Six Years полностью

“So what do you make of that?” she asked.

“Make of what? I don’t know what to say here. I don’t even know where Natalie is, much less how she might be connected in a very, very small way to a bank robbery.”

“That’s my point. I didn’t think it mattered either, until I started looking up the other name you mentioned. Todd Sanderson.”

“I didn’t ask you to look him up.”

“Yeah, but I did anyway. Got two hits on him too. Naturally the big hit surrounded the fact that he was murdered a week ago.”

“Wait, Todd is also linked to this same bank robbery?”

“Yes. Did you ever read Oscar Wilde?”

I made a face. “Yes.”

“He has a wonderful quote: ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’”

“From The Importance of Being Earnest,” I said because I am an academic and can’t help myself.

“Right. One of the people you asked about comes up in a bank robbery? That’s nothing to get excited about. But two? That’s not a coincidence.”

And, I thought, a week or so after the bank robbery, Todd Sanderson was murdered.

“So was Todd’s connection to the bank robbery also very, very small?” I asked.

“No. It was just small, I’d say.”

“What was it?”

“Mackenzie!”

I turned toward the scream and saw a woman who looked a bit too much like Shanta Newlin for my taste. Same height, same relative weight, same hairstyle. The woman had her eyes wide open as though a plane had suddenly crashed in the backyard. I followed her gaze. Mackenzie was back standing on the slide.

Shanta was mortified. “I’m so sorry, Candace. I told her to sit down.”

“You told her?” Candace repeated incredulously.

“I’m sorry. I was watching her. I was just talking to a friend.”

“And that’s an excuse?”

Mackenzie, with a smile that said, My work is done here, sat, slid down the slide, and ran toward Candace. “Hi, Mommy.”

Mommy. No surprise there.

“Let me show you out,” Shanta tried.

“We’re already out,” Candace said. “We can just go around the front.”

“Wait, Mackenzie drew the nicest picture. It’s inside. I bet she’ll want to take it home.”

Candace and Mackenzie were already heading toward the front of the house. “I have hundreds of my daughter’s drawings,” Candace called back. “Keep it.”

Shanta watched them both disappear into the front yard. Her normal military posture was gone. “What the hell am I doing, Jake?”

“Trying,” I said. “Living.”

She shook her head. “This will never work.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll work. It’ll just be messy.”

“How did you get to be so wise?”

“I was educated at Lanford College,” I said, “and I watch a lot of daytime talk shows.”

Shanta turned and looked back toward the swing set. “Todd Sanderson had a safety-deposit box at the Canal Street bank,” she said. “He was one of the victims of the robbery. That’s all. On the surface of it, he’s pretty meaningless too.”

“But a week later, he gets murdered,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Wait, does the FBI think he has something to do with the robberies?”

“I’m not privy to the full investigation.”

“But?”

“I didn’t see how it could be connected—the bank robbery in Manhattan and his murder down in Palmetto Bluff.”

“But now?”

“Well, your Natalie’s name came up too.”

“In a very, very small way.”

“Yes.”

“How small?”

“After a robbery like this, the FBI does an inventory of everything. I mean, everything. So when the safety-deposit boxes are blown up, most people have all kinds of important papers in them. Stocks and bonds, powers of attorney, deeds to homes, all that. A lot of that ended up on the floor, of course. Why would a thief want any paperwork? So the FBI goes through all that and catalogs it. So, for example, one guy was holding his brother’s car deed. The brother’s name goes on the list.”

I was trying to keep up with what she was saying. “So let me see if I follow. Natalie’s name was on one of those documents from the safety-deposit box?”

“Yes.”

“But she didn’t have a box of her own there?”

“No. It was found in a box belonging to Todd Sanderson.”

“So what was it? What’s the document?”

Shanta turned and met my eye. “Her last will and testament.”

Chapter 32

The FBI, Shanta said, wanted to know what I knew about all of this. I told her the truth: I knew nothing. I asked Shanta what the will and testament said. It was pretty simple: All of her assets should be split equally between her mother and sister. She had also left a request to be cremated, and interestingly enough, she wanted her ashes to be spread in the woods overlooking the quad at Lanford College.

I thought about the will and testament. I thought about where it had been found. The answer wasn’t yet in my grasp, but it felt as though I were circling right above it.

As I started to leave, Shanta asked, “Are you sure you don’t have any thoughts about this?”

“I’m sure,” I said.