True Blend (39 page)

“Reid?”

“Yeah, it’s Reid’s phone.”

Nate shuffles through a drawer filled with take-out menus and old receipts. He flips open a black address book and scribbles down a number on a scrap of paper. Every minute matters now. As soon as he sets the pencil down, George grabs the paper, turns and walks out of the house.

“Hey!” Nate calls after him. “Hey, be careful, would you?”

George keeps walking. He doesn’t see if Nate watches from the door. He doesn’t see the sun shining on the dewy lawns, the flowers opening to the light. It’s all he can do to wait behind the flashing railroad crossing for the train to pass, car after car after car. Stop signs are barely visible on the drive back to The Main Course where he folds Reid’s number into his shirt pocket. He isn’t thinking straight enough to call yet, not with the thought of one of Amy’s cherished bridal pieces ruined. It’s difficult pulling the tangled fabric from the grinder, difficult watching a plastic garbage bag fill with the remnants. Some of the lace is still intact; detailed stitches shape a vine pattern with small hearts blended in the leaves. “Okay, you win already. Leave her alone.”

He turns to go into his office and sees one of Nate’s denim work shirts draped over a chair near the refrigerator. Its long sleeves hang close to the floor. George throws it over his arm to bring into his office when something falls out of the pocket.

A placard, folded in half, is on the floor near the chair. It opens to a brief description of the lace veil Amy’s grandmother had made. The lace told a love story in the vines and hearts entwined together. Her grandmother’s photo appears beneath the text, the aged image an old wedding portrait of her wearing that very same veil, her blonde hair pulled back in a twist, her face looking so much like Amy. And his heart drops with the awareness of exactly which deeply sentimental piece someone has cruelly targeted.

He looks down at the denim shirt folded over his other arm, then at the placard again.

“No.”

It can’t be. His eyes glance around the room, searching for some explanation. For some evidence exonerating his brother from the realization sinking in.

He looks again at the shirt, holds it at arm’s length and slips the folded placard in and out of the pocket. And his mind denies the image of Nate lifting a veil off a mannequin in the dark of night. No, because what his mind sees is Nate pedaling furiously after him on hot summer days, their baseball cards rat-a-tat-tatting against the spokes as they fly through the neighborhood. And there’s Nate crouched on the rocks at Stony Point, a sand pail at his feet as he’s bent over watching his crabbing line next to George, settling it into the seaweed and stones in the shallow water, the sun hot on their backs. And Nate, yes, there’s another image, Nate sitting beside him in the driver’s seat at fourteen, when George took their parents’ car out on the winding country back roads and let him take the wheel. Nate in Christmas photos, always grinning with George, the decorated tree strung with gold beads beside them, frost on the windowpanes. Nate jumping onto the toboggan behind George, his mittened hands holding on tight, his head tipped back in laughter, powdered snow rising in a cloud around them.

Nate. His tag-along brother.

“No,” George says as he goes to the grinder and yanks off a length of lace hanging from it. He gave his brother a key to The Main Course a year ago, a spare in case of emergency so he can let himself in whenever. Nate’s watched him cleave and carve, debone and grind, the same way he used to watch him pitch and bat, skateboard and swim out to the raft. Brothers, man, through and through. Nate can probably run the shop himself, in a pinch, and certainly knows the basics of a meat grinder.

George finishes cleaning that grinder, putting unending tatters and shreds of lace into the bag he’ll toss in the dumpster. Each delicate piece holds a piece of Amy’s life in it, too. Then he drops the cover on the grinder and leaves a note for Dean telling him it is out of commission.

With the placard carefully set back in the pocket, George hangs the denim shirt on the chair where he found it. Because still there’s a part of him denying it. Still seeking to clear his brother from this.

There’s only one way to know. He leaves his shop and drives to Nate’s house again. If he can just feel him out without letting on about the shirt and his suspicions. Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding. Maybe someone’s setting up Nate. That’s got to be it. Someone’s framing his brother.

It doesn’t take long to pull his pickup truck into Nate’s driveway, get out and ring the doorbell this time. When there’s no answer, he walks over to the garage window. The Harley is parked in one bay, but the car is gone. So he goes around to the back of the house and lets himself in again, unsure of exactly what he is looking for. His eyes scan the kitchen, he brushes through the receipt drawer, thumbs through pages of the address book, looking for anything, any hint even, to clear this up.

Nate can’t be Amy’s stalker. It’s just not possible that his brother would go this damn far. So he takes his cell from his pocket and pulls out the folded paper with Reid’s number on it and dials while pacing the kitchen. Reid’s got to be behind all this. When the voicemail picks up, he disconnects. After a moment, he dials the number again, listening to the ring at his ear and to something else. Something that doesn’t belong. He moves quietly out of the kitchen toward the staircase until the automated voicemail answers again, prompting him to disconnect and redial, impatiently now. He climbs the stairs quickly and stops at the top, waiting for the connection to go through and the phone to ring.

As it does, George walks to his brother’s room, listening to the ring in his cell. Slats of morning sunlight reach through the window blinds. And a cell phone on Nate’s dresser top rings, stopping at the same time the voicemail answers George’s call. He disconnects and redials. The phone on Nate’s dresser rings again.

“Holy shit,” George says, sitting on the edge of the bed shaking his head. It all sinks slowly in, with each thought he considers.

A framed photograph sits on a bookshelf across the room. He walks over to it, picking up the picture of him and Nate both dressed in their Little League uniforms ages ago. It was a hot day and they’d just finished a game, their knees grass-stained, their hair sweating and matted, their faces lit up.

George!
The day baseball finally ended for them, that day at the cottage when George told Nate he wasn’t going back to the minors, was the day Nate’s anguish began. He knows it now. Feels it as sure as feeling the weight of a line drive caught in his mitt. His hand brushes dust off the glass covering the Little League picture, off Nate leaning into him, George’s arm over his brother’s shoulder, mitts hanging from their hands.

Years of Nate trying desperately to rectify the guilt he carried, the crushing blame he felt for their father’s death and the death of his big brother’s dream—it all crystallizes for George now. The lunches and car shows and ski trips and plans and dreams that never let up. The armored truck heist intended to restore the major league money and glory George had sacrificed all those years ago when their father died.

Nate was the mastermind. Not Reid. The heist was all for his brother, all to pay him back after a death that changed everything. Nate did it for him. And now Amy threatens it.

George!
Nate had cried out that afternoon at the beach, one day after burying their father. His voice carried through the cottage on the sea breeze and kept going, grief reaching out over the breaking waves, echoing up to the skies above the sea. And still, it carries still.

Thirty-two

HER REPUTATION ALONE EASES HIS nerves. She is tough, can go head-to-head with any federal prosecutor, effectively presents her case and is eminently fair. But most importantly, Attorney Claire Jensen believes him.

George looks at the clock Monday and waits for her call, answering the phone on the first ring minutes later.

“It looks good,” Claire tells him.

“Good? They agreed to immunity?”

“Not yet. Sit tight.”

“What’d you say to them?”

“George, for now let’s just say they all know. The U.S. Attorney’s office knows. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation knows. As does Detective Hayes. They all know I’ve got a confidential informant who has come forward with information that may be of substantial assistance to them in the apprehension of those involved in a serious crime still under active investigation. I presented, too, that my client is ready, willing and able to wear a wire to assist the government and authorities in this process. Are you still good with that?”

“Whatever it takes, Claire.”

“All right then. I’ll continue pushing for complete immunity from prosecution, George, but for now, no signed agreements, no talking client. So stay near the phone, okay? They know they’ve got to move quickly. As far as they’re concerned, my client can change his mind, or try another tactic, or even disappear at any moment.”

As far as
he’s
concerned, Nate has to be stopped and George isn’t capable of stopping him alone. So he called Attorney Jensen and, given the circumstances, she met with him over the weekend. If all goes as planned, Nate will be facing criminal charges later this week. His brother will be handcuffed and led to a cruiser, taken off the streets and tied up in the legal system for a good, long time. And if George stays away from Amy in the meantime, he thinks she’ll be safe. It is their very relationship that provokes Nate.

The morning unfolds outside the slider in his dining room. Landscapers mow the expanse of lawn, a neighbor stains his deck and George begins playing the very last hand with his brother.

And it plays out quickly. By midweek, he sits with Claire in a tense conference room at the U.S. Attorney’s office. She was right. The authorities didn’t waste any time negotiating the terms and conditions of his immunity agreement in exchange for his assistance in resolving the crime and convicting the people involved. Papers were signed, pens and notebooks are poised now, recorders at the ready. They want to close the books on this one.

“Your attorney says you can crack this case, Carbone.” Detective Hayes leans back in his chair, eyeing him.

George shifts in his seat, unbuttons the jacket of his navy blue suit and doesn’t break eye contact with Hayes. “That’s right. I can.” And so it finally begins. Without Amy knowing, he seeks her absolution fully, starting with those four simple words.

The faces lining the table, faces that can bring her justice, listen to him describe the morning he waited for his brother to pick him up to go to the casino. When he gets to the part about returning to Nate’s car after seeing Amy and Grace enter the bank, a rush of questions interrupts him until the room falls silent again, waiting for his answers. Each person leans forward as his voice, a low monotone, empties out the story. He is conscious of his breathing, his dry mouth, and requests a glass of water.

An Assistant U.S. Attorney, the FBI agents, even Hayes, they continue asking questions seeking clarification, reasoning, belief, and he pauses with each, carefully arranging his answers word by word, aware of his tongue forming each syllable. Nothing is left out, including the stalking. This is the day he always knew would come, though he never dreamt the impetus that would bring him to it would be his kid brother.

“I don’t know the whereabouts of Reid and Elliott,” George concludes. “But I’m sure my brother knows. He’s going to be key to any unanswered questions.”

Two of the federal agents conferred throughout the entire testimony. One of them speaks now. “Mr. Carbone. If we bring Nate in on your word alone, too much can go wrong, from his refusal to answer questions, to sending us on a wild goose chase, to withholding evidence. One of the terms of the immunity agreement negotiated by your attorney was that you’d assist in the apprehension of your brother through wearing a recording device. We need you to fulfill that obligation.”

George glances at Claire beside him, then back to the agent. Right now he’s worried about only one obligation, to Amy and her daughter. “You want him framed.”

“We want Nate to talk. But if he catches wind of our scent, he can slip away too easily, especially with the cash he’s sitting on. If he hasn’t skipped out already. He may even know you’re here.”

“I understand,” George says. He takes a long swallow of water.

“We need an insurance policy securing his participation in the heist. So it’s necessary for him to discuss his criminal involvement without his being aware of a set-up.”

“And another thing, George,” Attorney Jensen interrupts, turning to him. “Once this goes down, the news will hit fast and the media will be relentless, you know that. They’re going to want to draw the line between your brother and the fact that it was you who returned Grace.”

George only nods.

“As a confidential informant,” she continues, “your actual participation in the crime will remain undisclosed. The media won’t be aware of
that
, but they’ll be aware of
you
because of your connection to Grace. So keep yourself scarce. Lay low and refuse comment while this plays out.”

“Got it.”

Attorney Jensen turns back to the table. “We’re prepared to move forward,” she says.

George will do anything. His brother is ruthless. The only way he’ll be stopped is by someone, with good reason, just as intent. “Name the time and place,” he adds.

*  *  *

Amy lies on her living room sofa, having just talked on the phone with Grace and her parents. They still don’t know of George’s involvement in the truck heist, thinking only that she broke things off with him, that too much is going on in her life to leave room for a relationship. It’s dinnertime now but she hasn’t eaten. Because it’s happened again—the inability to eat is stronger than her appetite. Since her confrontation with George, memories of him have moved like shadows through her mind: hazy, vague, but very real. Her living room windows are thrown open, the midsummer evening sweet with birdsong and cicadas. She hears the rhythmic footsteps of someone jogging past her house and turns her head, listening until the sound fades. No breeze stirs outside; the air is clear and dry, settling on her like a cool white sheet, summer noises floating on its ethereal lightness.