“He forgot his wrench,” Sheila said.
“Damn.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“Not sure. Let me sleep on it.”
I woke at first light, with a sick feeling in my gut. Like I’d had too much caffeine without any food to absorb it.
Something was missing.
It took me a minute. The crows. That time of morning, they ought to be cawing their damn heads off. But they weren’t, and none of the other birds were on duty either.
I slid out of bed, pulled on some clothes, slipped out the door. It was only a few steps before I rounded the curve and saw Hank’s place. There were three cop cars. Two LW security vehicles. Paramedics. A couple of neighbors standing around gawking. Across the street, someone’s visiting grandbaby was squalling its fool head off. The kind of thing living at Leisure World was supposed to eliminate.
Rae was talking to a couple of cops. She spotted me and ran over. “They—”
“What’s going on?” I said, real loud. “What’s the matter?” I put my arms around her, whispered, “Act dumb.” She stared up at me. “You don’t know anything. Got it?”
Nothing.
“Rae. I need you to focus. You don’t know anything. It’s important. One of the cops is coming over. I need you to get it.”
She straightened her spine. “I got it.”
The cop came near. He was young and he had a mustache and he thought he was hot shit. I asked, “What happened, officer? Is Hank all right?”
“Who are you?”
“A friend.”
“Well, friend, why don’t you just step over there and wait. We’ll get to you soon enough.”
“Certainly, officer.” I put my hands on Rae’s upper arms. Squeezed. “You going to be all right?”
A tiny nod. “Uh-huh.”
“Okay, good. You need anything, you know you can count on Sheila and me.”
“Sir...”
“Right. Over with the others.” I stepped away and began to concoct some useless information to share with the police.
Someone had managed to get past the guard gate and jimmied Hank’s lock and shot him twice. He’d evidently used a silencer, because Rae, sound asleep in her room, didn’t find him until some time later.
It wasn’t going to be long before the police figured out who Hank was. I figured I had a couple of hours head start.
Rae showed up a little after 9. “Last cop just left.”
“Good.”
“We have to get the son of a bitch.”
“And we will.”
Sheila poured her coffee and we sat at the little table in the kitchen. When Sheila’s back was turned Rae gave me a look. “She knows everything,” I said.
“I’m very sorry,” Sheila said.
“Thank you,” Rae said.
“And now I’m going to leave you two to... to do whatever you’re going to do.”
Once she was out the door Rae said, “First, you need to know this. Allison. She stole him from my mom. So I hated her. She deserved what she got. But Dad didn’t kill her. She was dead when he got there.”
“Swift killed her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Dad never knew. But Swift had been drinking. Maybe it was an accident. Or maybe she was going to declare her love to the whole world, and Swift couldn’t have that.”
“Then why did Hank stand trial?”
She took a deep breath. Looked away. “Blackmail.”
I thought about it. Took a few seconds before things fell into place. “He was willing to shut up for a big chunk of cash. But without a presumed murderer, the cops would’ve dug deeper. They would have found out it was Swift.”
She turned back to me. “Swift says to him, yeah, I’ll give you the money, but you have to let the cops think you did it. Then I’ll make sure you get off. Which I guess he could do. He had people in his pocket. And while the heat was on Dad, he covered his tracks.”
“Swift could have double-crossed him. Let him stand trial, not interfere, and get him convicted.”
“If he had, Dad would’ve told the real story.”
“Who’d have believed him?”
“He had a picture.”
“He just happened to have a camera with him?”
“He was done with her. He was going to divorce her and get back with my mom. He was going to take a picture of them together, and then he was going to use it to get a divorce, and if she complained he was going to let everyone see Swift fucking around. Which Allison didn’t want, because she’d gone and fallen in love with the asshole.”
“But he didn’t get back with your mother.”
“It didn’t work out.”
She slumped in her seat and stared at me with eyes half open. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“About your dad blackmailing that shit Swift? I’m not. Not really.”
“How come?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Tell me.”
I stood up. Went and leaned on the kitchen counter. “I thought he’d done it. Gotten away with murder. Up until you told me different a couple of minutes ago. So if I was ready to think him a murderer, then what’s a little blackmail?”
“You thought he did it, but you palled around with him anyway?”
What was I supposed to say? That I still figured I’d killed my son, and I felt some kind of weird kinship with someone who’d killed his wife? She didn’t need to hear that. “I liked him. I got past his past.”
Did she believe me? Maybe she did. It didn’t really matter.
“So now what do we do?” she asked.
“What happened to the picture?”
“He sent it to Swift after he got off and got the money. The negative too.”
“How honorable.”
“That’s the kind of guy Dad was.”
“That’s the kind of guy I am too. But...”
“But what?”
“But self-preservation. If you’re dealing with straight shooters, you shoot straight. If you’re dealing with scum...”
“You think he kept a copy?”
“I would have.”
“Then let’s go look.”
There was nothing in the bedrooms. Nothing in the living room. We moved into the kitchen. “There a junk drawer?” I asked.
She pointed. “Top one on the right.”
It looked promising. All sorts of crap. Take-out menus, pieces of string, toaster instructions. Little bits of plastic that had broken off things. Random tools, including a utility knife. Which I discovered when the blade sliced my pinkie open. I jerked my hand out and wailed and bled all over the counter.
Rae hauled me into the bathroom. She put pressure on and washed the finger and poured hydrogen peroxide over it. After a few minutes the flow turned to an ooze. She went into the medicine cabinet for bandages.
“Just like mine,” I said. “Pills for everything.”
She bandaged me up. Stared at my hand. Then at the medicine cabinet. Tried to retreat from the reality in which her father had been murdered. “I guess we won’t be needing these anymore,” she said, grabbing a bunch of the prescription bottles and tossing them at the wastebasket. But she took too many. One fell to the floor. Another into the sink. As she bent for the one on the floor my eyes went to the one in the sink. Which didn’t have pills in it.
I grabbed it and struggled with the childproof cap until Rae saw what was up and snatched it from my hand. She flipped it open and poured the contents into my palm.
A key. A safe-deposit key.
“Where did he do his banking?” I said.
We tore open a box of canceled checks and I practiced his signature. My cut finger made it harder. But I didn’t think it had to be really close. Who’s going to expect one geezer was trying to get into another’s box? Especially when the first geezer looks a lot like the photo on the second’s driver’s license? Which we grabbed before we headed for the bank.