Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(73)

“When did you last see your son, Mr. Pauley?”

He smiled, but there was bitter around the edges. “I don’t know that he is my son.” He rubbed his eyes. “God, some things never stop coming up behind you, do they? I was with his mother when he was born, and had been with her for months before. I put my name on the records. I thought he was mine. But I didn’t know she’d been with someone else before she was with me, while she was with me. I wasn’t yet twenty, green as grass and dirt stupid with it.”

“Don’t say that, Vinnie!” Mimi came in carrying a tray with a big pitcher, several glasses full of half-moon slices of ice.

Roarke rose. “Let me help you with that, Mrs. Pauley.”

“Oh, thank you. Don’t you have a nice accent. Are you from England?”

“Ireland, a long while ago.”

“My grandmother’s grandmother, on my father’s side, she was from Ireland. From somewhere called Ennis.”

She pronounced it wrong, with a long I at the start, but Roarke smiled. “A lovely little town. I have people not far from there.”

“And you came all the way to America to be a policeman.”

“He’s a consultant,” Eve said, firmly, as Roarke smothered a laugh. “Darrin’s mother is listed as Inga Sorenson, deceased.”

“That’s the name she was using when I was with her, and I left it that way on the records. I don’t know if it was her name. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. I’m told she’s dead, but . . .”

“Why don’t you tell me when you last saw him or spoke with him?”

“I guess maybe six years ago, or seven.”

“Seven,” Mimi confirmed. “Early spring because I was putting in the bedding plants out back, and Jennie was in kindergarten. Vinnie was at work, and I was alone here. I was afraid to let them in so I called Vinnie and he came right home.”

“Them?” Eve repeated, and saw Mimi slide her gaze toward her husband.

“Darrin, and the man who may be his father,” Vinnie said. “The man he considers his father, and the one Inga was with before me, and maybe during me for all I know. My brother.”

“There’s no brother listed on your records, Mr. Pauley.”

“No. I had him taken off. It cost me a lot of money, and it’s illegal, I guess, but I needed to do it. I needed it before I could ask Mimi to marry me.”

“He’s a bad man. A very bad man. Vinnie’s nothing like him, Officer.”

“Lieutenant. Dallas. How is he a bad man?” Eve asked.

“He does what he wants, takes what he wants, hurts who he wants,” Vinnie told her. “He always did, even when we were kids. He took off when we were sixteen.”

“We were?” Roarke repeated. “You’re twins then?”

“Fraternal, not identical.” The distinction seemed an important point for Vinnie. “But we look a lot alike.”

“I’d never mistake them. There’s something scary in his eyes.” Mimi shivered. “Something mean, just not right in them. And I’m sorry, Vinnie, it’s in that boy’s eyes, too. No matter how sweet he smiles or how polite he talks, it’s in his eyes.”

“Maybe it is. Anyway, they weren’t here long. They wanted to stay a few days. God knows why, or what they’d done they needed to put up here. I said Darrin could stay, but Vance had to go. He wouldn’t stay without Vance. I asked him about his mother, why wasn’t his mother with him. He’s the one who said she was dead. He said she’d been dead for years. Murdered he said.”

“How?”

“He didn’t tell me. I was shocked, and I asked him, how, when, who? All he said was he knew who was responsible. And he had plans. Mimi’s right. Something not right in his eyes, when he said that I could see it. He had plans. I wanted them both away from my family.”

Vinnie glanced toward the stairs. “I wanted them away from Mimi and Jennie. Even if he’s mine, I didn’t want him near my girls. That’s the hard part, you know? Even if he’s mine.”

“We’re yours,” Mimi whispered. “That’s what matters.”

Vinnie nodded, took a long drink from the frosty glass. “I wasn’t twenty when Inga . . . she was beautiful. Sorry, sweetie.”

“That’s all right.” Mimi took his hand, gave it a hard squeeze. “So am I.”

He brought their joined hands to his lips, pressed them hard to her knuckles. “You sure are. You sure are.”

“Go on and tell them about it,” Mimi prompted. “Stop worrying yourself and tell them.”

“All right. I fell for her, for Inga. For who I thought she was. I don’t know if she’d run away from my brother, or if they planned it all together, to dupe me, to use me so she’d have somewhere safe to stay while she was nesting. It was hard not knowing. Not so much anymore, but back then, when it happened, it was hard. And so I paid to have Vance’s name taken off my data.”

“Nobody’s going to give you grief over that, Mr. Pauley,” Eve assured him.

He nodded. “Well, that’s good to know. Anyways, Inga left when Darrin was a couple months old. Took whatever wasn’t nailed down in my place, my car, cleaned out the savings I had, even the little account I started for the boy before he was even born. All there was was this video cube from my brother, laughing, telling me thanks for filling in for him. I found out he’d been arrested near to a year before. For some kind of fraud or something. I guess maybe he sent Inga to me, so I’d . . . fill in. And when he got out, he took them. Just like that.