Annie's Rainbow - Fern Michaels [132]
“No thank you.” Why would Clyde Pearson be expecting her?
Annie climbed the magnificent mahogany staircase, marveling at the stained-glass window on the landing. Everything was clean and polished and smelled faintly of lemon. There wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen anywhere. The hall at the top of the steps was wide and monstrously long with what she supposed were Pearson ancestors in gilt frames and little tables underneath that held books and silver-framed photographs. She knocked tentatively.
“Come in, Miss Clark,” a nurse said cheerfully. “Mr Pearson is waiting for you.”
Annie took a deep breath. Nothing in the world could have prepared her for the sight of Clyde Pearson. Elmo looked robust compared to this bony caricature of a man.
“Mr. Pearson, I’m Anna Clark. I’ve come to talk to you about your son Andrew. Do you know where he is, and if you do know, will you tell me?”
The skeleton in his nest of pillows held up a bony claw of a hand. He waved it back and forth.
“That means he doesn’t know where Andrew is. That young man skulks around here from time to time. He steals from his father and thinks we don’t know. Mr. Pearson disowned him after the bank robbery.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. It was my understanding that Mr. Pearson believed in Andrew’s innocence and gave him money to find the person responsible for keeping the robbery money even though the money was returned later on.”
The clawlike hands waved furiously. “No, Miss Clark, that is not true. Young Andrew came here once in the middle of the night and cleaned out his father’s safe. He’s forged his name to checks. According to the household help, Andrew was always a troubled child. Of course that was before my time. The boy’s pranks became more serious the older he got. The bank robbery was the last straw for Mr. Pearson. That’s when he disowned Andrew. A week later, Mr. Pearson suffered a stroke. He was seventy-five percent recovered with extensive therapy. Then when Andrew was released, the poor dear suffered another stroke.”
“I can’t prove this,” Annie said, “but I think Andrew tried to kill me one night and then threw some kind of bomb into my house. No one saw him. There was a child in the house and a very old sick man. If we hadn’t left the kitchen when we did, we would be dead. I don’t know what to do. I thought if I came here and you told me where he was, I could try to talk to him. It wasn’t my fault he was sent to prison.”
The bony arms and hands flopped up and down in a frenzy of motion. “Mr. Pearson understands what you’re saying. He can’t speak. He’s upset for you. We spoke of this many times while he was mending from his first stroke. My name is Selma Daniels, Miss Clark. Mr. Pearson had me type up a letter for you to give the police should you ever come here. Andrew doesn’t know about the letter. As I said, Andrew came here several times and boasted about what he was going to do. He’s waiting for his father to die, thinking he will inherit, but Mr. Pearson changed his will years ago. Everyone in this house is as afraid of Andrew as you are. Security guards patrol the property with guard dogs. The police can’t do anything because he hasn’t made any threats against his father. This is still his legal address. Unfortunately, it is not illegal to wait for one’s parent to die. Sad as that may sound.”
“If he doesn’t stay here, where does he stay?”
“We don’t know, Miss Clark. All we can do is give you the letter and some other reports that might be beneficial to you. Mr. Pearson calls them affidavits. Go to the police with what we give you.”
“Do you know any of Andrew’s friends?”
“Those old friends want nothing to do with Andrew these days. I’m afraid the friends he has today aren’t the kind of people you would want to talk to.”
“I have to do something. I can’t just sit around waiting for him to kill me or my friends. I came here to Boston to my