The felons ball, p.21
The Felons' Ball, page 21
“But why was he so upset?” Natalie said, already afraid she might not want to know the answer. “What did that matter?”
Rosemary sighed and perched on the edge of the chaise longue. “Ben was in rehab when Lanny left town,” she said. “It was his third or fourth stay at this facility down in North Carolina, and when he was gone, Lanny would make do on his own. Since it was Thanksgiving, your father invited him to stay with us, and he couldn’t figure out why Cassie was so upset about it. Then we got the blood tests. I wanted to go to the police, but your daddy told me he had a plan, to just leave the whole thing to him, so I did. When Ben came back from wherever it is he’d been, your daddy told him that we woke up on Thanksgiving morning and Lanny was gone. I forgot all about those old pictures. I threw them in the box with a million other old photos, and I never dreamed that Kaitlyn would pull them out.”
“I don’t understand.” Natalie’s face felt numb, with cold or shock. “Why didn’t you just say he left the day after Thanksgiving?”
“Do you remember the rain that week?” her mother said. “You were in the hospital, so you might not have been paying attention, but we got nearly twelve inches in twenty-four hours. Lanny couldn’t have left on the day after Thanksgiving, because the roads were bottomed out. His little car never would have made it.”
Her mother looked up, their eyes meeting, and Natalie wondered how it was possible she’d never noticed how clear they were—a pure unadulterated blue, like snowmelt.
“What about the postcards?” Natalie said. “Ben got those from Lanny for years. I saw them.”
Rosemary shrugged, as if small details like these hardly mattered. “Well, Leo could have written those,” she said. “He’s wonderful with imitating handwriting. Back in high school, he was always forging your grandfather’s signature on notes to get out of class. But I’m only guessing—I don’t really know what happened to Lanny. That’s the honest truth, Natalie. I never asked.”
“You’re lying.”
For the first time, her mother looked surprised. “Did I assume that your father had killed Lanny? Of course I did, but I didn’t know the details. I just knew that we had to get those pictures back from Ben. Your father was already sleeping, so I had to go myself. And he was very upset,” she said, her voice measured. “He kept saying that he had to do the right thing once in his life, for Lanny. When I told him what Lanny had done to you that night, it was as if he didn’t hear me. He went on and on about setting things right. He said he was going to go straight down to the sheriff’s department the next day and show him the photos that proved we’d lied.”
“But it was twelve years ago,” Natalie protested. “He didn’t have any real proof. Daddy could have said he’d gotten the date wrong, or blamed the cop who took the report.”
Her mother’s eyes flashed in a way that made her want to back quietly out of the room. “For goodness’s sake, Natalie, I wasn’t playing the goddamn lottery,” she snapped. “For all I knew, Hardy Underwood would have at least taken him seriously enough to open an investigation, and then what? I just couldn’t risk it.”
Natalie looked away. The longer she listened to her mother, the more likely she’d be to see her point of view, and she couldn’t let herself do that. She’d been the one to find Ben lying there, soaked in his own blood; she’d taken his hand, clammy and rubbery at the same time.
“They found Lanny’s car,” she said. “They just pulled it out of the lake. Is his body inside?”
Her mother sighed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I truly don’t know the details, but your father told me once that Lanny would never be found. I don’t think he would have said that if he’d put the body in the lake.” She stood up, rolling her shoulders back. “Excuse me, sweetheart. I have to call your father, and then I’ll have to talk to Mr. Singletary.”
“Why do you need to talk to a lawyer?”
“Well, I don’t know what your father will want to do,” her mother said. “What happened to Ben has been weighing on him quite a bit. He may decide that the best thing to do is for us to come clean.”
“What?” Natalie leaped to her feet. “Mama, he can’t make that kind of decision for you.”
Her mother smiled bleakly. “It doesn’t sit lightly on a person, killing someone you’ve known for forty years. Besides, prison didn’t seem so bad for Martha Stewart.”
“How can you sit here and make jokes at a time like this?” Natalie could hear her voice cracking, and to keep herself from breaking into tears, she made herself talk louder. “For fuck’s sake. You killed someone. Martha Stewart was in jail for insider trading, not murder.”
“Don’t you cuss at me, Natalie Rose.” The veins in her mother’s neck appeared, tight as violin strings. “And lower your voice, please.”
“Jesus, Mama—” Natalie began again, but then her watch beeped. It was three fifteen, and the You Are My Sunshine day care closed at three thirty. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “You only did what you did to protect Daddy. You don’t need to martyr yourself just to ease his conscience.”
Her mother shook her head, smiling. “Your father gave me everything,” she said. “What kind of person would I be if I wasn’t willing to give everything in return?”
38.
Natalie parked at the curb in front of the day care, pausing a minute to draw on her gloves and cinch her hood tight around her face. She hadn’t been able to reach Kaitlyn or Cassie on the phone, but she’d left messages that she hoped underlined the urgency of the situation. She needed her sisters to help her make sense of this. Their mother had bowed her head while her husband said a prayer for the repose of Ben Marsh’s soul, all the time having the vision in her mind of blood blooming from Ben’s chest, blood on the floor of the boat, blood on her smooth white hands. Someone had once given Rosemary a novelty tea towel that read “Love Is Knowing Where the Bodies Are Buried,” and apparently, in their family, that was more than a joke.
Cindy had gone all out decorating for Christmas, and between the plastic holly wreath and the paper bells taped to the door, it was hard to find a place to knock. Natalie waited a minute and then rapped again, smiling in spite of herself as she listened to the babble of voices inside. She could already feel Anjali’s warm, solid weight in her arms. She craved her niece’s presence, which would remind her that the Macreadys had produced at least one good thing.
The door was opened by a teenage girl Natalie had never seen before, wearing a men’s burgundy sweater and carrying a toddler in her arms. The toddler, a round-faced little boy in overalls and a knit hat with bear ears, wrapped his fist in the girl’s sweater and stared up at Natalie with his mouth open. Natalie tried to put on a pleasant face for his sake. “Hi, I’m Natalie Macready,” she said. “I’m here to pick up my niece, Anjali.”
The girl looked hesitant. “Come in,” she said, stepping back from the doorway. “I’ll go get Cindy.”
Natalie stamped her cold feet on the mat. In what had originally been the living room, a group of four preschool-age children sat on a rag rug, looking up at her as if they’d been interrupted in the middle of a business meeting.
The girl had disappeared, but she was back with Cindy before Natalie had shaken the numbness from her hands. Cindy wore a belligerent expression that Natalie didn’t know how to interpret. “Hi,” Natalie said, plastering on the same thin facsimile of a smile that her mother would have used in this situation. “How are you?”
Cindy gave a huffy laugh. “Imagine that,” she said. “Every other day she’s the last child to be picked up, and then today you’re early.”
Natalie checked her watch: she was early, but only by five minutes. She wondered if Cassie might owe Cindy money—could that be the reason for her attitude? “Well, I’m here now,” she said, widening her smile.
Cindy scoffed again, hands on her hips. “Lord, anybody could tell where you came from,” she said. “You’re your daddy’s girl through and through.”
Natalie felt the pressure of angry tears rising behind her eyes. After the day she’d had, it seemed so unfair that now she had to stand here and listen to Cindy Caldwell, who’d always hated her for no particular reason. “Where is she?” she asked. “I’ll just grab her and get out of your hair.”
“I know about you,” Cindy said, waving a finger in her face. “I know all about your family. The night he died, I told Ben he ought to know better than to mess with a little slut like you. And look what happened to him.” The kids on the rag rug were all staring now, and one little girl in a pink sweatshirt had started crying.
Natalie took a step closer, thinking how good it would feel to connect her palm to that smooth cheek. How satisfying it would be to yank those curls, to wrap Cindy’s red wig around her wrist and snap her head back. She had tried to take the principles of yoga seriously, but she was still a Macready.
But after everything that had happened today, she was not going to waste her time on a catfight with Cindy Caldwell. “I don’t know what was between you and Ben,” she said wearily. “And honestly, I don’t care anymore. Would you just go get Anjali, please?”
Cindy exchanged a look with the pale girl, and Natalie expected her to bustle away to the back room, but she didn’t move. “What?” Natalie said. “What’s wrong?” Surely Cindy had not hurt the baby, she thought. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t that kind of crazy.
Cindy crossed her arms over her chest. “She’s not here.” There was defiance in her voice, but also something that sounded a lot like fear.
“What?” Natalie’s voice rose. “Cindy, you tell me right fucking now what you’ve done with my niece.” The pale girl gasped, and the boy in her arms imitated her, his mouth a perfect O.
Cindy’s eyes were still hard, but her chin trembled, and now Natalie could see the fear in her eyes. “She’s with Luke,” she said.
39.
From the driveway, Natalie called Luke, but it went immediately to voicemail. Cindy wouldn’t tell her anything else—where Luke had taken Anjali, or why—and Natalie hadn’t wanted to waste time arguing with her. It didn’t make sense that Luke had picked up Anjali, unless maybe Cassie had asked both of them, and simply forgotten that she’d double-booked. The curtains twitched, and Natalie could see Cindy’s pinched, frowny face glaring out at her, so she hurriedly put the car in reverse and backed out.
She could drive up to the farmhouse on Bible Camp Road, but what would she say when she arrived? If Luke was simply doing a favor for Cassie, he wouldn’t react well to the idea that Natalie felt the need to check up on him. If she got there and found Anjali napping in her car seat on the kitchen floor while he fixed a broken cabinet, she would need an excuse. Maybe she could say she wanted to borrow something of Kaitlyn’s—a book, a casserole dish, a yoga top. It was lame, but he would buy it; Natalie and Kaitlyn had been the same size before Kaitlyn’s pregnancy, and traded clothes so often that they sometimes forgot what belonged to whom.
Her thoughts returned to Lanny, that old car rising to the surface like some primitive creature of the deep. She couldn’t bring herself to be sorry he was dead, but she felt a little sick when she thought about how her father and Leo had talked about him all these years, as if he’d been the golden boy, their heir apparent. If she saw her father at Rotary or a church picnic, chances were good that he’d end up telling a story about Lanny—the time he’d sweet-talked the old principal out of suspending him after he was caught with weed in his locker, or the time, age twelve, he’d towed Kaitlyn’s unicorn float all the way across the lake on a dare, swimming with the rope between his teeth. If the Macreadys and Ben were the Duke boys, then Lanny was supposed to be the second generation, raising hell from one end of the county to the other, and his flight from home had been, she’d believed, the great sadness of her father’s life.
Except it had all been theater. All of it—the fond stories, the nostalgia—was meant to distract the audience from the fact that Lanny Marsh was not wandering around the Pacific on a merchant ship, but dead and gone for twelve years now. Until Ben had found out, and proved that his loyalty was not to the Macreadys, after all.
If Natalie had turned her head the other way, she never would have seen it. If, when she came to the intersection of Goshen Street and Highway 82, she’d been looking at the Texaco station rather than at the studio, she wouldn’t have glimpsed the back end of the truck, just visible behind the corner of the building. But she did see it, and braked suddenly, making the Chevy that had been riding her ass through downtown squeal around her, the Skoal-hat-wearing driver leaning out the window to point her way and lick the V between his fingers. She sat for a moment, heart pounding, and then turned in the middle of the road and pulled into the studio lot.
Visitors to the studio rarely left their cars in the back. Unless you had the code to the rear door, it was easier to park in the side lot by the main entrance. Somehow, though, before she even rounded the corner, she knew that she would find that back door open and that the truck would turn out to be Luke’s, the tricked-out F-150 that he’d insisted on leasing even when Kaitlyn barely had enough money for groceries.
Natalie was already halfway to the door when she turned around, went to the passenger side of her car, and reached into the glove compartment for the pink-skinned Glock 19. The magazine was in a pink camo pouch under the car’s owner manual, but it felt lighter than it should have, and when she checked it, her stomach sank: she’d forgotten to load it after the last time her dad took her to the range. Her hands were shaking as she reached for the paper box of ammo—her dad had always said to keep it separate, but thank God she’d never bothered to listen—and shook the bullets into her palm. The magazine took fifteen, but she loaded only five, wincing as the hard metal edges pressed into the skin of her thumbs. She clicked the magazine into place, then checked the safety and slipped the Glock into her purse.
It wasn’t as if she was going to actually use it, she told herself. She couldn’t even put her finger on what she was afraid of, but just knowing the gun was there made her feel better, the sick feeling in her gut dissipating slightly.
Natalie moved through the doorway, and as she paused, she realized that she could hear Anjali babbling from inside one of the studios. She sounded neither hurt nor scared, and Natalie’s knees went weak with relief. She walked forward cautiously and looked through the open door into Studio A, where her niece was sitting on a half mat in her puffy winter coat, eating a pouch of pureed apples.
“Time to get going, honeybunch,” Luke called from the hallway. When he caught sight of Natalie, he looked surprised, but not as if her presence worried or upset him. “Hey there,” he said. “You forget something?”
He was wearing a duffel bag over his shoulder, and the shape of his jacket kept her from seeing if there was a holster at his waist. But of course there was, Natalie thought; Luke didn’t even go to the grocery store without a gun.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m just here to pick up Anjali. Cassie asked me to bring her back to the lake.”
“No can do,” Luke said, still in the same chillingly upbeat tone. “She’s coming with me, right, pumpkin?” Anjali looked up and gave him a fleeting smile. “I just stopped by to relieve you of some of that extra cash in the register. I know you don’t even pay Kaitlyn for half the time she spends in here.”
“You can’t do that.” Natalie gauged the distance between Anjali and Luke. The baby was closer to him than she was to Natalie, which meant she couldn’t risk a sudden move. “I don’t care about the cash,” she added, in case he’d misunderstood her. “But you can’t take Anjali.”
“She’s my daughter,” he said.
Natalie’s mouth was dry as sand, and she made herself swallow before she could speak. “Did Cassie tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to tell me. Look at her.”
They both looked, but from Natalie’s perspective, Anjali didn’t look any more like Luke than she did like Jay. Her skin, eyes, and hair were the same color as Cassie’s. She might as well have been born by osmosis, like a paramecium.
“Cassie said it only happened once,” Natalie said.
Luke had that familiar cocky look that she used to think was sort of cute, head tilted back and to the side. He’d been longing to tell someone how he’d finally gotten the girl he’d been pining after for years, and so he was even willing to tell Natalie about it now, when it should have been clear that she was trying her best to stall him. “Once is all it takes, Natalie. I did the math.”
“But do you know for sure?”
Luke scoffed. “I don’t need a damn paternity test, if that’s what you’re asking. I knew as soon as I saw her at the Felons’ Ball, and I went straight to Cassie and confronted her. She thought she could buy me off.” There was contempt in his voice. “As if I would sell my child.”
“But you can’t just take her,” she said. “You need Cassie’s permission. Otherwise it’s parental kidnapping.” She had no idea how she knew this term, or whether what she’d said was even true, but it seemed to give Luke pause. “What about Kaitlyn?” she tried. “What about your wife and her baby? You’re just going to leave them and disappear?”
His mouth twisted. “She’s been planning to leave me, did you know that? That bitch Amanda wrote her a check for five thousand dollars. The only reason she isn’t already gone is that she can’t find a car.”
Natalie thought of the little convertible that she’d been planning to get rid of before someone shattered the windshield at the Felons’ Ball. Shortly before that night, she’d promised to sell that car to Kaitlyn—the car that would have made it possible for her to leave her husband.
“Jesus, Luke,” she said, shaking her head. “You smashed my windshield, didn’t you? I bet it was your idea to put the roofies in Cassie’s drink on the night of the boat crash. You gave Lanny that cup to give to her, so you could rape her on the party boat.”
