fresh coffee.”
He followed her into the kitchen. Stopping by the sink, she poured out the scalded coffee, then carefully ladled more beans into a grinder. “What is it?” she asked.
“The insurance policy.”
Glancing up, she asked in a thinner voice, “Where did you hear about that?”
“Not from you. Or Teddy, for that matter.”
“Don’t reprimand me, Adam.” She paused. “The police know, of course. But it isn’t that important. After all, it won’t let me keep the house, and with Ben having cancer, I don’t know that I’ll collect. At least that’s what my lawyer tells me.”
She made not telling him sound innocent enough, Adam thought, but this was not the real problem. Evenly, he said, “The police must wonder why you took it out. So do I.”
Clarice put down the bag of beans. “So now you’re looking at us like you’re Sean Mallory?”
“Please don’t try guilt, Mom. I outgrew it. What concerns me is the answers I’m not getting. Did you expect that something would happen to him?”
“Not anything specific. But when you’ve lived with someone for forty years, you notice not-so-little things like drinking too much, or losing one’s balance for no reason. Or Ben’s indifference to being caught out with this actress.” She paused, as though finding her own answer. “I didn’t imagine him falling off that cliff, or changing his will. Except for worrying he might drive his car into a tree some night, it was nothing that concrete. More a sense that the ground was shifting under us in ways I couldn’t identify. When you’re as afraid as I was, and as defenseless, you become good at reading tea leaves.”
“Did you discuss this with Teddy?”
“In a general way, yes. But the initiative was mine.” Her voice became clipped. “Are we quite done with this now? We’ve left your uncle sitting there.”
“One more thing,” Adam said. “Why did you call Teddy the night he died?”
Clarice cocked her head. “Did I? When?”
“About eight thirty.”
“I really don’t remember. So it can’t have been important.” Clarice frowned. “I certainly didn’t call him to predict your father’s death. Which leaves me wondering why you seem to know more about me than I can remember.”
“Because Teddy’s in trouble,” Adam said curtly. “Do you recall anything else about that night? Specifically, anything that would make it harder for the police to suspect my brother?”
“I know this much,” Clarice responded firmly, “as a mother. No doubt Teddy feels protective toward me. But he’s the last person on earth capable of killing Ben. You’re imagining Teddy as yourself.”
Turning from him, Clarice foreclosed any further discussion.
Two
When Adam stepped outside, he saw light coming from Teddy’s studio.
His brother painted up to fourteen hours at a stretch, Adam knew, working at night under 200-watt bulbs. But this was late even for him. Walking to the guesthouse, Adam could see Teddy through the window, seated at his easel with a glass of red wine beside him. The stillness of his posture suggested a trance.
When Adam entered, pulling up a stool at Teddy’s shoulder, his brother’s only movement was to pick up a brush. This canvas was abstract, with garish colors to which Teddy began adding slashes of bright red. He worked with what seemed a terrible intensity, the sheen of sweat on his forehead; but for the obstinacy of his brother’s concentration Adam might have believed that Teddy did not notice him. For an instant, he recalled watching Teddy as a youth as he painted-Adam at twelve, Teddy at fourteen or fifteen-and how magical it was to see his brother fill a blank canvas with such startling images. Calmly, he said, “Any time you’re ready, Ted.”
After a moment, Teddy turned to him, his smile guarded. “What is it, bro?”
“I know you were on the cliff that night. I don’t mind that you lied. But Hanley and the cops mind quite a lot.”
A shadow crossed Teddy’s face. “How do you know all that?”
“That’s irrelevant. All that matters is that they’re preparing to indict you.”
In the harsh illumination from above, Adam saw the first etching of age at the corners of Teddy’s eyes, and, more unsettling, the deep vulnerability of a man who felt entrapped. Teddy lowered his voice, as though afraid of being heard. “My lawyer says not to talk about this.”
“Good advice for anyone but me.” Adam’s tone became cool. “The first thing I ask is that you listen, then tell your lawyer what I’ve said without disclosing who said it. That conversation is covered by the attorney-client privilege. Understood?”
Silent, Teddy nodded.
With willed dispassion, Adam recited all that he had learned: the unknown person Nate Wright saw at the promontory, Teddy’s boot print, the drag marks, the bruises on Ben’s wrists, the mud on his boot heels, Teddy’s hair on his shirt, Clarice’s call to Teddy, Teddy’s call to the ex-lover, Teddy’s fantasies about killing their father, the insurance policy on Ben’s life-all rendered more damning by Teddy’s lie. “I’m sure your lawyer knows most of this,” Adam concluded. “But not all-unless you’ve told him more than I think you have. If there’s anything you’ve left out, tell him now. Then start perfecting a story that covers all this and still makes you out to be innocent.”
Teddy flushed. “So you think I killed him?”
“I don’t give a damn. You’ve paid too big a price for him already.”
A brief, reflexive tremor ran through Teddy’s frame. “And if I tell you what happened?”
“It never leaves this room.”
“It can’t,” Teddy said with sudden force. “This involves more than me. You’ll have to be every bit the actor I’ve come to think you are.”
Adam felt a stab of dread, a sense of coming closer to a reckoning with the truth. “Go ahead.”
Richard North Patterson
Fall from Grace
Teddy bent forward on the stool, hands folded in his lap, then said in a husky voice, “We didn’t tell the truth- not all of it. Mom called me that night, close to frantic. Dad was drunk and rambling, she said, not really making sense. But the essence was that he was leaving her for Carla Pacelli.”
Adam felt the jolt of revelation run through him: first that his mother and brother had lied to him and to the police, then that-at least on this point-Carla Pacelli had told the truth. “Why didn’t you tell that to the police?”
“Because I knew that Mother hadn’t. She told me she was afraid that could make his death look different from what it was-an accident.”
Adam tried to envision Clarice suggesting this, further complicating his sense of who she was. Quietly, he asked, “Because she believed that? Or because that’s what she needed other people to believe?”
Teddy rubbed his temples. “I can’t be sure. See, I concealed the truth from her as well. She still doesn’t know that I went to the promontory.”
“This family certainly has a gift for candor, doesn’t it? Tell me when you went there.”
“After she called me.” Teddy’s voice became harder. “That sonofabitch had tormented me for years, and now he was humiliating our mother. So I decided to confront him.” His words came in a rush now. “He was standing there like he had a thousand nights before, staring at the fucking sunset like it was the last one in human history and he was there to bear witness.”
I can’t imagine not looking at this, Ben had said to Nathan Wright. Can you? “Maybe he was,” Adam said. “After all, the man was dying.”
“I didn’t know that. All I knew was that he treated her like dirt.” Teddy shook his head, voice thickening with emotion. “God help me, I wanted to push him off that cliff, just like I’d imagined ever since I was a kid. Instead, I just stood there waiting for him to notice me.
“When he finally did, he gave me this look-not disdainful like normal, but more puzzled. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘You hate this place.’ It threw me off guard-suddenly he had the tone and manner of an old man,
