Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (15 page)

“What’s the big deal there? Do I have to remind you how long you’ve been away from your game and what you’ve been through lately?”

“No, of course not, but—”

“Fine. Cut yourself some slack and start over. Start with where you were accusing Nate of—”

“I’m not accusing Nate of anything! I’m questioning where Hollingsworth came by his assumption. I thought Nate might know. Or you, by association.”

“I can’t think of a connection at the moment and I have
no
idea what you were talking about when you were suddenly reduced to shit.”

“Oh the hell with it . . . I asked Nate not to tell you—or anyone—when we stumbled across an extremely plausible theory into the cause of Rayce’s death. This occurred soon after Nate returned from Glen Abbey that day. You remember, it was the day he went there for my father’s burial clothes and to collect some personal items for me.”

“You better believe I remember because it was also the day I ripped into Nate for turning down Colin’s offer.”

Without further ado, Laurel relates the story in one outpouring broken only by occasional muffled gasps from Amanda, who can be envisioned openmouthed and goggle-eyed at this news. On second thought, that could be the wrong image; Amanda has come too far too fast to still be playing the eternally thunderstruck ingénue.

“I shouldn’t act so surprised. I was half expecting to hear something like that after seeing in this morning’s paper that the cops over there are taking another look at the way Rayce died,” Amanda says. “Yeah, it’s all makes sense now—new information, new investigation. But I’m not sure I understand why you asked Nate not to tell anyone. Were you afraid if word got out the investigation would be tainted in some way? Or did Scotland Yard impose a gag order when you told them?”

“Scotland Yard knows nothing about this.”

“Wait a minute. You just got through telling me something that’ll crack the Vaughn case wide open and you
didn’t
share this information with the authorities? I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all!”

“Think about it, Amanda. While we were confined together in New York, you saw how hard Colin took my father’s death and David’s. You saw him take on blame for those losses, you saw what that did to him. And I know you’re aware of how he felt about Rayce, so just imagine how he might react if it turns out he was unwittingly instrumental in Rayce’s death. What might
that
do to him? Where might
that
send him?”

“Oh . . . I didn’t think about . . . that.”

“Well I did, and now I’m between the proverbial rock and hard place because if Colin learns about this from a third party and
doesn’t
suffer a serious setback . . .”

“Got it. He could find out that you knew all along and kept it from him.”

“Precisely. And
everybody
knows how he feels about being kept in the dark.”

“Especially Nate.”

“Yes and let me state for the record that Nate was against not telling him. Very much against. Right from the start. I intend to make that perfectly clear if . . . when push really does come to shove.”

“Okay. I’m getting the whole picture now. Overall you’re attempting to protect Colin by concealing evidence from a law enforcement agency—stupid move, Laurel—and now you’re trying to plug a leak you think could be coming from Emmet Hollingsworth. Do I need to tell you what—”

“No! I know what I have to do. I knew long before now. I knew the chance I was taking when I swore Nate to secrecy. I took it anyway and now I have to pay.”

“Do you have someone there to see you through this? Is your sister nearby? I never did hear how that worked out.”

“It didn’t work out. Wishful thinking seldom does. Emily’s still in school in New Haven where she’ll remain at least until the semester’s over. We were too late in the year to find a slot for her over here. But that’s beside the point. When have I ever needed someone to see me through?”

“Always. You were always too proud and stubborn to admit it, though.”

“You sound just like David.”

“Well, I’m not exactly without his influence, you know. And if you’ll forgive the audacity, I
am
trying to think of what he would do right now.”

“Is that anything like asking ‘what would Jesus do?’, that ridiculous legend I’ve seen on bumper stickers and T-shirts?”

“You could say, but without channeling him—David, I mean—I do have an idea about where Hollingsworth may have come up with these assumptions that have you in such a tizzy.”

“Let’s hear it . . . please.”

“You’ve read Hollingsworth’s resume, right?”

“Yes, of course. I reviewed it only this morning.”

“Then you noticed that he attended a couple of American universities, one of them being Penn.”

“I did . . . So?”

“So did Brownell Yates.”

“The gonzo investigative reporter turned music journalist?”

“Yeah. He was a classmate of Nate’s. So was Hollingsworth, as it turns out.”

“Good lord, I almost forgot Nate went to Penn. Now I see. Now I see where you’re going with this.”

“Then you’re remembering that Yates approached Nate at the Concert for Rayce—I’m sure I told you about that when everything else came out—and Nate agreed to meet with him the morning after the concert and listen to the wacko theories and prophesies he was kicking around.”

“Yes, you did tell me and I am remembering . . . although I’d rather not.”

“That’s certainly understandable. Who wouldn’t prefer to forget that Yates’s theories weren’t so wacko after all? I could live happily ever after if I never had to hear another theory and that’s not gonna happen because here I go theorizing that Yates was in touch with Hollingsworth—or the other way around—because it’s only logical to believe they could’ve been clueing each other in the way former classmates do—I mean, isn’t that what these old-boy-network secret-handshake things are all about?”

“I’d love to believe that’s all it’s about. I’d love to think I didn’t have anything more to worry about than the capture and conviction of the Jakeway rat-bastard—as though
that’s
not enough to worry about.” A bitter little laugh comes out like a cough when she switches the receiver to her other ear to relieve the one that’s starting to throb. “I hate this, Amanda, this talking about Colin as though he’s a delicate piece of porcelain to be cushioned at all costs. I feel as though I’m objectifying him by trying to spare him and that makes me no better than those publicists I wanted to strangle the day I met him. I’m as bad as Nate was when he was at his protective worst.”

“No you’re not. Don’t be silly. You love Colin. You’re frightened for him and for yourself. And don’t rule out the influence of those hormones you blamed earlier. You wouldn’t be the first expectant mother to have skewed judgment and go overboard about something.”

“I’ll cop to the questionable judgment, but I’m not sure I can agree about going overboard.”

“Well haven’t you? With your worries about a supposed leak, I mean? C’mon, Laurel, now that I’ve had a minute or two to think about it, there’s no way Hollingsworth—or Yates, for that matter—could know what you and Nate know about switching coke for headache powder. No way, Jose.”

Amanda goes on unraveling arguments and downgrading fears in a manner suggesting she is indeed channeling David. She makes perfect sense, as David would, by isolating the only issues worth examining and drawing the obvious conclusions.

“I
totally
share your apprehension—in your shoes I’d be just as scared—but you
have
to tell Colin or there’ll be hell to pay down the road,” Amanda warns.

“I know, I
know
,” Laurel says. “And if I don’t release Nate from his promise and share what we know with law enforcement agencies on both sides of the pond . . .” She leaves it at that, thanks Amanda for her time, if not her advice, and ends the call.

Simon is still sound asleep when she looks in on him and nothing is stirring when she goes down the front stairs and wanders into the cavernous great hall with no real purpose.

Today the hall is churchlike in its silence, the ideal place for contemplation if contemplation wasn’t what she was trying to avoid. The little cat yawns up at her from one of the immense sofas. She strokes him in passing and generates a connection to the first time she was alone with him in this intimidating space—shortly before news came of Rayce’s death and so soon after her arrival here that she didn’t know the difference between the ground floor and the first floor.

The bittersweet memory returns her to the sofa, where she sits down beside the cat and surrenders to contemplation. She takes a stab at getting in touch with her own better judgment; she pokes and prods Amanda’s sound judgment without finding any holes in it. She ticks off on her fingers all the reasons her fears should be laid to rest. The flicking motion invites the cat to play.

When the cat becomes bored, they both leave the sofa, stretch and go their separate ways. Laurel’s way takes her past the grand piano that’s seldom played now that the remote studio is fully operational. Because the piano has fallen out of regular use, the papers scattered across its broad black surface seem especially out of place.

Although she’s breaking her own rule by picking up after someone else, she gathers the papers into a neat pile. In the process, she identifies pages torn from books and writing tablets mixed in with sheets of hotel stationery. They all contain poetry of one kind or another, either handwritten in stylized script or, in the case of the book pages, beautifully lithographed.

Unless Anthony’s been challenged by a crash course on dead poets, the material must be Colin’s. She’s ready to set the tidied stack aside and caution Colin to set a better example for both boys when something about the top page catches her eye.

The margins are dotted with designs she at first mistakes for her brand of meaningless doodles until they emerge as a form of editorial comment stressing one line, questioning another, emphasizing yet another. As revelatory as they might prove to be, she has to blank out the margin notes in order to concentrate on the main text.

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

To win me soon to hell, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

She reads it again, this time with her lips moving and her mind fully engaged. Shakespeare. Sonnet 144, the one she never quite understood no matter how many times her literature professor father went over it with her. But now she’s goosebumping at an interpretation never before considered and losing her tenuous grip on the courage that was going to see her do the right thing.

Another page selected at random does nothing to restore that grip. On this page she recognizes Longfellow without remembering the title, recognizes theme without reading the entire poem, and is drawn to the significance of the final stanza.

But who shall dare

To measure loss and gain in this wise?

Defeat may be victory in disguise;

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Her focus moves to the first stanza of the next example.

Virtue runs before the muse

And defies her skill,

She is rapt, and doth refuse

To wait a painter’s will.

Emerson, if she’s not mistaken, and the one after that is Thomas Paine, the excerpt Colin recited with her at Jockey Hollow the day she got carried away over the winter soldiers and their need for lumber.

“What we obtain too cheap . . . We esteem too lightly” she murmurs the line underscored in red and comprehension sweeps through her like a draft from an open window. This hodgepodge collection of papers comprises the writings Rayce called into play when his own words failed to summon Colin from the depths.

She picks up the entire stack and hugs it to her. No professional thought to do as much, and no devoted friend or father figure could have done more. She loses herself in comparisons with her own father’s often heroic efforts to heal and uplift with the words of others. The thought is so warming, so captivating she could have fallen under a spell—a spell that’s abruptly broken when Toby, Anthony’s terrier, streaks through the room in hot pursuit of the little cat and shouts and laughter announce the return of the oasthouse adventurers.

Colin comes in smelling of greenery and fresh sweat. He nods acknowledgement of the bundle in her arms; his pleased expression assumes her awareness of what she’s holding.