He turned to Clare. “If you need to talk with someone, do it.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“I mean it. This”-he waved his hand in exactly the same way she had earlier, wondering why he couldn’t come up with a better way to indicate an emotional tidal wave threatening to swamp his life- “shouldn’t make you less of who you are. I don’t want that, and if you have to go to confession or talk to the bishop or whatever, you should do it.”
“And name names?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “If you have to. Although, I gotta tell you the truth, I’d rather you fudged the identity thing if you can. But if you have to, go ahead.” He settled his glasses firmly over his ears. “Just don’t make yourself smaller for me.”
She nodded.
“Let’s get inside. Talk to people who have worse problems than we do.”
The first thing Rachel said when Lisa opened the door was “You do know your house is being watched, don’t you?” “What? Where?” Lisa stepped past her sister onto the doorstep. The automatic floodlight had come on when Rachel drove into the dooryard, and the beaten dirt and withered grass were brilliantly, if temporarily, lit. “I don’t see anybody.”
“Across the road from the start of your drive. I could see the squad car. I don’t know who’s staking you out, but it’s not Mark.”
Lisa stepped back inside and pulled the door shut behind her. “How do you know?”
Madeline was sound asleep on her sister’s shoulder, her eyelids almost translucent to her fine blue veins, her pink mouth open. A tiny snore bubbled from her nose. “Here, take her for a moment,” Rachel said, easing the five-year-old off her shoulder. Lisa took her niece, grunting slightly. Maddy’s frail baby-girl look was deceiving.
Rachel stripped off her coat. “Whoever was in the squad car waved to me. Mark would’ve flashed his lights.” She wiggled Madeline’s jacket off the little girl. “She fell asleep in the car,” she explained. “Mark dropped her off with the Tuckers when he was called in. Three little girls and a hyperactive dog-she probably didn’t stop running the whole time she was there.”
“You want to put her down in my bed?”
“Thanks.”
Lisa mounted the stairs, one hand on the banister to keep her from keeling over backward beneath the unexpected weight. Rachel slipped past her in the hall, and by the time Lisa reached her bedroom, her sister had the covers drawn back on the double bed. Lisa laid her niece down. The little girl curled like a bear cub in its den and buried her face in the pillow. Rachel tucked the bedclothes around Madeline, and the two sisters stood looking at her in the light shafting in from the hallway.
“She looks like a total angel,” Lisa said quietly.
“It’s an adaptive trait,” her sister said in the same low voice. “The child who looks sweet and adorable while sleeping is the child whose parents forget what a pain in the butt she can be when awake.”
Lisa smiled lopsidedly. Rachel could afford to be cynical about kids. She already had one. Lisa had hoped, this year, maybe… but if Randy went to prison, there weren’t going to be any kids, not this year. Maybe not ever.
Rachel, perhaps reading her mind, wrapped an arm around Lisa’s waist and hugged her. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go downstairs and have a drink.”
In the kitchen, Lisa ladled out two bowls of stew to go with their rum and Cokes. Rachel dug into hers, but Lisa had no appetite. She sat and watched her sister eat and listened to her dole out sensible advice between bites.
“You have got to call an attorney. Forget the whole court-appointed thing. Believe me, when it comes to criminal trials, you get what you pay for, and you have to be willing to pay for the best.”
“How are we going to afford that?”
“Mortgage your house? Sell it? You’ll find a way. Mom and Dad may help out.”
Lisa stared into her stew. “Great. Then we can spend the rest of our lives getting out from under a mountain of debt.”
“I’m only saying. If it was Mark, that’s what I’d do.”
“What if they don’t find Randy?”
Rachel wiped her mouth and pointed the napkin at her sister. “Lisa, you can’t get on a Greyhound bus nowadays without showing some ID. Even tiny little police departments like ours have computerized records and access to national databases. How long do you think Randy could last out there under those circumstances?”
“But you’re always hearing about crimes where no one was caught.”
“No one was caught because no one was ever identified as the perpetrator. That’s not what’s happening here. The woman ID’d Randy.”
“Then it’s her word against his! And he has an alibi!”
Rachel put her spoon down. “And that’s exactly why he needs a sharp laywer. Somebody who can take whatever holes exist and tear ’em open enough so that the jury has a reasonable doubt about whether Randy did it.”
Lisa wanted to shove her bowl and spoon out of the way, to set her forehead against the table and weep. She wanted a way out of this nightmare, and her sister, with her steady, implacable voice, was telling her there was none.
The phone rang.
“You want me to get that?” Rachel said.
“No.” Lisa rose from her chair and crossed the kitchen. “Hello,” she said into the receiver, already thinking about how quickly she could get off the phone and how on earth she was supposed to find a good criminal lawyer.
“Hey, honey. It’s me. Can you talk?”
“Randy!” Across the kitchen, Rachel sat up straighter. “Babe, where are you? No, wait, don’t tell me yet. Are you safe?”
“I’m fine. Look, I need to talk with you.”
“So talk.”
“In person.”
Her eyes widened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s really important. I think I have a way to get out of this mess. Remember how I told you I left some stuff in Mr. Reid’s office? To, you know, make him look suspicious instead of me?”
“I do, babe. That was so smart of you.”
“What if I told you I might have a way to get him to confess that he beat up Becky Castle?”
Lisa stared at the phone. Now what was he thinking? She couldn’t begin to imagine, which probably meant it wasn’t that good an idea. “I’d say that sounds… not very likely,” she said.
“I don’t want to get into all the details right now,” he said. “Please, honey. You gotta trust me. I need you to help me pull this off.”
Oh, boy, she was going to regret this. “Okay.”
“Great! Come to the Reid-Gruyn mill. Park in the back of the employee parking lot. You’ll see my truck. I’ll meet you there.”
The Reid-Gruyn mill? She had figured he would be halfway to Plattsburgh, holed up in a motel by now. “Where are you calling from?”
“The employee break room.”
“That’s crazy! Somebody will spot you!”
“That’s why I want to get off the phone.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said. “I love you. Bye.” She hung up without waiting to hear his reply.
“What’s going on?” Rachel’s voice, behind her, startled her. While she was wrapped up in the call, Rachel had risen from the table and was now standing in the doorway.
“He wants me to meet him.”
“Where is he?”
Lisa looked at her sister. Rachel’s face colored. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Oh, Rache.” Lisa opened her arms and gathered her reluctant sister into an embrace. “If you don’t know anything, you won’t have to choose between protecting me or lying to Mark.”
Rachel took Lisa by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Please, please promise me you’ll consider what I said. About getting a lawyer.”