I should have known. I should have suspected from the very beginning that this was what she would do.
“Can you forgive me?” she asked. I uncrossed my arms, leaned forward, and took her hand.
I nodded. “For loving us? Yeah, I think so.”
I was about to give her a hug when we heard a scream from upstairs.
Grace.
Actually, not a scream. A shout. A single word: “Yes!”
Cynthia and I ran up the stairs and found her in her room, sitting on the bed, phone in hand, a smile on her face unlike any I had seen in some time.
“What is it?” I said, coming through the door first, Cynthia right behind me.
Grace looked up, and she was smiling.
“He’s okay!” she said.
“What?” her mother said. “Stuart?”
“He just texted me! He’s okay!”
She handed the phone to me and I held it so Cynthia could see the screen, too. We read:
GRACE: just let me know your ok
GRACE: im going out of my mind if something happened 2 u let me no
GRACE: if you cant talk get someone else to get in touch with me
GRACE: did i hit you? just let me know that much
Those messages had all been written this morning. Grace had sent a dozen others last night.
And then, just now, there was this:
STUART: hey
GRACE: omg r u ok?
STUART: yeah. sorry if i freaked u out
GRACE: freaked out? im going out of my fuckin mind
STUART: had to run sorry i left u there. lotta shit going down, my dad mad
GRACE: but your ok?
STUART: yup.
GRACE: where r u
STUART: hidin out for while. dad mad boss too
GRACE: did i do it? shoot u?
STUART: fuck no! more l8r. see ya.
Cynthia and I exchanged glances, then looked at Grace, who was beaming.
“This is, like, the best news ever,” she said.
Thirty-nine
“Hello?”
“Reggie.”
“I’m kind of busy right now, Unk. Let me call you back in a few—”
“He called me.”
“What? Who called you? What are you talking about?”
“He knows.”
“Who? Who knows what?”
“Quayle.”
“Jesus. Just hang on a second. I’m coming out of the coffee shop. Let me get into the car. Hang on. Okay, I’m in. Start over.”
“Quayle phoned me. Just now. He knows it’s me.”
“There’s no way. Eli never told him. I’m sure of that. He— Shit!”
“What?”
“I just spilled some hot coffee in my lap. Unk, I don’t get it. How would Quayle make the connection?”
“Quayle hired a detective. Eli must have called him once to sound him out about a deal, but when he never called back, Quayle wanted to find him. So he got a private detective to look for him.”
“What did Quayle say? Exactly. What did he say, exactly, Unk?”
“He said he knew it was me. Said he should have known all along. Reggie, he must have done a deal with Eli after all.”
“What?”
“He hasn’t got her in his actual possession, but the detective does. Quayle said they’re checking for fingerprints. That they’re going to look for my fingerprints.”
“That sounds like bullshit, Unk. It’s a trick. He’s trying to set you up.”
“What if he isn’t? If they find my fingerprints, they’ll go to the police. I’ll be arrested. And then they’ll find out about Eli, about what happened to him.”
“Let me think, let me think. If we knew who the detective was—”
“He told me.”
“What?”
“He told me the detective’s name. Duggan. Heywood Duggan. I looked him up in the book. He’s a real private detective.”
“Well, hell, you got an address, Unk?”
Forty
At the body shop, Vince had closeted himself in his office. Gordie was outside the door asking Vince, through the frosted glass, whether he was okay.
“I need a minute,” he said, dropping into the padded chair behind his desk. “Where’s Bert?”
“He’s coming in.”
“When’d he get back from the farm?” Vince opened a drawer, took out a small glass and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Poured himself a snootful, knocked it back, poured himself another.
“Around four in the morning. He joined up with me to do a couple more houses, then went off on his own.”
“What’d he do with Eldon’s Buick?”
“Left it at his place. He was in his own car when he caught up with me. Listen, I think things are more or less okay,” Gordie said, “but he ran into a problem at one of the houses a little while ago.”
Jesus, it never ends.
Vince asked, “Which house?”
Gordie told him. “He said he rang the bell, knocked, was sure no one was home, but the kid was there, and then the wife showed up. Nearly ran him over.”
Cynthia.
“Shit,” Vince said.
“Have you talked to Eldon yet?” Gordie asked. “I mean, is he going to show up here any minute and not know? ’Cause I don’t want to be the one who tells him. I think it should come from you. I’m trying to weasel out of it, but you’re the boss and all.”
“Eldon won’t be coming in.”
“Why’s that?”
“When Bert gets here, I’ll fill you both in. You do that other thing I asked you?”
“The texts? Yeah, that’s done. But I wanted to ask you if—”
“I told you. I need a minute.”
Gordie’s shadow moved away from the frosted glass.
Vince stared straight ahead, dazed. Poured himself a third shot, downed it, then placed his hands flat on the desktop. Concentrated on his breathing. Inhaled slowly. Exhaled slowly. He was feeling light-headed, and it had nothing to do with the booze. He felt a knot of anxiety in the center of his chest. He wondered, for a moment, whether he was going to be sick to his stomach.
Was this what they called a panic attack?
Get a grip. You got a lotta shit to deal with.
A shadow darkened the frosted glass again. “Bert’s pulling in,” Gordie said.
“I’ll be out when I’m out.”
The shadow slipped away again.
Vince was thinking about a show he’d seen on disasters. Probably on the Discovery Channel. How, when a plane came down or two trains ended up heading toward each other on the same track, there was usually more than one cause, unless it was a bomb. Events conspiring. Pilot error meets faulty switch. Engineer looking at a video on his cell phone as trackside signals malfunction.
Vince believed events had very much conspired against him. Stuart breaking into that house at the very same time as someone else was ripping it off.
Things were going to shit all around him. He could feel his empire — such as it was — slipping away. And it had been getting chipped away at before the events of the last twenty-four — God, it hadn’t even been that long. More like twelve hours.
Audrey.
Maybe Jane was right. He had been a pussy. But he couldn’t bear to see his wife in that hospital bed those last few weeks. It tore him apart, filled him with despair and rage at the same time. He knew this wasn’t supposed to be about him — it was about her, about being there for her. But it was too risky, going to see her. Vince had to be the rock. Always the rock. He was the guy who didn’t let things touch him.
Most of the time, he could pull that off.
But not when he was in that room with Audrey, watching her die. It was bad enough, when she had her eyes open, seeing him become emotionally compromised. Seeing that tremble in his chin. The moistness in his eyes. But what if someone entered the room — a nurse, her doctor, Jane, Eldon or Gordie or Bert — and saw him that way? He’d never recover from the embarrassment. It would be a humiliation.