The Survivors (17 page)

“The blueprints and other technical documents that your mother used were kept in a special work room. She could check most of those things out, take them home if she wanted. But anything sensitive couldn't be removed. Mr. Bowles developed the system himself, simple color-coding. Any file with a blue cover stayed in that room, no exceptions.”

She paused to take a sip of tea, and her face grew distant as she thought back. “One day I was working in there and noticed a few of the blue files were missing. There were just two security officers at Braeder then, and I called them in. We went over the logs, and your mother was the only person who had used them.”

Lois looked at me for the first time in a while. “She was working at home that day. It was June, and you and your brothers were still in school. The two security men went to the house. Your mother let them in but tried to stop them when they started searching. They were the only people at Braeder I didn't like, a pair of mean thugs. They found five blue files locked in a drawer in the dining room.”

“Why did she have them?” I asked. “She must have had an explanation.”

“If she did she never told me. They brought her back to the office, and she went in to see Mr. Bowles. Twenty minutes later they escorted her off the property.”

“You didn't see her again?”

“Of course I did. I went to see her that night and whenever I could after that. She wouldn't talk about it except to say she hadn't done anything wrong. It was all going to work out.”

“You must have had some idea what she'd been up to.”

She gave a slight smile. “Only guesses, Davie. Let's leave it at that.”

“No, I'd like to know what you thought.”

Her eyes flashed at me. She wasn't used to being argued with.

“It wasn't the first time things had been taken from that room. Like any company, we had competitors. One in particular—Clovis-Knight Optics. About a year earlier, a secretary took a set of blueprints for a night-vision system and tried to sell them to Clovis-Knight.” She nodded slowly. “There's a lot of money to be made from that kind of thing.”

“You think that's what it was?” I tried to keep the heat out of my voice but didn't do a very good job of it. “She was spying for money?”

She reached her hand out. We were too far apart for her to pat me, but it meant the same thing. “It's not that simple. Your mother was always wonderful to me. And you boys—you meant everything to her. But there were stresses in her life.”

She sat back and smoothed the wrinkles in her slacks. “Your parents had financial troubles. Your mother wouldn't give me the details, but it was serious.”

I remembered the bank statements, only a few hundred dollars in the account.

She said, “You can see how it was. She had you children to worry about and your father's business was never very stable. Denise was a good person, but not very strong.” She gave a disappointed sigh. “Those files must have seemed the easy way out.”

I set my teacup down with a clatter. In the back of my mind, I could hear Ron:
creepy old bat
. “Easy way out or not, you were her friend. After she left Braeder, did you try to help her?”

“Your mother was very private about a lot of things—”

“Maybe you didn't think it was a good career move, spending time with her after she was fired.”

“Davie, it makes sense that you're bitter. But all of us who knew her—we did everything we could for her.”

“Everything? If they needed money, you could have helped with that. Look at this place.” I waved at the room. “You've done pretty well.”

“Yes.” Her smile had turned to acid. “And it's ironic. I was part of management at Braeder. The hourly people like your mother always got paid, but sometimes they couldn't make our salaries. They gave us stock options instead. They were so worthless, I kept them in a drawer in the kitchen. Then a few big contracts came our way, and Mr. Bowles decided to take Braeder public. Suddenly my little stock options were worth a pretty penny.”

She leaned forward for emphasis. “That happened a few months after your mother died. If she'd been able to hold on, I would have given her anything she needed.”

Her voice became clipped and cold. She'd had enough of my impertinence. “I've always wanted to tell you I was sorry for what happened. I wish I'd seen it coming and been able to stop it. But no one could have guessed your mother was capable of what she did. The one thing I learned from it all was that even the best people make mistakes. We just need to be able to forgive them.”

With that, she stood up and looked toward the door.

That was it then. I hadn't needed Scottie; I'd made her angry all by myself. Maybe it was justified, on both sides. Even after so long there was a lot of guilt to go around.

At the door, I thanked her for her time. She seemed distracted now, wanting me to be on my way. “You take care, Davie. I enjoyed seeing you.”

She shut the door and flicked out the porch light. I noticed she hadn't asked me to visit again.

The thunder had moved on, but the rain was still pouring down. There was a set of stairs at the corner of the porch, near where I'd parked the car. Just as I got to them, a light came on down the side gallery of the porch, in the study where Lois and I had been earlier. I stepped over to peek in the window.

She was at the rolltop desk with her telephone cradled at her ear, and her glasses pulled down her nose so she could read a number from a directory. When she finished dialing, she let the book flip closed. It was the company directory for Braeder Design Systems. That was an odd thing for her to have since, according to Scottie, she'd retired from there years ago.

Someone had come on the line. The noise of the rain made it hard to hear what she said. It was easy to tell she was angry from the tight pinch of her eyes and mouth.

“. . . don't know . . .” she said. “Yes, I'm sure. Her son . . .”

I edged closer, and one of the floorboards groaned. She wheeled around and was so shocked to see me the phone slipped from her hand.

The porch lights popped back on as I jogged across the yard. It occurred to me that I should thank Jamie Weston for teaching me that listening-for-the-phone-call trick. Then again, instead of getting any answers, I had a pile of new questions to worry about.

SIXTEEN

I
opened the car door and almost sat on Scottie. “What are you doing here?” I said.

“It's my turn to drive.”

Instead of standing in the rain arguing, I went around to the passenger's side.

“How did it go?” he said. Lois had come out on the porch and was watching us.

“You were right. She was angry.”

“I'm glad I didn't go in then,” he said.

He turned the key and ground the gears as he hunted for reverse.

“Can you really drive?” I asked.

“Sure. I don't like to in the city. That's why I don't have a car. Imagine me in a traffic jam.”

“Not a pretty sight,” I said.

He backed onto the road and took off slowly, heading north. “What did she tell you?”

I gave him the highlights. He laughed when I said Lois thought my mother had stolen some files from Braeder. “Your mom a corporate spy? Do you remember the time I stole two peppermint patties from Bob's Fill-R-Up? Your mom caught me and basically ripped me a new one. She said that was the kind of thing people got sent to hell for.”

He had some colorful memories, I had to give him that.

Scottie thought a bit. “Nah. I don't believe she'd do something like that.”

It must be nice to have that kind of certainty, I thought. Then I thought about the way Lois had told the story. It seemed natural, not rehearsed. She believed it all. Some friend she turned out to be for my mother. But none of that answered my more immediate questions. Who had she been on the phone with? Who at Braeder would be interested in knowing I was around and asking questions?

Much as I wanted to stay focused on the present, I started to think back. I remembered Lois visiting when I was young. My mother always seemed anxious when she was there. She was like that—nervous around older adults sometimes. I had a different picture of her when she was working. Humming softly, always content. She kept her papers from work in a hutch in the dining room. Didn't Lois say the blue files had been locked up? Was that even possible? Locks on that old hutch? I tried to envision it, the color of the wood, the carved handles—

“Hey, wake up.”

We were stopped. I was looking at a realtor's “For Sale” sign.

“I wasn't asleep.”

“You looked like you were.”

I rubbed my face. “No. Just thinking.”

“What do you think about this?” Scottie pointed over my shoulder.

For the second time in an hour I felt a tingle flash up my spine and a slight dizziness. We were parked in front of my old house. It was still a country road, with a corn field on the other side and a big copse of woods down the way. In the darkness, it didn't look like a single thing had changed.

“Nobody lives here now,” he said. “It's been for sale for over a year.”

He popped open his door. “Let's check it out.”

“No . . . we shouldn't, Scottie. Besides, it'll be locked up.”

He leaned around so I could see his grin. “That never stopped us before.”

Standing in the front yard I noticed a few things were different. The windbreak of white pines on the edge of the property was gone. There was a new screen door on the front. Otherwise it was exactly as I remembered it.

The rain had moved off, but a few distant flashes of lightning remained. “This is cool,” Scottie said. “We played capture the flag out here on a night like this. I won.”

“Being here doesn't bother you? You wouldn't even go into Lois's house.”

“There's nobody to fight with here.” He gave my arm a playful punch. “Come on. Let's see if we can get inside.”

The house had originally been a simple, flat-front colonial. Before we bought it, a wing had been added on one side, turning it into an L-shape. My parents had built on front and rear porches.

By the corner of the front porch was a sprawling crab apple tree. Scottie tested the lower branches. “You ready?”

I went to look in the front windows. I could make out a few pieces of furniture, but not enough for anyone to be living there. “Why not,” I said. His happy attitude was contagious.

Scottie was already halfway up the tree. He slipped and nearly fell. “Wrong shoes,” he said.

I climbed after him.

The shingles on the porch roof were slick from the rain, so we had to move carefully. Three bedrooms faced out this way. Alan's was in the middle. He was the one who figured out how to climb onto the roof and down the tree. We did it so many times the lock on the window eventually broke. Scottie loved to have sleepovers with us, and our troop of four would sometimes sneak out and go on commando missions.

I tested the window. It held tight at first, then sprang up with a shriek. I was glad the nearest neighbor—Scottie's old house—was a long way away. I climbed in, and he followed.

Scottie had my key ring from the car, and it had a penlight on it. He shone it around the room, which was empty except for a chest of drawers. I looked it over, and, sure enough, it was Alan's. The house must have been sold with all the furniture after my family died. The last owners left this behind when they moved out.

I opened the middle drawer. Alan kept his favorite copy of
Playboy
taped to the underside. There was a tacky spot from the tape, but the magazine was long gone.

“We were right about here,” Scottie said from the middle of the room. “You remember that night? Playing
Life
. I tried to help you win, but you wouldn't cheat. Alan slammed the board closed. The cars went all over the place. I remember worrying—” He squatted and felt the floorboards. “We'd lose the pieces and wouldn't be able to play again.”