"Didn't lead to quite what you intended, did it?" Anna suggests.
"Carrie used her…"
"Made Lucy gay?"
"No, I wouldn't go that far," I say. "You don't make people
gay"
"Made Benton dead? Can you go that far?"
"I don't know, Anna."
"A volatile past, a personal history. Yes. Benton said something about Lucy, and Carrie lost control and shot him just like that," Anna summarizes. "He did not die the way they planned." She sounds triumphant. "He did not."
I rock quietly, looking out at a gray morning that has become full of bluster. The wind exerts itself in fierce gusts that fling dead branches and vines across Anna's backyard, reminding me of the angry tree hurling apples at Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Then Anna gets up with no announcement, as if an appointment is up. She leaves me to go about other business in her house. We have talked enough for now. I decide to retreat to the kitchen, and that is where Lucy finds me around noon after her workout. I am opening a can of whole tomatoes when she walks in, the early stages of a marinara sauce simmering on the stove.
"Need some help?" She looks at sweet onions, peppers and mushrooms on the cutting board. "Kind of hard getting around with only one hand."
"Pull up a stool," I tell her. "You can be impressed with my fending for myself." I exaggerate bravado as I finish opening the can with no help, and she smiles as she moves a bar stool from the other side of the counter and sits. She is still in her running clothes and has a look in her eye, a secret light, reminding me of the river catching the sun very early in the morning. I steady an onion with two fingers of my immobilized left hand and begin to slice.
"Remember our game?" I lay the onion slices flat and begin to chop. "When you were ten? Or can't you remember back that far? I certainly will never forget," I say in a tone meant to remind Lucy what an impossible brat she was as a child. "Bet you have no idea how many times I would have put you on admin leave, given the choice." I dare to push that painful truth. Maybe I am feeling bold because of my naked talk with Anna, which has left me unnerved and at the same time exhilarated.
"I wasn't that bad." Lucy's eyes dance because she loves to hear what a little terror she was when she was a child and would come stay with me.
I drop handfuls of chopped sweet onions in the sauce and stir. "Truth Serum. Remember that game?" I ask her. "I'd come home, usually from work, and I could tell by the look on your face that you'd been up to something. So I'd sit you in that big red chair in the living room, remember? It was by the fireplace in my old house in Windsor Farms. And I'd bring you a glass of juice and tell you it was truth serum. And you'd drink it and confess."
"Like the time I formatted your computer while you were gone." She is laughing hard.
"Ten damn years old and you format my hard drive. I about had a heart attack," I recall.
"Hey, but I did back up all your files first. I just wanted to give you a bad moment." She is really enjoying this.
"Well, I almost sent you home." I wipe the fingertips of my left hand with a dishtowel, careful that my cast doesn't smell like onions as I experience a wave of sweet sadness. I don't
really remember why Lucy came to stay with me on her first visit to Richmond, but I was not the child-rearing type and was new in the job and under tremendous pressure. There was some sort of crisis with Dorothy. Maybe she ran off and got married again, or maybe I was a sucker. Lucy adored me and I wasn't accustomed to being adored. Whenever I would visit her in Miami, she would follow me all over the house, everywhere I went, tenaciously moving with my feet like a soccer ball.
"You weren't going to send me home." Lucy is challenging me, but I catch the doubt in her eyes. The fear of not being wanted is based on fact in her life.
"Only because I felt inadequate to take care of you," I reply, leaning against the sink. "Not because I wasn't crazy about you, little rat fink that you were." She laughs again. "But no, I wouldn't have sent you home. Both of us would have been devastated. I couldn't." I shake my head. "Thank God for our little game. It was about the only way I could get to what was going on inside of you or what mischief you had engaged in while I was off somewhere, at work, whatever. So do I need to pour you juice or a glass of wine, or are you going to just go on and tell me what's happening with you? I wasn't born yesterday, Lucy. You aren't staying in a hotel for the heck of it. You're up to something."
"I'm not the first woman they've run off," she starts in.
"You would be the best woman they've run off," I answer.
"Remember Teun McGovern?"
"I'll remember her for the rest of my life." Teun_pronounced Tee-Un_McGovern was Lucy's ATF supervisor in Philadelphia, an extraordinary woman who was wonderful to me when Benton was killed. "Please don't tell me something's happened to Teun," I worry.
"She quit about six months ago," Lucy replies. "Seems ATF wanted her to move to L.A. and be the SAC of that field division. The worst assignment on God's earth. Nobody wants L.A."
A SAC is a special agent in charge, and very few women in federal law enforcement end up running entire field divisions. Lucy goes on to tell me McGovern's answer was to resign and start a private investigative business of sorts. "The Last Precinct," she says, getting more animated by the moment. "Pretty cool name, right? Based in New York. Teun's round- ing up arson investigators, bomb guys, cops, lawyers, all kinds of people to help out, and in less than six months she's already got clients. It's sort of turned into a secret society. There's a real buzz on the street. When shit hits, call The Last Precinct_where you go when there's nowhere left."
I stir the simmering tomato sauce and taste a little. "Obviously you've been keeping up with Teun since you left Philadelphia." I drip in a few teaspoons of olive oil. "Darn. I guess this will be all right, but not for the salad dressing." I hold up the bottle and frown. "You press olive oil with the pits still in, it's like squeezing oranges with the rind still on and you get what you deserve."
"Why is it I don't assume Anna is an aficionado of things Italian?" Lucy dryly comments.
"We'll just have to educate her. Grocery list." I nod at a notepad and pen by the phone. "First item, extra virgin olive oil Italian integrate style_pitted before pressed. Mission Olives Supremo is a nice one, if you can find it. Not a trace of bitterness."
Lucy makes notes. "Teun and I have stayed in touch," she informs me.
"You're somehow involved in what she's doing?" I know this is where the conversation is headed.
"You could say that."
"Crushed garlic. In the refrigerated section, in little jars. I'm going to be lazy." I pick up a bowl of lean ground beef that I have thoroughly cooked and patted free of grease. "Not a good time for me to crush garlic myself." I stir the beef into the sauce. "How involved?" I go into the refrigerator and open drawers. Anna doesn't have fresh herbs, of course.
Lucy sighs. "God, Aunt Kay. I'm not sure you want to hear it."
Until very recently, my niece and I have talked little and not in depth. We have seen each other seldom over the past year. She moved to Miami, and both of us retreated behind bunkers after Benton's death. I try to read the stories hiding in Lucy's eyes and instantly begin to entertain possibilities. I am suspicious about her relationship with McGovern and was last
74 year when all of us were called out to a catastrophic arson scene in Warrenton, Virginia, a homicide disguised by fire that turned out to be the first of several masterminded by Carrie Grethen.
"Fresh oregano, basil and parsley," I dictate the grocery list. "And a small wedge of Parmesan Reggiano. Lucy, just tell me the truth." I look for spices. McGovern is about my age and single_or at least she was single last time I saw her. I shut a cupboard door and face my niece. "Are you and Teun involved?"