An exasperated sigh. “What?”
“This is... this isn’t an easy time for me. You gotta know that.”
“Whatever you say,” she said.
“I know I’ve been kind of busy lately, that you and I, we haven’t spent as much time together, but hey, you know, you’ve got your life, and there’s all this other shit, with the doctor and—”
“Which doctor? What’s the latest?”
“Nothing. Forget about that. The point is, I’ve been changing my whole operation this last couple of years, trying to be more creative.”
“I thought you’d always been pretty creative,” she said. “Hijacking trucks, stealing SUVs, shipping them overseas. That’s pretty creative.”
Vince didn’t try to deny it. “But it’s all labor intensive. I’m not as young as I used to be. And I’ve had... cash flow problems. But I’m turning things around.”
“You think any of that has anything to do with why I’m pissed at you?” she snapped.
He said nothing. He just waited.
“Why didn’t you go visit her?”
“I did,” he said defensively.
“Oh, like twice?”
“That’s not true, Jane, and you know it. I was into the hospital to see your mother regularly.”
“But not that night. Where were you then?”
“I was on my way,” he said. “I was going to come over. I was.”
“Really? Something come up? You got delayed? I know where you were. Mike’s.” A Milford bar where Vince spent a lot of time. “If you’d tried to drive to the hospital in your condition, you’d have plowed right into the emergency ward.”
“So I was at Mike’s. Big deal.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“Having a few drinks,” he admitted. “I didn’t know it was gonna happen that night.”
“No, you didn’t, because you hadn’t gotten your ass in there for days to see how she was. If you had, you’d have seen how bad she was getting. You’d have known it was coming. I tried to tell you but you had your head up your ass and didn’t hear me.”
Vince mumbled something.
“What’s that?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?”
“I couldn’t see her like that. I just...” He stopped, took a breath as though he were winded. “I loved your mother very much. She was everything to me. Watching her suffer, watching her get worse every day, that was hard.”
“Hard for her, too,” Jane said.
“Why do you think I was at Mike’s drinking myself into a stupor? Because I couldn’t stand to lose her, that’s why.”
Jane’s eyes were piercing. “Feeling sorry for yourself. You know what I never would have guessed all these years? That you were a pussy.”
Vince glared at her. His cheeks flushed.
“Yeah, I said it. You didn’t have the guts to be there. I mean, it’s not like you haven’t been around death all your life, is it? You don’t mind causing it. You just don’t want to see what it looks like.”
“No one else talks that way to me and gets away with it, Jane.”
She opened her arms, a “bring it on” gesture. “Take your best shot.”
“Jesus, Jane,” he said, and shifted closer to the table, put out a hand to steady himself. “I don’t want to do this.” He dropped his head, shook it slowly. “I know I’ve disappointed you. I don’t blame you. I’m not the man you thought I was. I probably never was. I’ve lost your mother, and it looks like I’ve lost you now, too. I won’t disappoint you much longer.”
Jane started to respond, but something made her hang back.
“Besides,” he said flippantly, “it’s not like I’m really your father. You’re not my real daughter. So what’s the big deal, right?”
He tried to force a laugh, but it sent him into a coughing fit.
Jane hesitated. She was only a foot from the door, but it was hard to walk out on someone when he was in the middle of trying to catch his breath.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. His cell phone started ringing. “I gotta get that.”
“Sure.”
He got out the phone, put it to his ear. “Yeah, Gordie... good... yeah... Hang on.”
Vince said to Jane, “I got stuff I gotta take care of.”
“Sure,” she said. She turned, went out the screen door, and let it swing shut with a loud clap behind her.
Vince spoke into the phone. “Off the top of my head, I’m thinking it could be the dog walker. Braithwaite. The security pad was green. Someone used a key, knew the code. Keep doing the other checks, but I’m liking him for this. If other places got broken into, then it’s not him. But if it’s just the Cummings place, that’s different. We’ll pay him a visit tomorrow. He’s living across the hall from Archer’s wife. I’ll give you the address — you got something to write it down?”
Twenty-nine
Terry
I could have gone up to Grace’s room, knocked on the door, and tried to calm the waters, but I had nothing left. If she wanted to stew about this for a while on her own, that was fine by me.
So I kept my ass in the kitchen chair.
Said to myself, Shit shit goddamn motherfucking shit.
Because that’s what we were in. Right up to our goddamn necks.
Was I a fool to do what Vince had ordered me to do?
Probably.
Did I have a better idea about how to deal with this mess?
Not exactly.
Did Vince honestly believe he could keep the lid on this? Did he think he could make these problems disappear? Even if he could make Grace and me forget Stuart ever existed, did he think he could erase all evidence that the boy ever existed?
Had Stuart ceased to exist? And if he had, what the hell had actually happened to him? If he was dead, what had Vince done with him? What about the boy’s father, Eldon? What was his reaction going to be? Maybe, just maybe, Grace and I could be counted on to keep our mouths shut, but Stuart’s father? If his kid was dead, was he going to do whatever Vince wanted?
What was it about that house? Why was Vince going on about whether Stuart and Grace had plans to do anything besides stealing the Porsche? Why did he want to know if they’d been anywhere else but the basement and the main floor?
The man was rattled. If he didn’t have a handle on what was going on, if he couldn’t contain things, what would be the fallout for Grace later when everything came out? What price would she pay for not coming forward in the beginning?
And if whoever else was in that house believed Grace was a witness, and knew who she was and how to find her, was Grace safer going to the police and putting all her cards on the table?
Man oh man oh man, what a mess.
In the morning, I’d see a lawyer. Someone I could tell all this to, with complete confidentiality. Lay it all out for him. See what our options were.
I couldn’t imagine any of them were good.
As if all this were not enough, there was another matter.
Cynthia.
What the hell would all this do to her? Unless Vince really could bury this mess deeper than Captain Kidd’s treasure, I was going to have to tell her everything. She deserved to know.
More than that, I needed her to know. Cynthia might be more high-strung and stressed-out than the next person, but she was still my rock, and I wasn’t going to be able to get through this without her. And as much as Grace might want to keep her mom in the dark, she wasn’t going to be able to get through this without her, either.
The question was when to bring her into the loop.
Not tonight. Definitely not tonight.
I went upstairs, stood in front of the bathroom sink, looked at myself in the mirror for a good minute before I remembered what I’d gone in there to do. I brushed my teeth, stripped down to my boxers, and crawled into the queen-sized bed that had felt far too empty the last few weeks.