The Survivors (16 page)

“What did you do, phone her?”

“Yes. She doesn't have Internet accounts. When I told her who I was and why I wanted to see her, she got really upset. She told me she wasn't going to talk to me and not to call back.”

“She and my mother were good friends. It's got to be a terrible memory for her.”

“No, it's more than that.” He took the papers from me. “She retired from Braeder less than a year after I got shot. That's when she started buying property.” He pointed at the oldest of the tax records. “This one. Bought for cash—nine hundred thousand dollars. And a year later, another building, one point seven million. These others, too.” He rapped the papers with his finger.

“What are you saying?”

“Where did she get the money?”

“Scottie, people come into inheritances, they win the lottery. Some people are just good investors.”

“Over eight million dollars? You're nuts if you don't believe that's suspicious.”

I should have known better than to smile.

“
Damn it, Davie!
” He slammed his hand on the arm of the chair so hard the wood creaked.

“Stop it,” I said firmly.

He glared at me, but nothing more. In a few seconds he'd calmed down. He tested the chair to make sure it wasn't broken.

“Sorry,” he said. “I know you weren't trying to pick a fight.” He sighed and looked into my eyes. “Why do I get so mad? It . . . happens so fast. Do you know?”

“I'm not sure. But I know you've got some questions about what happened twenty-five years ago. Those questions are eating you up.”

For a while we were quiet. I realized the same thing was true for me, old questions that could put me into a tailspin. Which of us was handling it better—Scottie with his shouts and shovels, or me with my trips to oblivion?

“What have you written here?” I pointed at a sticky note on one of the tax records.

“That's McGuin's address—she still lives in Damascus—and there's her phone number and the days I tried to call her.”

“Days plural?”

“Yeah,” he said shyly. “I made a few calls to her.”

“You really don't like taking no for an answer, do you?”

He knew I was joking and grinned.

“How about we go see her?”

“You'd do that?”

“Sure,” I said. “When you showed me that unemployment filing of my mother's, it floored me. I had no idea she'd lost her job. And I thought of Lois right away. She's the one person who would know what happened. I want to hear what she has to say about it.”

I also thought visiting Lois McGuin would be a good thing for Scottie. He could get some answers of his own—far away from Eric Russo.

“You mean like now?” he said.

“It's a nice evening. Why not?”

Scottie beamed. “It's a road trip!”

“Let's not get carried away.”

FIFTEEN

B
y the time we were headed north on I-270, rush hour was long over. The sparse traffic droned along at seventy miles per hour. Scottie leaned forward in his seat, talking a stream about the road and the buildings and the birds—anything that crossed his field of view.

I was thinking about Lois McGuin. I'd always liked her, but my brothers weren't so keen. They thought her gifts of candy and toys were too calculated. “Creepy old bat,” Ron called her. I felt certain she'd remember us, and that would be my way in. That meant I'd have to be Davie Oakes—grown up, and there to open old wounds. Given how close she and my mother had been, I didn't see how she could refuse me.

“We'll need directions,” I said. “My phone has a map application if you can figure it out.” I handed it to him.

His fingers zipped over the screen. “Don't really need to. The place is right on Ridge Road, a mile north of the center of town. Here's a picture.”

He held the phone up—a Google Maps street view. The house was a Queen Anne Victorian, tall and boxy with a wide porch that wrapped around three sides. “That's an old photo,” he said. “It's been renovated since then.”

“How do you know that?” I turned to look at him. “And how did you get that picture so fast?”

He shrugged. “I like to play around with computers and stuff.”

That was a lot more than playing.

“That reminds me—how did you find those tax records?”

“Tax records are easy,” he said, tapping on the phone again. “Every county has a searchable system.”

“I didn't see Lois's name anywhere on those records. How did you know what companies to look for?”

He kept working the phone, then flashed the screen at me, showing some kind of chart. “The assessed value on her house is one-point-four million. The renovation was two years ago. The assessment went up five hundred thousand that year.” He pecked the screen a few more times. “There's no mortgage.” More pecking. “She had a lawsuit with the county over an easement for road access. Want to know what political party she contributes to?”

I stared at him. “Not really.”

Three taps. “Republicans.”

We had left the interstate, and I pulled up at a stoplight. I stared at him some more, until he became self-conscious.

“Mrs. Rogansky—my landlady—says everybody needs a hobby.” He wagged the phone. “Mine is doing this.” He gave me a bright smile. “You want to know what I found out about you?”

“Definitely not,” I said. I grabbed the phone and dropped it in the center console.

It was dusk when we made it to Damascus. In twenty-five years, I hadn't been back to visit. The old elementary school was there at the south edge of town. Farther along, there were a lot of new buildings—banks and fast-food places and small businesses. The place had the same feel, though—a sleepy burg where people maybe didn't make much money, but they felt safe walking the streets at night.

Lois McGuin's house was visible from a half mile away. It reared up a full story taller than the neighbor's homes, and there were lights on everywhere. I thought maybe she was having a party, but I found only one car in the driveway. It was some car: a gleaming black Jaguar XJ.

As I pulled in behind it, Scottie stared at the house. He fiddled with his seatbelt but didn't unclick it. “Maybe I shouldn't go in.” His leg started jiggling up and down.

“You wanted to come here.”

“She's not going to be happy to see me, not after what I said to her on the phone. Besides, I might get mad, ruin the whole thing.” His hand hovered on the seatbelt. The jiggling was getting worse.

“All right, I'll go in first. If I get a chance, I'll come out to get you.”

He shrugged and picked at the armrest.

I wasn't going to deal with his problems now. “Sit tight. I'll be back.”

It had clouded up on the drive out from the District. I heard a faint rumble of thunder as I climbed the steps to the porch. There was intricate scroll work in the railing and under the eaves. It was pretty, but it made the house seem out of place, its excessive elegance transplanted from Charleston or Savannah.

The door chime sounded deep inside, and I heard steps coming to answer it. I remembered Lois with dirty blond hair, a big person, soft from a few extra pounds. This woman had red-tinged hair in an elegant bob. She was slim, dressed in an expensive cashmere sweater and silk pants, matching sky blue. Her face was tight and shiny from a recent skin peel.

“Yes?” I knew right then it was her, with that honeyed southern drawl. It brought back so many memories that a tingle went up my spine, and I felt a little off balance.

“Ms. McGuin, it's good to see you. My name is David Oakes. I knew you when I was a boy.”

“Oakes?” She tilted her head back to study me through her glasses. “Davie . . . it is you. I'd never mistake those eyes.”

An awkward moment passed. “Could I come in? I'd like to speak with you.”

“Of course. Where are my manners?”

She pulled the door back. I put my hand out to shake. She brushed it aside and gave me a hug.

She insisted on making tea and told me to wait in the parlor. When it was ready, she called me into the kitchen to carry the tray. “I was thinking about you only a few weeks ago. I was throwing out some things in the study and came across an old photograph.” She pointed at a table where I should put the tray down. “Let me show you.”

I followed her to the adjoining room, where there was a rolltop desk and several banks of filing cabinets. The walls were covered with framed pictures, most of them shots of empty offices. “I'm sorry for the mess. I run my business from here.” She looked around. “Now where did I put that . . . ?” She moved a ledger on the desk and broke into a smile. “Here it is.”

It was a picture of Ron, shooting a basket on a playground court while Lois looked on and applauded. “That was at a picnic. Your whole family was there. You boys were always my little nephews, do you remember that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you loved chocolate-covered cherries.”

Actually that was Alan, but I didn't correct her. In the photograph, I noticed a shadow across the lower corner. I couldn't tell if it was male or female—my mother or father as they snapped the picture. I quickly handed it back to her.

“Twenty-five years,” Lois said. “I realized that when I found the photo.” She gave me an appraising stare. For a moment, I could see the shrewd businesswoman in her. “Is that why you're here, Davie?”

“That—and I have some questions to ask.”

She slipped the photo back where she'd had it and rolled the top down on the desk. “Our tea will get cold.”

She filled our cups and asked me where I worked. I gave her only a few sketchy details. She told me about her real-estate business, how she'd managed through the downturn. It was genteel conversation before we got into anything serious.

Outside, it had started to rain, and there was another drum of thunder. The noise startled her. “I don't like these summer storms we have. An old lady alone—I turn on all the lights to make me feel better.”

There was a window open behind the settee where I was sitting. She rose and closed it. “I met your aunt and uncle at the funeral service for your family. They seemed like a lovely couple.”

“They've been great to me. We moved to Arlington when I was in middle school. They still live there.”

She sat down and toyed with her teacup on the saucer. “Your mother was my dearest friend. I can't imagine what it was like for you. It took me years to get over losing her.”

I'd wondered a few times why Lois had never looked me up. I had my answer now: she was avoiding the memories. I certainly could understand that. “I only found out recently that she'd lost her job at Braeder. I was hoping you could tell me about that.”

Her hand hesitated over the cup. “All of us who knew tried to keep that quiet. Even the police agreed to leave it out of their public statements. They were worried about that neighbor boy who almost died, and they wanted to push the whole thing under the rug. The rest of us felt your mother's troubles at Braeder were private. Of course the press came snooping around, but we brushed them off. Pretty soon they started making up their own stories.”

“What happened at Braeder?”

“It was a great place to work, mainly because of Ned Bowles. He started the business, hired only the best people. Especially the science people. Brilliant, every one of them. Ned was very relaxed about the way he ran things. He figured his employees were grown-ups. They could set their own hours, dress the way they wanted, work from home if they liked. Your mother did a lot of that. But Ned had one absolute rule: loyalty to the company. People who left to work elsewhere were never even allowed back in the building.”

She had on a gold chain necklace, and as she talked she twisted it slowly in her fingers. “A lot of what we did involved special engineering techniques—trade secrets and new processes we were going to patent. In those days, most of the projects were in optics, telescope and microscope systems, some of it for government use. Your mother and the rest of the technical writers worked under me. I had an engineering background, University of Virginia, two degrees, but I never felt happy in the lab. I knew how to organize people, get the projects turned around on time.