Unauthorized Access (30 page)

A resolute calm emanated from her that Lesley was not used to seeing.

“Not a day goes by,” Rose said, “that I don’t ask myself whether there was something I could have done differently with your father. He used to promise to give up the gambling, but money kept disappearing from our bank account. Sometimes I said nothing. Other times I waved the account statement in his face and we’d fight about it. He always ended up promising it would never happen again. But of course it did.”

“Mom, you don’t have to go into all this.”

“I know, but …” Rose sighed. “You know what the worst part was?”

“What?”

“Seeing what your father’s death did to you. It was hard on Michael, too, but you disappeared inside a shell for the first year or so. That was the main reason we moved to Worcester. Your therapist said a change might do you good, and it did to some extent. But even after you got back to being yourself there was still this … I don’t know, this distance between us.”

Lesley thought her mother’s hand trembled as Rose rubbed her own cheek, but then again, the train made everything tremble.

“You and I used to do all sorts of things together before your father died,” Rose said. “You liked me to read to you at bedtime. We played duets on the piano, even after you stopped taking lessons. And every day at dinnertime you told me what happened to you at school. I knew about every boy you had a crush on. But all that went away when your father died. You wouldn’t let me back in. I kept telling myself that if I gave you some space it would work itself out, that things would gradually get back to normal. But after a while the distance got to
be
normal. And then you went away to college and …” She shrugged.

“I spent a lot of time blaming Bruce,” Rose went on, “asking how he could have done this to us. There were times I think I would have strangled him if he had shown up again.”

Rose stared up in the general direction of the advertisements that lined the top of the wall opposite them. “But mostly I kept trying to figure out what I had done wrong.”

“Me too,” Lesley said.

The words were out before Lesley knew they were coming.

Small lines of concern formed between Rose’s eyebrows.

“What do you mean?” Rose said.

“I always thought he must have been really sad to do what he did,” Lesley said. She clamped her hands between her knees. “And I wondered if I was part of the reason he was unhappy.”

A look of horror spread on Rose’s face.

“That’s not true. Your father loved you more than anything.”

“You don’t remember him yelling at me? How I wanted to stay out late with my friends and he didn’t want me to?”

“You were fourteen years old. Everybody tests their limits at that age.”

“Still, it was a problem for Dad.”

“Any problems he had were his, not yours.”

“I remember what he told me after he was arrested,” Lesley said. “He said none of the charges were true. ‘I didn’t do anything, Lesley.’ That’s what he kept telling me. Then he’d say, ‘You believe me, don’t you?’ Of course I believed him. In my eyes he was big and strong and perfect. He could have told me the sun was made of melted butter and I would have believed him.”

Lesley felt the familiar sting behind her eyes, the hurt inside trying to come out into the sunshine, to make itself real and painful. She blinked the feeling away.

“How could he do that, Mom? How could he love me and at the same time look me right in the eye and lie to me?”

“I don’t know, except we all have our weaknesses and your father certainly had his share.”

Lesley grimaced. “And now I have to figure out if Rob is lying to me.”

Rose nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sorry you two are having troubles. I always liked Rob.”

“Until now.”

“No, that’s not really true.”

“You said I’d be better off without him.”

“So I’m an overprotective mother, but something occurred to me last night when I was driving home. Despite all the problems your Dad and I had, not once did I ever consider leaving him. All I wanted to do was help him, to work it out. So who am I to suggest you should abandon Rob now.”

“But it was different for you. There were lots of reasons to stay. You were married, with kids.”

“And you don’t have reasons for being with Rob?”

Lesley braced herself with her feet as the train slowed for a station stop.

“I thought I did.”

“And now?”

“It’s hard to trust him,” Lesley said. “I mean, the way he’s acting. Like last night. We were apart, what—eight, ten hours? He ends up running to Kirsten Glanville’s place and spending the night with her.”

Rose lifted both eyebrows, but said nothing as the train doors opened. A few new passengers boarded and found seats.

“Then this morning,” Lesley said, “Rob phoned and tried to convince me Tim must have sabotaged the bank’s computers. As far as I can tell, all Tim has done is try to make me feel better.”

“Does all this mean you and Rob are through?”

Lesley sighed.

“I don’t know. One minute it feels that way and the next minute I want to grab him and hold on tight and to hell with the rest of the world.”

“Well I don’t want to tell you what to do—”

“Really?”

Rose smiled in acknowledgment.

“Okay, I do want to tell you what you should do. The problem is I have no idea what that is. All I know is, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life wondering if things might have turned out differently if you had only tried harder.”

Lesley spread her hands, palms up.

“Tried harder to do what?”

“To make things work out the way you want.”

“Okay …” Lesley said slowly. “I want everything to go back the way it was, to find out this was all a big mistake, that Rob didn’t do anything wrong and we can start planning the wedding.”

Rose pursed her lips and looked skeptical.

“Too much to ask for?” Lesley said.

Her mother shrugged.

Lesley looked down at her lap and sighed again. What was the point of wishing? There didn’t seem to be any way out. She looked up at her mother and gave her a weak smile.

“Or maybe for today we could shoot for something easier,” Lesley said. “Stan and Sheila have a piano in their living room. When we get back we could try to remember one of those duets we used to play.”

Rose returned the smile.

“I’d like that.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
N
INE

ROB STARED INCREDULOUSLY across the wooden table at Special Agent Steeves. Pettigrew, seated to Rob’s right, registered a more subdued look of surprise.

“You can’t be serious,” Rob said.

“No one named Labadie works out of this office,” Steeves said. “And the only way any agent would visit your old girlfriend was if I sent them, which I couldn’t have done. I didn’t even know she existed until you mentioned her just now.”

“But she wouldn’t make up something like that.”

Steeves just stared impassively back at Rob.

“The guy who kidnapped me,” Rob said. “He pretended to be an FBI agent at first. That’s why I went with him. Maybe it’s the same guy.”

Steeves rubbed his chin. “Let me get this straight. Some guy drags you off to an abandoned garage last night and beats on you. You get away from him but you don’t bother to report it. Instead you spend the night with an old girlfriend you claim you haven’t seen in years.”

“I didn’t say I hadn’t seen her in—”

“Who by the way,” Steeves went on, “just happens to be visited by some mysterious stranger this morning. That what you want me to believe?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Why didn’t you call the police last night?”

Rob opened his mouth to answer but Pettigrew beat him to it.

“My client was severely traumatized last night. People don’t necessarily think straight in those kinds of circumstances.”

“Your client,” Steeves said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “has a proven track record of lying to me, so you’ll excuse me if I explore what he says from every angle.”

Rob felt the fury and futility bubble up inside him once more.

“He was assaulted,” Pettigrew said, “and is now coming to you for help. I expect you to do your job and provide it.”

Steeves looked at Rob.

“How about another possible scenario,” Steeves said. “You get out of jail yesterday and you’re all bent out of shape. So you go out on the town, have a few too many and pick a fight—which it looks like you lost big time, by the way. You end up at the old flame’s place for a little slap and tickle, and this morning the two of you cook up this story about some guy who’s after you. You figure we’ll be all impressed by your bruises and run off looking for this guy.”

Rob’s face was a dark mask.

“Why would I do that?”

“Smoke and mirrors, Rob. You don’t like all the attention you’ve been getting so you get us searching for some nonexistent stranger. That way we have less time to focus on you.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Really?” Steeves said. “Well here’s the part of your story that I can’t get by. You said this guy beat you for quite a while, trying to get the keyword out of you.”

“That’s right.”

“Same one you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“So here’s the thing,” Steeves said. “I can see you holding out on me. I mean, it’s a stupid move, but some people just can’t admit when they’ve done something wrong.”

“That has yet to be proven,” Pettigrew said.

“But what I can’t see,” Steeves said, still skewering Rob with a cold scowl, “is how you could possibly keep that up through the beating you described. You would have told him, simple as that.”

Rob clenched his hands into fists under the table. His entire body throbbed with aches and pains. The searing headache made it difficult to contain his frustration. He looked at his lawyer.

“I told you this would be a waste of time.”

“It probably is,” Steeves said before Pettigrew could respond, “but I’m stuck. The Bureau takes a rather dim view of people running around pretending to be us. So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to show us this garage. After that I want you to sit down with one of our artists and work up a sketch of your kidnapper.”

“With or without the wig and mustache?” Rob said.

“Both. Meanwhile I’ll go have a chat with Kirsten, see if your stories match.”

Rob could feel a vein throb in his forehead. He leaned close to Pettigrew and murmured so Steeves couldn’t hear.

“You sure we shouldn’t mention anything about Tim?”

Pettigrew shook his head. “Not until we actually know something.”

“But Kirsten is likely to tell him anyway.”

“We’ve been over this. It’s not the time.”

Rob leaned back in his chair and tried to contain his frustration. He had been right; he would be tied up for hours. His talk with Tim would have to wait.

* * *

Lesley lifted her suitcase onto the guest bed, flipped it open and rooted around in the cloth flap that lined the inside of the lid. Her hand closed on what she was after and she hauled it out. She hadn’t really known why she had packed it when she was getting ready to escape to Stan and Sheila’s place, but now she was glad to have it.

The photograph was old and tattered. It showed Lesley standing on the fairgrounds of a carnival with a pale blue teddy bear clutched in both arms and a huge grin on her face. Bruce McGrath stood beside her with one arm around her shoulders, the arm that had so recently toppled the milk bottles and won the bear. His smile matched Lesley’s.

Happier times.

The bear still sat on Lesley’s bed back at her apartment. The photo normally resided on her dresser, under her jewelry box. At times she went months without pulling it out for a visit with her father.

Lesley sat on the edge of the bed and entered the world of the picture. She could almost feel his arms around her. The Daddy-smell wafted at the edges of her memory, tantalizingly close, half aftershave, half him.

“I understand better now, I think,” she said aloud to her father’s image. “You made mistakes. Everyone does.”

She ran one finger lightly down the edge of the photo.

“I think I’m finally ready to forgive you.”

Lesley was silent for a bit. Her father didn’t have anything to say.

“Sure wish you were here to talk to, though. Maybe you’d be able to tell me if what I’m about to do is a mistake.”

She put the picture back in her suitcase and reached for her cell phone.

Tim answered on the first ring

“Oh hi,” he said in a surprised voice. “What’s up?”

Lesley bit her lip and then plunged in.

“I was wondering if it was too late to take you up on your offer.”

“You mean …”

“If you still want to get away for a couple of days, I’d love to go with you.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY