39

MONDAY, JUNE 11
3:45 P.M.
PORT ST. LUCIE, FLORIDA

Ian had flown into Fort Lauderdale instead of West Palm Beach. No flights were available into the airport nearer to his destination. He’d rented a car for the extra hour drive to Port St. Lucie.

Brook had driven him to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport the night before. She’d offered to lend him money, but he’d turned her down. “You’re already in way over your head,” he’d said with thanks. Accepting money from her made it all the worse.

He’d promised to be careful. “If somebody was trying to harm you before,” Brook told him, “they almost certainly still are.” And this time he wouldn’t have the gun he’d left behind with Katie.

They’d hugged before parting. In the midst of the hug, he’d remembered the name of the perfume she always wore in law school and was wearing again last night: Chantel Spring.

Ian saw the exit for Port St. Lucie ahead. Feeling blind without GPS, armed with only a cheap cellphone he’d bought yesterday, he left the freeway and began watching the street signs carefully, recalling from memory the map he’d reviewed.

Within minutes he entered a neighborhood of winding streets and tropical-colored ramblers with tall palms rustling overhead. Each house looked a little different from the other. It was a rare one that didn’t have a pool behind it.

Then he saw it.

It was as though a snapshot buried in his mind had come to life. The long sidewalk curving from the street to the front door. The coral walls and green shutters. A single palm centered in the front yard. By the time he parked, he knew that confirming the address was unnecessary.

This was Ed McMartin’s home. Ian had been here before.

He got out of the car into air like that of a sauna. As his feet hit the pavement, he had the strange sensation he was a child again, missing the grip of his mother’s hand. He took the sidewalk in rapid strides and rapped on the door.

A large woman answered.

“Mr. McMartin?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Mr. McMartin isn’t living here at present,” she said in a Jamaican accent. “I’m the cleaning lady. Mr. McMartin’s current residence is the Shannon Transitional Care Home.”

“Could you tell me where that is?”

She disappeared, returning moments later holding a Post-it note with the address and directions written on it.

The drive to the medical facility took less than ten minutes. The man behind the front desk acknowledged Edward McMartin was a resident patient and led Ian into a dining hall with brightly colored tablecloths decorated to look like an ice cream parlor. “Over there,” he said, and pointed toward a corner.

The figure there was hunched in a powered wheelchair with an oxygen canister attached to its back.

Ian approached. “Ed McMartin?” he asked.

The man looked up. With wisps of stray white hair and tubes running to his nostrils, the man resembled a shrunken version of someone familiar. Ian tried to picture him as the man at the pool from his dreams, but the gap of age and wear was too great.

Yet the opposite apparently wasn’t true. The withered man looked at Ian with such ferocity that he half expected a renewal of the poolside demand to know who had brought him there.

“Do you remember me?” Ian asked unnecessarily.

“Yeah, I know you.” Ed raised a bent hand holding a cloth and wiped at the edge of his mouth. “You’re Martha’s brat, the one she brought with her to Christina’s funeral. Still look like you’re ten years old. Come back to bury me, now, did you?”

Ian shook his head. “I’m here because I need to know some things about the art robbery and the money.”

Ed coughed into the cloth in his hand, glancing around uncomfortably. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t want to talk now—I’m tired.”

Ian shrugged. “Well, I’ve got all day. I can start with a few questions to jog your memory, and you can join in when you feel like answering.” He looked around. “Anybody in this place not hard of hearing?”

Ed glowered. His hand went to the joystick on the arm of his wheelchair. “My room,” he said.

The one-bedroom apartment was barely furnished and held little that was personal, hinting at either a recent arrival or no plans for a long stay. Given the man’s frailty, Ian wondered if the sparse décor was wishful thinking. Ed drove his wheelchair to a corner window that looked out over a green lawn. He spun the chair around to face Ian.

“You want to know about the money, eh?” He shook his head. “What good’s that gonna do you? What good’s the trust money going to do anybody after all these years?”

“Then tell me about the robbery,” Ian said, trying to stay calm. “I need to know my parents’ role in it.”

Ed coughed, louder and harsher this time. Ian realized he felt no concern for the man, only a powerful worry that he might collapse before he could tell Ian what he needed to know. That and a mild curiosity to learn whether McMartin really was as ill as he looked. Because if so, it was impossible he could have had a hand in launching the events up in Minneapolis the past week.

“Sean was right,” McMartin said. “You don’t look like a lawyer.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

“Yeah. Not jaded enough yet. You don’t give me the urge to hide my wallet. Give it time, I suppose.”

“If you’ve been talking to Callahan, you know I represent the trust.”

Ed nodded. “Yeah. He called me last week.”

“Good. So tell me my dad’s role in the robbery.”

Ed waved him off with a gesture of his hand. “What’s that matter to passing out the trust money?”

Ian’s voice hardened. “Because you need me to make decisions to distribute the cash and I want to know my dad’s role.”

Ed shrugged. “Your dad wrote the trust. Jimmy wanted it that way.”

“That’s not what I meant. I want to hear how my dad earned his share from the art gallery job itself.”

The old man’s nostrils shrank as he drew a gulp of oxygen through his nose. “Not sure what you think you know.”

Ian looked up at the ceiling. “It happened on January 14, 1983, at the Elaine Art Gallery on Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park. There were a dozen paintings taken. Also around fifteen thousand in cash.”

“You could’ve read that in the paper.”

Ian closed his eyes, pulling together the dream impressions. “You found me beside the pool the day of the funeral—your sister’s funeral. You asked me who’d brought me. I followed you into a bedroom, where Jimmy and Rory and Sean Callahan and my mother were. Jimmy Doyle told you there wouldn’t be a distribution, but the money would go into a trust.”

“Who told you all that?” Ed’s voice was suddenly stronger.

“Some I remember. Some Rory and Sean told me,” Ian lied.

The old man shook his head as much as the tubes would allow. “I’ve still got nothin’ to say.”

Ian felt his patience give way. “Listen, Ed, I’ve been told my dad wasn’t involved with the Doyle family until years after the art theft happened. All I want is a confirmation if that’s true. Just tell me—was my dad there the night of the art theft?”

Ed squinted at Ian, as though to read his face. “That’s it?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Another pause. “Okay. If there was any kind of art job, and I’m not saying there was, your dad wasn’t there that night.”

Even hearing it a second time, Ian still couldn’t believe it. “That’s the truth? He wasn’t there?”

Ed nodded. “That’s right.”

“Then why was my dad entitled to a share of the money if he wasn’t there?”

The old man’s chin came up. “You want to know why he was entitled to his share of the money?” McMartin let out a loud laugh, followed by a groan of pain and a low hacking cough. “If you really don’t know, I suggest you ask your mother,” he gasped out.

“Ed,” Ian said, his voice softening, “in case you haven’t heard, my mom—Martha—has Alzheimer’s. She can’t tell me. And what’s it matter at this point anyway? No matter what you tell me, the trust is supposed to get distributed in two days. I only get my fee if I meet that deadline. What’s the harm in letting me know a few facts about my own parents? Who’d be hurt by that?”

The old man shook his head. “Me, if Callahan ever found out. The Keeper of Family Secrets.” Ed closed his eyes. “All that money you’re gonna hand out—it’s no use to me. When Doreen was alive, well . . .” His voice drifted off.

Ian was wondering if he’d gone to sleep when Ed opened his eyes again. “Okay,” he said in resignation. “Fine. Forget about Callahan. What can he do to me now? And it looks like I won’t be rid of you until I say something. So I’ll tell you a little family history. The rest you can figure out from there.”

Ed looked at Ian again, his eyes hinting at guilty pleasure, like he was about to say something he’d been wanting to say for a long time.

“The man you’re really working for here? The guy who decided what shares got handed out and who got ’em? Well, the joke’s on you, kid. ’Cause that man, Jimmy Doyle, was Martha’s father. Which makes him your grandfather. Grandpa Jimmy, the low-life scum who had the guts to let his illegitimate daughter and her punk kid come to his own wife’s funeral.”