Silent Partner

“That’s not the only reason,” I said.

“No. Hope wanted it that way. She felt closer to Sherry, felt Sherry needed her more.”

“Punish the victim,” I said. “From a mansion to a dirt patch. Two retarded people as caretakers.”

“They were good people,” he said. He began coughing and, unable to stop, shook his head from side to side, gasping for breath. His eyes filled with water and he had to hold on to the table for support.

Finally he was able to speak, but so softly I had to lean forward to hear: “Good people. They’d worked for me. I knew they could be trusted. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary- a way to buy time for Sharon until I came up with something else.”

“A way to wipe out her identity,” I said.

“For her sake!” His whisper was harsh, insistent. “I’d never have done anything to harm her.”

Hand to mouth, again. Uncontrollable coughing. He placed a silk handkerchief to his lips, spit something into it.

“Excuse me,” he said. Then: “She had her mother’s face.”

“So did Sherry.”

“No, no. Sherry had the features. But not the face.”

We said nothing for a long time. Then, suddenly, as if forcing his way out of a sentimental stupor, he sat up, snapped his fingers. The waiter brought him a glass of ice water and was gone. He drank, cleared his throat, touched his Adam’s apple, swallowed hard. Forcing a smile, but looking drained, defeated. A man who’d sailed through life in first class, only to find out the cruise had gone nowhere.

I’d arrived at this place hating him, prepared to stoke my hate. But I felt like putting my arm around him.

Then I thought of dead bodies, a pile of them, and said, “Your temporary plan stretched to permanence.”

He nodded. “I kept searching for another way, some other arrangement. Meanwhile, Shirlee and Jasper were doing a yeoman job- amazingly so. Then Helen discovered Sharon, made her a protegee, began molding her in a fine way. I decided nothing could be better than that. I contacted Helen; we reached an agreement.”

“Helen was paid?”

“Not with money- she and her husband were too proud for that. But there were other things I could do for them. Scholarships for her children, aborting a plan to sell off corporate acreage in Willow Glen for development. For over thirty years, Magna’s guaranteed to purchase any agricultural surpluses and compensate for any losses below a specified level. Not just for Helen- for the entire town.”

“Paying them not to grow apples,” I said.

“An American tradition,” he said. “You should taste Wendy’s honey and cider. Our employees love them.”

I remembered Helen’s complaint:

They won’t sell… For all intents and purposes that keeps Willow Glen a backwater speck.

Keeping Shirlee and Jasper and their charge away from prying eyes…

“How much does Helen know?” I asked.

“Her knowledge is very limited. For her sake.”

“What will become of the Ransoms?”

“Nothing will change,” he said. “They’ll continue to live wonderfully basic lives. Did you see any signs of suffering on their faces, Doctor? They don’t want for anything, would be considered well-off by most people’s standards. Helen looks out for them. Before she came along, I did.”

He allowed himself a smile. Smug.

“All right,” I said, “you’re Mother Teresa. So how come people keep dying?”

“Some people,” he said, “deserve to die.”

“Sounds like a quotation from Chairman Belding.”

No answer.

I said, “What about Sharon? Did she deserve to die for trying to learn who she was?”

He stood, stared down at me. All self-doubt gone, once again The Man In Charge.

“Words can communicate only so much,” he said. “Come with me.”

We headed out toward the desert. He aimed a penlight at the ground, highlighting pitted soil, mammalian clumps of scrub, saguaro cactus stretching skyward.

About a half-mile in, the beam settled on a small, stream-lined Fiberglas vehicle- the golf-cart I’d visualized during my ride with Hummel. Dark paint, a roll bar, knobby, off-road tires. A forward-slanting M on the door.

He got behind the wheel and motioned me in. No blindfold for this ride. I was either trusted or doomed. He flipped several switches. Headlights. The whine of the electric engine. Another flip and the hum rose in frequency. We moved forward with surprising speed, twice as fast as the bumper-car pace Hummel had taken- the sadist. Faster than I’d thought possible from an electric machine. But then, this was high-tech territory. The Patent Ranch.

We rode for more than an hour without exchanging a word, sailing across stretches of chalky wasteland. The air was still hot and grew fragrant, a mild herbaceous scent.

Vidal coughed a lot as the vehicle churned up clouds of fine clay dust, but he continued to steer with ease. The granite mountains were faint pencil marks on black construction paper.

He flipped another switch and made the moon appear, gigantic, milky-white, and earthbound.

Not the moon at all, but a giant golf ball, illuminated from within.

A geodesic dome, perhaps thirty feet in diameter.

Vidal pulled up to it and parked. The surface of the dome was white plastic hexagonal panels framed in tubular white metal. I looked for the booth Seaman Cross had described, the one he’d sat in while communicating with Belding. But the only access to the building was a white door.

“The Basket-Case Billionaire,” I said.

“A stupid little book,” said Vidal. “Leland got it into his head that he needed to be chronicled.”

“Why’d he pick Cross?”

We got out of the cart. “I haven’t the slightest idea- I told you he never let me inside his head. I was out of the country when he cooked up the deal. Later he changed his mind and demanded Cross fold up his tent in return for a cash payment. Cross took the money, but went ahead with the book. Leland was very displeased.”

“Another search-and-destroy mission.”

“Everything was handled legally- through the courts.”

“Burglarizing his storage locker wasn’t exactly working within the system. Did you use the same guys for the Fontaine break-in?”

His expression said that wasn’t worth responding to. We started walking.

I said, “What about Cross’s suicide?”

“Cross was weak-willed, couldn’t cope.”

“You’re saying it was a genuine suicide?”

“Absolutely.”

“If he hadn’t done himself in, would you have let him live?”

He smiled and shook his head. “As I told you before, Doctor, I don’t squash people. Besides, Cross was no threat. No one believed him.”

The door was white and seamless. He placed his hand on the knob, looked at me, and let the message sink in: