“We know we’ve kind of been playing hardball lately,” Garnet said. “We’ve employed tactics which, in retrospect, have gone too far.”
“You mean taking pictures of me through a window?” Sam asked, starting to feel her way. “When I was with someone?”
“With,” Yolanda said under her breath.
Garnet reached out a hand and touched his wife on the knee. “Now, dear, we promised to be good.”
“I’m sorry,” Brandon’s mother said. “And I’m sorry for sending that photo to you. That was... uncalled for.”
“You think?” Sam said. “Would it be okay with you if I hired someone to spy on you? I’m sure you and Garnet still get it on once in a while. Does that make you bad people?”
Yolanda flinched. She looked ready to bite back, but then composed herself. “You make an excellent point, Samantha.”
“And what about today? Sending that thug Ed in here? What the hell was that about?”
Garnet’s face contorted. “What are you talking about? Ed was here?”
“Are you saying you don’t know?”
He shook his head sorrowfully. “He goes off half-cocked sometimes. Thinks he knows what we want, but really, he shouldn’t have bothered you. We’re very sorry about that, aren’t we, Yolanda?”
“We sure are,” she said.
“We just want everyone to be happy or, if that’s too much to ask, to understand one another,” Garnet said. “And before I forget, Brandon asked me to say hello and pass along his best wishes to you and Carl.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“We go every week,” Garnet said.
“He forgives you,” Yolanda said.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“He forgives you for leading him down a reckless path.”
Sam swallowed hard, made a fist that she managed to keep pointed at the floor. “What that man did was his choice and his choice alone and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. He could have stolen the crown jewels for me and I still wouldn’t have gone back to him. Do you know what he did to me? He kept me living in a constant state of fear. He was capable of violence, and sooner or later I knew I’d be on the receiving end.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Yolanda said. “Not my son. He was always a very gentle child and—”
Garnet grabbed her knee and pinched it hard enough to make her shut up. “We’re getting a little off topic here, love. Let’s not lose sight of why we came here to see Samantha.”
Sam glanced at the clock. It was time for her to leave to get Carl.
“I don’t know why you’ve driven all this way, but I really have to go,” she told them.
“Just another minute,” Garnet said. “I know you don’t trust us. I know that if I were to extend an invitation to our grandson to come stay with us for a week or two in the summer, at our beach house on the Cape, you’d be suspicious. I get that. So what we wondered was, would you be our guest, too? You and Carl could both come down. You could stay in the guest room. Would you feel comfortable with that? You’d love it there. I know we invited you and Brandon, and you were never able to find the time, but it’s quite beautiful and relaxing. We could take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Go to Edgartown.”
Sam took another look at the clock.
“I don’t think all of us being under the same roof would work very well,” Sam said, her eyes fixed on Yolanda. “And I don’t know if the owner could find someone else to run this place if I went away.”
Yolanda made a derisive scan of the premises. “How hard could it be to find someone to do this?”
Garnet shot his wife a look, then smiled understandingly at Sam. “Well, then, what if we were to come up here? Book a hotel, or maybe a resort around Saratoga. Someplace close to Promise Falls. We could give Carl a little vacation close to home. And we could book a room for you, too. We could make it close enough that you could drive in here every day, make sure everything’s running like clockwork.”
Sam didn’t get it. Why the change of heart? Were Garnet and Yolanda really on the level?
“What about all this talk of trying to take Carl away from me?” Sam said. “Would that end?”
Garnet smiled. “That hasn’t been productive, has it? We think there has to be a better way.”
“And Brandon would like to see his son,” Yolanda said.
Garnet gave her a look that suggested that was not on the agenda.
“Prison is no place for a nine-year-old boy,” Sam said. “One day, when Brandon is released, I’m willing to sit down and work out some kind of visitation arrangement. Despite what you may think of me, I don’t want to turn my son against his father.” Again, she looked at the clock. “I can’t be here another minute. I have to go pick up Carl.”
Garnet held up a hand. “Just wait. I think what you’re saying is very mature, very honorable,” he said. “I’m pleased to hear you say that. What we’re wondering is—”
“You’re not hearing me,” Sam said. “Carl will be looking for my car. When—”
Sam cut herself off. She suddenly understood what they were doing.
They were stalling her.
She stood, ran to the office at the back end of the Laundromat to grab her purse.
“Samantha!” Garnet said, standing. “Please! There’s more we want to say!”
She grabbed her purse, and as she headed for the alleyway out back where she kept her car, she searched it for her car keys. Once she’d found them, she pointed the remote at her car and hit the button to unlock it. The car was listing to one side. Both tires on the driver’s side were completely flat.
“No, no,” she said. “This isn’t happening.”
Behind her, standing framed in the back door of the Laundromat, Garnet and Yolanda Worthington smiled. “Got you good, you bitch,” Yolanda said.
They’re sending Ed. They’re sending Ed to the school to grab Carl and take him back to Boston.
Twenty-four
I got back into my car, which I’d parked in a visitors’ spot at Felicia Chalmers’s building, and took out my notebook. I turned to the page where I’d written down the numbers Lucy had read out to me from Adam Chalmers’s phone bill.
There was one we hadn’t been able to connect to anyone. I figured, what the hell, and dialed it.
The number rang four times, then went to voice mail.
“Hi! This is Georgina. I’d love to talk to you, but I can’t take your call right now, so leave me a message!”
Cheerful. I chose not to leave a message. I called Lucy.
“Hi,” she said when she picked up. “Did you talk to Felicia?”
“Yeah. But I wanted to ask, does the name Georgina mean anything to you?”
“Georgina?”
“Yeah.”
“No, nothing.”
“Okay, just thought I would ask. I’ll check in with you later, okay?”
I pointed the car in the direction of Thackeray, on the outer edges of Promise Falls. Took the better part of twenty minutes.
It was the first time I’d been on the Thackeray grounds since returning to Promise Falls. I’d spent time out here when I was in my late teens and early twenties, although never as a student. I’d done two years at the state university in Albany before dropping out. If I could have gotten a degree in partying, I’d have done well, but things didn’t work that way. So I switched institutions, taking a six-month course at the New York State Police Academy, still in Albany. After graduation, I managed to get on with the Promise Falls cops.
Where I stayed until I screwed up, moved my wife, Donna, and son, Scott, to Griffon, a small town north of Buffalo, and went private. We had a few good years there, maybe the best I ever had or ever will, before darkness took them both away from me.