Part 121 (1/2)
”I figure not. It strikes me like this was your job, your mission, not something to share. Your ... you said 'right,' didn't you?”
”It is my right.”
Shaking his head, Corbett tipped back in his chair. ”You're going to have to explain that one. All I see is the guy who got caught sleeping with Landon's wife breaking into Landon's house to dig a big hole in his bas.e.m.e.nt.”
”It's as much my house as his.”
”How do you figure?”
”I'm a direct descendant of Violeta Landon.”
”Sorry, I'm not real familiar with the Landon family tree.” He glanced at Vinnie now. ”Are you more up on that, Deputy?”
”Sure. She's the one who supposedly rescued the seaman who survived the wreck of the Calypso way back when. Nursed him back to health. Some versions have them b.u.mping hips, and getting caught at it.”
”It wasn't a seaman, but the captain. Captain Nathanial Broome.” Suskind tapped his fist on the table now. ”He didn't just survive, he survived with Esmeralda's Dowry.”
”Well, there's a lot of theories and stories about that,” Vinnie began.
Suskind smashed his fist on the table. ”I know the truth. Edwin Landon killed Nathanial Broome because he wanted the dowry, then he put his own sister out of the house, convinced his father to disown her. She was carrying Broome's child, his son.”
”That sounds like bad luck for her,” Corbett commented. ”But it was a long time ago.”
”She was pregnant with Broome's child!” Suskind repeated. ”And when she was dying, suffering in poverty, and that child, then a grown man, pleaded with Landon to help his sister, to let her come home, he did nothing. That's who the Landons are, and I have every right to take what's mine, what was hers, what was Broome's.”
”How'd you come by all this?” Vinnie asked casually. ”A lot of stories go around about that treasure.”
”They're stories. This is fact. It's taken me nearly two years to put it all together, a piece at a time. I've got letters, and they cost me, written by James Fitzgerald, Violeta Landon's son by Nathanial Broome. They detail what she told him happened that night on Whiskey Beach. He walked away from it, from his rights, Fitzgerald-her son. I won't!”
”Sounds to me like you should've been talking to a lawyer,” Corbett put in, ”not hacking holes in bas.e.m.e.nts with a pickax.”
”You think I didn't try?” Suskind jerked forward, face washed angry red. ”Nothing but a runaround, nothing but excuses. It was too long ago, she wouldn't have legally inherited in any case. No legal claim. What about my blood claim, my moral claim? The dowry was booty belonging to my ancestor, not Landon's. It's mine.”
”So, with this moral, blood claim behind you, you broke into Bluff House on numerous occasions and- Why the bas.e.m.e.nt, specifically?”
”Violeta told her son Broome instructed her to hide it there to keep it safe.”
”Okay, and you don't think in a couple hundred years somebody found it, maybe spent it?”
”She hid it. It's there, and it's mine by right.”
”And you figure that right equals breaking in, damaging property and pus.h.i.+ng an old woman down the stairs?”
”I didn't push her. I never laid a hand on her. It was an accident.”
Corbett hiked up his eyebrows. ”Accidents happen. How did this one?”
”I needed to look around on the third floor. The Landons have a lot of things stored up there. I needed to see if I could find something to give me more specifics on the dowry. The old woman got up, she saw me, she ran and she fell. That's it. I never touched her.”
”You saw her fall?”