TWENTY-SEVEN

Steps sounded on the stairs behind us. I whipped around, putting the cup behind my back. Inky stood in the doorway, with his arm around Spiro, holding him upright.

“He insisted I help him get up here,” Inky explained. Spiro looked like death warmed over and was barely moving under his own power, but he was at long last conscious.

“Where is he?!” he rasped. “I’m going to kill him!”

“Who?” I looked around and then realized, of course, that he meant Russ, who was staring at him malevolently from across the room.

Spiro tried to make a move for Russ, but didn’t have the strength to break Inky’s hold on him. “Easy, Spiro. He’s not worth it.”

“He is worth it, damn it!”

Russ’s expression darkened in garish contrast to the yellowish gray bruise covering one side of his face. He pointed to his cheek with a stubby middle finger. “This better not leave a mark.” Brenda looked up at the bruise nervously. So there’d been no bar fight keeping him out of work the other day. Spiro hadn’t gone willingly. I should have guessed.

I glanced from Spiro to Russ, and back again. There was something I was missing here. Some association that wasn’t clear yet.

“My treasure!” Spiro cried in horror as he saw the dismantled kaleidoscope. I still had the cup in my hand. “Where is it?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” I reassured him.

Russ saw his chance and lunged for me. I stepped up on top of the overturned chair and went over the other side, still on my feet and miraculously holding the cup upright. I felt a painful spasm in my calf and knew I’d pulled another muscle.

Inky propped Spiro up against the wall. “Now, stay put! Do as I say!” He crossed the room at warp speed, and put Russ into a headlock. Dolly picked up the gun, which Brenda had stowed over in one of the eight corners of the room, and trained it on her son, not for the first time.

“Now, settle yourself down and shut up,” she ordered. “I ain’t shot a deer yet this season but I’ll settle for you.”

“He’s always had everything! The best of everything!” Russ spit out, still trapped in the iron circle of Inky’s left arm. “Now he’s got a bunch of jewels too! It’s not fair!”

“Life ain’t fair, remember? If you’d gone to community college for restaurant management or up to Wanakena to the forest ranger school like I wanted you to, you’d be making good money by now.” She turned to Sophie. “No offense. We’ve got good jobs here and you treat us real well,” she said sincerely. Sophie nodded at her.

“Them jewels should be mine!” Inky tightened his grip. “They’re half mine, anyway,” Russ choked out.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dolly asked him, waving the barrel of the gun up and down.

“Them rocks, this house, they’re half mine. Basil was my father too.”

We all stared at him. Sophie’s face was white and stony, her lips compressing into a line so hard it was possible her face might crumble from the pressure. Dolly’s face turned scarlet. There was a long moment of silence; then she burst out laughing.

“You idiot!” she managed between guffaws. “Basil wasn’t your father!”

Sophie did not relax. It was pretty clear that she had suspected something like this might be true. Now I understood why she had kept Dolly and Russ around all these years, even after we knew he’d been sneaking steaks and bottles of beer and liquor out in the boxes of vegetable trimmings. Maybe having them around was her way of keeping her husband’s memory alive. Or more likely, she wanted Russ and Dolly where she could keep an eye on them in case they tried to capitalize on the relationship. She was not taking Dolly’s word for it, but she remained silent.

“Oh, come off it, Ma! He must be my father. Look at me and Spiro!”

I looked from Spiro, who appeared to be preparing to throw up, back to Russ to see whether there was any resemblance. They were about the same height, and both had dark hair and similar hazel eyes. Russ was thirty pounds heavier and ten years Spiro’s junior, but hard living had aged him prematurely. All in all, their similarities could easily have been coincidental. I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t think anybody else could either.

“Russ, your father’s dead. You know that.” Dolly’s first husband, Cliff, who refused to wear anything more rigid than a greasy Yankees ball cap on his head, had died when he hit a tree root hidden by the snow and flipped his four-wheeler thirteen years ago. We’d provided the funeral lunch at no cost.

Russ didn’t look convinced. Dolly sighed, then continued. “Russ, how long have I been working here?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Watch your mouth, mister. Didn’t I teach you better than to cuss in front of ladies?” Brenda stood up a little straighter. I doubt she’d been called a lady too many times in her life.

“Well, I’ve been working here for thirty years. This summer is my anniversary,” she added, tipping her head in my direction to make sure I’d heard. We’d have to plan some kind of celebration after Labor Day, or at least a gift. “Now, how old are you?”

“Thirty-three,” he answered, and I could see him mentally doing the math, none too quickly, all things considered. He looked up at his mother. “You mean Cliff really was my father, and you weren’t banging Basil?”

“I said watch your language! Now, you apologize to Sophie.”

“Sorry, Sophie,” he said. Inky let go of him but blocked his way to the stairs.

I looked from Sophie to Dolly and back. Dolly hadn’t answered the question at all, but I wasn’t going to say anything about it. It was very, very quiet. Sophie finally broke the silence.

“Come downstairs,” she ordered. “I made moussaka today. Russ won’t get any kind of good food in jail.”