My parents did not have money. They didn’t talk about it, but I knew we weren’t rich. My mother clipped coupons, searched online for bargains. We got our books from the library, bought what was on sale, not the latest styles. The answer to almost everything I wanted was no or maybe later. And I knew that it hurt her to say no; she wanted me to have everything I wanted, what the other girls had.
“It was an inheritance from her grandmother,” he said. “She added to it when she could. You know how she was. Frugal. Then there was the death benefit, pension, life insurance, and the sale of your parents’ stuff.”
It didn’t ring true.
“She told you about it?” I asked.
He nodded, but his face looked gray, his expression strained. It was a look he got when he talked about my parents. Grief, anger, something else I couldn’t name.
“I was your legal guardian should anything happen to them,” he said. “That was always known. We talked about you, your future, what she—what they—wanted for you.”
“But I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought there was debt. That my dad was in trouble.”
He blinked at me. “Who told you that?”
“I heard you and Boz talking, a long time ago,” I said. “That’s why they thought—” I couldn’t finish.
That my dad was a dirty cop, that he robbed drug dealers and stole their money, that they came looking, that he let them kill my mother, torture me, kill him rather than say where it was hidden. I still couldn’t put my lips around those words in front of him, even though I had been talking to Mike. Even though I had grown strong enough, brave enough to ask questions, to look for answers.
“It’s not true,” he said. “What they thought. There’s no evidence. Your dad—he was a good man. He wasn’t good with money. But he was a good man.”
“If they were in trouble,” I said. “Why didn’t she use this money to pay the bills?”
“Because,” he said. “It was money she’d saved for you. She didn’t want to compromise your future because of their mistakes.”
“She told you that?”
He nodded, looked down at a hand he had laid down flat on the table.
“So you knew about the money, but my dad didn’t?”
He didn’t answer, didn’t look at me. Then, “Your mother confided in me sometimes. Your dad wasn’t always easy, and your mother and I were friends. But I didn’t know about the debt until after they were gone. If I had, I’d have helped them.”
I folded up the statement.
“That money is in an education trust,” he said. “So, again, it can only be used for those costs until you graduate. Then it belongs to you.”
“I’ll give it to you,” I said. “When I graduate.”
“You will not,” he said, turning those icy eyes on me. He reached for my hand, and I laced my fingers through his.
“You deserve it,” I told him. “How much have you spent on me?”
He bowed his head, and when he looked at me again, his eyes glistened.
“Every second you have been in my life is a blessing, Zoey,” he told me. Color came up his neck. “You’re the very best of both of them. Every time I look at you, I see her beauty, his goodness, her warmth, his strength. I’m the one who owes you.”
We sat like that a minute; I didn’t say anything, and I knew he didn’t need me to. My love for him was well known, and I’ve never been good with words. But I knew that my mother didn’t have money like that. She’d alluded to an account, a little money tucked away for the future. But that wasn’t a little money, not to people like my parents. Where had it come from? Since my name was on the account, it was easy enough to find out that the balance of the account was about $8,000 the month before my mother died. Slowly, about a year later, deposits started to show up—$1,000 here, $5,000 a month later—until just under $400,000 had accrued. Then the withdrawals started for school and nothing new came in.
That was the kind of thing that they’d look for, the police, anyone monitoring a cold case that involved money. Unless no one was looking. Unless the people who were supposed to be looking, as Seth suggested, were intentionally looking the other way.
? ? ?
I STOOD AT THE EDGE of the trees in the shadows. I didn’t have a plan, not really. I figured I’d knock on the door and see what happened.
“Is that why you left your car by the side of the road and walked nearly a mile through the woods?” asked my dad. He was following behind me. Didion was nowhere to be seen, thankfully.
It was always better to approach on foot, quietly, when walking into a situation full of unknowns. If I were big and strong, maybe I’d be more direct on my approach. But since I’m small, surprise is one of my few advantages. Not that I was expecting a fight. I just wanted some time in that basement, to go through anything left by my parents. I figured I’d knock on the door, introduce myself, and ask permission. But I’d definitely set something into motion, and I was still aching all over from the bruising I’d taken last night. I couldn’t be sure who else was watching the house. That key, the one Mr. Rodriquez had given me, the one I’d been jumped for last night, it opened something. And I had a feeling, whatever it was, was in that house. If they had the key, they weren’t going to waste any time.
“What did you hide in the basement that night, Dad?” I asked.
But when I turned around, he was gone, never one to answer the hard questions.
Maybe I felt it when I came through the trees, like Catcher did that night. The door to the barn was gone. The door to the house stood wide open, as well. The blue Toyota that I recognized as belonging to Josh Beckham was parked in the drive. There was a pulse to the air, something not quite right. I waited, a watcher in the woods, listening to the air. There was the wind. The call of some faraway bird. The scrabble of blowing leaves. My own breath.
A dark form appeared in the door to the house, paused there, breathless, then broke into a run across the yard toward the barn. I waited a moment, then followed, fast and quiet.
thirty-six
When the phone rang in the night, Chad Drake was always fully awake before his hand even touched it. It had happened so many times that Heather usually did little more than stir and turn over. For a smallish town, they were a busy department. And adjacent towns had smaller forces, so when something big happened, he usually got a call. He didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.
“Drake.”
“Can you meet me?”
“What’s up?” he said, surprised. He looked at the clock; it was after 1:00 a.m.
“I need you to come out.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting up. The floor beneath his feet was cold as he pulled on his jeans, the sweatshirt hanging over the chair. If it was the job, he’d have quickly showered, gotten fully dressed. Instead, he grabbed his sneakers, socks, heading out into the hallway so Heather wouldn’t pick up on the fact that there was something different about this call.
“I’m at the rest stop between exit 90 and 93 on Route 80 in Leesburg.” Paul sounded level, normal—which in and of itself was odd for a late-night call like this.
“What happened?” That rest stop was an hour from the house at least.
“Just come.”