Moving Target (15 page)

Maisie shrugged. “Nothing much. I do know it was never solved. We were told that someone wanted his car. Uncle Jonah and Aunt Adele had a fairly new car—a Jaguar, I think. After Jonah died, Aunt Adele went back home to live in Cheltenham with her parents. She just couldn’t stand being here without her Jonah.”

“And without Leland,” Daisy added quietly. “He was her baby, you
see. When he and his brothers were growing up, I think Lee was always Aunt Adele’s favorite.”

Maisie glowered at her sister as if willing the woman to shut up. Ali took that moment to set down her teacup and reach for her purse. “I need to be going,” she said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

Daisy hurried to open the door. As Ali walked back down the front path, she heard loud laughter and boisterous voices coming over the laurel hedge that separated the yard from the parking area. A group of leather-wearing motorcycle riders stood clumped around their bikes, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. They gave Ali the same ogling looks as she walked to the Land Rover that Marjorie Elkins’s officemates had dished out an hour or so earlier.

Inside her vehicle with the door shut and locked, Ali Reynolds realized Jeffrey Brooks and Charlie Chan were both right. Jordan’s-by-the-Sea was exactly the wrong place for a family reunion.

T
he one thing that LeAnne Tucker had learned in the days her son was hospitalized was that out in the waiting room, time stood still. Far inside the building, with only a single window to help mark the changing of morning to afternoon or afternoon to evening, she had few clues to help her gauge the passage of time. Yes, she wore a watch, but the hands seemed to move so slowly that there were times when she held it up to her ear to make sure it was still ticking.

Sometime after Mr. Dunn left, Sister Anselm and LeAnne returned to Lance’s room to maintain what was now a mostly silent vigil. LeAnne noticed that Sister Anselm often clutched her rosary, passing the beads through her fingers one by one. LeAnne supposed the woman was praying, which made her think guiltily that she should be praying, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her needs right then were so overwhelming—to have Lance live; to be able to keep the house; to not lose her job—that praying seemed like dropping empty words into a bottomless pit.

She was grateful to Lowell Dunn for coming by and being willing to take Lance’s part, even against his own employers. She was grateful for his advice, too, though she had no idea how to put it into action. She’d had only two dealings with attorneys in her whole life. One had been
the sleazy guy she’d found on the Internet to help get her divorce; that had been mercifully cheap because her ex made no effort to contest it. The other had been the guy who was Lance’s public defender. Everyone knew how that had turned out. All of which meant that as far as hiring attorneys went, LeAnne Tucker had no idea where to start.

Now that Sister Anselm had appeared on the scene, the hospital’s five-minute visiting restriction seemed to have been lifted, but when the nurses came in to deal with Lance’s dressings sometime in the afternoon, Sister Anselm advised LeAnne to go elsewhere.

Out in the waiting room, LeAnne looked around, more than half expecting that her mother would be there. Then, glancing at her watch—the hands had moved this time—she realized it was early afternoon. Phyllis would be on her way back to San Leandro to pick Connor up from school and go to Thad’s basketball game. It was easy to sit in Austin and feel guilty about missing the game, but the truth was, even if Lance hadn’t been in the hospital, it was unlikely that LeAnne could have made it to an afternoon game. She was usually at work.

She was sitting there waiting when a man walked into the room. The guy was dressed in a finely tailored blue suit that fit him well enough that LeAnne wondered if it had been custom-tailored. Her first instinct was that the man was an attorney. It was only as he came closer that LeAnne realized he looked oddly familiar.

“You wouldn’t happen to be Mrs. Tucker, would you?” he asked.

Oops, LeAnne thought. Another reporter. How’d he get up here? “And who might you be?” she asked.

He gave her an ingratiating smile. “I don’t believe we’ve ever officially met,” he said, ignoring her off-putting tone. “My name is Crutcher. Daniel Crutcher.”

It came back to LeAnne in a rush: This was the guy who had been selling the student locating system, the tagging system. She had never met him in person, and he hadn’t been called to testify during Lance’s trial, but she had seen him being interviewed on TV; she knew he worked for some big multinational company.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she said coldly. “Get out. Leave me alone.”

“Please, Mrs. Tucker. I wish you no harm. I’m here at my company’s behest, with only your best interests and those of your son in mind. I came by to see how he’s doing and to give you this.” He reached into the pocket of his suit coat, pulled out an oblong piece of paper, and handed it to LeAnne. “You might want to take a look at it.”

She looked, and then she looked again. It was a cashier’s check made out in her name in the amount of fifty thousand dollars. “What’s this?” she demanded. “Is it some kind of joke?”

“I can assure you, it’s no joke,” Crutcher said. “I work for United Tracking Incorporated. We make the SFLS—the student/faculty location system—the use of which your son adamantly opposed, by the way. UTI wants you to know that what happened after Lance took the actions he did to protest the system had nothing to do with us. Bringing charges was the prosecutor’s decision, not ours. When I heard about last week’s unfortunate incident, I let higher-ups in UTI know what had happened. The check you are holding in your hands is their response. This is my company’s way of showing how much United Tracking International and all of its subsidiaries regret any part we may have played, however indirectly, in the terrible calamity that has befallen your family.”

Tears blurred LeAnne’s vision, causing the numbers on the paper to swim out of focus. It was an impossibly large amount of money. Enough to catch up her back mortgage payments; enough to get them out of hock.

Just then a shadow fell over her shoulder. “What’s this?” Sister Anselm asked.

“It’s a check from United Tracking International, the people who made the tracking system that got Lance in so much trouble in the first place,” LeAnne explained, holding the paper up so Sister Anselm could see it. “That’s what Lance was doing when he broke in to the school district’s server: protesting the student locater system. UTI executives heard about what happened to Lance last week, and they sent Mr. Crutcher to give me this.”

The nun turned to Daniel Crutcher and gave him a stern look. “They did this out of the kindness of their hearts? How very Christian of them!”

“It’s a matter of public relations,” Daniel Crutcher began. “The boy and his family have already been punished enough. Now, with this unfortunate accident—”

Sister Anselm deftly removed the check from LeAnne’s trembling fingers. She studied it and then handed it back to Daniel Crutcher. “I suggest you take this back to wherever it came from.”

Daniel Crutcher and LeAnne both gaped at Sister Anselm. “Wait,” LeAnne objected. “You can’t do that. He gave it to me.”

“I know he did,” Sister Anselm said calmly. “You do not want to take this man’s money or his corporation’s money, at least not right away. If this was their first offer, you can expect that there’s a lot more where that came from. Now, let’s go back into Lance’s room and see how he’s doing.”

With that, Sister Anselm took LeAnne’s hand, bodily lifted her up, and led her away. LeAnne was still protesting as they walked through the door into Lance’s room. Looking back, she saw Crutcher glance quickly around the room, as if checking to see whether anyone else had witnessed his humiliation at Sister Anselm’s hands. Then he stood up, tucked the check back into his inside coat pocket, and strode out of the room. LeAnne Tucker read the thunderous expression on Daniel Crutcher’s face. She had lived with her ex-husband long enough to recognize fury when she saw it.

LeAnne turned on Sister Anselm. “Why did you do that?” she demanded. “Why did you make me give the money back?”

“Because there are a number of countervailing forces at work here,” Sister Anselm explained. “That includes someone who was prepared to murder your son rather than see him released from jail. Lance is still alive but that doesn’t mean whoever wanted him dead has given up. Maybe the UTI people were behind it and this is their way of trying to get close enough to you to try again. On the other hand, what Mr.
Crutcher said might be true—that the UTI people feel guilty about what happened to Lance and they’re trying to salve their consciences. In any event, that was only their first offer. Trust me, it won’t be their last.”

“But what’s this all about?” LeAnne asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Let’s say that good and evil exist in the world,” Sister Anselm answered. “I have it on good authority that your son—your brilliant son—has come up with something that could help tip the balance of power one way or the other. With something like that at stake, there are some people who hope to tap into the brilliance while others want to shut it down. The latter would be the people who tried to kill Lance and didn’t quite succeed. The former would include the folks who just offered you that enormous check, and that’s probably only a drop in the bucket of what Lance’s prototype is really worth. What was that company’s name again?”

“UTI. United Tracking International.”

“Had you accepted the check, you would have felt beholden to them, right?”

LeAnne nodded. “I suppose.”

“And that would lead them to believe that once Lance is released from the hospital, they’d have both you and him in their back pocket. My bishop sent me here to help look after your son’s medical interests, LeAnne, but I’m also here to look out for your entire family. There are plenty of underhanded folk in the world who are hoping to take undue advantage of your current situation, Mr. Crutcher and his misguided check being a case in point.”

LeAnne wasn’t sure she could believe any of this. “You’re saying that my not quite eighteen-year-old son has created something that’s worth more than fifty thousand dollars in the open market?”

“That’s my understanding.”

“So what should I do?”

“It means you must be very careful,” Sister Anselm cautioned. “It means that we have to protect Lance from all comers, because in this instance, the first bidder as well as the highest bidder may turn out to
be the kind of people with whom your son won’t want to do business. Come to think of it, it’s probably time to give some serious thought to Mr. Dunn’s suggestion.”

“What suggestion is that?”

“Get an attorney on board.”

“I don’t know any attorneys,” LeAnne said.

“I don’t, either,” replied Sister Anselm, “at least not here in Texas, but I do know someone we can ask.”

W
hen Ali arrived back at the Highcliff, Leland was sitting in the lobby bar with an almost untouched glass of Scotch on the table in front of him. He stood up as she entered. “You were gone for a long time,” he said.

“I made more than one stop,” she answered. “I paid a visit to the local cop shop before I went calling on your cousins. Are you aware that some of your nearest and dearest, most notably your cousins, are under the impression that you spied for the North Koreans during the war?”

Leland’s jaw dropped. “They think I was a spy? That’s preposterous. I was a cook.”

“That’s what I told them,” Ali replied, “but apparently, that’s the story Langston spread about you after you left town. It appears that a lot of people believed him, including both your parents.”

Leland went back to his chair and sat down heavily, as though his knees would no longer support his weight. “My parents believed I was a spy?” he asked. “How could they?”

“Langston was evidently very convincing. He used a pal of his, a friend from his university days, to sell the story. The legend goes that the authorities let you trot off to the States unencumbered by charges
to keep things quiet. They didn’t want any kind of unpleasantness that might have reflected badly on the Royal Marines.”