He sprinted down the hall to the master bedroom. The old Smith & Wesson was in the dresser, top drawer. The bullets were in the strongbox in the closet. Ryan grabbed the revolver first, then the ammunition. He loaded all six chambers and wrapped his hand around the pearl handle, the way his father had taught him. The gun was not a toy, he’d always warned Ryan, it was only for protection. Protection from drunken in-laws who were after the Duffy millions.
Ryan heard footsteps on the front porch, then a key in the front door. He switched off the safety on the revolver and started for the living room.
Gun in hand, he waited by the staircase, watching the front door. He heard keys jingling. He watched the lock turn. He raised the gun, taking aim, ready on the defense. The door opened. Ryan’s finger twitched. His heart pounded. His whole body stiffened, then suddenly relaxed.
“Mom?” he said, seeing her in the doorway.
She sniffed the smoky room. Her face went ashen. “Don’t tell me you really burned it.”
He was tongue-tied with surprise. His mother had always been intuitive, but to infer from the mere smell of smoke that he had burned all the money was downright clairvoyant. He lowered the gun, deciding to play dumb. “Burn what?”
She closed the door and went straight to the fireplace. “The money,” she said harshly. “I was at Sarah’s house and Brent came home all hysterical. Said you’d gone crazy and were burning the money.”
“Is he out there now?” ask Ryan. “I thought I saw his car.”
“Sarah drove me over.” She glanced at the ash in the fireplace. “I can’t believe you did this.”
He discreetly stuffed the gun into his pocket, hiding it from his mother. “What did Brent tell you?”
“He said you burned at least ten thousand dollars in the fireplace. That you threatened to burn it all.”
“That’s true.”
His mother stepped toward him, looked him in the eye. “Have you been drinking?”
“No. Brent’s the drunk. He came in here like a burglar looking for the money.”
Her tone softened. “They’re afraid you’re going to cheat them out of their half.”
“I’m not cheating anyone.”
She looked again at the ashes in the fireplace. “Ryan, you can do what you want with your share of the money. But you don’t have the right to burn your sister’s.”
“Sarah and I had a deal. The money would stay put until we figured out who Dad was blackmailing and why. She wasn’t even supposed to tell Brent. Obviously she did.”
“You had to figure she’d tell her own husband.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s her husband.”
“By that logic, Dad should have told you who he was blackmailing.”
She seemed to shrink before his eyes. “I told you. I don’t know any of the details. I didn’t want to know, and your father didn’t want to tell me.”
Ryan stepped closer and took her hand. “Mom, I came this close to burning two million dollars tonight. Maybe you would agree with that move, maybe you’d disagree. But I deserve to know everything you know before I do something that final.”
She turned away and faced the fireplace. The flickering flames were reflected in her dark, troubled eyes. She answered in a soft, serious voice, never looking up. “I do know more. But I don’t know everything.”
Ryan was beginning to sense why his mother hadn’t cried at the funeral. “Tell me what you know.”
“Your father-” She was struggling for words. “I think I know where you can find the answers you’re looking for.”
“Where?”
“The night before he died, your father gave me a key to a safe deposit box.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know. Your father just said that if you had any questions about the money, I should give it to you. I’m sure the blackmail will become clear once you open it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because even though your father couldn’t say it to your face, he apparently wanted you to know. And I know of no place else to look.”
He searched her eyes, as if scrutinizing her soul. He’d never looked at his mother that way before, never had to watch for signs of deception. He found none. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you for telling me.”
“Don’t thank me. Can’t you see how afraid this makes me? For you, for all of us?”
“What do you want me to do?”
She grimaced, as if in pain. “That’s up to you. You can be like me and just stay away from it. Or you can open the box and deal with whatever comes with it.”
He paused for a moment until their eyes met. “I have to know, Mom.”
“Of course you do,” she said in a voice that faded. “Just don’t tell me about it.”
18
Panama. Until now, it had meant nothing to Ryan but a famous canal and an infamous dethroned dictator named Noriega. When his mother had told him about the safe deposit box, he’d figured it might be as far away as Denver.
What the hell was Dad doing with a safe deposit box in Panama?
The key and related documentation were in a locked strongbox in the bedroom closet, right where his mother had said they would be. Box 242 at the Banco Nacional in Panama City. There was even a city map. Dad’s passport was in there, too. Ryan didn’t even know he’d owned one. He thumbed through the pages. Most were blank. The passport was like new, stamped only twice. A trip to Panama nineteen years ago and a return to the United States the very next day. Not much of a vacation. It had to be business.
The business of extortion.
Ryan took the box up to his room and spent most of Friday night in bed awake, his mind racing. He ran though every human being he’d ever seen his father with, every man and woman his father had ever mentioned. He couldn’t come up with a single person who had the financial wherewithal to pay two million dollars in extortion. He certainly couldn’t think of anyone with connections to Panama.
At two in the morning he finally formed a semblance of a plan. He rose quietly and peeked in his mother’s room, making sure she was asleep. Then he sneaked downstairs. The money was still under the couch, where he’d stashed it when his mother had pulled up unexpectedly. He had a mini-ware-house near the clinic where he stored extra supplies, some old office furniture. Not even Liz knew it existed. Like a cat burglar, he slipped silently out the front door, pushing his Jeep Cherokee to the end of the driveway so that the engine noise wouldn’t wake his mother. He drove straight to the warehouse and hid the money in the bottom drawer of an old file cabinet. It would be safe there. Both the cabinet and the metal suitcase his father had left him were fireproof. He returned home, went straight to bed, and waited for the sun to rise.
He rose early Saturday morning, having managed only a couple of hours of sleep. He showered, dressed, and brought the box down to the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the Lamar Daily News, a local paper put out by the nearest “metropolis” — Lamar, population 8,500. It was usually no more than sixteen pages, three or four of which would typically be devoted to a photographic recap of the annual Granada High School class reunion or the 4-H Horse Show. The sight of his mother and her small-town news made it all the more absurd, the thought of his father flying to Panama and opening a safe deposit box.
“I’ve looked everything over,” said Ryan.
His mother stared even more intently at her newspaper.
“Don’t you want to know exactly what’s in there?” he asked.
“Nope.”
Ryan stood and waited, hoping she’d just look at him. The wall of newspaper between them seemed impenetrable. Fitting, thought Ryan. Most people in Piedmont Springs at least once in a while read the Pueblo Chieftain, the Denver Post, or even the Wall Street Journal. Not Mom. Her world was filtered through the Lamar Daily News. Some things she just didn’t need to know.
“Mom, I’m going to take all this stuff with me, if that’s okay with you.”