Robert Parker - Family Honor

“Millicent?” she said.

“She was in the bathroom when you and Kragan agreed to zip Humphries. She heard it. And when Kragan came in to use the bathroom he saw her, looked right at her, and didn’t say a word.”

“He knew she heard?” Betty Patton said in her strangulated voice.

“He had to have known,” I said. “So when he sent a couple of tough guys to get her away from me, you really think he intended to bring her home?”

“He...”

“Do you?”

Again her throat seemed to have closed entirely, and she struggled to swallow. Then she shook her head.

“I don’t either.”

“My daughter,” Betty Patton whispered. “I want my daughter back.”

“So she could become the house photographer?” I said.

“You bitch,” Betty Patton rasped.

“Yes, you’re right. There’s no need for that, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want them to kill my daughter.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ve found common ground.”

Billie had brought us some tea, and Betty Patton had poured some brandy into hers, and we had moved to a couple of summery-looking armchairs in the conservatory. The snow was mostly rain now. And the late afternoon had turned dark.

“If you tell me everything you know, maybe I can fix this,” I said.

“All of it?”

Betty had made a trip to her room and put herself back together. Her voice was still small, but it no longer sounded as if it were being squeezed from a tube.

“My concern is Millicent,” I said. “I will do what seems in her best interest.”

“And what of me?”

“I don’t know. One salvation at a time,” I said.

“That’s acceptable,” she said.

“Oh good,” I said. “Talk.”

“I don’t... know... where... to begin.”

“You said something about, I didn’t know what it was like to be married to him. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Brock...” She shook her head sadly. “Brock is one of those people for whom too much is never enough. It accounts, I suppose, for his success. He is passionate in pursuit of everything. He always seems to want more. More success, more money, more power, more prominence, more sex, more sex partners, more sexual excitement, more, more, more, more, more, more, more.”

“Excelsior,” I said.

Betty Patton looked at me blankly for a moment, decided I hadn’t said anything worth asking about, and continued.

“At first that excited me. I liked the challenge. I liked...” She made a searching-for-the-right-word motion with her left hand. “I liked the sense of being the one.”

“The one who was enough?” I said.

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No. It’s not like there was someone else.” She laughed without amusement. “There was everyone else.”

“Equal opportunity,” I said, just to be saying something.

“I assume he’s made a pass at you,” Betty said.

“Yes.”

“A lot of women are flattered. He’s powerful, rich, handsome.”

“I wasn’t flattered,” I said.

She looked into her tea cup for a minute, holding it in both hands, then drank some, and put the cup on the tabletop.

“He cheated on me from the first day, I guess.”

“What did you do?”

“I got even.”

“By cheating on him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy that?”

“No.”

“Did it bring you closer together?”

“No.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But it made me feel less like somebody’s discarded toy,” Betty said. “The worse he got, the worse I became.”

“See what you made me do,” I said.

She looked at me as if I’d said something puzzling.

“We seemed somehow to fuel each other, we became more perverse and more perverse. I had my plumber. He had his China dolls. I don’t remember exactly when we joined forces.”

“Joined forces?”

“Yes. I would watch him. He would watch me.”

“And the, ah, partners, never minded?” I said.

“At first they didn’t know; we had viewing ports.”

“Peepholes?”

“Yes.”

I was beginning to feel as if I’d spent my life in a convent and was just emerging.

“The strange thing was that it gave us a thing we did together, a, ah, project. We’d plan together who, and how many, and when, and where to meet them, and what to do with them, and that led us to think about photographing them, and then how to do that and we’d buy photography equipment, and, for obvious reasons, we learned how to develop our own pictures. It was the closest we’d been since Millicent was born.”

“And no matter what you did, he didn’t get jealous.”

“No. He seemed to like it.”

“Some revenge,” I said. “Tell me about Kragan and Antonioni.”

“Do you know who they are?” Betty said.

“I know a little,” I said. “But go ahead, why don’t you tell me whatever you know.”

“And this will help Millicent?”

“She will be safe when there’s no one walking around with a reason to kill her,” I said.

“And you think we can accomplish that?”

“If I know what’s going on,” I said.

“Is she somewhere safe?”

“Yes,” I said, “she’s with people who will take care of her.”

“Unlike her parents,” Betty said.

I waited. Betty poured some more tea for us, and offered me brandy. I shook my head. She put some in her tea and took a sip, and sat back holding the teacup. There was very little light coming in through the wet glass of the conservatory. Had the sun been out it would have been barely visible above the western horizon.

“Brock has long been active in politics,” Betty said. “He has been a regular contributor to Republican candidates, and a vigorous fund-raiser as well. And several times he has taken a leave and served in one governmental job or another. Now he is running for governor.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I want it very much. I would like to be First Lady of the Commonwealth, and perhaps it would lead to more.”

“And Antonioni was going to help him?”

“He was going to help us. I was very much a part of Brock’s campaign.”

“Another project,” I said.

Again Betty gave me the look that suggested she didn’t quite get me. She was not alone. Then she seemed to dismiss the puzzlement and went on talking.

“Albert Antonioni is some sort of mobster from Rhode Island. There is, as you may know, a kind of vacuum in the mob situation here.”

“Yes,” I said. “And Antonioni wants to fill it.”

“Yes. Brock knew Albert when we lived in Rhode Island. We stayed in touch when we moved here. Albert thinks that when he expands into Massachusetts, it would be useful to have a governor he could trust.”

“So he has put a lot of money into Brock’s campaign.”

“Yes.”

“And Kragan?”

“Cathal is Albert’s man on the scene. Much of what Albert wants to take over is currently owned by the Irish. I think Albert feels the need to have one of their own as a point man. You know how ethnic they all are.”

I wasn’t sure who they all were. But it didn’t seem like I needed to at the moment and I let it pass.

“Does Antonioni own your husband?” I said.

Betty drank some of her brandied tea and stared out at the dying light. She nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she said.

“So when you made the mistake of giving those pictures to Kevin the plumber, and he made the mistake of trying to blackmail you with them, you went to Antonioni.”

“Kragan,” she said. “Albert is remote and prefers it that way.”

“And that was the conversation your daughter overheard.”

“Yes.”