breaking into Landon’s house to dig a big hole in his basement.”
“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 bumping 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 basements 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 basement, 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 pushing 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?”
“Of course I saw her fall. I was there, wasn’t I? It wasn’t my fault.”
“Okay, let’s be clear. You broke into Bluff House on the night of January twentieth of this year. Ms. Hester Landon was in the house, and she saw you, tried to run from you and fell down the stairs. Is that accurate?”
“That’s right. I never touched her.”
“But you did touch Abra Walsh on the night she entered Bluff House, after you’d cut the power, broken in.”
“I didn’t hurt her. I just needed to . . . restrain her until I could get out. She attacked me. Just like Landon attacked me tonight. You saw that.”
“I saw you reach for a weapon you had concealed.” Corbett glanced at Vinnie.
“Yes, sir. I witnessed same, and we have the weapon in evidence.”
“You’re lucky you only took a couple punches. Now, let’s go back to the night you and Abra Walsh tangled in Bluff House.”
“I just told you. She attacked me.”
“That’s an interesting take on it. And did Kirby Duncan attack you, too, before you shot him and pushed his body off the lighthouse cliff?”
The muscle in Suskind’s jaw twitched again, his gaze shifted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, or who Kirby Duncan is.”