Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954)

by Dale, Lisa

  “In here!” he called from his office, which was little more than a room that happened to have a computer in it, along with mountains of copious and sundry collectibles. He whistled a little as he skimmed through an antiques magazine, keeping an eye out for familiar items with the same sense of ease and interest that some other person might feel when stumbling across the face of an old friend in a high school yearbook.

  “Hello?”

  He stopped reading. The woman’s voice was unfamiliar—a nice, neat, tidy little hello. A hello appropriate for a massage parlor or bridal boutique. “Yeah. Be with you in one sec.”

  He closed the magazine and made his way to the front of the shop, picking a path among haphazard piles of treasure. Over the years his mother and sister had tried a handful of times to come in and “spruce up the place.” Annabelle complained that the shop always smelled like dust and grandmothers, and his mom’s aversion to clutter went back to her housekeeping days. But Will did his best to keep them from meddling too much. True—the place looked dreadful: ripped cardboard boxes, shelves heaped with teacups, steamer trunks full of ancient antimacassars. But to his mind, an antiques shop without a good coating of dust would be like the Statue of Liberty without her fine green patina.

  In the rubble and chaos of his collection, the woman standing in the front of his store was completely out of place—though he could not perfectly put his finger on why.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so. Are you the owner?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, lifting himself onto the countertop and sitting.

  The woman was small and boyish, with a neat bob the exact color of the Brazilian cherry chifforobe he’d bought at an estate sale last week. She wore a tan cotton dress that was a little too stiff to be called a sundress—not a frill, bow, or ribbon to be seen among fitted seams. “What can I do you for?”

  “The apartment above your store,” she said. Her gaze was calm and level, and her voice smooth. “I can’t figure out how to get to it. Where’s the call box? Or the door?”

  He laced his fingers together. There was something familiar about the woman. Had she been in the shop before? Her wide-set eyes and heart-shaped face struck him as throwbacks to the days of speakeasies and ragtime. In some intuitive and murky part of his brain, alarm bells rang.

  “Who you looking for, darlin’?”

  “It’s Lauren. Not even my father calls me darling.”

  “You’re a Yankee.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he said. He pushed himself hips first off the counter and dusted his hands on his old cargo shorts. “Who you looking for, Lauren?”

  “I’m trying to find Arlen Fieldstone,” she said.

  “You a reporter?”

  “No.”

  To cover his reaction he walked around to the back of the little counter. Lauren … not a reporter … looking for Arlen … Lauren Matthews. Her name was a lead weight. She was older than when he’d last seen her on television. Her hair was short now, falling no lower than her earlobes, and her bangs were a hard, thick line above her eyebrows. Her skin rode close to the muscles and tendons beneath her dress straps. Her heels looked demonic. He did the math—he and Arlen were twenty when the trial had happened, and she’d been twenty-five. She was thirty-four now.

  It was coming back. The television cameras had loved her—a pretty and improbable young redhead in a suit that always seemed too big for her even though the cut was right. Every time Will saw her on the news, reporters surrounding her like she was a rock star, his blood boiled with outrage—outrage that his good friend had been accused of a crime he could never in a thousand years commit. Outrage at the farce of justice. And as if that weren’t enough—Arlen’s fate had resided not in the hands of sagacious and hoary old judges, but with a beautiful and impertinent twenty-something prosecutor who controlled the jury the way a conductor would lead a choir.

  Echoes of old hatred welled up. Lauren was obviously no longer a wonder kid, but she’d become a wonder woman. After Arlen’s verdict, Will had followed her career for a little while, furious and fascinated to watch her move on to bigger and better things while Arlen faded into obscurity in his jail cell and Will scraped to get by.

  Occasionally, she would pop up as an expert on a nightly news program—looking prim and polished in colors that were too dark for her skin. And a couple years ago she wrote a book about interpreting body language (Will had bought it, read it in one night of fervent focus, then brought it back to the bookstore for a refund). Eventually, he’d lost sight of her—or he’d deliberately looked away—and he realized that maybe he’d been a little more angry at her than she deserved, and a little too obsessed with her in some twisted part of his mind. He supposed it was only natural that the next place she would turn up would be in his store.

  Will leaned as casually as he could on the counter and smiled at her. He didn’t want to give away the fact that he’d recognized her despite the long years that had passed since Arlen’s trial. And yet, with his gesture, something about her changed—as if she’d heard what he was thinking and knew the moment he’d put two and two together and realized who she was.

  “Arlen ain’t here,” he said, and he rubbed his nose with the back of a finger.

  She laughed, so quietly he might not have heard it if the traffic hadn’t eased for a moment outside the store. “I happen to know he is here.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You just told me.”

  He crossed his arms. “What makes you say that?”

  “You scratched your face.”

  “I had an itch,” he said.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Some people’s bodies release adrenaline when they’re stressed or when they lie. Adrenaline causes the capillaries to expand—hence, your itchy nose.”

  He knew he was staring at her, that his jaw was probably on the ground. “Fine. Here’s the truth. I know who you are, Lauren Matthews, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting you upstairs.”

  The imperious look on her face settled into its previous blankness.

  “But I guess you knew that too, didn’t you?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Because I have a ‘tell’?”

  “Everyone does,” she said, almost a little shyly now. “And anyway, it’s a good thing.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Lots of people touch their faces when they lie. It means they’re uncomfortable doing it—and that they don’t lie often. For you … ” She opened up a microscopically tiny black purse and pulled out a beautiful silver pen. “For you, it means you’re willing to fib a little to protect a friend. But that you’re probably not going to make a regular habit of lying because you don’t think it’s right.”

  He couldn’t help it; he stepped back a little as she bent to write her name on the back of a postcard that one of the local bands had dropped off. He wished he could say that meeting her in the flesh had dispelled all the myths about her from the television and newspaper reports. But if anything, her appearance had only confirmed the typecasting.

  “Listen,” she said. When she looked up at him, her gaze was neither pleasant nor challenging. In person, her eyes were a strange color: a coppery pond lit with sunlight and flecks of mossy green. Peering into them felt as oddly compelling and intimate as looking deep into the center of a tiger lily. He decided he liked her better on TV.

  She went on. “I don’t want to cause any trouble for him. I really don’t. I just … I need to speak with him. And I hope he’ll want to speak with me too. As soon as possible because I have to get back to Albany. So please? If you wouldn’t mind?”

  She folded the postcard in half and held it out for him in small fingers.

  He didn’t take it right away. “I can’t promise he’ll see you.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  He looked at her—her jet-black mascara, her white gold necklace and diamond solitaire, her gloss
y, cherry cola hair—and he believed her.

  “Fine,” he said. He took the card and shoved it into his shorts pocket.

  “Thank you,” she said. There was something uncomfortably still and placid about her, as if she breathed less air than he did or needed to exert less energy to hold herself upright. “I don’t think I got your name.”

  “I didn’t give it to you.”

  “But I’m asking.”

  He smiled. “Well, in that case. It’s Will Farris.”

  “Are you Arlen’s friend?”

  “Since we were thirteen.”

  She nodded. And before she turned and left, he was surprised to see that something about the information had made her glad.

  For a moment after she was gone, he leaned against the counter, his blood buzzing with the same loathing and fixation he’d felt toward her during Arlen’s trial, now magnified to monolithic proportions without the filters of miles, pixels, and commercial breaks. He had the urge to kick something. But if anyone had a right to be angry, it was Arlen. Not him. He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Donnie?” he said. “Will Farris. You still got that old toy cannon collecting rust out back?”

  Donnie laughed. “I told you before and I’ll tell you again. I ain’t coming down on the price.”

  “That’s okay,” Will said, a little breathless. “I’ll take it.”

  He hung up, and waited for the relief to set in.

  Lesson Two: Learning to read people closely, to understand and even predict their behavior, is not without its dangers. At any given moment, our brains simply cannot take in and process all the data flooding our circuits. By necessity, we’ve got to cherry-pick what information we notice and what we ignore. Many of us are predisposed to focus on either the best or worst in those we meet. When you begin to scrape away your own natural prejudices and inclinations, the results can be enlightening in any number of ways.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jonah: The thing you’d like most in Richmond: the Egyptian Building on the front of this postcard. So strange and unsettling among stately old brick. It might support your theory about an ancient alien race. Least: the heat. You could fry an egg on my BMW. No, I’m not going to try. Hug and kiss Dakota for me. Lauren

  P.S. Enclosed please find an imaginary ham biscuit, a Virginia specialty. Don’t wait too long to eat it. It might go bad.

  In the late afternoon, rain fell on all of Richmond with no exceptions. It washed into the gutters and sluiced into drains, and in Carytown young people with bright umbrellas ducked beneath awnings and into cars. Will, who had not been caught in the summer storm, stood and watched the downpour from the window of his rental apartment, where he’d once lived and where Arlen now stood at his side. The wind blew hard and flung drops of water against the glass.

  “Hoo-wee,” Will said. “Bad out there.”

  “It’s … incredible,” Arlen said.

  They stood for a moment, watching. When the storm began to let up, they went together into the bathroom, Arlen standing in the doorway and Will bending over the toilet bowl. He lifted the lid of the old beige tank, turned brownish by years of buildup, and he plunged his hand inside.

  “I got a joke for you,” he said as he worked. “How can you tell when a lawyer is really, really cold?”

  “I give up.”

  “He’s got his hands in his own pockets.”

  Arlen made a noise, a cross between a groan and a chuckle, and Will felt a bit happier. He adjusted the flap in the back of the toilet so it created a tighter seal, and the hiss of running water was silenced a moment later. Will stood, put the heavy porcelain lid back on the tank, and wiped his hands on a towel. “All fixed. If it starts running again, let me know and we’ll get a new flap. But you oughta be okay.”

  Arlen stood leaning against the doorjamb of the closet-sized bathroom, and yet his face was as blank as if he were daydreaming from some scenic vista. He was a big man—he’d always been big—but the soft fat he’d grown up with was gone now, replaced by cords of hard muscle. His eyes were very round and pronounced, flecked with gold. A few freckles peppered his dark skin.

  “Arlen?”

  He shook his head slightly, his eyes clearing. “Thanks. I wouldn’t have known how to fix it.”

  “Naw. Don’t sweat it,” Will said, struck by Arlen’s situation—his perfect lack of adult experience. He didn’t even know how to adjust the flap in a toilet tank. In some ways, taking in Arlen was like taking in a teenager instead of a grown man.

  They walked into the small living area. There was no furniture apart from an old pink couch fit for a nursing home and a small television propped up on a cardboard box. The apartment was simple and practical enough—even a little cheery when the blinds were open and the sun came in—and Will was glad he could offer it to his friend. He dropped himself into the cushions, took off his baseball hat, and blotted the sweat from his forehead with the front of his shirt. When he spoke, he did his best to sound casual. “You had a visitor today.”

  “Eula?”

  Will’s heart sank. “No. Lauren Matthews. Remember her?” Arlen was quiet. Thunder rumbled, weakening in the distance. “All these years, and still wound tighter than a Gibson guitar.”

  “What she want?”

  “She didn’t say,” Will said, and he tried not to show that the question bothered him. What did Lauren Matthews want with Arlen? He thought of her—her sheath of a dress, her sharp little face. He had the sense, even when he stood in the same room with her, that she was looking at him from behind a two-way mirror, so that he couldn’t quite get a read on her but she saw everything about him.

  He’d never perfectly grasped what it was about her that somehow both attracted him and repelled him. Lauren was the perfect opposite of his ideal woman in every way. He liked women who weren’t afraid to be a little bit broken down, rusty around the edges—women who were confident and knew how to get their hands dirty and have fun. What he did not like was pretty, better-than-thou redheads who started snooping around at his best friend’s apartment, causing trouble for a man who’d had more trouble in his life than most people could stand.

  “She say anything?” Arlen asked.

  “Not really.” Will pulled his hat back on. He dug into his pocket for her contact information. Her handwriting was neat and blocky—she could have been an architect if she hadn’t gone into law. “She left this address and phone for you.”

  Arlen held out his hand. He looked at the postcard for a long moment as if it might tell him something—a secret message, a code to unpack letter by letter. Will saw the transformation: Arlen’s face, usually as placid as a mountain lake, turning stormy.

  “This woman—” Arlen shook his head, choking off words.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “She’s a little bit of a freak, isn’t she?” Will said—anything to keep Arlen talking. “Like she’s part psychic.”

  “Naw, she ain’t psychic.” Arlen’s fingers twitched at his side. “Man, if I could tell you how many times I dreamed… He met Will’s eye full on—a stare tough as oak. “All I’m saying is that I couldn’t’ve committed the act of murder before they locked me up.”

  Will hesitated. The boy cop’s words echoed in his ears: Prison will change a man. “And now?”

  “I’m just saying—that girl best not be coming around if she knows what’s good for her.” He crumpled her note in one fist and tossed it back to Will. “Throw it away.”

  Will shoved it in his pocket, out of sight. He didn’t think his friend was capable of murder. Exaggeration, maybe. But not murder. Arlen was angry—and he had every right to be.

  Will looked hard at his new tenant—his shoulders that were more muscled now, his eyes that had lost some of their light. The outlook for men released for false imprisonment wasn’t exactly good. Prison life was a life of violence, where the potential of threat—physical and otherwise—lurked everywhere, ub
iquitous and unavoidable as the institutional fluorescent lighting. What kind of man did Arlen have to become to withstand years behind bars? Lambs among wolves did not survive.

  Will got to his feet.

  “You heading down?” Arlen asked.

  “Yeah. Sometimes I actually have work to do. Care to come with?”

  Arlen may have considered it a moment, but he shook his head.

  Will walked across the tiny living room to the door. “I got another one for ya,” he said. “If a lawyer, a judge, and a jury consultant were trapped on a desert island and you could only save one of them, would you go to a movie or out to a bar?”

  “I ain’t going back to jail,” Arlen said. “I’d save them all.”

  By evening, Lauren’s secretary, Rizzi, had called three times. The whole office had gone mad as hatters in Lauren’s absence—mercury in the watercooler. Burt was a complete bear, calling on the interns for tangential research that he obviously didn’t need but absolutely had to have right away. Lauren’s colleague Bryce Pinker was furious because Lauren’s biggest case had been temporarily dumped on him, and he was trying to get Rizzi to take his kids to band practice. And, to top it off, the copier had died.

  “It’s nuts here without you,” Rizzi said. “Like an eclipse, when all the birds go crazy because it’s night in the middle of the day.”

  Lauren chewed an antacid quietly so Rizzi couldn’t hear. “I promise. I’ll be back soon. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “The quicker, the better.”

  “Have you heard anything about when they might be having the vote?” Lauren asked.

  “Nothing unexpected. But don’t worry, hon. I’m your eyes and ears.”

  “Good,” Lauren said. “You know how much I want to have my name on the door.”

  “Well, maybe being away for a day or two will make them see that you should have been a partner two years ago instead of that deadbeat Rich Weller. But what do I know? I’m just the secretary.”

  Lauren laughed. “I owe you. We’ll go out for tequila when I get back.”