Ryan stepped closer and took her hand. “Mom, I came this close to burning two million dollars tonight. Maybe you would agree with that move, maybe you’d disagree. But I deserve to know everything you know before I do something that final.”
She turned away and faced the fireplace. The flickering flames were reflected in her dark, troubled eyes. She answered in a soft, serious voice, never looking up. “I do know more. But I don’t know everything.”
Ryan was beginning to sense why his mother hadn’t cried at the funeral. “Tell me what you know.”
“Your father-” She was struggling for words. “I think I know where you can find the answers you’re looking for.”
“Where?”
“The night before he died, your father gave me a key to a safe deposit box.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know. Your father just said that if you had any questions about the money, I should give it to you. I’m sure the blackmail will become clear once you open it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because even though your father couldn’t say it to your face, he apparently wanted you to know. And I know of no place else to look.”
He searched her eyes, as if scrutinizing her soul. He’d never looked at his mother that way before, never had to watch for signs of deception. He found none. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you for telling me.”
“Don’t thank me. Can’t you see how afraid this makes me? For you, for all of us?”
“What do you want me to do?”
She grimaced, as if in pain. “That’s up to you. You can be like me and just stay away from it. Or you can open the box and deal with whatever comes with it.”
He paused for a moment until their eyes met. “I have to know, Mom.”
“Of course you do,” she said in a voice that faded. “Just don’t tell me about it.”
18
Panama. Until now, it had meant nothing to Ryan but a famous canal and an infamous dethroned dictator named Noriega. When his mother had told him about the safe deposit box, he’d figured it might be as far away as Denver.
What the hell was Dad doing with a safe deposit box in Panama?
The key and related documentation were in a locked strongbox in the bedroom closet, right where his mother had said they would be. Box 242 at the Banco Nacional in Panama City. There was even a city map. Dad’s passport was in there, too. Ryan didn’t even know he’d owned one. He thumbed through the pages. Most were blank. The passport was like new, stamped only twice. A trip to Panama nineteen years ago and a return to the United States the very next day. Not much of a vacation. It had to be business.
The business of extortion.
Ryan took the box up to his room and spent most of Friday night in bed awake, his mind racing. He ran though every human being he’d ever seen his father with, every man and woman his father had ever mentioned. He couldn’t come up with a single person who had the financial wherewithal to pay two million dollars in extortion. He certainly couldn’t think of anyone with connections to Panama.
At two in the morning he finally formed a semblance of a plan. He rose quietly and peeked in his mother’s room, making sure she was asleep. Then he sneaked downstairs. The money was still under the couch, where he’d stashed it when his mother had pulled up unexpectedly. He had a mini-ware-house near the clinic where he stored extra supplies, some old office furniture. Not even Liz knew it existed. Like a cat burglar, he slipped silently out the front door, pushing his Jeep Cherokee to the end of the driveway so that the engine noise wouldn’t wake his mother. He drove straight to the warehouse and hid the money in the bottom drawer of an old file cabinet. It would be safe there. Both the cabinet and the metal suitcase his father had left him were fireproof. He returned home, went straight to bed, and waited for the sun to rise.
He rose early Saturday morning, having managed only a couple of hours of sleep. He showered, dressed, and brought the box down to the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the Lamar Daily News, a local paper put out by the nearest “metropolis” — Lamar, population 8,500. It was usually no more than sixteen pages, three or four of which would typically be devoted to a photographic recap of the annual Granada High School class reunion or the 4-H Horse Show. The sight of his mother and her small-town news made it all the more absurd, the thought of his father flying to Panama and opening a safe deposit box.
“I’ve looked everything over,” said Ryan.
His mother stared even more intently at her newspaper.
“Don’t you want to know exactly what’s in there?” he asked.
“Nope.”
Ryan stood and waited, hoping she’d just look at him. The wall of newspaper between them seemed impenetrable. Fitting, thought Ryan. Most people in Piedmont Springs at least once in a while read the Pueblo Chieftain, the Denver Post, or even the Wall Street Journal. Not Mom. Her world was filtered through the Lamar Daily News. Some things she just didn’t need to know.
“Mom, I’m going to take all this stuff with me, if that’s okay with you.”
She didn’t respond. Ryan waited a full minute, expecting her at the very least to ask where he was going. She simply turned the page, never making eye contact. “I’ll be back late tonight,” he said on his way out the kitchen door.
He put the box in the backseat of his Jeep Cherokee and fired up the engine. The sun was just rising over the cornfields. Miles and miles of corn, all for animal feed, not the sweet corn grown for human consumption. A cloud of dust kicked up as he sped along the lonely dirt road, a shortcut to Highway 50, the first leg of the two-hundred-mile trip to Denver.
The air conditioner in Amy’s truck was still broken, making the Saturday afternoon traffic jam even more unbearable. According to historians, Arapaho Indian Chief Niwot once said that “people seeing the beauty of the Boulder Valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” Inching toward the fourth cycle of the traffic light at 28th Street and Arapahoe Avenue, Amy was beginning to see the truth in what locals referred to as “Niwot’s curse.”
Amy had a twelve-thirty lunch reservation at her favorite restaurant. Gram had graciously agreed to babysit until three o’clock. For Taylor, that meant nonstop reruns of Three’s Company and The Dukes of Hazzard, at least until she went down for her afternoon nap. It made Amy feel a bit like a child abuser, but tomorrow she’d figure out some way to reverse the brain damage.
She parked near Broadway and walked up to the Pearl Street Mall. For all its natural beauty, Boulder was ironically quite famous for its mall. The four-block open-air walkway was the city’s original downtown area, converted for pedestrians only. Historic old buildings and some tastefully designed new ones lined the brick-paved streets, home to numerous shops, galleries, microbreweries, offices, and cafes. The mall was prime people- watching territory, especially on weekends. Jugglers, musicians, sword swallowers, and other street performers created a carnival atmosphere. Amy smiled as she passed “Zip Code Man,” a virtual human computer who, with no more information than your zip code, could identify and often even describe your neighborhood, no matter how far away. Taylor had stumped him last December, using the zip code she’d posted on her letter to Santa Claus.
Narayan’s Nepal Restaurant was a sizable downstairs restaurant right on the mall, offering a distinctive mountain fare at bargain prices. As a graduate student, Amy had shared many a lunch and dinner at Narayan’s with Maria Perez, her old faculty advisor from the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. Together, they’d plotted the course of her doctoral research over stuffed roti or the ever-popular vegetable sampler. Amy hadn’t seen much of Maria since she’d left astronomy. Even though she still considered her a friend, she found it hard to just pick up the phone and give her a call. Partly, she felt she’d let Maria down. Mostly, she felt she’d let herself down.
Maria was waiting at the entrance when Amy arrived.
“How are you, stranger?” she said as they embraced.
