Not Guilty (41 page)

K
eely stared at her visitor. The expensive clothes, the perfectly combed white hair, the broad smile that didn’t match the expression in his keen, wary eyes. His gnarled fingers were closed, white-knuckled, over the head of his cane. She felt as if she had never really seen him before. “Lucas,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting wet at the moment,” he said squinting up at the dark, drizzly sky. “May I . . . ?” He indicated the inside of the hotel room with his cane.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I followed you, actually,” said Lucas.

The idea of his following the SUV was chilling. She had to pretend that she was not threatened by his strange behavior. “Well. My goodness. What could be so important? Am I in some kind of trouble?”

“No,” he said. “Not you.”

“Not Dylan,” she said.

Lucas shook his head.

Keely glanced back over her shoulder into the hotel room. “Well. What else is there? Is Ingrid all right?”

“As far as I know,” he said, “Ingrid’s fine . . .”

“Is it Betsy?”

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

“Lucas, I’m flattered. But couldn’t it wait until I got home?”

“Keely,” he said in a chiding tone, “Surely you have a moment for a friend. I had to come a long way to talk to you.”

“It’s just that . . . we came here to get away for a while.”

“It’s very important,” he said. His face still wore that ingratiating
expression, but for the first time, Keely saw a flash of steel in his smile.

There was no reasonable explanation for his being here. He had to know. But how could he know? She hadn’t spoken to anyone but Dylan after Phil Stratton came by. Maybe the best thing was just to feign ignorance and speak to him, and then he would leave. “Well, I guess for a minute,” she said reluctantly. “But when Dylan gets back, we’re going to go down to the pool.”

Lucas edged past her into the room and smiled at Abby who was playing on the floor. Abby looked up at him, wide-eyed.

“Where is Dylan?” Lucas asked.

Keely closed the door, as Lucas sat down on the edge of one of the beds, resting his hands on the head of his stick.

“Excuse the mess,” Keely said, automatically picking up scattered belongings and putting them out of sight in drawers and closets. “Dylan went down to the . . . uh . . .” Keely lost her train of thought as she picked up her bedroom slippers, suddenly remembering Maureen, in that grotesque combination of wedding gown and bedroom slippers. Her so-called suicide arranged by . . .

“Where?” Lucas asked. Keely shook her head to rid it of that image, then looked at Lucas.
“I’m sorry, what?”

“Where is Dylan?” he asked.

Keely closed the closet door. “He went to get some ice and some sodas. He’ll be right back. He’ll be so surprised to see you.” Anxiously, she remembered what she had told Dylan—that Lucas was about to be arrested. What if Dylan blurted it out? Then, there’d be no pretending that she didn’t know, that she hadn’t figured it out. She looked anxiously at the door.

“Well, it will be good to see him,” said Lucas. “How did the return to school go?”

“Fine,” said Keely. “It went fine.” She thought of how vehemently Lucas had defended Dylan from Maureen Chase’s persecution. How they had leaned on him. It couldn’t be, she thought. Lucas was a champion of the law. He believed in justice and fairness. “Dylan’s the reason
we came down here, actually. He needed to do a paper on the Supreme Court. I thought it would be fun for him to actually visit the court.”

Lucas nodded. “Good idea. It will give him a real feeling for the place. I argued before the Supreme Court once, you know.”

“Oh?” she said. Her face was a mask of polite interest as her brain worked feverishly, trying to assess the situation they were in. Was he dangerous to them? It wasn’t possible.

“Oh, yes,” Lucas continued. “I was almost paralyzed with fear. It’s quite a feeling to stand in that courtroom as those venerable old justices come in and take their seats. You never forget it.”

Keely looked at him, feeling perplexed—and suddenly protective of him. He had had such a successful life.
How could it have been Lucas?
she argued with herself. There were lots of diabetics. For a moment, she couldn’t remember why she had assumed it was Lucas. There was no reason to think it couldn’t have been someone else. “You’ve had such a fantastic career, Lucas.”

“Yes, well . . . I always had a kind of simple-minded belief in truth and justice and all that. Always thought the good guys would win in the end. The outlaws would end up behind bars. Just like in all the old westerns. I grew up on those, you know. When I was a boy, you could sit in the movies all day. Watch the serials, the westerns. Even poor as we were, my dad would manage to scare up the money for my brother and me to go to the pictures while he and my mom were working in the store on Saturdays. That was a happy time in my life. I didn’t even know we were poor then. Not till my dad died when I was eight. By then, I was already hooked. I was gonna wear the white hat and save the day.”

For a moment, Keely was distracted as she thought she heard the door open and shut in the room next door.
No,
she thought.
It couldn’t be Dylan. Dylan would come in here first.
He was bringing the ice to her. He had sodas for them both. Besides, Dylan would turn the TV on the moment he came in. The TV was like life support for a teenager. She didn’t hear its tinny drone through the wall. She sat down carefully on the other bed. “And you did, Lucas,” she said. “You did. You always did. Mark always said—”

“Mark,” Lucas said. “Now there was a hero—”

“Where’s Betsy tonight?” she interrupted brightly, desperately.

A muscle twitched in Lucas’s wrinkled cheek, and he worked his fingers restlessly on the top of his stick. “Oh. At home,” he said ruefully.
“With no idea—”

“No idea where you are?” Keely interjected. “Why don’t you call her and tell her you’re here and you’ll be back soon? You know she always worries about you.”

Lucas stared blankly in front of him. “The police are probably there by now,” he said.

Keely’s heart thudded at the mention of the police.
Don’t tell me,
she thought.
I don’t want to know.
“Always some defendant needing your help,” she said weakly. She picked up a colorful plastic ball with a bells in it that had rolled away from Abby. She handed it back to the baby, then stood up, wringing her hands. “I wonder what’s keeping Dylan with that ice,” she said. “Maybe I’d better go look for him.”

Lucas looked up at her from under his thick eyebrows, still dark, despite his white hair. “You’re nervous,” he said.

Keely stared back at him like someone caught at a crime. Suddenly, she felt calmer. Defiant, almost. It was as if Lucas was imprisoning her in this little room. She wanted to throw him out, but she didn’t dare.
“He’s my son. I nearly lost him once,” she reminded him.

Lucas nodded slightly. “That’s what it’s all about,” he said. Then he sighed and looked around the room. “Where are all his things?” Lucas asked. “It doesn’t look as if a teenage boy is staying here.”

Keely didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to tell him that Dylan’s room was next door. She felt as if the simplest thing, the most innocuous truth, was somehow dangerous. But she didn’t dare lie, even about something so seemingly minor. There was a volatility about Lucas tonight that frightened her. It was as if he were holding a bomb on his lap. “Actually . . .” she began.

The connecting doors between the rooms opened, and both of them jumped. Keely looked up and saw Dylan standing in the doorway. He was wearing a pair of faded color-blocked cotton jams from the summer and a T-shirt. The wound on his neck looked discolored and painful, but no longer raw.

“Dylan,” she cried. She wanted to warn him—
Don’t say anything. Don’t mention what I told you about Lucas
—but she didn’t dare.

“I’m ready to go swimming,” Dylan said. “Hey, Mr. Weaver.” He looked surprised but not shocked. Almost as if he had forgotten what she said about Lucas’s trouble with the police.

Lucas peered at the boy. “Hello, Dylan.”

Before Dylan could remember and ask why Lucas was there, Keely said quickly, “I didn’t hear you come in. Where’s the ice, Dylan? Where are the sodas?”

Dylan gestured back to his room. “In my room,” he said. “You want one?”

“Yes, please,” said Keely.

“You want a soda, Mr. Weaver? I bought extras.”

“No, thank you, Dylan,” said Lucas politely.

“You probably have to get going, don’t you?” Keely asked the old man.

Lucas ignored her question and kept his piercing gaze trained on Dylan. “A heated pool, presumably.”

“I hope so,” Dylan said.

“I’ll come down there with you,” said Lucas. He turned to Keely.
“Are you going in?”

Keely shook her head.
Please go away and leave us alone,
she thought.

“What about Abby?” Lucas asked.

“No,” Keely snapped.

“We’ll all go down there and watch you swim, Dylan,” said Lucas.

Keely realized that this was a command from Lucas. She wanted to protest, to order him to leave, but she wasn’t sure how he would react. She could make a scene, but she wasn’t sure what the consequences might be. It seemed she would be going down to the pool whether she wanted to or not. Slowly, Keely gathered up a couple of Abby’s toys and picked up the baby.

Dylan turned around and started back into his room. Lucas stood up. “Where are you going?” he demanded suspiciously.

“To get my leather jacket,” said Dylan. “It’s too cold out there to walk around like this.”

Lucas limped to the connecting door and watched as Dylan picked up his jacket off the bed and put it on. Keely wondered why Dylan had not told the old man to mind his own business.
I trained him well,
she thought.
He’d say that to me, but he’s polite to senior citizens. Maybe I trained him too well,
she thought ruefully.

Dylan came back through Keely’s room, and Lucas ushered them all out the door, pulling it shut until the lock clicked behind them.
“Lead the way, Dylan,” said Lucas.

Obediently, Dylan began to shuffle down the walk. The rain was tapering off now, but it had gotten colder, and you could see your breath. Keely walked along with Abby in her arms, clutching the baby close to her for warmth. Although he limped, Lucas kept up with them with no problem. At the end of the outside walkway, they went through a set of double doors that led down a door-lined corridor.
At least the pool is a public place,
Keely thought.
That would be better.

Other than a dark-haired, brown-skinned chambermaid who nodded and said,
“Buenos noches,”
as they passed, they encountered no one else. They left the hallway and traversed an empty sitting area with an unlit gas fireplace flanked by two matching sofas covered in a nubby maroon fabric. They climbed two steps, then Dylan opened the door to the pool area. A blast of steamy air greeted them. There were a number of white plastic chairs and chaise lounges scattered around the concrete perimeter of the pool. A trim woman with wrinkled skin and a white bathing cap was methodically swimming laps. At the far end, a young couple wearing swimsuits relaxed on side-by-side chaises, their hands linked. They looked up, frowning, as Keely came in carrying Abby. There were no other children, and Abby’s babyish shrieks and gurgles echoed in the nearly empty, cavernous room.