Ask Cassandra

Chapter Thirteen

Manny took another swig of cold coffee and grimaced at his spreadsheets. No matter how he massaged the numbers, he couldn’t make them work with the new budget. If he kept the plans as they were, he just couldn’t afford the new material prices. If they lowered the luxury level on the carriage house rooms, he’d have to charge less for renting them. But the maintenance and staffing costs would be nearly identical, so the profit margins would be so much lower. And since the bank had given him a shorter term on the loan, he couldn’t even guarantee they’d be able to keep up with the payments at that lower income level.

He”d explained it all to his mother at lunchtime, who, for once, hadn’t blithely assured him she was sure he could handle it. She had indicated that she was going to have a sharp word with Simon at Midas the next time she ran into him, and Manny hadn’t tried to stop her. Simon really deserved it. That two-week delay had blown the whole project out of the water.

Manny rubbed the bridge of his nose. Hours ago, he’d looked at the dimming sunlight and contemplated a run, only to be swallowed by yet another idea that hadn’t panned out when he iterated it. He was starting to fuzz and lose focus, and it was probably time to stop. He started when the doorbell rang, echoing in the otherwise empty house, and went down the stairs in a rush.

It was Theo, hovering on the doorstep, looking unaccustomedly bashful.

Manny blinked, wondering why he hadn’t just used his key. “Is something up?” he asked.

“Your mom told me about the trouble with the carriage house plan,” Theo said, shifting from foot to foot. “I wondered if I could help.”

“Oh,” Manny said. “Well, if you wanted to take a look at my figures, you’d be welcome.” He couldn’t do any harm, at least, and there was an outside chance he’d come up with something.

“No,” Theo said. “I mean, help financially. I live pretty frugal, and I’ve got a fair amount in savings. It’d be a gift, not a loan.”

Manny stopped. “Did Mom tell you how much of a gap we were looking at?”

“Yes,” Theo said steadily, and named the number. “I can cover that.”

Manny had to grab the doorknob to stop his knees from giving out. “You have that much in savings?”

Theo’s eyes were gleaming in pleasure at the surprise. “That won’t even clean me out,” he said. “Doesn’t touch my retirement accounts, either.”

“Theo, I don’t know what to say. That’s incredibly generous. But I don’t know if I should let you do it.”

“Look, I don’t have kids,” Theo said gruffly. “Everything I have is eventually going to you boys and Aerope anyway. Arthur would have wanted me to take care of you.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, looking defensive. “Just take the money, okay?”

“Come in out of the cold and we’ll talk about it?” Manny said, and then they both turned at the sound of a car coming down the driveway, slowly appearing out of the dark.

“That Cassie’s car?” Theo said.

“Yes.”

“Huh. Thought she was going to be away for a couple days.”

“Maybe she forgot something,” Manny said. His heart was thumping unpleasantly hard. If Cassie had come back to tell him whatever she’d found in person, it couldn’t be good.

Theo gave him a conspiratorial look. “Maybe she did.”

Cassie jumped out of the car. She was wearing some kind of suit, with tights and high heels, ridiculous in this weather. She walked towards them as if the cold was the last thing on her mind, the lights from the house casting refracted shadows behind her. She spared Theo a smile, but her eyes were serious and intent on Manny. “Do you have a moment?” she asked.

“Thanks, Theo,” Manny said. “I mean it, really, thank you so much. Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“Sure, sure,” Theo said. “You kids have fun.” He clapped Manny on the shoulder, and Manny held the door open for Cassie and didn’t even wait for Theo to turn away before he closed it behind her.

“Is Aerope here?” Cassie said immediately.

“She’s having a girls’ night out with Beverley and Marie, and staying in town tonight,” Manny said. “She says you inspired her.”

“Okay,” Cassie said, and rubbed her hands together nervously. “Okay. I’ll tell you and then you can decide whether I tell her, or you do, or both of us.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Pretty bad,” Cassie admitted. “I didn’t think I should tell you over the phone. And I thought about texting to say I was coming back and needed to talk, but then I didn’t want you to worry for three hours while I made the drive, and then the whole way home I kept thinking I should stop and text you anyway, but it just seemed easier to keep going. I haven’t eaten anything. I might not be thinking too clearly.”

Manny wasn’t distracted enough to miss that she’d absently called Tantalus “home”. But now wasn’t the time to point that out. “Do you want dinner first?” he asked instead.

She shook her head. “No, I’ve got to get this out. Do you still have those protein bars in your office?”

“You got it,” Manny said, and as they went up the stairs he tried to steady his hands, which kept being annoyingly shaky. Cassie demolished two protein bars and downed most of a root beer, and then pulled her notebook from her bag.

“Okay,” she said. “First thing. Chris’s full name was Chris Ipith, born to Augusta Ipith, and he did indeed attend Argos Academy until mid-way through 12th grade. Then he dropped out before graduation.”

“Why?”

“He had a girlfriend, Julia Simmonds, and she got pregnant. They both left.”

“Oh,” Manny said. “I can see why she left, but why would he?”

“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “He might have been expelled for conduct unbecoming of a student or something. Or he might have left in protest when she did, because I’ll bet you anything she was expelled. I don’t think Argos in the seventies would be very accommodating for a pregnant teenager.” She snorted, sounding much more like herself. “I’m not sure they’d be accommodating now.”

“So he stuck with her?” Manny asked, feeling better about it.

“Yes. That’s how I was able to confirm the pregnancy. They got married in February 1978, Julia moved in with Chris and his mom, and in May they had a baby named Gus. Reading between the lines, Julia’s family were not happy that their little princess got knocked up to a nobody, and they might have cut ties for a while. I think Gus was named after Chris’s mother, Augusta. They lived with her until she died in 1989, and she left them the house.”

“What did Augusta do?”

“She was a legal secretary. I couldn’t find out much about her—most of the records from her time aren’t digitized. As far as I can tell, she lived in the city her entire life and mostly worked for a firm called Gortyn, which is a name that appears on a lot of vineyard paperwork from the 50s and 60s.”

“Right. So Grandad Perry meets her then, and they conduct an affair in the city. Accidentally or on purpose they conceived a kid, and Perry felt he has some responsibility towards him.”

“I can’t confirm any of that, because Chris’s birth certificate doesn’t name the father, but it’s plausible,” Cassie said. “Augusta must have been a tough lady. Even if Perry was helping her out financially, that was not a good time for professional single moms.”

“You sound like you admire her.”

“I kind of do. She supported her son and daughter-in-law through a difficult time. I don’t think the affair with a married man was a good idea or anything, but you might be surprised by how common it is. I get a lot of letters about people who have fallen in love outside their marriage and agonize about it.”

Manny thought uncomfortably about Augie and Ness. “People have affairs for less noble reasons, too.”

“They do,” Cassie agreed. “I like Julia too. She kept her own name, and Gus was hyphenated Ipith-Simmonds, which was pretty radical in the 70s.”

Manny mouthed the syllables. “Well, that’s a searchable surname, but I bet it got him into strife at school.”

“Maybe. He went to Westfield High, a public high school. No Argos Academy for him.”

“Gus,” Manny said, trying it out. His cousin, Gus, who was…let’s see, forty-six now. Eleven years older than him, nine years older than Augie. “Are Chris and Julia still together? Do they live in the city? Were you able to get an email address or phone number?”

“No,” Cassie said, and her eyes were huge and dark and full of sympathy. “Chris and Julia are dead.”

“Oh,” Manny said. This, somehow, wasn’t a possibility he’d considered. Chris was three years younger than his father, and Arthur hadn’t even hit seventy. He felt grief claw at him, mostly for his father, but also for these two strangers, the uncle he’d never known, and his high school sweetheart wife. Even Augusta, his grandfather’s mistress, sounded like an interesting person. He would have liked to meet her too. “You’re right. That is bad.”

“It gets worse,” Cassie said, looking grim. “Chris was murdered.”

“What?”

“The death certificate said homicide, gunshot wound, so I looked into the newspaper coverage. There was a lot of it. Chris Ipith was shot in his own home, in August 1996. There apparently wasn’t any sign of a struggle or break in. Nothing was taken, so it probably wasn’t a burglary. My guess, and I think it’s what the police were thinking, is that either he let the killer in or they already had a key.”

“You’re saying they like you don’t know who it was,” Manny said.

“No one was convicted,” Cassie said, and swallowed hard. “Julia was visiting her family in the Hippocampus, but Gus was in the city. He was eighteen. He said that he came home from a walk and found the body.”

Manny was momentarily dizzy with horror. He took a deep breath and put his head down, and Cassie’s hand came down on the back of his neck, cool and soothing. He looked up into her eyes. “Did the police think it was Gus?”

Cassie sat at his feet, tucking her legs underneath her. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think they did. With a domestic murder, they always look at the family first. And Gus and his father had argued, earlier that day. There’s an interview with a neighbor who said she saw Gus storm out before noon, but she didn’t see what time he came back. Gus said he just walked around the city for hours, getting all his frustration out, before he came back and found his father lying dead on the kitchen floor. He said he was already cold.” She paused. “Is this too much? Do you need a minute?”

“No,” Manny said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Keep going.”

Cassie took him at his word, and he heard the sound of flipping pages as she went back through her notebook. “He also said that when he left he saw a strange man in a car he didn’t recognize, parked around the block, but no one seems to have taken that seriously. There’s a perfunctory call for anyone who has any information about the man in the car to come forward, and a lot of talk about Gus helping the police with their inquiries. The papers are all leaning pretty heavily in the direction that he did it, but in the end the police can’t have had a strong enough case, because he was never charged. But the suspicion must have been terrible. He and Julia moved out of the neighborhood a year later. There’s a brief story, interviewing the same neighbor, and I was able to confirm it in the deed records.”

“His mom didn’t think he did it, then.”

“I guess not,” Cassie said.

“She died too? But not murder, right?”

“No, no,” Cassie said hurriedly. “She died five years after that, in 2001. Skin cancer. Sad, but unrelated.”

“And what happened to Gus?”

“There was no death certificate in any of the databases I could access, so chances are that he’d still be around. But 1996 is really pre-social media. It’s pre-Google. If he had any presence online then, a GeoCities account or something, it’s been wiped. And there’s no Gus Ipith-Simmonds anywhere online now. I think he might have changed his name, maybe even left the country. Julia’s family were wealthy, and by then it looks like they’d reconciled with their daughter and grandson. They could have helped him disappear.”

“Fuck,” Manny said. “Well, I mean. I would. Either he’d killed his dad, or he hadn’t, but nearly everybody thought he had. I’d want to run from either of those things as far as I possibly could.”

“That’s what I figured,” Cassie said, and sighed. “I’m sorry. I really wanted to bring you better news.”

“I didn’t think you would, given how Dad reacted,” Manny said. He was picturing his father discovering all this; finding the records that pointed at another little brother, then the horror of what had happened to that brother. Murdered, perhaps by his own son. And then… What? What had prompted the suicide? Dwelling on this terrible history, maybe. Thinking about all that death. Waiting until his wife left home, then—

“Wait,” Manny said. “Wait. Chris died alone at home, when his wife was out of town and his son wasn’t there?”

“Well, claim he wasn’t there.”

“Assume Gus didn’t do it. Chris let someone in, someone he trusted. And then that person killed him, and someone else got the blame.”

Cassie sucked in a breath. “Manny.”

“I don’t think my dad killed himself,” Manny said, reality twisting into a new shape. “That’s the part that’s never made sense. The doctor said that maybe he’d forgotten he’d taken some pills, and swallowed more of them, but that didn’t make sense either. They weren’t even his pills, and he’d never taken them before. He’d never had any issues with addiction or depression. Mom said he hadn’t said anything and he didn’t leave a note. He just went quiet, that’s the only thing she noticed. And he might have gone quiet because he’d discovered the existence of his half-brother.” The words kept coming out of his mouth, faster than his brain could keep up.

“You think finding that out might have triggered something.” Cassie said. “What?”

“I don’t know.” Manny’s head pounded. “Herc Stormson said he saw the vineyard truck on the road the night that Dad died. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Who uses the truck?”

“Jim, mostly. Theo or one of the hands, sometimes.”

“Did Jim have any reason to want your father dead? Did he inherit anything?”

“Nothing big,” Manny said. He swiveled to his desk and yanked open a desk drawer, pulling out his copy of his father’s will. He’d been using it to finalize probate, and now he flipped through, looking for Jim’s name. “No. He left Jim a bottle of aged whiskey, that’s all.”

“Was it expensive whiskey?” Cassie asked intently. “Rare bottles can go for hundreds of thousands at auction.”

“Seriously?”

Cassie nodded. “Is the specific bottle named in the will?” Manny told her and she looked it up, then shook her head. “It’s nice whiskey, but not that nice. I don’t think that’s a motive.” She paced around the room, floorboards creaking. “Maybe it was something else. Maybe when your father found out about Chris, he stumbled across a motive for that murder.”

“When was Chris killed again?”

“September 7th, 1996.”

Manny’s spine went cold. “That’s the year my grandfather died. Jim was working for us then.”

Cassie sucked in a breath. “When exactly did your grandfather die? Before or after Chris?”

“I don’t know, I was six! Hang on.” He pulled out his phone and pressed his mother’s name on the contact list. It went to voicemail. “Mom? Can you call as soon as you get this? I need to know what date Grandad Pelopson died. It’s important, thank you.”

Cassie had stopped walking, arrested in mid-step. “What about your grandfather’s will?” she asked. “If his death was the trigger…”

Manny rose from his chair. “Do you have it?”

“It’s upstairs.” She went for the door and he was right behind her when she stopped dead. “Theo,” she said, her voice flat and strange.

“What about—” Manny started, and then he saw what Cassie had seen.

Theo hadn’t gone home. He’d used his key to come inside after them, crept up the stairs, and along the hallway, and listened to their conversation.

And now he was standing in the doorway, blocking their exit, with his mouth in a grim line and the shotgun the vineyard used to shoo birds away held steady at his hip.

“Theo,” Manny said. At first, he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. This didn’t make sense, his uncle pointing a gun at them, his uncle eavesdropping as Cassie told him the terrible story of this branch of the Pelopson family tree.

And then it all exploded in his brain at once, connections sparking off each other like fireworks. “Theo. You killed Dad?”

“You evil son-of-a-bitch,” Cassie said, her voice absolutely level.

Unadulterated fury boiled through Manny’s veins and he made an aborted motion forward. Theo swung his gun up, pointing the muzzle straight at Cassie’s chest. “Don’t,” he said, his voice husky. “Don’t make it worse, Manny. Where’s your phone?”

“There,” Manny said, pointing at the desk. The screen was still unlocked, from his last call to his mother.

His mouth went dry. Unless he was misinterpreting this completely, that call was going to be the last words he ever spoke to his mom.

“Good. Now you get your phone out,” Theo told Cassie. “Slowly, now.”

Cassie complied, glaring at him.

“Put it on the floor and kick it down the hall.”

Cassie did, looking like she wished she could be kicking Theo instead.

“Let her go,” Manny said.

“I can’t do that,” Theo said. He gazed sadly at both of them. “Why couldn’t you two just leave well enough alone? I never wanted to do this. I thought I’d cleared out those fucking files.”

“You took the records about Chris,” Cassie said. “We thought it was Arthur.”

“It was Arthur,” Theo said. “Him and his damn hobbies.” He gestured with his head, but his eyes never left them, and the muzzle stayed steady. “We’re going upstairs, folks. Start moving.”

Manny could see his own tension mirrored in Cassie’s stance, the muscles in her broad back rigid. Either one of them could be stronger than Theo. Two against one and he wouldn’t stand a chance.

But not as long as he had the gun.

If Manny were by himself, he might take the chance. Theo was probably going to kill them anyway, he told himself harshly. He should at least make an attempt to get the gun off him.

But if Theo shot, and missed Manny, but hit Cassie…

He glanced at Cassie, and saw something similar flash across her face. “Please don’t hurt us,” she said. “Theo, Manny’s your nephew.”

“I know that!” Theo snapped. “Get up those stairs, now!”

Cassie gave Manny a single agonized glance and stepped into the hallway. Manny went after her, hoping for a chance, but Theo kept his distance, his eyes careful. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told them. “Cassie’s going to find something for me, and then I’m going to lock you in the attic. Your mom will be back tomorrow, Manny. You won’t come to any harm. I just need a head start.”

Manny desperately wanted to believe him.

They went up the stairs and into the attic. Cassie moved as slowly as she dared. There were plenty of hiding places in the attic, plenty of potential weapons or places to take cover, but the problem would be getting away in the first place.

Cassie didn’t think she could outrun a shotgun. She didn’t know much about guns, which was starting to feel like an important knowledge gap, but she had a vague impression that your aim didn’t need to be too good. Still, as she went to the heavy table she used as a desk, she slowed down even more.

“Don’t,” Theo said flatly. “Manny, you stop there.”

Cassie turned around, and saw Manny was several feet behind her, several feet in front of his uncle. Too far away for him to lunge at Theo. But much too close for Theo to miss.

Theo watched her register all of that and looked satisfied. “Cassie, you go into the archive room and bring out my father’s will. If you do anything I don’t like in there, or try anything stupid when you come out, I’ll shoot Manny in the knee. He’ll probably survive, but he won’t like it much.”

Cassie didn’t bother to assent. She went into the archive room, her brain working furiously. Finding the will would take her seconds, but Theo didn’t know how good her system was. He’d never bothered to come up here. And now his view of her was partially blocked. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was something, if she could only think it through.

What could be useful in the archives? There were heavy ledgers that might make decent weapons, but they’d be immediately obvious. What they needed was something small but helpful, if one of them could get close enough. Her eyes caught on a box at the back, marked “Sundry miscellaneous, c. 1920s”, and she squeezed through the shelves towards it.

“What’s taking so long?” Theo called.

“I’m trying!” she called back, trying to sound terrified—which she was—and not so angry that it was taking all of her common sense not to rush straight at him, which she also was.

“Is this how you got Dad to take the pills?” Manny said conversationally. “Held a shotgun on him and made him swallow them?”

Oh, bless him. He couldn’t know what she was doing, but he was trying to distract Theo while she worked.

“Sit down,” Theo said after a moment, and Cassie grimaced, even as she reached into the box. Reducing Manny’s maneuverability was smart of Theo, and bad for them. But what choice did Manny have? She caught movement from the corner of her eye, and heard him shuffle down. From the position of his torso, he was kneeling on his haunches, not sitting cross-legged. He’d still have some lunging power, if they could draw Theo closer…

Her questing hand found the pocket knife in its leather embossed sheath. Heart pounding, she unsnapped the pouch and fumbled the folded knife out, levering the blade open with her thumb. Bless whoever had oiled it—it came out as smoothly as it had the day it had cut her, and this time she avoided the jab.

“Cassie, have you got that will yet?”

“I’m looking,” Cassie said, deliberately breathy. “There’s a lot in here.”

“What does the will say?” Manny asked. “Did Grandad leave something in there for Chris? Is that how you found out?”

Theo laughed, a harsh crack of sound without any mirth, and Cassie used the moment to turn away from that box and to one on the next shelf, the box that held Perry Pelopson’s will. The knife was pressed flat in her palm, and she held it firmly against the sheaf of paper.

“Cassie!” Theo said. He was beginning to sound angry.

“I’ve got it,” she said and reappeared in the doorway with the will in her hands. “Please, Theo. Please, let us go.”

“Theo, tonight you offered me enough money to fix the carriage house,” Manny said. “Did you mean it?”

“Of course I fucking meant it,” Theo said gruffly. “Do you think I wanted to hurt your dad, Manny? I loved my brother, damn it!”

“Then why?” Manny’s voice broke on the word. Cassie thought it wasn’t a delaying tactic, but a sincere and anguished demand for answers, and her heart ached for him.

“Read it,” Theo said, nodding at the pages in Cassie’s hands. “Top of the second page.”

Cassie kept her right hand under the paper, and turned the top page over with her left. Manny knew she was right-handed. His eyes caught the movement.

“To my son Arthur I leave my house and chattels. To my son Theodore I leave fifty thousand dollars. The Tantalus Vineyard land, business, debts, chattels and all other goods I leave to be divided evenly among my sons.” The implications washed over her even as she said it out loud. She looked up. “His sons.”

“Yeah,” Theo said. “Not named. Just there, if you knew. Three sons, divided evenly. A third of the family business to someone who’d never been part of the family.”

“And you already knew about Chris,” Cassie said.

Theo’s weathered face was caught in an ugly sneer. “The old man wrote me a letter, to be opened in the event of his death. He wasn’t man enough to tell me about his third kid in person. He did it in writing.”

“That must have been hard,” Cassie said. It was too much for her to sound sympathetic to this murderer, but she could manage acknowledging that he had been placed in a shocking position by his father.

“He had the fucking gall to ask me to break it to Mom and Arthur. Asked me to get in touch with that guy and tell him who he was, where he was from. Can you believe it? Chris didn’t even know who his dad was. I burned that letter, and I promised myself I’d never say a word. Let it all die with the old man.”

“And then you heard the will,” Cassie said. “And you thought, wait. What if my dad wrote more letters. What if Chris gets curious and hires a private investigator. What if, somehow, he finds out he’s got a family, and his father’s will says he has one third of a business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Theo glanced at Manny. “She’s smart.”

“Yes, she is,” Manny said. “And so you went to Chris yourself. Did you tell him you were his brother, before you shot him?”

Theo didn’t say anything for a moment. He was taking labored breaths, his chest heaving. “He went to that fancy private school,” he said. “Dad paid for that. He got into some colleges, and Dad would have paid for that too. But instead he got that girl pregnant and dropped out, and everything still turned out peachy keen for him. He had the kid and the wife and the townhouse and his happy little life.”

Cassie watched the color in his cheeks bloom and fade. If she was going to use the knife, she needed to get closer to him, and that wouldn’t happen while he was watching her. She widened her eyes slightly at Manny.

And he caught her signal and kept talking. “And meanwhile, you’d been working at Tantalus.” He was better at sounding sympathetic than she was. “You never got to college. Grandad spent the money on Chris instead.”

“He was happy,” Theo said again, and his eyes were blank. He wasn’t even looking at Manny anymore, though the gun stayed steady. Cassie edged forward, a miniscule motion that was barely a step. But it was something.

“I didn’t even tell him about the will,” Theo continued. “I told him I was a representative of his father, and he got excited. He let me in and asked if we were family. Like it meant something, like he was really my brother. Arthur was my brother. This guy wasn’t anything, but he let me into his house and I looked at his family pictures and his kid’s report cards on the fridge, and when he turned away to get me a drink I shot him in the back.” His eyes focused on Manny again. “I waited until his kid walked out. There wasn’t any reason to kill the kid.”

“No,” Manny said. “You just framed him for his father’s murder.”

“I didn’t know he was going to get the blame,” Theo said sharply, and Cassie took another step. “How could I know that? He took a good look at me when he walked past my car, the little punk. It would have been safer if I’d waited and got him too. But I’m not a monster.”

From the way that Manny’s mouth twisted, Cassie was pretty sure he’d had the same thought she had about Theo’s monstrousness. But his voice stayed soft and understanding. “Dad found out, though. And you had to be safe.”

Theo nodded. “Arthur didn’t tell me right away. I don’t know how he found anything in this dump, but he collected a boxful of stuff—photo albums, a couple of Dad’s old record books, some information about those lake days for the underprivileged. He asked me over to dinner while Aerope was away. I didn’t even want to go, but he said it was important, said I’d be glad I’d came. So I came on over after I finished a few things at the vineyard. And then he pulled out this big box like it was a birthday present, and said he’d found us a little brother.”

“He didn’t suspect you’d murdered Chris?”

Theo snorted. “Arthur hadn’t even realized he was dead.” He looked at Cassie. He didn’t appear to notice that she’d got much closer to him, nearly level with Manny. “Bet you’re wishing you were a little less good at your job.”

“You killed Dad because he learned Chris existed at all?” Manny said, drawing Theo’s attention back to him.

Theo got the lost look again. “I didn’t know what to do. He was going on and on about how we could reach out and make a connection with this guy, except he was worried about whether his feelings would be hurt. He had plans to hire a private investigator, plans for family mediation. He didn’t mention the will. I don’t think he’d realized what it meant. But he was up in those archives every day. He would have found it soon.”

“And even if you’d had a gun with you, shooting him would have been messy,” Manny said. “The police always look at family in those cases.”

For the first time, Theo looked ashamed of himself. “Yeah. But I remembered your mom’s sleeping pills. She had nearly a full prescription.”

“Yeah, you really lucked out,” Manny said, disgust leaking into his voice.

Theo glared at him. “I loved my brother, Manny. I knew him my whole life. But if he started sniffing around, if someone noticed the dates, the police could reopen the case. That kid saw me. It didn’t matter when no one knew about the connection, but if they found out, they might take another look. So I sat down with my brother to talk things over and we had a couple of whiskeys. After the first two glasses, Arthur got confused and sleepy, and I told him to take the rest of the pills. And he did.”

“Because he trusted you,” Manny said. “And you put him to bed, and Mom found him, and for the last eight months she’s been thinking it was her fault. You killed your brothers and you ruined my mother’s life, because you’re a selfish son of a bitch and you didn’t want to share. You didn’t have to kill Dad, Theo. You could have confessed what you’d done, actually taken responsibility for your crime. Dad would have helped you. He would have got you the best lawyers, negotiated a plea-deal.”

Theo looked blank, as if that had never occurred to him. “But they would have looked into Tantalus. Bad enough to have you poking into everything and checking the accounts for probate and insisting we file everything with the IRS. Casual hires on contracts! Who does that?”

“Why would looking into Tantalus matter?” Cassie asked. It was the first time she’d spoken in a while, and she regretted it immediately. Theo’s face closed up, and she had the unnerving sensation that she’d just walked into a trip wire.

“It wouldn’t,” he said brusquely. “Put the will on the table and go back into the archive room. You too, Manny.”

Cassie didn’t move. “What are you going to do, Theo? You can’t just shoot us. That looks too messy. They’ll investigate the archives, and then you’ve got the same problem again.”

“Yeah,” Theo said heavily. “The archives are a problem. I got rid of everything Arthur showed me, but you still found more. No, I think there has to be a fire.”

Cassie looked at Manny and saw her horror reflected in his eyes. She swallowed it down.

“Are you going to lock us in the archives and burn us to death?” she asked. “That’s not quick, Theo. You made it quick for Chris and easy for Arthur. You owe your nephew better than that.”

Theo glanced sidelong at Manny and frowned. “I don’t like it either. Got another suggestion?”

“You could just run,” Manny suggested. “Clear your accounts and go somewhere else, set up another life. I promise we wouldn’t look that hard.” He sounded sincere. Cassie would happily break that promise for him, but if they could just get Theo to leave… The seed of another idea began to sprout. Getting any closer to Theo herself would be tricky, but maybe she could get him out of the attic.

Theo looked taken aback. “Leave Tantalus?” he said. “No. Some things you can’t run from.”

“I have another idea,” Cassie said, keeping her voice easy and her body language relaxed. She was slipping into advice mode, where you assumed the case as it was laid out, and offered the best solution to the writer’s problem. “When a woman is murdered, the first person the cops look at is the boyfriend. Everyone knows Manny and I have been dating. You could make it look like he shot me, then himself.”

“Manny wouldn’t do that! No one would believe it,” Theo said. He sounded honestly offended, and it was so ridiculous that Cassie almost laughed in his face. The whole situation was hideous. Theo had murdered both his brothers, and was about to kill them, but he baulked at impugning Manny’s reputation?

“I don’t know,” she said instead. “Thirty minutes ago, I wouldn’t have believed you could do it either.”

“I guess it’d be faster,” Theo said doubtfully.

Theo had killed his younger brother when his back was turned, and Arthur hadn’t known what was happening. Cassie wasn’t positive he could look his victims in the eye. Setting a fire and leaving it to roast them alive sounded horribly possible.

“You wouldn’t want us to suffer,” Cassie said, making it sound like a given. “And maybe Manny sets a fire, tries to burn everything before he gives up and dies. Then you could use accelerants and turn off the alarms, and that wouldn’t look suspicious.” Go, she thought. Leave us here, and go get gas or fire starters or something. “Manny would have to be alive to set the fire, though. If you set it up after he died, the forensic examiners would know.” She wasn’t actually sure how much evidence forensics could get out of a burned body, but it sounded plausible, and that was all she needed right now.

“Is that so,” Theo said, and Cassie realized the flaw in her reasoning the moment he swung the muzzle towards her. She’d argued that Manny had to be alive, but the story she’d plotted for him hadn’t accounted for her.

“Wait,” she said, stepping backwards even though it was totally useless, he was going to shoot her, she was going to die, her last word was going to be wait.

With a shout, Manny lunged to his feet and staggered in front of the gun.

“No!” he said.

“Get out of the way, Manny,” Theo said irritably, as if he were standing in front of a cabinet Theo wanted to reach into.

“No,” Manny said, spreading his arms wide. Cassie gasped for air, and then stepped up behind him, trying to hide behind his bulk. Theo looked mad enough to try the shot anyway, and she didn’t want to present a tempting target. “You can’t shoot her yet. You need her as a hostage to make sure I build your fucking fire. Otherwise I won’t do it. You’ll have to shoot me first, and there goes your perfect set-up.”

“What difference does it make?” Theo said. “Now or later, Manny, why does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” Manny said, and turned around to look at Cassie. He looked as shocked and terrified as she felt. “Every minute she’s alive matters to me.”

Cassie stared at him. “This is an insane time to realize I love you.”

“Stress and proximity will do that,” Manny said, and she felt a smile tremble on her lips.

“I could do with a little more proximity,” she said, and went up on her tiptoes, mashing her mouth against his.

He was unresponsive at first, understandably uninterested in a make-out session in front of his murderous uncle, but Cassie shoved the will flat against his chest, and he stopped hesitating when he felt the hard lump of the pocket knife. He opened his mouth to her, and put his arms around her in a convulsive movement that handily disguised her scrabbling at his chest. She fumbled the knife into his inside jacket pocket. He winced, and she thought she might have cut him a little on the way, but there was no help for it. If he was leaving with Theo, she wanted him armed, even with such a trifling weapon.

Manny’s hands tightened on her back, and the kiss was abruptly real, all of her terror and grief transmuting momentarily into passion. She clung to him and felt desire zing through her body as if every cell had suddenly woken to the possibility of impending death, and was frantically trying to grab after life instead.

“Damn it,” Theo said as they broke apart. Manny was looking at her with dazed joy, but that broke the spell. He flinched, and she saw him subtly shift his shoulders, feeling the weight of the knife.

Theo gestured with the shotgun. “Cassie, give Manny the key. Manny, lock her in and throw me the key. If you try anything, even if you get away, I’ll come right up here and shoot her, and figure out the story later. You got me?”

“Crystal clear,” Manny said. He kissed Cassie again, hard and brief, and then she walked into the office and heard the chunk of the lock. After a moment, Theo tested it, but Manny must have anticipated that, because he’d played fair and really locked it.

The men didn’t talk to each other as they left. Cassie waited for the footsteps to die down, and then strained her ears. She thought they might have gone outside, but at the very least, they were out of easy earshot.

Holding her breath at first, and then moving with more speed and confidence as no running feet came up the stairs, she cleared a bottom shelf of boxes. Then she started kicking the wall, which was not only the smart move, but a deeply satisfying outlet for her rage.

The archive room was only drywall slapped up over some wooden framing, and she was already making some impressive dents. She was pretty sure she could squeeze through the frame, and then it would be time to call the authorities.

Even more importantly, if Theo came back, she didn’t intend to be there.

Manny hoped he’d been reading Cassie right. He was fairly sure she had some kind of plan in mind that required being left alone.

Ideally, he figured, she’d wanted him to be with her. But at least this way, they’d cut Theo’s targets in half. And he had the knife, if that might help.

Theo had ordered him out into the yard, and their breath plumed in the air as they walked towards the truck, still parked where Theo had left it. Manny altered his gait once as an experiment, but Theo kept the same cautious distance. “Don’t do that again,” he said.

“What is your next move, out of curiosity?” Manny said. “Once I’m dead and buried, that is.”

“I don’t have any next moves,” Theo said. “I’ll keep running Tantalus, like I have since Dad died. Burning the archives should tie up any last loose ends. I doubt Augie will make himself a nuisance like you did. I’ll send him the profits every year, and he’ll put his kids through college.”

“There won’t be profits, if you keep going the way you have been.”

“Yes, there will,” Theo said, and what Manny had been regarding as a stubborn resistance to reality suddenly sounded like confidence based on information Manny didn’t have.

“How? Where’s the money coming from?” He paused. “How did you get that much in your savings account, Theo?”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Theo said. “You won’t need to worry about much anymore, Manny. Cassie made a good case for shooting, so as long as you don’t give me any trouble it’ll all happen fast. I didn’t feel great about leaving you to burn.”

“Yeah, your feelings are important here.” Manny stopped by the truck. “What now?”

“Get the gas container and siphon tank,” Theo said. Manny didn’t feel like pointing out that using the vineyard’s tools would mess with the story of Manny acting alone. If he and Cassie did end up dead, he definitely wanted Theo to get caught.

He reached for the empty gas container, and used the movement and shadow to conceal reaching into his jacket pocket for the knife.

Theo had come closer, looking jittery. “Don’t forget, if you run, I’ll shoot her,” he warned.

“I remember,” Manny said, and swung the gas container down and around, tossing it directly at Theo’s face. Theo ducked instinctively, bringing up one arm to fend off the missile, and Manny lunged forward. He didn’t have the slightest idea of what he was doing, but the blade had his momentum and weight behind it, and he felt it sink deep into Theo’s arm, grating on bone.

Theo screamed, jerking the blade out of Manny’s hand. Manny jumped back, instinctively diving for cover underneath the tall truck. The gun went off with a shattering roar, and something sharp stung his leg and hip, but he kept rolling, and sprang to his feet on the other side, sprinting away into the dark. Another shot behind him, and he remembered to zig-zag. Whatever Cassie was planning to do, he hoped she’d had time to do it, but all Manny could do now was get to a phone, and there was one in the office at the winery.

He risked a glance behind him, and Theo had stepped around the truck, taking aim again. He was yelling something, his face contorted in fury. An engine roared and headlights swept over the scene, a spotlight on Theo and the gun.

Theo barely had time to look around before the car hit him, with a meaty, unpleasant thud.

Theo went flying in a tangle of limbs, to land in a limp, unmoving pile on the driveway. Manny stared at him, the blood roaring in his ears, and then turned to look at his rescuer.

“Oh no,” Aerope said, tumbling from the driver’s seat. “Oh no, it was Theo! I hit Theo!”

“No, Mom, you did great,” Manny said. The shotgun had gone flying when Theo did. He retrieved it gingerly, keeping it pointed down. He had a vague idea that you kind of broke it in half to take the shells out, but he wasn’t sure how to do that, and he didn’t want to mess with it. Keeping it away from Theo and not pointing it at anyone else seemed like a good start.

“I didn’t know he was Theo! I just saw someone shooting at you!”

“He killed Dad,” Manny said, distantly wishing he could have softened the blow. “He was going to kill me and Cassie. Call the police.”

“I got your call,” Aerope said. “And you said it was urgent, and you sounded odd, but you didn’t pick up, so I told Beverley I had to go home.”

“The police, Mom,” Manny said, and tilted his head to the side as sirens began to sing through the night. “Wait, did you call them already?”

“I did,” Cassie said, and he spun around to see her behind him, holding her retrieved phone to her ear. There was white plaster dust in her hair and all over her black tights. She’d discarded her jacket at some point, and one of her blouse sleeves now featured a long tear. She looked tired and pissed off and incredibly beautiful. “Um, is that thing still loaded?”

Manny looked at the gun doubtfully. “I don’t know. He shot it twice, I think. How many bullets do they have?”

“Goodness, Manny, give me that before you hurt yourself,” Aerope said. She took the gun, turned it over, and began popping the cartridges out, her hands sure and confident.

“Huh. You don’t break it in half,” Manny said, feeling a bit dazed. The moment of crisis had sparked an adrenaline rush, but it was rapidly fading, and taking the last of his energy with it.

“Sit down and put your head between your knees if you feel woozy,” Cassie said, and she knelt beside Theo, feeling for a pulse, and then checking his airways. “I think he’s alive.”

“My womenfolk are very practical,” Manny said, sitting on the cold ground to take Cassie’s advice. She gave such great advice.

“If you ever call me your womenfolk again I’m going to rethink this whole being in love with you thing,” Cassie said, without looking up.

“Oh, good, you’ve both worked that out,” Aerope said, and then her hands paused in their efficient action. “Wait, Manny, did you say Theo killed Arthur?”

“You can’t shoot Theo in front of the cops,” Cassie said. “Besides, we need him alive to confess.”

“Hm,” Aerope said, her eyes fixed on Theo.

“There’s already too much murder in this family, Mom,” Manny said.

Theo chose that moment to groan, and Aerope put the gun down as the red-and-blue lights flashed down the driveway. The first vehicle was an ambulance, and the EMTs took over from Cassie.

She sat by Manny, and he linked his arm in hers, taking her hand.

“In love with me, huh?” he said.

“You realize you still haven’t said it back?” she said, staring at their joined hands. “I fessed up in the attic and in front of your mom.”

“I love you too,” he said. “Do you want me to announce it over the police radio? Maybe stand on a table in the Black Cat? Because I totally will.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Cassie said, and relaxed against him.

Tyron Stormson crunched over the gravel and leaned down over them, the lights flashing over his badge. “Sorry to interrupt, Manny. I’m going to need you to explain why Theo’s the one who’s been stabbed and run down, but your mom thinks I should be arresting him.”

“Well, let’s see,” Cassie said. “Manny and I are both witnesses to his confession of the murders of Arthur Pelopson and Chris Ipith. That second one’s a cold case, by the way, but there’s probably an independent witness formerly known as Gus Ipith-Simmons, if you can find him. I’ve already gathered a lot of circumstantial evidence for motive. Oh, and Theo shot at Manny, which should be easily corroborated by fingerprinting and a ballistics analysis.”

Tyron stared at her. “Do you listen to a lot of true crime podcasts or something, ma’am?”

“No,” Cassie said. “I’m an archivist.”

“Cassie, this is Tyron, Herc Stormson’s dad,” Manny said. He was feeling lightheaded again, but this time with joy and relief. “Tyron, this is Cassie Troiades, my girlfriend. She’s a genius.”

“We haven’t discussed labels yet,” Cassie muttered, but she snuggled closer to him, and he tucked his arm around her.

It was going to take an act of divine intervention for him to ever let her go.