Chapter 24
Inside the familiar apartment, too many things had changed: Instead of the usual “girls’ get-together,” with Lucky, Sandy, and Michelle, everyone sat in couples. Michelle’s marshmallow-topped mugs of whipped cream sat beside fragrant cheese biscuits that John had “magicked” out of the scant supplies in Lucky’s mom’s kitchen. Terry, quiet but alert, sat on the arm of the couch, next to Sandy.
Lucky was glad that Roger stood across the room, looking into a laptop, watching the video footage they’d all just reviewed: shot by Sandy in short bursts as she and Terry had opened every doorway in the top floor of the building, ranging from an old janitorial closet to a one-room apartment that looked like it had been vacant since the 1970s, and of course the final stairs to the roof access. And what Sandy called the “hidden room”: a long passageway that ran along the back of the building, where two caged pigeons perched with heads tucked down, barely stirring as the light went on above them and the phone camera took their images. Lucky noticed a half-used-up bag of birdseed next to the cages.
“Must smell pretty strong in there,” Roger commented, taking the video back to where the “bird room” light went on. “No windows or anything, right?”
“Funny thing, it didn’t stink though,” Sandy replied. She turned to Terry. “At least, not that I noticed. Did you think so?”
Terry shook her head. “I bet the birds haven’t been there long. I mean, no droppings on the floor, no feathers, no extra dust. Maybe whoever is running the birds just put them there.”
Lucky’s stomach clenched and she set down her mug of cocoa. “That means somebody is coming in and out of the building who doesn’t belong here.”
A murmur of agreement circled the room. Roger angled a hand in the air to show two directions. “Or,” he added, “somebody who belongs here brought the pigeons in. Who has keys, Lucky?”
“There aren’t any,” she admitted. “At least, not to the main building. Every tenant’s office or apartment has its own keys, but the street-level doors are supposedly a fire access. Never locked. Anyone could come in here.”
“Street people?” Sandy wrinkled her nose. “Homeless people show up here at all?”
“Not that I know of. Mostly just people looking for an office who get turned around in the hallways or reach the wrong floor. Even the counselors with offices here seem to have, well, sort of middle-class clients. You know?”
Michelle’s phone vibrated on the coffee table. “Jake,” she said as she reached to thumb the connection on. “Hey, Jake, what’s up? Yeah, the cops took Sean. We’re all in your mom and dad’s apartment. How’s your dad doing?”
She gave a thumbs up to the group. “Right, good. And your mom? Yeah, well, she’s got to be worn out, right? What about you?” She nodded, then said, “Sure, she’s here. Lucky, Jake said he’s been leaving messages for you. Want to talk to him on my phone?”
Roger pulled out his own phone and confirmed that Lucky’s messages had forwarded to him. He held up three fingers to Lucky, who nodded tiredly and took the pink cell phone from Michelle.
“Hold on, I’ll put you on speaker. Okay, go ahead. So, what’s up?”
“You said you needed to know about the gun, right? The one I got for Mom? She says I can tell you, and she said she already knows that means Michelle and Sandy, too. But, like, she says you guys should try to keep it quiet.”
Lucky sat on a dining chair, knowing anything softer would put her to sleep. “So, what was it? Who was stalking Mom? Why didn’t she tell me too, and – did Dad know?”
Jake sighed. “It’s complicated. Just a minute, let me just check.” They could hear a door open, then close again. “I’m in the bathroom next to Dad’s room. Mom hasn’t told him all of it. It’s got to do with Pauline.”
“Our Pauline? The one who works in Dad’s bookstore?”
“Yeah. See, I guess Pauline told Mom she’s got, like, this fibro something – some kind of disease that makes her tired a lot and she hurts all over.”
“Fibromyalgia,” Sandy put in.
“Yeah, I guess that’s it. And she’s got one of those new prescriptions, you know, for medical marijuana? And Mom’s been letting her do it, like, upstairs over Mom’s bookstore, because Dad’s against pot, you know?”
“Wait, I thought Dad was pushing for legalized pot. Like, for taxes for the state. Against the governor.” Lucky rubbed her forehead. “So why wouldn't Pauline be able to tell him?”
“That’s exactly it, about the legalized stuff. Because he’s doing testimony to the legislature. And he told, like, the whole committee or something that he’s never smoked pot since college and never had it around him. Let me finish, Lucky, okay?”
“Keep explaining,” Lucky agreed.
“So then around the end of last summer, Mom realized somebody was, like, sitting in a van in the back parking lot behind her store, with some big camera. And she figured they were trying to catch Pauline smoking, right? And use it against Dad, you know? But then she saw this guy again, or at least somebody with the same camera, up inside the gym building, aiming it at our apartment windows. And then she started getting stuff on her cell phone, text messages that said she should tell Dad to shut up and quit the whole thing. And you know, she didn’t want to tell Dad, because she wanted him to get through this without getting distracted. So that’s why she said I should get her a handgun, a little one. It was like she got mad and scared both at the same time, and I figured if I got it for her and just kept an eye out, she wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“But Jake,” Lucky protested, her voice rising, “how could you keep an eye out when you were away at school?”
“Yeah, well, I was trying. I mean, you know, I was calling her a lot. So much that the guys have been giving me a hard time, even. And she would have told me if anything was up, right?”
Lucky closed her eyes and shook her head. She felt speechless. Only Jake could have reasoned it out that way.
Michelle tried to make peace before Lucky could blow up. She crooned toward the phone, “And nothing happened, right? You were just trying to take care of your mom, the way she wanted you to.”
“Right, see, nothing happened!” Jake seemed to realize his mistake and added quickly, “I mean, until yesterday. Or the day before yesterday now, I guess. But see, it wasn’t Mom that it happened to. Whatever it is, it was over in Dad’s place instead. Right? So how could it be my fault?”
Lucky drew a deep breath. “Right,” she said grimly. “Not your fault, Jake. We got that. And you’re doing the right thing tonight, taking care of Mom and Dad. So, listen, we’ve all got to get some sleep. Some of us have to get up way too soon. You have a place to rest?”
“Yeah, I’ve got this pair of chairs in front of Dad’s room. The nurses don’t like it much, but there’s enough space for them to get in and check him, you know? But I might stay up for a while, just in case.”
“Right. Well, get some sleep if you can. Nobody much is going any place tonight. G’nite, Jake.”
“G’nite. But you’ve got to call me if anything else happens, okay?”
“Okay. Go to sleep.”
Michelle reached over and turned off the cell phone. John groaned dramatically and repeated, “But nothing happened!”
“Yeah. Right. Oh, spit. And all that. Hey Roger, is the door here pretty secure?”
Roger nodded but also walked across to the apartment door and pushed a table in front of it. He gestured toward the windows that overlooked the rear parking lot. “Snowplows are out there, hear them? I don’t think your mom’s phantom photographer is going to be there tonight.”
“Probably not.”
Sandy finally spoke up. “So, let’s see if I’ve got this. Your dad was fighting publicly with the governor over how to raise taxes – either by a sales tax here in Montpelier, which your dad didn’t want, or a tax on legal weed, which the governor and the conservative half of Vermont don’t want legal. Meanwhile, Sean was running a weed mailing operation out of your mom’s store, and Pauline from your dad’s store was coming to your mom’s building to get high – legally but against what your dad would have wanted. And this person with the camera, supposedly he was after Pauline – but what if he was after Sean? Or something totally else?”
Terry added, “And what’s with the pigeons?”
“And the guy on the snowmobile who wanted all the papers from your dad’s store,” Roger added. “Is that the same one that had the camera, or do we have two bad guys out there? Not counting Sean, who’s sitting in handcuffs someplace tonight, I hope.”
Lucky stood up. “Plus the gun,” she pointed out. “Whoever shot my dad knew how to get Mom’s gun.”
“Unless your mom was there after all,” Roger said quietly. At the stunned faces around him, he muttered, “I’m just saying. I mean, I know she wasn’t the one who shot him, but it’s an option, right? Suppose she brought the gun over earlier in the day or something. Your dad could have had it with him.”
“You’re forgetting the webcam footage,” Sandy pointed out. “Whoever it was, they brought the gun with them. For some pieces of paper? I don’t think so. Listen, I’m sorry to say this, but the way this unfolds, it’s so stupid, it’s almost got to have something to do with Sean. You know?”
“Pigeons,” Lucky mused. “We should ask Jake about Sean’s pigeon thing. That's when he looked scared, right? About the pigeons and his father?”
Heads nodded around the room, although only Ann Davila and Lucky had seen Sean’s out-of-control reaction.
Michelle cut in, voice quiet and soothing. “Listen, we should all get some sleep, you know? Let’s divide up the furniture and crash for a few hours. It will all make more sense in the daytime.”
Surprisingly quickly, people laid out pillows and blankets on top of beds and agreed on bathroom sequence. Roger fixed himself a place on the rug in front of the apartment door, and blew an air kiss to Lucky before lying down.
“Grab the couch while you can,” he advised her. “Nobody’s getting in here tonight.”
Lucky checked the back windows and saw that the snowplows had left. Snow fell straight down, lit by the safety lamps on poles; the wind had stopped. She stared into the white curtain, knowing Sean’s family lived beyond Seminary Hill, in the next town beyond the distant college campus.
Behind her, as if an inner window let her see it, she knew the bulk of the gold-domed State House waited in the snowstorm. Something told her the money and crises around her meant corruption, and corruption meant politics.
Her thoughts returned to the boxes of books in her father’s store marked with the governor’s name. “There’s something we’re not quite getting yet,” she said quietly out loud.
A sudden snore from Roger’s cocooned body on the floor startled her. A nightlight in the kitchen cast a soft glow, but all the other lamps in the apartment were off, and she stood alone in the darkness, unwilling to leave the window and their snowy night scene.
Finally she pulled out her cell phone, keyed in the alarm for seven thirty, and crawled onto the sofa, pulling an oversized afghan over herself. Sleep came at once, although her dreams were dark and confused, and she woke up briefly in the darkness, struggling with the tangled afghan, wondering where on earth she was. And why.