talking on his cell phone and to the girls.
Kay tracked them in the SUV.
Music filled the car again.
Kay ignored it.
She drew even with the girls, buzzed down the window, and said “Get in.”
“I’m not going home!” Zoe said.
“No, you’re not. Just get in.”
The girls piled into the car, and Kay accelerated past Franklin. Music filled the car again.
This time she answered. “What
She listened. She snapped her phone closed and announced, “He wants us to meet him at the octagon house.”
Landry knew how quickly things could go south.
Bad enough. But that was only the first shoe to drop.
First thing, get the extended family out of the way. Landry called Frank and told him to send them to the octagon house. He also told him to keep them occupied.
Then he turned his attention to the other shoe: the sheriff’s vehicle currently turning off Cape San Blas Road and approaching the gatehouse. Franklin, who had been driving his golf cart in the direction of the octagon house, answered Landry’s call on the first ring.
“Why’s the sheriff here?” Landry said. “Did you call him?”
“The sheriff?”
“Behind you.”
The golf cart slewed to a stop. Franklin leaned out, craning his neck around to get a view of the gatehouse.
Landry asked him, “You didn’t call the sheriff?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
Landry knew the ring of truth when he heard it. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Landry wondered if the sheriff had come to notify the attorney general about his wife’s death. Probably. “Get rid of him, Franklin.”
“What do I say? Anything about what you guys are doing?”
“No, don’t mention us. The sheriff’s office doesn’t know about the FBI’s involvement, and we’re going to keep it that way. How many people in the patrol vehicle?”
“One.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“It’s the sheriff himself, Tim Johnson.”
That sounded like a death notification. The sheriff would have come personally, especially for the attorney general. “If he is here to notify you, let him notify you. Then tell him you’re grieving and you need some time to be alone with your family. You know how to do that. But get him out of here.”
“Okay.”
Landry watched Franklin get out of the golf cart and meet with the sheriff. He watched them talk. They talked only for three or four minutes. Then the sheriff climbed back into his SUV, made a K-turn, and drove away.
Kay drove to the octagon house and parked. They got out and Franklin led the way. The Haddox dogs appeared out of nowhere and followed them up the steps, but Franklin didn’t let them come inside.
Kay had once showed her the house, just a quick glimpse of the first and second floor and the cupola. She noticed the wheelchair ramp for her grandfather, going down to the basement. The basement wasn’t really a basement, but a half basement—there were half windows to the outside.
Her grandfather was in there, somewhere.
She’d never met him, either. The day she came, he had “taken a bad turn,” and wasn’t seeing visitors.
Jolie found herself amazed that she had spent most of her life not twenty miles away, and she had never met her grandfather or her uncle.
The first floor was as Jolie remembered it: a cleared space with a stairway to the back and an open kitchen and a closed bathroom. The windows, empty of window dressing. Franklin bustled past them, went to a closet under the staircase, and started pulling out folding chairs. He handed one to Kay and one to Jolie. Took his own chair to the center of room.
“What the hell are we doing?” Kay said.
Franklin stopped, mid-unfolding, and looked at her. Finally he said, “We’re to wait here.”
“Wait here for what?”
He looked at Kay again. Jolie could see him thinking. It put her in mind of her computer when it was trying to process a big file. Frank’s disk was full. She sensed he had the answers just behind his tightly closed lips, but was afraid that it would be overwhelming, would shock them—so he said nothing at all.
“Franklin?”
He looked at Kay. “We just have to.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Shut up, will you, Kay? I didn’t ask for you to come here.”
An argument ensued, all the old slights and hurts coming up. Jolie had been witness to and part of many family arguments in New Mexico, and she’d had plenty with her dad and with her husband. Years of intimate knowledge of one another, plenty of history, lots of cues that Jolie would miss. They sparred without really saying anything at all. “Why should I shut up?” “Because you don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Then why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” “Look, it’s complicated.” And the kicker: “My wife just died, Riley’s mother—can’t you cut me some slack?”
Jolie sat and watched and listened. Franklin kept looking out the windows. Went from one to another to another. Nervous. Worse than nervous. Scared. He checked his watch. He used his cell phone, and even that was secretive, the way he held it, the way he turned away, his mouth pressed close to the phone. Agitated, arguing with whoever was on the other end. Slammed the phone shut. He looked at turns nervous, angry, impatient, terrified, annoyed, and resigned. Pacing the room, going to the windows, calling someone and getting no answer.
Jolie kept her eye on him because he was the only one who knew anything. His actions confirmed her suspicion that he was in over his head. She wondered where Franklin was in the food chain. Pretty low, judging from the way he was acting.
She knew two things: he was terrified of someone, and he was waiting for something to happen.
She’d left her primary weapon behind—it didn’t seem appropriate, coming here. But she had the Walther PPK .380 concealed in an ankle holster. She needed to be ready for whatever happened. And something would happen, she was sure of it. She leaned forward so that her elbows rested on her knees. That way she could grab the Walther if she needed it.
Riley and Zoe had been sitting together, but now Riley got up and went to be near her dad. She hovered near him like a moon to a planet. When he went to one window and looked out, she hung back but shadowed him.
Franklin told Riley to go sit down. Riley reacted the way Jolie had always seen her react. She got into a snit, said a few belligerent things, and stalked back to her chair next to Zoe. Bounced back up and started shadowing her father again.
His moon. Smaller and weaker and left out in the cold and the dark.
Jolie felt sorry for her. The only thing that mattered in her life was the man who ignored her. He never once looked in her direction. He stared out the window, checked his cell phone, paced. He did everything but look at his daughter, the one person who shared his loss.
Jolie thought how sad this was.
Then a chair came flying through the window in an explosion of glass.
