No Safe House (19 page)

“You still working it?”

Another shrug. “Client’s only got so much to spend. And I said to him, Look, this may have been a bluff. Maybe there’s nothing to this.”

Wedmore took a sip of her coffee. “Woody,” she said, and he smiled, “this is me you’re talking to. Off the record. What the hell was Goemann selling? What was your client trying to get back?”

“Basically, he was trying to get back what you were to me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He was trying to get back the love of his life.”

CYNTHIA
had sent Vince a sympathy card when she’d seen the item in the paper’s death notices that his wife had died.

She didn’t mention it to Terry. After those two disastrous visits to Milford Hospital to see Vince during his recovery, Terry had been adamant that they were done. We’ve made an effort, he’d said. We tried to show our appreciation, and he doesn’t want any of it. There’s nothing else for us to do.

Cynthia agreed, to a point, but she still felt she owed Vince something for helping them seven years before. If Vince hadn’t helped Terry put together some of the pieces in the puzzle of what had happened to her parents and her brother, Todd, Terry would never have found her and Grace in time.

They nearly died.

The way Cynthia saw it, she owed Vince. For her life, and the life of her daughter. The least she could do was send a card. So she picked one up at the mall, as unsentimental a one as she could find, but wrote inside:

She could have signed it from herself and Terry, but decided not to. The note, really, was from her. Even though she hadn’t told Terry about it, if it ever came up, she wouldn’t deny it.

Cynthia hadn’t heard anything back from him. And that was fine.

But a few days after she’d settled herself into the apartment, she noticed an old Dodge Ram pickup roll up to the curb as she pulled into the driveway. She’d gotten out of her car and saw Vince Fleming open the door and slide off the seat.

“Hey,” he’d said.

He was thinner and grayer—not just his hair, but even his pallor—and when he walked toward her, she noticed a deliberateness in his gait that suggested low-level pain.

“Vince,” she said.

“I was at a cross street back there, saw you drive by, was pretty sure it was you. Thought I’d say, you know, hello. But this—this isn’t your house.”

“No,” Cynthia said. “When I finish work, I like to sit on the porch with a beer. Join me?”

He hesitated. “No reason not to, I guess.”

She went up to her room, dropped her purse, kicked off her heels, grabbed two Sam Adams, and came back down in her bare feet. Vince was in one of the porch chairs staring out at the street.

She handed him a bottle, beads of sweat already forming on it in the humid air.

“Thanks,” he said.

Cynthia sat down, tucked her legs up under her butt, and put the bottle to her lips. “You doing some work around here?” she asked, like he was a friendly neighborhood contractor or something. If Vince was doing work around here, it was probably best to alert Neighborhood Watch.

“No,” he said, not looking at her. “Listen, thanks for the card.”

“You’re welcome,” Cynthia said. “I’d seen the notice in the paper.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Had she been sick for a while?” Cynthia asked.

“About a year.” He swallowed some beer. “Hot today.”

Cynthia fanned herself with her left hand. “Yeah.”

“So, you guys downsize? Renting a room? Doesn’t seem big enough for you two and the kid.”

“Just me.”

“Oh. So you guys split up.”

“No. I just needed some time.”

“Time to what?”

“Just some time.”

He grunted. “I get that. Sometimes it’s nice living alone. Lot less drama.”

“Jane still with you?”

He shook his head. “Nope. She’s living with some half-wit.”

“A what?”

Vince shrugged. “Half-wit, dipshit, fucktwat, whatever. A musician. Plays in a band. I don’t like it, her living with him. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but that doesn’t sit right with me.”

Cynthia asked, “Were you and Audrey married when you first started living together?”

“That’s different,” he said. “We’d been around. She’d been married before. Nobody’s business what we do at that age.”

“Maybe that’s what Jane thinks. That it’s nobody’s business what she does.”

He gave her a look. “Did I come here for you to bust my balls?”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

Vince glowered at her. “No.” Long pause. “I came by to apologize.”

“For what?”

“When you came to the hospital to see me. I was a horse’s ass. This might seem kinda late coming, but I take my time when it comes to admitting I was wrong.”

“Forget it,” Cynthia said. “All is forgiven.”

“Well, shit, that was easier than I thought it’d be.” He drew on the bottle. “So, I opened up to you. Now tell me what happened between you and Terry.”

“You call that opening up?”

“I said I was sorry. So what are you doing here?”

She settled back in the chair, watched a car go by. “I lost it. With Grace. I was … out of control. So I’m on a self-imposed time-out.”

“You smack her around some?”

She shot him a look. “I did not smack her around. Jesus. But I’ve been trying to control her every move. We’re fighting all the time.”

Vince looked unimpressed. “That’s what parents do. How else kids going to learn?”

“It’s beyond that. I’m fucked-up, Vince. You find that surprising?”

“What, you mean about that shit with your family?” Vince shook his head. “That was years ago.”

She eyed him incredulously. “Really? So I should, what, just walk it off?”

He looked at her. “Things got sorted out. Move on.”

Cynthia studied him with a small sense of wonder. “You should have your own show. Dr. Phil’s got nothing on you.”

“There you go.” Vince stretched out his legs. He seemed to be struggling to get comfortable in the chair. “I’m not trying to be an insensitive asshole.”

“It just comes natural.”

“But you have to move forward. No sense looking back.”

“How about you, then? You moved on? You nearly died.”

He twisted uncomfortably in the chair, lightly touched his abdomen with his free hand. “I’ve been better.”

He drank some more beer.

A Cadillac came charging up the street, turned into the driveway, and parked. Nathaniel Braithwaite got out, slammed the door, spent about half a minute brushing dog hair off his clothes, and approached the house. As he mounted the steps to the porch, he slowed when he saw Cynthia and her guest.

“Oh, hey,” he said. He glanced at Vince, nodded.

“Hi,” Cynthia said. “Nathaniel, this is my friend Vince. From high school. Vince, Nathaniel.”

“Nice wheels,” Vince said.

Nathaniel smiled. “Thanks.”

“Always liked Caddies. But not so much now. They’re trying to turn them into Kraut cars. I liked them when they were big and long and had huge fins on them. Like the ’59. Bit before my time, but that was a car. Thing spanned two zip codes.”

Vince craned his neck, took another look at the car, then cast his eye back at the house. Cynthia could guess what he was thinking. Nathaniel had a pretty nice car for someone renting a room in an old house like this.

“What line of work you in?” Vince asked.

“Used to be in computer software,” Nathaniel said.

“Not anymore?”

“I’m taking a break from all that.”

Vince, motioning to Nathaniel’s pants, said, “If you’re having an affair with a collie, you’re gonna have to do a better job hiding the evidence.”

Nathaniel looked down at himself. “Occupational hazard.”

Vince cocked his head, waiting for an answer. Cynthia didn’t feel it was her place to explain what Nathaniel did for a living now.

“I walk dogs,” he said.

“For what?” Vince asked. “Like, for a hobby?”

He shook his head, forced out his chin defiantly, struggling for dignity. “It’s what I do. I go to people’s houses through the day and take their dogs out for a walk.”

Vince moved his tongue around in his mouth.

“That’s your job?” he asked. Not in a patronizing way. Just interested. “Must pay good to be driving a car like that.”

Nathaniel dug his upper teeth into his lower lip and said, “Hung on to it from my software days. Look, nice to meet you.” He offered Cynthia an awkward smile. “Catch you later.”

He went into the house. They both listened to his feet stomping up the stairs to the second floor.

Looking at the street, taking another draw on the bottle, Vince said, “I’m guessing there’s a story there.”

CYNTHIA
thought back to that day in the moments after she returned to her apartment after having a glass of wine with Nathaniel. Thought about Nate asking her to help him get out of an arrangement he had with her high school friend.

What the hell had Vince gotten Nathaniel into? Cynthia had no intention of talking to Vince on his behalf. Nate was on his own. There was a part of Vince that Cynthia still liked, but she had no illusions about the man.

Helping Nate extricate himself from an arrangement with
Vince would be like one fly letting itself getting snared in a spider’s web to save another.

She thought about that, and other matters, as she rested her back against the large oak tree, her arms folded across her chest, half a block down from the house she intended to return to soon. Cynthia had parked her car around the corner so it would not be spotted.

She wondered where Terry’s car was and why it was taking him so long to pick up Grace and bring her home.

This was Cynthia’s favorite spot. She could stand here by this tree, and if a car showed up in the distance coming from either direction, she could scurry around to the other side and not be seen.

How many nights had she done this? Pretty much every night since she’d moved out.

Cynthia needed to know everyone was home safe.

She wanted to phone Terry, ask what was keeping him, whether Grace had run into a problem, but how did she do that without giving away the fact that she was spying on them?

So instead, she waited, took out her cell to check the time. How long had it been since she’d been on the phone with Terry? Nearly an hour and a half? Where the hell could—?

Wait.

A car was approaching. It looked like Terry’s Escape.

She moved around to the other side of the tree, waited for the car to pass her. It was Terry’s car.

He was behind the wheel. And there was Grace beside him.

She watched the car turn into their driveway. Cynthia wondered what sort of trouble Grace had gotten herself into. Drinking maybe? But when she got out of the car, she seemed to be walking okay. But she didn’t look well. Her head was hanging low. Her clothes were a mess, as if she’d been rolling around on the ground in them.

Something was wrong.

But at least she was home.

Cynthia watched until they were in the house, then walked back to her car and returned to her apartment. But she had a difficult time getting to sleep.

She kept wondering what Grace had done.

“WHAT
happened?” Grace asked as we walked back to my car out back of Vince’s beach house. “What’s going on?”

“Get in,” I said.

I let Grace handle her own door this time. I was keying the engine as she got into the passenger seat.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked. “Did Vince know what’s happened to Stuart? Was Stuart with him? Are we going to the hospital? Are we going to Stuart’s house? What about—?”

I slammed the heel of my hand against the steering wheel. “Enough. No more questions.”

“But—”

“Enough!” I put the car in drive and did a U-turn on East Broadway. “We’ll talk at home.”

Grace turned away and pressed herself up against the passenger door. I glanced over, noticed her shoulders trembling slightly.

We were back at the house in five minutes. We got out of the
car like two people coming home from a funeral service. Moving slowly, not talking, wrapped up in our own thoughts. She stood next to me while I fumbled with the key to let us in.

“Kitchen,” I said.

She walked ahead of me like a condemned prisoner. I pointed to a chair and she sat down compliantly. I pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.

“There’s no point in looking for Stuart,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh my God.”

“It looks like Vince, or his crew, or both, were in the house between the time you left and when we got back there. They cleaned the place up. They’re going to go back, finish up, fix the window.”

“But what—?”

“Whatever happened to Stuart, Vince has taken care of it.”

Grace’s face was flushed. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What do you
think
it means?”

You want to protect your kids from bad things, but sometimes there’s no way. Especially when they’re the ones who got themselves into the mess in the first place.

“I think it means he’s dead,” I said.

She put her hands to her face, covering all of it save for her frightened eyes. “I shot him,” she said, the words coming out muffled. “I killed him.”

“That part’s less clear,” I said. “I don’t have all the information when I say this, but I don’t think so.”

She brought her hands down. “Why?”

“A few things. One, from what you’ve said, it’s pretty clear someone else was in the house. Two, if you’d fired that gun, I think you’d have known it. The kickback, when you pulled the trigger—it would’ve knocked you on your ass. I think you may have been—maybe you still are now—suffering from a mild form
of shock when things started getting scary in that house. So your perception of things is skewed. You don’t really know what went down.”