The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (44 page)

Brad glared at Phyl and said bitterly, “Didn’t I tell you the Kane men really knew how to pick their women? Well, Chantal was a true bitch.

“She told them she was in France to check her properties in the Charante. ‘Fortunately,’ she said, ‘the Germans liked cognac and they left them in good shape. Lucky for me the family trust is in Switzerland, huh? I get to keep it all.’

“She stood mocking them with her eyes and her smile. Then she said, ‘I heard your third wife left millions, and most of it went to your son. By the way,’ she added casually, throwing out her bombshell, ‘did I tell you I met Johnny? Of course, he’s not nearly as handsome as you, Jack. But I want to tell you,
he is something
else in bed.
’ Her peals of mocking laughter rang in their ears as she turned and walked away.

“Jack leaped up to go after her, but Archer held him back. ‘Sit down, you fool,’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t give her the satisfaction of thinking you believe her.’

“But Jack did believe her. He knew it wasn’t the kind of thing Chantal could have invented on the spur of the moment just to rile them.
His goddamn half brother was still alive. And he had screwed his mother.
He burned with humiliation, and he said to Archer, ‘One day I’ll find that little bastard Monkey. And then I’ll kill him.’

“‘You’d better,’ Archer replied, ordering a scotch. ‘Or else he’ll be back to claim the money. And where will the Kanoi Ranch be then?’”

Brad poured himself a brandy. He swirled the amber liquid, staring blankly down into the glass. Phyl thought it was almost as if he had forgotten she was there, he was so caught up in the story of the past.

Finally he tossed back the drink and said, “Jack knew Archer was capable of running through the second fortune even faster than he had the first. But this time the money was in Jack’s name. All Jack wanted was the ranch. He gave Archer enough money to live out his rich man’s life, and then he began to build up the business again.

“He put everything he had into the ranch; it consumed his life. And he did anything he had to to make it a success again. But he told me that he never forgot that the Monkey was out there somewhere and that one day he might return to claim back his fortune.

“Jack worked hard those years, and he played hard. There were plenty of women in his life; they liked him all right. They always had. Then he met Rebecca Bradley at a party in San Francisco. Even afterward, when he hated her, he always said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“Rebecca was rich and spoiled and very social, and
she looked down her nose at the young rancher. ‘A wild man’ she called him mockingly when they were introduced, and Jack said he laughed, remembering the Monkey and thinking how ironic it was that he was now the one being called wild.

“He said Rebecca was elegant and proper, but underneath he sensed a like spirit. She was just as wild and wicked as he was, and he loved it. He told me the first time she let him make love to her was in the back of her father’s chauffeured limousine.

“They were driving home from a party out in the hills somewhere, and it was dark. The chauffeur kept his back discreetly turned, but Rebecca knew he was aware of what was going on, and she liked it. She always liked that sense of danger, Jack told me. She enjoyed the feeling that she might be caught. She wanted to do it in hotel elevators, in bathrooms at crowded parties, up against an alley wall, like a cheap hooker.”

Brad turned his pale, ravaged eyes on Phyl. “That was Rebecca,” he said bitterly. “And she never changed.”

His hand shook as he poured another brandy. “But Jack was giving her what she wanted, and Rebecca decided she couldn’t live without him, so they got married a couple of months later. It was the wedding of the year in San Francisco. Her father was a Hawaiian sugar baron, and there was mixed blood in there somewhere, you could see it in her long black hair and the shape of her eyes, but her mother was an old guard socialite, and the cream of the society crop attended their nuptials.”

Brad stopped his pacing and looked at Phyl. “Wait here,” he suddenly commanded, holding up his hand. He strode off into the hall, and the dog trotted quickly after him, its claws clicking on the wooden floor.

Phyl shuddered, thinking about what he had just told her. She knew she was finally getting to the truth about Brad, and she was afraid of what he was going to
say. She wished they were in her office, that Brad was just a patient and she his doctor. She looked nervously at him as he came back in the room, clutching a silver-framed photograph.

“Here,” he said, pointing with a trembling finger at the couple standing outside a church in their wedding finery, smiling for the cameras. “That’s my father. And that, god damn her, is Rebecca.” He groaned like a man in pain, then suddenly hurled the photograph across the room.

Phyl gasped as it hit the wall and the glass shattered onto the floor. The dog ran toward it, sniffing and growling softly.

“Oh, God,” Brad cried with anguish. He knelt in the debris and picked up the scarred photograph “Why did I do that?” he demanded, flourishing the photograph under Phyl’s nose. She drew back in alarm. “I know why,” he cried angrily. “My mother was no good. She was a cheap lay. She was insatiable. Anyone was fair game to hen her husband’s friends, her own friends, a casual acquaintance. Even after I was born, she just kept on doing it, taking what she wanted.”

He sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. “I was the decoy for her assignations,” he whispered through his fingers. “She used to take me along with her. After all, who would suspect a woman of screwing around when her child was with her? But she did. She made me a witness, an accomplice to her dirty little game.

“My father was away at the ranch a lot of the time, and she would take me to San Francisco. We would set off, and I would think,
Maybe this time it will be fun, just the two of us together. Maybe this time it will be all right.
But I hardly saw her, except when she dragged me along to her ‘social events,’ as she called them. She would give me toys and books and tell me to be a good boy. She said she and her friend were going into the other
room, and I was not to disturb them; they had a lot to talk about.”

Brad lifted his head and looked bleakly at Phyl. “And I never did,” he said. “I was the good boy, the model son. I wanted to please her, and I did as she asked. Until the day she kept me waiting so long—two hours, three, four even—that I got frightened. I put my ear to the door of the room, but there was no sound. I was afraid that she had forgotten me, that she had gone off and left me. I thought maybe she had died … I pushed open the door and peeked inside. The curtains were drawn, and a lamp was lit on her side of the bed. I saw her clothes scattered on the floor, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew she could not have gone away and left me without her clothes.

“I slid through the door, peering into the darkness. And then I saw them. She was lying there naked, her black hair flung across the pillows. His head was on her breast, and he was sleeping. She turned and looked at me. Our eyes met. Then, still looking at me, with a smile of terrible complicity, she took his genitals in her hand and began stroking them.

“I heard him groan and he began to stir and I ran, terrified, from the room. Her mocking laugh followed me as I dosed the door.”

Brad was looking at Phyl, but she doubted he saw her. “Her laughter has haunted me ever since. I hear it in my dreams, waking and sleeping. And that smile. It was not the smile of a mother for her son.” He shook his head despairingly. “She was so beautiful.

“Afterward we went shopping, and she bought herself a new hat, red with little feathers in it. And then we went to tea at some grand hotel she liked. She met her friends there. ‘Look at me, what a good mother I am,’ she said, laughing with them, ‘taking my son out to tea.’ And she gave me that knowing smile again. ‘He’s a boy who knows how to keep a woman’s secrets,’ she said, and they all laughed.”

Brad lapsed into a deep silence, his head in his hands. Phyl waited, almost afraid to breathe in case she triggered another dangerous memory.

He sighed deeply. “Years later, after they were divorced, I asked my father why he had put up with her. He just shrugged his shoulders and said he took his own pleasures where he could. Besides, she was part of the great Kane image: the beautiful society heiress, the glamorous wife and mother. In an odd sort of way I guess they suited each other. She took what she wanted, and so did he. And he told me that women meant nothing to him. He reminded me that the only thing that mattered in our lives was the Kanoi Ranch. ‘Never forget that, son,’ he said. And I never have.

“My father told me the history of the ranch, how Archer had started it and about their financial difficulties over the years, trying to hold it together. And about the fortune that should have been theirs years ago if it were not for that half brother.

“‘That goddamn wizened little Monkey tried to steal our birthright from us, Brad,’ my father said. ‘If it hadn’t been for your grandfather Archer’s cleverness, he would have done it, and you and I would not be sitting here, on one of the biggest cattle ranches in America. I know I should have killed the Monkey when I had the chance because I know in my bones he is still out there somewhere, liked a coiled rattlesnake waiting to strike. He will try to take that fortune from us one day, son. He will want to take everything the Kane family has worked for all these years: our sweat and toil, our land, our heritage.
Our name.
Make no mistake, he will come to claim his fortune, and when he does, we must be ready to act. Quickly and without mercy.’”

Brad looked calmly at Phyl and said quietly, “I have been waiting for that moment all my life.”

Phyl perched warily on the edge of her chair. Brad’s mood swings from anger and violence to icy calm presaged
trouble; she was sure of it. “And do you think it will ever come?” she asked softly.

He stood up, poured himself more brandy, and gulped it down. “Not now,” he said coldly. “Not anymore.”

The icy shiver ran down Phyl’s spine again. Did he mean that the Monkey had returned? And that he had killed him? She was afraid to ask. Suddenly she was afraid even to be here alone with him.

“Jack almost killed Rebecca, you know, before she left,” Brad said, casually. “He said she had flaunted her affairs once too often and something in him just snapped. He grabbed a rifle and threatened to shoot her, but she just laughed and walked away. She knew all about him and all about the Kane family. ‘Like father, like son,’ she said contemptuously, daring him on.”

“Oh, God,” Phyl whispered, afraid to ask what happened.

“He should have, but he didn’t,” Brad said moodily. “He just beat her up a bit. It was what she deserved. I was watching from the doorway, and I was glad. I was glad when she went away and it was just my father and me, alone. They got divorced, and we got on with our lives, running the ranch. He sent me away to school and college, but I couldn’t wait to get back.”

He began pacing again, backward and forward, his hands in his pockets, his head down. “I never saw my mother again. Archer had died several years before, and then we heard that Rebecca had had a stroke. She lingered for a while, but nobody ever saw her. They said that one side of her face was paralyzed, grotesque, but that the other half was almost normal, still beautiful. But she couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t walk. She died a couple of years later.

“Jack was drowned in a boating accident the year after I got out of college. They said he was drunk, but I didn’t believe them. He was a good sailor, and he was
just caught in one of those sudden storms. I knew he would have made it through if he could. He wouldn’t have left me alone.

“I inherited everything. The ranch, the houses, the island.” He laughed bitterly. “And the ever-present threat of the Monkey. The rattlesnake at the heart of the Kane family, waiting to strike.”

Phyl looked at him, debating whether to ask the fateful question. But she had to know. “What did you do about it?” she whispered.

Brad came to stand in front of her. He looked deep into her eyes. He leaned forward and tenderly stroked her cloudy black hair away from her frightened face. “Why, I took care of it, of course,” he said gently.

Phyl stared up into his handsome, gently smiling face, into his beautiful, mad eyes. She thought of Mahoney saying, “You get so you can feel who the villains are, even when they are cloaked in normality. Straight, decent-seeming folks, just like you and me. But the famous Dr. Forster must know better than anyone what goes on in people’s minds. In those deep, dark recesses. Things that are hidden behind good looks and charm and expensive clothes. The wife beaters, the child abusers, the murderers. They are just folks, like you and me.”

He had been describing the man she was looking at. Brad was a textbook sociopath, and she, the clever psychiatrist, had failed to see it.

Phyl flinched as she felt his hands on her shoulders. Afraid he would see the panic in her eyes, she dropped her head quickly. She had to stay calm, humor him. She had to get out of here….

He said in that gentle, concerned voice she knew so well, “My poor Phyl, I’ve kept you talking all night. Look, the sun is already up. Go to bed, my love. Get some rest.” He glanced at his watch and added lightly, as if the long soul-searching confessional night had never happened, “I almost forgot. I’m due at a meeting
at the ranch first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll fly over there now.”

She closed her eyes, trying not to cringe as he dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be back later,” he promised, sounding just like his old self. “I want you to wait here for me. Don’t go out. Don’t leave this house. Promise me?”

She nodded numbly. “I promise.”

“Good.” He smiled, satisfied. “I shall trust you this once then.”

Phyl watched him walk to the door. He whistled for the dog. The long night and the drinking had left no marks on him. His face was smooth, smiling. In his expensive shirt and well-pressed jeans he looked every inch the rich, urbane man of the world.