Joanna recovered from her space sickness as soon as the Clippership lit its engines for the return flight from the orbiting space station to Savannah. Once they got home, she phoned Bradley Arnold and insisted that they meet with Greg at her house instead of in the corporate offices.
“It will be much more relaxed,” she said to Arnold’s image in the phone screen. “After all, it’s been his home, too.”
Arnold agreed. “I’ll have him there first thing tomorrow,” he promised.
They were in Joanna’s upstairs sitting room, next to the master bedroom suite. Joanna was reclined on the chaise longue. She reached out wearily to turn off the phone console on the table beside her.
Joanna turned to Paul as the screen went blank. “We’ll resolve everything tomorrow.” She smiled happily.
Sitting alone on the love seat beneath her portrait, Paul muttered, “I hope so.”
They met in the spacious parlor of the house. It had been decorated in what Paul had always thought of as mock Gone With the Wind style: frills and doodads everywhere; long sweeping curtains of heavy silk on the tall windows; overstuffed furniture; patterned wallpaper. The house was only a few years old. Gregory had built it in a fit of conspicuous consumption. The worse the corporate profit-and-loss picture became, the more lavishly he spent, it had seemed to Paul.
So now he sat tensely on the brocade-covered sofa while morning sunlight poured through the windows and Joanna fiddled nervously with the bric-a-brac on the fireplace mantle.
It was a gas-fed fireplace, and the architect’s drawing of the house that hung above the mantfe concealed the room’s big television screen, one of the first thin-film Windowall screens built in orbit.
Paul heard a car pull up on the driveway outside. Joanna stiffened, then hurried to a window.
“They’re here,” she said, looking pleased and apprehensive at the same time. Then her face clouded. “Greg’s brought Melissa Hart with him.”
Paul’s insides wound even tighter. This isn’t going to be a reconciliation, he knew. It’s war.
Greg still wore a black suit and tie. Paul thought his underwear might also be in mourning. Dark circles rimmed his reddened eyes. He looked somber, almost gaunt. Melissa, wearing a knee-length violet skirt and simple white blouse, seemed as tense as Paul felt. Bradley Arnold, in a rumpled gray business suit, was the only one smiling.
Greg had an attache case with him. The videodisk must be in there, Paul thought.
“I’m glad that we could all get together like this,” Arnold said as they sat down on the two sofas that faced each other across the carved cherrywood coffeetable. Greg and the board chairman sat on one sofa, Joanna and Paul on the other. Greg clutched the attache case on his knees. Melissa took the overstuffed armchair by the end of the coffeetable, facing the cold, empty fireplace.
The butler came in, carrying a tray of juices, coffee, tea, and a plate of toast. He deposited the laden tray on the coffeetable, then stood off to one side.
“Have you all had your breakfasts?” Joanna asked mechanically. “Would you like anything from the kitchen?”
They all said no, and Joanna dismissed the butler.
“Now then,” she said as the butler left the room, “I believe you’ve brought the videodisk, Greg?”
“It’s right here,” he said, his voice low.
“Before we do or say anything else, then, I think we should all see it.”
Arnold bobbed his head in agreement. Paul glanced at Melissa. Why did Greg bring her here, except to show me that he’s got her now?
Greg opened the attache case and took out a single, unmarked videodisk, about the size of a credit card. Paul thought it ridiculous to lug around the tooled leather case just to carry one slim disk; like using a heavy-lift booster to put a sugar cube in orbit.
Joanna started to say, “I’ll get the butler—”
But Greg got to his feet with a wintry smile. “I know how to use the TV, mother,” he said. “This has been my home, too, you know.”
Sarcastic bastard, Paul said to himself.
Greg flicked down the hidden access panel in the mantle-piece and powered up the TV. The architect’s drawing faded away and the wide display panel turned soft gray. Then Greg inserted the videodisk and returned to his seat beside Arnold.
Paul stared at the screen. It streaked random colors for a few moments, then Gregory Masterson’s face filled the screen, bloated and distorted because it was almost pressed against the camera lens.
Gregory was mumbling something. Then he leaned back and they could see he was sitting at his desk, his face dark and grim. Paul was startled to realize how much alike father and son looked.
Joanna’s hand reached into Paul’s and gripped tight.
“Fuckin’ sonsabitches,” Gregory muttered. “How the fuck’m I s’posed to know if this piece of crap is in focus? Autofocus my hairy ass…” His voice trailed off into incoherent mumbles.
Paul saw the crystal decanter of whiskey at Gregory’s elbow. He was waving a heavy old-fashioned glass as he grumbled, whiskey sloshing over its rim onto the desk. The Smith Wesson revolver was resting in front of him, big and menacing, polished steel, long ribbed barrel and fine-grained walnut grip.
“It’s killing me,” Gregory said, looking straight into the camera. “What they’ve done to me… what they’re doin’ now… might’s well be dead. Serve ’em right, the goddam’ pricks.”
Paul felt his insides turning to ice. Joanna was staring fixedly at the big screen, where her late husband loomed over her. She seemed transfixed, unmoving as a statue, not even breathing, like a deer that freezes when it’s caught in an automobile’s headlights.
With his free hand Gregory picked up the heavy revolver. “See this? Oughtta blow their fuckin’ heads off with this. Blam! Right between the eyes. Or maybe shoot off their goddam’ balls, see how they like it.”
Their balls? Paul wondered. What’s he talking about?
“Get ’em before they get me,” Gregory muttered darkly. “Only way to do it…’ He lapsed into incomprehensible mumbles again.
Then he put the old-fashioned glass down with exaggerated care and transferred the gun to his right hand. He studied it for long moments, breathing heavily, mouth hanging open. Paul thought he might have been having trouble focusing his eyes.
“Get ’em before they get me,” he repeated thickly. “This gun’s my protection, my insurance policy. Make sure they can’t hurt me anymore. Protect myself…”
Suddenly Gregory’s eyes blazed with fury and he swung the gun madly. The picture abruptly went dead.
For several seconds no one said a word. They all stared at the blank screen.
At last Arnold spoke up. “That’s it”
Paul pulled his eyes away from the screen and saw that Greg was staring at him accusingly.
“It’s pretty much of a jumble,” Joanna said, disengaging her hand from Paul’s. “Is that the original disk or the enhanced version?”
“That’s the enhancement,” Arnold replied.
“The original’s in a bank vault,” Greg said tightly, “with orders to turn it over to the police if anything should happen to me.”
Joanna gave her son a pale smile. “Isn’t that just a trifle melodramatic?”
Paul could see that Greg’s hands were trembling slightly.
“No, it’s not melodramatic, mother,” he answered. “It seems very likely that someone murdered my father. Whoever did it—” he shifted his gaze toward Paul “—might try to kill me to keep this disk out of the hands of the authorities.”
“That’s stupid,” Paul snapped.
“I don’t think so.”
“In the first place,” Paul said, “the disk doesn’t show anything — except that Gregory was blind drunk and had a loaded pistol in his hand.”
“And felt his life was in danger,” Arnold added.
“He said someone was killing him,” Greg said, still staring at Paul. “He felt betrayed.”
Paul started to retort that Gregory was an expert on betrayal, but decided it would only make the situation hotter, so he bit it back.
“Are you saying,” Joanna asked her son, her voice tense, strained, “that Gregory committed suicide because he felt betrayed?”
Greg turned molten eyes to her. “I’m saying that my father was frantic. That his feelings of betrayal drove him to drink—”
“Then he must’ve started feeling betrayed twenty years ago,” Paul snapped.
“And after he passed out from drinking,” Greg went on, glowering, “someone slipped into his office, put that gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”
“Bullshit,” Paul growled.
Joanna asked, “Who are you accusing, Greg?”
“We all know who stood to gain the most from my father’s death.”
“Paul couldn’t have done it,” Joanna said, so calmly that Paul wondered how she could control herself so well.
“Why not?”
“Because he was here, with me, that afternoon,” she said, her voice low but firm. “We spent the afternoon in bed together. That’s where I was when the phone call came through.”
Greg’s face went white with rage.
“So if you think that Paul murdered your father,” Joanna continued, “then you’re going to have to blame the two of us. I can’t prove that we were here that afternoon. I obviously didn’t want the servants to see us together.”
“I don’t believe you.” Greg said. “You’re trying to protect him.”
Almost triumphantly, Joanna said, “If Paul murdered your father, then I helped him. Go to the police with that!”
“You were sleeping with him!” Greg accused. “You betrayed my father.”
“Your father betrayed me a hundred times and more,” Joanna said, her voice edging higher. “Paul was the only consolation I had.”
“Paul and who else?” Greg snarled. “How many other men have you—”
Paul jumped to his feet and leaned across the coffeetable to haul Greg up by his lapels. “That’s enough! You’d better shut your mouth.”
Greg pulled free, glaring pure hatred. Bradley Arnold, never moving from his place on the sofa, smiled and raised his hands soothingly.
“Gentlemen!” Arnold said. “Please! Let’s not allow our emotions to get the better of our judgment.”
For a long moment Paul and Greg stood confronting each other, the coffeetable between them: Greg tall and slim, Paul a solid welterweight.
“Sit down, both of you,” Joanna commanded.
“Please,” Arnold said. “Let’s try to keep this on a civilized plane.”
Paul took his place beside Joanna again. Greg sat down next to Arnold. Paul saw that Melissa looked alarmed, frightened.
“If we had wanted to go to the police,” Arnold said, “we would have done that days ago.”
We? Paul’s ears perked up. Arnold said we .
“The reason I set up this meeting,” the board chairman went on, “was to try to come to some sort of understanding about all this. Keep it in the family, so to speak.”
“Then why is she here?” Joanna asked, gesturing toward Melissa.
“She’s with me,” Greg said. “If it hadn’t been for Melissa these past few weeks I think I would’ve gone off the deep end.”
You’re already in over your head, kid, Paul said to himself.
“Now, now,” said Arnold. “Let’s try to be reasonable and come up with a solution that makes some sense.”
“I don’t see where the problem is,” Paul said. “Gregory committed suicide. That’s all there is to it.”
“He was murdered,” Greg insisted sullenly.
“Then show your pissin’ disk to the cops and see what they make of it.”
“No!” Arnold boomed. His deep voice seemed to make the heavy window drapes flutter. “We should settle this among ourselves.”
“Settle it how?” Joanna asked.
“Greg will refrain from showing this disk to the board of directors—”
“Refrain?” Paul snapped. “He’s got no business showing that disk to anybody.”
Arnold shook his head disappointedly. “Paul, I’m sure you understand that even though the disk may not constitute the kind of evidence the police could use, it would certainly look very bad for you in the eyes of the board members.”
“Especially,” Melissa pointed out softly, “with Joanna’s alibi for you.”
Paul sank back on the sofa cushions. “You sonsofbitches are going to use this disk to drive a wedge between me and the board?”
“You can resign,” Greg said. “Just quit and leave the company and I won’t have to show the disk to anybody.”
“Resign?”
“You have a golden parachute,” Arnold pointed out. “You won’t be hurting, financially.”
“Quit the company? Is that all you want?”
“No,” said Greg. “There’s one additional thing you’ll have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Divorce my mother.”
Paul got to his feet again, slbwly this time. “This meeting’s over,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s the door, Greg. Get out.”
Still sitting, Greg looked up at him sullenly. “You can’t throw me out. This is my house.”
“Not any more.”
Greg’s eyes widened and he looked past Paul to his mother. “I live here, too!”
“Get out,” Paul repeated, pronouncing each word distinctly. “You can send somebody over to clear out your things later. Now get out of here before I throw you through a window.”
Greg shot to his feet. “Mom, are you going to let him do this to me?”
“I think it would be best,” Joanna said. “We obviously can’t live under the same roof anymore. Not now.”
“You’re letting him throw me out of my own home?” Greg’s voice climbed an octave higher.
Arnold lumbered to his feet. “Come on, Greg, you can stay at my house until you find a place of your own.”
The old man pulled at Greg’s jacket sleeve. Looking bewildered, hurt and angry at the same time, Greg let himself be led away toward the door.
Melissa stood up. “For what it’s worth,” she said softly, “I told him this would happen.” Then she left, too.