Unspoken (11 page)

B
ryce settled on simplicity for emptying vault five. He started at the first room and boxed coins until he had enough to fill the SUV he was driving, took them to Chicago where Ann had accepted the challenge of running the prep room, then returned to box and haul more. He could hire it done, but he liked the privacy and security of doing it himself. And the drives back and forth between Chicago and Wisconsin gave him some much-needed time to think. The reason he needed time to think was currently headed down the hall to join him, her off-key whistle echoing off the metal walls inside the berm.

He hadn’t seen Charlotte much the last couple of weeks, despite his hopes. He would have thought she was avoiding him, but a few passing comments from John had filled him in on her travels. She was busy hauling items to her various shops.

Charlotte appeared in the doorway of the third room, looked around, and perched on the table inside the door. “I see empty shelves. I’m impressed. You’re making progress.”

“Good progress,” he assured her, finishing packing a box and taping it closed.

She held out a bag she had in her hand. Bryce slipped off the cloth gloves and took a handful of her M&M’s. “How was Cincinnati?”

“Wet. It rained the entire time I was there. Sales have been good, though. They even sold the last of the cigar boxes.” She nudged with her foot to get a better perch on the table. “I dropped off four hundred very old books, a dozen old mirrors, five cases of Christmas wrapping paper, a wooden barrelful of bows, and probably a thousand pieces of ladies’ costume jewelry from every decade since there has been a Graham. The barrel itself is probably the most valuable item, oddly enough.”

Bryce reached for more M&M’s, and Charlotte obligingly tipped them into his hand. “To their credit, the two ladies I have running the store sorted through the items and said it would be no problem. They’ve hired four more staff so they can handle the volume. The store in St. Paul said there was a bidding war over Fred’s old desk set from his father. I had a few more items of that kind boxed, so I took them all over to St. Paul, including four trunks of dresses that must be from the 1930s and ’40s. I don’t understand vintage clothes. They said the very old shoes were popular too, and I should bring the rest of what I find.”

“Age brings character.”

“Something. I will say everything was in excellent condition. They’ve been stored in a berm for decades that stays sixty-five degrees and dry. I’ve got three more storage rooms of clothes to empty out as my next priority.”

“Any old toys?”

“An entire truckload—they’re what I used to open the St. Paul store. They sold out in less than ten days.”

“Admit it, Charlotte. You like selling stuff.”

“I’m not any good at the customer face-to-face part, but I
enjoy seeing items being put to use versus being thrown away. I’m getting more efficient. I used to agonize about what to take and how to price it. It’s not such a big deal now, as I’ve realized the market will bid up the price on the few rare items, and the rest will sell if reasonably priced.”

She slid back to her feet. “Could I get a ride back to Chicago with you? I need to fly to New York tomorrow and it’s easier to leave from O’Hare than Madison.”

“Sure. Going to see your sister?”

“No. Other business.”

“I figure I’ll leave about three, if that works for you.”

“Appreciate it. I did get one useful piece of business done. The group three coins are now at my shop and priced. Stop by and tell me what you think. I’m at two million eight, but I’m flexible.”

“I’ll stop there first thing tomorrow morning. Is there going to be a group four?”

Charlotte considered him. “Would you like there to be?”

Bryce thought she was teasing, but didn’t want to chance it. “I’d like to buy whatever coins you have to sell, Charlotte.”

She smiled. “That works for me. Yes, plan for a group four.”

Bryce settled into the drive that he had done several times now, familiar enough with the scenery to know the time remaining, the exits he would like to stop at, without having to refer to the map. It was nice having a passenger along, though a quiet one.

Charlotte had her sketchbook out. He was content not to interrupt her as the hours of the drive passed. She drew with the concentration that said this was her real job. She finally snapped a rubber band around the pencils she was using and dropped them in the briefcase.

“What do you think?” She turned the pad to show him.

It was her dogs looking back at him from the page. “Nice.”

“I know their faces so well, sometimes I dream about them looking at me.”

She flipped the page. “Just a concept. I’ll do the final sketch in color.”

He glanced over at the pad and saw a misty fog over Shadow Lake, the trees faint silhouettes. “It’s beautiful, Charlotte.”

“Thanks.” She paged through the sketches. “A couple of these have potential.”

“How long have you been selling your works?”

“About fifteen years. I let Ellie manage the business side of the art for me. I just hand her the sketchbooks, and she decides what is worth selling and how to price it. She’s got an extraordinary gift herself for the business side of art. That’s rarer than most people realize.”

She pulled out her briefcase and put the sketchbook away. “There’s about an hour left in the drive?”

“Fifty minutes.”

“I stay with Ellie when I’m in Chicago. I would appreciate it if you could drop me off there. She’s on Bryston Avenue, just west of Porters Street.”

“No problem.”

Charlotte sorted around in her briefcase for a pen. “You mentioned you had another giving list for me?”

“The page is folded in that book on the back seat.”

She reached over to pick it up, looked at the cover and said, “Andy Stanley, any good?”

“I’m enjoying it.”

She tugged the page from the book. “Thanks for the list.”

“I’ve jotted down some ideas for projects—a new dorm for an orphanage in Zhanjiang, China. Four deep-bore wells for clean drinking water in Sierra Leone. A vaccine distribution effort
in Uganda. The equipment, supplies, and salaries for a health clinic serving the Mathare Valley slum area of Nairobi. Two agriculture projects targeting food transportation across Kenya. There’s also some general suggestions for several churches I know well that have strong mission budgets.”

She read through the page. “I can do your full list.”

“Seriously?” He’d put together a list totaling eight hundred thousand, thinking a few items might appeal. It hadn’t crossed his mind that she’d say yes to everything.

“My offer was to do your suggestions or tell you to scale it back. I don’t mind giving this amount.”

She got out her checkbook.

She was now at just over a million in gifts based on his recommendations. Bryce found the thought disconcerting. He’d put some care into the two lists, she’d asked for his best ideas and he’d given them, but the scale of it now began to sink in.
What did I miss here, Jesus? She’s giving away a million dollars because I mentioned some places . . . this just doesn’t happen.
He glanced over at her.
Thank you
didn’t seem sufficient, and the best he’d done so far was treat her to fast food during the drive. “Thank you, Charlotte, from all these places that will be really helped by your generosity. And thanks from me for doing this.”

She smiled. “Relax, Bishop. It’s only money.” She wrote the checks for his list, stacked them neatly for him, then pulled out the pad he’d seen her work from before, and she began to write checks to food pantries, addressing envelopes as she worked.

He realized she wrote two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks as easily as she did fifty-dollar checks, and took a moment to process that unexpected fact. “You send checks every month?”

“I prefer doing it that way. It’s easier on their planning if support is a steady amount rather than lumpy with occasional gifts during the year.”

“If you run labels for the addresses, it would save you time and you would know you didn’t skip any place you intended to give.”

She licked another envelope and sealed it. “That would fall in the category of a good idea that I haven’t made time to do yet. Ellie would jump at it, she likes to organize things, but I try not to land everything on her plate.”

“It really is a nice thing you’re doing,” he offered. Words were failing him just when he wanted something eloquent to say.
Jesus, what’s an encouraging word here?
She’s doing something that truly matters. I want her to hear that.

“I’m not particularly nice, Bryce. I’ve just got the resources to write some checks this year, and it makes sense to use some of the money this way.”

He watched the stack of envelopes grow. “You said you don’t believe like I do. What do you believe in, Charlotte?”

She gave him a long look, then signed a check before she replied. “I would call myself a struggling Christian. I was raised attending church every Sunday, baptized when I was ten. But I’ve got some doubts about God.”

She’d addressed the topic rather than brush off his question, but Bryce sensed the conversation was going to be short. He chose to go to what mattered most to him personally. “God is all about grace, the same as you showed your brother-in-law. We repent, He forgives us, and we get another chance. We need a clean slate, and can’t earn that new chance, so Jesus paid the penalty for what we’ve done wrong in life. It’s a goodness we don’t deserve, but need, and a magnificent act of grace. God likes to forgive.”

“I know.” She finished writing another check. “That’s the problem. God is too good. He’s too willing to forgive. He would have forgiven the men who hurt me.”

The car swerved slightly right, and he put his attention back on the road. “Charlotte—”

“They’re dead,” she went on, “so it’s theoretical now. But it also isn’t. God meant it. He would have forgiven them if they asked him to. I don’t know that I’m interested in a God who would give a second chance to the men who hurt me.”

He breathed in very carefully over the pain in his chest. “What—?”

“I don’t talk about it. I’m not talking about it any further.”

He literally bit down on his tongue to stop his words, afraid he was going to take a wrong step, say the wrong thing, and do real damage because he didn’t know what he now
had
to know. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. So am I.”

Charlotte finished stacking the envelopes and pulled out her sketchbook again. She shut down the conversation like a wall, and Bryce let her have the silence.

Them
. Plural. He felt sick. And she was right. God would forgive even the men who hurt her, had they repented and said forgive me.
Jesus, what happened? How do I even begin to find words to have a conversation with her about it?

Bryce had rented as the prep area for the coins part of the third floor of the office building where Chapel Security had its headquarters. He walked into the large room shortly before eight a.m. The boxes he had unloaded from the SUV the night before were stacked on a push trolley by the east wall, the top two boxes now open.

Ann was at the third table sorting silver half-dollars. The people he had hired to help her were not in yet.

Bishop pulled out the chair across from her. “Ann, I need to know.”

She took one look at his face and set aside what she was working on. “Something happened?”

He nodded.

Ann took a deep breath. “Bryce, she’s Ruth Bazoni.”

Shock ripped through him, then grief, pain, and enormous sadness. Pity finally overwhelmed every other emotion in him.

She laid a comforting hand on his arm. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

B
ishop could vividly remember, shortly after his college graduation, seeing a television interview with Charlotte’s twin sister.

“Ruth and I were sixteen when we were kidnapped, initially held for twenty-four hours by two men in a van that just drove around. The older man had just returned with the ransom money. He tossed the duffel bag into the back of the van with us. ‘Your dad paid this, he’ll pay more. Only one of you is getting out of this van.’ The words had no more than left his mouth than Ruth planted her feet in my ribs and shoved me out of the van. I fell onto the pavement. The guy slammed the door shut, laughing. It was the last I saw of my sister for four years.

“It was four years and three ransoms before the FBI found the two men, killed them, rescued her. Everything Dad had left to sell, my modeling income, a loan against my future earnings, even donations from strangers paid ransoms two and three. Though Dad and I thought she was probably dead, we just couldn’t give up hope. She saved my life that day, at the cost of her own. She looked like a skeleton with skin when she was found. She was twenty, yet her gaze was of someone in her
eighties. She’s never said a word—to the cops, to her doctors, to her family—about those four years. She just smiled at me and said, ‘I missed you.’”

Ruth Bazoni had disappeared from the public view, changed her name, and rebuilt her life. John Key had helped her.

Bryce closed his hands around the coffee mug Ann brought him, needing the warmth. “She talked about God briefly. It shook me. Now . . . now I get where she’s coming from. She doesn’t know if she wants to believe in a God who would be able to forgive the men who hurt her.”

Ann traced a circle on the table with the cold soda she had brought over for herself. “I imagine, Bryce, that God broke her heart, that she couldn’t trust Him to keep her safe. If He loved her, He wouldn’t have let her stay trapped in that nightmare for four years.”

“It’s hard to comprehend, Ann. Four years, three ransoms. She was just sixteen when it began. Just a kid.” He tried to get that image in his mind to square with the woman he knew today, and he couldn’t do it.

“It’s a black eye to the FBI and the task force of local cops who worked the case. It shouldn’t have dragged on that long,” Ann said. “They finally found the two guys, killed them and rescued her, but it was four very long years. The fact she was found less than three miles from her home, had been there the entire time—there’s a reason it’s the most famous kidnapping case in recent Chicago history.”

Bryce thought about all the media the event had attracted, even during the missing years, and then after she was found. No wonder John had been hired as her bodyguard to keep reporters away.

He looked at Ann. “I understand where Charlotte—I can’t think of her as Ruth—is coming from. If those guys had asked forgiveness, God would have done it. Doesn’t matter that it’s only theoretical now, that they didn’t repent. God was willing to forgive them, wipe their slates clean, and accept them into heaven. That’s what Charlotte can’t deal with. God meant it.”

“Truly evil men rarely repent, even though they are invited to do so.”

“Charlotte said God is too good,” Bryce said softly. “Implied if God loved her, He wouldn’t have offered them the chance. Today, I almost agree with her.” He taught basic theology at his church, had spent his life willing to put his time, money, and personal honor on the fact God was worth following—and right now it all felt off-kilter. “Ann, what am I going to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Make it go away.”

“The one thing you can’t do for her.” Ann wiped the moisture off the table. “Figure out how much it’s in the past, Bryce, and let her decide what, if anything, she wants from you. It’s been years, and from what you’ve said up to this point, she’s rebuilt a good life. I don’t think Charlotte’s nearly as separated from God as you would think. I think she’s still wrestling with the hurt of what happened, but her charitable gifts are just one clue God still matters to her. She doesn’t understand Him. But you don’t wrestle with a problem when the answer doesn’t matter to you.”

“I wish I didn’t know.”

Ann nodded. “I know what you mean, Bryce. Where is she now?”

“Her flight to New York is not until noon. She’s probably still at Ellie’s.”

“Better to have a conversation today than several days from now.”

Bryce got to his feet. “Thanks for telling me. And for the
warning earlier that I didn’t want to know. You were absolutely right. I wish I didn’t.”

Bishop rang the bell at Ellie Dance’s home, expecting to get no answer even if Charlotte was still here. He didn’t imagine she was going to want to see him before she left for New York. Especially when she found out—

Charlotte opened the door before he could complete the thought.

“Charlotte . . .”

He didn’t know how to begin. On the drive over he thought he had worked out what he would say, but the words failed him as he saw her.

“Come on in, Bryce.”

She stepped back to let him enter, walked into the living room ahead of him. She picked up the book on the couch to put it on the table, took a seat and pulled her legs up under her. “You know,” she guessed.

“Ann told me.”

“Why hadn’t you looked me up and already known? I laid a bread-crumb trail right to the answer with the fact my sister was named Model of the Decade. There’s only
one
of those in a decade.”

“It simply didn’t occur to me, Charlotte. The background report had you being from Texas and the sketch artist CRM. It never crossed my mind that you were originally from here. I thought I knew who you were. I just hadn’t asked you to confirm it.”

She looked . . . he could see what John must have seen in those early days . . . the bruised emotions of a survivor. He walked over to the window to look out at the traffic.

A minute passed.

“I’m sorry, Charlotte, about what happened.” He kept his eyes on the street outside, but he had to say it. He still felt sick with shock and grief, and neither of those emotions was going to improve matters with her right now.

“I don’t talk about it. Never have. Never will.”

He turned, pushed his hands in his back pockets. “I won’t ask.”

She shrugged.

It seemed important to say something else. “I remember when you disappeared. I was starting college. And I was graduating when you were found.”

She didn’t respond.

Bryce could feel the seconds tick by.
Jesus, give me some help here, please. I’ve known about this for only a couple of hours, and I’m drowning here, trying not to make it worse, but feeling appalled at the idea I’m supposed to ignore what shattered this woman’s life.

He glanced around the room, seeing a few pictures of Ellie and Charlotte, several more which included John. Friends. Family. He latched on to that thought and looked at Charlotte. “How about your dad? How’s he doing?”

“He lives near my sister in New York. Had a stroke and thankfully doesn’t remember those years. I go see him when I’m in town. He thinks I’m his nurse’s niece and tells me how much he likes jazz. He gets agitated after I visit, like part of him is trying to remember, and the doctors have carefully suggested that maybe it would be better for him if I visited less often. He seems okay with Tabitha and the girls, so they have a meal with him every week. When Tabitha and I talk on Sundays, she’s good about telling me how he’s doing.”

“You’re not catching any breaks, are you?” he murmured.

“The name change confuses him. I changed my name after it happened, Ruth Bazoni doesn’t exist anymore. I was Charlotte
March until my grandfather showed up. I decided his family name was more appropriate and would lead to fewer questions, so I became Charlotte Graham when I moved back here.”

“John knows. Ellie,” Bryce said, trying to form a picture of those who knew.

“Paul does, and you’ve just said Ann knows,” Charlotte added.

“She won’t speak out of turn.”

“Not a concern. I know her by reputation,” Charlotte replied, “and we share some common friends. Don’t treat me differently, Bryce. It will annoy me.”

He nodded, but wondered just how he was supposed to do that. The knowledge literally hurt. “I’ll go take a look at the coins for group three today, have an answer for when you get back. You need a lift to the airport?”

“Already covered.”

“How long will you be in New York?”

“Three days, maybe four if business bogs down. Lawyers can be slow when they feel a need to explain every detail after I got the gist of it in the first five minutes.”

He smiled. “I’ll track you down when you get back. We’ll talk coins.”

She half smiled back as she nodded. “Maybe dogs too. Let yourself forget you know, Bryce. John has, enough it doesn’t color how he nags at me.” She studied him. “It’s not fragile glass you’re dealing with, Bryce. I survived. I shouldn’t have. You want to remember something, remember that. I’m neither nice nor particularly soft.”

He didn’t understand her perspective on herself, but accepted that her comment originated in one of the many layers of her history. Nothing was going to be simple about this woman—nothing ever had been. But now he was understanding the reason. “Why doesn’t John travel with you? Reporters have long memories, and you’re still a story.”

“I vetoed it years ago. I don’t look like my sister, and she’s the one whose photo is everywhere. I know John has security around me when he thinks circumstances warrant it. He’s got my truck tagged. Probably Mitch or Joseph will be on the flight this afternoon. We’ve got an agreement that I won’t ask so he won’t have to tell me. He handles the security so I don’t have to worry about it. But unless someone really tries to find me, they aren’t going to link Ruth Bazoni to Charlotte Graham. Your background check didn’t turn it up.”

“You must have had some law enforcement help burying those name changes,” he guessed.

She nodded. “For that, and a few other matters that keep my identity under wraps. They are inclined to do what they can—an apology of sorts for not being able to do more when they couldn’t find me.”

“One question, Charlotte, and I promise to leave it be. Did you know that you were only miles from your home?”

“I knew the street I was on, had guessed the house.”

He closed his eyes. “Okay.” When he opened them he met her gaze, and he knew what she meant when she said she was a survivor. She had known, and she had lasted four years.

Chapel Security had been fast. Bryce had three boxes of material to read regarding the Bazoni kidnapping, most of it from newspapers, along with four videos of prime-time television shows done about the case while she was missing, interviews with the FBI and local cops working the ransom demands, another six tapes of press conferences, fund-raisers, newscasts. Bryce spread it across his desk at home and went through it all late into the night, dug out his old video equipment and watched several of the tapes. He got to relive it, from the search for the missing girls, the initial ransom demand, the hope when
Tabitha had been freed to the desperate realization Ruth wasn’t going to be so lucky.