Voices Carry Page 25

  “Oh, since before the Missus passed on. Why, that must be—”

  “Lilly? Lilly!” A voice from the back of the house bellowed.

  “I’m sorry, I have to. . .” The housekeeper glanced behind her warily.

  “Well, it sounds as if Mr. Homer is feeling better,” John said, sticking his foot in the door before she could close it in his face. “How fortunate for us. Now, if you would be so kind, please tell Mr. Homer that the FBI is here to see him.”

  Reluctantly, Lilly Evans stepped back and permitted the pair to follow her into the foyer.

  “If you’d wait here, I’ll just see if he’s agreeable.”

  “Well, we have one question answered without even having to ask it,” Genna whispered as the woman disappeared through a doorway.

  “What’s that?” John leaned close to hear.

  “We know where Michael got sufficient money to permit him to travel around as much as he did. He wouldn’t have had anything to speak of when he got out of prison, and chances are he wouldn’t have had too many opportunities for employment, but collecting on an inheritance would have fit his plans nicely.”

  “I wonder how Mr. Homer will react when he realizes he financed his brother’s activities,” John said.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the first time.” Genna’s jaw tightened.

  “What do you mean?”

  Before she could answer, Miss Evans returned and closed the door solidly behind them.

  “This way,” she gestured, “but you must understand that Mr. Homer is a sick man. He’s not supposed to have visitors.”

  She opened the double doors that led into what had once been an elegant room, one with plaster cherubs in the corners of the ceiling and ornate stained glass in the large side window. Now, the cherubs had begun to crumble and the glass was cracked.

  Clarence Homer, elderly and obviously infirm, sat in a wheelchair in front of the fireplace. On his left was a table that held a nearly-empty carafe and a glass of water that was filled almost to the top. He wore a sweater that had probably been white when it was new, over blue and white cotton pajamas, blue slippers, and a distant expression.

  “Mr. Homer, I’m John Mancini,” John entered the room behind the housekeeper, then stepped aside to introduce Genna, saying, “and this is Agent Snow.”

  If the old man recognized the name, he gave no indication. He did not offer his hand to either visitor, nor did he invite them to sit. He merely turned his head slightly to face them and asked, “What do you want?”

  “We’re looking for your brother, Michael. We’re hoping that you can help us locate him.”

  Without hesitation, without a blink, the old man asked, “What’s he done now?”

  “We don’t know that he’s done anything, Mr. Homer,” Genna replied, wanting him to look at her. It was suddenly very important to her that he remember her.

  “Then why would you come here asking where he is?” He glanced past Genna to John, as if dismissing her altogether.

  “We know he was released from prison in April, but we don’t know where he went from there or where he is now. We were hoping. . .” Genna stepped forward, refusing to be relegated to a minor role.

  “I have no idea of where he is now.” Clarence Homer’s voice was strong and clear. “He certainly isn’t here.”

  “But he was here,” Genna said, trying to get, and hold, his attention.

  “Yes. He was here. After his release. He really didn’t have anyplace else to go.” The man directed his response to John.

  “How long did he stay?” John lowered himself casually to the arm of the sofa that sat opposite the wheelchair.

  “I don’t remember. Couple of days, is all.”

  “What did he do while he was here?”

  “What?” Mr. Homer appeared surprised by the question. “Well, I’m not sure. He spent most of his time upstairs.”

  “What’s upstairs?” Genna asked.

  “The family bedrooms,” Homer responded as if to an impertinent remark.

  “Does Michael still have a room upstairs?” Genna and John exchanged a hopeful look.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been upstairs in six years, since my stroke. You’ll have to ask Miss Evans.”

  “We’ll do that, thank you.” John nodded. “Mr. Homer, did Michael have any specific purpose in coming here?”

  “I already told you. He had no place else to go.” Homer sat back in his chair and appeared indignant. “But where else would one go, but home, to his family?”

  “Did you give him money, Mr. Homer?” Genna decided the blunt approach was called for.

  “Yes, of course I gave him money. The man hadn’t worked in eighteen years. Didn’t have a dime to his name.”

  “May I ask how much money you gave him?”

  “I gave him what was due him.”

  “And what was that?” John leaned forward slightly.

  “Half of Mother’s estate. It belonged to him. I couldn’t rightly keep it. When he showed up after all those years and asked for it, I had to give it to him,” Homer said somewhat defensively.

  “When did your mother pass away, Mr. Homer?”

  “Sixteen years ago.” Weary all of a sudden, the old man appeared to deflate somewhat. “She never did get over Michael’s going away for all that time.”

  “How much was half of your mother’s estate worth?” John asked.

  “By the time the lawyers and the bankers and the tax man got finished, we each got roughly seven hundred thousand dollars.”

  Genna’s eyes widened. Michael had more than enough to keep him moving around for years to come.

  “Do you know if he opened an account at a local bank, or invested—” Genna was thinking out loud, wondering if there might be a paper trail to lead them to Michael.

  “Far as I know, he just kept it.” Mr. Homer interrupted her. “I don’t think he bothered to deposit it anywhere but in his suitcase.”

  “Are we talking about cash here?” John’s eyes narrowed.

  “Of course we’re talking about cash. What did you think we were talking about?”

  “You gave your brother seven hundred thousand dollars in cash?” Genna’s jaw dropped considerably.

  “Yes. It was his money, and that’s how he wanted it.”

  Good-bye, paper trail.

  “Did he mention where he was going when he left? Maybe mention visiting a friend?”

  Clarence Homer snorted. “Michael had no friends. He never did. The only person he ever put much stock in was Mother.”

  John stood and pulled one of his business cards from his pocket, offering it to their host.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Homer. We appreciate it. Please give me a call at this number if you hear from your brother, or if you think of something you think we should know.”

  “Or if he stops back here,” Genna added.

  “Why would he do that? He got everything he wanted the first time around.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” John snapped his fingers, as if just remembering. “You were going to let us see Michael’s room.”

  “You’re welcome to poke around all you want, but I doubt there’s anything to see. Anything of value, he’d have taken it.” He wheeled himself over to the doorway but did not pass through it. “Lilly! Lilly!”

  When Lilly Evans appeared, Clarence Homer pointed to Genna and John and said, “They want to take a look upstairs.”

  “This way.” The housekeeper led them into the foyer and up the wide mahogany stairwell.

  “Which room is Michael’s?” John asked when they reached the second-floor landing.

  “Right down here.” She walked briskly to the third door on the right and opened it. “Not much to see.”

  Not much to see was an understatement.

  The shades on the windows were pulled down, so John switched on the overhead light, which clicked on loudly but provided little illumination. The furniture was old, though good quality maple. The bed wa
s stripped to the mattress and had no pillow. The top of the dresser was totally bare, as were the drawers, and a peek into the closet revealed only empty hangers. No books sat next to the old lamp that stood on the bedside table, and no paintings hung on the walls.

  “Are you sure this was Michael’s room?” Genna asked the housekeeper.

  “This was his, all right.” She nodded in reply.

  “Where are all his personal effects?” Genna thought aloud, then looked at Miss Evans and asked, “What happened to all his things?”

  “Michael never kept much in the way of things.”

  “Books?”

  The housekeeper shrugged. “Didn’t read much.”

  “Did you strip the bed after he left?” John asked.

  “No. There was nothing to strip.” She shrugged.

  “You mean he slept on the bare mattress?”

  “Oh, no. He didn’t sleep in here.” The woman shook her head. “He slept over there. Across the hall.”

  Puzzled, Genna and John stepped toward the door.

  “In his mother’s room,” Lilly Evans explained, then crossed the hall and pushed open the door.

  Following the housekeeper into the room, Genna gasped softly. If Michael’s room had been spartan, the bedroom of the senior Mrs. Homer was a nightmare of Victorian excess. Gold damask draped the windows, the canopy bed, the slipper chair that sat next to the hearth. Paintings in jewel colors lined the walls, and lamps with fringed shades stood like sentinels on the dresser. The scents of gardenia and stale air overwhelmed.

  “It’s all just as she left it. Except of course for the mess over there.” The housekeeper frowned and walked to the window seat, which was heaped with clothes. She began to sort through them, separating them into piles. “You’d have thought he’d have outgrown it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who’d have outgrown. . . ?” John asked.

  “Well, it’s not the worst of what he is, I suppose,” she muttered as if she hadn’t heard.

  Genna lifted a garment and held it up. It was a woman’s dress, circa maybe 1950, its skirt cut like a wide circle of lavender cotton. “Was this one of Mrs. Homer’s dresses?”

  “Guess it wasn’t his color,” Lilly Evans snorted softly.

  “Did Michael’s mother know that he wore her clothes?” John asked.

  “Know it? If you ask me, she encouraged it. Used to dress him up like a girl when he was little, so I’ve heard.” The woman shook her head.

  “When he was here back in the spring,” John asked thoughtfully, “was he wearing his mother’s clothes?”

  “If he was, he was doing it behind closed doors. Mostly he wore jeans then, but with that beard, I guess a dress would have been out of place,” Miss Evans said dryly.

  “Michael has a beard?” Genna asked.

  “He did, yes. Not much of one, mind you. But it was a beard, all the same. Odd, too, because he was always so clean-shaven. Guess that’s something he picked up while he was. . . away.”

  The agents scanned the room, looking, but not touching, lest they sully any fingerprints that may be lifted later. For now, it was enough to inspect the contents of the room, all of which appeared to have belonged to Mrs. Homer.

  “Genna.” John touched her arm.

  “What?” She drew her gaze from the dresser, where a black-and-white photograph of a woman had held her attention. There was something about the woman that was vaguely familiar, but Genna couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “I said, I think we’ve seen enough here,” John repeated.

  “Oh. Yes.” She nodded, then turned to follow John from the room. At the doorway, she stopped and asked of Miss Evans, “The woman in the photograph there on the dresser, is that Mrs. Homer?”

  “Yes.” The woman nodded as she closed the door behind her.

  Once downstairs, the agents stopped to say their good-byes to Mr. Homer, but found him sound asleep. Just as well, Genna thought as they walked to the front door. She wasn’t sure how he’d feel about his housekeeper sharing family secrets.

  “Thank you again, Miss Evans. You’ve been very helpful,” John said courteously as they reached the front door.

  “Please give me or Agent Mancini a call if you hear from Michael.” Genna stepped outside into a muggy evening.

  “He’s done something again, hasn’t he?” Lilly Evans jaw set tightly.

  “We don’t know for certain,” John said. “But we really would like an opportunity to speak with him.”

  Miss Evans shook her head slightly, as if in bewilderment, as she closed the front door.

  “Oh, Miss Evans,” Genna asked. “Did Mrs. Homer have a third child? A daughter?”

  Lilly Evans stared blankly as if not understanding the question.

  “Did Michael and Clarence Homer have a sister?” Genna rephrased the question.

  “Not as far as I know,” the housekeeper shook her head.

  “There was no sister named Anna? Are you certain.”

  “Yes, I’m certain. Anna Homer wasn’t their sister,” Miss Evans explained patiently. “Anna Homer was their mother.”

  “How much weirder do you suppose this is going to get?” John asked Genna after they had gotten back into the rental car. “Not only is Michael a pedophile, but he likes to wear his mother’s clothes. And sleep in his mother’s bed. Who knew?”

  Genna held her head in her hands and began to weep.

  John gently rubbed the back of her neck with a strong hand, and simply let her cry.

  “The son of a bitch didn’t know me,” she muttered. “He didn’t even know me.”

  “Did you really think he would, after all these years?”

  “He didn’t even flinch when I said my name. Not a twitch.” She raised her head. “His brother ruined my life, ruined my sister’s life, ruined the lives of a lot of young women—and may, for that matter, be coming back around to make sure they have no lives at all—and he didn’t even recognize my name.”

  John pulled her to him and cradled her in his arms, feeling the storm rise within her.

  “Maybe he chose to ignore it,” John said softly. “Maybe he knew who you were but didn’t know what to say. What would you have wanted him to say to you?”

  Genna wept softly in his arms but offered no reply.

  “Or maybe he’s just an old man who doesn’t remember what happened all those years ago,” John soothed her, stroked her hair and her back and her shoulders, and simply let her cry.

  When the worst of it had passed, she sat up and said, “If you ever tell anyone about this—that I fell apart like this—I’ll deny it.”

  He dabbed at her wet face with his handkerchief.

  “Understood,” he nodded.

  “We can go now,” she gestured to the key that he’d slipped into the ignition but had not turned.

  John handed her the white cloth and waited while she finished mopping up her face.

  “What?” She peered at him over the top of the handkerchief when she realized that the car was not moving.

  “Do you want to go back in and speak with him privately?” he asked.

  “And say what? ‘By the way, Mr. Homer, since you don’t appear to have recalled on your own, I thought that perhaps I should remind you that my father used to preach in your church. Until, that is, your brother attempted to rape me—as he had a goodly number of my camp-mates, including my sister—and I blew the whistle on him. After which he was tried and convicted on a number of offenses and sentenced to twenty years and my father was removed as pastor of your church. Now, how is it, Mr. Homer, that you don’t even recognize my name?’” Her anger had grown with each word she uttered, so that by the time she had finished her soliloquy, her hands were fisted and her eyes wide with fury. “Is that what you had in mind, John?”

  “That would probably do it,” he nodded calmly.

  “And what would that accomplish?” she demanded tersely.

  “Well, it seems that after all these years, after all that
’s happened, you have the right to know if that man in there knew what he was doing when he put his brother in charge of a hundred or so little girls.” With the fingers of one hand, John pushed the hair back from her face gently. “That’s what you need to know, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much sums it up.”

  “Now’s your chance.” John gestured toward the house. “It may not come again.”

  Genna looked beyond John to the front door where the outside light had just come on for the evening. Given Mr. Homer’s age and health, this could be her last opportunity to ask questions that had festered for years.

  “You’ll wait here for me?”

  “You have to ask that?” John stroked the side of her face, and she knew that he would wait all night for her if necessary.

  Genna reached up to touch his face, drew it close to her own. “Thank you,” she said simply, then kissed the side of his mouth, as if to draw strength from him.

  “Go on, now, before Miss Lilly tucks him in for the night.”

  “I doubt I’ll be long.” Genna opened the door and stood on the sidewalk for a long moment, gathering her courage, before slamming the car door and walking purposefully up to the front door.

  Miss Evans opened it on the first ring.

  “Did you forget something?” the housekeeper asked.

  “Actually, yes, I did.” Genna smiled and stepped past the woman before she could react. “I just need to ask Mr. Homer one more thing. I won’t be a moment. . .”

  Genna’s heels tapped lightly on the hardwood floor as she found her way back to Mr. Homer’s sanctuary.

  “I thought you might be back,” he said without looking at the door. “I thought there might be something else you might want to say.”

  “Did you know about Michael?” Genna asked from the doorway. “Did you know what he was?”

  “You’re asking me if I knew what an abomination my brother was? If I knowingly sent you and your sister and all those other girls into the hands of a monster?” he said pointedly. “No. No, I did not.”

  “You never suspected—”

  “I knew there was something. . . different. . . about my brother. I can’t deny that. Knew that, for all his intelligence, he couldn’t hold a job. That he’d never had friends or played the way other kids did. That even as an adult, he’d never been able to tolerate anyone, except Mother, of course. And occasionally, me. But never, not for a moment, could I have suspected what he was.”