One False Move: A Myron Bolitar Novel (20 page)

“When?”

“A long time ago. I don’t remember really. It’s just a feeling … or maybe I’m just imagining. But I think I was here as a little kid. With my mother.”

Silence.

“Do you remember—”

“Nothing,” Brenda interrupted him. “I’m not even sure it was here. Maybe it was another motel. It’s not like this one is special. But I think it was here. That weird sculpture. It’s familiar.”

“What were you wearing?” he tried.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“What about your mother? What was she wearing?”

“What are you, a fashion consultant?”

“I’m just trying to jar something loose.”

“I don’t remember anything. She vanished when I was five. How much do you remember from back then?”

Point taken. “Let’s walk around a little,” he suggested. “See if something comes back to you.”

But nothing surfaced, if indeed there was anything there to surface. Myron had not expected anything anyway. He was not big on repressed memory or any of that stuff. Still, the whole episode was curious, and once again it fit into his scenario. As they made their way
back to Myron’s car, he decided that it was time to voice his theory.

“I think I know what your father was doing.”

Brenda stopped and looked at him. Myron kept moving. He got into the car. Brenda followed. The car doors closed.

Myron said, “I think Horace was looking for your mother.”

The words took a moment to sink in. Then Brenda leaned back and said, “Tell me why.”

He started up the car. “Okay, but remember I used the word
think
. I
think
that’s what he was doing. I don’t have any real proof.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

He took a deep breath. “Let’s start with your father’s phone records. One, he calls Arthur Bradford’s campaign headquarters several times. Why? As far as we know, there is only one connection between your father and Bradford.”

“The fact that my mother worked in his house.”

“Right. Twenty years ago. But here’s something else to consider. When I started searching for your mother, I stumbled upon the Bradfords. I thought they might somehow be connected. Your father might have come to the same conclusion.”

She looked less than impressed. “What else?”

“The phone records again. Horace called the two attorneys who handled your scholarships.”

“So?”

“So why would he call them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your scholarships are strange, Brenda. Especially
the first one. You weren’t even a basketball player yet and you get a vague academic scholarship to a ritzy private school plus expenses? It doesn’t make sense. Scholarships just don’t work that way. And I checked. You are the only recipient of the Outreach Education scholarship. They only awarded it that one year.”

“So what are you getting at?”

“Somebody set up those scholarships with the sole intent of helping you, with the sole intent of funneling you money.” He made the U-turn by Daffy Dan’s, a discount clothing store, and started heading back down Route 10 toward the circle. “In other words, somebody was trying to help you out. Your father may have been trying to find out who that was.”

He glanced over at her, but she would not face him now. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was throaty. “And you think it was my mother?”

Myron tried to tread gently. “I don’t know. But why else would your father call Thomas Kincaid so many times? The man had not handled your scholarship money since you left high school. You read that letter. Why would Horace pester him to the point of near harassment? The only thing I can think of is that Kincaid had information that your father wanted.”

“Where the scholarship money originated from?”

“Right. My guess is, if we can trace that back”—again, tread gently—“we would find something very interesting.”

“Can we do that?”

“I’m not sure. The attorneys will undoubtedly claim privilege. But I’m going to put Win on it. If it involves money, he’ll have the connections to track it down.”

Brenda sat back and tried to digest all this. “Do you think my father traced it back?”

“I doubt it, but I don’t know. Either way your father was starting to make some noise. He hit up the lawyers, and he even went so far as to start questioning Arthur Bradford. That was where he probably went too far. Even if there’d been no wrongdoing, Bradford would not be happy with someone poking into his past, raising old ghosts, especially during an election year.”

“So he killed my father?”

Myron was not sure how to answer that one. “It’s too early to say for sure. But let’s assume for a second that your father did a little too much poking. And let’s also assume the Bradfords scared him off with a beating.”

Brenda nodded. “The blood in the locker.”

“Right. I keep wondering why we found the blood there, why Horace didn’t go home to change or recuperate. My guess is he was beaten near the hospital. In Livingston, at the very least.”

“Where the Bradfords live.”

Myron nodded. “And if Horace escaped from the beating or if he was just afraid they’d come after him again, he wouldn’t go home. He’d probably change at the hospital and run. In the morgue I noticed clothes in the corner—a security guard uniform. It was probably what he changed into when he got to the locker. Then he hit the road and—”

Myron stopped.

“And what?” she asked.

“Damn,” Myron said.

“What?”

“What’s Mabel’s phone number?”

Brenda gave it to him. “Why?”

Myron switched on the cell phone and dialed Lisa at Bell Atlantic. He asked her to check the number. It took Lisa about two minutes.

“Nothing official on it,” Lisa said. “But I checked the line. There’s a noise there.”

“Meaning?”

“Someone’s probably got a tap on it. Internal. You’d have to send someone by there to be sure.”

Myron thanked her and hung up. “They have Mabel’s phone tapped too. That’s probably how they found your father. He called your aunt, and they traced it.”

“So who’s behind the tap?”

“I don’t know,” Myron said.

Silence. They passed the Star-Bright Pizzeria. In Myron’s youth it was rumored that a whorehouse operated out of the back. Myron had gone several times there with his family. When his dad went to the bathroom, Myron followed. Nothing.

“There’s something else that doesn’t make sense,” Brenda said.

“What?”

“Even if you’re right about the scholarships, where would my mother get that kind of money?”

Good question. “How much did she take from your dad?”

“Fourteen thousand, I think.”

“If she invested well, that might be enough. There were seven years between the time she disappeared and the first scholarship payment, so …” Myron calculated
the figures in his head. Fourteen grand to start. Hmm. Anita Slaughter would have had to score big to make the money last this long. Possible, sure, but even in the Reagan years, not likely.

Hold the phone.

“She may have found another way to get money,” he said slowly.

“How?”

Myron stayed quiet for a moment. The head gears were churning again. He checked his rearview mirror. If there was a tail, he didn’t spot it. But that did not mean much. A casual glance rarely gave it away. You had to watch the cars, memorize them, study their movements. But he could not concentrate on that. Not right now.

“Myron?”

“I’m thinking.”

She looked like she was about to say something but then thought better of it.

“Suppose,” Myron continued, “your mother did learn something about the death of Elizabeth Bradford.”

“Didn’t we already try this?”

“Just stay with me a second, okay? Before, we came up with two possibilities. One, she was scared and ran. Two, they tried to hurt her and she ran.”

“And now you have a third?”

“Sort of.” He drove past the new Starbucks on the corner of Mount Pleasant Avenue. He wanted to stop—his caffeine craving worked like a magnetic pull—but he pushed on. “Suppose your mother did run away.
And suppose once she was safe, she demanded money to keep quiet.”

“You think she blackmailed the Bradfords?”

“More like compensation.” He spoke even as the ideas were still forming. Always a dangerous thing. “Your mother sees something. She realizes that the only way to guarantee her safety, and her family’s safety, is to run away and hide. If the Bradfords find her, they’ll kill her. Plain and simple. If she tries to do something cute—like hide evidence in a safety-deposit box in the event she disappears or something like that—they’ll torture her until she tells them where it is. Your mother has no choice. She has to run. But she wants to take care of her daughter too. So she makes sure that her daughter gets all the things she herself could never have provided for her. A top-quality education. A chance to live on a pristine campus instead of the bowels of Newark. Stuff like that.”

More silence.

Myron waited. He was voicing theories too fast now, not giving his brain a chance to process or even to inspect his words. He stopped now, letting everything settle.

“Your scenarios,” Brenda said. “You’re always looking to put my mother in the best light. It blinds you, I think.”

“How so?”

“I’ll ask you again: If all that is true, why didn’t she take me with her?”

“She was on the run from killers. What kind of mother would want to put her child in that kind of danger?”

“And she was so paranoid that she could never call me? Or see me?”

“Paranoid?” Myron repeated. “These guys have a tap on your phone. They have people tailing you. Your father is dead.”

Brenda shook her head. “You don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

Her eyes were watery now, but she kept her tone a little too even. “You can make all the excuses you want, but you can’t get around the fact that she abandoned her child. Even if she had good reason, even if she was this wonderful self-sacrificing mother who did all this to protect me, why would she let her daughter go on believing that her own mother would abandon her? Didn’t she realize how this would devastate a five-year-old girl? Couldn’t she have found some way to tell her the truth—even after all these years?”

Her
child.
Her
daughter. Tell
her
the truth. Never
I
or
me
. Interesting. But Myron kept silent. He had no answer to that one.

They drove past the Kessler Institute and hit a traffic light. After some time had passed, Brenda said, “I still want to go to practice this afternoon.”

Myron nodded. He understood. The court was comfort.

“And I want to play in the opener.”

Again Myron nodded. It was probably what Horace would have wanted too.

They made the turn near Mountain High School and arrived at Mabel Edwards’s house. There were at least a dozen cars parked on the road, most American-made, most older and beaten up. A formally dressed
black couple stood by the door. The man pressed the bell. The woman held a platter of food. When they spotted Brenda, they glared at her and then turned their backs.

“They’ve read the papers, I see,” Brenda said.

“No one thinks you did it.”

Her look told him to stop with the patronizing.

They walked her to the front door and stood behind the couple. The couple huffed and looked away. The man tapped his foot. The woman made a production out of sighing. Myron opened his mouth, but Brenda closed it with a firm shake of her head. Already she was reading him.

Someone opened the door. There were lots of people already inside. All nicely dressed. All black. Funny how Myron kept noticing that. A black couple. Black people inside. Last night at the barbecue he had not found it strange that everyone except Brenda was white. In fact, Myron could not recall a black person ever attending one of the neighborhood barbecues. So why should he be surprised to be the only white person here? And why should it make him feel funny?

The couple disappeared inside as though sucked up by a vortex. Brenda hesitated. When they finally stepped through the doorway, it was like something out of a saloon scene in a John Wayne film. The low murmurs ceased as if somebody had snapped off a radio. Everyone turned and glowered. For a half a second Myron thought it was a racial thing—he being the only white guy—but then he saw the animosity was aimed directly at the grieving daughter.

Brenda was right. They thought she did it.

The room was crowded and sweltering. Fans whirred impotently. Men were hooking fingers into collars to let in air. Sweat coated faces. Myron looked at Brenda. She looked small and alone and scared, but she would not look away. He felt her take his hand. He gripped back. She stood ramrod straight now, her head high.

The crowd parted a bit, and Mabel Edwards stepped into view. Her eyes were red and swollen. A handkerchief was balled up in her fist. They all swung their gazes toward Mabel now, awaiting her reaction. When Mabel saw her niece, she spread her hands and beckoned Brenda forward. Brenda did not hesitate. She sprinted into the thick, soft arms, lowered her head onto Mabel’s shoulder, and for the first time truly sobbed. Not cried. These were gut-wrenching sobs.

Mabel rocked her niece back and forth and patted her back and cooed comfort. At the same time, Mabel’s eyes scanned the room, mother wolf-protective, challenging and then extinguishing any glare that might be aimed in the direction of her niece.

The crowd turned away, and the murmur returned to normal. Myron felt the stomach knots begin to loosen. He scanned the room for familiar faces. He recognized a couple of the ballplayers from his past, guys he had played against on the playground or in high school. A couple nodded hellos. Myron nodded back. A little boy just past the toddler stage sprinted through the room imitating a siren. Myron recognized him from the pictures on the mantel. Mabel Edwards’s grandson. Terence Edwards’s son.

Speaking of whom, where was candidate Edwards?

Myron scanned the room again. No sign of him. In front of him Mabel and Brenda finally broke their hold. Brenda wiped her eyes. Mabel pointed her toward a bathroom. Brenda managed a nod and hurried off.