J. Robb - Delusion in Death

“You’ve never come up to visit your son?” Teasdale asked them, in the most pleasant and sympathetic of voices.

“He’s the one moved to this godless place. We don’t have the time or wherewithal to come hieing up here. He comes home to visit.”

“Is he all right?” Audrey asked. “I tried to get a hold of him, but he didn’t answer. He texted me back last night, just to say he was fine, and he was busy. But you said he was there, at that place where it happened.”

“That’s right, with some coworkers. One of them died there.”

“Oh.” Again she closed her hand over her cross. “Rest his soul.”

“He lost other coworkers there, and at the café where the second incident took place.”

“Oh, this is terrible. Russ, we have to go see him. He must be very upset.”

“Not upset enough to tell you he lost someone he’d worked with for years. Someone he’d just had a drink with.”

“He’s got no cause to worry his mother.”

“Maybe not, Mr. Callaway, but it strikes me his mother was already worried. That’s why she tried to contact him. When’s the last time you saw or spoke to him?”

“He came down a few weeks ago, stayed a couple days. Audrey, you stop fretting now.”

“I see he’s come to see you several times in the last few months.” Eve opened a file, scanned data. “Yet previously, his visits were spaced much further apart. Once a year.”

“He’s very busy.” Head down, Audrey spoke quietly. “He has an important position in his firm. People depend on him. He has important clients, and a very demanding job.”

“Have you ever met any of his coworkers?”

“No.” Russell spoke before his wife could. “We’ve got nothing to do with any of that.”

“I’m sure he’s shared stories.” Teasdale spread her hands. “About the people he works with, his friends, his work.”

“I said we’ve got nothing to do with it.”

“But an important man with such a demanding job, and all these recent visits. Surely he’d talk about his life here.”

“We don’t really understand his work.” Audrey shot her husband a nervous glance.

“Why has he come home so often recently?” Eve demanded.

“It’s restful. It’s restful on the farm.”

“Restful ’cause you wait on him hand and foot. Up till all hours doing God knows what. Can’t risk his soft hands on a good day’s work.”

“Now, Russ.”

“The truth’s the truth, but it’s none of your business,” he said to Eve. “What are you after here?”

“Oh, it isn’t clear? Your son is a person of interest in this investigation.”

“What does that mean?” Audrey looked from Eve to her husband, back again. “I don’t understand what that means.”

“You mean you think he had something to do with it? With killing those people?”

“No. No. No.” Audrey covered her face with her hands, did her best to turn herself into a ball while Russell stared at Eve.

And she saw it in his eyes. Shock, yes. And a little fear. But not dismissal, not rejection of the idea.

“You moved a lot while he was growing up,” Eve commented.

“I went where the work was.”

“I don’t think so. You were—are a trained medical, Mr. Callaway, and someone with your qualifications and experience doesn’t have to travel for work. He did things, didn’t he? Got into trouble. Small things at first. Boys will be boys, right? But there was something, always something not quite right. The neighbors didn’t much like him. The other kids didn’t want to play with him. Then there were bigger things, things you had to deny or cover over. Best thing to do is move away, start again. He never made friends. Nothing was ever really enough, or satisfying to him, not for long.”

“He got picked on,” Audrey claimed. “He was sensitive.”

“Broody,” she suggested, remembering Elaine’s words. “Moody, sulky. Holed up in his room. You schooled him from home. It was better that way, for him. You thought that because he didn’t make friends, didn’t like being told what to do and when to do it.”

“He just needed more attention. Some boys need more attention. He never hurt anyone.”

“He’d start rumors.” Teasdale sat in her quiet way. “Tell the boy next door what the girl down the block said about him, whether she did or not. He enjoyed stirring up trouble—maybe stealing things, then planting them on someone else. Watching others fight over the trouble he’d stirred.”

“He did the same to the two of you,” Eve continued. “You especially, Mrs. Callaway. Little lies, quiet little sabotage to cause conflict and friction between you. He still does it when he can. When he comes to visit you, there’s always some upheaval, some new tension.

It’s such a relief when he’s gone again.”

“That’s not true, that’s not true. He’s our son. We love him.”

“Love’s never been enough for him.” Eve saw it clearly in Audrey Callaway’s eyes. “When he comes you make his favorite meals, wash his clothes, wait on him like a servant. And still, he looks at you with contempt—or worse, boredom.

“But just recently, he’s taken more of an interest. He’s had questions. When did he find out Guiseppi Menzini was his grandfather?”

“Oh no. No.”

“Hush now, Audrey. Hush now.” Russell laid his big, hard hand over his wife’s, but Eve saw a gentleness in the gesture this time. “We’re Christian people. We live our life, don’t bother anybody.”

“I’m sure that’s true.” Teasdale folded her hands neatly on the table. “I’m sure you tried to be a credit to Edward and Tessa Hubbard, Mrs. Callaway.”

“Of course.”

“When did you learn they weren’t your biological parents?”

“Oh God. Russ.”

“Listen here, Audrey, she was raised by good people. She didn’t know anything about Menzini until her father was dying. He thought she needed to know. It’d been better if he’d let it die with him, but he was sick and dying and afraid she’d find out when he wasn’t there to explain how it was.”

“That man wasn’t my father. Edward Hubbard was my father, and Tessa Hubbard was my mother. The woman who bore me, she strayed, she did bad things, but she repented. She redeemed herself. She died trying to protect me.”

“When did you tell him? When did you tell Lewis?”

“Russ—”

“If he did something, Audrey, it’s our responsibility to say. He’s our son, and we’re the ones who have to say.”

“He couldn’t do something like this.”

“Then you can help clear it up, put him off the list,” Eve prompted. “What did he find? What did you tell him?”

“There were things—journals and essays and mementos, pictures. I’m not sure. I never really went through all of it. My mother boxed everything up. They talked about destroying it all, Dad said, but it didn’t seem right. So they kept it all boxed up, put away, and my father told me about what had happened before he died.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Russ, I can’t.”

He only nodded. “I tended to Audrey’s father while he was dying, and I guess he could see I cared for Audrey. And she cared for me. So he told me everything, or everything he knew. Tessa’s half-sister was wild. She married a good man, but she betrayed him, and ran away to join Menzini’s cult. They used God’s word, twisted and defiled it to prey on the weak. She lay with him, and had his child. She was one of them. But she came to realize she’d taken an evil path, came back to her husband with the child. She begged for forgiveness from him, from her family.”

“And William took her back,” Eve prompted. “Took you as his own.”

“He was a good man,” Audrey said. “And he forgave her. They were going to take me away from her, and she ran away with me, went home.”