She reached the house, pulled up in front, and parked, delighted to see Barb sitting in a plastic beach chair on the lawn, laughing as she watched her boys ride trikes, bikes, and Razors in the driveway. Barb had lost weight in the hospital, and it showed in her face, her cheeks sunken slightly. Still she looked happy. Her blond hair was clipped back and she wore a light blue windbreaker over her jeans.
"Hello, gorgeous!" Nat grabbed her stuff, got out of the car, and walked across the brown-green grass, which was lumpy and soggy under her loafers. "You catchin' some rays?"
"Damn right. It's the life of Riley." Barb patted an empty chair next to hers, with a grin. "Jen's inside, making us all dinner. Pot roast and potatoes."
"What a good sister."
"She's doing the laundry, too. I'm milking this for all it's worth." Barb laughed, and so did Nat.
"These are for you." Nat handed her a bouquet of flowers, and Barb sniffed them with a sweet smile.
"Thanks so much. I love roses."
"Me, too. How're you feeling?"
"Better, day by day." Barb set the roses on her lap and gestured at the boys. "They're doing better, too. We'll get through this."
"I know you will." Nat had come to say something. "I'm so sorry for what happened to you."
"No need to apologize."
"That night, they followed me." Nat's throat caught. "I led them to you."
"Stop. You didn't do anything wrong. You had a message to deliver and you delivered it, for Ron. Now, that's enough." Barb patted her arm.
Tell my wife. It still bugged her why he had said that, but she wasn't about to bring it up all over again. "It seems so long ago."
"I know." Barb managed a smile, and Nat couldn't wait any longer to give her a surprise.
"By the way, I have a gift for you and the kids. It's from the students and faculty at the law school." Nat reached in her purse, retrieved an envelope, and presented it with a flourish.
"What's this?" Barb opened the envelope, and her eyes widened at the check. "My God! I cant take this."
"You have to or we'll sue you."
"It's too much." Barb's eyes glistened, and Nat swallowed the lump in her throat.
"It's for the kids. Take it, please, from all of us."
"Thank you so, so much." Barb folded the envelope and put it in her pocket, and both women fell silent a minute, holding back feelings. They knew it was the time for going forward.
"I got oatmeal cookies for dessert," Nat said, handing Barb the Whole Foods box.
Barb grinned, the awkward moment gone. She undid the tape and opened the lid. "These look awesome."
"They are. I eat three in a sitting."
"Life is short. Have dessert first." Barb picked up a cookie and took a big bite. "Grab one before the little monsters do." She called to the kids, "Cookies, guys!"
"Thanks." Nat took a cookie, and the boys jumped off their bikes and came running.
"Mom, mom! Can I have a cookie?" the littlest one yelled, running up in too-big jeans.
Barb caught his arm before he jumped into her lap. "Calm down, mighty mite. Say thank you to Professor Greco."
"Thank you!" the kids called out in unison, wisely dispensing with the professor part and grabbing the cookies.
"You're welcome," Nat said, laughing. They ran back to their bikes and hopped on, then tried to eat and ride at the same time, crashing into each other. "Multi-tasking, I see."
"Always." Barb shielded her eyes with her hand, watching the littlest one, whose red trike was heading for the curb. "That's far enough!" she called out, weakly.
"You want me to yell for you? I'm a teacher."
"That's okay" Barb watched him, her eyes flinty with sunlight and concern, and Nat watched with her, eating the sweet, oaty cookie. At the end of the driveway sat a few large rocks, painted white, and the little boy was on course to plow into one. Barb made a megaphone of her hands. "Honey, don't ride there. That's Daddy's garden, you know that."
"Okay," the little boy shouted, sticking the cookie in his mouth and freeing his hands to steer back onto the driveway.
"What's Daddy's garden?" Nat asked, and Barb broke off a piece of cookie.
"A flower bed that Ron made with the kids. Tulips and daffodils, bulbs that come up. He used to say it was his special garden because it grew automatically." Barb spoke sadly. "It wasn't true, though. He spent plenty of time weeding it. He painted those rocks, too, with our house number."
Nat eyed the rocks, which were white. She hadn't seen them in the winter because they'd been covered by snow, but now they stood out, by themselves.
"Ron was always worried that an ambulance would get lost out here. He painted the numbers really big, and the paint's reflective."
"Excuse me a minute." Nat was already standing up. She walked toward the white rocks, acting on the strangest hunch.
"What?"
Nat walked around the rocks and stared at the numbers: 524. Each number was painted in black on its own rock. Tell my wife. It's under the floor.
"Nat?" Barb was walking over.
Floor. Four? Nat squatted down, reached for the rock with the black four, and wedged it out of place.
"What are you doing?" Barb asked, but by then Nat was looking in astonishment at the large circle where the white rock had been, clearly outlined by a ring of earth. Lying in the center of the circle was a large Ziploc bag, which held a yellow manila envelope.
Nat felt her heart start to hammer.
"What's that?" Barb asked, amazed.
"I don't know, but it was under the four!'
"What?"
"Remember what Ron said? 'It's under the floor.' He must have said, 'the four'. I must have misheard him."
"I should have thought of that!" Barb's hand flew to her mouth, and Nat retrieved the plastic bag, brushed off the wet dirt, and read the name on the outside envelope, written in ballpoint, a man's hand. It said, Barb. Touched, Nat rose and handed it to her.
"It's for you. This must be what he wanted you to have."
Barb accepted the plastic bag as her boys played in the background, making motor noises with their mouths. She pulled aside the blue plastic zipper on the bag, then extracted the envelope, and opened it. She took out five or six typed pages, with other white papers stapled to the back. On top was a shorter piece of blue paper, a handwritten note that Barb read to herself, then looked up with tears in her eyes.
"He says, 'I love you,'" she said finally, her eyes welling and her lower lip trembling. "He says, 'I love you and our boys with all my heart.'"
Nat blinked back tears of her own, remembering that night, when Barb had been so upset that his last words hadn't been about her. And after all this time, they had been. As tragic as it was, Nat had a sense that they had come full circle.
"Then he says, 'If you're reading this, it means I'm gone.'" Barb's voice broke, but she continued reading aloud, hiding her tears from the kids. '"I would've put it in the garage but I wanted it as far away from you and the boys as possible, in case anyone came looking for it. Turn the rest of these papers over to the police as soon as you can, and they can catch these men. Let them take it from there. Stay safe, and know that I love you and our boys, even now.'"
Nat swallowed hard, then suppressed her emotion at the words. Saunders had been killed for what he knew, but in the end he had triumphed, putting the proof under a rock. It must have been what they were searching for that day, after the funeral. Not drugs or money. Evidence.
"I'm so happy to have his note," Barb said, wiping her eyes. "Thank you so much for finding it. It's the greatest gift you could have given me." She detached the note from the papers, then handed them, the envelope, and the Ziploc bag back to Nat. "Please take these. Give them to the police."
"You sure?" Nat accepted the pages.
"My head's already starting to hurt, and I don't want the kids to see me upset."
"I'll make sure you get a copy. You can read them when you're ready."
"Great, thanks." Barb shielded her wet eyes and held the note close. "This is all that matters to me. That my husband loved me and his sons. That we were his last thought."
"I understand," Nat said, just as Barb's lower lip buckled.
"I'm going inside. Can you watch the kids a sec?"
"Sure." Nat's heart went out to her. "Can I help you in?"
"No, please, keep an eye on the kids." Barb turned away and went to the house, her head down. "Be right back, boys. Stay outta the street. Mom's got a little headache."
"You gotta my-grate, Mommy?" the little one called out from his bike, and Barb blew him a kiss.
"Hope not, tiger. Be right back. Hold on with two hands!"
Nat watched her go, making sure Barb reached the door, and then she turned to the pages that Ron Saunders had written.
And what she read brought her to her knees.
Chapter 48
Nat sat parked along the side of the road and slumped in the drivers seat, behind the steering wheel. A pale afternoon sun shone in a faint blue sky, and old, dry leaves spun frantically across the road in a gust of wind, the last frantic dance of winter. The scene was as bucolic as ever, but she couldn't appreciate it anymore. Not after what she'd read in Saunders's pages. She'd begged off on dinner in favor of delivering them to the police, and both Barb and Jennifer had understood.
But Nat had lied to them. She hadn't gone to the police. She was still sitting in the Volvo, parked at a crossroads. The road to the right led to the state police barracks. The road to the left led home. She wasn't sure yet which one to take. Ron Saunders's pages, a narrative based on overheard conversations and amateur sleuthing, described the conspiracy to help Williams escape exactly as Nat had figured it out. Except for one thing she'd missed.
She read the first paragraph again, but it kept coming out the same way:
On April 28, last year, I was on duty and I took Angus Holt to meet with Richard Williams in the courtesy-hold area. I thought Williams wanted to ask Holt to be his lawyer. Holt thought that, too, because he said so. We were having a rat problem at that time, so I had to put poison everywhere, including the heating ducts. I overheard Williams ask Holt to set up an escape. Williams said he had "one of his boys," Mark Parrat, who would handle paying Holt to get Williams out before his trial. Holt asked why Williams was asking him to help, and Williams answered because the warden would let him meet with a lawyer without anybody suspecting anything, but he couldn't go meeting with C.O.s and he didn't know which C.O.s were "safe" to approach.
Nat rubbed her face. She couldn't believe it. Angus hadn't mentioned that he'd met Williams, either the day that she first went with him to the prison or any day thereafter, even more recently. But Saunders had had no reason to make it up. The rest of the pages contained details of the finances and other plans, which Saunders had overheard and recorded. So much of the narrative was right, but could this part be wrong? Angus could never have been involved with Graf and Machik. She'd seen them fight with her own eyes. And if he was really part of the conspiracy, why would Parrat have hit him with the black pickup?
Nat reread the next paragraph, which picked up the narrative:
Holt said no, but Williams kept upping the money. They agreed on three million dollars up front and a million more when Williams escaped. Holt said the construction might "present some opportunity" to get Williams out. Holt said he knew all the C.O.s and he knew which C.O. to "hire" for the job, maybe Graf. Holt also said they would need somebody higher up, too, maybe Machik. Holt said he would take care of it and get back to Williams.
Nat felt sick to her stomach. It was awful even to contemplate. Angus had dedicated his life to law that served the public interest. He would never have done such a thing, and he didn't care about money. His apartment was as no-frills as his office, his wardrobe was nonexistent, and his biggest asset was the Beetle. She had never met anybody so uninterested in material things. Could she have been so wrong about him? She knew him. She loved him.
She read the last paragraph that pertained to Angus:
After that, Holt met two more times with Williams, but I couldn't listen in on them the way I could on Graf and Machik. I am attaching copies of the visitor logs to show that Holt visited Williams three times, and the logs prove that Holt was there. It's true I don't have any proof that Holt followed through. I leave that to you guys. I do think they are covering it up, big-time, because last week I checked the log and the pages about Holt were gone. It's a loose-leaf notebook, so there was no sign they were ripped out, but I knew they were there before, and the copies in here show that.
Nat flipped to the back of the pages, where photocopies of visitor logs had been stapled. There were three separate dates. She ran a finger along the signatures. Sure enough, it was Angus's signature. She knew his handwriting from cards and love notes he'd stuck in her briefcase. From shopping lists, even. They were practically living together. He had his own key. He'd be home later, to spend the night after she got back from her dinner with Barb Saunders.
She set the papers down on the passenger seat and watched old leaves blow across the road, so dry they'd disintegrated into dirty brown fragments. Or it could have been her state of mind. There was no proof that Angus had stayed involved in the conspiracy. What if he had originally agreed to it, then changed his mind? Maybe he had simply pulled out in the end. Of course he wouldn't admit to ever having been involved in the first place, because he'd be too embarrassed and ashamed.
She considered the crossroads. She could go to the left, meet Angus at home, and ask him about the pages. Give the man she loved the benefit of the doubt. She trusted him, and he'd give her the same consideration.
Or she could go to the right, drive to the cops, and turn him in. Show them the pages. They would call him in for questioning. There would be handcuffs. The interrogation room. The media. The electronic flashes. She knew what it would do to him, and to his reputation. She had been there. The accusation equaled the conviction, especially at a law school. He still didn't have all his outreach programs reinstated. It was driving him crazy. And a betrayal like this, from her? It would break him. And break them up.
Nat looked at the crossroads and considered her choices. Left or right? Right or left?
She twisted the key in the ignition and hit the gas.
Chapter 49
“Honey, I'm home!" Nat called from the doorway. It was their standard greeting, and she was trying to keep things as normal as she could before springing the pages on him. But in the next second, she heard the unmistakably festive pop of a champagne cork.
"Hey, girl!" Angus came out of the kitchen beaming and holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and two crystal flutes in the other. He was wearing a workshirt she loved with jeans, and he looked so at home in her apartment, with the lighting soft and the books surrounding them both, a perfect backdrop for two law professors. The sight made her heart ache, and she prayed he had a good explanation, one that would make it all go away.
"Champagne?" she said.
"We're celebrating. I settled that case with the city today." Angus gave her an exuberant hug and a warm kiss, but Nat made herself stay on task.
"You did? That's great!" She managed a smile, slid out of her coat, and put it and her purse on the chair.
"The city solicitor gave up the ghost. We proved that the poorer sections of the city don't get waterlines repaired as quickly as the middle-class sections."
Nat remembered the details. He cared so much about that case. It had kept him up for nights on end.
"We had two great experts submit reports and they compared response times to water main breakages in Philly with those in other major cities. When we flunked, the city guy caved in." Angus set the two glasses on the coffee table and poured champagne into one. "We got a very nice settlement and a consent decree, so we can nail their asses for the next five years if they step out of line." He handed Nat the full glass, then poured himself one. He looked at her with a
slight frown. "You look a little down. Was it tough, seeing Barb?"
"Well, yes. Kind of."
"First, a toast." Angus raised his glass, his smile so kind and his eyes the softest blue, focused, as usual, on her. "To you, who inspire me to great things."
"To you, too," Nat said quickly, then sipped the champagne, because it would be easier to swallow than the lump in her throat.
"So tell me." Angus sat down and rested the glass on his thigh. "Come sit next to me and tell me how it went."
"Uh, not yet." Nat remained standing, gathering her nerve. "I have a strange question."
"Sure. But no sitting?" Angus patted the couch.
"Not yet."