CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Mother’s Ruin
When Blair got to Calvin Maxwell’s house again, he shuddered on looking into Felicity Carmichael’s no-nonsense face for a second time. He’d hoped that with the passage of time and the aging of the day, her disposition would’ve mellowed a little bit. No such luck.
As she opened the door and saw him standing there, it was as if an old rival had come back to challenge her. “Yes?” she said, standing at the ready in front of the entrance. Her body language told him that birds would fly upside down before she would ever let him inside again.
“I’d like to see….”
“Mr. Maxwell isn’t in,” she interrupted. “Perhaps you should try back later.”
“But I’m here to see Corinne Maxwell.”
“I’ll see if she can spare the time to see you.” Miss Felicity took particular pleasure in slamming the door in his face, and he doubted if she would make good on her promise to let the lady of the house know that he was there. Blair glanced over his shoulder and then down the street, thinking about Horace even though he couldn’t see him.
Eventually Felicity came back and opened the door. After pausing to glare at him as if she really meant it, she finally stepped to the side. “Mrs. Maxwell will see you now,” she said, practically choking on every word.
“Thanks,” Blair said, stepping inside. Before going any farther, he just had to add, “You’re a good doorkeeper. Maybe you’ll own your own door someday.” Felicity turned a shade of red Blair had never seen before, and he fancied it; it was a very striking color.
“Look who’s talking,” she said, emphasizing the point by staring down at the holes in his shoes. “Mrs. Maxwell’s in the family room.” She cut her eyes away from him as she closed the door. Being civil for no longer than necessary, she took off for high country, going up the stairs and then taking brisk strides down the hall. It was a safe bet that Blair would never see her again, especially if she saw him first.
Soon Blair wandered into the family room and Corinne met him with a warm smile. “Blair!” she said. “Thanks for coming back.” She walked past him but only to close the double doors. “Would you like a drink?”
“Sure,” he said, accepting the offer with raised eyebrows. “Gin, please.”
“Would you like a martini?” she asked as she headed straight for Blair’s favorite place, the bar at the far end of the room.
“I’d love one,” he said, coming closer and watching as she started mixing the concoction. He studied her for a moment, taking a long whiff of the delightful fragrance she was wearing. Corinne prided herself on always smelling good, and today was no exception. Until now, Blair never really thought about how much she resembled Cynthia. It was true that Cynthia hadn’t lived very long, but he would always be able to picture her in later years by looking at her mother.
“Gin, the poor man’s drink,” Blair said from over her shoulder. “‘Mother’s Ruin’ as the upper classes once called it. But thanks to the martini, gin gained the respect and admiration it so richly deserved.”
Corinne stopped what she was doing as if amazed. “You are a very well-read man,” she observed, the freckles on her nose coming closer together as she wrinkled it up.
“Don’t let the tattered clothes and the smelly armpits fool you. Yes, despite the popular, biased opinions concerning the poor in America, not all of us are illiterate.”
Her surprise folded into an embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to imply that of you.”
“You can apologize best by mixing that martini a little faster.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. Do you prefer your drink dry?”
“As dry as you can possibly make it. Do you have an eyedropper for the vermouth?”
Corinne mixed up a standard dry, ten to one. Using an excellent brand of gin, she also added a fine vermouth from a bottle that had just been opened. “Do you prefer an olive or a twist of lemon peel?”
“I prefer a large glass,” he said, and she laughed. Her laughter sounded so good, so soothing. He always said that Cynthia was lucky to have a mother like her.
“I’ve missed having you around, Blair. I’d forgotten how easily you can make me laugh.” She poured the mix over ice and then stirred it. Afterward, she put some of it in a cocktail glass and then added a lemon peel.
Blair sniffed it before swallowing all of it at once. Corinne filled his glass again, and he threw that one back just as fast. “Here,” he said, accepting the pitcher, “I’ll drive this.” This time he filled his own glass and drank it. He probably looked silly standing there, his glass in one hand and the pitcher in the other, but putting the container down and then picking it up again would’ve been a waste of time. Smiling at Corinne as she offered him a seat, he poured himself another glass.
“Flying Dutchman, Highball,” he said, “Maiden’s Prayer, Jewel Cocktail, Nightmare, What the Hell…. Those drinks pretty much sum up my life these past few days.” He raised the glass before swallowing the next serving.
“We’ve all been through a lot,” Corinne said as she sat down in a chair across from the one he just sat down in, and he looked at her.
“Would you like some of this?” he asked, holding up the pitcher. “After all, you made it.”
“No, thanks.”
Lowering the pitcher, he poured himself another glass.
“Would you like something to eat, Blair?”
“Can you make some of those gin dishes?” he asked, glancing up from his glass.
“Pardon me?”
“Gin dishes. You know, like gin-pickled peppers or zucchini martinis. Or how about happy baked apples?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to prepare any of those.”
“Oh, it’s just as well.”
“I could ask the chef….”
“No, no,” Blair said, taking another drink, “there’s no need to bother him.” He smiled even though he didn’t feel much like doing it, and then paused to drink until his glass was empty.
“I’m going to tell you a little story, Corinne,” he began again, coughing a little, “and you can feel free to jump in anytime the mood hits you.”
She smiled with a shrug, resting her delicate hands on her lap. Her large, ruby ring with various assorted diamonds subordinately surrounding it caught his attention. That exquisite marquise-cut rock had been faceted to be a real eye-grabber. Its iridescence bespoke of its unmistakable authenticity. “It’s your story,” she said. “What would I have to add?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, filling and then drinking his glass dry again. His vision was doubling and there were two Corinnes now, but that was all right because there were also two containers of gin in one of his hands and two glasses in the other.
“I knew this couple who’d been married for what seemed like forever,” he began. “But one day, the wife finds out, see, that her husband has been banging another woman for years.” He paused to burp. “Not only that, but he has a kid by this ‘other’ woman. So one day his wife decides to make him pay for his indiscretion. Hell, she decides to make them all pay: the husband, the whore, the kid…. Everybody. What the hell?” he said, and then chuckled. “Just like the drink.”
As he hesitated, he wondered if she were looking at him that way because she couldn’t understand what he was saying. His words were beginning to slur.
“Anyway, the wife decides to get the kid in the kind of trouble he’d probably never be able to get out of, and it was easy for her to do because he’s just a kid. So she sets him up. This wife has an accomplice of hers take very valuable gemstones that her husband and his friends had been arguing over for years and put them in a place where the kid would be able to find them.” He looked at her. “He’s a rockhound, you see.
“After the kid finds the stones,” he continued, “she goes to her husband’s friends and tells them that the kid stole the gems. Well, these guys are pissed off about it because those gems are worth millions. They go looking for the k
id and try forcing him to tell them where they are. But the kid is mad because they’ve already killed his sister. All these thugs know is, they were trying to find this kid to get those stones back, and his sister was getting in the way by trying to stop them. Because the kid is a loose cannon after finding his sister’s body, they kill him, hoping to recover the gemstones later. But before his sister got herself killed, she and a friend of hers hid the stones along with field notebook pages and a map of the area where the priceless gems had been found.”
Blair filled the cocktail glass with what was left of the drink. Downing it all at once, he patted the foot of the stem just to get the last drop. “So the thugs were foiled,” he told her, “because they thought they’d killed everybody who knew where the gemstones were. Boy, were they idiots!”
Getting up and putting the pitcher and cocktail glass down, Blair grabbed a decanter of gin and a tumbler from the bar. He filled the big glass to the brim and let that magnificent blend of juniper berries slide down like burning oil riding on the crest of a wave.
Sitting back down in the chair he’d occupied before, he said, “But perhaps the person who paid the biggest price was the wife. You remember, the jealous, self-centered bitch with the sneaky, underhanded disposition. Anyway, she got what she wanted: the kid was dead. But what she hadn’t counted on was that the boy would share the gemstones he’d found with his sister, and together they tried to swindle the whole bunch of them.
“His sister knew where the gems had come from, and she knew that her father had stolen them in the first place,” he continued. “So, who says that greed doesn’t run in families? She tried to help her brother sell them so that they could split the money. Even when it came down to deciding between her brother’s welfare or giving up the gems, she refused to hand them over and then foolishly tried to stop the killers herself. She couldn’t do it, and only managed to get herself killed in the process.” He paused to take a long drink of gin.
“The funniest part of all, and you tell me if you think this is funny, too. The wife, who only wanted her husband’s bastard son dead, ended up getting her only daughter killed as well.” Smacking his knee before taking another shot of gin, he added, “Now, money or no, is that the most dysfunctional family you’ve ever heard of, or what?”
“What do you want?” Corinne asked him; her face had long since lost its humor. Even though she knew he was fingering her for everything that had happened, she didn’t seem compelled to defend herself. Perhaps she’d been rich for too long.
“Just tell me if I got the story straight, that’s all.”
“I suppose. Considering the storyteller, I guess it’s plausible.”
“Let’s talk about Mercedes Whent, okay? I found a tablet in her apartment with your address on it next to the initials C.M. At first I thought the initials stood for Calvin Maxwell. But they were really yours, weren’t they, Corinne?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mercedes is a good friend of yours, isn’t she?”
“Was,” she said casually. “Haven’t you heard? She overdosed on heroin and ended up drowning in her own vomit.”
If it were true, then he was so sorry to hear that Mercedes was dead. He liked her a lot, but he tried not to show it. Knowing how he really felt would’ve brought Corinne some degree of satisfaction, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. So he simply shrugged it off and went on with his story.
“You had Mercedes pass me a twenty dollar bill the night Cynthia was killed,” he said. “Were you just being charitable, or were you hoping I’d drink until I made myself falling down drunk and end up being an unreliable witness?”
“Twenty dollars? What twenty dollars?”
“Mercedes couldn’t afford to give twenty dollars away just like that. It had to have come from somebody else. Someone who had Kevin’s murder all planned out to happen in that alley just off Baker, where the town drunk hangs out.” Blair hesitated. “And that would be me.”
“Whatever you say,” she said, admitting nothing. “It’s your story.”
“You know the combinations to the safes in Calvin’s office, don’t you?”
“Don’t you think that I should? After all, I am his wife.”
“Did he ever voluntarily give you the combinations, or did you sneak a peek at them?”
Again, she didn’t answer.
“I think you found out about them on your own, and you told Mercedes one of the combinations. The one that had the pigeon-blood rubies inside.”
“Pigeon-blood rubies? What pigeon-blood rubies?”
“I’ll bet when you had Mercedes take those gems out of that safe, she had no idea how valuable they really were,” he said. “What did you pay her to do it? Whatever it was, I’ll bet she got mad at you when she found out how much they were really worth and maybe started demanding a bigger cut. Is that why you had her murdered? To keep her off your back? After all, you had a big enough job occupying your time just trying to hold the proverbial wool over your husband’s eyes.”
Blair laughed right in her face. “When I tell Calvin all of this, things just aren’t going to be the same between you two, are they? You might end up losing the only thing that ever mattered to you, and that would be your beloved husband. He’s the reason you tried to pull this whole thing off, isn’t he?”
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“Just as you said, I’m well-read,” Blair told her.
“I hope you never have a spouse who goes elsewhere to find the pleasure he should have found right in his own home.”
“Are you saying that you were the wife in my scenario?” he asked, trying to sound surprised.
“I was,” she said, and then started to cry. “When I found out that Cyndi was dead, I couldn’t believe it! I couldn’t believe they would do that to her. To me.” She held a hand to her breast, the one wearing that gorgeous ruby. It was a fitting gesture, especially since rubies were the reason for all of her troubles.
“They did do that to you,” Blair said, “and they didn’t think twice about it. I watched Quentin Latrice kill your daughter, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He showed no remorse, no regret. And he’d kill you if he thought that would help him to get those rubies back.” Corinne’s tears escalated and she buried her face in those delicate, white hands of hers.
“If Calvin ever found out about any of this, he’d never forgive me,” she said, looking at Blair pleadingly. “I can’t let you tell him. I can’t let you tell anyone.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to tell anybody who’ll listen,” he said. “Calvin included. I have to.” Blair’s speech was slurred and he felt very tired. Slouching in the chair was the best he could do; he was lucky that he was still able to sit up at all. Corinne got up and came closer to him.
“You insignificant, little maggot!” she said, and he imagined seeing her angry, wet face clearly through the smoky haze forming from places outside the bounds of his peripheral vision. “I won’t let you destroy everything that I’ve built here!”
Corinne went off somewhere and seemed to be gone for an eternity. When he saw her again, she was a blurry, jumbled shadow. If he hadn’t known that she was in the room with him, he wouldn’t have been able to tell who was there. But the figure before him was a mass of pale yellow and white, the colors of the dress he knew Corinne was wearing. When he reached out for her, his sudden movement threw off his balance and he fell to the floor. He ended up sandwiched between a coffee table and the chair he’d occupied.
The subtle yellow and brazen black fog intertwined curiously, making Corinne appear to be a gigantic bumblebee buzzing around and trying to sting every inch of him. Blair couldn’t tell if her expression was one of concern for him or of anger. All he could think about was getting off the floor before that vicious bee had the chance to trample him.
Not being able to see what Corinne was doing was frustrating. He grabbed the coffee table and tried to pull himself up, but he was unable to. Vaguel
y, he could see her looming above him like a great, golden tower. She was coming forward in slow motion and with something long and glistening in her hand. Finally, she stopped and raised whatever she was holding as if about to strike him.
“She’s trying to kill me,” Blair murmured, taking the first blow on the side of the head. Rolling over, he pulled himself under the coffee table to use it as a shield. Even so, Corinne still managed to hit him repeatedly on the chest until blood sputtered from his mouth. And then, all of a sudden, she stopped. She pushed the coffee table aside and tore open his shirt. When she examined his chest, her mouth was open so wide, even Blair could see it. She resembled the face on the video version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall; she looked creepy, real creepy. But at least she’d stopped that confounded thumping on various parts of his body.
Maybe it was finding the wireless microphone strapped to his chest that did it. In the first place, she never expected to find expensive equipment like that on a bum. Second, the possibility of someone recording everything she’d said and done within the last forty-five minutes was quite unnerving, at least it would’ve been to Blair if he’d been standing in her highly polished pumps. Corinne probably couldn’t believe that a rummy finally had the upper hand. Or, should he say gin rummy?
His battered lips forced a smile before he passed out. If he had to die, then right now while he was plastered to the floorboards and reeking of gin was as good a time as any.