“That much we know already. Where in Montana? Be very specific.”
Through the phone, Myron’s father stubbornly shouted, “You bastard! You broke my nose!”
Ellen met Myron’s eyes. Myron tried to regain some kind of leverage here or at least slow things down a beat, give everyone a chance to breathe. “Let’s just talk about this a second.”
Ellen sighed and leaned forward closer to the phone’s speaker. “Allen?”
“Yes, Ellen.”
“Shoot him in the head and wait for the mother to come home.”
“No!” Myron shouted.
“Just do it, Allen.”
Then Allen Castner said, “Ellen, turn off the video.”
The old woman hesitated a moment before pulling her hand back across the desk, taking the phone off speaker mode, removing one earring, and putting the phone up to that ear so Myron couldn’t hear. She listened a moment, nodded, and said, “Understood.”
Then she disconnected the call.
“What happened?” Myron asked.
He could still hear the panic in his own voice.
“We sit and wait.”
“For?”
“It won’t take long.”
The hell with that. Myron took out his own phone.
“Put it down,” she said. “If you contact anyone...” The old woman shook her head. “Do I really have to make the threat? I thought you’d be smarter than that.”
Myron’s leg started shaking. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but if anything happens to my father—”
“Wait, let me guess.” She stroked her chin. “You’ll go to the ends of the earth to find me and make me pay. Please. Look at me, Myron. Do you think this is the first time I’ve done this? Do you really think I don’t have all the bases covered?”
Myron had never felt so helpless in his entire life. “So what do we do now?”
“We wait.”
“For?”
“For as long as it takes.”
“Don’t hurt him. Please. I’ll tell you—”
She put her index finger to her lip. “Shh.”
They sat there. Myron had never imagined time could move so slowly.
“This would have been easier if you’d just cooperated.”
“What does that mean? What’s going on right now?”
Her phone finally buzzed. She picked it up. “Hello?” She listened for a moment and then said, “Okay.” She hung up and put the phone back in her purse. Using both hands for leverage, the old woman pushed herself into a standing position.
“I’m leaving now.”
“What’s going on? Is my father okay?”
“If I don’t get down to my car in the next ten minutes, it will get worse for you. Much worse. Sit there. Don’t move. Don’t call anyone. Ten minutes.”
And then she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Myron hit full panic mode.
He called his father’s phone. No answer. He called his mother’s. No answer.
He debated calling the lobby of the Lock-Horne Building and telling security to follow the old woman, get a license plate, something, but how would that help his father? It wouldn’t. It might bring justice later, but for now that whole idea was something his brain didn’t even want to entertain.
So what should he do?
Call the Florida police? Call someone who worked at his parents’ retirement village?
It all felt so futile. Myron felt helpless and scared and vulnerable, and man oh man, he didn’t like that.
He sprinted into the waiting area. Big Cyndi wasn’t there. He could feel the panic in him rise to yet another level.
From behind him, Big Cyndi said, “Mr. Bolitar?”
“Where were you?”
“In the little girl’s room,” she said. “It was only a number one.”
He was about to tell her what happened when his phone buzzed.
The caller ID read MOM.
He hit the answer button with the speed of a gunslinger in an old Western. “Hello?”
“Guess what klutz broke his nose playing pickleball?”
Then he heard his father’s voice: “Oh stop it, Ellen, I’m fine.”
Relief flooded Myron’s veins.
“You were the one who insisted I call him right away, Al.”
“I didn’t want him to worry.”
“How would he worry? He didn’t even know you were hurt.”
“Mom,” Myron said, fighting to keep his tone even, “just tell me what happened.”
“Cousin Norman, that’s Moira’s boy. You remember Cousin Norman, right? We went to see him in Where’s Charley? when he was in seventh grade?”
“Mom.”
“Anyway, Cousin Norman is driving us to urgi-care, but your father is fine. Seriously, Myron, who breaks their nose playing pickleball? You know that new carpet in our living room? The one we bought at... Al, what was the name of that place?”
“I don’t know. Who cares?”
“I care. It was that home store off Central Avenue. Myron, you know the one. It’s next to that diner you took us to lunch at last time in February.”
“Ellen.”
“It begins with a D. Demarco Home and Carpeting? Deangelo? Anyway, that carpet. It’s covered in blood now. Like our living room is that shower scene in Psycho. Who comes back home when they’re still bleeding and, what, takes a nap on the floor?”
“I didn’t know I was still bleeding,” his father said.
“How could you not know? Anyway, he’s playing pickleball. Then someone — your father won’t tell me who—”
“Because it doesn’t matter!”
“—smashed the ball at your father. Your father, being a regular Jim Thorpe, used his nose instead of a paddle.”
Myron said, “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to catch the next flight down.”
“No, you’re not.”
That was his father.
“I’m fine,” Dad said. “You have work. You’re busy.”
“Oh, right,” Mom said. “We read about Greg Downing getting arrested. Did he really kill that pretty woman and her son?”
“Don’t ask him that, Ellen. You’re a lawyer. You should know better.”
“What, I can’t ask him mother-to-son?”
“Myron,” Dad said, “don’t come down.”
The voice left no room for argument. Myron got it. Dad didn’t want Mom to worry. If Myron flew down, Mom would know something was seriously wrong.
“Who were you playing with, Dad?”
Mom took that one. “He was playing with his new friend Allen. You remember him, Myron? He’s that big fan of yours.”
“I remember.”
“He’s gone,” Dad said.
“Oh, Myron?” Mom again. “We just pulled into the urgi-care. I’ll call you later.”
When Mom hung up, Myron realized that his entire body was shaking. He called Win and filled him in on what happened.
“They just suddenly backed off,” Myron said at the end. “I don’t get it.”
“I do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me get people on your parents. I’ll be back at the office in fifteen minutes.”
“I thought you were flying down to Philadelphia.”
“I canceled.”
“Why?”
“Fifteen minutes, Myron.”
Win hung up. Myron took his phone and stared at it for a moment as though he were expecting it to ring again.
What now?
He called Terese. She answered on the third ring. “Hey, handsome.”
“Hey.”
“What’s going on?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said.
“Shit, what happened?”
He didn’t reply for a second.
“That bad?”
“Tell me about the story you’re working on.”
“I would say, ‘You first,’ but it seems you need a second.”