She straightened, focusing. “Michael and Bobbi Tiernay have two sons. This is widely known but not widely discussed. Deegan, the younger son, is at school down here, interning for your Mollie Lavender as a thumb in his old man’s eye-or maybe his mother’s, or his grandmother’s, or the whole damned family’s. It’s hard to say because they’re the stiff-upper-lip type, and because they know how to do spin control better than most. The older son is Kermit. He’s twenty-two. He flunked out of Harvard after his freshman year. He went in as a top student, but he flipped out after he got his first C, then couldn’t pull it together, and next thing, he’s back home in Palm Beach.”
“Jesus, Helen, you think-”
She silenced him with a look. “So his family tells him to sink or swim. It’s some weird, warped tough-love thing, I guess. Anyway, he takes off, disappears, there are rumors of substance abuse and general rebelliousness. They figure he’s in Colorado or someplace and go on with their lives, making it clear they do not wish to discuss their number one son.”
Jeremiah couldn’t speak. He stared at Helen, knowing she wouldn’t have dragged herself to a West Palm Beach hospital to give him rumors and innuendo. What she had was solid or she’d have kept it to herself. She certainly wouldn’t have gone without a cigarette for this long.
Croc was Michael and Bobbi Tiernay’s son?
“I’ve got his high school graduation picture somewhere.” She dug in handbag, circa 1980, and produced a black-and-white photo cut out of a high school yearbook or newspaper. “He went to private school. Apparently he was quite the egghead.”
It was Croc. Younger, cleaner, meatier, more optimistic, less world-weary. He probably hadn’t slathered his french fries in ketchup in those days, or bussed tables and detailed cars for a living.
Then Helen said, “I think he came into his Atwood trust fund when he turned twenty-one. Nothing the family could do about it.”
“That would be a lot of money?”
Helen grinned. “For an investigative reporter, you can be so naive about some things. Yeah, it’s a goddamned lot of money. I don’t know, Tabak,” she said, going philosophical on him, “where love and support and respect stop and enabling begins-well, I never had kids. Thank God, because I’d have messed it up.”
“Why?”
“The job. You know it as well as I do.” She shook off the attack of introspection. “Okay, so I’ve given you what I’ve got. I wished I’d put it together sooner, but there it is.”
“It was there for me to see, too. I just needed to do the legwork.”
“Yeah, well, the kid’s a friend, right?”
Jeremiah stared at her.
She sighed, nodding with understanding. “Happens to the best of us, Tabak. I’ve got some snooping I might as well do while I’m up here. A society columnist never sleeps. Plus, I need a freaking cigarette or I’m going to start foaming at the mouth.”
“Thanks for the tip, Helen,” Jeremiah said, his voice flat, his senses dulled.
“No problem. Get your head around this one, Tabak. That little shit’s been lying to you from the get-go. You know, this is going to leak out. The long-lost Kermit Tiernay, heir to the Atwood fortune, son of Michael and Bobbi. You’d better decide where you want to be standing when the poo-poo hits the fan.”
She strutted out, and Jeremiah made his way blindly to the elevators. If Croc could turn out to be a rich ne’er-do-well, he supposed he could end up a Helen Samuel in another thirty years. He shuddered at the thought.
Frank Sunderland caught up with him at the elevators. “We’ve got an ID on your buddy Croc,” he said, out of breath.
“Kermit Tiernay.”
Frank scowled. “One day, I’m going to scoop you. The younger brother’s up there with him now, and Miss Lavender. She called from the hospital.” The elevator dinged, and they got on. Frank smiled thinly. “I like her. She tells me stuff.”
“She’s a publicist, not a journalist.”
“Exactly.”
Two minutes later they were in Croc’s room. Frank stood back, reluctantly, and let Jeremiah approach the bed. A pale, subdued Deegan Tiernay stood over his injured older brother. Croc-Kermit Tiernay-was conscious, dazed, swollen, and beat to hell, but his blue eyes were trained on Deegan. When he saw Jeremiah and Frank, Deegan went visibly rigid, his emotions held in check.
Mollie, however, was easy to read. She glared at Jeremiah and pounced. “Damnit, you could have told me.”
“I didn’t know.”
His words didn’t register. “Your pal Croc and Deegan are brothers. You had to know.”
Jeremiah remained steady, despite the gnawing pain in his gut. “Well, I didn’t.”
Mollie still didn’t give up. “But you’ve known him for two years-”
“As Croc, a street kid, this crazy guy who brought me information and liked too much ketchup on his fries.” He shifted to Croc, felt a molten mix of emotions hurtling through him. “I could toss you and that bed out the damned window. Just as well you can’t talk. You’d probably try spinning me another tale. And I’d probably swallow it.”
Kermit Tiernay was too swollen and bruised to provide a readable expression, and he couldn’t speak with his jaw wired shut and his lips stitched.
Jeremiah bit off a sigh. “How’re you feeling?”
Croc nodded slightly, an acknowledgment that he was alive but that was about it.
“You hang in there, okay? Trust me, I’m not going anywhere.” He turned to Deegan, was aware of Mollie fidgeting to his right, ready to jump out of her skin. “When’s the last time you saw your brother?”
“Last Tuesday.” His voice was steady, straightforward. “I helped him get hold of guest lists from several parties. Between Griffen and a few other contacts, it wasn’t difficult.”
“Did you know why he wanted them?”
“Not at first.”
“When?”
“After the Greenaway robbery. I just assumed he was playing private eye.”
So had Jeremiah. Now, he wasn’t ready to make any assumptions until all the facts were in. A hard lesson learned. “How long have you two been in touch?”
“The past two weeks.”
“Not before?”
Deegan shook his head and glanced back at Frank, who stood quietly by the empty bed, taking it all in.
Jeremiah kept pushing. “He sought you out?”
“Yes. He asked me not to tell anyone, and I didn’t.”
“Then your parents don’t know, your grandmother, Griffen Welles, Mollie-”
“Obviously I didn’t know,” Mollie put in.
Jeremiah glanced at her, knowing she was scared and upset, and he pushed back the memory of her sleek body last night. He said nothing, shifting back to Deegan, who shook his head. “Nobody knew.”
Satisfied, Jeremiah turned back to Croc. He pushed back the conflicting emotions, the anger at himself and concentrated on what he had to do. “One finger up for yes, two for no. You can do it?”
One finger went up.
“Do you want me to find you a lawyer?” Jeremiah asked.
Two fingers.
“You know the police are here right now, listening in?”
One finger.
“Croc,” Jeremiah said, leaning over the hospital bed and the battered body of a young man he considered-he could no longer deny it-a friend. “Is someone setting you up?” He raised one finger, and Jeremiah asked, “Do you know who?”
This time, Croc managed a shake of the head before his eyes, already heavy, closed and he drifted off.
“I’ll tell Mother and Father.” Deegan Tiernay’s voice shook; the cockiness of the young man who’d tossed his girlfriend in the pool the other night gone. “They need to know.”
Not want to know, Jeremiah noticed. “They haven’t heard from him?”
“Not since they kicked him out. It’s been over two years.” He pushed a shaky hand through his hair. “They won’t like it that I’ve been in touch with him, but they’ll understand-I had no choice-”