She switched off the faucet. “Matt…”
“Never saw him. Didn’t have a clue. The thing about him I realize now—” He thought a moment as Wendy carried the colander of beans over to the stove and dumped them into her pan of sautéed onions, peppers, garlic and carrots; she didn’t think anyone would notice the carrots when the chili was finished. Ham sighed and said, “He wanted it all. The glory, the violence, the money, the risk, the sneaking around. So he ended up biting off more than he could chew. It all got away from him.”
Wendy didn’t respond. She opened cans of tomatoes, dumped them in her pot. She added spices, fresh herbs from her grandmother’s garden. The steam and the smells filled the kitchen, and one uncle drifted in, then another, and another, until they all were there, and it was Uncle Sam who noticed the carrot shreds. “Wendy—carrots?”
“They add sweetness,” she said.
Her grandmother backed her up, and she and Uncle Will got bowls down from the cupboards while Wendy grated cheese for those who wanted it. Most of her cousins and aunts and the extra cops had left. She put the cheese on the table and dipped out the chili, noticing that Ham had left. Too many people for him, she thought.
“I liked Matt,” she said in a half whisper when she sat at the table. “I trusted him.”
Her father took her hand. “We all did. We all got taken.”
“He was a likable guy,” Uncle Sam said.
“You can’t live your life not trusting anyone,” her grandfather added.
Uncle Jeff concurred, then grunted. “But the next guy who shows up for temporary work gets checked out.”
They all seemed to enjoy the chili. Wendy liked it, too—it had worked out a lot better than her apple crisp.
A car sounded in the driveway, and she felt her heartbeat quicken. Her grandfather went to the window, his limp more pronounced today. “Ah.” He turned to his family at the table. “The feds are here.”
He greeted them at the door, and they introduced themselves.
Joe Collins, Mike Rivera and Nate Winter.
Wendy smiled tentatively at Special Agent Collins and Chief Rivera, and their serious expressions softened when they saw her. Her father squeezed her hand. “They’ll want to talk to us,” he said.
“Both of us?”
“Oh, yes.”
Aunt Juliet followed the three men into the house and made a face. “If someone had handed me a picture of all you guys here in the kitchen when I was seventeen,” she said, “I’d have stuck to landscaping.”
“You and that mouth,” Chief Rivera said, but he was grinning.
Then Ethan Brooker walked in, and from her aunt’s look, Wendy decided that no way would Juliet have been happy planting lilacs.
Juliet joined Ham on the porch. It was early evening, the temperature falling fast. “We’re losing sun,” she said. “In a few more weeks, it’ll be dark at three o’clock.”
He smiled at her. He looked tired, pale and very sore. “That’s an exaggeration.”
“Okay, three-thirty.”
He lifted his eyes to her. “They want to talk to me now?”
She nodded, knowing he meant Collins, Rivera and Winter. “You can tell them everything. What’s classified will stay classified.”
“I just—” He got awkwardly to his feet, picked at one of his little bandages. “I just told Dr. O’Farrell stuff I heard. It was never that big a deal.”
“From what I understand, you prevented some rotten things from happening.”
He shrugged, obviously pleased, but not wanting to take any credit. “But I almost caused—” He broke off, then continued, his head lowered, “If I hadn’t switched the emeralds.”
“Bobby Tatro’s a violent man, Ham. If he’d walked away with the emeralds, who knows who else he would have hurt.”
“Yeah. That’s what I tell myself.” He pulled open the porch door, glancing back at her. “How is Dr. O’Farrell?”
“She got pretty beat up, but she’s okay. The mental scars are going to take the longest to heal.”
Ham nodded, his eyes distant. “He’d have tortured her—”
“I know, Ham. Don’t dwell on what might have been.” Juliet gave him an encouraging smile. “Go talk to Agent Collins.”
“I don’t understand why Kelleher turned on Dr. O’Farrell.” Ham frowned, shaking his head, muttering to himself as he went inside.
Juliet sat on the porch steps, a cold wind whipping through the bright leaves of the sugar maple. When the door creaked open behind her, she knew it was Ethan and didn’t look up. He sat next to her, stretching his long legs down the steps and leaning back on his elbows. “I think Officer Paul wants to skin your mother.”
“Why?”
“Apparently your fed friends can’t find a room for tonight, and she offered to let them stay here.”
Juliet nearly choked. “She did what? Oh, hell. I’m not going back to New York until tomorrow. The last thing I want to do is run into Joe Collins on the way to the bathroom in his boxer shorts.”