I WAS SITTING in one of the wicker chairs on the front porch. It was a little past dinner, and the temperature was starting to drop. We were heading into fall, and I was debating whether to keep sitting out there, head inside, or head inside for a sweater and come back out.
The door opened and Sarah came out, a pad of paper and our checkbook in her hand. She took the wicker chair next to mine.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s good,” Sarah said. “You know she’s got a lecture tonight, and I gave her lots of choices. I said she could stay home if she wanted to, or you or I could drive her down to Mackenzie, wait for her until her lecture is over and bring her home.”
It had been a week. We insisted Angie take a break from classes. Sarah spoke to the registrar, explained all that Angie had been through, and was told that she could take as long as she needed to get back on her feet. After a couple of days, she was getting antsy, and now, seven days later, she was sick of hanging around the house and wanted to get back to her regular routine.
“What did she decide?” I asked.
“She said she wants the car. She’s going to drive herself to her lecture tonight, drive herself home.”
“Oh,” I said. Angie might be ready for that, but were Sarah and I?
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “Oh.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I’d like to keep her home for the rest of her life,” Sarah said. “How do you feel?”
“I think your position is a reasonable one.”
We were both quiet for a moment. Sarah broke the silence. “I think we should let her.”
“I guess. But I think she should take the Camry. Until we’re absolutely sure that starting problem is fixed on the Virtue.”
“Agreed.”
“And you know,” I said, going slowly, “if you’re worried, we could sort of follow her along, make sure she got down to the university okay.”
Sarah eyed me. “Follow her.” It was a question, not a command.
“It was just a thought. I was trying to think of a way to make this easier for you.”
Sarah thought about it. “It’s not that I’m not tempted,” she said, “but I don’t think so.” She turned her attention to the checkbook, which she was leafing through, frowning.
“Speaking of the Virtue,” she said. “We’re going to be paying it off for quite a while. If we put, say, $300 a month down on the line of credit, it’s going to take us nearly thirty months or so to pay it off.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“We don’t really have another $300 a month at the moment,” Sarah said. “Not with all of Angie’s college expenses, and we need to be socking money away now for Paul, he’s going to want to go someplace.”
“The car seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said. “It seemed like such a good deal.”
We were quiet again for a while as Sarah scribbled away at some figures. She’s always done the finances in our house. I worry about everything else. All the time.
“You know,” I said, “it’s just occurred to me now, I can’t believe I forgot about this, but I know a place where there’s a lot of money just sitting around.”
Sarah’s pen paused over the notepad. “What are you talking about?”
“It never came up, all the questions I had to answer for the police, I never even thought to mention it.”
“What?”
“There’s mail, some very thick envelopes I’d imagine, waiting to be claimed at several five-star hotels down in Rio de Janeiro. If you could find all the places they were sent to, you’d have yourself $140,000 in cash.”
Sarah put down her pen. “Excuse me?”
“The money Eddie Mayhew got from the Jamaicans for the drugs he took out of our car. He sent it down there, he was going to go down and collect it, live high for a while.”
“So it’s just sitting down there now,” Sarah said.
I nodded. “And here’s the interesting thing. I might just be the only person who knows about it.”
Sarah set aside her notepad. “How’s that?”
“Eddie told Trimble, and then when Trimble and I went back to Bullock’s place, he told Bullock and the guy I thought of as Blondie. The other guy, the one I shot, he wasn’t in the room at the time.”
“And all of those people…” Sarah said slowly.
“Are no longer with us,” I said.
“So if somebody were to go down to Rio, start going around to various hotels, and said he was Eddie Mayhew, they’d hand over the money to him.”
“I guess,” I said.
We watched some people walk past on the sidewalk. They waved, we waved back.
“It’s dirty money, of course,” I said.
“That’s for sure,” Sarah said. “Although… it was made from selling something that was in our car.”
“But it wasn’t yet our car when the stuff was removed from our car.”
“That’s true,” Sarah said.
A car drove by. Somewhere in the distance, a siren.
“And whoever tried to claim those envelopes would need some sort of identification,” Sarah said.
“Oh sure, a fake ID, you’d have to have one of those. I don’t even know where a person would begin to find one of those,” I said, and thought of Paul and his underage drinking friends.
I guess a full minute went by where we said nothing. Sarah started doing some more scribbling on her notepad, adding up some numbers. I was afraid to look over and see what sort of figures she might be playing with.
“The thing is,” I said, “I could never pull it off.”
“Did somebody suggest you should?” Sarah said, almost defensively. “I didn’t say a word.”
“You know how I am. I’m too nervous. I’d break into a sweat at the hotel counter. I’d start stammering. They’d call the police. I’d crack before the interrogation even began. I don’t hold up well under pressure, you know.”
“Sure,” Sarah said. “That’s why it’s totally out of the question. It’s just something to talk about, that’s all.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Just something to talk about.”
“Yeah,” said Sarah, a bit dreamily. “Just something to talk about.”
Another car went by. A couple of kids rode by on bicycles, laughing.
“I’ll bet, though,” Sarah said, “and I’m just thinking out loud here, but I’ll bet if you made an appointment to see Harley, told him you needed something to calm you down, I’ll bet you he could give you something.”
She kept her head down, focused on her notepad, afraid to look at me.
I got up from the chair. “I’m gonna go see if we have any Scotch,” I said, and went into the house.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some people need to be thanked.
The folks at Bantam Dell have been, and continue to be, a joy to work with, particularly Irwyn Applebaum, Nita Taublib, Bill Massey, and my superb editor, Micahlyn Whitt. Thanks for your confidence, attention to detail, and kindness. Andie Nicolay deserves a special mention for her encouragement and commitment.
And I am grateful, as always, to my wonderful agent, Helen Heller.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LINWOOD BARCLAY is the author of Bad Move. He is a columnist for the Toronto Star and lives with his family near Toronto.
