“So?” Freckles said.
“So,” he said, glancing over to check if the coast was still clear, “Sully’s got another way to get the money. But he needs help with it. And here’s what we gotta do.”
SULLY WAS HALF listening to Lauren finish her call to the police and half watching the boys, trying to figure out what they had up their collective sleeve. They were all looking so innocent that something had to be going on.
Whatever it was, he told himself as Lauren hung up, he’d likely find out soon.
“I’m afraid,” she said, glancing at him uneasily, “the phone call wasn’t enough. They want to send an officer to talk to me because the car’s a little pricey.”
He nodded, resisting the urge to point out that incredibly pricey would be more accurate.
“They said,” she went on, looking even more uneasy, “they probably wouldn’t be able to get anyone here for a few hours. Between one and two, they said, and it’s not even ten yet. So I guess you’re stuck with me a little longer.”
“That’s all right.”
Her expression said she didn’t believe that for a minute, said she was still convinced he was dying to get rid of her—which made him feel like a real jerk. Especially since she’d stopped being snippy to him. In fact, she’d almost gotten back to acting as if she liked him.
That had him thinking that maybe, if they had some time without the boys around, he’d try to straighten things out with her. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He’d have to give the idea some hard thought, because he suspected it could be a dangerous move.
“Lauren?” Billy said. “What if the cops don’t get here when they said. What if there’s an accident on the highway or somethin’ and they’re way later? Then you’d have to stay the night again, huh?”
“No, I definitely won’t be doing that, Billy.”
“Oh.” He glanced at Hoops, his look plainly saying, Over to you, buddy.
Sully leaned back on the couch and waited. He’d been right. They were up to something, and he was about to find out what.
“Sully?” Hoops said, “’Member yesterday? ’Member you told Billy and me to think about our punishment?”
He nodded.
“Well, we was thinking maybe it could be cleaning out the garage? Getting all the junk out of there and ready to take to the dump?”
“And Freckles and Terry and me should help,” Tony jumped in. “’Cuz we knew they went to Manhattan but we didn’t tell you.”
Sully rubbed his jaw. The hidden agenda was obvious now, and it was the same as last night’s. They figured if they all cleared out, leaving him alone with Lauren, he’d end up getting his funding back.
One day soon, he was going to have to sit the five of them down and have a talk about how things worked in the real world. But he was hardly going to do it right now, in front of Lauren.
As far as their suggestion went, though, he’d be crazy to pass on it. That was a four-car garage, and at the moment there was barely room to get his minivan and Otis’s Dodge in it at the same time.
“All right,” he said, nodding slowly. “That sounds like a fair punishment.”
The boys exchanged self-congratulatory glances, then Billy said, “Sully, we’re gonna work straight through till we’re done, okay?”
“We’ll grab some stuff from the kitchen,” Freckles put in, “and eat lunch in the garage.”
“So it’ll be faster,” Billy added. “And could you not come out there till we’re finished and come get you? ’Cuz that way you’ll be real surprised when you see it.”
Sully nodded again. He doubted there was any way they’d get the whole job done in one day, but usually it was better to let kids discover for themselves that they’d misestimated something.
As the boys trooped out, Lauren glanced at him, saying, “Do you mind if I make a couple of other calls? Last night, I promised my mother I’d check in when I got home, and I don’t want to take any chances on them panicking again.”
“Sure. No problem.” He pushed himself up off the couch. “I’m going to make coffee. Would you like some?”
She said that coffee sounded good and reached for the phone. Then, before he got to the kitchen door, he could hear her punching in more numbers than just a phone number. She was putting the first call on her card.
Walking into the other room, he exhaled slowly. He knew she was only being thoughtful, but he wasn’t so poor he couldn’t pay for a couple of long distance calls. And her charging them, as if she figured he didn’t have two cents, bothered him. He tried telling himself that was a stupid way to feel, but it didn’t help.
He reached for the coffee, thinking that a few other things had started bothering him since she’d come here. Things he normally never gave a second thought. Things like not having a university degree and being an ex-con. If it weren’t for things like that, just possibly…
He shook his head. They were facts. So the sooner she went back to her world, the better.
When he took the coffee into the lounge she was still on the phone, so he put hers on the table in front of her. Then he sat down across from her and tried not to stare. But she was sitting sideways with her legs curled up beneath her, and she looked…cute. And lovely. And every other word he shouldn’t be thinking.
She finally hung up and smiled. “That was my friend Jenny, whose apartment is across the hall from mine. She’s going to look in again and make sure the cat’s still doing okay. But I’m really going to have to decide on a name for him, aren’t I. It seems wrong to just keep calling him the cat.”
Sully ran his finger down the scratch on his arm. “I think you should call him Killer.”
She smiled again. “I think maybe you’re right, although it’s not exactly a classy name.”
“Lauren, at the risk of stating the obvious, he’s not exactly a classy cat.”
When she laughed, it started a warm feeling inside him. She had the nicest laugh he’d ever heard, so quiet and velvety it reminded him of a cat’s purr.
Not Killer’s purr, though. From what he’d seen, Killer was a howler, not a purrer.
“And what did your parents have to say?” he asked after a minute.
She shrugged. “My dad went ballistic, because when I was talking about buying that car he told me not to—said it would be a car thief’s dream. And obviously, he was right.”
“What about your mother?”
“She was mostly worried about how I was going to get home. Suggested I have a limo drive up from the city instead of calling a taxi from around here. She said that at least she’d trust the driver, then. So I did that. He’ll be here at three.”
Sully nodded, thinking he’d never been inside a limo in his life.
“I’m just lucky,” Lauren went on, “that my parents are spending the rest of the weekend in the country with friends. If they were staying home, they’d probably have asked me to check in every hour on the hour until I was safely back in my apartment.”
“I guess that thing with your brother has them really upset.”
She gave another little shrug. “That’s made it worse, but they’re always worrying about me. They’ll probably still be doing it when I’m old and gray.”
He smiled, trying to imagine her as old and gray. The picture that came to him, though, was absolutely crazy. She was old and gray, all right, but she was also sitting in an Adirondack chair on the porch of Eagles Roost—beside an old and gray man who looked suspiciously like him.
Forcing that picture from his mind, he replaced it with a realistic one of her getting out of her limo and walking into her ritzy apartment building. Once he had that in focus, things inside his head made a lot more sense.
WHEN BILLY GOT to where it would be about a five-minute run from Mr. Ludendorf’s, he stopped his bike and waved the twins to pull up behind him.
“Okay,” he said to Terry when they had, “lie your bike on its side and sit down beside it. And you know what to say when he comes, right? You say
you banged your head when you fell, but you’re startin’ to feel better now. But if he tries to leave too soon, you gotta pretend to be dizzy or somethin’.”
“What if he wants to take me to a doctor?”
“Don’t let him. Just keep him here for a while. You can do it. And Tony’ll come back with him to help you.”
“Billy, I really don’t wanna do this,” Terry whined for about the hundredth time. “Sully’s gonna kill us.”
“Do you want to stay at Eagles Roost or not?” Billy snapped. Tony wasn’t bad for a ten-year-old, but sometimes Terry was a real pain.
“Of course he does,” Tony said. “We all do.”
“Well we can’t unless Sully gets money from someplace. And you guys heard Lauren say she’s goin’ home today for sure. So it don’t look like he’ll get it from her.”
“But why do Tony and me have to do this?” Terry sniveled. “Why couldn’t Freckles and Hoops?”
“I already told you,” Billy said. “’Cuz you two are the youngest. And the younger you are, the easier it is to get someone to help you. And ’cuz they’re bigger, so they can get more of the garage cleaned and maybe Sully won’t know we were gone.”
“He’s gonna know.”
“Maybe not,” Billy insisted. “If we just tell him Mr. Ludendorf phoned and left a message and stuff.”
“He’s gonna know,” Terry said again. “And he’s gonna be so mad he’ll—”
“Oh, stop being such a baby,” Tony muttered.
“I’m not a baby. I’m three hours older than you.”
“Then act like it. Let’s go, Billy.”
“We’re all countin’ on you, Terry,” Billy said. “’Member that,” he added, pushing off.
He and Tony rode most of the rest of the way to Mr. Ludendorf’s house, then they stopped and he stashed his bike behind a bush.
“Okay,” he said once it was out of sight, “you know which door is to his office?”
Tony nodded.
“Okay, then give me time to hide by it, then come ridin’ up.”
“You really think he works on Saturdays?” Tony said. “You really think he’ll be in his office?”
Billy shrugged, trying to look cool. “If he’s not in there, go to the front door.”
“But then how’ll you get into his office?”
“Maybe he won’t have the door locked. Or maybe through a window. Private eyes always find a way.”
“But you’re not really a private eye.”
He shrugged again. Maybe he wasn’t, but he wanted to be one even more than Hoops wanted to play basketball for the Knicks. And he’d watched a million detective shows on TV, so he knew all about how they did stuff.
“I’ll get into the office,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
When Tony nodded again, Billy took off running. He’d just gotten himself hidden—around the corner of the house from the office, where he could peek out far enough to see—before Tony came racing into the drive, the wheels of his bike spitting up gravel.
He hopped off and started yelling, “Mr. Ludendorf! Mr. Ludendorf!” while he ran up to the house.
He was reaching out to knock when the office door opened and Mr. Ludendorf was standing there.
Billy swallowed hard. His stomach felt woozy, but at least the plan was working.
“What’s the matter?” Mr. Ludendorf asked. “You’re one of Sully’s kids, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Tony told him. “And I need help. My brother fell off his bike just down the road, and I think he’s hurt bad.”
“Oh, God, I’ll just grab my car keys and we—”
“No, it’s not far. Just down the road. We can run there in a minute.”
“All right, let’s go.”
Billy held his breath, hoping the lawyer wouldn’t take time to lock the door.
He didn’t. He just started off after Tony.
The second they were down the drive, Billy hurried along the side of the house and into the office. Shutting the door fast, he looked around. There was a desk with a computer and stuff, a couple of chairs, a photocopy machine humming in the corner, and two filing cabinets against a wall.
He hurried over to them, trying to decide where he should look first. Under E for Eagles Roost? Or under S for Sullivan?
Pulling open the drawer labeled D-G, he started looking through the E files. Lauren had said it would be a lot better if Sully could talk to Mr. Ludendorf’s client himself, and the guy’s name had to be in these files somewhere. A real detective would find it.
CHAPTER NINE
Decision time
THERE WAS OBVIOUSLY something on Sully’s mind, and Lauren wished he’d tell her what it was.
Not that she imagined it was anything she’d like, but she didn’t like the way he was looking everywhere except at her and not saying a word, either. She’d been doing her best to be pleasant, while he seemed to be doing his best to make her uncomfortable.
Drinking the last sip of her coffee, she decided that if she didn’t speak up they’d be sitting in silence until the police arrived. “Sully?” she said. “Is something wrong?”
He looked at her for a moment, then said, “Do you want to take a walk? It’s not far to the lake.”
“Sure. I really haven’t seen anything except the lodge and the cabin.”
When they got outside he glanced over at the garage, saying, “It doesn’t sound like there’s much activity in there, but I guess the kids must be working.”
He didn’t say anything more, so she simply walked along with him—across the clearing and into the thick woods where the air smelled of fresh earth and pine trees. It was cooler once they were out of the late morning sun, and the quiet…well, for someone used to the relentless clamor of “the city that never sleeps,” the quiet was incredible.
There wasn’t a corner of Manhattan that was even remotely like Eagles Roost, and she couldn’t help wishing there was. Everyone should have a place like these woods to walk in.
Ahead, through the trees, she caught a glimpse of Hidden Lake, and in another minute they’d reached the shore of a sheltered cove. The water was blue crystal, sunlight shimmering diamonds on its surface.
A weathered wooden boathouse and dock reached out into the water, and beyond the cove the lake sprawled like glass in all directions…the far side visible but distant.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “Absolutely beautiful. Do you still appreciate that after all these years?”
Sully nodded. “It’s funny. I grew up on the streets of the Bronx, but now I can’t imagine living anywhere except here.”
“No, I can see why.” She looked out over the water for a few more seconds, then gazed at him and caught him watching her. Her heart fluttered and she wished it wouldn’t. Sully would rather she were long gone, so her heart was being incredibly foolish.
“Look,” he said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “There’s something I want to explain to you.”
“Yes?” Gazing at him, she realized his eyes weren’t saying he’d rather she were long gone. They were saying he’d put his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her. So if the eyes really were the windows of the soul…
She told herself she was misreading what she saw, and waited for him to go on.
“Lauren,” he said at last, “when I told you it wouldn’t be a good idea to see each other after today…”
“Dumb. You said it would be a dumb idea,” she reminded him, feeling hurt all over again and wishing he hadn’t started in on this a second time. She’d received his message loud and clear the first time.
“Well look, whatever words I used, I gave you the wrong message. I know you thought I was telling you I didn’t like you, but that wasn’t it. Because I really do,” he added with a smile that made her knees weak.
He liked her after all! The little news flash made her so happy it was ridiculous. But ridiculous or not, she was starting to feel bubbly inside.
&nbs
p; Then he burst the bubbles by saying, “And it’s because I like you that it’s not a good idea for us to see each other again.”
She simply stood staring at him—and hoping he never decided to enroll in a Logic 101 course because he’d fail for sure.
Finally, she said, “Let me make sure I’m clear on your thinking. If you didn’t like me, then it would be a good idea for us to see each other again?”
“No, of course not.” He gave her another smile. This one seemed puzzled, as if he couldn’t understand why she was being so dense.
“Look,” she admitted, “I’m missing the point here.”
“The point is that you and I have nothing at all in common.”
She thought about Logic 101 again and decided he wouldn’t have to worry about failing. He’d never even manage to get enrolled. He’d be screened out by an interview or an entrance exam or something, because his reasoning was far too linear to deal with the big picture.
Oh, at first glance, it was clear they didn’t have the major, obvious things in common. He wasn’t looking beyond that, though, wasn’t considering that those weren’t always the important things.
She and her ex-husband had come from similar backgrounds, had moved in the same circles, et cetera, et cetera. But those similarities had hardly added up to a happy marriage.
Which wasn’t to say she had any ideas about marrying Sully. As she’d been thinking earlier, though, it would be nice to have some sort of relationship with him.
Given the fact that she didn’t meet many men she liked, when she met one she did it seemed silly to just walk away without seeing…
Without seeing what? a voice in her head demanded.
She wasn’t really sure. But she knew she didn’t care for the thought of just walking away.
Their last go-around had left her very leery, but she finally asked, “Were you only trying to make me feel better, or do you honestly like me?”
Dawn Stewardson Page 11