38
SUNDAY, JUNE 10
7:40 P.M.
VICTOR’S 1959 CAFÉ
SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS
Through the beginning of a light rain, Ian approached the entrance to Victor’s 1959 Café. He was tugging the hood of his sweatshirt over his head at the same moment someone else left the restaurant door just ahead, wearing a blue windbreaker and a hood already drawn up. The person turned away just as Ian slipped past.
Every inch of the small restaurant’s yellow-painted interior was covered, wall to ceiling, with graffiti. The place was crowded, although given its size, Ian wondered if it was ever otherwise. He weaved across the uneven floor through tightly packed benches of patrons until he saw Rory sitting by himself in the back.
Rory’s eyes flashed recognition as Ian approached. “What are you doing here?” he snarled over empty dishes on his table.
Ian slid onto the bench opposite him, pushing a plate aside to rest his arms on the table. “We need to talk.”
“I gave you all my information last time.”
Rory squinted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Our meeting you set up Friday night?”
“Don’t know who you talked to. If it was Larry at the bar, we had a falling-out. Seems like too many people were learning my business. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to meet with you anyway. I’ve decided I don’t want the trust money.”
Ian leaned back in the bench, his questions forgotten. “Why not?”
“First off, you’ve been talking to Ahmetti and listening to his lies. The old scab told you I fenced things after my mother died, didn’t he? Except I didn’t. I sold him some things when I got separated from Lisa, but they were mine. I told him they weren’t stolen, but he and his yeti of a sidekick didn’t believe me. Just like you’re not believing me now.”
“Then that would mean you qualify for the trust. What if I believed you . . . still don’t want the money?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
Rory shrugged as he started to spin the ring. “My business.”
Ian shook his head. “The money’s gone, Rory. You don’t want it because you’ve already got it.”
The thin man’s head snapped up. “Whaddya mean, gone?”
“Somebody hacked it out of my account two nights ago—the night you were supposed to meet me.”
“That’s bull.” His attention drifted, and he looked over Ian’s shoulder.
“It’s not. And it was your guys who attacked me at the bar too. Planning to make me disappear.”
Rory was looking straight through Ian now. He shook his head, pulled some cash out of a pocket, and dropped it on the table.
“Wait a second,” Ian said as Rory stood. “I’ve got more questions.”
“Not for me, you don’t.”
Ian stood as well, leaning over the table and grabbing the gaunt man’s arm. He pulled him close and whispered, “I know the trust money was from the art theft. I know somebody died in the robbery. Ahmetti told me my dad wasn’t connected to your family at the time. So how’d he get involved and how’d he earn a piece of the trust?”
Rory’s expression was a mix of angst and anger. “Connor and I grew up in the same neighborhood. I knew him then.”
The first sliver of truth. “Friends?”
“No. I just knew him.”
“Then how’d he connect to your family?”
“He fell for my sister,” he replied, growing more agitated. Then he pulled his arm free and walked away from the booth.
Rory had no sister. It would have shown up in his search of Jimmy Doyle’s genealogy. Infuriated, Ian called to Rory, “Callahan thinks one of us has that money.”
“Then I suggest you give it back to him,” Rory shot back, then headed toward the restaurant exit.
Ian moved to follow, but a waiter stepped in his way, bringing him to a halt and leaving him several paces behind as Rory was going out the door.
Seconds later, the air outside was misty and cool as Ian emerged from the restaurant. He searched every direction before seeing Rory thirty feet away on the corner, looking both ways before crossing the street.
A black car pulled across the empty intersection against the red light. It stopped as the rear passenger door came abreast of Rory. The door opened.
The wiry man leaned forward, looking into the car. He slid inside.
Ian hadn’t even thought to start moving again before the car was pulling away from the curb, splashing water as it disappeared up the wet street.
8:27 P.M.
EAST ST. PAUL
Martha stared out across the parking lot that lay below her chair on the patio of the third-floor condominium. Somewhere in the apartment through the screen door behind her she heard Katie greet her son, who’d just arrived. Martha could just make out the voices of Katie and Ian and Brook in the apartment, speaking low enough that she couldn’t understand them over the freeway traffic in sight a block away.
The low conversation faded, then stopped.
“Have you tried Wet Willy again?” she heard Katie ask a minute later, calling from the kitchen.
“Yep. I got him on the fourth try,” Ian answered, nearer at hand. “I told him he could keep the car till I get back from Florida.”
Martha sighed. A swallow swooped down from a telephone pole, darting back and forth like the tip of a conductor’s baton.
She ached in a way she hadn’t in a long time. If only Connor were here. He could always bring her back from these moods, convince her they’d really done the right thing all these years. Where was he now when she needed him so?
She tried thinking of other things. Katie—dear Katie—was humming a familiar song in the kitchen. She loved when Katie sang or hummed. Deep-throated, carefree. It softened the edges of the void within her.
“Mom. I’ll bet you miss your gardens.”
Ian had appeared on the deck and taken a seat beside her. She felt him take her hand.
Her gardens? She did miss her gardens. Why had they taken her away from them? Why couldn’t she go there now?
“I’m flying to Florida in the morning, Mom,” Ian was saying gently. “Brook’s driving me to the airport. I’m going there to talk to Ed McMartin.”
Florida. She remembered going there as a child with her mother. The hot sand underfoot, the shells of Captiva piled deep like a snow sculpture on the beach. Warm rain drifting in from the Gulf to pound the roof of the house they’d rented.
“I wish you could tell me what happened.” Ian was speaking again. “Like what you meant when you told Katie they wouldn’t ‘find it.’ You meant the painting, didn’t you? Where is it, Mom? And how Dad earned his share. Anything to help me recover the trust money before Tuesday. I need to know so I can protect you. And me. Everyone. I don’t care what Dad did, but I wish you’d speak to me and save me this trip.”
The pain gathered again around her heart. Oh, Connor, where are you?
“Hon, supper’s about ready,” Katie called.
“Great,” Ian called back. He let go of her hand. “Five minutes till we eat, Mom.”
Martha’s mind flowed back to Florida and the man arriving in the rain, ringing the doorbell of their house that lay within sight of the Gulf’s waters. Leaning down and tickling her chin when she answered the door. Her mother in a green dress, coming out of her bedroom and greeting him, kissing him. The man taking off his wet coat and crouching down to give her a brightly colored plastic turtle.
The swallow had been joined by others on the telephone wire. Martha watched them gathering for a moment, then glanced over her shoulder. In the apartment, Ian was filling glasses with ice, Brook setting dishes on the table. Katie stood at the stove.
She turned back to the parking lot.
Why didn’t Mother ever explain? You never should assume what a child knows or believes. Never. Though she understood that sometimes it seemed too painful. Too painful to lay bare what you were doing or what you’d done or, hardest of all, why you’d done it—even to a child who had a right to know. Martha understood that now. Still, her mother should have at least tried to explain.
The man had left them in the morning. The rain hadn’t stopped, but he’d gone out into the shower with only his hat and coat and no umbrella, walking slowly to the black car, pelted by drops as big as pebbles, to drive away.
Martha sighed.
“Hon, it’s time to come in and eat.” It was Katie, standing at her shoulder with a wide smile on her face.
Martha shook her head. “Tell Ian to bring an umbrella,” she said quietly. “It rains a lot in Florida.”
Then she began to cry.