Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (9 page)

“How much do you know about Lincoln Rice?”

“Oh, Lord.” She let go of my arm and faced me. “Autumn knows?”

I nodded. “And now Hersch does, too.”

She staggered away from me, her heavy footfalls crunching in the snow. A sudden gust tugged at the hem of her coat, fluttering it around her thighs. Her back to me, I heard her voice, but the wind carried off the word.

“How much do you know?” I asked again.

She shook her head, wouldn’t turn back.

I glanced at my parents’ graves, pulling in a hard breath through my nose. The winter chill burned the insides of my nostrils and carried a metallic scent like cold steel. Then I marched up to Sheila, put a hand on her shoulder, and gently turned her around to face me.

Tears rolled in the grooves on her face. Up close, I noticed the jaundiced hue to her eyes. How much of her share of the inheritance had she washed away with drink?

I felt like I stood at the edge of a precipice. The deepest, darkest water breaks against the rocks, like giant dinosaur teeth, below. I could jump. Could plunge into the dark sea and immerse myself in whatever secrets it held. But I had to clear the rocks. This jump could kill me.

“Did you know about the baby selling?”

She scowled. “Of course not.”

“Did you know about my daughter?”

She inched back, drawing trenches in the snow with her heels.

My throat swelled. My face grew tight. “No, Sheila. No.”

“I didn’t know he would…sell her.”

Flakes of snow caught in my eyelashes. When I blinked them away, their melted remains felt like tears. “What
did
you know?”

“That Autumn was pregnant. That you were the father. And that neither of you were ready for such a responsibility.”

“You were in on it?”

“We had long stopped seeing each other, but he came to me when he found out. Asked my advice.”

Each word she spoke felt like a hammer strike to my chest. I could hardly breathe. “Your advice was what? Keep it secret then sell her off to the highest bidder?”

Her gloved hands curled into fists. “I told you I didn’t know about that.”

“Why should I believe you? You’ve kept this little lie for almost twenty years. If my parents knew what you’d done—”

“They
did
know.”

I shuffled back as if punched square in the solar plexus. My mouth opened and closed like a perch left on the dock planks to suffocate in time for dinner. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. They knew, and they agreed with our decision.”

“Your decision? As if it was yours to make!”

“You were just a child.”

“I was eighteen. And you all were right. I hope that makes you feel better. I wasn’t ready to be a father. I couldn’t even figure out how to be a son.” The wind buffeted against me, but I felt none of the cold. “But all of you in your self-righteousness never thought to include the baby’s father in the discussion.”

“What would you have said? Done?”

I hesitated only a second. “I would have stood by my responsibility.”

Sheila pointed at me. “That’s why we didn’t tell you.”

“For my own good?” I twisted my fingers into my hair, ready to tear it out in chunks, maybe some scalp with it. “You knew what I went through after I came back. But you never said a word.”

“I was ashamed. And I didn’t have enough information to help you, anyway. After I brought your parents together with Lincoln, I stepped out of the affair.”

“How convenient.”

“It wasn’t my choice to make.”

“Mine either, thanks to you…” I swung a hand in the direction of the twin graves. “…and them.”

“If I had it to do over again—”

“You don’t.” I turned my back to her. “You don’t.”

I heard the snow squeak as she closed the distance between us. Her hand rested on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Go the fuck back to wherever you came from. Disappear. I’m done with you.”

“I want to help.”

“You’ll get no redemption from me. You want to atone, do it somewhere else.”

“Ridley, please.”

I folded my arms across my chest. All that heat burning inside of me had burned itself out, leaving me twice as vulnerable to the cold. I couldn’t stop shivering. “He’s going to contact you.”

“I won’t tell him a thing.”

“How do I know that?”

“I may have made a grave mistake, an unforgivable one, but I’m not your enemy, Ridley. I have no reason to bring you more harm that I already have.”

She didn’t see the larger picture. She thought it would be as simple as saying “no.” But Hersch had proved he had a set of sharp grifter’s tools. And Sheila had a number of pieces he could dismantle.

“He’ll offer to give back the money he took from you,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t help him. Besides, I don’t know anything that
can
help him.”

I forced myself to face her again. She looked like an ugly hag to me now. Nothing like the strong-willed protector she had pretended to be for so many years. “Are you sure?”

“I’m certain.”

“How long before you betrayed me were you and Rice lovers?”

Her eye lids fluttered. “Couple of years.”

“Did you go out? Meet any of his friends?”

“He treated me very well. Theatre, restaurants, carriage rides.” She shuddered. “I know he turned out a monster, but I never knew a hint of that while we were together. He was a gentle, sweet man.”

Who had killed his wife and pawned his granddaughter. A regular old Casanova, hey Sheila?
“You only answered half my question.”

A sprig of gray hair blew free from her tight bun and whipped across her face in the wind. “He introduced me to a few fellow doctors. He called them his Club Med. His clever way of saying they were his club of medic—”

“I get it.” I wanted to reach out and pull that ridiculous lock of hair out of her face. She let it twitch in the wind across the bridge of her nose. It drove me crazy to look at. “You remember names?”

“You don’t think…”

“You’re damn right I do. Rice couldn’t have worked his adoption ring alone. Since he used his own status as an obstetrician to pick up unwanted babies from that old free clinic, it stands to reason his colleagues worked the same way.”

She covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, dear God.”

“Names, Sheila.”

Her head bobbled as if loose at the neck and susceptible to the wind’s push. “I would have to think about it. Their first names shouldn’t be hard to recall. Last names… I would have to think about it.”

My teeth hurt. I realized I had my jaw clenched. I focused on relaxing the tension, then said, “Go back to your hotel. Think about it. Write me a list. And don’t fucking share it with anyone.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

“He’s going to come on hard and strong. This guy is good. And right now you’re a damn wreck. Won’t take much to break you open.”

She narrowed her eyes. “That’s lovely. Thank you.”

“It’s the truth and you know it.”

Her gaze fell.

“Now get the hell out of here while I finish with my parents.”

“But you drove me here?”

“You got a chauffeur. Call him.”

I strode back to the graves and stared down at them without seeing them. I listened until I heard Sheila’s footsteps recede behind me. Then I could focus on the ground that held my mother and father.

“Just when I’m about to forgive you two.” Tears burned in my eyes. I blinked and let them fall. “How could you do this to me?”

The sound of the traffic over the hill died for an instant. Near perfect silence stood in its wake. The top of my scalp was damp from melted snow, my face wet from tears. Neither had anything to do with my sense of drowning.

“This is the last time I’m coming here,” I said to my parents. “The last time for a long while.”

Chapter 10

I had just started helping Paul set up the bar to open for business when my cell rang. A sick wave rolled through my stomach even though my ring tone—the opening bars of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”—sounded nothing like the digital twitter of my (recently deceased) office phone. I could never imagine living in a monastery. I wasn’t a very religious person. But the prospect of cutting myself off from phones of any kind made the idea tempting all the same.

I unclipped the phone from my belt and reluctantly answered it.

“Hey, Rid. Eddie. Just checking in on the case.”

Oh, yeah. That. “Sorry, man. I got caught up with another thing today.”

“That’s okay. I know I’m not the only case you’re working on.”

No reason to burst his bubble on that score. Though I supposed what Hersch had pulled me into was shaping up to look like a case. Another one without a check coming my way. Good thing I didn’t do this for a living.

“Promise I’ll put in some good time on it tomorrow,” I said.

“You think that list I gave you will help?”

His enemy list. Turned out mild-mannered Eddie Arndt had crunched on a few toes in his time. A half-dozen names graced the list of people Eddie thought might want to get at him for one reason or another. His family’s murder predated four of them, but following up on all possible leads was the name of the detective’s game. I could probably wipe out those four names with a few phone calls on each. Then I could get to the other two. Names I remembered from high school. One of them a detention friend—the kind of kid you associate with only during detention because you both ended up there often enough. Wayne Greenberger. Man, that kid
loved
detention. To him it was like winning recess back from elementary school.

“I think it’s a start,” I said. I tried to keep an open mind, even though I didn’t think the list would amount to much. High school squabbles usually weren’t severe enough to warrant a lifetime of stalking and killing your adversary’s relatives. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything.”

“Right, sorry. Didn’t mean to bug you.”

“Trust the process, Eddie. It may take a while before we find out what’s underneath this corner we’ve peeled up.”

“The corners. I liked that analogy.”

“Talk to you later.” I hung up and clipped my iPhone back to my belt. When I looked around me to see what else needed doing before we opened, I discovered Paul had finished it all while I was on the phone.

He cocked his mouth in his signature sneer-smile. “Please, your Highness. Don’t dirty your hands with the peasant work.”

“You want a raise, Paul?”

The smile turned genuine along with the surprise in his eyes. “Sure.”

“Then stop being such a smartass and I’ll consider it.”

He puckered his lips and shook a fist at me. “One of these days, Alice. Bang zoom.”

I smirked. Only Paul could out smart mouth this smart mouth detective. With all the shit smeared through my life, old Pauly was a good guy to keep around.

Sunday nights were hit and miss at the
High Note
. Sometimes you got a crowd desperate to string out the weekend for as long as the drinks kept pouring. Sometimes everyone stayed home, steeling themselves for the coming workweek, inoculating against dreaded Monday.

This Sunday tipped toward the latter. The gloomy weather probably had a hand in that. Nothing made the Monday commute worse than gray skies and icy roads.

But Hal never missed a night. Or hadn’t before the last two.

Tonight was day three.

Despite all the complaining I do about the guy’s cringe worthy attempts at song, I had come to expect him at the
High Note
as much as Paul, Holly, and my rotating wait staff. I didn’t pay him, but he might as well have been an employee. He was certainly more prompt than most of the rest of my crew.

Holly sat on her stool on stage, chin in her hand, elbow planted on one knee—the bored version of the Thinking Man sculpture. She had sung a few songs herself when no one entered their names into the rotation. After that, she perched on her stool and waited.

Only three people occupied tables, each on their own. Two old guys that reminded me of the shredded look Sheila had taken on since she left Hawthorne. The third, a middle-aged man, looked well on his way to joining the ranks of his two elders.

Not exactly karaoke fans.

I stepped up on stage and asked Holly about Hal.

Her bored eyes rolled up to look at me, one shoulder lifted maybe half an inch. “Don’t know.”

“Three days is a long time for him not to show up.”

“Three minutes is a long time for him not to show up.” For someone as expressive as Holly was while singing, she sure had the monotone thing down when she spoke. “Why? You worried about him?”

I realized I was. Which was crazy, considering I had plenty of other things to worry about. Part of me said to just forget it. But Hal was…well…
Hal
. A goofball? Yes. A travesty to all musical kind? Sure. Still, I saw his devotion to the
High Note
as more than obsessive compulsion. He believed in the place. Probably more than I did.

Holly waved a hand in front of my face. “Hey, boss, what’s with the far away stare?”

“You hear anything about the old guy, let me know, okay?”