Russ himself came to the Langevoorts’ house with Eric McCrea, Hadley Knox, and a technician from the state crime lab. He sat Joni and Audrey on the sofa in the living room and dragged a chair over to face them. Clare perched on a hassock halfway between her husband and the Langevoorts, which felt just about right.
As the officers and the technician spread through the rest of the house, collecting evidence, Russ told the women what had happened. His voice was gentle, but his unwavering recitation of the details—telling them exactly what he had found in Kent Langevoort’s storage locker—made the experience like watching two people having nails hammered into their flesh. She wanted to cry mercy for them, until she realized this was a hard kind of mercy, giving them the truth without false hope or euphemism.
Neither of them, she noticed, said I can’t believe it or He’d never do that, although Audrey had started to weep halfway through Russ’s description. Joni went to fetch her mother’s medication, only to find it in an evidence baggie. With Russ’s nod, the gloved technician took a single pill out and handed it to Joni, who gave it to her mother with a glass of water. Clare watched the technician reseal and relabel the bag. The bottle of hydrocodone sitting in her glove compartment filled her head until she was certain anyone looking at her would know what she had done.
Russ got to the end of it. He asked, “Do you have any questions?”
The Langevoorts sat in silence for a moment, hip to hip on the sofa, Joni’s arm around her mother. Finally, Joni said, “Can we see him?”
Russ shook his head. “Not yet. He’s being processed into the county jail. You’ll be able to be there for his arraignment and bail hearing.”
“What about an attorney?”
“He called someone. I don’t know who.”
“Probably Brenda Kenty. She handles our family stuff.” Joni’s mouth twisted. “She helped me with my name change; this is going to be something different.”
“I’m sure she’ll recommend an experienced criminal lawyer,” Clare said.
Russ’s phone buzzed in his pocket. “Excuse me, please.” He got up and crossed into the kitchen. Clare listened to the low tone of his voice, his words inaudible.
“What about the business?” Audrey spoke for the first time. “My God, what about the business? Bors is on his deathbed and God knows how long it will take for your father to fight this. What happens to the firm?”
Joni glanced at Clare, then at her mother. “You’re still co-owner with Dad, right? The lawyer can make out power of attorney papers for you. You can sign them and then you’ll have legal authority to do anything necessary.”
“Me? I don’t know anything about the firm!” She put her hands over her face. “Oh, my God, what is this going to do to the client base when the news gets out? We’ll be lucky if they don’t all jump ship. And the ones who don’t are going to want complete accounts of their portfolios.”
Joni hugged her. “See? You do know something about the firm.”
Her mother clutched her hand. “You’re going to have to go back. You have to head it up until your father gets out of jail.”
“Mom—”
“Joni, you have to. We’re going to need someone strong and smart at the top and you’re the strongest, smartest person I know.”
Joni closed her eyes for a moment. “How can I resist that? Okay, Mom. I’ll do it.”
Audrey sighed and collapsed back against the sofa cushions. Joni turned to Clare. “It looks like I won’t be able to do my internship with you—” She broke off. Frowned. Clare could see on her face the precise moment she realized. “You knew about this.”
Clare hesitated. “I knew Russ suspected your father, yes.”
“How long?”
“Just this afternoon. If he had any inkling about it beforehand, he didn’t tell me.”
“Why did you come over here?”
Clare forced herself not to twist on the hassock like a prisoner in the dock. “I came over to see if I could help.”
“And?”
“And to make sure Kent didn’t go anywhere without alerting the police. And to be here if he offered violence to you or your mother.” And to poke around and see if I could find anything incriminating. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that out loud, not the least of which because she didn’t want to taint the MKPD’s case against Langevoort.
“Wow.” Joni stared into the middle distance for a moment. “I think when I’m not so completely numb, I’m going to be really pissed off at you.”
“You have every right. I’m not very happy with myself at the moment, either.”
Joni made a noise. She stood, pulling her drooping mother upright. “Why don’t you do something actually useful and see if the bedroom’s clear so Mom can lie down.”
Russ was still on the phone. Clare caught Hadley Knox ascending from the lowest level with several folders wrapped and stickered as evidence. “Sure,” she said. “We’ve cleared it.”
Joni vanished into the bedroom with Audrey and emerged a couple of minutes later. “The drink and the Seconal will keep her out for a while. Thank God.” She walked back to the living room. Clare followed. “Mom thinks Dad is going to come home at some point. But that’s not going to happen, right?”
Clare spread her hands. “That’s going to be up to a judge and jury.”
“What do I do? What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“What do you want to do?”
Joni looked at her. “Burn this whole house down and salt the earth beneath it.” She passed the sofa and slid open the screened portion of the French doors. “I always loved this place. I loved coming here. We had our best times together as a family in this house.” She leaned over the railing. Clare joined her, carefully avoiding the place where the unhappy Bors—she was going to have to stop thinking of him as a victim, she supposed. The guilty Bors. The repentant Bors? It would be too pat to imagine he had been trying to pay back a life for a life. No, he had been drunk and terrified of everything coming out and had chosen to skip all that now faced Kent Langevoort: public disgrace and prison and the shame of his family.
“I caused this.”
Clare jolted back to the here and now. “What? No, Joni, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I precipitated it, then. Dad was so furious with me when I came out to him. He fought me transitioning every inch of the way. I was his son, he needed a son, why couldn’t I just see that. I blamed transphobia; I thought he was stuck in the last century. And then I quit the firm. And he had to find someone else to take over.”
Clare put her hand on Joni’s arm. “It’s not your fault your father was so hidebound he couldn’t envision a woman running Barkley and Eaton.”
“He didn’t think of me as a woman. He’s never thought of me as a woman. He thinks I’m a boy in a dress, and that no one would respect me or follow my lead.”
“Listen. I don’t know much, but I do know you can’t save someone else by destroying who you are. You can’t start with a lie and expect to build anything good and lasting on top of it. Your father had choices, Joni. He could have taken the company public. He could have issued shares, so he wouldn’t be dependent on the whims of the next owner. He could have recognized you for who you are and trusted you. He could have done a hundred other things instead of going through with that sick, perverted ‘adoption’ ceremony. You are not responsible for his blindness and his lack of common humanity.”
Joni nodded. She turned back to the railing, and they stood side by side, looking at the hills shading from green to blue to gray as they rose into the High Peaks. Eventually, Joni said, “That’s a good speech. Could you e-mail it to me once a week while I’m down in the city?”
Clare surprised herself with a laugh. “Sure. If you hurry up with what you have to do and get back to your studies.”
“I don’t know. I may try to combine the two. I have no idea what it feels like to work in finance when I get to set the rules. Maybe we can switch to ethical investing. I can’t pay back what the company owes to the women who died. I can try to pay it forward, though.”
“Sounds like it might be a good start.”
They turned around at the sound of the screen door opening. Russ’s face was grim. “That was Lyle. The hospital called. Bors Saunderson died about an hour ago. Pneumonia.”
Joni let out a breath. She tucked her hair behind one ear. “I’ll tell you one thing I know from my studies. The First Letter of Paul to Timothy. ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.’”