Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three Page 11

  “I’ll leave those proposals with you,” she says at the end of their hour together. “But I prefer to keep this.” She retrieves Agent Bell’s report and adds it to the other papers she’ll be retaining. “Colin will be in touch,” she assures him even though they both know that’s only a formality, that Emmet is a shoo-in.

  They walk together to the porte-cochère, where his car is parked. He declines her invitation to stay for lunch, and just as well. That could be jumping the gun; that could risk further comment on a taboo subject in an open forum.

  “Match or not,” she cautions as he’s gets into the late model German sedan. “You’d still have to establish how the drugs got into Rayce’s possession and I don’t see that ever happening.”

  “You’ll see it happening if the Jakeway bloke talks once he’s run to ground,” Emmet says in parting.

  She says nothing in parting. She can’t. When she coerced the promise from Nate to remain mum about Rayce’s probable cause of death, she never once considered the possibility Emmet just raised. The thought keeps her rooted in the covered entryway long after his car has disappeared from sight.

  — FOURTEEN —

  Early afternoon, August 28, 1987

  A chorus of barking dogs and shouting children jars Laurel back to life. Colin appears and makes himself heard over the uproar.

  “Bit of good news came our way,” he says. “They’re having another look at Rayce’s cause of death.” He waves a section of newspaper at her and her heart sinks to the ground. She’s numb to his quick embrace and temporarily immobilized again.

  “Well . . . I’m waiting,” he says as he releases her. “What’s the verdict?”

  “That I should never ever play poker.”

  “Sorry?” He cocks his head and motions Anthony and his playmates to take their racketing elsewhere. “What has that to do with—”

  “Nothing, never mind. All you need to know is that Emmet Hollingsworth is eminently suited to handle your legal affairs. Mine too. He’s the kind of guy you want to make sure is on your side when the chips are down. I left it that you’d be in touch.”

  He maneuvers her deeper into the shelter of the porte-cochère. “I wasn’t expecting you to finish so soon. You okay? Everything all right in there?” He passes a hand over the slight swell of her belly.

  “I’m fine, we’re fine. What have I interrupted by finishing early?”

  “I was about to organize an expedition to the oasts. There have been requests. Pleadings, actually.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. I’d never hear the end of it if Anthony was denied because of me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I have plenty to do. I have calls to make, any number of things to take care of,” she says. I have potential to examine, worrisome thoughts to examine, she says to herself.

  “I’ll let you go then and I’ll be off.”

  He gives her some tongue and a hard squeeze before hurrying away to round up Anthony and his friends. She retires to the unoccupied kitchen, where she dutifully prepares a nourishing lunch which she eats while standing over one of the prep sinks—just like old times. While eating, she confirms by the stove clock that it’s not too early to call New York. She also calculates that Simon won’t wake from his nap for another hour—more than enough time to pursue some answers.

  From her north wing office, she dials Nate’s direct line at work and learns that he’s attending a board meeting in Philadelphia and will be gone for the day. Three calls later, she locates Amanda at her Brooklyn apartment, of all places. Any other time Laurel would comment on this, wonder aloud why Amanda hasn’t dropped lingering pretenses and moved in with Nate. But today the only thing she cares to wonder about is who briefed Emmet Hollingsworth and to what extent.

  Amanda professes ignorance when asked. “And I know Nate’s stayed well out of the vetting process for obvious reasons.”

  “Well someone has convinced Hollingsworth that Jakeway is somehow responsible for Rayce’s death. Inasmuch as Nate and I are the only ones who know that’s a good probability and I sure as hell didn’t—”

  “Wait! What did you say? You and Nate know what?”

  “Shit! I’ve done it again. It must be the damned hormones. Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  “What are you shitting about?”

  “I’m coming apart, Amanda. This morning when I met with Hollingsworth, I accidentally confirmed a couple of his pet theories—nothing all that damaging, only indicative of how far off my game I am.”

  “What’s the big deal there? Do I have to remind you how long you’ve been away from your game and what you’ve been through lately?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “Fine. Cut yourself some slack and start over. Start with where you were accusing Nate of—”

  “I’m not accusing Nate of anything! I’m questioning where Hollingsworth came by his assumption. I thought Nate might know. Or you, by association.”

  “I can’t think of a connection at the moment and I have no idea what you were talking about when you were suddenly reduced to shit.”

  “Oh the hell with it . . . I asked Nate not to tell you—or anyone—when we stumbled across an extremely plausible theory into the cause of Rayce’s death. This occurred soon after Nate returned from Glen Abbey that day. You remember, it was the day he went there for my father’s burial clothes and to collect some personal items for me.”

  “You better believe I remember because it was also the day I ripped into Nate for turning down Colin’s offer.”

  Without further ado, Laurel relates the story in one outpouring broken only by occasional muffled gasps from Amanda, who can be envisioned openmouthed and goggle-eyed at this news. On second thought, that could be the wrong image; Amanda has come too far too fast to still be playing the eternally thunderstruck ingénue.

  “I shouldn’t act so surprised. I was half expecting to hear something like that after seeing in this morning’s paper that the cops over there are taking another look at the way Rayce died,” Amanda says. “Yeah, it’s all makes sense now—new information, new investigation. But I’m not sure I understand why you asked Nate not to tell anyone. Were you afraid if word got out the investigation would be tainted in some way? Or did Scotland Yard impose a gag order when you told them?”

  “Scotland Yard knows nothing about this.”

  “Wait a minute. You just got through telling me something that’ll crack the Vaughn case wide open and you didn’t share this information with the authorities? I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all!”

  “Think about it, Amanda. While we were confined together in New York, you saw how hard Colin took my father’s death and David’s. You saw him take on blame for those losses, you saw what that did to him. And I know you’re aware of how he felt about Rayce, so just imagine how he might react if it turns out he was unwittingly instrumental in Rayce’s death. What might that do to him? Where might that send him?”

  “Oh . . . I didn’t think about . . . that.”

  “Well I did, and now I’m between the proverbial rock and hard place because if Colin learns about this from a third party and doesn’t suffer a serious setback . . .”

  “Got it. He could find out that you knew all along and kept it from him.”

  “Precisely. And everybody knows how he feels about being kept in the dark.”

  “Especially Nate.”

  “Yes and let me state for the record that Nate was against not telling him. Very much against. Right from the start. I intend to make that perfectly clear if . . . when push really does come to shove.”

  “Okay. I’m getting the whole picture now. Overall you’re attempting to protect Colin by concealing evidence from a law enforcement agency—stupid move, Laurel—and now you’re trying to plug a leak you think could be coming from Emmet Hollingsworth. Do I need to tell you what—”

  “No! I know what I have to do. I knew long before now. I knew the chance I was taking when I swore Nate
to secrecy. I took it anyway and now I have to pay.”

  “Do you have someone there to see you through this? Is your sister nearby? I never did hear how that worked out.”

  “It didn’t work out. Wishful thinking seldom does. Emily’s still in school in New Haven where she’ll remain at least until the semester’s over. We were too late in the year to find a slot for her over here. But that’s beside the point. When have I ever needed someone to see me through?”

  “Always. You were always too proud and stubborn to admit it, though.”

  “You sound just like David.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly without his influence, you know. And if you’ll forgive the audacity, I am trying to think of what he would do right now.”

  “Is that anything like asking ‘what would Jesus do?’, that ridiculous legend I’ve seen on bumper stickers and T-shirts?”

  “You could say, but without channeling him—David, I mean—I do have an idea about where Hollingsworth may have come up with these assumptions that have you in such a tizzy.”

  “Let’s hear it . . . please.”

  “You’ve read Hollingsworth’s resume, right?”

  “Yes, of course. I reviewed it only this morning.”

  “Then you noticed that he attended a couple of American universities, one of them being Penn.”

  “I did . . . So?”

  “So did Brownell Yates.”

  “The gonzo investigative reporter turned music journalist?”

  “Yeah. He was a classmate of Nate’s. So was Hollingsworth, as it turns out.”

  “Good lord, I almost forgot Nate went to Penn. Now I see. Now I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Then you’re remembering that Yates approached Nate at the Concert for Rayce—I’m sure I told you about that when everything else came out—and Nate agreed to meet with him the morning after the concert and listen to the wacko theories and prophesies he was kicking around.”

  “Yes, you did tell me and I am remembering . . . although I’d rather not.”

  “That’s certainly understandable. Who wouldn’t prefer to forget that Yates’s theories weren’t so wacko after all? I could live happily ever after if I never had to hear another theory and that’s not gonna happen because here I go theorizing that Yates was in touch with Hollingsworth—or the other way around—because it’s only logical to believe they could’ve been clueing each other in the way former classmates do—I mean, isn’t that what these old-boy-network secret-handshake things are all about?”

  “I’d love to believe that’s all it’s about. I’d love to think I didn’t have anything more to worry about than the capture and conviction of the Jakeway rat-bastard—as though that’s not enough to worry about.” A bitter little laugh comes out like a cough when she switches the receiver to her other ear to relieve the one that’s starting to throb. “I hate this, Amanda, this talking about Colin as though he’s a delicate piece of porcelain to be cushioned at all costs. I feel as though I’m objectifying him by trying to spare him and that makes me no better than those publicists I wanted to strangle the day I met him. I’m as bad as Nate was when he was at his protective worst.”

  “No you’re not. Don’t be silly. You love Colin. You’re frightened for him and for yourself. And don’t rule out the influence of those hormones you blamed earlier. You wouldn’t be the first expectant mother to have skewed judgment and go overboard about something.”

  “I’ll cop to the questionable judgment, but I’m not sure I can agree about going overboard.”

  “Well haven’t you? With your worries about a supposed leak, I mean? C’mon, Laurel, now that I’ve had a minute or two to think about it, there’s no way Hollingsworth—or Yates, for that matter—could know what you and Nate know about switching coke for headache powder. No way, Jose.”

  Amanda goes on unraveling arguments and downgrading fears in a manner suggesting she is indeed channeling David. She makes perfect sense, as David would, by isolating the only issues worth examining and drawing the obvious conclusions.

  “I totally share your apprehension—in your shoes I’d be just as scared—but you have to tell Colin or there’ll be hell to pay down the road,” Amanda warns.

  “I know, I know,” Laurel says. “And if I don’t release Nate from his promise and share what we know with law enforcement agencies on both sides of the pond . . .” She leaves it at that, thanks Amanda for her time, if not her advice, and ends the call.

  Simon is still sound asleep when she looks in on him and nothing is stirring when she goes down the front stairs and wanders into the cavernous great hall with no real purpose.

  Today the hall is churchlike in its silence, the ideal place for contemplation if contemplation wasn’t what she was trying to avoid. The little cat yawns up at her from one of the immense sofas. She strokes him in passing and generates a connection to the first time she was alone with him in this intimidating space—shortly before news came of Rayce’s death and so soon after her arrival here that she didn’t know the difference between the ground floor and the first floor.

  The bittersweet memory returns her to the sofa, where she sits down beside the cat and surrenders to contemplation. She takes a stab at getting in touch with her own better judgment; she pokes and prods Amanda’s sound judgment without finding any holes in it. She ticks off on her fingers all the reasons her fears should be laid to rest. The flicking motion invites the cat to play.

  When the cat becomes bored, they both leave the sofa, stretch and go their separate ways. Laurel’s way takes her past the grand piano that’s seldom played now that the remote studio is fully operational. Because the piano has fallen out of regular use, the papers scattered across its broad black surface seem especially out of place.

  Although she’s breaking her own rule by picking up after someone else, she gathers the papers into a neat pile. In the process, she identifies pages torn from books and writing tablets mixed in with sheets of hotel stationery. They all contain poetry of one kind or another, either handwritten in stylized script or, in the case of the book pages, beautifully lithographed.

  Unless Anthony’s been challenged by a crash course on dead poets, the material must be Colin’s. She’s ready to set the tidied stack aside and caution Colin to set a better example for both boys when something about the top page catches her eye.

  The margins are dotted with designs she at first mistakes for her brand of meaningless doodles until they emerge as a form of editorial comment stressing one line, questioning another, emphasizing yet another. As revelatory as they might prove to be, she has to blank out the margin notes in order to concentrate on the main text.

  Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

  Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

  The better angel is a man right fair,

  The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

  To win me soon to hell, my female evil

  Tempteth my better angel from my side,

  And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

  Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

  And whether that my angel be turned fiend

  Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

  But being both from me both to each friend,

  I guess one angel in another’s hell.

  Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

  She reads it again, this time with her lips moving and her mind fully engaged. Shakespeare. Sonnet 144, the one she never quite understood no matter how many times her literature professor father went over it with her. But now she’s goosebumping at an interpretation never before considered and losing her tenuous grip on the courage that was going to see her do the right thing.

  Another page selected at random does nothing to restore that grip. On this page she recognizes Longfellow without remembering the title, recognizes theme without reading the entire poem, and is drawn to the significance of the
final stanza.

  But who shall dare

  To measure loss and gain in this wise?

  Defeat may be victory in disguise;

  The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

  Her focus moves to the first stanza of the next example.

  Virtue runs before the muse

  And defies her skill,

  She is rapt, and doth refuse

  To wait a painter’s will.

  Emerson, if she’s not mistaken, and the one after that is Thomas Paine, the excerpt Colin recited with her at Jockey Hollow the day she got carried away over the winter soldiers and their need for lumber.

  “What we obtain too cheap . . . We esteem too lightly” she murmurs the line underscored in red and comprehension sweeps through her like a draft from an open window. This hodgepodge collection of papers comprises the writings Rayce called into play when his own words failed to summon Colin from the depths.

  She picks up the entire stack and hugs it to her. No professional thought to do as much, and no devoted friend or father figure could have done more. She loses herself in comparisons with her own father’s often heroic efforts to heal and uplift with the words of others. The thought is so warming, so captivating she could have fallen under a spell—a spell that’s abruptly broken when Toby, Anthony’s terrier, streaks through the room in hot pursuit of the little cat and shouts and laughter announce the return of the oasthouse adventurers.

  Colin comes in smelling of greenery and fresh sweat. He nods acknowledgement of the bundle in her arms; his pleased expression assumes her awareness of what she’s holding.

  “I know now that I must have heard him when he read to me,” Colin says. “Shit, I still hear him. That’s why I dug into the archives this morning. Thought it wouldn’t hurt to give another listen whilst you were busy.”

  “He still inspires you.”

  “Yeh, and I was gonna put that inspiration to the test till Anthony and his mates started pestering for a visit to the oasthouses.”

  “How so?”

  “I was thinking I might find something in the lot that touched on bearing responsibility for the death of another.”