Unexpected Dismounts (26 page)

Monday morning came, and the moment I got back from taking Desmond to school, Bonner was there with a briefcase and a long face. It took me a minute to remember
why
he was there. I’d been right: A lot could happen in two days.

My heart sagged, but I waved him in and put the kettle on. I could feel his uneasiness as he hoisted himself up to the bistro table.

“How is Zelda?” I said.

“Holding her own. Allison—have you decided?”

“No,” I said.

“Our time’s up. I don’t think Taylor has a dozen prospective buyers knocking on his door, but it isn’t fair to keep this tied up.”

I sat across from him. “I didn’t say there was no decision. I just said
I
hadn’t decided.”

“You’re losin’ me here,” he said.

“Okay. You aren’t going to list my house because something tells you not to. I get that.”

He nodded slowly.

“And I don’t want to list it with anybody else because something tells
me
not to. Well, not just ‘something.’ It’s your integrity. The same thing that won’t let you list it.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“What if we sign the contract, saying our purchase of the house is contingent on the sale of mine. Only we don’t list it.” I put up my hand to stop his protest. “And we tell Mr. Taylor we’re not listing it. If somebody else comes along and wants to buy his place, he can sell it to them. But if this one sells, we get his for the deal that’s in the contract.”

Bonner just stared at me.

“It’s legal, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“This way it’s up to God.”

Bonner sat back in the high seat and watched his leg dangle.

“What?” I said.

“Wasn’t it up to God when you decided to sell in the first place? Wasn’t it a Nudge?”

I opened my mouth. And then I closed it.

“Seriously, Allison?” Bonner said.

“I’m desperate, Bonner,” I said. “There’s just so much, so many people to save from the lives they’re living. I just have to find a way.”

“You do? Not God?” He shook his head at me. “I thought that was what we were doing here. And you’re the reason for that. You’re the one that keeps plowing ahead on nothing but faith. And that’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“That’s why I can’t list this house. That’s what’s wrong. It’s not coming from God. It’s coming from you trying to second-guess God.”

There was nothing in that I could deny. Not even the shame that burned my face.

“If we’re going to give it to God,” he said, “I think we have to give him the whole thing. Tear up the contract. Tell Taylor we’ll buy when we can if his property is still available. If God sends somebody to buy this house, totally without advertising, then so be it. Meanwhile, there will be another way.” He pressed his hand down on mine. “There will be, Allison.”

“Okay, Bonner,” I said. “You want tea?” I squeezed his hand. “I’m having humble pie with mine.”

Dr. Doug Doyle said Chief would be released Sunday. He pointed out with a twinkle that that was April Fools’ Day. Yeah, well, the thing didn’t feel like a joke. Every time I thought about it, I got the shakes.

The meeting with Vickie and Priscilla Sanborn and her attorney was scheduled for Thursday the twenty-ninth, but Chief kept reassuring me he was handling it.

“You aren’t going to make me go in there alone, are you?” I asked on the morning of the twenty-eighth. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be there via Skype or some such ridiculous thing. I
will
fire you.”

“Oh ye of little faith.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve hired a guy. He’s doing my legwork. In fact, if you aren’t busy, he’ll go with you this morning to meet with Stan about your bike and the insurance. “

“And tomorrow?”

“He’ll be with you at the meeting. I’ll be a phone call away in case he needs me. I’m still the attorney of record.”

“Am I going to meet this person?” I said.

“He should be here anytime.”

“Now? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why? Did you want to have your hair done or something?” He pointed at me. “I didn’t tell you in advance because I knew you’d do what you’re doing right now.”

“Which is what?”

“Building a little wall around you.”

I stared. “Do I do that?”

“Sometimes.” His eye lines crinkled. “I enjoy taking it down, brick by brick.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake, get a wrecking ball and let’s get on with this.

I was still trying to catch my breath when someone tapped on the door.

“You could have at least told me his name,” I whispered.

But he didn’t have to. When the door swung open, Kade Capelli walked in.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The kid appeared as self-assured as he was the first time I met him. He gave no indication of caring that I’d seen him being thrown out of a prostitute’s room. Ophelia’s room. Our
Ophelia. Did he actually think I wasn’t going to turn to Chief and say,
Get this little jackal out of my sight?

But on closer inspection, as he crossed the room and shook my hand to the tune of Chief’s explanation of how he’d taken my recommendation and called him, blah, blah, blah, I saw the question in Kade’s clear blue eyes: Was I going to out him or not?

“I interviewed him right before the accident,” Chief said.

“World’s longest wait for a job offer.” Kade was still watching me.

“You happier now?”

I looked at Chief.

“Does this make you feel better?” he said. “You obviously saw something in the guy, which I did too.”

I wanted to scream,
Did you see that he’s a complete phony?

But Chief was looking pleased with himself. The lines that had deepened in his long sleep relaxed around his eyes.

“You’ve checked his credentials, I assume.” I tried to sound light, but I hoped Kade could hear through that.

“Harvard Law Review. Great recommendations.”

“Great bedside manner,” I said.

The door opened and a hefty guy in scrubs came in already talking. “I hate to break this up, but it’s time for Jack’s PT.”

“You say we’re meeting Stan?” I said to Chief.

“He said he’d catch up with you two wherever.”

I smiled my best smile at Kade. “How about the Monk’s Vineyard?”

Only because the color drained from the kid’s face did I not spill the whole thing to Chief.

“Let him know we’re on our way,” I said.

I swished past Kade and headed down the hall. I wasn’t sure what I was actually going to do or say once we got to the parking garage, so I took the stairs instead of the elevator, with Kade’s footsteps echoing behind me. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this, even as right as Chief was about us needing help. I couldn’t be Chief-right. I had to be me-right. God-right. I only knew one way to get clear on that.

“We should talk,” Kade said when I stopped.

“We will,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

“I have a car.”

“I have a Harley.” I pointed to the Road King. “Get on.”

“I don’t have a helmet.”

“Florida law says you aren’t required to wear one if you’re over twenty-one and have insurance. You do have insurance?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s go.”

I didn’t give him a chance for further argument. I stuffed my head into my helmet, poked my fingers into my gloves, and fired up the bike. He finally swung one trousered leg over and pressed his soles onto the foot pegs. He was, of course, heavier than Desmond, and I hoped he knew how to be a passenger. Otherwise, this was going to be my worst dismount yet.

I took off out of the parking garage as fast as I dared and wove through the back streets to US 1. My mind was in a higher gear than the bike.

Could this be any more ironic? What was the deal? It wasn’t even April Fools’ Day.

If it was, Kade didn’t get the joke. His body was so stiff I wondered if he was still alive back there. I was fine with his being freaked right out of his tasseled loafers.

As we passed West King and turned onto Valencia, I slowed down. This was only getting me more stoked for a fight with the kid, and I had to admit that verbal fisticuffs weren’t going to get us anywhere. The meeting was tomorrow. I couldn’t do it without legal representation, not if I wanted to keep Desmond, and there was no
if
about that. We’d get through this and then I could tell Chief. Or maybe he would be ready for court by the time of the hearing that Vickie Rodriguez would surely have moved under the circumstances. Or maybe this kid was sharp enough to eliminate the need for that altogether.

That was too many maybes. When I pulled into a parking space on the St. George end of Cuna, I sighed a prayer into my helmet.

Please show me what you want me to do, because I have no idea.

“Can I get off now?” Kade said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He did, and stood white-faced on the sidewalk looking at me. “When we set out on the motorcycle to Whipsnade zoo, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did.”

I felt my jaw drop. “C. S. Lewis,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I never understood that before.”

“Huh,” I said. Now there was a surprise. Either that or he was just a well-
read
phony.

We started off toward the Vineyard, threading our way among the school groups shouting their way toward the Schoolhouse.

“Are you going to tell him?” Kade said above the babble.

I waited until we were standing by the Monk’s bottom step before I answered. “That depends on why you were here that day.”

The color returned to his face, all the way into his scalp. “It wasn’t what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“What anybody would think if they saw a guy coming out of a, uh, room belonging to a woman of questionable reputation.”

“How long have you been practicing that?” I said.

“All the way over here. Look—” He moved his neck as if his collar had suddenly shrunk. “We didn’t even—nothing happened. I just wanted to ask her some questions.”

“So it was a job interview,” I said.

“Research,” he said.

“You really know your way around a euphemism, don’t you?”

“I wanted to find out about you.”

I rocked back against the porch railing and folded my arms. “I can’t wait to hear what you do with this.”

“After I met you that day, I googled you and I saw what kind of work you do. It relates to the kinds of cases I want, representing people trying to get their lives together. I wanted to find out if you were the real thing, so, yeah, I thought I’d ask somebody who might know.”

“You’re nothing if not creative.”

“I offered to pay her.”

“Ophelia,” I said. “Her name is Ophelia.”

He went scarlet again. Not the reaction I expected. “When I started asking questions, she thought I was an undercover cop and she threw the money back at me and showed me the door. That’s when you showed up.” He actually grinned. “At least I knew I’d come to the right place.”

“I never met Ophelia until that day. Why didn’t you just come ask
me
if I was the ‘real thing’?”

“I tried to, that day at the restaurant when you kicked Troy Irwin’s butt.”

“I did not kick his butt,” I said. But the fact that he seemed to find that delicious softened me up a little.

“You acted like you didn’t have time for a conversation,” Kade said, “and you handed me off to Chief. So yeah, here we are.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Here we are.”

Kade parked his hands on his hipless hips and tilted his head back as if he were examining the grapes carved into the sign above us. “You can believe me or not about any of it, and that’ll be what it is.” He lowered his gaze to me, blue eyes clear. “But if you don’t trust me to be there for you at the meeting tomorrow, tell me now. I don’t want to waste your time.”

I nodded toward the porch and went up the steps. He followed me to the table in the corner.

“You know C. S. Lewis,” I said.

“I’ve studied him.”

I raised an eyebrow. “At Harvard?”

“No. When I was an undergrad. I was trying to figure some stuff out.”

“Did you?”

“I’m still working on it.”

Allison.

I know, I know. Wash his dadgum feet.

I sighed, somewhere from the vicinity of my own feet. “All right then. I guess we’d better talk about tomorrow before Stan gets here. You want to order something?”

“So does that mean …”

“Yeah. And don’t get the latte.”

He smiled, teeth white and square as Chiclets, eyes lit up with an assurance I didn’t have at twenty-six. It wasn’t a cocky smile, but he wasn’t cowed by me either.

Which he proved as he pushed aside the silverware-wrapped-in-a-napkin, rippled his fingers on the table, and said, “Tell me why you want to be a mother.”

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“In case it comes up tomorrow. Mr. Ellington already knows, I bet, but I don’t, and I might need to be able to think on my feet. Kind of hard to do without all the information. So, yeah.”

“I don’t want to just be a mother,” I said. “I want to be Desmond’s mother.”

“Because his biological mother signed him over to you?”

“Y’know, I don’t like your tone.”

“It’s not my tone,” Kade said. “It’s the tone the lawyer’s going to use when he cross-examines you.”

“I feel like I’m being cross-examined right now.”

“That’s the point.”

He sat there, hands flat on the table. I put mine there too.

“I don’t just
want
to be Desmond’s mother,” I said. “I have to be, and not because his mother signed him over like a used car. Because he is already my son here.” I pointed to my head. “And here.” I pressed one hand against my heart. “I get him, and I love him, and I am making a good life for him. I don’t see anybody else being able to do that.”

A slow smile spread across Kade’s face. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Miss Chamberlain?”

I knew it was Nicholas Kent before I turned around. He couldn’t send me a text but he could track me down at the Monk’s Vineyard?

He nodded at Kade and switched his coffee cup to the other hand so they could shake. Okay, so he hadn’t tracked me down. Nice to see business was picking up for Lewis and Clark. Maybe they wouldn’t have to give up the expedition after all.

“Didn’t you get my message?” I said.

Nicholas’s face colored, filling in the spaces between the freckles. “I had a little incident with my cell phone.”

“Let me guess,” Kade said. “You dropped it in the toilet.”

“No, bathtub. Dude—so embarrassing.” Nicholas turned to me. “You left me a message?”

“You want to go in and order us a couple of coffees?” I said to Kade.

He scoped us out with a look and then nodded and disappeared inside. I told Nicholas about the cops at Sacrament House. His eyes grew cloudier with every sentence.

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said when I was done. “In fact, I didn’t think the department was even pursuing the case. I’m not in on it if they are.”

“I don’t get it, then.”

“Neither do I. But I’ll find out.”

I liked the set of his jaw. He was looking less like Opie Taylor all the time.

“It’s about time you came in to say thank you.”

Lewis set two coffees on the table, virtually elbowing Kade as he tried to get back into his seat.

“What am I thanking you for?” I said.

The mustache seemed to expand. “Don’t you take the paper?”

“No.”

“George!” he said.

George was already behind him, planting a folded newspaper in front of me. There was a lot of that going on lately. I really was going to have to think about subscribing.

“Front page,” Lewis said, “Above the fold. I didn’t know I still had that kind of pull.”

I stared at the picture he was proudly thumping with his finger. It was Desmond’s silhouette of Ophelia’s rapist.

“Good article too,” Lewis said.

I started to scan it to see if they’d used the word
alleged
.

“I’ve been following this,” Kade said when Lewis had returned to the kitchen with Nicholas to get his to-go order. “You know your connection with it could affect our case.”

“Then it’s your job to see that it doesn’t,” I said.

“And your job to tell me everything I need to know. So, yeah, let’s get started.”

By the time Stan showed up, I felt almost like I’d been on the witness stand already. I hated to admit it to myself, but young Kade Capelli might be able to handle this after all.

Nicholas called me early the next morning to tell me that the department was already receiving a flood of phone calls since Desmond’s drawing made the
Record.

“Any leads, then?” I said.

“Most of them are crank calls, people saying it’s everybody from Henry Flagler’s ghost to their brother-in-law they always thought was a pervert. One thing is for sure, though.”

“What’s that? And please tell me it’s good.”

“It could be. The chief’s on the hot seat now because the mayor doesn’t like this kind of thing on the newsstands when tourists walk by.”

Ms. Willa would have several paragraphs to say in support of that theory. “Any luck finding out who those jerks were that went to Sacrament House?”

“Nobody’s talking. Frankly, I think whoever it was is ticked at me for raising a stink about investigating this, even before it got on the news. It makes more work for them in what they think is a nothing case.”

He went quiet.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing. I was just waiting for you to blow up.”

“What would be the point, Nick?” I said. “Would it help?”

“Maybe.” I imagined his freckles getting lost in a blush. “It’s you blowing up that got this whole things started. If you stop popping your cork now, we might not get
any
where.”