Jan Burke - Liar

“You saw me as a baby?” he asked warily. “But my father didn’t have a housekeeper then.”

She hesitated only slightly before saying, “Oh, he did, just not at your mother’s place.”

“You worked for him at the DeMonts‘,” I said.

She sighed. “Yes, you’ve figured that out, haven’t you? Well, I don’t guess I’m obliged to keep these secrets after all that’s happened. Yes, I worked for Mr. Spanning at the DeMont place, and for Papa DeMont and Miss Gwen before him.”

“Ann Coughlin?” I asked.

“Yes, that was my first married name. Mr. Coughlin died and I later on married Mr. Havens. Mr. Havens, God rest his soul, died a few years back. Mr. Havens was always good to me.

“But Mr. Coughlin! He used to lose his temper with me every now and again, and he wasn’t above using his fists on me. Called it ‘teaching me a lesson.” Probably would have killed me one day, except young Arthur-oh, he must have been about eighteen then-he found out about it and put a stop to it. Told Mr. Coughlin there’d be none of that on the DeMont place, or he’d give him a lesson of his own-one that would make him feel like he’d been to college.“ She laughed. ”Mr. Coughlin never laid a hand on me after that. Well, all I’m saying is, I knew who helped me, didn’t I? And I never forgot it. And I was proud to be able to help him whenever he needed it.“

“When Gwendolyn was murdered-” Travis began.

“Yes, I helped him then, too. I was shocked, of course, but I knew he wasn’t the one that had done the killing.”

“But you couldn’t be certain!”

“Who on earth could be any more certain, I ask you? I spent more hours in that house with the two of them than I did in my own home. Arthur was never anything but kind to Miss Gwen. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. And he never would have done anything to harm her.” She paused, then added, “I knew your daddy and I knew his brother, too-from the time your daddy was a little boy.”

“If you saw Travis when he was a baby,” I said, “you must have known about Arthur’s other life.”

“Yes. As I say, you can’t hide much from the person who cleans your house and washes your clothes. I’m sure there are plenty of people on this earth who will judge him harshly for what he did, but I won’t be one of them. That’s all I have to say about that. He helped me when everybody else just pretended not to see anything wrong-that man got me out of a living hell. I would have done anything to try to repay him for that.”

She turned to Travis. “I was always begging him to work it out so that I could see you, so proud he was of you. So one day, I told Miss Gwen I had some shopping to do, and he told your mother he had some shopping to do, and I got to see you! Oh, I was thrilled. You could just see how much he loved you, how precious you were to him. I told him then and there, he was right, having you was worth the world. The very world.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Havens,” he said softly. “For telling me that, and for-well, thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

“Travis,” I asked, “do you have the key with you?”

“The key!” she exclaimed. “But surely you can’t need it now! I read where they caught him! He’s locked up, right?”

Travis pulled the little key from his pocket. “Gerald? Yes, Mrs. Havens, but we want to make sure he stays locked up.”

She frowned, then said, “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

By the time she came back, her new boss had returned. That’s how it worked out that when we opened the small strongbox, a Catholic priest happened to be present. I wasn’t surprised to find a knife with a broken tip and dark stains on it. But I was surprised to see it resting on a pair of stiff, blood-stained gloves.

“Don’t touch anything in that box,” I warned the others.

“How did my father get these?” Travis asked.

“Well, you don’t have an older brother, so there’s no way you could know,” she said. “But one thing a younger brother always knows about an older one is where he likes to hide things. Arthur found these that Sunday, he told me, and I helped him hide them before the police even knew she was dead. Gerald was fit to be tied, of course, but Arthur told him if he ever brought any harm to you or your mother, someone else would turn that over to the police, along with some notes. I was the someone else!”

“But-but Mrs. Havens!” Father Chris said, looking at his elderly housekeeper in an entirely different way. “This was evidence! The woman lay there murdered for a full day after you knew about it!”

“I loved Gwen, Father, but she was dead. Wasn’t going nowhere, right? And what was more important, to protect three innocent people’s lives, or let the likes of Harold Richmond use that evidence to hurt them? And before you say another word, Father, ask yourself if Arthur Spanning could have possibly paid a higher price for loving his brother as himself. If anything, that man loved his brother too much!”

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked out. She was back less than a minute later to say, “Two weeks notice, Father. Time I retired. Travis, you call me.”

I’m still not sure if it was the notes, the knife, or Reed Collins’s bold assertion (made without checking with any lab) that DNA could easily be lifted from the inside of Gerald’s gloves that made the difference. Reed liked my theory that Gerald’s wetsuit trick indicated a certain fear about leaving DNA around, and put it to the test.

Personally, I think having his ass kicked by a woman so disordered Gerald’s way of looking at the world, he took one glance at the notes, knife and gloves and started unburdening his conscience. This, I’m told, took the form of a lot of ranting about bitches who could have been happy with him, traitorous brothers, whores and bastards-but the district attorney, a judge and a jury of his peers were able to sort it all out and find him guilty.

I took Travis to meet Leda DeMont Rose and her granddaughter. They quickly set him at ease, and by the end of the visit, they were well on their way to becoming friends, even though Laurie’s first glimpse of my badly mauled cousin must have made her believe I had lied about his good looks.

Horace DeMont died the day after Travis visited them, and I have still not convinced him that it was not his fault.

Robert DeMont, though disappointed that he had not found a way to get his hands on the small remaining portion of the DeMont fortune, was able to sell an improved version of the toilet-seat invention to a novelty manufacturer, and realized enough from the sale to work on other innovations, as well as to pay an auto body shop bill.

I envied him, as well as Rachel and Frank, and everyone else whose car came back from the body shop. Like Travis’s camper, the Karmann Ghia was gone forever. I still miss it.

Long before any of that came to pass, Frank and I made another visit to Holy Family Cemetery. We stood near my parents’ graves, but we weren’t alone. Great Aunt Mary and her caretaker friend, Sean Grady, were nearby. My sister Barbara, and Rachel and Pete were there. Travis was there, too, as were Zeke Brennan, Father Chris and Ann Havens, the latter two having forgiven one another. Father Chris presided over a re-burial of Arthur’s remains, next to those of Briana. They had been in the same cemetery, as it turned out-but separated from one another. Now there was a new stone in place, their names together. Though tears were shed, it was, on the whole, a celebration.

I thought I saw McCain’s car in the parking lot, but I may have been mistaken.

Travis was staying with us for a while, having realized that we really didn’t care that he could afford to stay elsewhere. What you can afford in money, we had learned, you can’t always afford in time.