Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954)

by Dale, Lisa

  A PROMISE

  OF SAFEKEEPING

  A PROMISE

  OF SAFEKEEPING

  LISA DALE

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEWYORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Dale.

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  Cover photograph: Yolande De Kort / Trevillion Images.

  Text design by Laura K. Corless.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / January 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dale, Lisa.

  A promise of safekeeping / Lisa Dale.—Berkley trade pbk. ed.

  p. cm.

  EISBN: 9781101553954

  1. Women lawyers—Fiction. 2. Ex-convicts—Fiction. 3. Judicial error—Fiction.

  4. Richmond (Va.)—Fiction. 5. Forgiveness—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.A3538P76 2012

  813′.6—dc22

  2011019254

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Cathy

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Acknowledgments

  Lesson One: You already know how to do this. You’ve been doing it all your life. As an infant, you studied your parents’ faces even as they studied yours. You learned the meaning of a smile, a frown. And then you learned the meaning of a bashful smile, a disappointed frown. All people are open books, and you’re hardwired to read them. Your instincts will guide you. Just listen.

  CHAPTER 1

  The day news broke that Arlen Fieldstone had been released from prison was the day the first flutterings of Lauren’s heart began. The muscle that for all her life had pumped so courteously and discreetly within her chest suddenly clamored for attention. As she stood on the sidewalk at a busy newsstand, adding low-cal sweetener to her morning coffee and trying to ignore Arlen Fieldstone’s sad eyes on the front page of the newspaper, she felt an odd thump behind her ribs, as if a small firework had gone pop—just once—before it disappeared.

  She paused, and after the twinge subsided, she went about the rest of her day as gently as she could, trying not to pay too much attention to her heart for fear that she would invent a problem where none existed.

  At her office not far from the Albany, New York, courthouse, she waved over her assistant, Rizzi, to ask how her son was doing with his broken wrist. She ordered an extra cannoli with her lunch as she sometimes did when she was feeling indulgent, and she adjusted her schedule to allow for an extra half hour at the gym. She reviewed the files on the potential jurors she would meet that afternoon for a case against a pharmaceutical company, and she popped a few antacids. The morning’s odd tremor of her heart was nothing more than a muscle spasm—no different than if she’d gotten a cramp in her foot.

  But when she arrived at the courthouse, the courthouse where she’d worked a thousand times, and where she and the opposing counsel were now readying to interview potential jurors, the heart stutters returned.

  She felt just one little spasm at first, as if her heart had been jerked on a string. And though the beat faltered, she did not. She stayed focused with a tenacity that she’d practiced for so many years she no longer thought of it as tenacity at all.

  Candidate after candidate came into the room, and she proceeded with her line of questioning to determine who would be the most sympathetic to her billion-dollar client: Do you consider yourself a religious person? Do you believe there’s a limit to the amount of money a company should be penalized for pain and suffering? Do you or does anyone in your family have a condition that requires regular medication?

  Thirty minutes later, what had been a hiccup in her chest was now an earthquake. She felt as if the fat, round ball of her heart was attached to a wooden paddle and a rubber band. She hadn’t realized she’d stopped talking.

  “Ms. Matthews?”

  Burt Sternfeld, who usually called her Lauren unless they were in public, sat at her side. He swiveled his chair toward her as she put her hand on her heart; underneath the fabric of her suit jacket and the silk of her shirt, the ventricles that normally moved so fluidly were gulping and sputtering. She tried to tell him she was fine, but somehow, there weren’t any words—only her breath, going in and out of her lungs with alarming quickness. Only her heart, sending up smoke signals that something was wrong. Darkness burned holes in her peripheral vision.

  Someone asked, “Is she okay?”

  And it was only when she opened her eyes again that she realized they’d been closed. She must have fallen off her chair because she was on the wood floor, her pencil skirt riding alarmingly high on her thighs. She tried to sit up, to cover up and pull herself together. Burt cautioned her to relax.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You passed out,” he said, bending over her but not touching.

  “For how long?”

  “Just a few seconds,” he whispered to her. “Lauren—are you pregnant?”

  “What? No.”

  He sat back on his knees with some awkwardness, given his bulk. Though his voice was gentle, he probably didn’t realize his mouth had pulled for the quickest flash of a second into a frown. But Lauren saw everything, every micro expression th
at could cross a person’s face in a moment—it was what she got paid to do. And she knew that in some subconscious place deep below his very sincere compassion, he was somewhat repulsed by her breach of decorum. Fainting during voir dire proceedings was not professional at all.

  “I’m fine,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows and testing for dizziness. She pulled down her skirt a few more inches, bent her knees so she could sit up straighter, and put a hand to her forehead. Though she’d sat at the defense counsel’s desk many times, she’d never seen the underside of it before. “I’m fine.”

  Burt shook his head. “I’ve already called the ambulance. They’re on the way.”

  Lauren didn’t protest. She pressed her hand to her chest again. Her heart was still knocking her ribs like a fish trying to bust the surface of an icy lake. Burt and the others were staring at her with a mix of repulsion and surprise and concern, and she could hear people ducking into the room to see her—curious as onlookers who slow to see wrecked and mangled cars. She closed her eyes.

  Please, she told her restless heart. Please just stop.

  Will Farris didn’t consider himself the most observant man in Richmond, but he knew enough to know that the sleek black sedan parked for the last three days across from his antiques shop probably didn’t belong to one of the many college students who lived in the neighborhood. And so instead of buying himself one cup of coffee at the shop in the morning, he bought two.

  The kid in the black sedan jumped clear out of the driver’s seat when Will knocked on the glass.

  “Hey, man,” Will said. The guy rolled down the window, composure returning to his sleep-rumpled face. He wore a Redskins hat and a good twelve hours’ worth of blond stubble. The kid pulled himself up straighter in his seat—Will could see the fight instinct of a good cop kick in, the flashing awareness of being boxed into the driver’s seat. Will smiled and held up the second cup of coffee. “Thought you could use this.”

  For a moment, the kid hesitated—looking at Will, then the cup, then back at Will, obviously trying to work out whether taking the coffee would mean acknowledging that his cover had been blown. In the end, the caffeine was the bigger draw, and the kid reached out the window for the paper cup and said thanks.

  Will leaned his elbow against the roof of the car as the kid peeled the lid off his drink. “I guess you drew the short straw.”

  “Something like that.”

  “How long they gonna keep you sitting out here?”

  “Hard to say. Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how long you keep him living in that apartment above your shop.”

  A delivery truck drove past them, rattling hard on its shocks. Will glanced toward his building, which he’d bought at a foreclosure sale with his own pennies when he was just twenty-two, back before the street became trendy and the art galleries and vegan restaurants moved in. Like other shops in Carytown, Will’s building was a mid-century house, fit for any middle-class family, that had been reincarnated for retail. At street level, wide bay windows—protected now by a metal grate—were crowned by a gilt sign that said only antiques. On the second floor, an air conditioner hummed and one light was on.

  Will drummed his fingers on the roof of the car. “They realize he’s not guilty, right?”

  “We don’t want no trouble in the neighborhood. That’s all.”

  “I suppose you’re gonna tell me the twenty-four/seven surveillance is for his protection?”

  “And yours,” the boy said with perfect earnestness. “Some folks ain’t too happy about your putting him up like this.”

  Will laughed. “I’m not in danger and you know it. Y’all just want to keep an eye on Arlen, far as I can tell.”

  The boy shrugged. “Just following orders.”

  “Well, don’t trouble yourself. Arlen’s not gonna cause any disturbance unless people start causing it with him.”

  “You never know. Prison’ll change a man. Believe me. I seen it with my own eyes.”

  Will patted the roof of the car twice. Already, the hot August sun was blazing, and the black car was little more than an oversized oven.

  “Seriously, man,” the boy went on. “Be careful.”

  “Arlen’s as good as anybody,” Will said. And yet, the brick wall of his confidence was weakened in places, because Will really didn’t know Arlen anymore. Nine years ago, Will would have sworn on the family Bible that Arlen was incapable of murder. But now? Will’s faith in Arlen stood on one wobbly leg: a friendship that had been severed when they were just boys.

  “Enjoy the coffee,” Will said.

  “Hey, pal,” the kid called out as Will crossed the street. “Next time, can you make the coffee iced?”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  At four thirty in the morning of her first day in Richmond, the time of day when Lauren always felt she made the most sense to herself, she woke and didn’t know where she was. Her alarm hadn’t gone off, and yet her eyes had come open as if they—and not her digital clock—were plugged into an outlet and set for a certain time. She sat up, rubbed her face in the darkness. She listened to her body: in her chest, her heart was opening and closing like a fist, quiet and even, for now.

  Maisie’s spare bedroom was half storeroom, half B and B. A stack of neatly labeled Tupperware bins was lined up against the wall. A hand-stitched quilt hung over the back of a rocking chair in the corner, lit softly by streetlight. A round braided rug floated atop a wooden floor that had been layered up by decades of paint—the latest being cornflower blue. Lauren dropped her bare feet off the side of the high bed, her toes skimming the floor.

  Four thirty in the morning. If she were at home in her Albany condo, she would stand and get herself ready for her morning workout, taking the elevator to the gym downstairs to hit the treadmill and get her blood moving. Then a four-minute shower, a high-protein shake, and it was off to the office, where the only person she would meet on her way to the sixty-first floor would be Ted the security guard, whom she chatted with for a few bright moments each day. Ted would worry about her when she didn’t show for work today. She wished she could have warned him.

  She stood, feeling lost and meaningless without her usual routines. Out of habit, she plucked the fraying threads of the bracelet on her wrist—a gift from her niece. It clashed with everything she owned, and it always looked out of place with her severe suits and that no-nonsense toughness she’d learned to cultivate at work. But she loved it—just like she loved her niece, just like she loved her whole family … her family who did not yet know she was gone.

  She eased open the slats of the blinds to see through them: the whole of Monument Avenue was deserted, a lonely streetlamp shining like a spotlight on an empty stage. Richmond was a stranger to her—vaguely menacing in the shadows. When she moved, the boards of the old house creaked.

  She turned on her laptop, the light filling the room like the sunrise, and she logged into Maisie’s Internet connection. There were eight e-mails waiting for her about Dautel Pharmaceuticals. She was glad to see them. She climbed back into bed and began to type, eager for the night to be over, eager to get a head start—as if she might beat the day to whatever it had in store and reclaim from fate her lost upper hand.

  Richmond was no stranger to ghost stories. Its white-columned verandas and wide streets had been haunted since the first Europeans arrived on Virginia’s tobacco-friendly soil. Churches and whorehouses alike burned to the ground during the Civil War, and from their steaming ashes the stories of hauntings arose: shadows of hanged slaves appearing on brick walls, little girls floating above wooden floorboards, mischievous old beer drinkers loitering for centuries in dark taverns …

  Over the years, Richmond had come to embrace its ghostly past. In certain parts of the city, evening brought tour guides in Confederate gray leading groups of camera-toting tourists down alleyways and side streets, people hoping for the thrill of glimpsing ghosts—or perhaps just their own p
owerful imaginations.

  Despite his reluctance to materialize outside Will’s apartment building, Arlen Fieldstone knew that the residents of Carytown whispered about his presence with the same horrified captivation that compelled them to tell ghost stories. The “Infamous Innocent,” the papers were calling him. From his perch on the second story of Will’s shop, Arlen watched the frenzied bustle of Carytown—surveying the daylight mayhem for an opening to rejoin the stream of the world.

  When he was in prison, he’d made promises to himself. Many promises. He promised that when he got out, the first thing he would do was go straight to a bar and say, “A round for everyone, on me.” He promised that, as soon as they cut him loose, he would lie down in the grass—any old patch would do—because he missed grass terribly, the smell of it freshly cut, the tickle of it on his skin.

  And yet—here he was. No bar. No grass. More ghost than man. He hardly slept. He twitched like the deer that had grazed so nervously in his mother’s yard. His bedroom felt unsafe and overly big—so big that he might as well have been sleeping on a park bench under the sky.

  Outside, Carytown partied and shopped till it dropped. Arlen watched. Listened. Once, when the shop was closed and Will had gone home, Arlen walked himself up to the front door and even gripped the hard brass handle. He stood that way for a long time, Richmond calling to him like a siren, beckoning with promises of every kind. His palm sweated. His heart raced. But still, he had not been able to bring himself to turn the handle. He was Richmond’s newest ghost story—trapped by specters of iron bars.

  *

  Will didn’t get up immediately when the front door to his shop squealed open. The type who visited in the middle of a workday were either semiprofessionals looking for a steal—in which case they could show themselves around—or down-on-their-luck men who wanted to see how much they could get for their mother’s jewelry or an old watch. Either way, there was no sense in standing on formality.