David Handler - The sweet golden parachute

“Pete did sow his wild oats in France in the Sixties,” she said to him. “Which would make you about the right age.”

“The right age for what? I truly don’t…” Andre halted, turning six different kinds of chilly now. “My God, you think Pete was my father, don’t you? You think that I’m the bastard son’s bastard son, come to claim my rightful share of the treasure. This is beyond preposterous, Des. It’s truly insulting!”

And yet it made so much sense. After all, Andre was married to a woman who enjoyed detailed inside knowledge of John J. Meier’s will and the wills of his two children, Poochie and Pete. Who better to secretly help him contest those wills than the family’s own lawyer?

“I mean no offense, Andre. From time to time, this job compels me to ask even my friends some very unpleasant questions.”

“It does indeed,” he shot back, his jaw clenching. “And here I thought my job was unpleasant. Telling a lonely widow that I have to put down her beloved poodle, that’s something awful. But this… Des, you are grossly underpaid.”

“You won’t get any argument from me.”

“Still, we do what we have to, you and I,” Andre conceded grudgingly. “And we get up every morning and we do it again, eh? So I will not sputter at you like an angry headwaiter. I will honor your professionalism by granting you a civil reply.”

“I appreciate that, Andre.”

“I never met Pete Mosher before I moved here,” he said, his voice calm and quiet. “I have no dark secrets in my past. Merely a conventional middle-class upbringing in a suburb of Paris. My father was a civil servant. When I was sixteen I came to America as a foreign exchange student. I lived in Scarsdale, New York, with John and Diane Alterman and their three children. The Alter-mans ran a veterinary clinic. From them I learned to love animals and America. I went home to finish my schooling and be a ski bum for a while. Then I met Glynis and followed her back here. After veterinary school, I never returned home. Dorset is home.”

“Are your parents still living?”

“They’ve retired to Collioure, a small fishing village on the Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border. You’d enjoy Collioure, Des. The likes of Picasso painted there in their youth. There is a restaurant called Les Templiers where many fine paintings still hang-the starving young artists paid for meals with their work, you see.”

“Sounds great,” she said, barely hearing his words. She was too busy sagging inwardly. She’d thought for sure she’d nailed it. Had felt it down in her gut. Now where the hell was she?

Her cell phone rang. Glancing down at it, she saw that it was Mitch yet again. “Still kind of busy here,” she growled into the phone.

To which he blurted out: “I know, I know. And I’m sorry to bother you again. But something slightly urgent has come up…”

The snug little package from Vero Beach, Florida, was waiting for him at the post office, tightly bound in a manner reminiscent of the wrap job on Boris Karloff in The Mummy. It was the only way Mitch’s mom knew how to wrap packages. While he was at the post office, Mitch express-mailed Justine’s manuscript to his literary agent. The note he attached read simply: Am I crazy or is this great?

From there, Mitch picked up a load of nonperishables at the A amp;P and frozen day-old bread from The Works. Then he too-dled his way through the exquisite calm of the Historic District to the Congo church. It was not yet eleven o’clock, but two dozen or so people were already lined up outside the door to the Fellowship Center. He parked around the back. Lem the custodian had unlocked the Bilco cellar doors for him. Mitch raised them open and stashed the loaves of bread in the freezers down in the old coal cellar. Then he lowered the doors and toted the rest of the load into the kitchen, where a pigtailed Danielle was at the stove heating up a vat of soup.

“Morning, Danielle. How are you today?”

“A bit ashamed,” she confessed, blushing. “I was feeling sorry for myself last night, and I needed to unload on someone.” She stirred the soup pot, chewing on her lower lip. “Thanks for being such a good listener.”

“No need to thank me. Friends talk to each other. It’s what they do. Not a big deal.”

“Yes, it was,” Danielle insisted, her eyes avoiding his. “And I’m grateful. I want you to know that, okay?”

“Okay,” Mitch responded, glancing around. The long dining tables were set up for the soup kitchen regulars, but they were shy at least a dozen folding chairs. “Where are all of the chairs?”

“I’ve sent Eric off to find them. You could give him a hand.”

Mitch tried the parish offices but found no sign of the chairs there. Or Eric. But he did hear sounds coming from inside the meetinghouse itself. The connecting door was propped open. And the missing chairs were arrayed up on the horseshoe-shaped dais behind Reverend Sweet’s pulpit. Eric was folding them up.

Mitch had to pause there in the doorway to gather himself. He hadn’t set foot inside a church since Maisie’s funeral.

The Congo Church was not nearly as grand inside as he’d expected from its towering profile out on Dorset Street. Its ceiling was barely high enough to accommodate the wraparound balcony. And the decor was spare and unadorned. Bare, polished wooden pews. Whitewashed walls. Wide-planked oak floors. There were windows everywhere. Two stories of windows. The low March sun flooded the sanctuary with sunlight.

“Ah, an extra pair of arms,” Eric remarked, spotting him there.

“That’s me.” Mitch started toward the dais. “How goes it?”

Eric snapped the folding chairs shut and leaned them against the wall. “Just had to do a sucky family thing this morning,” he replied a bit edgily. “Mother’s all freaked out because her ‘friend’ is dead. Like we’re supposed to care about some old fairy who was sponging off of her. Hey, if Tolly made her happy, I was all for it. But now that he’s dead I’m supposed to care? Sorry, that’s something I’ve always had trouble with.”

“What is, Eric?”

“Being a phony. Can you grab half of these?”

“Absolutely. I just have a quick question. Did you pay the Ker-shaw brothers to kill Pete and Tolly or did you actually kill them yourself? I still can’t figure that part out.”

Eric froze, his eyes widening at Mitch. “What?…”

Mitch’s powerful microcassette tape recorder was stuffed in the pocket of his wool jacket. He flicked it on, convinced tha he was not breaking his promise to Des. He’d told her he wouldn’t do anything crazy, and he wasn’t. What he was doing was very sane. And necessary. “You offered Stevie and Donnie work on the farm when they got out of prison. You had them start the same morning that Pete would be pedaling past Four Chimneys on his rounds. They were still around the place when Tolly was killed. Did you arrange it that way because you’d hired them to do the killings or because you wanted people to think they had?”

Eric continued to gape at Mitch, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Are you hallucinating? This is me.”

“And you’re the single most amazing scam artist I’ve ever come across,” Mitch said. “I’ve been schmoozed by big-time Hollywood studio bosses, producers, agents. I’m talking world-class talent. But they can’t even touch you, Eric. You present yourself as the ultimate American hero-the small farmer, an idealist who wants to grow things honestly. You perform good works in the community. You’re a loving husband. To know you is to look up to you. Except no one knows you, do they?”

“Mitch, they need these chairs in the fellowship room,” Eric said tightly. “And I re-eally don’t think this is funny.”