Daddy's Girl (14 page)

N
at steered the Volvo along the last stretch of country road on the way to the Saunders house. Raindrops pounded on the hood of the car and sliced the night in front of her headlights, which froze them like a camera flash, making vision difficult. She’d checked for pickups on the way, but none had a Delaware plate. Still, she was relieved to finally reach Barb Saunders’s house. She parked, grabbed her purse, and, putting it over her head, got out of the Volvo and ran up the driveway to the front door. She rang the bell. The door was opened quickly by Barb’s sister Jennifer.

“Come in! It’s pouring!” she said, hurrying Nat inside. “Can I take your coat?”

“Yes, thanks.” Nat slid out of her coat, trying not to get water everywhere, and while Jennifer left to hang it up, she scanned the living room. Duct tape crisscrossed the couch cushions where they had been slashed, and the computer workstation looked bizarre without the computer, like an eye socket without an eye. The children’s books and DVDs had been returned to the shelves, but one of the drawers in the credenza hung by a screw, broken.

It’s under the floor.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jennifer said, returning, and Nat looked over in alarm.

“You do?”

“You wonder what’s wrong with people. To burglarize a house during a funeral. It’s sick.”

“I know.” Nat could see that the family had tried to put the room back together. Soft yellow lights shone from a remaining lamp, the TV played on mute, and sharp red Legos and large Tonka trucks were strewn across the shag rug. From the kitchen came the shouts of little boys and the homey aroma of boiled hot dogs.

“How bad is the rain?” Jennifer asked.

“Bad.”

“Thank God it’s not snow. These kids
have
to go back to school next week. We couldn’t take a snow day.” Jennifer flared her eyes comically. “Between her three and my two, I’m going crazy.” She picked up a yellow rain slicker from the couch. “I’m taking my nephews out to the movies, so you and Barb can talk in peace.”

“Thanks.” Nat felt a familiar dread. She’d been waiting to do this for days but still felt unready. “How is she?”

“Hanging in, for the kids. She’s a great mom.” Jennifer leaned closer, zipping up her coat. “If she gets a migraine, call my house. I left my home number on the table. My mom is there, with my kids.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Come with me,” Jennifer said to Nat, heading for the kitchen and calling out, “Anybody in here wanna go to the movies and eat too much candy?”

“Yes!” “Yeah!” “Aunt Jen!” the three boys shouted together. “Let’s go! Can I get Milk Duds?”

The cacophony took Nat back to the Greco household, so long ago. Or maybe Monday night.

“Hello, Nat.” Barb rose from her knees, where she’d crouched to help her youngest son with his coat. Her eyes were a tired hazel and her blond hair had been brushed back into a loose clip. She wore a black cardigan and jeans and managed a shaky smile. “Thanks for coming back. I felt so bad about last time.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Nat waved her off. “Hi, guys,” she said to the kids, who were zipping their coats with complete absorption.

“Say hello to Professor Greco.” Barb tapped the boys on their puffy shoulders.

“Hello, Pefefe Greco,” the older one said.

“I want Milk Duds,” said the middle one.

“Okay, kids, see ya later.” Barb bent down and kissed her sons on their smooth cheeks, making a cute little grunt each time. “Be good for your aunt. One candy apiece and that’s
it
.”

“See ya, honey.” Jennifer gave Barb a quick kiss, waved to Nat, and packed off the kids, who toddled out the door in their thick coats, their SpongeBob mittens dangling from clips on their sleeves. The door closed behind them, and the house fell abruptly quiet.

“Whew.” Barb sighed, mock-collapsing at the knees. “They’re funny, aren’t they?”

“They’re adorable.” Nat marveled at the tag team of women taking care of five children between them. “I can’t imagine what this has been like for them, and you.”

“They did okay at the service. I was proud of them. They don’t understand much, really. Now, the burglary, they understood. Someone messed up their
Bob the Builder
.” Barb made a child’s frown. “That they cried over. It was like it all got to them, all at once.”

Nat felt for them. “Moms don’t get enough credit, do they?”

“That’s the
truth
.” Barb crossed to the coffeemaker. “Would you like a cup?”

“If it’s no trouble. Can I help?”

“Sit down. It’s all made. All I do is make coffee. Jen handles everything, between the cops and the TV people.” Barb picked up the glass pot and poured coffee into an ivory mug that read, West Chester University. “How do you take it?”

“Black is fine.”

“Great.” Barb brought the coffee to the table, which was covered with a white tablecloth of wipe-clean plastic. A line of Chips Ahoy and Fig Newtons sat on a plate like fallen dominoes. Barb stood, hovering. “You want something to eat? If you don’t like cookies, I have grown-up food.”

“No, thanks.”

“You’re sure? The roast beef was a big hit.”

“No, that’s fine.” Nat waited for Barb to sit down, then realized that she was stalling. She wanted to know and didn’t want to know, just like Nat wanted to tell and didn’t want to tell. “Sit down, Barb,” Nat said softly.

“Okay.” Barb sank slowly into a chair across the small table, folding her hands at the edge of the table. There was a glass of water at her right, which Nat knew she would need.

Don’t pretty it up.
“Would you like me to tell you what happened, or do you want to ask me questions?”

Barb swallowed, visibly. “I want you to tell me everything, and then I want to ask you questions. I do have some, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind.” The kitchen was quiet except for the pounding rain outside. A warm golden light emanated from an overhead lamp. Nat lay her hand down on the table. “Gimme your hand, and we’ll get through this together.”

Barb put her hand in Nat’s.

“Good girl.” Nat began the story from when she saw Graf coming out of the staff office, then noticed that Ron Saunders was still alive on the floor.

“Did he…suffer?” Barb interjected, her voice wavering.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Thank God.” Barb blinked tears away. “Thank you, Jesus.”

Nat waited for her to recover her composure.

“You tried to save him, I know,” Barb said, after a moment.

“I did.” Nat felt a stab of guilt. She described what she did, then brought the story to her point. “He did give me a message for you.”

Barb gasped. “He did?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say he loved me?”

Tell the truth. You’re just the messenger.
Nat answered, “Honestly, he could only get a few words out, and he had another important message for you.”

“He didn’t say he loved me?” Barb’s lower lip puckered, and tears welled in her eyes. She grabbed a napkin and dabbed at them, smudging her mascara. “Not anything? Not even my name? The boys?” She held the napkin at the corner of her eye.

Nat squeezed her other hand. “Barb, do you have any doubt in this world that your husband loved you and the boys?”

“No. We were happy.”

“Then feel it. Know it. Because he told me a message you
don’t
know. I promised him I would tell you.”

Barb lowered the napkin, her eyes reddish. “Okay, what?”

“He said, ‘Tell my wife, it’s under the floor.’”

“What?” Barb frowned, her forehead a network of premature wrinkles. “What’s under the floor?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“I don’t know what that means. What floor? What’s under it?” Barb ran a trembling finger-rake through her hair. “What kind of message is that?”

Nat didn’t know if she should go further. “Can you handle it if I tell you something that’s worrying me?”

Barb kept frowning. “Sure.”

“I’m worried that the burglary here wasn’t coincidental. Since the cushions were slashed, it looks like it wasn’t a real burglary. It looks like—”

“Somebody was looking for something? That’s what my mom said, too.”

“Do you know what it could be?”

“No idea.” Barb blinked, mystified, but Nat didn’t have the heart to tell her Angus’s suspicions.

“Barb, was Ron friends with Joe Graf?”

“Sure, Joe was his best friend. We went out with them all the time.” Suddenly, Barb’s blue eyes rounded. “My God! I know what Ron means! I remember now!”

“What?” Nat asked, then caught herself. “Wait. It’s not my business.” Still, she was dying to know what was under the damn floor.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Barb said excitedly. “Ron has a workshop in the garage. He used to keep things under the floor there. It was like his hiding place. We put our wills in there, which we got after Timothy was born, and also life insurance papers, because it’s fireproof.”

“Do you think that’s what he meant? Was he talking about your wills?”

“No. We both knew where our wills were. My sister knows, too. He must have put something else there for me. Something I don’t know about.” Barb leapt to her feet, full of new purpose. “Come on!”

Nat rose, and Barb was already in motion, leaving the kitchen.

“I have to warn you,” she said, over her shoulder. “There’s a video we made there, too. Nothing hardcore, just dumb stuff, for us. We put it there so the kids wouldn’t find it.” She giggled, then her smile faded. They hustled through the living room to a door. “That can’t be what he meant, can it? Why would anybody want to find that?”

Nat lingered at the threshold while Barb opened the door, flicked on a panel of fluorescent lights, and hurried to a corner of the garage and rolled aside a green Rubbermaid trash can on wheels. She bent over and moved a box of old rags aside to reveal a large door in the floor, which had apparently been installed when the concrete had been poured.

Nat held her breath as Barb moved the heavy lid aside.

T
he two women stood over a square hole almost as big as a safe.

The hole stood empty, and its contents sat stacked on the concrete floor—a videotape labeled, Barb and Ron’s Excellent Adventure, two life insurance policies, a joint last will and testament in a blue backer, and four old copies of
Playboy
.

It’s under the floor?
Nat couldn’t explain it.

Barb looked over at her in confusion. “There’s nothing under the floor. What’s going on?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe there’s something in the magazines?” Nat picked up the magazines and thumbed through them, like a flip book of flesh tones. Subscription cards blew out and fluttered to the floor. She picked them up, examined them for good measure, then stuck them back in one of the magazines. “Nothing.”

Barb moaned, covering her face with her hands. “Ron, what do you mean?”

Nat went over and touched her back, spiny in the thin knit. “Is there another floor hiding place?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what he meant.”

“Neither do I.” Barb lifted her face, now tinged with red. “That’s a great message, lemme tell you.”

“I’m so sorry. Maybe I misunderstood.” Nat flashed on Saunders dying. “What else could he have said? ‘It’s under the door?’ Do you have a door we could look under?”

“No.”

“Core? Shore? Boor? Sore? Tour? Fore? More? Lore? Any of that make sense to you?”

“No. Thanks a whole helluva lot, Ron!” Barb said, her mood darkening. She gritted her teeth. “Great message, hon!
Not
that you love me!
Not
that you love our kids!” She picked up a
Playboy
and threw it at the wall, knocking into one of the levels hanging there. “Just look under the floor. For your friggin’
porn!
”

“Maybe it’s here but we’re just not seeing it.”

“Like where?” Barb whirled around on her sneakers.

“Anywhere.” Nat surveyed the room, looking for a clue. It was a garage used for a workshop and storage area. Hammers and saws hung neatly on a brown pegboard on one wall, next to a tall metal toolbox on wheels, stacks of tiny plastic drawers, and a Craftsman workbench. Kids’ toys and bikes, balls and Wiffle bats, and a plastic Little Tykes three-wheeler sat stowed in boxes toward the front of the room, against the metal garage door, the kind that slid up. The rain thundered outside, the room uninsulated from noise and cold.

Barb eyed the place, her hands resting on her hips. “I suppose I could look some more. He was so handy. He could have hidden something here. Or even in the house.”

“I’ll help you. We could search pretty thoroughly, together. Let’s start here, then if we don’t find anything, we’ll look in the house, under some rugs, okay?”

“Okay.” Barb sighed, pushing up the knit sleeves of her sweater. “We’ve got three hours before the boys get home.”

“Then let’s get busy.”

It wasn’t until ten o’clock that Nat hit the road, driving home through the dark countryside in a continuous downpour. Hard rain pounded the car’s roof, and the wipers worked frantically to clear the windshield. There were only a few other cars on the road, but she drove cautiously in the storm, too nervous to call Angus or Hank. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts anyway, which tumbled over themselves in confusion.

She and Barb had searched everywhere, but they hadn’t found anything under the floor, much less money from drug sales or otherwise. Maybe the burglars had taken whatever they were looking for, or whatever it was was never there in the first place. Maybe Nat had misunderstood Saunders, or he had been delirious, in extremis. Either way, she felt terrible for delivering a message that made no sense, and for linking the message to a burglary that may have been just a burglary. She had been playing sleuth and failing miserably. She was a lousy Nancy Drew.

Rain fell so hard that the wipers couldn’t keep up. The headlights fought the mist rising from the melting snow and were losing the battle. Ice and slush pooled along the side of the winding road, spraying from the Volvo’s tires. She accelerated only gently and passed a homemade orange sign that read,
CAUTION—HORSE AND WIFE CROSSING.
Somehow it made her think of Angus.

Natalie, listen.

Suddenly light flooded the Volvo, from headlights blasting behind her, and she felt a reflexive tremor from the accident last night. She’d been too preoccupied to check for black pickups. She looked in the rearview. It wasn’t a pickup behind her, but a state police cruiser. Flashing lights on its roof flickered red, white, and blue in the storm. She checked her speedometer. Forty-five miles an hour. What had the last sign said? Thirty-five?

Damn
. She’d been speeding. The cruiser flashed its headlights, illuminating the interior of the Volvo, and she pulled over, cut the ignition, and braked. She went into her purse and retrieved her wallet while the familiar wide-brimmed silhouette appeared at her door. She wondered if it would be Milroy or another trooper she knew. She lowered the window, blinking against the rain spraying inside, but she didn’t recognize him. She couldn’t see much of his features, only his profile, visible in the headlights from the cruiser. Droplets dotted his steel-rimmed glasses, and a plastic cover, like a shower cap, protected his hat.

“You’re going too fast for these conditions, Miss,” the trooper said, his voice almost drowned out by the rain. “License and registration, please.”

“Sorry,” Nat said, hoping for a warning. She handed her ID and registration through the open part of the window, and the trooper stuck them on his little clipboard, where they could get soaked.

“Please wait here.” The trooper went back to the cruiser, and Nat slid the window up, fighting a free-floating anxiety. What if he wasn’t a real trooper? She’d seen reports like that in the news. She hadn’t asked him for ID. She twisted around in the seat, shielding her eyes from the high beams. The multicolored lights on his roof were still flashing. It was a real state police car.

Stay outta Chester County
.

Nat felt a tingle of paranoia. No one knew she was here. She rooted in her bag for her cell phone to call Hank. She pressed his speed dial, but he didn’t pick up, and she didn’t leave a message. She went to Plan B, holding the phone up to the light to see the numbers for information, then asked for the hospital’s phone number. The call connected after a minute, and the hospital operator picked up.

“Angus Holt, please,” Nat said, just as the trooper reappeared at her window, with his clipboard and a long white ticket book. She flipped the phone closed and put it back in her purse, then lowered the window.

“Please step outside the car, Ms. Greco.”

“In the rain?”

“Step outside, please.”

Nat felt oddly nervous. She reached for her purse and fumbled for her cell phone, but it must have slipped to the bottom of her purse. She groped for it but couldn’t find it in the dark.

“Ms. Greco? Now.”

Calm down.
Nat opened the door and got out in the storm, and the trooper stepped aside and faced her. She still had her coat on but cold rain poured onto her head. She tensed her shoulders so it wouldn’t run down her neck and covered her head with her hands.

“Please wait a minute,” the trooper said. He switched on a black flashlight and aimed it inside the Volvo’s front seat, where the beam danced a jitterbug over the front seat.

“Will this be long? This is torrential—”

BOOM! Suddenly there was an earsplitting blast. Something exploded from the cop’s head. Warmth splattered across Nat’s face. The trooper’s hat flew off in the air. He dropped the flashlight and crumpled to the wet street.

Nat screamed. She whirled around in the pounding rain. A silhouette in a black ski mask stood on the far side of her car, out of the cruiser’s headlights. He held a gun, smoke snaking from its barrel.

“Run, bitch!” said the figure.

Nat felt stunned for a split second, then bolted across the street in terror, as hard as she could in the pouring rain. She began screaming but rain drowned the sound. She tore into a dark field of snow and mud. She sprinted forward in the darkness, pinwheeling her arms to keep her balance. Slush churned up around her, soaking her boots. A dark tree loomed in front of her. She darted to avoid it. Branches tore her cheek. She couldn’t see a thing in the rain. She ran with her hands in front of her. There were no buildings or lights. She didn’t even know if she was running in a straight line.

She glanced back. The Volvo sat on the road, lit up by the police cruiser. Freezing rain slaked her face and soaked her. Her lungs felt about to burst. She panted with exertion. She tried to think through her panic. What was happening? Was he coming after her? There were no houses around. Her cell was in the car. She kept running.

A loud neighing cut through the rain, a sound so piercing she felt it in her chest. Suddenly horses were galloping around her, massive shadows speeding in the dark. They snorted and blew, their hooves crunching through ice and sucking mud. Nat stood stock still, too terrified to move, screaming as they stampeded past. A heavy haunch bumped her in the shoulder, spinning her around, and she fell down in the muck. Hooves pounded around her, spraying mud. She got up as soon as she could, checking behind her.

The two parked cars were far away now, their lights like dots. The herd of horses passed, their hooves pounding ahead of her. She couldn’t stop to catch her breath. She kept going, wiping mud and rain from her face. Then she saw it. A large building with a tiny light on.

“HELP!” she hollered, hurling herself forward toward the building. She ran to a three-rail fence and half flung herself, half fell over the top, landing on her butt in the freezing snow. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the building, feeling her boots strike something hard. Gravel. A driveway. She spotted a metal handle. A door. She found the handle, yanked with all her might, and the door rolled aside. She bolted out of the rain and into the dark building.

“HELP ME!” >she yelled, and her own terror echoed in the darkness.