“Was she afraid of him?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all.”
“But she didn’t let him back into her life-I mean, not until recently.”
“No, like I said, she felt tremendous guilt over everything that had happened before the murder. She didn’t want to profit from Gwendolyn’s death. Once the crisis was over and she felt sure my father wouldn’t be charged with Gwendolyn’s murder, she felt guilty about lying on his behalf. She decided that no matter how much she loved him, he wasn’t good for her or for me. She couldn’t trust him again.”
“And he went along with this?”
“Think of the threat she could hold over him,” he said. “I’m not saying she ever did threaten him, but we both knew that my dad was dependent upon our silence.”
So my aunt had exercised her own form of blackmail over those years. Stay away from me and your son, or I’ll blow your alibi.
“Once she got an idea in her head,” Travis was saying, “it was harder than hell to get her to let go of it. A couple of years ago, she read a passage in one of her Georgette Heyer novels to me, about a shy woman. Heyer had made the observation that shy women often have strong prejudices. She asked me if I thought that was true.”
“What did you say?”
“I said the fact that she hadn’t spoken to my father in a decade ought to prove that Ms. Heyer severely understated the case.”
“This was near the time you had the fight with her over your dad?”
“Yes. I had reached a point in my life when I needed to get to know him. If he was a liar, a cheat, a killer- whatever-I needed to get to know him. The pity was, I had lost ten years during which he was perfectly healthy.”
The phone rang.
“Reed tells me I’m not supposed to yell at you,” the voice said. “Can I just say I’m worried?”
“Frank! Please don’t worry. I’m home, I’m safe, just a little bruised.”
“We’re leaving Boise tomorrow morning-”
“You’re coming home!”
“No,” he laughed, “but I’m glad you sound so excited about the idea. We think our guy is in Montana now. We have some pretty solid leads.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry. I’m anxious to get back, too. Twice as anxious now.”
“So where will you be?” I asked.
“I’ll call you when I know for sure. We’re still working on finding a place to stay.”
“Frank, you know how you’ve been telling me about the people you’ve met there, with the Boise PD?”
“Yes,” he said warily.
“Is there anyone there who might be willing to look something up for you?
He groaned. “For me, huh?”
“Okay, for me. It’s important.”
“What is it?”
“I need to know if there’s an arrest record for a Robert or Bobby De-Mont in the summer of 1940.”
“Did you just say
“Yes.”
“Irene-”
“Come to think of it,” I said, remembering that Gerald mentioned that school had just let out for the summer, “it was probably June of 1940.”
There was a pause. “Want to tell me why I should put any new acquaintance of mine to that kind of trouble?”
I told him about the conversation with Gerald Spanning.
“Hmm. Any idea at all what the charges might have been?”
“No, but to send a lawyer all the way to Boise-”
“A lawyer and a bunch of money,” he said.
“If it was a violent crime against a woman, it would be worth it to De-Mont to have it hushed up, don’t you think?”
“I’ll see if I can get anyone interested in it. Spell the name for me again.”
I did. “Thanks, Frank.”
“Irene?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful, okay?”
“You, too.”
“Think about staying somewhere else, okay?”
“I have been, much more seriously,” I said. “I’ll give you Travis’s cell phone number in case you can’t reach me here.”
He told me that Pete wanted to talk to Rachel, and I put her on.
“Travis,” I said, “Frank doesn’t think it’s a good idea for us to stay here, at least for a while. Do you mind if we stay somewhere else tonight?”
He looked relieved. “I didn’t want you to feel insulted. Let me pay for a couple of hotel rooms somewhere, or we could stay in the van. Either way, I’d feel safer.”
“I think I know someone who’d probably love to have us stay over at her place. The rooms are small, but the food is great. And wait until you see the gardens.”
26
Jack was willing to take care of the pets, so Travis and I arrived on Mary’s doorstep about an hour later. Rachel had been invited to join us for dinner but wasn’t going to stay overnight.
“Travis!” Mary cried, as he entered the house. Within moments she had instructed him to call her Aunt Mary if he wanted to, because even Frank and Rachel called her that. “So there’s no need to stand on genealogical ceremony,” she said. “Irene, he must be half-starved, waiting so late for his dinner. Travis, I hope you like beef stew, because I’ve got a big pot of it simmering on the stove.”
I never really think of her as motherly, or even grandmotherly, but as I watched her fuss over him in an agreeable way, I began to realize there were sides of Mary Kelly I didn’t always get to see. She might spoil Frank or goad me, but her treatment of Travis was more tender, and solicitous without being oppressively so.
“What happened to your hand?” she asked. His answer earned me a look of reproof from her. “Sweet heavens, Irene! I expected you to take better care of him!”
“Yes, I managed to injure him within twenty-four hours of meeting him,” I said.
“That’s not true!” he protested. “Irene has been nothing but good to me. And I think she was hurt worse today. I told you what happened, Aunt Mary-my injury was my own fault, not Irene’s.”
“Well, I’m just thankful you weren’t hurt any more seriously than that,” she said, turning back to the stove. Travis couldn’t see her face from where he sat, so he didn’t see her smile. I decided she must have been pleased that he had started calling her Aunt Mary. Maybe that was it.
She then began regaling him (and Rachel) with stories of some of the more ridiculous moments of my childhood. The story of Barbara locking me in my grandmother’s outhouse had already been met with hilarity.
It was with some relief, then, that I heard Rachel’s cell phone ring in the middle of the story about the time my father took off work to come to my school for a conference with one of the nuns, only to discover that the good sister had been barricaded in the library. Aunt Mary hadn’t reached the part about the fire when the phone rang.
It was McCain, trying to reach me through her. I told her I’d talk to him and she handed the phone to me. I
