“All right, Friday at noon. My office, with you, your psychologist, Scott, and my lawyer friend. In the meantime, Scott is free to do as he pleases as long as he doesn’t bother Eric Russo. Deal?”
She sucked on her cheek while she considered it. “Deal.” She stuck her hand out in a stiff little gesture. Her grip was surprisingly firm.
“There’s another thing,” she said, holding on to my hand.
“There always is, isn’t there?”
“Like you said, Glass needs to leave Russo alone, and that includes no more poking into his background. Russo didn’t like those phone records you showed up with. He said it felt like some courtroom trap.”
“I was just trying to get an explanation.”
“Doesn’t matter. No more snooping. Got it?”
“Sure.” She frowned, so I bowed slightly. “Word of honor.”
“Good.” She let go of my hand, and her smile came back, full on. “Do you really want to learn evasive driving?”
“That was a silly joke.”
“But you thought someone was following you?”
“It was my imagination, unless . . . what kind of car to do you drive?”
“Me? A little Japanese thing.”
Like an Acura, I thought.
She leaned away from the car and slung her jacket over her shoulder. “You’ll let me know when Glass agrees to our meeting?”
“I’ve got both of your numbers memorized.”
She walked past, brushing my shoulder with her bare arm. “I like the sound of that, Cal.”
“Good to see you, Jamie.”
She didn’t turn around, but raised her hand and wagged it in a good-bye wave.
FOURTEEN
Scottie was waiting in Felix’s front yard, and he opened the door to my car before I was fully stopped. “Where have you been? You told me you’d be here at six.”
“Somebody came by the office to see me. Where’s Felix?”
“He said he had to take Coop to the veterinarian. Do vets stay open this late?”
“Sure, if that’s what Felix said.”
“I think he lied. I think he wanted to get away from me.”
I shut the engine down. “What happened?”
“That table in his kitchen, you know? He yelled at me for leaving a glass on it. Then he said it was a Stickley, and it isn’t. I mean, it’s not even made of oak and the joints—”
“Scottie, you can be a real pain, you know that?”
He hung his head. “I know. But I don’t like it when people get things wrong. It bugs me.”
“I’m sure Felix won’t stay mad long. He never does.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go sit where it’s more comfortable. I’ve got some good news.”
I led him to the porch, where Felix kept two Adirondack chairs. The heat of the day was fading, but I switched on the overhead fan to stir the air.
“Eric Russo told the FBI to leave you alone.” Scottie smiled so brightly I shook my head to calm him down. “That’s as long as you stay away from him. Meanwhile, I’ve got to keep an eye on you. We’ll have to meet every day, have a talk.”
“Great,” he said. “I’d like that.”
“And you’ll need to have an interview with an FBI agent, Jamie Weston. I’ve talked to her a few times, and you’ll do fine. I’ll be there along with a lawyer friend of mine.” I wasn’t going to mention the FBI psychologist just yet.
“What do they want to interview me about? I don’t need a lawyer.”
“The lawyer is my idea. Like I said, he’s a friend. Weston needs to talk to you to make sure you’re not going to do anything to Russo, that’s all.”
“Is she going to interview Russo, too? Find out why he tried to get me in trouble?”
He’d started rocking back and forth. It was so damned easy to set him off. What I needed was to knock some of his defenses down.
“Have you ever been arrested?”
“What? I—” He looked away. “Why do you want to know that?”
“It’s me, OK? There’s nothing to be ashamed of between us.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I was once. They put me on probation for a while, and there was some community service stuff.”
“Tell me about it.”
He shrugged. “I hurt somebody—kind of.”
Maybe he thought I was going to let him keep it at that, but I waited, dead still, until he began to squirm.
“I was riding my bicycle home from work. This guy stepped out in front of me. I had to veer off, and I hit a parking meter. I broke this tooth—” He lifted his lip to show me. “And my collar bone. He didn’t even help me up. Just said, ‘Idiot. Watch where you’re going,’ and walked away.”
He looked at the street and rubbed his hands on his knees.
“So?” I said.
“I found out his name—Stewart Pearsall—and where he lived in Georgetown. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he left me lying there. After I healed up, I went to his house one morning. I might have only talked to him, but he wouldn’t listen. He told me to get lost or he’d call the cops. I . . . I broke his leg with a shovel from the neighbor’s yard.” He gave me a furtive glance. “It was only a little break. He didn’t even need crutches.”
“Oookay.” If he’d been a patient, I would have said, And how did that make you feel? As it was, I had practical problems to deal with. “Scottie, can you see now why the FBI needs to talk to you? They don’t want you to end up at Eric Russo’s house with a shovel or a hammer—” I’d brought his backpack to the porch, and I nudged it with my toe. “Or a gun.”
“I guess so,” he mumbled. “That doesn’t mean they should treat me like an insect.”
They. The big, bad world at large pushing him around. Feelings like that would take a long time to deal with, partly because he was right. I’m sure at times people did treat him like an insect. At least he was dropping the hard shell when he was around me.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said. “Why do you have those real-estate tax records? The ones from the office buildings around Damascus.”
“Why do you want to know about those?”
“I couldn’t figure them out.” I took out the papers from the backpack. “These corporations don’t mean anything to me, nor do the addresses. I just wondered how they connected to anything.”
He gave me a suspicious look. Maybe he realized I was changing the subject, away from Russo.
He said, “Those companies are all owned by somebody who worked with your mother at Braeder Design. I thought she might know something, but she refused to see me, just like Russo.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Lois McGuin. She was your mother’s boss.”
Lois’s name had come up last night when I was with Russo and O’Shea. She was a connection point, but there was no surprise in that.
“What did you do, phone her?”
“Yes. She doesn’t have Internet accounts. When I told her who I was and why I wanted to see her, she got really upset. She told me she wasn’t going to talk to me and not to call back.”
“She and my mother were good friends. It’s got to be a terrible memory for her.”
“No, it’s more than that.” He took the papers from me. “She retired from Braeder less than a year after I got shot. That’s when she started buying property.” He pointed at the oldest of the tax records. “This one. Bought for cash—nine hundred thousand dollars. And a year later, another building, one point seven million. These others, too.” He rapped the papers with his finger.
“What are you saying?”
“Where did she get the money?”
“Scottie, people come into inheritances, they win the lottery. Some people are just good investors.”
“Over eight million dollars? You’re nuts if you don’t believe that’s suspicious.”
I should have known better than to smile.
“Damn it, Davie!” He slammed his hand on the arm of t
he chair so hard the wood creaked.
“Stop it,” I said firmly.
He glared at me, but nothing more. In a few seconds he’d calmed down. He tested the chair to make sure it wasn’t broken.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know you weren’t trying to pick a fight.” He sighed and looked into my eyes. “Why do I get so mad? It . . . happens so fast. Do you know?”
“I’m not sure. But I know you’ve got some questions about what happened twenty-five years ago. Those questions are eating you up.”
For a while we were quiet. I realized the same thing was true for me, old questions that could put me into a tailspin. Which of us was handling it better—Scottie with his shouts and shovels, or me with my trips to oblivion?
“What have you written here?” I pointed at a sticky note on one of the tax records.
“That’s McGuin’s address—she still lives in Damascus—and there’s her phone number and the days I tried to call her.”
“Days plural?”
“Yeah,” he said shyly. “I made a few calls to her.”
“You really don’t like taking no for an answer, do you?”
He knew I was joking and grinned.
“How about we go see her?”
“You’d do that?”
“Sure,” I said. “When you showed me that unemployment filing of my mother’s, it floored me. I had no idea she’d lost her job. And I thought of Lois right away. She’s the one person who would know what happened. I want to hear what she has to say about it.”
I also thought visiting Lois McGuin would be a good thing for Scottie. He could get some answers of his own—far away from Eric Russo.
“You mean like now?” he said.
“It’s a nice evening. Why not?”
Scottie beamed. “It’s a road trip!”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
FIFTEEN
By the time we were headed north on I-270, rush hour was long over. The sparse traffic droned along at seventy miles per hour. Scottie leaned forward in his seat, talking a stream about the road and the buildings and the birds—anything that crossed his field of view.
I was thinking about Lois McGuin. I’d always liked her, but my brothers weren’t so keen. They thought her gifts of candy and toys were too calculated. “Creepy old bat,” Ron called her. I felt certain she’d remember us, and that would be my way in. That meant I’d have to be Davie Oakes—grown up, and there to open old wounds. Given how close she and my mother had been, I didn’t see how she could refuse me.
“We’ll need directions,” I said. “My phone has a map application if you can figure it out.” I handed it to him.
His fingers zipped over the screen. “Don’t really need to. The place is right on Ridge Road, a mile north of the center of town. Here’s a picture.”
He held the phone up—a Google Maps street view. The house was a Queen Anne Victorian, tall and boxy with a wide porch that wrapped around three sides. “That’s an old photo,” he said. “It’s been renovated since then.”
“How do you know that?” I turned to look at him. “And how did you get that picture so fast?”
He shrugged. “I like to play around with computers and stuff.”
That was a lot more than playing.
“That reminds me—how did you find those tax records?”
“Tax records are easy,” he said, tapping on the phone again. “Every county has a searchable system.”
“I didn’t see Lois’s name anywhere on those records. How did you know what companies to look for?”
He kept working the phone, then flashed the screen at me, showing some kind of chart. “The assessed value on her house is one-point-four million. The renovation was two years ago. The assessment went up five hundred thousand that year.” He pecked the screen a few more times. “There’s no mortgage.” More pecking. “She had a lawsuit with the county over an easement for road access. Want to know what political party she contributes to?”
I stared at him. “Not really.”
Three taps. “Republicans.”
We had left the interstate, and I pulled up at a stoplight. I stared at him some more, until he became self-conscious.
“Mrs. Rogansky—my landlady—says everybody needs a hobby.” He wagged the phone. “Mine is doing this.” He gave me a bright smile. “You want to know what I found out about you?”
“Definitely not,” I said. I grabbed the phone and dropped it in the center console.
It was dusk when we made it to Damascus. In twenty-five years, I hadn’t been back to visit. The old elementary school was there at the south edge of town. Farther along, there were a lot of new buildings—banks and fast-food places and small businesses. The place had the same feel, though—a sleepy burg where people maybe didn’t make much money, but they felt safe walking the streets at night.
Lois McGuin’s house was visible from a half mile away. It reared up a full story taller than the neighbor’s homes, and there were lights on everywhere. I thought maybe she was having a party, but I found only one car in the driveway. It was some car: a gleaming black Jaguar XJ.
As I pulled in behind it, Scottie stared at the house. He fiddled with his seatbelt but didn’t unclick it. “Maybe I shouldn’t go in.” His leg started jiggling up and down.
“You wanted to come here.”
“She’s not going to be happy to see me, not after what I said to her on the phone. Besides, I might get mad, ruin the whole thing.” His hand hovered on the seatbelt. The jiggling was getting worse.
“All right, I’ll go in first. If I get a chance, I’ll come out to get you.”
He shrugged and picked at the armrest.
I wasn’t going to deal with his problems now. “Sit tight. I’ll be back.”
It had clouded up on the drive out from the District. I heard a faint rumble of thunder as I climbed the steps to the porch. There was intricate scroll work in the railing and under the eaves. It was pretty, but it made the house seem out of place, its excessive elegance transplanted from Charleston or Savannah.
The door chime sounded deep inside, and I heard steps coming to answer it. I remembered Lois with dirty blond hair, a big person, soft from a few extra pounds. This woman had red-tinged hair in an elegant bob. She was slim, dressed in an expensive cashmere sweater and silk pants, matching sky blue. Her face was tight and shiny from a recent skin peel.
“Yes?” I knew right then it was her, with that honeyed southern drawl. It brought back so many memories that a tingle went up my spine, and I felt a little off balance.
“Ms. McGuin, it’s good to see you. My name is David Oakes. I knew you when I was a boy.”
“Oakes?” She tilted her head back to study me through her glasses. “Davie . . . it is you. I’d never mistake those eyes.”
An awkward moment passed. “Could I come in? I’d like to speak with you.”
“Of course. Where are my manners?”
She pulled the door back. I put my hand out to shake. She brushed it aside and gave me a hug.
She insisted on making tea and told me to wait in the parlor. When it was ready, she called me into the kitchen to carry the tray. “I was thinking about you only a few weeks ago. I was throwing out some things in the study and came across an old photograph.” She pointed at a table where I should put the tray down. “Let me show you.”
I followed her to the adjoining room, where there was a rolltop desk and several banks of filing cabinets. The walls were covered with framed pictures, most of them shots of empty offices. “I’m sorry for the mess. I run my business from here.” She looked around. “Now where did I put that . . . ?” She moved a ledger on the desk and broke into a smile. “Here it is.”
It was a picture of Ron, shooting a basket on a playground court while Lois looked on and applauded. “That was at a picnic. Your whole family was there. You boys were always my little nephews, do you remember that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you lo
ved chocolate-covered cherries.”
Actually that was Alan, but I didn’t correct her. In the photograph, I noticed a shadow across the lower corner. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female—my mother or father as they snapped the picture. I quickly handed it back to her.
“Twenty-five years,” Lois said. “I realized that when I found the photo.” She gave me an appraising stare. For a moment, I could see the shrewd businesswoman in her. “Is that why you’re here, Davie?”
“That—and I have some questions to ask.”
She slipped the photo back where she’d had it and rolled the top down on the desk. “Our tea will get cold.”
She filled our cups and asked me where I worked. I gave her only a few sketchy details. She told me about her real-estate business, how she’d managed through the downturn. It was genteel conversation before we got into anything serious.
Outside, it had started to rain, and there was another drum of thunder. The noise startled her. “I don’t like these summer storms we have. An old lady alone—I turn on all the lights to make me feel better.”
There was a window open behind the settee where I was sitting. She rose and closed it. “I met your aunt and uncle at the funeral service for your family. They seemed like a lovely couple.”
“They’ve been great to me. We moved to Arlington when I was in middle school. They still live there.”
She sat down and toyed with her teacup on the saucer. “Your mother was my dearest friend. I can’t imagine what it was like for you. It took me years to get over losing her.”
I’d wondered a few times why Lois had never looked me up. I had my answer now: she was avoiding the memories. I certainly could understand that. “I only found out recently that she’d lost her job at Braeder. I was hoping you could tell me about that.”
Her hand hesitated over the cup. “All of us who knew tried to keep that quiet. Even the police agreed to leave it out of their public statements. They were worried about that neighbor boy who almost died, and they wanted to push the whole thing under the rug. The rest of us felt your mother’s troubles at Braeder were private. Of course the press came snooping around, but we brushed them off. Pretty soon they started making up their own stories.”
The Survivors Page 11