attorney, and he arranged to have an innocent man killed for profit.”
“That is such bullshit.”
“You think so? You’ll find out different tomorrow. Your father and Ray Presley set up one of the most heinous murders I’ve ever come across, and J. Edgar Hoover covered it up to keep your grandfather happy. To keep them pulling for Nixon in the sixty-eight election.”
“What are you babbling about?”
“Never mind.”
Her face has taken on a strange cast. “I met him once, you know. Hoover. When I was a little girl. Up in Jackson with my father.”
“Oh, they were big buddies. And the root of their friendship was the murder of Del Payton.”
She shakes her head as if I’m hopelessly insane.
“By sundown tomorrow your father will be indicted for murder, unless he can kill my witnesses. And he’s trying hard, believe me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father and John Portman tried to kill me last night.”
She shakes her head. “You’re lying.”
“When have you known me to lie, Livy? Ever? Your father killed for money and power in 1968, and he’ll do it now to cover his ass. That’s all he’s ever been about. He’s played every angle and skimmed every deal, from factory locations to backroom adoptions. Everything’s money to him.”
Livy has gone still. “What do you mean, backroom adoptions?”
“Come on. That can’t be news to you. I saw a record of the private adoptions he handled over the years. He did about twenty of them, and yours was one. Jenny’s, I mean. For big money too. Big for those days, anyway.”
She reaches out and touches my arm. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”
“You really don’t know? Remember those records you and Leo took out of his office last week? The ones he tried to burn?”
“Yes.”
“There was a scrap of paper in there, a record of income from adoptions. He pocketed thirty-five grand off of yours. One of the highest prices paid for any baby on the list. I guess he wanted top dollar, since the baby came from his gene pool.”
The blood has drained from her face.
“Look at it, if you don’t believe me. I’ve been carrying the list around in my wallet since the day Jenny told me her story. I thought it was a record of our child being given away.”
“Let me see it.”
I pull out my wallet and fish the scrap of yellow paper from the bill compartment. Livy snatches it away and holds it up in the blue glow of the streetlight across the road, trying to read in the dark. Her face is in shadow, but after a few moments the paper starts to quiver in her hand.
“That son of a bitch,” she murmurs. “That son of a bitch.”
“You still think I’m lying?”
“That he would profit from my pain like that…”
“I doubt he gave it a second thought. Making money was his habit. Everything that passed through his hands had to turn a profit. You should know that better than anyone.”
She looks up at last, her eyes empty of everything but desire for the truth. These are the eyes I knew in high school. “Do you really believe my father ordered Del Payton’s death?”
“It’s not a question of belief. I know.”
“You can prove it?”
“If my witnesses reach the courtroom alive.”
She folds the paper slowly. “I’m going to do something you may not believe. I’m going to do it because I don’t believe my father killed Del Payton. I can’t believe that. But if it should turn out that he did, I won’t protect him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The papers you requested under discovery. Business records, all that?”
“Yes.”
“You got sanitized versions. There’s another set of files. One that nobody sees. Not the IRS, not anybody.”
My heart jumps in my chest. “You realize that withholding those papers from the court-”
“Is a felony? I’m not telling you this to hear the Boy Scout oath repeated back to me. Before I tell you where those files are, I want a promise from you.”
“What?”
“Any evidence of illegal activity that doesn’t directly pertain to the death of Del Payton, you’ll forget you ever saw.”
“Livy-”
“That’s nonnegotiable.”
“All right. Agreed. Where are these files?”
She bites her bottom lip, still resisting the deeply bred urge to protect her family’s secrets. “Ever since I was a little girl, Daddy kept his sensitive papers in a big safe under the floor of his study. He called it his potato bunk, whatever that means. If he’s hiding anything from you, it’s in there.”
“How can I get a look in there? He’s home tonight. Isn’t he?”
“He’s probably upstairs by now. Mother’s been flipping in and out for the past few days. He’s probably up there feeding her Darvocet and Prozac cocktails.”
“What about the off-duty cops he called?”
“They won’t look twice at you if I drive you in.”
She looks sincere. But it’s anger that’s driving her now. Her relationship with her father has always been one of extremes, love and hate commingling in proportions that change too fast to be assayed. To see the secret safe in Leo Marston’s study, I’ll have to go back to Tuscany. And at Tuscany, on this night, Leo could kill me and tell the police anything he wanted. He could even have one of his cops kill me. My only real protection would be the woman standing before me.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.
She folds the paper in half, then twice again, into a tiny rectangle which she slips between the buttons of her blouse and into her bra. Her eyes shine with utter resolution.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
CHAPTER 38
The grounds of Tuscany are dark. I parked my mother’s shot-up Maxima at a gas station a quarter mile up the road from Tuscany’s gate, then got into Livy’s Fiat for the ride to the estate. As we approached the gate, she took a remote control from her purse, touched a button, and the barred fence slid back into itself. That was twenty seconds ago. We should have seen the lights of the mansion well before now.
“Livy-”
“I know. I’ve never seen it like this. The floodlights are always on.”
“I told you he was scared of Presley.”
“Look,” she says, pointing at a dim light high in the trees. “They’re on the third floor. Mother’s room.”
I close my hand around the butt of the gun in my waistband. Ike’s gun.
A thin beam of light slices through the darkness and comes to rest on the windshield of Livy’s car. I start to pull the gun, but then our headlights sweep across a black police uniform.
Livy slows to a stop.
The cop walks around to her window and shines his light onto her chest, sparing her the direct glare of the
