When they’d gotten up to the backdoor, she’d wiped her shoes on the mat. Opened the door on Edward, Vizless, finishing a sandwich at the kitchen table. He’d nodded to her, mouth full, eyes wide, and she’d seen, through the door into the dining room, that her mother had the good china out. Nodding back at him, slipping out of the parka, which was perfectly, scarily dry, she’d hung it on the rack beside the fridge.
“And here’s your pretty daughter, Ella.” He was beside the fireplace, with Burton, her mother sitting in the middle of the sofa. “And this must be Deputy Tommy.”
“Evening, ma’am,” Tommy said. “Mr. Pickett. Burton.”
“Hi,” said Flynne, almost silenced by how much anybody like Corbell Pickett was never supposed to be in their living room. “Remember you from the Christmas parade, Mr. Pickett,” she said.
“Corbell,” he said. “Been hearing good things about you. From Ella here, and your brother. And Tommy, by way of Sheriff Jackman. Good to finally meet you, Tommy. Appreciate you coming out.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Pickett,” said Tommy, behind her, and she turned to see him. He’d hung his black jacket on the rack beside the parka, and now he put his hat on the hook. He turned, in his starched tan uniform shirt with the patches on the sleeves, badge flashing in the light, expression neutral.
What she really wanted, she realized, was to ask Burton if they’d managed to buy the governor yet, but her mother was here, not to mention Pickett.
“Hey,” said Burton, how he stood reminding her of Conner in the peripheraclass="underline" off-centered but just so, ready to swing either way.
“Hey,” she said.
“You must be tired.”
“Not sure.”
“Bring in the coffee, Flynne,” her mother said. “Help me up, Burton. I’m past my bedtime.” Burton crossed to her, took her hand. Flynne could see her staying on top of her sickness, something she could still do when she needed to. Unwilling for Pickett to see it. The oxygen was nowhere in sight.
She went back into the kitchen and got the pot off the stove. Edward was just sneaking out, under one of those giveaway rain capes with the Hefty logo across the back. He gave her a nervous half wave. The plastic blinds on the door’s window clattered as he closed it behind him.
“Eat his sandwich?” her mother asked, from the living room.
“He did,” Flynne said, coming back with the coffee.
“Knew his aunt. Reetha. Worked with her. Sorry I have to turn in, Corbell. Pleasure to see you. It’s been a long time. Pour Corbell some coffee, Burton. Flynne, you help me to bed, please.”
“I will,” she said, and put the pot down on the coffee table, on a thing made of big wooden beads that Leon had done in Scouts. She followed her mother through the door beside the fireplace, closed it behind them.
Her mother bent down, plucked up her oxygen, turned the knob, stuck the little clear plastic horns into her nose. “What are you and Burton up to with that man?” she asked, voice down so he wouldn’t hear, and Flynne could see her being really careful not to swear, which meant she was seriously angry.
58
The Fitz-David Wu rental, the one with the grease-smeared cheek and the creased boiler suit, was approaching his table, a drink in its hand. It seemed to see him.
“You see me,” he said, resentfully.
“I do,” it said, putting the drink down in front of him, “though others can’t. That’s your last. You’ve been cut off.”
“By whom?” he asked, but knew.
The peripheral reached into a pocket at its hip, withdrew something, which it then exposed on its open palm: a small cylinder, wrought in gilt and fluted ivory. It morphed, becoming a gilt-edged ivory locket that opened, revealing Lowbeer in what seemed a handtinted image, orange tweed and a green necktie, gazing sternly up. Vanishing as the locket seamlessly became a thumb-tall lion, crowned and rampant, then back into the ornate little cylinder.
“Am I to assume it’s genuine? Easily done with assemblers.”
It pocketed the thing. “The punishment for emulating a tipstaff is extremely severe, and not at all brief. Drink up. We need to be going.”
“Why?” asked Netherton.
“As you reached her voice mail, various individuals, across the entire Thames Valley, began to move in this direction. None connected to her, or to you, in any known way, but evident to the aunties as violating statistical norms. We need you out of here, then, with as little hint as possible of any contrivance of authority. Drink up.”
Given such unqualified permission, Netherton tossed back the whiskey. He stood, a bit unsteadily, knocking over his chair.
“This way, please, Mr. Netherton” said the peripheral, rather wearily he thought, and took his wrist, to lead him deeper into Impostor Syndrome.
59
People think the really bad ones are something special, but they’re not,” her mother said, sitting on the edge of her bed, next to the table crowded with meds. “Psycho killers and rapists, they never ruin as many lives as a man like Corbell does. His daddy was a town councilman. Stuck-up boy, Corbell, selfish, but no more than lots that age. Thirty-some years on, he’s ruined more people than he can be bothered to remember, or even know.” She was looking at Flynne.
“We took something on,” Flynne said. “Took the money. Nothing to do with him, that we knew of. Now he’s turned up in it. Not like we asked him to, or asked for him.”
“If Burton’s moonlighting, and the VA finds out,” her mother said, “they’ll cut him off.”
“Might not matter, if things work out.”
“VA’s not going out of business any time soon,” her mother said.
Flynne heard the door open behind her. Turned.
“Sorry,” said Janice, “but that asshole’s giving Burton the gears. Didn’t want to be standing where he might see me and think I heard.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“On your bed, doing hate Kegels. Went up there after I’d put the coffee on and helped Ella put her hair up, when Burton told us who was coming over. You okay, Ella?”
“Fine, honey,” said Flynne’s mother, but her sickness was showing.
“You take your meds now,” Janice said. “You’d better get back there,” she said to Flynne. “Sounded like there was business being done.”
Flynne noticed the picture of her very young dad, younger than Burton, in his dress uniform. The room had been his den, then her mother’s sewing room. After she started having trouble with the stairs, they’d moved her bed down here. “Have to go back now,” Flynne said to her mother. “I’ll look in after. If you’re still awake, we’ll talk.”
Her mother nodded, not looking at her, busy with her pills.
“Thanks, Janice,” Flynne said, and went out.
“Not without a better idea who’s doing the buying,” Pickett was saying, as she entered the living room. He sat in the rocker armchair with the tan slipcover, which she now saw could do with a wash. Burton and Tommy were at either end of the sofa, facing him across the coffee table. Pickett saw her, kept talking. “My people in the statehouse won’t talk to you. This outfit you’ve hooked up with will be going through me. The other thing they need to understand is that what they’ve spent so far was just to get the door open. Maintenance is going to be due, on a regular basis.”
She realized, sitting down between Burton and Tommy, that each sentence of what he’d just said had been in a cadence she remembered from his commercials for his dealership, a sort of spoken wedge, narrow on the front end but widening out to a final emphasis. Driven like a nail.