Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (28 page)

I tried again early Saturday to pray and shape some thoughts for our meeting with Brenda Donohue, but I no sooner got settled at the bistro table with a cup of coffee and an almost-centered soul when my phone dinged with a text from Kade. MEET ME AT GEORGIE’S AT TEN?

I texted back YES. Kade must be thinking about tomorrow too. It would be good to process it with him.

Flannery was up early, nine being early for her, and she seemed on edge. Not that I could blame her.

“I have to go to a quick meeting,” I said. I left out the Kade part. “You want to stay here or—”

“No,” she said.

“Then where—”

“I’ll go to Ms. Willa’s.”

She could have given me a bigger surprise, but I wasn’t sure how. Unless it was her saying as we were about to pull into the alley behind Ms. Willa’s place, “Just drop me off in front of her house.”

“I’ll wait for Maria to let you in,” I said.

“You don’t have to. Ms. Willa gave me a key.”

I turned onto Cuna and let the engine idle at the curb. “How do you rate? Ms. Willa never gave me a key.”

“She says I need options. A woman should always have options.”

“Oh,” I said, and watched the little redhead bounce up to Ms. Willa’s porch and let herself in. She looked so tiny, like a small child going to see grandma.

It grabbed at me.

Kade was already at Georgie’s when I arrived. Nobody else was there for breakfast, which made Neil Sedaka seem even louder than usual as he informed us that breaking up was hard to do.

“What is with you and this place?” I said as I slipped into a booth across from him.

“Kind of reminds me of back home,” he said. “It’s too new to be authentic though.”

The red-and-white checked floors and the metal edged tables and the neon tube lighting did seem to be trying a little too hard. The only thing missing in the booth itself was tuck-and-roll and a miniature jukebox.

Kade, however, was clearly not there to talk about the decor. He hadn’t touched the coffee in front of him, and his face was ruddy with obvious excitement. It made his eyes seem even bluer. I forced myself not to compare them to Troy’s.

“You need to know something,” he said.

“I feel like I know more than I can handle already.”

“No, this’ll make your day.”

I nodded at the college kid who put a cup of coffee in front of me and left. Kade produced a sheet of paper from a folder on his seat and turned it face down between us.

“Before I show it to you, you have to promise not to breathe a word of this to anybody. You won’t have to keep it to yourself for long, because I’m sure it’ll be announced publicly soon, but until then—”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I got an email this morning.” He turned the sheet over. “You can read it, but the upshot is: Troy Irwin is being removed as CEO of Chamberlain Enterprises.”

I must have blinked five times before I got anything out. And even at that, I could only say, “Are you sure?”

Kade tapped the email I still hadn’t looked at. “I’ve been working pro bono as a legal consultant for a group of minority stock holders who are watching their investments dwindle because of the bad press Troy got when he was being questioned by the cops last spring.”

“What bad press?” I said. “It barely made the news.”

“It was enough to make some people nervous.”

“I don’t get it. If the value of the stocks was going down, wasn’t Troy losing money too?”

“He has so many shares it doesn’t hurt him that much. Besides, that’s not the only way Troy Irwin was making money, or the only reason these people want him out of there.” Kade was all but rubbing his hands together. “I’ve suspected there was more going on than that, and I finally found somebody on the inside at CE who would work with me.”

By now my body was starting to go cold, one extremity at a time. “Work with you how?”

He flattened his hands on the table. “It was all perfectly legal.”

“I didn’t say—”

“And ethical. Once we were able to prove he wasn’t carrying out his fiduciary responsibilities—”

“In English, Kade.”

“We’re talking mismanagement of funds. Embezzling, basically.”

“Embezzling? Troy?” All I could seem to do for body language was shake my head, over and over. “Why did he need to make money illegally? He’s a multimillionaire already.”

“You know as well as I do it wasn’t about money. It was about proving he could do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted to do it—including his own stockholders. And they’re done with it.”

“So you’ve helped them and now Troy’s getting fired.”

“Essentially, yes. Like I said, the official announcement hasn’t been made yet.” Kade folded his arms. “He’s so arrogant he probably doesn’t even see it coming.”

“I think he does.”

Kade unfolded. “Why do you say that?”

“Chief and I were at Columbia one night and I saw Troy come out of a private dinner meeting raging like a bull. He was yelling something like, ‘They can’t do it.’ Or ‘They can’t prove it.’ I think he saw it coming, Kade, but he was sure he could stop it.”

“You could tell all that just from watching him?”

“I wish. No, we had a bit of a confrontation.”

He watched me for a moment, until something dawned in his eyes. “That started the rift with Chief.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Then this is double good news for you.”

“I’m not so sure about that. You’ve seen how ruthless he is. He already blames us for his trouble with the police. He puts total responsibility for his failure with the West King project on me. It doesn’t matter that he’s the cause of every one of his own issues. He has always and will always punish other people for his unconscionable … stuff.”

“Then we’ll take precautions.”

“How can we take precautions when there is no telling what he’ll stoop to? Especially now that he’s losing power. That means he won’t be able to control the mayor or his attorneys or the DA or whoever else’s strings he’s been pulling for the last ten years.”

For the first time, the victory gleam dimmed a few watts in Kade’s eyes. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

“I am terrified, and you should be too.” I drew in my shoulders. “I’m glad you told me, and I’m sorry to take the wind out of your sails. I really am proud of you for doing this the right way. I’m sure Chief is too.”

Kade looked down at the table. “Chief doesn’t know about it. And … I’m asking you not to tell him until the official announcement is made.”

“Why?”

“I’ve done this totally without involving Chief. That’s why I’m not going to represent these people in court if it comes to that. I’ve been really careful not to use the office to pursue this, just to keep Chief completely in the clear. Just in case Troy does find out it was me.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said. “If I keep something from Chief that involves Troy, and he finds out about it, which he will because he always does, that could be the final death blow to our relationship.”

“Worse than having his name dragged through the mud Irwin’s going to sling over this?”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds. Nothing came. At least nothing more than I already knew, which was that not telling Chief was a huge mistake.

“Hey,” Kade said.

I opened my eyes.

“It will probably hit the papers Monday morning. You aren’t even going to see Chief until late Sunday. Later, if he finds out you already knew, I’ll go to bat for you and explain to him that we were trying to protect him, which is the absolute truth.”

He reached over and teased at my arm until I pulled out a hand. He squeezed it, hard, and looked straight into me. “I’ve got your back.”

This time all I could do was nod.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t disturbed down to the very core of myself as I drove the Classic around the perimeter of the historic district and over the newly renovated Bridge of Lions out to Anastasia Island. The Harley grumbled, tough and reassuring under me. The St. Augustine lighthouse stood tall and straight and sure the way it had for so many years and so many wars and more storms than both put together. When I let the bridge lift me back into the noonday traffic and the fall tourists and the tour carriages waiting hopefully at the bayfront, I could see the great fort, the Castillo de San Marcos, keeping watch as it had done since the seventeenth century. I needed to see things that weren’t going to be something else the next time I blinked.

God was still there too. Murmuring right along with the engine’s constant, protective growl. Telling me the same thing, again and again.
Go another mile.

I did. Until Hank’s voice seemed to join God’s.
It’s your enemies Jesus is referring to when he says to go another mile.

I pulled the bike off the road in front of the entrance to the Fountain of Youth.

“You want me to go there, I’ll go there,” I said out loud. The engine idled over my voice, keeping me from looking too crazy as I talked to myself. “Troy’s place is more than a mile from here, but I’ll go—”

My phone vibrated in my pocket, and for a second I thought maybe I
was
nuts. But it wasn’t God. It was Flannery, and I knew from her shallow, frightened breathing that she was near panic.

“It’s Ms. Willa,” she said. “She’s really, really sick.”

I turned off the engine. “What does that mean, Flannery?”

“She keeps passing out and coming back. She’s almost blue, too. This is serious.”

“Okay, I want you to call 911. I’ll be right there.”

“911,” she said.

“No hospital,” I heard a thready voice cry in the background.

“As long as she can still give orders, she’s not dying,” I said. “Call no matter what she says. I’m on my way.”

“I’m calling, Ms. Willa,” I heard Flannery say.

By the time I got there exactly seven minutes later, the paramedics were already knocking on the front door. By the time I got up the steps they were letting themselves in as Flannery called out, “It’s unlocked.”

She and Ms. Willa were both on the couch and for the life of me I couldn’t see how Flannery had managed it. Ms. Willa was propped against her, face the exact shade of blue as her hair, breathing raggedly as Flannery stroked her arms.

“I don’t need these people,” the old lady said.

“You promised me, Ms. Willa.”

To my amazement Ms. Willa closed her mouth, and her eyes, and sank further into Flannery. The longing in the air was palpable. I didn’t even try to sort out whose was whose as I watched the paramedics go to work.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For the second time in four days I helped check an elderly friend into the hospital. It made me want to order Owen to go immediately to the clinic and have a complete physical. That wouldn’t have done a whole lot of good; he refused to leave Ms. Willa’s side, even when more than one nurse made it abundantly clear that he was in the way.

“We should have made her go to the hospital days ago,” he said to me when one particularly militant nurse forced him to wait in the hall.

“Owen, you know Ms. Willa,” I said. “There is no making her do anything.”

“That little redhaired girl did.”

I looked over at Flannery, who was sitting on a bench against the wall repeatedly pulling her hair onto the top of her head and letting it fall back to her shoulders. All I’d been able to get out of her was that she just talked to Ms. Willa the way she did the people at the nursing home. I wondered if her attachment to the old lady had something to do with a grandparent she’d visited there, but I didn’t push it. With what she had staring her down tomorrow, and now this, there were probably enough memories to tangle with right now.

Finally a doctor emerged and gave us the news: Ms. Willa had had an attack of angina and was resting comfortably. They would be discussing her treatment plan, but in the meantime her visitors were to be limited. I was able to talk Flannery into going home, but Owen almost literally dug his heels into the linoleum. He promised to keep us posted.

“Who are they?” Flannery said as we walked toward the elevator.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“Who are the they that doctor is going to discuss her treatment plan with? Does Ms. Willa have any family?”

“Good question,” I said.

I gazed at Flannery’s back as she preceded me into the elevator. That sealed it: there was way more to this little woman than any of us thought. Except maybe Ms. Willa herself.

“Does she have any kids?” she said.

“No. And she’s a widow.”

Flannery pushed the button for the lobby. “Then who’s going to help her make decisions about her health care?”

It was hard for me not to demand to know where she learned to talk like a patient advocate.

“I doubt she’s given anybody medical power of attorney,” I said.

“What about a living will?”

“It does sound like something Ms. Willa would have, doesn’t it?” I said. “So she can stay in charge.”

“Let’s just hope so,” Flannery said.

Okay, someday I was going to get to the bottom of that.

All the way home I thought about a hot bath and a steaming cup of chamomile, but Bonner was there on the side porch when we arrived. Zelda was with him. Judging from the size of her eyes as she rocked the swing with a vengeance, they hadn’t just dropped by for a chat.

I sent Flannery inside and managed to catch the swing and hop on to join Zelda. Bonner sat across from us in one of the Adirondacks, hands pressed between his knees. He had so many great skills, but dealing with hysterical women wasn’t one of them.

“What’s up?” I said to Zelda.

“You tell her, Mr. B. I’m too upset. It’ll all come out wrong.”

I looked at Bonner.

“Zelda and I talked last night, and we decided that the best thing for her to do was go to the hospital and discuss the key situation with Maharry, face-to-face.” I opened my mouth, but he stilled me with his hand. “I said I’d take her and stay there with her.”

“So what happened?” I addressed that to Zelda, but she still pointed at Bonner.

“We never had a chance to talk about him accusing Zelda because he was too worked up about Sherry.”

“He wasn’t just worked up! He was fixin’ to lose it right there in that bed. Two nurses had to come in and get him calmed down, and they told us we had to leave.”

For someone who was too upset to talk, Zelda was doing rather well.

“That one nurse, she kep’ sayin’ everybody that come in there got him all coughin’ and not bein’ able to breathe.”

“Maharry’s blood pressure isn’t their only concern,” Bonner said. “From what I gathered, he has some lung damage, which is why they’re keeping him.”

Zelda planted her feet so that the swing came to a jerky halt. “That ain’t what I’m upset about, Miss Angel. It’s Sherry.”

“Wasn’t she there?”

“Maharry said she ain’t been there since the day
you
was there. She come up from talkin’ to you and said she need to go home and sleep, and she ain’t been to see him again.”

I squinted back to the day before. “When I tried to call her yesterday at Sacrament One, Jasmine told me Sherry was still staying at the hospital.”

“That’s what she
told
Jasmine, but that ain’t what she did.” Zelda grabbed my forearm with both hands, so hard I was sure she was leaving her fingerprints in my skin. “You think somethin’ bad happen to her, Miss Angel? She wouldn’t just run off and leave her daddy. Or us. Now, I know that.”

Her head bobbed in an attempt to get me to nod too, but I couldn’t. Yet I couldn’t tell her what Sherry had said to me either, not yet.

“So it’s been, what, twenty-four hours?” I said to Bonner.

“Yes. You think we should file a missing-persons report? I’m not sure what the time is on that for an adult.”

“Why don’t we check?” I said. “Zelda, you need to stay hydrated. There are drinks in the fridge.”

She went dutifully into the kitchen, as if she were glad someone was telling her how to be in this situation. I waited until she shut the door behind her to cross to Bonner and sit in the other chair.

“I’m not sure she’s so much missing as AWOL,” I said, and told him about part of my conversation with Sherry. I left out her confession about Sultan.

“She picked a strange time to decide to go off on her own with her dad sick like this,” Bonner said.

“True. She told me she was going to wait until the sale of the shop was final and she got Maharry settled.”

“So we’re back to she’s missing.”

“I think I upset her.”

“Enough to make her leave town?” Bonner pulled his glasses down his nose and looked at me over the top of them. “I’m not buying that.”

I was tempted to tell him the whole story, but I wasn’t sure that what she told me about Sultan was the reason for her disappearance. She certainly didn’t think I would tell Detective Kylie that she had seen Sultan’s body being carried off. Why would I? We’d all established the fact that he was still alive.

A deep sigh welled up without my permission. Whatever she was thinking, I might have stopped this if I had gone after her.

“I brought y’all some sweet tea,” Zelda said from the doorway.

She was visibly calmer; at least she was able to carry three glasses without jittering the ice cubes out of them. But once the drinks were served, her eyes went right back to begging me for reassurance.

“We’re going to try to find Sherry,” I said. “But just so you don’t worry about this too much, she did tell me that she was thinking about going on her own. She probably didn’t know they found lung issues in Maharry, or she wouldn’t have left. He’s coming into some money, and she most likely thought he’d be okay.”

It was the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth. And judging from Zelda’s “Mmmm-mm,” I knew she knew it.

If I hadn’t been looking right at her, I would have thought that came from Mercedes herself.

I felt like Gumby Sunday morning, stretched between Ms. Willa and Sherry and Zelda and Maharry as I got ready for the drive to Hastings with Flannery and Kade. As usual, the family snapped me back into shape.

Hank said she’d go to Sacrament One and talk to all the Sisters about Sherry. Bonner and Liz promised to keep Zelda with them for the day. I couldn’t have torn Owen away from Ms. Willa, and India said she’d go by the hospital too, and take Ophelia with her. Their love surged through me, their love and their willingness to go the extra mile.

Especially when God kept asking us to keep going.

The drive to Hastings was mercifully short. We had only twenty minutes with Flannery in the backseat of Kade’s tiny Mazda, chattering nonstop all the way down route 207 about everything from how weird it was that cranes hung out with cows to why anybody would name a place in Florida Vermont Heights. As soon as we passed the wide space in the road called Spuds—now
there
was a name she thought was cool—I got her to talk about just exactly where it was we were going once we got to Hastings.

“Turn left after you pass the Potato Building,” she said.

Kade snickered. “They have a building for potatoes?”

Flannery automatically went into flirt mode. “What’s wrong with you, Kade? You didn’t know Hastings is the Potato Capital of Florida?”

“I’m a loser,” he said.

Quite the contrary. He was a complete winner for keeping the poor kid from chattering herself right out of her skin. We got the rest of the directions without having to chase her down any more verbal trails.

We probably could have found Brenda Donohue’s house simply by knocking on every door in the town. There were only about two hundred homes in the whole place, though the one Flannery had us stop at was a step up from the rundown dwellings surrounding it.

It was a simple rancher with a carport. The white siding was clean, and the black shutters and trim were freshly painted. Brenda’s azalea bushes would have met Owen’s approval, and the wreath of autumn leaves on the door would have met India’s. Even the garbage cans and recycle bins looked as if they were hosed off on a regular basis. I was actually a little surprised by the neat, middle-class look of the place. Between her understanding of fashion and the gymnastic lessons, I’d expected more from Flannery’s background.

What didn’t strike me until the three of us were walking up the driveway was that this didn’t look like a house someone was about to abandon. Before I could warn Flannery that maybe Mama wasn’t totally going for the let’s-run-away-together plan, the front door flew open and a small woman with fading red hair skittered squirrel-like down the steps and ran toward us. She was the spitting image of Flannery. Right down to the bruised, swollen eye.

Until then, Flannery was running ahead of Kade and me, arms spread. At about the same moment that black eye registered with me, Flannery stopped and screamed, “You lied to me! He’s here!”

She turned so hard she left a divot in the lawn. Only because I was right behind her by then was I able to grab her and flatten her against me. Otherwise, I knew she’d have run all the way to St. Augustine. Or further.

She continued to scream, “I’m not staying here! I’m
not
!
”

I didn’t bother to introduce myself to the woman who stood there with what was left of her face twisted in anguish.

“Ms. Donohue,” I said, “there has obviously been abuse here. This child is terrified—”

Terrified and, apparently, enraged. Flannery got one elbow loose and jabbed me soundly in the gut, which gave her a chance to wriggle free and bolt. She had already put two other front yards behind her by the time Kade got to the Mazda and took off after her.

Brenda Donohue, on the other hand, had her remaining eye fixed on another vehicle, a red Mustang that squealed around the corner from the opposite direction and careened into the driveway. It spit out a large man with shoulders as big as Chief’s. His whole physique could, in fact, have been Chief’s if not for the paunch that spilled over his belt buckle as he stormed toward us.

Beside me, Brenda crossed her forearms over her chest and tucked her head. I knew in that moment that I had never seen true cowering before. Just as he got within grabbing distance I stepped in front of Brenda and pushed her two steps backward. I barely avoided a head-on with the man I knew was Elgin.

My mind raced straight to God.
Pleasepleasepleaseplease—

He yelled, “Who are you?” Basically. I was amazed he could get as many expletives as he did into that three-word question.

“I’m here for Brenda,” I said. “I took one look at her and called the police.” It was a lie I knew I was already forgiven for. And for the next one. “They’re on their way. If you did this to her, you might want to consider getting out of here in your Mustang.”