Authors: S.W. Hubbard
Cal’s face is so close to mine I can smell his spearminty breath. He cradles my cheeks in his hands. “Baby, you must see that no good can come from revealing all this to the media. Anne did so much good in her life. Spencer has so much still to offer the world. It would be best if we kept the affair and the circumstances of the fire within the family.” He kisses me. “Do it for me.”
I jerk away as if I’ve been slapped. The sound of my own breathing roars in my ears.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
That’s it. Of course it is. Coughlin warned me that all Cal’s loyalties lay with Spencer. I should have listened.
“Spencer assigned you to keep an eye on me and bring me into the Finneran fold, didn’t he?” My voice ascends the scale. “The romantic dinners, the flowers, the sex—all in a day’s work for you, wasn’t it?”
Cal reaches for me. “No, it wasn’t like that!”
But his protest comes a split second too late. I see the shadow of guilt pass over his face. I’ve nailed it. Deep in my heart I’ve always known the truth—a man like Cal would never be interested in me.
I spring up just as my phone starts to trill. If it’s another reporter, this time I’m taking the call. I lift the phone to my ear. In one swift lunge, Cal grabs my phone and hurls it across the room. It crashes against a wall and breaks apart. He latches onto my arm and jerks me around to face him. Any pretense of affection has dissolved. I see a fierce passion there that has nothing to do with me. “Grow up, Audrey. You think you were the only person in the world with an unhappy childhood? That everyone’s family was perfect except yours? My father dumped my mother for a woman ten years older than me. Anne’s mother had a nervous breakdown, Spencer’s father was an unemployed drunk. Shit happens. Get over it.”
I break free and run for the powder room, slamming the door in Cal’s face and locking it.
He pounds hard enough to make the wood vibrate. “Audrey, come out of there. We’re not done.”
Oh, but we are. We’re so done.
Soon he stops hammering. A minute passes and his voice softens. “Baby, I’m sorry. I overreacted. It’s true that Spencer asked me to…get to know you. But Audrey, that was just at the beginning. I really did fall for you. Let’s talk, baby—we can work this out.”
“Shut up! I’ll come out of here when I’m good and damn ready. And stop calling me baby.” I sit on the edge of the toilet and run my fingers through my hair. Hunched and trembling, too numb to cry, I pick up each betrayal and caress it, admiring the artistry that went into its creation. I’m outclassed here—a Play-Doh sculptor at the Louvre.
I get up and walk to the polished marble sink. Trying not to look at myself in the mirror, I splash cold water on my face. My breaths come in short, hard bursts. I have to get more oxygen to my brain. I can’t think.
I can’t trust Cal, that much is obvious. His belief in Spencer goes way past loyalty. It’s more like a fundamentalist religion that causes its followers to speak in tongues. Cal has given me lots of information, but how can I tease out what’s true and what’s false?
My mind makes a sudden leap back to my college days, tutoring non-math majors in calculus. One girl used to hyperventilate every time she saw the sea of numbers and letters and symbols staring up at her from her text book. The answer is right in there, I would tell her. Relax and you’ll see it.
That should work here, but it doesn’t. Because a calculus textbook isn’t filled with false information masquerading as fact. I could solve this equation any number of ways, but I still won’t be sure I have the right answer. Garbage in, garbage out as the computer science majors used to say.
Reason, Audrey. Start with what you know is true. No doubt Spencer dumped my mother’s body, kept her ring, and gave it to Agnes to keep. There can be no other explanation for how it came to be in that trunk. But what about the letter? Cal and I argued before he even attempted to explain that. Why would Spencer have taken the letter? And why leave it with Agnes? A letter to another man is hardly a sentimental memento.
Another thing is certain. I blew off Brian Bascomb and my father too soon. I’m ashamed by how unquestioningly I accepted Cal’s explanation that my father killed my mother. Maybe he did…but isn’t it just as plausible that Spencer killed her? I need to hear his version of events, if he’s able, or willing, to tell me. Has he regained consciousness? It’s too late to visit the hospital now, but I can call when I get home.
I lean against the cool tile wall and close my eyes. I want nothing more than to be held. Instead, I have to go out there and face Cal. I have to face that I’m totally alone. I will not cry. I will not.
Opening the bathroom door, I poke my head into the hall. The apartment is dark and silent; could Cal have gone out?
I slip toward the front door. I want out of here, away from the Finnerans and everyone connected to them. Their house, their family, their life was a sham. I’m ashamed for ever being attracted to it.
“You were in there for a long time.” The voice--calm, quiet--floats to me in the darkness.
My heart pounds. “I was thinking.”
Neither of us speaks. We don’t need to. Despite all the deception, we have built a bond, we two, over this past month. He knows that to me, empirical truth is paramount. I know that to him, everything is relative. It hardly matters who actually snuffed out my mother’s last breath. The result is the same: the end of Spencer’s career.
“The world is not black and white, Audrey.” Cal’s disembodied voice, low and even, caresses me like warm seawater. “Your mother’s dead; Anne’s dead—nothing’s going to change that. Your father and Spencer did what they had to do to protect the people they loved. What good can come of telling the media this old story? More people will be hurt. And none of it will bring your mother back.”
So intense, so pragmatic. Cal the horsetrader; give a little to get a little. That always works with constituents and donors. He doesn’t understand he’s not offering me the right deal.
It’s not my mother I want back. It’s my father.
I open the door of the apartment and walk out. No good-bye, no slam—I’m done with drama.
On the elevator ride down I plan what to do first. Call Coughlin, the New York Times, the hospital? Everything will have to wait until I get home to my landline.
On the lobby level the door slides open and a tall man in a stocking cap and a canvas coat faces me.
Figuring he intends to go up, I warn him, “This is going down to the parking garage.”
He nods and steps in. The door slides shut and we’re alone together.
I feel my heart rate quicken. This is ridiculous—I have to get over my fear of elevators. Keeping my eyes focused forward, I edge away from my fellow passenger. Silently, we descend two more levels. When the door opens on P1, he stands aside to let me exit first.
Whew! Gripping my keys in my coat pocket, I set off toward my car. My footsteps echo in the empty, cavernous space. I don’t notice another car. I wonder what that guy—
A footstep. A swish of air. The cold grit of concrete against my cheek. I’m down so fast I don’t have time to utter a sound. There’s a knee in my back and fingers laced through my hair. He yanks my head back to slam it into the concrete.
I manage to get my arms up to block the impact. He shifts his grip for better leverage. I twist around to look at him.
He knocks me back down. Now we’re face-to-face as he puts his hands around my neck.
The face is familiar, yet strange. The head is bald, the teeth are crooked, the eyes are brown.
But the lips, the chin, the cheekbones are ones I know well. They belong to Spencer Finneran.
My eyes widen and he grins.
“Good disguise, huh? I never wanted to be one of those politicians whose fame puts him in a bubble. I use this to get out among the people, hear what they really think. Amazing how when you change your most distinguishing characteristics, no one recognizes you.”
His hands tighten. I stare straight into his creepy, brown contact lens-shrouded eyes. It takes a long time to strangle someone to death. I’m not going to make it easy for him.
“Is this how you killed my mother?” I whisper.
The pressure increases. He shakes his head. “Shut up, Audrey.”
Shut up. That’s what Cal wanted me to do, but I wouldn’t agree. Cal. He set me up for this. I should have known he wouldn’t let me walk away and destroy everything the two of them have worked for.
Starbursts of white light explode before my eyes. Spencer’s BlackBerry chirps the arrival of a text. I stop struggling, shut my eyes, and go limp.
The pressure lessens. It’s enough. Rage propels me out of Spencer’s grasp. Keys in hand, I slash at Spencer’s eye. He screams and touches the damage. His hand comes away bloody. Through it all, his phone keeps chirping.
I’m up on my feet and racing for my car. Almost there. Then I feel my leg yanked out from under me. I’m airborne, my head bouncing off a concrete column. Dazed, I can’t fight back when Spencer gets his hands around my neck again. He won’t fall for the going limp trick a second time. Game over.
The exploding lights appear again…fade to gray…black is next…
“Stop!”
Spencer flinches and oxygen rushes back into my lungs. Another man appears above us.
“Jesus Christ, Spencer, what are you doing? You said you wanted to talk to her. You can’t
kill
her!”
Spencer looks up at Cal. “You had your chance. You told me you could make her listen. Clearly, you were wrong.” Spencer’s hands resume their work. “This will look like Dylan’s drug-dealing friends did it. Get out of here if you’re too squeamish to watch.”
Cal pulls Spencer off me. They stagger, grappling for the upper hand. Cal is younger but Spencer is taller. Neither one is a street fighter. Cal breaks away and takes a swing, but lands only a glancing blow to Spencer’s shoulder. I struggle to push myself to my feet. Instinctively, I reach for my phone, but it’s lying shattered upstairs.
“Get in the car, Audrey,” Cal yells. “Go for help.”
Just then, Spencer delivers a punch to Cal’s head and he reels. I scream and stumble toward them.
Cal regains his footing. “Go, Audrey!”
He’s right. I’m too weak to be of any use. The car is the best solution. As I fall into the driver’s seat and start the engine, I hear a terrible scream. Looking around, I see Cal slump down along the length of a column. A bright blossom of blood marks the spot where Spencer slammed Cal’s head against the concrete.
Even after all that’s happened, my instinct is to run to him, comfort him.
Then, in my headlights, I see Spencer Finneran sprinting up the exit ramp. In a moment he’ll be out on the street, out of his disguise, out from everything he’s done to Cal…my mother…my father…me.
I accelerate.
Eight hours after Spencer Finneran is admitted to Palmyrton Memorial Hospital for trauma surgery, my father is released, the overdose of medications flushed from his system. The police are searching for a newly hired Manor View aide who stopped coming to work after my father was poisoned. Maybe Spencer promised her a green card for her husband or a civil service job for her son.
We are sitting together in the solarium at Manor View, preparing to solve the biggest problem of our lives. The Hodge Conjecture and the Reimann Hypothesis pale in comparison to the complexity of the Nealon Quagmire. Sharpened pencils with good erasers and a high-end graphing calculator won’t help us here. This is mental math gone wild.
I speak calmly. “Tell me again exactly what you remember about that night.”
His voice is steady even though his speech is still a little slurred. His eyes never blink. “When I ga home aroun’ nine, your mutha was already dead.”
“Who was there?”
“Spencer in the driveway, crying. You asleep in the fron’ seat of the car. Charlotte under it. ”
“Did you understand right away what had happened?”
Dad shakes his head. “Too much to absorb. Charlotte dead. Spencer there. The snow, so much snow.”
“Who said that I must’ve put the car in gear?”
“Spencer. He foun’ the crush doll carriage after I arrived. Saw how you were slumped over the gear shift.”
“And you believed him?”
Dad nods. “Spencer so distraught. He loved your mutha too… I thought . And, and…he had been my friend.”
Betrayed. I know how that feels. I touch his hand lightly. He doesn’t pull away. “Look.” I hand him the letter. “Have you ever seen this?”
I watch his face crumple as he reads it. Thirty years later the shock and pain are still raw. My father’s no Robert De Niro—this is the first time he’s read that letter.
“My mother meant to leave me behind, Dad. She took off while I was asleep in my bed. I was never in the car with her.”
Our eyes meet. “My God,” he whispers.
For thirty years my father has resented me for what he thought I did that night. Now I’ve proved my innocence. What should I be feeling here—relief? Triumph? Anger? I try each emotion on and reject it. Instead, I’m stunned to discover a little flicker of sympathy. My father’s response to my three year old self was totally unjust, totally irrational. For the first time in our lives, he seems fully human to me.
Not that we’re about to throw our arms around each other in an orgy of tears and apologies. We are Nealons, after all.
When I speak again, my voice is steady. “Did you ever see her neck?”
“No, wearing a scarf.” He looks at me. “Car didna kill her?’
I shake my head. “Strangled, I think. Tell me what happened next.”
“Spencer and I argued, but worked ou’ a plan. What to do with the car. Putting toys he bought for his kids in the trunk. What to do with body.” Dad stares at the hospital ID bracelet still on his wrist as if he wouldn’t know who he was if it weren’t printed right there.
“Where was I?”
“I carried you in house. Put you in bed. I hadda leave you alone for a while, when I took car to the lake with Spencer. Didna’ like it, but no other way. You slept righ’ through.”
“And Spencer took care of the rest,” I say. “ Drove to the shore. Put Charlotte’s body in his boat and took her out to sea. But when it came time to throw her in the water, he slipped her ring off. Wanted that one little memento.”
“Spencer tol’ me wait ‘til mornin’ to call police. By then, the body would be in ocean and he back home.”
I get up and pace around the overheated room. A huge geranium drips brilliant red petals on the floor. Outside, the world is black and gray and brown. “But what about the letter? Why did he save that? The ring might be a memento, but the letter was written to another man. It incriminated him. Why wouldn’t he have destroyed it?”
Dad shakes his head.
I experience a moment of great clarity, as I do when I can see five moves ahead to how I’m going to win a chess game. I look at my father.
“I remember the cops being there when I woke up on Christmas morning. What time was that, Dad?”
He shrugs. “Eight or nine.”
“Do the math, Dad,” I say softly. “I slept more than twelve hours straight. I slept alone in the car. I slept when you carried me through the snowstorm into the house. Slept while you and Spencer argued about your plan. Slept when you left me to dump the car. Slept long past the time most little kids are up to see what Santa has brought.”
“Drugged.” Dad breathes the word out. “I remember you had an empty sippy cup in your hand. You loved juice. Spencer must’ve given you somethin’ before I go’ there.”
I hold up my hand. “Not Spencer. Anne.”
Anne with her handy Benadryl for crying babies. Good mother Anne, ever ready with cups of juice and bags of snacks.
“Cal told me Spencer helped you cover up my mother’s murder to spare Anne from knowing about the affair. But that can’t be true. She must’ve known right from the start. Spencer was out all night long on Christmas Eve getting rid of the body. How could he possibly have explained that to the mother of his children? Anne knew. Anne knew because Mom must’ve called and told her she was pregnant with Spencer’s child. She was tired of waiting. She jump-started the action.”
Dad sighs and nods. “Tha’ was your mutha.”
I take the letter out of Dad’s lap. “Maybe that’s why she said, ‘I’m not good at keeping secrets.’ After all, you already knew about the affair. Anne was the one who truly hated Charlotte. And I know for a fact she’s strong enough, and determined enough, to kill. So as mom was running off to meet Spencer, Anne intercepted her in the driveway and strangled her. Then Anne must’ve realized she couldn’t get rid of the body herself. She needed to call her husband for help.
“Spencer arrived and together they ran over my mother’s body with our car. With the hedge along the driveway and the snow coming down so thick, the neighbors wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.”
Dad clenches the arms of his chair. “The crush doll carriage… perfec’ prop. Charla’ really did run over tha’.”
I slept through this night thirty years ago, but today I see it with stunning clarity. “Then Anne came in the house to get me. Mom’s letter to you was probably right on the kitchen table. She took it, but why did she keep it?” I feel I’m so close—that the answer is there for the taking.
“I thin’ I unnerstan’,” Dad says. “Anne very proud. Didn’ wanna admit mistakes to her fatha. No’ wanna risk Spencer leavin’ her again. Letter was insurance.”
I nod. Dad and I are on to something here. Collaborators, not adversaries for once. “She kept the letter—and the ring as well-- to hold over Spencer’s head. We’ll never know, but it must’ve been Anne who gave the stuff to Agnes for safekeeping—she would have been closer to the nanny than her husband.”
“Risky.”
“Not so much.” I slide my chair closer to his and hold out the letter so we can both see it. “It starts ‘My Darling’ and it’s signed ‘C’. If Agnes had ever read it, which I don’t think she did, she wouldn’t have understood what she had. And then, somewhere along the line, Anne must’ve felt she no longer needed her insurance policy. She probably told Agnes to get rid of it. But by that time, the poor old soul couldn’t get up into her attic to do Anne’s bidding.” I give a bitter little laugh as I recall how Anne was able to control her household help with a nod of her head or a lift of her eyebrow. It probably never occurred to her that Agnes wouldn’t obey her.
I drop the letter in my father’s lap. “This only had meaning for Spencer, Anne and you.”
“An’ you.”
“Yeah, and me. If anyone else had found that trunk, none of this would’ve happened.” I nudge my father’s leg. “Remember when you finally accepted I was going into the estate sale business, you told me not to choose a silly name like Another Man’s Treasure. If I had named my company “Nealon’s Estate Sales” maybe Spencer and Anne would’ve encouraged Cal to choose a different firm. Like in chess, Dad. The opening gambit determines the whole course of the game. ”
He sits there, rigid as the Sphinx. When he speaks again, his voice is tinged with awe. “What a marriage the Finnerans had!”
“Amazing, for sure. The murder seemed to make it stronger. Spencer saved Anne from a life in prison. Anne saved Spencer from a messy, career-ending affair. You keep my secret, I’ll keep yours—that was the basis of their union.”
I twist to face my father head-on. “Why were you so determined to keep it from me that Spencer was my mother’s lover.”
“Dangerous for you to know before election. You would confron’ him even if I tol’ you no’ to.”
I narrow my eyes. Would I have? “What makes you say that?”
“You nevuh listen ta me.”
“You always think you’re right!”
There it is, every parent and child’s lament. I wouldn’t listen when he wanted me to stay in the Chess Club in high school, wouldn’t listen when I chose UVA over Princeton, wouldn’t listen when I started Another Man’s Treasure, wouldn’t listen when I hired Ty. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I wouldn’t have listened. But he could’ve tried. Instead, he did what he thought was best, always convinced he was right.
We glare at each other for a moment. Then I stretch back in my chair and gaze up at the ceiling. “Anne must’ve been stunned when Spencer told her about the trunk. I bet it was Anne who stole the key to my condo from your house and went through the trunk looking for that letter. I wonder—”
Dad waits for me to go on. When I don’t, his expression shifts. Maybe he’s noticed the tears in my eyes. He reaches for me, but I pretend I don’t see and fold my arms across my chest.
“I wonder which of them persuaded Cal—” The tears are flowing now.
“Don’ torture yourself, Audrey,” my father says.
Oh, but I will. I can’t stop thinking about how they ensnared him, controlled him, engendered such loyalty.
Cal lost his soul trying to save the Finnerans.
He lost his life saving me.