Chapter 25

 

Ron helped Victoria to sit up. She swore her injured shoulder felt better in that position than lying down. I brought her a cup of tea and she began her story.

“I’m afraid I lied to the police,” she said. “When the detective asked if I knew the men who shot me, I said no.”

“You did know them?” Ron’s arm holding the cup froze halfway to his mouth.

“Well, strictly speaking, no, I don’t. But one of the men introduced himself. He said he was my father.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked.

“There were two of them,” she continued. “An older man with silver hair and a younger one, a big thuggish type. He’s the one who brandished the gun. The older man told me he was my father. I don’t know what he expected me to say or do.”

“You’d never seen this man before? Not even a photo?”

She shook her head. “I sure don’t think so.”

“Vic,” Ron said, “your mother told you your father was killed in Vietnam and we know that’s not true.”

She sent him a puzzled glance and he explained our conclusion based on what Elsa had told us.

“I never even questioned it. Mom rarely talked about him and never spoke of the war at all. I gathered they’d been married a very short time before he went, and then he never came home. It was just us two girls all those years. We laughed a lot. She was playful and fun. I lost her way too soon.”

“Any idea why this man would show up now, so many years later? And why on earth would he bring along someone to threaten you?”

She gave a ragged sigh and handed her mug over to me. “He wanted something, some kind of papers. I don’t know—I was so stunned at what he said about being my father that the rest of it kind of zipped right past me.”

“Papers. What sort of papers?” Ron asked.

“He used the word evidence. Said my mother stole some evidence from him.”

“Evidence of what?”

“I should have asked. I was just so … shaken. I was already in my robe, getting ready for bed, and these guys show up in my house and make this unbelievable announcement, and all at once he wants evidence of something. I couldn’t think. I just kept shouting at them to get out, go away.” Her voice rose, the panic of that moment still fresh.

“I was standing right there,” she said, pointing to the kitchen island, “and I could only think I should get to my phone. When I started toward my purse on the dining chair, the guy with the gun got really anxious—or over-eager, or something—and the gun went off. I just remember being shocked to find myself on the floor by the sofa. Then they were standing over me. The older one was furious—kept talking about this so-called evidence—and the other one wanted to shoot me again. Somehow I got to my feet and I just ran, right out the front door. I remember thinking I had to avoid the street and the lights, get out of sight. After that, it’s a blur.”

I could see she was rapidly tiring and I suggested she sleep some more. She nodded but said the sofa wasn’t comfortable. I could imagine—the stuffing in the cushions had been pulled out and hastily replaced by me. We would need to send it out to be reupholstered.

Ron helped her to her feet, asking if she was okay to walk on the big clunky boot. When she admitted to being so filled with painkillers nothing bothered her, he helped her to the bedroom. I cleared the tea things and tidied the kitchen, thinking about what we’d just heard.

Suppose this man really was Victoria’s father. He’d been out of her life, living somewhere else all these years and had somehow figured out where she was. The fact that he described the items he wanted as ‘evidence’ led me to believe he’d committed a crime of some sort.

The idea shocked me but the possibility was certainly there. There was a lot more to this whole story and for the life of me I couldn’t quite put it together yet.

I went into the bedroom where Ron had helped Victoria out of her robe and under the covers. Her eyelids were droopy but she came around a little when she saw me.

“Did I do the right thing, not telling the police the man said he was my father? Surely whatever he wanted from me couldn’t be important after all this time.” Her voice faded to a murmur.

Ron assured her everything would be all right, kissed her forehead and tucked the blanket up to her neck. We left the room, closing the door behind us.

“What do you think?” I asked, once we were back in the living room. “Does Kent Taylor need to know that part of it?”

He paced the length of the room. “The thing I can’t figure is, unless his own life was on the line, why would this stranger have showed up with some big muscle man to help enforce his demand?”

“Right. Why wouldn’t he have taken the time to get to know Victoria gradually, work his way into her confidence and then ask about the papers? He might have had her cooperation and even access to her house if he’d played it differently.”

“I think we have to ask, what crime was serious enough the evidence of it could still hold threat over him after more than thirty years?”

I thought about that. There weren’t many. The statute of limitations would have freed him from nearly anything, except murder. Did Victoria’s mother know the father of her child was a killer? It would certainly explain why she’d rarely mentioned him and made up a story about his death.