Last to Know: A Novel(52)

Without waiting for him to do so she slipped in a disc of Chopin piano études being played by someone with ethereally delicate fingers, which somehow in their nerve-ridden kitchen sounded totally out of place.

All eyes swiveled to Wally when he walked into the room. He’d changed from what Rose now thought of as his “prison garb,” meaning the clothes he’d been wearing when he was caught at the murder scene, into baggy tan shorts and a white tee. His hair was plastered to his head, still wet from the shower. He nodded acknowledgement to his family and took a seat at the table.

No one spoke; the only sound was of the bacon still sputtering. Everyone was eyeing Wally out of the corners of their eyes, afraid to be the first to ask the questions that were on the tips of their tongues.

After a minute Wally got up. He went to the freezer, took out a bottle of vodka and a glass, frosted-white, then poured the vodka into it. He drank it straight down, standing by the still-open freezer door, then turned and surveyed his bug-eyed family.

“I never expected to have to tell you this.” He slammed the freezer door shut and stood tall, blondly handsome, the man any woman would want, the man any kid would be proud to call Dad. “I am a drug addict,” he said. “I fell into the situation I have tried all my life to keep you out of. I became trapped by it. Drugs are insidious, they steal into your life while you, poor sucker, feel you have the world by the balls. Only you don’t. The person who first turned you on—turned me on when I was at a low point, wondering if I could ever write again, wondering about where my life was going, falling into a depression so deep the bottom of the lake looked like a valid answer. This person saw me, saved me, found the answer to all my problems. That’s what I thought, as all addicts do I guess, until very quickly I found I still had all my problems, plus now another even bigger one. One I had to pay handsomely for. And did.”

Diz got up and went to stand next to his father. “It’ll be okay, Dad, we know you didn’t kill Jemima, we’ll help you with the drugs.”

Wally stroked his boy’s hair. “Thank you, son.”

Rose put down her spatula and left the bacon to burn. She stood in front of her husband, her hands on his shoulders, gazing into his eyes as though searching for something he might be hiding.

“I had nothing to do with Jemima,” he told her. “I never even met her, but for the police I remain ‘a person of interest.’” Wally frowned, as if thinking of the dead young woman becoming simply a police case. His voice trembled as he added, “I mean, in her murder. I don’t know who did it, though I have to believe it has something to do with drugs. I’d just left the dinner party, Rose, I simply went outside for a while because I needed to be alone, to ask myself what I thought I was doing, where I imagined I was going to end. And that’s when I heard Bea screaming. I saw her run through the trees, went after her and found Jemima lying there.” Wally put his head in his hands. “Dear God, I hope never to have to see anything like that again. I write about this! I know exactly how it’s done, exactly what knife to use. I write how that knife feels as it slits open a throat, the way the blood spurts then oozes, I write about blood matting the hair, the broken necklaces…”

He lifted his head and looked at his stunned and silent family. “I am telling you the truth and I’m thinking I deserve to be suspected of this horror, a man like me, who makes money from it.”

Rose slid her arms around her husband and he bent his head into her smooth throat, the kind of throat Rose knew Wally knew how to slit, knew exactly where the jugular was, knew where the muscle was that paralyzed. “I believe you,” she told him, though an uneasy weight seemed to have gripped her heart. “I believe you, Wally,” she repeated, looking round, collecting her children’s eyes with her own.

“We believe you, Dad,” Frazer and Madison chorused staunchly.

“What about Bea?” Roman said.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“Were you having an affair with her?” Roman asked.

“Jesus!” Wally was shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Wally replied, quickly. “I certainly was not.”

Diz thought Roman looked relieved as he turned away, and he guessed the reason why. It was Roman who was enamored of Bea, not his dad. Bea had Roman in her clutches and he’d do anything for her … But murder? No, no, he didn’t think so. Roman could not do that, not with a mother like Rose … he would not hurt her, though he might be out to get Bea if she was stringing him along. Oh God, what was happening to his family?

Diz looked at his mother holding tightly to his father as though if she let go the whole family might sink into Evening Lake. As though, without Wally, they would all be gone forever.

With an arm around Rose’s waist, Wally walked back to the table where he poured her a glass of wine. He glanced at the label. It was a good French chateau and a prime year. “You always know best,” he said to Rose, who hurried, too late, to try to save the burning bacon.

“Dad?” Diz said, and his father glanced up at him. “Exactly where is Bea?”

The name dropped like a stone into a pool, with ever-widening circles until it entrapped them all.

“I asked you never to say that name again,” Rose said too quickly, because she was nervous and quite possibly afraid of the answer.

But Wally replied, “I believe she has her own place, back across the lake. I imagine that’s where she will live.”