by Wendy Wax
As she watched him go, she prayed that she’d said and done the right thing. She would have loved to tell Joe everything, but she’d made a promise to Nikki. “Please, God,” she whispered to herself as he strode out of sight. “Don’t let that promise be the thing I regret for the rest of my life.”
Chapter Forty
Renée padded quietly down the hall to the guest room where she’d sat with Annelise until the sleeping pill finally kicked in. Now her sister lay on her side, curled into a tight protective ball, whimpering and twitching, but at least she was asleep. She stared down at Annelise’s ravaged face, shocked to see what the years and distress had done to it. When had the high, smooth cheeks sunk in on themselves? How had the skin grown so taut and thin, the age spots so prevalent? When had her little sister’s mouth turned permanently downward so that her unhappiness was apparent even in repose? She looked far older than her nearly seventy years. If Annelise was “old” what did that make her?
Leaving the bedroom door open so she would know if she were needed, Renée went into the family room and lowered herself onto the couch. Moonlight streamed in through the windows; she could hear the wash of the tide on the sand barely a block away. A pile of boxes sat near her feet, brought down from the office attic. She lifted the lid of the closest box, which had been labeled and dated in her grandmother’s hand, and pulled out the first photo album. New Year’s Eve 1950. The eight-by-ten was a black-and-white of the hotel lobby. The windows had been hung with long silver fringe, paper lanterns strung above the entire space. In a corner on a raised platform a tuxedo-wearing trio with a sequin-gowned singer performed in the glow of a spotlight. On the improvised dance floor, the terrazzo shining like marble, couples were frozen midstep or midsway, all of them wearing formal attire. Her father had served as official photographer, and this album was filled with what Nana always requested: close-ups of the couples who danced in each other’s arms or lingered in the dining room over tables draped in white linen, their faces bathed in candlelight. Photos that would be given to each guest before they checked out of the hotel and that undoubtedly graced family albums all over the Midwest.
As she turned and studied the pages, Renée recognized every face, every couple whether they were hotel regulars or local beach club members.
The Grossmans, who came each year from Detroit and who took a second cottage for their daughter and her children for the entire month of December. The Rosenzweigs and Weintraubs from Cleveland. The Schwartzes and Jacobsons from Chicago. New Yorkers might favor the East Coast and particularly Miami, but in the late fifties and sixties, midwesterners took advantage of the newly inaugurated national interstate highway system to make their way to Florida’s west coast and St. Petersburg Beach.
Renée traced the outline of Nana’s and Pop Pop’s figures at the center of the group photo taken just after midnight each New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Day another would be taken of everyone—grandparents, parents, children, longtime employees, plus all the Handlemans, a shot her father would set up and then take with the aid of a self-rigged timer. Always Nana would remind them that “the reason our guests come back every year is because they know they are family.”
“Renée?” John stood in the doorway, his eyes half closed and his voice thick with sleep. “Is everything okay?”
“I wanted to check on Annelise. And then, I don’t know, I couldn’t seem to go to sleep. I was just looking at the old New Year’s pictures.”
“Really?” He yawned and came to sit next to her. The sofa dipped as he pulled her close. She rested her head on his shoulder. It was narrower and frailer than it had once been. But John’s strength had always radiated from the inside out.
“It’s no wonder,” he murmured. “What a day. I never believed Ilse would have ever done your father harm. But I did think she might have had a reason to run. She always seemed oddly frightened. As if she were somehow waiting for the rug to be snatched out from under her.”
“You’ve never said that before.” Renée lifted her head.
“Haven’t I?”
“I feel like I’ve started remembering things I didn’t even know I knew,” she said. She hadn’t only been unable to fall asleep, she’d been afraid to. Afraid not of seeing what had been left of Ilse’s body, but of hearing words and seeing images that had begun to take shape in her mind. “I think I heard them arguing.”
“Who? Your father and Ilse?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I thought. But I’m starting to wonder. There was a lot of German even though Ilse and my father always spoke English. I heard the word ‘Juden!’ And Ami refers to American, I think. And mein! Mein tochter! That means ‘daughter.’” She closed her eyes. Trying to remember was less frightening with John by her side. “Ilse was the one who sounded hysterical. Which doesn’t really make sense, does it? I don’t think I ever heard her raise her voice in all the time I knew her. But I’m pretty sure I heard her say, ‘Nein! Not yours!’”
For the first time, she could see herself standing in the kitchen with the glass of water she’d gotten up for, feeling that something didn’t fit but not understanding what. “I don’t know. I thought it was just the two of them. That they were arguing for some reason. And in the morning when my father was dead and Ilse was gone, I thought that proved it. But I think there might have been a third voice.” Tears gathered, pricking her lids. Had she heard Ilse pleading? A noise? Some sort of scuffling? Had she really said, “Not your tochter!” And why would she say that to her husband? “Oh, God, I should have knocked on the door. I should have done something.”
The tears pressed more insistently and it took her a few moments to recognize what they were. “And why am I only remembering now?”
“Shhh,” he soothed. “Don’t worry. I don’t know what you could have done about any of it.”
“I’m crying,” she said, shocked at the unaccustomed wetness on her cheeks. She never cried. Never.
“It’s all right. You’re allowed to. You have every right. You’re just always so busy being strong and taking care of everybody else that you push your own problems and worries aside. But that doesn’t necessarily make them disappear.”
He pushed her hair back off her face. “Annelise isn’t the only one who lost a parent that night. And you’d already lost your mother when you were even younger than she was when Ilse died.”
She looked at her husband, made herself consider what he’d said. What would she do without him? “How’d you get so smart?” She pressed a kiss to his forehead. Another to his weathered cheek.
“I guess after all these years my wife finally started rubbing off on me.”
“I love you.” She smiled, cupping his cheek in her hand. “I’m so lucky to have you.”
He shook his head and cupped the hand that cupped his cheek, the touch warm and comforting. “I’m the lucky one,” he said gently. “And I thank whoever is in charge up there every single day for giving you to me.”
She sighed when John put his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest and thought again about her father and Ilse. In comparison to the decades she’d shared with John, they’d had so few years of happiness. And Annelise had had almost none at all.
Nikki would have given a lot to be wearing her “lucky suit.” The one that would have given her confidence to not act like what she was: a desperate family member of a convicted felon, acting on his behalf while trying to figure out how to turn the tables on him. For the entire five-hour drive to Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle, she’d racked her brain to come up with a means of retrieving the cash Malcolm had put in her name without drawing undue attention.
In the end she’d had no choice but to show her ID and sign in. Despite the absence of her lucky suit, no one had tried to stop her. As she emptied the safe-deposit box, she debated what she would do with the money—assuming she got out of the bank without tripping up. Pay it to whoe
ver threatened Malcolm’s life (if, in fact, there was a shred of truth to this story)? Turn it in to the authorities (this would include Joe) so that it could be disbursed through proper channels to Malcolm’s victims? Or, and she was ashamed of how much she preferred door number three—keeping it to give to the victims she knew personally (that would be herself, Maddie, and Avery) so that they could use it for the damned renovation, which was still stalled in every possible way. Once she figured out whom the money should go to, she’d have to come up with a way to keep Malcolm from carrying through on his threats against Joe and her. Every part of this both alarmed and exhausted her.
“Ma’am?” She’d left the vault and was crossing the bank lobby when the voice sounded behind her. “Wait. Just a minute. Ma’am!”
Nikki’s brain weighed the words and the urgency behind them as her feet did a stutter step. She didn’t want to stop, though. She couldn’t. The front door was just a few steps ahead of her.
“Ma’am! In the green shirt!”
Caught. Mind racing, Nikki prepared to turn around. She must not raise her hands in surrender. Stay calm. She hadn’t done anything illegal. It would only be illegal if anyone found out that the money she’d retrieved from the safe deposit box was stolen and put there by a convicted felon. She gauged the number of steps to the door, then forced herself to turn slowly. “Yes?”
“You dropped this.” The bank employee moved quickly toward her.
Nikki had to force herself to hold her ground, to keep her smile steady.
The young woman stopped directly in front of her. “Ms. Grant?”
Nikki braced for the words you’re under arrest. Or please come with me. “Yes?”
The employee reached out and . . . handed Nikki her driver’s license.
Jesus. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” the young woman said. But she stared at Nikki a beat or two longer than seemed necessary. As if she were memorizing Nikki’s features. Or possibly wasn’t really a bank employee at all but a . . . Enough.
Nikki nodded, smiled once more, and turned clutching her driver’s license in her hand while using her elbow to hold the purse, now stuffed with wads of cash, tight to her side. It took everything she had not to sprint out the door.
“Get a grip,” she said once she’d gotten into the Jag, locked the doors, and turned on the ignition. She sat slowing her breathing and waiting for the air-conditioning to blow cool. “If you’re going to jump every time someone speaks to you, you might as well carry a neon arrow over your head that flashes the words ‘guilty person.’” Redirecting the vent to the sweat-soaked blouse that now stretched too tight across her breasts, she pulled out the list of banks, which crisscrossed Florida. She’d come northwest to Tallahassee. The next bank was in Jacksonville on the opposite coast. It was only 164 miles due east on I-10, but it was already three o’clock. Even if she made it before the bank closed, she’d have to race in and out; someone in a bank in too big a hurry would be calling attention to herself. She could go ahead and make the drive now, spend the night in a hotel near the bank, and go in the next morning at a time when the bank would be busy enough that she could go unnoticed. “No worries,” she told herself. “Everything’s under control. You don’t have to decide what to do with the money now. You just have to retrieve it.” Decision made, she backed out of the parking space and made her way to the interstate.
In the morning she lay in bed and stared out at the rain slanting down on the hotel window. She’d overslept yet still felt like it would take a few more hours to be truly rested. Feeling as heavy as the iron-colored sky, she got up and moved slowly into the bathroom, where she took her time showering and dressing. She longed for a cup of coffee, but Maddie had insisted that she needed to cut out caffeine. For the babies. Now she eyed the two chocolates that she’d discovered in the bottom of her purse. They have caffeine in them, Maddie’s voice said in her head. But at the moment Nikki didn’t care. They were small. How much caffeine could they possibly contain? Besides, where were the perks that pregnant women were supposed to be entitled to, she wondered as she unwrapped the first gold foil and popped the candy in her mouth. Wasn’t she allowed, even expected, to eat?
She considered herself in the full-length mirror as she savored the final chocolate. The sleeveless white blouse did gape a bit around the buttons, but its peplum hid the fact that she’d been unable to button the waistband of the black pencil skirt she’d paired it with. The black-and-white-patterned pumps smartened the plain pieces up a bit. They were now her go-to dress shoe because of their kitten heel.
Her breakfast done, she checked out of the hotel and headed for the second bank on Malcolm’s list. This time she entered the bank lobby with her head high and a pleasant smile on her lips. A greeter showed her to the safe-deposit vault. With far less dithering than in Tallahassee, she signed in, showed her ID, and went inside. It only took her a few minutes to find the numbered box and remove it from its spot. Glancing over her shoulder even though she knew she was alone, she carried it to the vault table, opened it, and began to remove the bound bills. Yesterday’s box had held a lot of hundred-dollar packets but had not been full. This box was tightly packed and held more than twice as many stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Her mental calculator put the total so far somewhere around $500,000. If the safe-deposit boxes continued to bear this much fruit, there’d be more than enough to renovate the hotel, cover production of a new season, turn in a huge chunk to the government, and still pay off whoever was threatening Malcolm’s life. This money may be in your name but that doesn’t make it yours. If you keep any of this, you’re no better than your brother.
She brushed the thoughts aside as she exited the vault and began to make her way through the lobby. Once she had retrieved all the money she’d figure out what should be done with it. No one seemed to be watching or even noticing her at all. Relieved, she nodded good-bye to the greeter and covered the last few steps to the door glad to see the rain had stopped. Then she was outside into the hot, muggy air, exultant at how smoothly the retrieval had gone and striding across the parking lot to the Jag. Which was when she saw the man standing next to it. A man who looked an awful lot like Joe Giraldi.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against her car. An overnight bag sat at his feet.
“I could ask you the same thing. In fact I am asking you the same thing.” Joe’s eyes were dark and steely. The tic in his cheek apparent. He was wearing the blue pin-striped suit, crisp white shirt, and red tie in which he liked to make arrests.
“How did you find me?”
“I’m with the FBI,” he said drily. She wished he’d put his sunglasses on so she wouldn’t have to see the way he was looking at her. “We do have one or two resources at our disposal.” His cheek ticked his disapproval again. “And FYI, the next time you decide to do something illegal and want to avoid detection, it’s best not to use your credit cards.”
She knew this, of course. Anyone who’d ever watched an episode of Castle knew better. She’d just been so intent on getting this taken care of and getting Malcolm off her back that she hadn’t been thinking clearly. As if on cue a text dinged in. “Who says I’m doing something illegal?” she demanded, careful not to look at her phone. She did not want him to know that she’d been communicating with . . .
“Is that Malcolm?” He held out his palm, making it clear he expected her to hand over her phone.
“What in the world are you talking about?” She tried for shock and righteous indignation; only the shocked part rang true.
“I know he’s been texting you,” Joe said, lifting the phone out of her fingers. “And threatening you.”
Once again, she was at a loss for words. As many times as she’d known she should tell him and worried about him finding out, she hadn’t prepared any kind of defense or explanation.
“
He’s not just threatening me,” she said. “He’s been threatening to implicate you.” She paused. “And also someone’s put a hit out on him.”
It was clear from his lack of reaction that none of this was news to him. She tried not to fidget under his regard, but it was hard to stand up under his merciless gaze when she knew just how much right he had to be angry.
“There’s nothing Malcolm can do to me or my career no matter how much he might want to. And while I’m guessing everyone who’s ever known him for more than five seconds would like to see him dead, there is no hit,” Joe said grimly. “No one but your brother is demanding money.”
“What?” This time the shock was real and automatic. She’d known this was a possibility but still had not been able to take the chance that something would happen to Malcolm that she could have prevented. “How do you know that?”
“Because the person who smuggled that cell phone in to him works for us.” He watched her face as the implication of just how much he knew sank in. His nod was as sharp as his voice. “He’s played you again, Nikki. Like he’s been playing you his whole life. And for some reason you just keep going back for more instead of asking for help from someone who could have given it.”
Tears formed, blurring her vision. Her brother, whom she’d practically raised, was a selfish, self-absorbed, and criminally greedy human being who’d bankrupted hundreds of people, charities, and institutions. Once again, he’d proven that he didn’t give a single shit about her. Her lip began to tremble. She ordered it to stiffen up.
“It would have been nice—and a whole lot smarter—if you’d confided in me. Because now I’m in an awkward position.” Joe looked at her as if he were trying to figure out what he’d ever seen in her. “If we don’t clean up this mess right away, I’m going to be forced to arrest the woman who appears to be carrying my child.”
Nikki’s head jerked up. “How do you . . . ? What makes you think that?” She couldn’t believe Maddie had told him.