This brings a smile to my lips. “That’s what Buck used to say.”
“Will you play it for me tomorrow?”
“Sure, yeah.” I step back into the hall. “Hey, did that muffin fill you up? Or do you need some food before bed?”
She laughs. “You going to cook for me?”
“You’ve done it for me enough. I can scramble eggs. Huevos rancheros?”
“Maybe for breakfast. I need sleep now.”
I nod, then take her father’s pistol from my pocket. “I want you to keep this close.”
Her face darkens. “I’d rather you hold on to it.”
“I have one in my bedroom. But if anybody sneaks up this hall, they’ll get to your room first. Better safe than sorry.”
She reluctantly accepts the handgun.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I tell her.
As I start down the hall, Nadine leans out and calls, “Did I weird you out when I mentioned Jerry Lee Lewis’s son drowning in the swimming pool?”
“No. It’s fine. Hard to believe, really. That and losing his brother, just like me.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, right?”
“Always.” I wait to see if she has anything else to say. I feel like she does.
After a few seconds, she says, “Have you given any more thought to what I asked you this morning?”
“You asked me a lot of things.”
“About whether, if you had the power to punish Buck’s killer and unravel the corruption behind the paper mill deal, you would do it? If it meant the town losing the mill and all that comes with it.”
“I have thought about it. I asked Jet the same question this afternoon.”
“What did she say?”
“She’d blow it up without a second thought.”
Nadine nods thoughtfully. “Well . . . she can afford to, can’t she? She married well, as they say. At least in an economic sense.”
“What about you? What would you do?”
“I understand the temptation to blow it all up. Especially after what happened to Buck. But it’s like that Vietnam-era saying: ‘We had to destroy this village in order to save it.’ That’s the real dilemma in all this.”
“I know. It’s just hard to take the macro view when you know somebody beat Buck to death over it.”
Nadine is watching me carefully. “Well . . . anyway. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t cross a line before.”
“No. We’re good.”
“Night.” With a small smile she closes the door.
I check the doors and windows to be sure they’re locked, then go back to my bathroom and brush my teeth, glad for quiet after the night’s craziness. It’s strange to have Nadine under my roof, but not at all unpleasant, and it’s absolutely necessary. The break-in at her store was not normal. A skilled criminal was looking for something in her safe. Something specific. The same burglar probably hit at least two other law offices in town. What I don’t understand is how Nadine could have no idea what they might be looking for.
Using earbuds, I call Ben Tate to make sure I know the thrust of the stories he’ll be running tomorrow. While we talk, I open my top dresser drawer and remove the Walther P38 I borrowed from my father after I moved back home. I was living downtown at the time, and street crime was common enough to warrant keeping it in my car. The gun was made in Germany in 1957, and Dad bought it while serving there in the early 1960s. After hanging up with Ben, I set the Walther on my bedside table, then lay my iPhone and the new burner Jet brought this afternoon beside it. I’ve yet to take a call on that burner phone, but something tells me that whatever comes over that illicit connection over the next few days could determine the course of the rest of my life.
As I lie in the bed, waiting for sleep, I see Jet on the mezzanine of the Aurora after dragging me down there in a fit of recklessness. Suddenly I understand what triggered her atypical breakout. From the moment she kissed me on the roof to the moment she hiked up her dress, she was trying to get us caught. The months of secrecy and tension took one kind of toll, but Paul’s suspicion means we must stop seeing each other, at least for a while. The only rational way forward is for her to ask him for a divorce, one that will never be resolved in her favor. Even for a woman as resolute as Jet, the prospect of fighting an unwinnable battle must