CHAPTER 6
Noah
I’m catching up on sports highlights in the family room when Judy’s delicate hand settles on my shoulder. “Would you mind helping me with the table, Noah? I’m so terribly behind.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I pull myself off the couch. Not that I would ever deny help to anyone, but it’s impossible to refuse Judy’s lilting Southern accent and motherly smile. She may be the sweetest woman alive.
Silas and Judy have lived in this big, old white colonial outside of Austin for as long as I can remember. We’d drive out on weekends when I was young and spend our days hanging out on one of the three covered porches, or running through the sprinklers in the expansive yard. Coming here is like entering a time warp—instead of renovating to modernize, they’ve poured money into the place to hold on to its historical charm, plastering the rooms with busy wallpaper and moldings, refinishing the old plank wood floors until they shine, and hanging antique chandeliers.
As much as I dread the idea of making small talk with strangers, it feels good to be here. Familiar. Plus, dinner with people who don’t know me may be exactly what I need. “Thanks for letting me crash your party,” I tell Judy.
“You know you’re always welcome here, my darling.” She reaches up to give my cheek an affectionate pat. “Silas has an early morning meeting, so our meal will be served shortly after they arrive. I hope you brought your appetite.”
I rub my stomach. “I’m starved.” I’m not, but telling Judy that would only make her worry. “Are we eating in the dining room?”
“Yes, of course. The dishes are stacked on the buffet. We need five settings. Salad forks on the outside.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Everything about my aunt is proper, right down to the table settings when company comes. I’m grossly underdressed in my T-shirt and jeans and she’s the type to gently reprimand me about that, but tonight she hasn’t said a word. I guess I’ve earned a pass.
The doorbell rings as I’m Googling “wineglasses and placement” because I know Judy will come in and quietly fix it all if I don’t do it right. Moments later, Silas’s loud voice carries down the hall. “Retirement’s treating you well, I see.”
A man chuckles. “Can’t complain.”
“And yet he does complain about being bored, daily,” a woman says, earning a round of laughter.
“How was Italy?”
“Just lovely! We’ll be going back, soon.”
“You’ll be going back. This old fart’s had enough of trains and planes. Let me rock in my chair in peace.”
His voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
“You’ll have to tell us about it over supper. Judy’s already pricing out tickets to Tuscany for the fall.”
“She must know that she can’t get you away from your office for more than twenty-four hours?”
“Well, she’s darn determined this time.” The hardwood floors in the hallway creak.
“Thank you for the invitation,” the woman says. “I was in the midst of figuring out what to make for tonight when George mentioned it this morning. Saves me from having to cook!”
I frown. Silas invited this couple over for dinner just this morning? That’s unlike my aunt and uncle. They’re normally reserving space in their calendars two months in advance.
“Come. Let’s have a drink in the parlor.”
I chuckle. My cousin, Emma, would be rolling her eyes if she heard him. Judy is desperate to live in nineteenth-century England, and has decorated their living room with stiff furniture and china figurines and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that house leather-bound volumes. It’s one of those rooms that’s used only when company comes and is not at all comfortable.
I finish setting the table and then wander in, to find Silas mid-pour from a crystal decanter. His idea of a pre-supper cocktail is Kentucky bourbon. “There you are! Noah, do you remember George?”
“Hi.” I offer my hand in greeting, but can’t help the frown as I study the portly man with the gray beard because he does look familiar. I just can’t place where I’ve seen him.
“Well, look at you!” He seizes my hand in a firm grasp. “To think I last saw you when you were a gangly boy.”
“And if we don’t get food into him soon, he’s going to turn into one again,” Silas mutters, passing a drink to the man.
The way they’re talking, I feel like an ass for not knowing who this guy is. “It’s been a while,” I say casually.
George’s round belly jiggles with his laughter. “You don’t have the first damn clue who I am, do you, son?”
“George, really!” his wife, a petite brunette with a round face, a glass of sweet tea already in hand, scolds.
“No offense taken. You probably only saw me in uniform and it has been a while. I’m George Canning. I was chief for some time.”
“For twenty years,” Silas pipes in, clinking glasses with him in a toast. “And he was so dang good at it, he’s getting his own life-sized monument downtown this June.”
“Yes, hopefully a trimmer version.” He emphasizes the word with a pat against his gut.
Silas adds, “Your mother knew George well.”
George clears his throat and with the act, all amusement vanishes. “Dolores and I were on our way to Italy for a wedding when we heard the news. It was a shock to all of us.”
I simply nod, not trusting my voice with this prickly ball sitting inside my throat. So much for mindless conversation with people who don’t know anything about me.
“Noah!” Silas nods his head toward his office entrance.
“I should get going home.” Two hours of listening to the women babble about Italian food and grandchildren, and the men debate about Republicans and Democrats, is my limit. Thankfully, the one thing everyone stayed far away from during supper was talk of Jackie Marshall.
“Nonsense.” He hooks an arm around my shoulder and pulls me into the traditional man cave of dark leather, mahogany furniture, and heavy drapery. George has already found his spot in a chair in front of the wide-open French doors, a lighter held against the cigar in his mouth.
Silas sees my brows pop and laughs. “Your aunt may reign over the roost, but I get the final say in my little coop.” He thrusts a glass of amber liquid into my hand. “Join us.”
I hate hard liquor—more now than before—but when Silas offers, you don’t refuse. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“That Jackie raised you right, I can see that.” George lifts his foot to push a chair out for me with his polished shoe. “The kids these days . . . My grandkids misplace their manners more than those godforsaken electronics they’re attached to.”
“She’s a stickler for some things. Was a stickler.” A fresh wave of numbness washes over me before I have to feel the full impact of that simple correction.
George’s heavy sigh fills the room. “I still don’t know what to say. I never would have seen that comin’ in a million years.”
“No one did.” My standard three-word line. Pretty sure I’ve started saying it in my sleep.
“Silas mentioned that she had a bit of an issue with . . .” He tilts his glass in the air.
“Near the end,” I admit reluctantly.
“Bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“I reckon so.” He shakes his head. “She’d be far from the only one to get caught up in the drink. She and the boys could tie one on, back in the good ol’ days. Still . . . I can’t make heads or tails of it.” Sweet smoke fills my nostrils as he puffs on his cigar. “She was smart as a whip, that one, and driven to succeed. Loyal . . . honest . . . Integrity like I’ve never seen.”
I can’t help but drop my gaze, afraid that he’ll see the doubt in my eyes.
“I wish I could say the same for the rest of the force and your blue wall of silence,” Silas mutters. “It’s no wonder the public doesn’t trust the police.”
“Now don’t get all riled up with that hogwash,” George warns through another puff.
But Silas is never one to back down. While the two of them bicker over police politics, I hide behind the terrible burn of this bourbon, picking through my mother’s final words. It’s funny . . . I can still smell the acrid stench of her Marlboros, can hear the crackling buzz of the radio, can see her lifeless body hunched over the table, but the most important part of that night—all the seemingly nonsensical rambling—is swimming loose in my mind, testing my memory.
I do know that she spoke of honesty that night, of Abe being a good, honest man and, if I were to read between the lines, not guilty of what he had been accused of. So what exactly is the truth? The version I’ve believed for the past fourteen years? Or what might have been a deeply hidden confession that forced itself to the surface in her final moments?
Silas’s cell phone rings. He checks his screen and sighs. “I’ve got to take this. Maybe while I’m gone, you can talk my nephew into staying in Austin. The DA’s office can’t afford to lose him.”
“Stay with a bunch of liars and crooks? You’re two sandwiches short of a picnic if you think I’m gonna help you with that,” George hollers after Silas as he ducks out the door. “Heck, if I’m convincin’ you of anything, it’d be to apply for the academy. If you’re half as determined as your mother was, Austin PD would be lucky to have you.”
“Yes, sir.”
His eyes narrow, studying me. “That ain’t something you’re interested in, though, is it?”
“No, sir.” I grew up thinking I was going to be a cop. After I finished my stint in the NBA, of course. But when it came time to make those big life decisions, the last thing I wanted to do was apply to the police academy. I had too many bad associations with it already.
“Oh, to have your whole life ahead of you . . .” he says wistfully. “I didn’t have no choice but to retire, heart issues and all. Both the doc and the wife insisted it was time. But you know, Jackie’d call me almost every week, askin’ for advice. It was nice; made me feel like I was still of some real value. And she’d talk about you, plenty. She was so proud of you. Of the man you’ve become.” He pauses. “You two were close, weren’t you?”
“She’s the reason I applied to UT.” I wanted to come home.
His forehead furrows with his frown. “And she never gave you any clue, hey? Just out of the blue up and did that? No warning at all?”
“I mean, she said things, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.” All those nights of drinking, mumbling to herself about making better choices . . . how did I not take it more seriously? “She told me she wasn’t good enough to be chief.” That seems innocent enough to admit.
He snorts. “That there’s the biggest load of bull crap I’ve ever heard. She was one of the best damn officers I’ve ever seen, and believe you me, I saw a lot over my forty-odd years on the job. I was groomin’ her to take over my spot. She should have had it when I was forced out, but that spineless city manager Coates put Poole in. Took me a few years of meddlin’ to get both of them out, and your mother in there. But she knew the job of chief inside and out long before she ever accepted it.”
I’d love to take his high praise at face value.
“What’s the matter? You look bothered.”
I smooth my expression. “No, nothing. It’s good to talk to someone who knew her well.”
George takes a long puff of his cigar. “My oldest son, Wyatt, was a police officer. He came home one day and said, ‘Dad, they gave me a female partner. Can’t you do somethin’?’ I said, ‘Sure I can, son. I can move you to the graveyard shift of the drunk tank, if I hear you sayin’ another word about having a woman partner.’ Just three shifts later, Wyatt found himself starin’ down the barrel of a pistol at a routine traffic stop. This guy was all cracked out on somethin’, ranting and raving, with two little kids in the backseat. He wasn’t goin’ anywhere with the police. It was that female partner—your mother—who talked him down from pullin’ the trigger. Her and her level head. She never panicked, not once. Didn’t even raise her voice while dealin’ with him, from what I hear. Cool as a cucumber. I knew right then and there that I had a good one. I kept a close eye on her after that. Mentored her some.”
“I thought Abe was her first partner.” He’s all I remember.
“No, sir-ee. Jackie and Wyatt were partnered for three years.” George peers into his drink, his mood suddenly somber. “Then Wyatt got caught in the middle of two gangbangers on some drug-turf-war issue. He was mindin’ his own business, walkin’ out of a corner store. Bullet hit his throat. He died right there on the sidewalk. That’s when she got paired up with Abraham Wilkes. And, well, we all know how that turned out.”
“He was a good, honest man.”
“We are bad, bad people.”
George shakes his head while I struggle to ignore the way my stomach tightens. “Lord knows I’ll never lose that name. One cop goes rogue and I’m left scrubbing filthy fingerprints off the whole dang department for years. Forget that I spent years before that all up in everyone’s asses with more task forces than anyone else in the state of Texas, trying to rid this city of the kind of drug runners who killed my son.”
I hesitate. “My mom never talked about Abe after he died. She wouldn’t answer my questions.” I don’t want to sound too eager, but I’m desperate to know what George Canning knows. Did my mom tell him what she admitted to me?
“I remember her sayin’ something about you havin’ a rough go of it afterward. She didn’t know what to tell you.” George studies me for a long moment. “What was he, again? Your baseball coach? Or was it football?”
“Basketball.”
“Right.” George pauses. “You still have questions about him? Because if you do . . .” The chair creaks as he leans back. “I’m all ears.”
I should say no. I should pretend that what Abraham Wilkes was or wasn’t doesn’t matter to me after all these years. My mother’s cloudy confession might be safer that way. But the truth is it has mattered to me, since long before the night my mother died.
Abe wasn’t just the guy who taught me how to dribble a ball like a pro. And he may have been my basketball coach for five years, but he was never just my coach.
Every time I scored in a game, no one cheered louder than Abe.
My dad didn’t come to most of my games. He said it was because of work, but Abe was a cop on shift work, and he managed to work his schedule so he could coach my team.
Abe taught us how to lose with grace, and to treat all players with respect. Two or three times a year we’d volunteer as a team at a soup kitchen. Other times we’d come out and run drills with young kids from low-income areas. All this was a mandatory requirement for being on his team. More mandatory than playing in the actual games.
I was eleven the first time I kissed a girl. Her name was Jamie, and Abe was the only person I told. He patted me on the back with a knowing smile.
Then he took me for a drive through one of the rougher parts of Austin, slowing past a community center ripe with teenaged girls pushing around baby strollers. Even though schoolyard gossip had already taught me the basics, I got “the talk” from Abe. The one where he stared me down with those penetrating chocolate-brown eyes and told me if I got a girl pregnant and the thought of walking away from my responsibility even crossed my mind for a second, he’d beat my ass because I’m better than that.
Abe was like a father and a big brother and the man I wanted to be when I grew up, all rolled into one.
Yeah, Abe’s death left a lasting impression on me.
The void was gaping.
And the betrayal I felt from this father-figure, this moral god . . . it was crippling. At first, I didn’t believe what the news was saying; I couldn’t. How could someone so focused on doing the right thing do something so wrong?
But my mother didn’t defend him, didn’t discredit what the newspapers were saying. Didn’t deny it. She just drank and let her marriage and our family fall apart.
Before long, it became easier to believe everyone. To believe that Abe was guilty, as much as I didn’t want to.
There’s not a lot that’s worse than finding your mother dead in your kitchen with a gun in her hand. But having that happen on the same night she alludes to having something to do with the death of your childhood idol . . .
Now the one person who would have seen all the evidence against Abe is offering to give me answers.
George leans over. “Boy, you’re as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. What gives?”
After forty years on the police force, it’s not a wonder he can see right through me. “I still have a hard time believing he did it,” I finally admit.
George presses his lips together. “What do you remember?”
“Just what was in the news.” Over the past few days, I’ve spent hours reading old articles online to refresh my memory, unable to shake my mother’s words.
Abe died in a sketchy motel, along with another guy. Two bags—one of drugs, one of cash—sat on the bed between them. In the beginning, the only statement the police would release was the one confirming that a police officer and a man known to police were found dead, and that they were investigating. The media got hold of Abe’s name quickly, though, along with the details about the crime scene and the fact that Abe was alone and not on duty at the time. They also learned that the “man known to police” was Luis Hernandez, a drug dealer released six months prior. One thing led to another, and soon the public was screaming that the APD was trying to cover up a crooked cop.
George stares hard at his drink for a moment, his lips twisted in thought, before taking a sip. “Did you know that Austin is now the eleventh-largest city in the nation, and one of the fastest growing?”
“I read that somewhere.” Or maybe Silas told me, right after he said not to sell the house.
“It was less than half of what it is today back then, but we all saw it coming. This population explosion. And yet so many people still have a hard time seeing how it’s changing. They expect us—the mayor, the police department, your uncle, all of us—to keep it the same.
“Everyone wants to continue living in their happy little bubble. They want to drink their fancy lattes and go to their music festivals and restaurants and ‘keep Austin weird.’ Sure, we look like a fairy-tale city next to Houston or Dallas or San Antonio. But make no mistake, there’s crime here and it is damn ugly. I mean, for God’s sake, we’re some two hundred and thirty miles from the Mexican border, where they’re funneling through a million pounds of marijuana and who the hell knows how many tons of cocaine every single damn year!” George’s face is turning red with anger. He takes a few breaths to calm himself.
“We started noticing a big problem with the drugs coming into Austin. Our patrol divisions were stumbling on it all over the place; they couldn’t keep up. I knew I had to take the bull by the horns before Austin turned into another Laredo.”
That’s being a little bit dramatic, given that Laredo borders Mexico, but I can appreciate his point. Like he said, we are only a couple hundred miles away—and some days, the distance feels even shorter.
“So I assigned four officers to a narcotics field unit. Their job was simple—to hit the streets and bust as many dealers as possible. Big, small, didn’t matter. Uncover the stash houses and labs, seize everything. Shut ’em down. Don’t let them get comfortable in my city.
“And son, let me tell you, these guys were good. They were dogged, churning through tips, securing informants. They were sniffin’ out dealers like bloodhounds.” Canning chuckles. “That’s what I called them—my hounds. Dumbest thing Poole coulda done when he took over for me after my heart attack was shut them down. Budget cuts, my ass.
“Anyway . . . they caught wind of a patrol officer who was emptying the pockets of dealers he’d come across on routine calls and reselling at a discount. They didn’t have a name. All they knew was this guy was of African descent.” He stares into his drink. “Not long after, Abraham Wilkes turns up dead in a motel room with Hernandez. Wasn’t too hard to connect the dots.”
“What do you think happened the night Abe died?”
“Who knows? Maybe Hernandez wanted more drugs for less money. Maybe he didn’t know Wilkes was a cop and panicked when he found out. Maybe Wilkes threatened him with somethin’. These guys . . . they’re lowlife criminals; some of them are dumb as dirt. There ain’t no rationalizing with them.” He takes another long puff of his cigar. “But it was all cut and dry what was goin’ on in there—a gym bag full of a bit of this, a bit of that . . . a brown paper bag with piles of twenties. No sensible explanation for why Wilkes would be in that seedy motel that night. Still, I hoped for another reason, for my own sake as much as the department’s.
“But the evidence against Abe quickly piled on. We traced a call from Hernandez to him earlier that night. We found cash and drugs stashed away in his house, taped to the back of furniture, in the vents, under the mattress. We were able to link the drugs to batches checked in to the evidence room, from busts he’d been at over the last month.” He shakes his head. “It’s a damn shame that he lost his way like that.”
The steady tick of the old grandfather clock is the only sound in Silas’s study for a long moment, as I take in all that Canning has told me. It makes no sense when it’s laid out next to what my mother said. But, then again, she was drunk and in a poor state of mind. Still, I’m confused. “So, how was my mom involved in all this?”
George frowns. “Jackie? She wasn’t involved. I put together an investigative team with my very best people, but she didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. I never would have allowed that, what with her being close friends with him—partners, too—for years. She didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was impossible to ignore. That was a hard pill for her to swallow.”
She washed that hard pill down with plenty of booze. “What about his family?”
George clucks. “It was just his mother, and the only thing she was ever gonna accept was a report that said Abe Wilkes was framed and murdered. She wanted a lie. She refused to believe the truth, even when it was finally there in front of them, in bold black ink.” He shakes his head. “And his wife, well, she up and took off with the kid. I guess she decided that all would come out in due time. Hell, she probably already knew what was comin’. She was his wife, after all. If there was extra money under their mattress, I have to think she’d have noticed it while she was tuckin’ in the sheets. Probably turned a blind eye. Given where she came from, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
Where she came from? The Dina I remember was pretty and gentle and slight. She spoke softly. She wore floral dresses and baked chocolate-chip cookies and delivered her husband bottles of beer at barbecues, with a kiss. She was everything my mother wasn’t.
“What happened to her?”
“Started her life over elsewhere, I reckon. Can’t say I blame her. Being the wife of a cop who got himself into selling drugs won’t earn you no prize at the county fair, that’s for damn sure. As I recall, she didn’t even bother comin’ back to ask for the report once we released it.” His brow tightens. “It’s odd, don’t you think? Wouldn’t she want to see it, for closure?”
“Unless she already knew he was guilty.”
“Exactly.” George levels me with a somber look. “And unfortunately, Abraham Wilkes was as guilty as they come. Of course, we can’t try a dead man, but any jury would have seen it for what it was.”
“Seen what for what it was?” Silas asks, stepping back in.
“Jackie’s old partner, Abraham Wilkes.”
Silas’s eyes dart to mine, and I see the warning question in them: Did I tell George what my mom said?
I give him the slightest shake of my head, and I can see him exhale. He reaches for his drink. “Some people can’t help but abuse the authority they’re given.”
“Jackie sure didn’t. To one helluva cop.” George toasts the air. “And one of the hardest-working people I ever met. Not like this blister here, who don’t show up ’til the work’s done.” He nods toward Silas, flashing a smile to go along with the gentle ribbing.
Silas clanks glasses with him.
It finally dawns on me that this last-minute supper was Silas pulling his puppet strings. I can see what he’s trying to do—discredit my mother’s drunken rambling and give me something else to believe.
Manipulative, yes, but I appreciate it, because it’s given me the courage to face whatever sits folded in my back pocket. In fact, I’m now desperate to read what my mother had to say. I set my barely touched glass down on the desk.
“That’s good bourbon!” Silas scolds.
“I have to drive.”
“Right. Of course. So you’re going to pack up your things this weekend? Judy will have your room ready for you by Saturday.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Silas made a compelling case before George Canning and his wife arrived. I should move in with them rent-free—I’ll get home-cooked meals and can commute into work every day with Silas. I’ll borrow against the house’s equity and have the kitchen renovated. Give it a different feel, so my skin doesn’t crawl every time I walk in.
When the renos are done, I can either move back into the house and rent the two extra bedrooms out to my friends, or rent the entire house out for enough income to pay bills and a mortgage on a second property. Yup, Silas has made easy sense of my life for the next few years. I’m not sure if I’m sold on it—maybe I should start over fresh in Seattle, or somewhere completely new—but the thought of leaving behind everything I know isn’t appealing, either.
Plus, there’s no escaping what happened. My mother killed herself, no matter where I live.
“Chief Canning, it was great to meet you. Again.” I offer him my hand.
He stands and takes it, chuckling. “It’s just good ol’ George now. And if you ever need anything, give me a holler. Or better yet, come on out to my ranch for a visit. Anytime. The door’s always open. I’m out near McDade, the only Canning in the book.”
With a polite nod, I duck out.
The second my engine is running, I reach into my pocket for the envelope.
An odd mix of relief and disappointment hits when I see the single scrap of paper inside.
It’s not a suicide letter, after all.
It’s a diagram of the kitchen pantry, and what looks to be a removable panel in the floor beneath one of the shelving units, along with three words in her messy scrawl:
Open it alone.
My eyes roam over the long, narrow room, pausing on the thousand-pound green metallic Browning safe sitting in the corner, tucked away among the shelves of canned tomatoes and potatoes, bolted to the floor.
That safe is built to hold twenty-nine firearms, but Mom had only four personal guns registered to her: a Glock, a Colt Python, a Remington shotgun for the rare occasion that she had to play politics in the old boys’ club and go duck hunting, and my grandfather’s Hawken rifle—a family heirloom. They’re all present and accounted for, along with a healthy supply of ammo, and there’s plenty of room left in there.
So why the need for this hidden compartment under a shelf?
I set to shifting cans of food to the other shelves until the metal rack is empty, and I’m able to drag it away from the wall. It’s not heavy but the space is tight, making it difficult to maneuver.
I study her sketch, and then the floor. On first glance, there’s no obvious panel. Not until I crouch down and shine the flashlight on the worn wood do I see the seams.
It takes a few minutes with a butter knife before I manage to pry the covering off, revealing a compartment about two by one feet in size, and stuffed with a black nylon gym bag.
How long has this secret hiding place been here?
Pushing that question aside, I fish out the bag and yank open the zipper.
And my heart starts racing.
“Holy shit.”
I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how much cash is in here, but it’s a lot more than I’ve ever seen, and it definitely wasn’t included in Mom’s list of assets that Hal reviewed earlier.
Pulling out one wad, I fan through it. A lot of twenties, but also everything from fives to hundreds. I must have a grand in my hand, and there’s plenty more. What the hell was Mom doing with this much money, and why would she hide it under the floorboards?
That’s not all there is.
Tucked in with all the cash is a tan leather gun holster. I frown as I fish it out, running my fingers over the black stitching along the seams. I’ve seen this holster before, but I can’t remember where or when.
Not until I flip it over do I see the letters embroidered on the other side.
A.W.
A sour taste fills my mouth.
Who else would this belong to, besides Abraham Wilkes?
Why does my mother have Abe’s gun holster hidden with a bunch of cash beneath the floorboards?
I notice a slip of paper mixed in with the bundles of money. I fish that out and unfold it, an ill feeling firmly settled in my gut.
Gracie needs this money. Make sure she gets it asap. Don’t ask questions, Noah. Trust me, you don’t want the answers.
Below it is an address in Tucson, Arizona.
There are no explanations.
No apologies.
Nothing that might give me any sense of closure, any relief. In fact, it does the exact opposite.
A mixture of anger and resentment burns deep inside. Maybe she thought that the last “I love you” would carry me through this more than anything she could have written down?
She had no plans of explaining herself, of exposing her demons.
“I’m a coward.”
That’s what she said. She said she couldn’t face Gracie, that she wanted to make it right but couldn’t. Is that what this money is supposed to do? Make it right?
Where the hell did you get this money from, Mom? And why did you have Abe’s gun holster?
How much is in here, anyway?
Stretching my legs out, I dump the money onto the floor in front of me and begin counting, pulling apart the bundles and creating small piles for every thousand. And then every five thousand.
Until there are piles of bills all around me totaling ninety-eight thousand dollars.
I fall back against the wall, my mind churning. What was my mother expecting me to do? Hand-deliver this gym bag full of cash to the daughter of her late police partner? Because hand-delivering this much money is the only way Gracie will get it. And she also doesn’t want anyone knowing that I’m doing it, including Silas. That’s why she didn’t put it in the safe. She knew her brother. She knew he’d be in the thick of things and find it.
That she wouldn’t want him—the district attorney—knowing about this money leaves my stomach in knots. Mom made good money—over two hundred thousand a year as chief, and a solid salary as assistant chief for all those years before that, too. But to pay off the house and most of my tuition and still have all this cash? It doesn’t seem possible on a single woman’s salary.
So where did this money come from? Why is Abe’s gun holster stowed away with it?
And why does she want Gracie Wilkes to have it?
Why not Abe’s wife, Dina?
I rack my brain, trying to remember everything she said about Abe’s family the night she died. But all I keep coming back to is how she wanted his daughter to know that he was a good man.
And then another thought occurs to me: if the feds are investigating my mom and they show up on my doorstep with a warrant, the last thing I want them finding is this.
“Fuck.” I pull out my phone and Google the distance. It’s a twelve-hour drive to Tucson, and I have no choice; I have to drive. I can’t get through airport security with this much money on me.
Twelve hours.
Twenty-four hours, there and back.
It’s Thursday night. If I leave now and drive straight, I can be there early afternoon, catch some sleep, and be back by Saturday night.
My foot begins tapping with nervous energy. Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea. It’s a chance to get away. And what the hell else am I going to do between now and then anyway?
How do I explain this to Abe’s daughter, though? Won’t she be suspicious? I’m not about to repeat what my mother claimed that night. It’s like Silas said—it wouldn’t be right, casting blame on my mom. She’s not here to explain herself. Plus, everything George told me about Abe was damning.
He sounds as guilty as he was made out to be.
Just like Mom said they wanted it to appear.
Fuck.
Feds waiting outside my house to question me about Abe and Dwayne Mantis. Now, this giant bag of money that my mom has obviously been hiding shows up, meant for the daughter of the ex-partner she basically said was framed.
And Abe’s gun holster.
Silas is wrong—there’s definitely something going on here. Something that my mother had to be involved in.