CHAPTER 10

Brandon’s emotions swung from anger to melancholy as he drove across Long Island and into East Hampton. He couldn’t see the ocean from the highway, but he could smell it through the open windows, bringing back memories of childhood exploits on the white sands of Cooper’s Beach. He still couldn’t believe his father was gone. Even at college in a different city, Brandon had never been able to escape the fear of his father’s disapproval. Even now, he found himself wondering what his father would think of his choice to skip commencement.

He hated his father. The man had barely spent two hours together with him, but he always seemed to sail in and ruin whatever plans Brandon had for his life. Lego camp? Not posh enough. His friends were always the wrong friends and his dreams the wrong dreams. Despite this, to Brandon’s own disgust, it was always his father that he tried to please.

He had fantasized that the next time he drove this route, it would be to bring Abby home to meet him. He had wanted his father to approve of her. And somehow, he had thought he would. How could anyone disapprove of Abby? But his father had quickly relieved him of that delusion. All it had taken was a text home with her picture and the announcement they were dating. His father’s response had been: “You can do better.”

He hadn’t even met her. She was brilliant, beautiful, funny, kind, and unfailingly polite. She hadn’t grown up with money, but she was graceful and intelligent enough to impress anyway. She was perfect. She had been perfect. And now she was gone.

Brandon’s mind kept going round and round, trying to process her death into something that would make sense. It just couldn’t be true. He had to fix it. He would do anything, pay anything, if only he could figure out how to make it right. He felt the familiar catch in his throat as tears threatened to break through. He wanted to go back in time and cancel the demo, or else give Aisha the finger the night she came to visit and tell her he didn’t need her money, that he would do it all himself.

He cried out in rage and pounded his fist again and again on the steering wheel. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. It had been Tyler’s software, Tyler’s stupid broken kill switches—why wasn’t it Tyler lying dead on the track? In a just world, it would have been.

Brandon took deep breaths and got himself under control. A tiny voice whispered to him that he was just as culpable for Abby’s death as Tyler or anyone else, but he knew that if he listened to that voice, he would go mad. Part of him just wanted to drive into a tree and end it all, but he didn’t quite have the courage for that. He didn’t know what life would look like now that she was gone, but he knew that killing himself wasn’t what she would have wanted.

He drove past his old high school—another rush of memories—and on toward his family’s home, an eight-bedroom mansion with a swimming pool and easy access to both the beach and the golf course. It was technically their summer home, but his mother had loved it here even in the off-season, and so Brandon had spent most of his childhood here. Since their marriage, his father and Jillian had lived here on their own. Now, he supposed, only Jillian did.

Jillian. Twenty-nine years old, sexy and shameless, she had caught his father’s eye on the beach one summer and managed to insinuate herself into his bed and into his fortune. It was embarrassing. She was so obviously a trophy wife he wondered how his father, who would have turned sixty this year, could stand to be seen with her in public. Nobody thought it was about love.

It was a betrayal of Brandon’s mother, and it was a betrayal of him. His first summer at grad school, Brandon had come home to the house where he had grown up—where his mother had raised and cared for him—to find her walking around the halls in a bikini. She’d apparently returned from sunning herself at the beach, but hadn’t bothered to change. His father had actually suggested at dinner that night that if he wanted, he could call her ‘Mom.’ Brandon had broken a chair against the wall and had never come home again.

They had visited him at Penn twice, and both times he had been civil. Dad was paying for school, after all, and had even grudgingly contributed a few times to their autocar venture. But Brandon would never acknowledge Jillian as part of the family. She was a gold-digging whore who hadn’t even had the decency to call him herself when his father died. She was probably celebrating. He wondered how much of his inheritance his father had squandered on her. The will would be read on Monday morning, so he’d find out soon enough.

He pulled up in front of the house and parked. He’d thought about finding a hotel to avoid seeing her, but this was his house.

She had no right to stay here and keep him out. And it’s not like there wasn’t plenty of room.

He found her in the den, wearing workout pants and a tank top. She sat on the floor in a stretching pose, with one leg straight to either side, reaching both arms toward one foot with her forehead against her knee. She looked up when she heard him come in. Her eyes were red and puffy.

“Brandon,” she said, her voice soft and compassionate. “I’m sorry—I was just finishing up a workout. It’s good to see you.” She stood and wiped one sweaty hand against her pants before holding it out to shake. He took it, and she squeezed his hand briefly. She looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He was a good man.”

He looked away, uncomfortable. What kind of woman did an exercise routine when her husband was dead? Was she trying to keep her figure for the next millionaire she seduced? He couldn’t look at her without thinking of her sharing his father’s bed. This had been a bad idea. He should have stayed in a hotel.

“Look,” she said. “This is your house now. I know your father meant to leave it to you. I have friends in the city, so I’m just going to stay with them for a few days, until this is all worked out. I’ve been packing up my things in boxes upstairs. I’ll have it all moved next week.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Brandon heard himself say. “There’s plenty of room here. You don’t have to leave.”

She put a hand against his face. “You’re sweet. But I think both of us will be more comfortable if I go.” She paused. “I heard about your girlfriend. I’m so sorry. Both of them, within a few days—I can’t imagine.”

He pulled away. He didn’t want her to talk about Abby. He certainly didn’t want her sympathy. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it would be better for you to go.”

She sighed. “Let me just take a shower, and then I’ll be on my way. I’ll walk down to the train, and you’ll be rid of me.”

He winced. Maybe he’d been too harsh. “I’ll drive you to the station,” he said.

“I can walk it. It’s only a mile away.”

“I’ll drive you,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

While she showered, he wandered the house. Jillian hadn’t made much of a mark on the decorative style of the place. It looked much as it had when he’d lived there: the same oil paintings on the wall, the same glass figurines, the same grand piano that no one in the house knew how to play. Maybe Jillian could; he didn’t know. Though he doubted she was the musical type.

She came out dressed in white pants and a sea green top. He had to admit she looked stunning. Her beauty, though, just made him all the more angry. Why did a woman like this, who used her looks to manipulate an old man out of his money, get to live on, while an angel like Abby died young? Nothing made sense. He felt his muscles clenching again and only relaxed them with an effort. “Ready?” he said.

She had one small suitcase, which he took from her and loaded into the trunk of the Prius. The drive to the train station took only a few minutes. He parked, retrieved her suitcase from the trunk, and carried it up to the platform for her.

The platform was under construction, much of it cordoned off by striped yellow tape. Blue plywood panels blocked the skeleton of a new walkway and covered waiting area. A wooden framework marked a new concrete ramp that hadn’t been poured. A sign read, “Station still in operation. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

It was mid-afternoon on a Friday, and no one else was on the platform. With the waiting area under construction, nothing blocked the brightness of the sun. The black half-sphere of a station camera hung limply from the half-finished roof, its wires trailing free. No one was watching them. Brandon set the case down.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you later.” He wished he would never see her again, but he knew she would be at the funeral on Saturday and at the reading of the will on Monday.

She took a breath, like she was facing up to do something hard. “Look,” she said. “I ought to warn you.” He turned back, wary. “Your dad told me about his plans. I know what’s in the will.”

That didn’t sound good. He felt a flush of heat in his neck. “What are you saying?”

“Your father wanted you to have his money, but . . . not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“He’s giving it to me, to use on your behalf, until you turn thirty.”

Brandon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “He gave it to you? All of it?”

“Just until you’re thirty. He said he wanted you to have some maturity before . . . he didn’t want you throwing his money away on . . .” Her expression changed, and she took a step back. Brandon realized he was looming over her.

He didn’t care. A deep fire of rage erupted into his chest. He stepped forward, closing the gap again. “On what?”

The train was coming. He could feel it vibrating through the taut muscles of his shoulders. She looked suddenly nervous. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

He moved closer, driving her back against the rail. He was shouting now. “Tell me!”

“It wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have said it.”

He grabbed her shoulders roughly, the sea green material of her shirt crumpling in his hands. “Throwing his money away on what?”

The silver and blue LIRR train shrieked as it moved toward them. He could hardly hear her over the din. “On your tramp of a girlfriend!”

If there had been some object nearby to kick or punch or break, maybe he wouldn’t have done it. He hadn’t planned it. But there was no room for thought in the blazing inferno of anger that consumed his mind. “It was him!” she said. “I didn’t say it—it was him!” But Brandon wasn’t listening. With a roar, Brandon pushed, lifted, hurled her over the rail and directly into the path of the oncoming train.

It took only a second. She didn’t even scream before the hurtling metal vehicle thundered past, taking her with it.

Brandon stared, hardly breathing, astonished at what he had just done. Had anyone seen? The platform was still empty. The inert camera still hung from the roof, its wires disconnected. The train was screeching to a halt, however, and there must be passengers on board. Had they seen him push her? Could they identify him?

He raced for the stairs, in a daze, his heart hammering in his chest, and almost tripped over her suitcase. He had carried that. His fingerprints would be on it. He snatched it up and took it with him, down the stairs two at a time, to the Prius. He hurled it into the passenger seat and climbed in after it, starting the engine.

He backed up without looking and then floored the accelerator, racing out of the parking lot and toward the highway. He turned west, toward the city, and pushed the speedometer up to eighty. His hands were shaking, and he felt lightheaded.

No one knew he had been there. He had told no one of his plans to come to Long Island. He hadn’t stopped for gas or used his credit card, not since the New Jersey Turnpike. Tyler knew he was heading home, but that could just as easily have been to his father’s other house in Manhattan.

Thinking fast, Brandon dialed an old high school friend who was now performing in shows on Broadway. “Hey, Christine,” he said. “I just got in to my dad’s place and wanted to catch one of your shows tonight. Can you get me in the door?”

She responded pleasantly, saying nothing about his father, meaning she probably hadn’t heard the news of his death. She told him yes, she could get him a seat, and it would be great if he could stay for drinks afterward. As alibis went, it was pretty flimsy, but he hoped it would at least establish an intention to stay in Manhattan rather than East Hampton. Not that it would do much good. He was an obvious suspect.

Would someone be willing to lie for him? Give him a fake alibi? No, too dangerous. The best he could do was get to the house and spend the evening seeing people. There would be a several-hour time gap between stopping for gas in New Jersey and entering Manhattan, but he would just say he had stopped for a meal and paid with cash. He took the long way, driving clear around to the other side of Manhattan so he could enter through the Lincoln Tunnel, as he should have done if that had been his destination in the first place, and finally reached his father’s house.

The final problem was getting rid of the suitcase. He found some bleach under the sink and a pair of leather gloves in his father’s coat pocket, and scrubbed the handle and the plastic rim to get rid of any fingerprints. He slid the paper tag identifying Jillian out of the tag holder and ran water over it until it turned to sludge. Unzipping the case, he looked for anything that could easily identify her—anything with a name or phone number— and found nothing. He closed it and wheeled it outside.

As he walked to the subway, he felt conspicuous, as if all the eyes of the neighborhood were on him. No one knew him here, though, and there was no sight more ordinary than a man walking to a station with a suitcase. He took the subway to Grand Central Station, left the case in a bathroom stall, and walked out. When it was discovered, it would join the hundreds of lost cases that were found there all the time. Without any way to contact the owner, it would sit in storage indefinitely. It would certainly never be connected to the death of a woman in East Hampton.

He took the subway to the Forty-Ninth Street station in time to walk to his friend’s theater and catch the show. He barely noticed what it was about. All he could think of was walking out to find the police waiting for him. But when he finally did leave with Christine and some of her friends, there was no one.

He saw the news story the next morning: “Woman Jumps to Her Death on LIRR Track.” The article went on to say that this was the third such suicide in as many months. There was no mention of a police investigation or suspected homicide.

Brandon drove back to Long Island the next day as planned for his father’s funeral. His mind reviewed the events of the previous afternoon constantly, trying to think of what evidence he might have left behind. He could have left a fingerprint or DNA evidence on her body, of course, but there was nothing he could do about that. He would just have to hope no evidence had survived.

The funeral was mercifully short. Brandon realized Jillian must have arranged the details. He felt suddenly annoyed that she had done so without consulting him, though of course he wouldn’t have wanted to be involved. After the service, the procession of vehicles with funeral flags followed the hearse to the cemetery, where his father’s body was interred.

When it was all finally over and he turned to go, he saw two men waiting for him. His heart started to race. This was it. He had missed something. They knew.

“Mr. Kincannon?” one of them said. He flashed a badge. “Sir, we just have a few questions.”

It was all Brandon could do not to blurt out a confession. Somehow, a voice that didn’t sound like his said, “What can I do for you?”

They were very polite. They asked how well he had known Jillian, and where he had been the day before. He answered as calmly as he could, and to his amazement, they seemed to accept his story. They were even apologetic. Each of them shook his hand in turn. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Kincannon.”

Mr. Kincannon. Of course. He was Mr. Kincannon now. Lord of the Kincannon fortune with all that it entailed. No wonder they were so polite.

He wasn’t going down for this. They would accept the suicide story and not look too closely. He had grown up with money, but he’d never really owned it, never really knew what it could do. He was untouchable. Brandon smiled. He could do anything now.