“Do you mean am I sober? Clean?” Randolph’s gaze mocked Maurice, and I saw a little of Turner in the way his mouth curled up at one side. “Yes. If you mean am I grieving over my mother’s death, then no, not particularly. She wasn’t much of a mother.” He said it matter-of-factly, and I found his lack of emotion somewhat eerie.
I saw Maurice fighting to control his reaction to the slur on Corinne and jumped in with, “Have the police been out to see you?”
Randolph’s gaze slid to me. “As a matter of fact, they have,” he said, “although I’m not sure what business it is of yours.”
“Um…”
Before I could think of a reply, Maurice said, “Did Corinne visit you as usual last Sunday?”
“She thought coming out here once a week made up for all the times she was gone when I was growing up.” Grievance seeped from Randolph like gas from a sewer pipe.
I wanted to say, You’re fifty-plus years old; get over it already, but I held my tongue. I thought I’d read somewhere that addicts had a habit of blaming others for their weaknesses. “Did she say anything about the memoir she was writing?” I asked.
The teakettle shree-ed and Randolph pushed himself up to remove it from the burner. “She was always going on about her precious manuscript,” Randolph said, plunking a teabag into a mug and hefting the kettle in a silent question. Maurice and I shook our heads and he poured the steaming water, slopping some of it onto the counter. “She wanted my blessing on the chapters that dealt with me and my illness, as she called it.”
“Did she show them to you?” Maurice asked. I shot him an approving look.
“Just talked about what she was going to write,” Randolph said. “How she was too young when I was born, unprepared for motherhood. How when my father died she was ‘cast adrift, emotionally untethered.’ Those are the phrases she used. How she tried to provide me with loving stepfathers-of which you were the first,” he told Maurice, stirring a teaspoon of honey into his tea and rejoining us at the table. “Too bad she divorced you before I was old enough to remember you. Judging by the others, you were probably the best of the lot.”
Wow, the acid bottled up in this man would etch granite. Maurice looked shell-shocked, so I asked, “Did she mention anything else about the book? What she might be saying about other people she knew?”
Randolph’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute… are you saying you think she was killed because of something she wrote?”
Maurice and I exchanged glances but didn’t say anything.
“That’s rich.” Randolph gave a phlegmy chuckle, like bubbling mud.
“You disagree?” I asked. “Several people seem nervous about what might have been in her book; one even broke into her house trying to get hold of the manuscript.”
“Really?” He looked mildly interested. Downing half his tea, despite the fact that steam still curled from it, he licked his lips. “Who?”
I hesitated a moment, but then decided there was no harm in telling him. “Marco Ingelido. I guess he almost became one of your stepfathers.”
He furrowed his brow, the wrinkles looking like grooves drawn in Play-Doh. “The guy who started the dance studio franchise? He was never one of Mother’s ‘special friends.’” He gave the last words a falsetto twist, and I could hear Corinne explaining her lovers to her young son as “Mommy’s special friends.”
“He said they were an item,” Maurice put in, leaning forward so his forearms rested on the table.
“Absolutely not.” Randolph shook his head. “Mother despised him, even before he opened those cheesy studios and ‘dumbed down’ ballroom dance, as she put it.”
“Why?” I asked. Had Marco Ingelido lied to me for some reason, or was Randolph lying now? Or perhaps he wasn’t as tuned in to his mother’s love life as he thought he was.
“Who knows? Mother could hold a grudge like no one else.” His fingers, strangely long and thin for his bulky build, tapped rhythmically against the mug.
Maurice shoved his chair back from the table as if wanting to distance himself from Corinne’s son and his negative view of his mother. “If you don’t think Corinne was murdered because of her memoir, who do you think did it?”
“That’s easy.” He looked down into his mug, but not before I caught the glint of malice in his eyes. “My only offspring, the fruit of my loins. Turner.”
I gasped and I could tell my response pleased Randolph.
“You’re accusing your own son?” Maurice asked, incredulous.
“One of the things they teach you in these sorts of places”-he waved a hand to indicate the greater Hopeful Morning Rehabilitation Center-“is to see clearly, to give up illusions and excuses and live honestly. Well, I’ve found it’s easier to live honestly if one doesn’t have to deal with one’s family too often. Ergo, my present living arrangements.” A wry smile twisted his lips. “Distance-physical and emotional-helps with honesty, too. I’ve had a clear-eyed view of Turner for some time now. I gave up on him the third time he was expelled for cheating.”
“Corinne never gave up on you,” Maurice said, anger and repulsion warring on his face.
“More fool she.”
Ten seconds went by before I managed to say, “Do you have a particular reason for thinking Turner did it? Did he say something to you, do something suspicious?”
“I haven’t seen or heard from him since I came to Hopeful Morning almost a year ago. I just know what he is. And I know Mother was concerned about his debt load and his lifestyle.”
A lawn mower started up outside, its buzz cutting into the room. Glancing through the window on my right, I spotted a young woman watering potted begonias in the “haven” next door. She waved when she caught me looking, and I smiled in response. I wondered what addiction had brought her to Hopeful Morning. I’d suddenly had enough of the hopeless Randolph Blakely. I rose. Maurice jumped to his feet as if he’d been waiting for a signal to depart. When Randolph stayed seated, Maurice and I made for the front door to show ourselves out. As we walked under the arched doorway that led to the hall, Maurice turned back. “Where were you this past Tuesday?”
Randolph got up and put his mug in the sink. With his back to us, he said, “I didn’t kill Mother.” His voice was muffled and I wondered whether he was crying. But when he turned to face us, his eyes were clear. “I was here. I’m always here. I don’t even have a car.”
Unsatisfied and unsettled, I tugged at Maurice’s hand and we left, shutting the door to Hollyhock Haven quietly behind us. I wondered whether we were closing Randolph in or closing the world out. It didn’t matter. The woman from the cottage next door was watering flowers in the front yard, and she gave us a big smile. I saw she wasn’t quite as young as she’d looked from the window-maybe in her mid-thirties. Fine, light brown hair wisped around her face, and she shoved it off her forehead with her wrist.
“It’s so nice that Randolph’s getting so many visitors these days,” she said in a breathy voice, stepping closer to us and pouring water on a thirsty-looking rosebush. “For a long time, it was just his mom, on Sundays, but now it seems like every time I turn around he’s got more folks stopping by. It’s good to see him rejoining the world, as it were. So helpful with… well, you know… when you’ve got a good support group. I’m very lucky that my husband and my friends have all stuck by me.” She paused, as if inviting us to ask about the reason for her presence at the rehab center. When Maurice dropped his gaze to the path and I just stared at her, completely unaware of the etiquette for these sorts of situations, she said, “I’m going home next week and I know everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to be fine.”
“Great,” I said, a shade too heartily. “I’m sure Randolph will be fine, too, especially now that his friends are gathering around. Who all have you met?” Maurice winced almost imperceptibly beside me, and I wondered whether I was being too blatant, but the woman looked happy to gossip.