Then Marsha got it. They'd been too busy to remember what they were there to do. Her eyes widened. "You forgot him. You were fucking, you and that fat nurse," she screamed. "Your fucking killed Daddy. Oh shit."
Charlie got it, too. Now he could see the scene, how it had played. Marsha was out. Cassie had been drinking. With all that grape in the cellar, she was probably a big wino. Big. Teddy and his girlfriend, in charge of the patient, had been fooling around somewhere out of sight. Mitchell Sales had another stroke. Charlie guessed he might have died anyway. But maybe not. No wonder the shuffling feet. The kid must think he killed his father just to get laid. Ouch.
Footsteps sounded on the parquet landing. Cassie the probable wino clacked down the stairs.
"Oh God. Mommy," Marsha cried wildly.
She hurried out of the room to meet her mother at the bottom of the stairs. "Oh God, I just heard about Daddy. I'm so sorry."
Cassie didn't say anything as she brushed past her and came into the dining room. She sent a stunned look in her son's direction, then turned to embrace her daughter. For a minute they rocked together, and she stroked the girl's hair. Then she said, "It's okay, honey. Whatever happens, it's okay."
Charlie was made uneasy by the intimacy of the two women. Their hugging hit him like a charge from a jumper cable. They looked alike. One was dark-haired and one light-haired, but both were slender and graceful, both easy on the eye, though the younger one had quite a mouth on her. Cassie's tenderness to her child knifed the old injury right through him. His little girl would have been a woman now.
"Mommy, I love you." Finally Marsha pulled away. Then she stared at her mother with horror. "You're wearing my dress!" she said.
CHAPTER 44
FIVE MINUTES LATER Cassie closed the door to the dining room and settled her chi ldren around the kitchen table. "Look, there's something I have to do right now." She didn't look at Teddy, but she knew he had tears in his eyes.
"What's that man doing here?" Marsha said softly.
"Listen to me, Marsha. You and Teddy are going to have to go through my address book and start calling people."
"Mom, talk to me. What's going on?" Marsha kept her voice low, but she wasn't backing down.
"I told you, he's an IRS agent," Teddy said unhappily.
"Marsha, I want you to call Parker Higgins and tell him your father died." Cassie leaned forward. She didn't have a lot of time and wanted them to pay attention.
"I can call him," Teddy protested.
"You call Ira. Divide up the list."
"An IRS agent? Mom, what are you doing?" Marsha asked.
"I'm taking Charlie to see Mona's house," she replied.
"Why?" Marsha was shocked.
"Because it's juice. Now, do what I tell you for once."
"Mom, don't go psycho on us. The IRS is like explosive stuff." Marsha gave her mother one of her superior looks, and Cassie exploded.
"I don't want to hear that from you ever again! I've never been psycho, not for one second in my whole life. I've been stupid. I've been in denial, but psycho, never!" Cassie realized she was getting loud and lowered her voice. Leaned forward, tried to take control of the plane. Up, up, up, get that cockpit up, she coached herself.
"Now, listen to me. The two of you have to rely on me now. Teddy, I understand what happened last night. Marsha took off, and you were doing your own thing." That was a nice way of putting it. Cassie's lips were set hard against her teeth, but she said it without a trace of irony. They'd been doing their own thing, and their father had died on their watch. It was over. Fact of life.
Marsha gripped her mother's arm. "Mom, calm down."
"I'm perfectly calm. He had Daddy's body removed before I was even up, Marsha. Did he call you at Tom's place? No, he did not. Then he took off with that girl and left me here to be interrogated by the police. That cop wanted to arrest me for murder. What were you thinking?" she hissed at her son.
Teddy looked like a fifteen-year-old caught out doing everything he wasn't supposed to do. "I was just trying to help. I'm really sorry, Mom."
"Sorry!"
"He was already dead when she went to check on him. I swear," Teddy said.
Cassie didn't want to pursue it now. The girl was not in the house. Good, she didn't want to pursue that, either. Suddenly she felt sick again. She turned her attention to the grain running through the wood in the kitchen table. She'd wiped it clean before she'd gone upstairs to change. Tidy was her middle name. "Is there anything else you want to tell me before I go?" she asked softly.
Teddy took a deep breath. "Well…"
"What, Teddy?" Marsha demanded. "What now?"
"Gently, gently." Cassie pointed at the dining room door. "I swear to God he must think we're nuts."
"Who cares? We are nuts," Marsha muttered.
"Shhh. Marsha!" Cassie told herself she was perfectly calm.
"Don't shhh me. Daddy's dead, and nothing changes around here except now you're wearing my clothes."
"Well, they're better than mine," Cassie pointed out.
"I sent the letter," Teddy blurted.
"What letter?" Marsha gave him the idiot look. For once, Teddy ignored it.
"Mom, I'm really sorry. He was going to marry her. She told me a thousand times that everybody underestimates you, that you'd be okay. She promised me a better life." He squirmed in his chair, crumbling like a cookie.
"Mona promised you a better life than what?" Cassie's brain spun back into its whirl. In an instant she lost her perfect calm.
"She promised she'd always take care of me." Teddy pulled on his fingers until his knuckles cracked. "I had to stop it, that's all."
Mona had promised Teddy a better life? Cassie swallowed bile as a terrible thought struck her: Had Mona been sleeping with her son, too? She shivered in the sun-drenched kitchen. This was the stuff of soap operas. Teddy was their informer. He had nailed his own father. She was speechless.
"What are you talking about? What did you do?" Marsha demanded. She didn't have a clue.
Teddy was telling his story and paying no attention to her. "He was always teaching me lessons. It was time to teach him one."
"For God's sake what did he do?" Marsha turned to her mother, and still Teddy wouldn't acknowledge her.
"Mom, I gave him the second set of books."
Cassie's life took another unexpected turn. She was spinning, spinning. Dizzy, dizzy. Where would it stop? "What second set of books?" she asked faintly.
"It was how he taught me accounting. Not even Ira knows." For the first time Teddy glanced guiltily at his sister. "He and Mona cooked the books. Daddy showed me how they did it. Easy as pie. The official set was prepared for Ira, the other for them. He told me everybody did it. He was proud of it. He thought only idiots were honest."