'Yes,' she squeaked.
Slowly, as if it were choreographed, everyone in the room looked from Sherry to Penny.
FIFTY-EIGHT
PENNY'S FACE WAS a little tight. Otherwise she seemed calm. Delroy glanced over at her.
'You need a lawyer,' he said.
'You may need one, Jon. I do not.'
'You killed Daddy,' Stonie said. Her voice was very small.
'Stonie, try not to be an idiot,' Penny said.
'You did,' Stonie said in the small voice. 'And you sent my husband away.'
'Your husband?' Penny said. 'Your pederast husband?'
Cord didn't look at anybody. Becker showed nothing, sitting back a little in his chair, listening.
'You destroyed my marriage and locked me up and tried to brainwash me,' Stonie said. She was implacable in her small way, her voice somehow more absolute for being small.
'You did,' SueSue said.
She was louder, as she always was. But it was sincere. Penny looked first at Stonie and then at SueSue. Her voice was flat when she spoke.
'You,' Penny said to SueSue, 'are married to a drunken philanderer, and have become a drunken philanderer too.' She shifted her gaze onto Stonie. 'And you are married to a homosexual child molester, and have yourself become a whore.' She gazed at them with a look that seemed to encompass Cord and Pud too. It was a very cold gaze. Scary almost, unless of course, you were a tough guy like me. 'My family,' she said. 'Whores, drunks, and perverts. You don't do anything. You don't contribute anything. You simply suck sustenance out of us like a cluster of parasites.'
I looked at Becker. He was listening quietly. There was a hint of satisfaction in the set of his mouth.
'Penny,' Delroy said.
'Shut up,' she said. 'You've caused a ridiculous amount of trouble.'
Delroy nodded, as if in agreement with some inner voice. He went back to studying his hands. Penny returned her attention to her sisters.
'You should be thanking me,' she said. 'I couldn't do anything when Daddy was alive. His precious married daughters, let them do what they want to, as long as they're married. Leave them alone. Take care of them. If they get in trouble have Delroy erase it. Why do you think we kept Delroy around so long? To keep the sty clean.'
'And then Daddy died,' Becker said gently.
'And I tried to clean the sty for good. Get rid of the husbands that were perverting them. Teach them, force them if necessary, to be clean.'
'Like you,' Becker said, even more softly.
I knew he was trying to channel the flow. It was a gamble. There was always the danger that it could interrupt the flow and she'd realize where she was going and stop. But Delroy hadn't been able to stop her, and I agreed with Becker. She couldn't stop, and maybe she could be directed.
'Yes,' she said impatiently, 'just like me. For God's sake, I was the perfect daughter. Pretty, smart, always helpful, good with the business, charming to everybody. Daddy used to say it was like I had a different set of genes.' She smiled for a moment. It wasn't a pleasant thing to see. 'And the sonovabitch didn't even prefer me. He liked those two useless cows as much as he liked me.'
It all had a rehearsed quality, as if she were speaking from memory of a grievance that she had recited to herself a thousand times. And then she stopped, as if that were all she remembered. No one spoke. I heard the deputy's gun belt creak again as he shifted his weight a little. Becker looked at me.
'And then you found out he might give away the business,' I said. 'So you and Delroy invented the horse shootings. Just the kind of smart thing a gifted amateur might invent. And you had to smile and go along with it when your father hired me to look into things. You even chewed Delroy out in front of me, to make it look like you were with me all the way.'
'And why on earth would Mr. Delroy go along with so harebrained a scheme?' Penny said.
She was quite rigid in her posture, and her mouth seemed stiff when she spoke. But her voice was perfectly calm.
'Because you and he were lovers,' I said.
Penny laughed. It was, if possible, less pleasant than her smile had been.
'Mr. Delroy and I? Please. He was my employee, nothing more.'
'And he was following your orders when he, ah, sequestered your sisters?'
'Yes.'
'And when he tried to kill me?'
'No.'
'Why did he try to kill me?' I said.
'I have no idea. Perhaps he killed my father and felt you were about to find that out.'
