Break and Enter (13 page)

The conversation ranged from that topic to many others, and I began to realize that Mrs. Barnett was extracting information from us with all the skill of an expert interrogator. At the same time, she seemed to be genuinely interested in what we were telling her. I don’t know how long we sat there talking, but eventually Lydia, Robbie, and Lance came back to where we sat.

“Hi, big guy,” I said. “Did you have a nice walk in the garden?”

“Yes, Sir,” he said. “It’s real big.”

“We’re going to go up to the playroom now,” Lydia said, “and visit the tribe.”

She reached for Robbie’s hand. He took it, and they went toward the stairs, Lance following them. Philip refilled our glasses, and the conversation resumed. Lydia came back downstairs without Robbie, and Philip poured her a glass of tea when she was seated.

“He’s definitely troubled about something,” she said, “and I’ve no doubt it has to do with witnessing his mother’s death.”

“Did I tell you in one of my e-mails that when the female deputies questioned him about what he saw, they probed a little too deeply and set him on a crying jag that lasted most of the rest of the day?”

“No, you didn’t, but I’m not surprised.”

“Because of that,” Mike said, “we were afraid to take him by the cemetery to visit his mother’s grave.”

“Given what I know so far, I’d say that was very smart of you,” she said.

“You can get him through this, I hope,” I said.

“Certainly, but I want you to forget the two names I sent you. I think he needs to talk to a woman instead of a man, so I’m going to send you a couple of different names.”

“Because of the violence he witnessed?” I said. “The medical examiner reported that his mother had literally been beaten to death. When we found him in our generator shed, he had more things with him than he could have carried in one trip, which makes me think he had to have gone back to his house more than once before the body was actually discovered.”

“Exactly. It’s clear that he has a deep bond with you and Mike, but my feeling is that he might find some men a little threatening. I wish you weren’t three hundred fifty miles away. I’d like to take care of Robbie myself.”

“Why?” Charles said.

“Because I don’t see this kind of trauma very often,” she said, “and this is the sort of case that cries out for a study to be made and a paper to be written.”

“How often would you want to see Robbie?” Charles said.

“I’ll have a better opinion on that after tomorrow,” she said, “but weekly, I should think.”

“For how many weeks?” Charles said.

“There’s no way to predict that,” she said, “but for a minimum of six months, perhaps a bit longer. Where are you going with this line of questioning, Charles?”

“Bear with me for a minute,” he said. “Is this the sort of study for which you might be able to procure a grant?”

“Very likely,” she said.

“Enough to reimburse George and Mike for the cost of aviation fuel for a round-trip flight to Atlanta every week?” Charles said.

“I have no idea how much that would be,” she said.

Charles told her his best guess, and Mike nodded in agreement.

“At least that much,” she said. “Why?”

“Hear me out,” he said. “I already know that Mike has access to two airplanes. If he could get one of them every Saturday for six months and fly Robbie up here to see you, would that work?”

“Sure,” she said, “but I sense a lot of ifs.”

“Would it be a disaster if he occasionally had to miss a week for one reason or the other?” Charles said.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Do you see where I’m going with this, George?” Charles said.

“Yes, I do,” I said, “but that ball is in Mike’s court. What do you think, Mike?”

“Those guys almost never use their planes on the weekends,” he said. “In fact, they’re pretty paranoid about using the planes too much for personal use because of possible tax consequences. They mostly use them for flying their most important clients places or for flying down to Tampa or Orlando for conferences or trials.

“They actually issue me an invoice for the use of the plane, and I pay it with services rendered. I don’t see why I couldn’t get one of the planes at least three out of four weekends, if not all four.”

“But where would we stay?” I said.

“Need you ask?” Charles said. “This house has several empty bedrooms on any given night of the week.”

“That would be a terrible imposition,” I said.

Mrs. Barnett, who had remained silent throughout the conversation, spoke up. “Nonsense, young man. It’s no imposition at all, and even if it were, it would be a small price to pay to see a sweet little boy restored to his full potential.”

“Actually,” Charles said, “the biggest price to be paid would be the wear and tear on you and Mike, what with all the running back and forth.”

“I’ll defer to your grandmother’s superior wisdom on that one,” I said, and I was rewarded with a smile from Mrs. Barnett.

“As it happens,” Mike said, “George and I do have income from several rental properties. Flying to Atlanta every week would curb our plans for expansion, but we could do it on our own dime if need be. For that matter, it doesn’t have to be an overnight trip each time.”

“How so?” I said.

“Think about it,” Mike said. “If we got into Atlanta around ten, allowed Robbie the necessary time with Lydia, and were on our way home by three or four, we could easily sleep in our own bed that night.”

“True,” Charles said, “but as far as expending your own funds on fuel, why not let some foundation with a fat purse underwrite the cost, if it’s for the advancement of child psychology.”

“I surrender,” Mike said.

“Lydia?” Charles said.

“Need you ask?” she said. “You’re dangling a huge opportunity in front of me, and I’ll see if I can get a friend of mine to write up a grant proposal next week. For an opportunity to follow a case like this from beginning to end, what’s a couple of hours every Saturday morning for six months or so?”

“I don’t know much about how these things work,” I said, “but Robbie has been enrolled as my dependent with the City of Jacksonville’s group insurance plan. Surely there’s a way to get the insurance to cover some of your time, at least.”

“Now you’re talking,” Charles said. “Use the system and make it work for you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I’m more than a little bit overwhelmed right now.”

“George,” Mrs. Barnett said, “I’ve watched Charles and Philip at work for several years now. This won’t be the first time they’ve stepped up to the plate and gone to bat for something or someone they believed in, and it certainly won’t be the last.”

“Then by all means,” I said, “let’s try to make it work. Mike?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “If it will help that little guy, then why not?”

“Speaking of little guys,” Charles said, “let’s go up to the playroom and see what they’re up to.”

•
10 •

H
E
LED
us upstairs to the hallway that led to our room and opened a door I hadn’t noticed, revealing a stairway leading up with some sort of electric chair lift running along one side of it, presumably for Mrs. Barnett’s use. At the head of the stairs we emerged into a huge room—the ceiling, at the center peak, was more than head high, and it tapered gradually to two or three feet above the floor level on each side of the room. There were dormer windows spaced regularly along both walls, and I saw two or three low tables spaced down the length of the room. Robbie was standing at one of them, and there were two smaller boys standing next to him. Two younger boys were playing nearby with Lance in attendance, and two still younger boys were in a playpen. A thirtysomething woman stood as we entered the room.

“Hi, Grace,” Philip said. “Meet George and Mike. They’re Robbie’s dads.”

We shook hands with the nanny and stood for a while watching the kids at play. Robbie was so engrossed with what he was doing that he didn’t seem to notice our presence. I walked down to the table and saw that it was an elaborate setup of what I recognized as Thomas the Tank Engine, complete with wooden tracks and a host of trackside buildings and accessories.

“Mark and Steven are a bit too young for Lionel,” Charles said, walking up behind us, “so we went with Thomas instead.”

“Robbie is starting to yawn,” I said. “I think it’s naptime.”

“Yeah,” Philip said, “it’s that time of day for our tribe as well.”

We led a somewhat reluctant Robbie back downstairs and to his bed. He snuggled down with Andy, and I said, “You can play with Mark and Steven again after you wake up, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

“We’ll be downstairs in the room where you met Lance,” I said.

We headed down the hall and met Lydia at the head of the stairs. “Lydia,” I said, “before we go downstairs, I’d like to ask you a question or two in private.”

“Sure,” she said, “there’s nobody in the study right now.” She pointed the way into the study, and when the three of us sat in facing chairs, she said, “What’s on your mind?”

“This may sound silly,” I said, “but how should we deal with nudity around Robbie?”

“Give me an example,” she said.

“For one thing, Mike and I sleep raw,” I said, “and Robbie frequently comes into our bedroom early in the morning and crawls in bed with us.”

“And,” Mike said, “earlier, while we took turns showering, he sat on the bed carrying on a conversation with us while we undressed and dressed.”

“On the other hand,” I said, “we’ve been very careful to lock our bedroom door if we’re going to be doing things he doesn’t need to know about or witness.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, guys,” she said. “You’re both males, and so is he. He’s a couple of years from the age at which he’s going to start asking questions about why your bodies are more developed than his. When that time comes, and it will come, answer his questions openly and honestly. There are any number of books you can buy that will serve to guide you. The very worst thing you could do is to give him an idea that nudity around other males is somehow shameful or something to be hidden.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“We’ve got a lot to learn,” Mike said.

“Parents survive,” she said.

“True,” I said, “but most of them have five years to work their way up to dealing with a five-year-old.”

She smiled at that, and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

We returned to the sunroom, where Mrs. Barnett was where we had left her, and Charles and Philip were sitting with her. Lydia said goodbye to all of us and promised to be back in time for dinner. “I’m spending the night,” she said, “so I can be around first thing in the morning.”

After she had gone, Charles said, “Want to swim some laps?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “We missed our workout at the Y this morning.”

“Follow me,” he said.

He led us out the same exterior door Lydia and Robbie had used earlier, and then down a brick walkway to the building that housed the pool. It looked sort of like a huge greenhouse, with translucent glass walls and a glass roof which were anchored to solid brick structures at each end. We followed him into a dressing room, where we removed our clothing and stowed it in baskets on shelves. Philip handed each of us a pair of high-quality swim goggles and we went to the pool.

It was great—we already knew that it was twenty-five yards long, which was just under half the length of an Olympic-size pool, and I saw that there were four lanes for swimming laps defined by the black lines running the length of the pool’s bottom.

By my count, we had just finished a mile of laps when, as I turned to begin another lap, I saw a couple of guys make running jumps and cannonball into the pool. We suspended our laps at the shallow end of the pool, stood up, and the two newcomers swam up to where we were and stood. One of them had black hair and bore a resemblance to Philip. The other was a really cute blond.

“George, Mike,” Philip said, “meet my nephew Steve and his boyfriend Roger.”

We shook hands, and Steve said, “Uncle Philip, I think Roger and I qualify as partners now, don’t we? After all, we’re eighteen and we’ve been together for two years.”

Philip laughed and said, “I stand corrected.”

“We just finished a big job,” Steve said, “and needed the pool to cool off.”

“Knock yourselves out,” Philip said, “then join us in the Jacuzzi, if you like.”

Philip led the way to a large Jacuzzi, which was built into the floor of the room. Its perimeter was tiled, and there were steps leading down into it. The four of us sat quietly for a while, allowing the jets of warm water to relax our muscles, and when Steve and Roger finished splashing around in the pool, they walked over and into the Jacuzzi. As they did so, I saw that their bodies were deeply tanned.

The boys settled in the Jacuzzi and sighed. “God, this feels good,” Roger said.

“You mentioned a job,” Philip said. “I thought you had classes today.”

“Only one,” Steve said, “and it was canceled. We went out to the ’burbs and put in a sprinkler system.”

“It was a complicated one,” Roger said, “one of the kind that uses waste water, or gray water as it’s called, from the house with a backup supply from the normal water source.”

“How’s Mr. Goodman working out for you?” Charles said. In an aside to us, he added, “Mrs. Goodman’s husband used to act as a combined butler, chauffeur, handyman for Gran, but as she put it, with four men in the house to do that kind of thing, he was getting bored, so Steve and Roger hired him.”

“When we start at Tech full time in September,” Steve said, “he’s going to be in charge of the sprinkler systems.”

“You’ve got that right,” Roger said. “He’s the only one we’ve found that we can trust to do it right.”

“Is it that complicated?” I said.

“No, Sir,” Roger said. “It’s really very easy to join sections of PVC pipe with PVC cement. The problem is that some of the kids we’ve had working for us would get in a hurry and not use enough cement.”

Evidently, Roger saw nothing odd about an eighteen-year-old referring to other teenagers as kids.