knock after ringing the doorbell—like: answer now or I’ll pound your door down—when someone behind me said, “Looking for me?”
I jumped and turned. Danni stood there, a shoulder bag slung diagonally across her chest. She held a plastic shopping bag in one hand.
“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“That’s okay.”