The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [88]
“And to killing Constance,” Unc said, his voice the same low and cold whisper. He moved his hand from the bench beside him to his lap.
“Constance, Constance, Constance,” Simons said, in it nothing. Only three words. “A necessary evil, to my way of thinking. Of course she never quite got over you, Leland, and many were the times amidst tears shed at bedtime that your name was offered up as a sort of votive. There was no love lost between us, as I’m not quite certain there had ever been any to begin with. But the harridan of a mother she had was, chiefly because of my middle and last names, on my side from the beginning: a Dupree-Middleton union by way of the Simons family. What greater cachet hereabouts, Leland?”
Unc was quiet a moment, the only sound the dull, empty hum of the engine. Unc moved, settled himself, his hand on his knee now. He said, “You are evil.”
“But as there is no God,” Simons said, and turned the boat again, “then there is no evil, simply each organism for itself. This organism—namely, Charles Middleton Simons, M.D.—with the wheeling away of a dead, still lipidinally and mammarially challenged South of Broad matron, immediately set about upgrading his insurance and adapting his will to plans set in motion. When I died, all proceeds were to go directly to poor, devoted Constance, who, as an aside, wrote out her death confession with no more prompting from me than three whiskey sours and a Magic Marker one night not a month ago.” He chuckled, his shoulders up and down with it, and Tabitha pulled away from him an inch, squirmed a moment beside him. “The degloving, of course, was a touch anvil-like in its irony, the wife of a plastic surgeon having skinned her murdered husband’s hands. But it served as well to eliminate any corroboration of fingerprints.”
He turned us again, that island I’d seen now gone. “And were Constance to die,” he went on, “all benefits go directly to the Christian Children’s Reconstructive Surgery Foundation, a charitable organization I set up that treats needy children with cleft palates and harelips in Third World countries, headquarters of which is nestled in the pleasant little town of Lucerne, Switzerland, which feeds a branch office in Bangkok, which in turn wires funds to its satellite facility in the Cayman Islands.” He shrugged. “As warned, Leland, this is awfully predictable: filthy lucre and all that. But now that I am dead, and as this foundation exists only on paper, and as my murder has been solved by a signed confession and the murderer’s suicide to boot, there will be waiting for me in a matter of weeks the tidy sum of six million dollars at that branch office, this in addition to thirty-three million I’ve managed to sock away one way and another. Not bad for a four-year setup. A sort of business-administration project for the passed-away, proving that yes, indeed, Miss Gaillard”—and now he leaned left again, nodded behind me again—“there is life after death, but also dispelling that nasty rumor you can’t take it with you. I can.”
“But why now?” Unc said. His hand was still on his knee, but I could feel him begin to lean forward in the smallest way, felt his leg touching mine tense up. He was getting ready for something.
“Things have been pushed toward fruition on this day, Leland, because of a change of heart our dear departed Constance had in the last few weeks, culminating with her telephone call to you last Wednesday. A change of heart our late Carolina Museum of History trustee undertook