“Then maybe it’s time to get a few things off your chest,” I said.
Clayton turned his head on the pillow to look at me again. “Tell me your name.”
“Terry. Terry Archer.” I hesitated. “What’s your name?”
He swallowed again. “Clayton,” he said. “I’ve always been Clayton.” His eyes moved down. He stared at the folds in the hospital linen. “Clayton Sloan, Clayton Bigge.” He paused. “Depended where I was at the time.”
“Two families?” I said.
I was able to make out a nod. Remembered some of the things Cynthia told me about her father. On the road all the time. Back and forth across the country. Home for a few days, gone for a few, back for a few. Living half his life someplace else…
Suddenly he brightened as a thought occurred to him. “Cynthia,” he said to me. “Is she here? Is she with you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t…I don’t know exactly where she is right now. She may be back home now, in Milford, for all I know. With our daughter. Grace.”
“Grace,” he said. “My granddaughter.”
“Yes,” I whispered as a shadow went by in the hall. “Your granddaughter.”
Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, as though in pain. But I didn’t think it was anything physical.
“My son,” he said. “Where is my son?”
“Todd?” I said.
“No no,” he said. “Not Todd. Jeremy.”
“I think he may be on the way back from Milford.”
“What?”
“He’s on his way back. At least that’s what I think.”
Clayton looked more alert, his eyes wide. “What was he doing in Milford? When did he go there? Is that why he hasn’t been here with his mother?” Then his eyes drifted shut and he started muttering, “No no no.”
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He raised a tired hand and tried to wave me off. “Leave me,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
His eyelids rose slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage. “This can’t happen… I’m so tired.”
I leaned in closer. I hated pushing an old, sick man as much as I hated Vince keeping an old, disabled woman prisoner, but there were things I had to know.
“Tell me,” I said. “Are Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
Slowly his head turned on the pillow and he looked at me. “No.” He paused. “Todd is dead.”
“When? When did Todd die?”
“That night,” Clayton said resignedly. “With his mother.”
So it was them. In the car at the bottom of the quarry. When the results of the tests comparing Cynthia’s DNA to the samples taken from the bodies in the car came in, we’d be getting a connection.
Clayton raised his hand weakly, pointed back to the small table. “More water?” I said. He nodded. I handed him the glass and he took a long drink.
“I’m not quite as weak as I look,” he said, holding the glass as though it were a major accomplishment. “Sometimes, when Enid comes in, I make like I’m in a coma, so I won’t have to talk to her, she won’t complain so long. I still walk a little. I can get to the can. Sometimes I even get there in time.” He pointed to the closed door on the other side of the room.
“Patricia and Todd,” I said. “So they’re both dead.”
Clayton’s eyes closed again. “You have to tell me what Jeremy is doing in Milford.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think he’s been watching us. Watching our family. I think he’s been in our house. I can’t say for sure, but I think he may have killed Cynthia’s aunt Tess.”
“Oh my God,” Clayton said. “Patricia’s sister? She’s dead?”
“She was stabbed to death,” I said. “And a man we’d hired to try to find out some things, he’s dead, too.”
“This can’t be happening. She said he’d gotten a job. Out west.”
“What?”
“Enid. She said Jeremy got a job, in…in Seattle or someplace. An opportunity. Had to go out there. That he’d come back and see me soon. That was why he wasn’t coming to visit. I thought…just not caring, that would be reason enough.” He seemed to drift off a bit. “Jeremy, he’s…he can’t help what he is. She made him what he is. He does whatever she tells him to do. She poisoned him against me from the day he was born… Can’t believe she even comes to visit. She says to me, ‘Hang on, just hang on a little longer.’ It’s like, she doesn’t care if I die. She just doesn’t want me to die yet. She’s been up to something, I’ve known it. She’s been lying to me. Lying to me about everything, lying to me about Jeremy. She didn’t want me to know where he’d gone.”
“Why wouldn’t she want you to know? Why would Jeremy have gone to Milford?”
“She must have seen it,” he whispered. “Found it, something.”
“What? Seen what?”
“Dear God,” he said faintly, and rested his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes. He moved his head from side to side. “Enid knows. Dear God, if Enid knows…”
“If Enid knows what? What are you talking about?”
“If she knows, there’s no telling what she might do…”
I leaned in closer to Clayton Sloan or Clayton Bigge and whispered urgently inches away from his ear, “If Enid knows what?”
“I’m dying… She…she must have called the lawyer. I never intended for her to see the will before I died… My instructions were very specific. He must have screwed up… I’d had it all setup…”
“Will? What will?”
“My will. I had it changed. She wasn’t to know… If she knew…It was all arranged. When I died, my estate, everything would go to Cynthia… Enid and Jeremy, they’d be left out, left with nothing, just what they deserve, just what she deserves…” He looked at me. “You have no idea what she’s capable of.”
“She’s here. Enid is here, she’s in Youngstown. It was Jeremy who went to Milford.”
“He’d do whatever she tells him to do. He has to. She’s in a wheelchair. She won’t be able to do it herself this time…”
“Do what herself?”
He ignored my question. He had so many of his own. “So he’s coming back? Jeremy’s on his way back?”
“That’s what Enid said. He checked out of a Milford motel this morning. I think we beat him back here.”
“‘We’? I thought you said Cynthia wasn’t with you.”
“She’s not. I came with a man named Vince Fleming.”
Clayton thought about the name. “Vince Fleming,” he said quietly. “The boy. The boy she was with that night. In the car. The boy she was with when I found her.”
“That’s right. He’s been helping me. He’s with Enid now.”
“With Enid?”
“Making sure she doesn’t call Jeremy, tell him that we’re here.”
“But if Jeremy, if Jeremy’s already on his way back, he must have already done it.”
“Done what?”
“Is Cynthia okay?” He got a desperate look in his eyes. “Is she alive?”
“Of course she’s alive.”
“And your daughter? Grace? She’s still alive?”
“What are you talking about? Yes, of course they’re alive.”
“Because if something happens to Cynthia, everything goes to any children… It’s all spelled out…”
I felt my whole body shiver. How many hours had it been since I’d talked to Cynthia? I’d had a brief chat with her this morning, my one conversation with her since she’d slipped away in the night with Grace.
Did I really know, with any certainty, that she and Grace were alive now?
I got out my cell phone. It occurred to me then that I probably wasn’t supposed to have it on within the hospital, but since no one even knew I was here, I figured I could get away with it.
I punched in our home number.
