Leavenworth, in the name of Christ Jesus.
“Bobby,” Myra said.
“I’m here,” Bobby said. “Just a minute. I was changing when you called.”
“Stop changing for a minute. This is serious.”
“Myra, with you everything is serious.”
Myra snorted. “Stop acting like my algebra teacher. You’re as worried about this as I am. And you know it’s important. You said yourself—”
“I remember what I said, Myra.”
“When you want to,” Myra said. “I’ve called them. They’re coming. Whether that’s going to do the trick, I don’t know.”
“It can’t hurt. At least it will take his mind off us. If he runs that audit—”
“I don’t know,” Myra said. “The company has to be audited sometime.”
“This would be a directors’ audit,” Bobby said, “not the usual annual pain in the ass. You know he just wants to cause trouble—”
“Maybe he does,” Myra said, “but—”
“And don’t forget. You’re the one on the books with thirty thousand nobody knows where it came from. Except you, of course.”
There was a pause on the line. “That was low, Bobby. That was very low.”
“I’m not your husband,” Bobby said. “You can’t fool me. If you hadn’t had a stake in this yourself, you’d have left me to paddle my own canoe.”
“Maybe I should have.”
“I could answer that, Myra, but I don’t want to be indiscreet over the phone.”
There was another pause, a longer one this time. Bobby felt a little spurt of fear climb up his spine. Myra was a smart woman, and a vindictive one. And right at this moment, he needed her. He needed her more than she could know.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. And we don’t have anything to worry about now. They’re coming. It’ll take care of everything.”
“I hope so, Bobby.”
“I know so. He’ll be so worked up over Bennis, he won’t have time for us.”
“Are you sure there isn’t something you’re not telling me?” Myra said. “You haven’t, oh, fiddled with the books or anything? Because if you have—”
“What would I have to fiddle with the books for, Myra? Remember me? I’m the one who got the most money.”
“I remember. You’d think the old goat could just have made a will like everybody else. I wish he had. Maybe somebody would have killed him for it.”
“That’s a very indiscreet thing to say over the phone.”
“Only if he shows up murdered,” Myra said. “All right, Bobby. It’s all set up. Anne Marie’s expecting you on the twenty-third. Try to make it for dinner. There’s a guest.”
“With Mother this ill?”
“You know Daddy.”
The phone went to dial tone.
Bobby replaced the receiver. His mouth felt dry. His chest felt heavy. It hit him suddenly that he was forty-four years old, no longer too young for a heart attack.
6
In the telephone stall off the first floor sitting room at Engine House, Myra stared at the old-fashioned metal phone and wondered if she’d done the right thing. Get them here, Bobby had said. She had certainly done that. Or would have, when they arrived. Which every last one of them would.
Still, it might have been better if she’d told them the truth. The whole truth. Like the fact that Mother wasn’t securely home from the hospital and doing just fine, but dying. Like the fact that Anne Marie was having some kind of nervous breakdown. Like the fact that Daddy was on the warpath for real this time.
Of course, with that kind of information, some of them might not have come.
She tapped the phone table restlessly, then reached up to stroke the brooch she was wearing, a shiny tin Christmas ball Mother had made as a child. On the table’s polished obsidian surface lay an oversize white visiting card, scribbled over and splotched with fountain pen ink. “Gregor Demarkian,” it said. “Head, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retired.”
Here was something she hadn’t told anyone about—Daddy’s dinner guest. Two hours ago, she’d never heard of him. Now she just wished she hadn’t. There he was: a man with a funny name who had held the second-most-important position in the most Irish Catholic organization in the U.S. government, a man with a reputation for being both obsessive and fanatical about his work, a man with an even bigger reputation for being right. Myra wondered what he looked like. Myra wondered what Daddy wanted from him.