Lock stood up, slightly dizzy. He felt a sick heaviness in his gut.
Abner handed him a power screwdriver and indicated that he should install shelving brackets in the wall opposite the desk.
“Find the studs first, son,” Abner said. Lock welcomed the additional assignment, instead of standing there and having Abner observe his facial expressions and body language. “By the way, I see you volunteered to be the guest speaker at the Wake-Up meeting at AA next week. Congratulations.”
“I’m pretty nervous about that, Abby. Not so sure it was a good idea.”
“It’s a wonderful idea. Sharing your experience is part of the program, and hearing your story benefits others, so just relax. You’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right. So how do you get from Mrs. Mannheim having a boyfriend all the way to them being involved in a plot to frame her husband?”
“Because she couldn’t have done this herself. Doesn’t have the brains.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If she’s so smart, why would she get involved in this kind of thing in the first place? She didn’t think it through. She’s impulsive. The sign of real intelligence, Lock, is thinking several steps ahead. Like in chess. These miscreants didn’t have much of a plan.”
“So Freel’s the brains?”
“Freel’s her partner, alright,” Abner said. “But he’s dumber than he thinks. Of course, he’s denying it and offering an alibi that’s impossible to verify. And threatening to sue us for harassing him. Who else could it be?”
Lock forced himself to look composed as his heart soared, knowing Abby wouldn’t be looking for other suspects if he was convinced he knew who the guilty parties were. For Lock and Natalie, Candice’s boyfriend was the real problem.
“Yes,” Abby continued. “Nothing about this made sense to me until I took that bottle of Glenmorangie out of the cabinet. It was calling to me. I set it down and I looked it in the eye and I told it to talk. But it wouldn’t talk. Nope, Lock. It wouldn’t talk. It sang.”
Abby sat down at his desk, satisfied. This was what Lock had been afraid of. He sat down too.
“That bottle told me the accident was all wrong,” Abby said. “‘Focus on what that kid Carlo saw,’ it said. It told me I had to find out why the missus would put the child in her car. How and where did Mannheim get hold of the child? No, this doesn’t add up, no matter how you figure it. And the Glenmorangie told me I didn’t know enough about that so-called Good Samaritan. Now, let me ask you something.”
Abby rose and began pacing.
Lock stood again and worked quickly at drilling the holes for the brackets. He wanted to get out of there.
Abby pointed to several shelves leaning against the wall. He wanted Lock to install them. “Are these two straight?” Abby asked, examining a pair of brackets.
“Perfectly straight. Is that all?”
“Straight is good, but I want them perfectly level, too. And no, that’s not all. We have to get all these boxes on the shelves.”
“We?”
“Now,” Abby said, “about that crash. Phony as can be. Usually, people set up accidents for a few grand from the insurance company, and maybe a slimy personal injury lawyer’s in on it. But not this time. This one was supposed to deliver a real juicy payoff.”
“Mannheim’s got a lot of money,” Lock said. “Putting everything in boxes on shelves won’t solve your problem.”
“You see,” Abner said, “the missus and her boyfriend wanted it to look like Mannheim was in a drunken stupor when he went home, messed the place up, and took the two-year-old for a joyride. Then he was supposed to have a little fender-bender that no one was going to pay much attention to—you know, because no one got hurt. A little fodder for a custody hearing is all. It would have been Mannheim’s second DUI.”
“But the first on the record,” Lock said. “Mrs. Mannheim said that he got the local cops to wipe the first one out.” He kept working, trying to add to the conversation and get as much information as he could, seeming to go along with Abby’s theory so he didn’t seem suspicious. Lock used a carpenter’s level Abby handed him to make certain the shelves were seated correctly. He began loading boxes on the shelves. The brackets creaked.
“I don’t know about more boxes on here,” Lock said.
Abby disregarded Lock’s concern and pointed toward the boxes he wanted up on the shelves. He handed Lock another box. “Don’t worry, son,” said Abner. “The shelves will hold just fine. So Freel goes into the bar where they know Mannheim will be and doses his drink. How exactly, I don’t know, but he pulls it off. Now Mannheim goes out to his car, but he can’t see straight. That’s Freel’s opportunity to get Mannheim’s keys. See, this is what the cabby notices—and when the coast is clear, Freel drives Mannheim to that sharp curve on Creek Road. But from the police report and Mannheim’s toxicology test results, we know it wouldn’t have been possible for him to have gotten out of that parking lot, let alone drive to the curve two miles away—he was too drunk and drugged up. Nah, Freel had it all rigged up to look like Mannheim crashed into the tree. To prove Mannheim’s a danger to his children.”
“Music to a family court judge’s ears,” Lock said, straining the shelf with one more box.
“Precisely.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this one,” Lock said, hoisting a box toward the top shelf.
“No, it’s fine. Put it up gently and be careful. Then the missus shows up with the kid in a carrier, they plant it in the car, and off they go.”
“Reckless endangerment right there,” Lock said. “Only they don’t figure on the other drunk coming around the bend.” Lock felt a surge of nausea gurgle in his stomach.
“See, that’s the trouble with crossing the line between what’s right and what’s not, if only for an instant, son,” said Abby. “The line moves on you, and you never learn that until you’re too far out on the wrong side.”
Lock breathed deeply.
“If Mannheim is shown to be a real danger to his children,” Abby said, “and if he doesn’t get custody, then the missus winds up with a big equitable distribution settlement and big alimony and big child support. Real cute. They have big dreams, Mrs. Mannheim and Mr. Freel, but what they never dreamed of was Carlo seeing Mrs. Mannheim with the baby in the garage. And they never dreamed of the other drunk driver coming and hitting Mannheim’s car. That’s where the line they crossed began moving farther and farther away. And something else they didn’t dream about was Abner W. Schlamm and his ever-loving love of first-class scotch.”
The shelves collapsed and the boxes and their contents went tumbling everywhere. The sound echoed through Abby’s office.
Abby looked up for an instant but ignored the mess. He was too focused on what he was saying. “See,” he said, “it’s like being a recovering drunk trying to stay sober. You keep going to meetings because they keep you on your toes. That’s why I still attend meetings. Keeps you from thinking you can cross the line just this once. You can’t get away with anything. Yes sir, they never saw that drunk coming—or this drunk, either,” he said, jerking a thumb towards his chest. “They never pictured their lovey-dovey little dream turning into a nightmare.”
Lock turned his head away and swallowed hard.
With a vinegary expression, Abby examined the fallen shelves and boxes.
“Look what a mess you’ve made,” he said to Lock, without the slightest trace of irony.
“I’ve got to get on a conference call,” Lock said. “As soon as I’m off, I’ll be back to help you clean this up.”
He left the room.
At that moment, Lock could not have cared less about what Abby said. His mind was riveted on the thought of Natalie in bed with another man.
Lock returned to his desk—there was no conference call, he simply needed to get out of
Abby’s presence for a while. He tried to busy himself, but he couldn’t work. He had no control over his mind. It went its own way and all he could do was tag along, trying to deflect one gut-churning thought after another.
Hours passed and Lock became even more distracted. He cleaned up the fallen shelves and boxes in Abby’s office. He left the office and walked around the block. The cold air felt good. He returned and tried to write up his weekly activity report, but his mind went blank before quickly returning to ruminating about the crisis.
He left the office again, this time seemingly to go to lunch, but instead, all he did was drive around, not paying attention to where he was going. Then he realized he was going nowhere. He drove back to the office and took another stab at completing the reports.
It was useless. All he could think about was that Natalie had had a boyfriend all along—and he’d never considered that as a possibility. He seemed to be suffocating and took short, rapid breaths to calm himself. He felt like he’d just eaten a large, greasy breakfast. The nausea boiled inside him. And an image flashed in his mind—he could see himself being handcuffed in his living room and ushered into a police car.
It took Lock a few more seconds to realize that this whole affair had been one long con to scam him into helping her. Anyone else might have seen that from the start. Her claims of love, the extraordinary sex, the phone calls and pillow talk that would last for hours, deep into the night. The heart-to-heart talks about their future. All lies and bullshit. The sex was meaningless to her, only physical. He was simply another man she’d accommodate, for whatever reason that served her. She must have had a good laugh curling up with her boyfriend when she told him about Lock. He was heartsick. Made a fool of, swayed into becoming a criminal and a co-conspirator. Oh, Natalie, he thought. But that wasn’t his only problem.
Abby was getting too close. He thanked God Abby thought it was Freel. That would buy Lock some time. But he had to wonder if maybe Abby was setting him up, giving him a chance to come clean. Lock knew that accepting responsibility went a long way with Abby, but he wasn’t going to wait forever. Either way, he had Lock plenty nervous.
Lock had to know what else Abby knew, and he figured maybe Abby’s email was a good a place to start. A while back, when Abby had gone fishing in Boca, he’d given Lock his password to check his email for him. The password was easy for Lock to remember. It was his own birthday.
Breaking into Abby’s email account was a horrible thing to do, he knew. Another betrayal. But Lock persuaded himself it had to be done.
26
Natalie arrived at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—an iconic building on a hill on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River—fifteen minutes late. She bought an admission ticket and made her way up the steps to the medieval cloister where she had agreed to meet Lock.
He was already there, seated on a stone bench, waiting, reading a pamphlet. He had arranged this meeting, wanting to speak to her face to face. The cloister, quiet and eerie in its subdued light, usually didn’t get much foot traffic. It was a perfect place to meet.
Although it was colder than it had been in days, she wore no outerwear other than her long sweater.
“Hi, Lock,” she said. She sat beside him. They faced the marble fountain surrounded by columns. “What’s wrong? You look so unhappy.”
A couple entered the room, paused to look at one of the columns, then kept going. In half a minute, they were gone.
“It’s Abby,” Lock said. “Now he’s convinced himself it’s you and someone else. And soon he might get to thinking that that someone else is me.”
“He can’t know it’s me because it was you. Mostly.”
Lock winced. Natalie continued, “All he can do is think it’s me. And that’s not enough for the D.A. to move forward with prosecution.”
“It’s good enough for him,” he said. “He saw Witt’s toxicity report and thinks it’s impossible that he could have driven the car to Creek Road. Now he’s wondering about the guy helping him in the parking lot.”
Another visitor walked through the room, and Lock paused, lowered his voice, and continued.
“He controls the agency budget. He wouldn’t think twice about making this CPS’s highest priority, or asking the D.A. for help, even though he can’t stand him. They would put a full detail of investigators on this, and that includes surveillance. More resources on our necks. Who knows what else they’ll figure out.”
“Like what?” Natalie said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the guy in the black Lamborghini.”
Natalie’s expression changed to momentary panic—her brow furrowed and a quick grimace flashed across her face—before she consciously brought it back to neutral.
“What black Lamborghini?”
“The one your boyfriend drives.”
Natalie’s slumped. There was a long pause.
“Candice. She told you.”
“No, not Candice. All you need to know is that I know,” Lock said. “And thank you for not denying it. But I have bigger problems than worrying about a white trash cheater.”
Natalie’s lip curled into a snarl. “Bigger problems, such as…?” she asked through clenched teeth.
“Jacoby, the D.A. This is the kind of case he loves. And Abby’s going to talk to Jacoby again—if he hasn’t already—and Jacoby will bring on a lot of heat. This was made for him.”
Natalie exhaled slowly.
“No matter what you think of me,” she said, “you have to understand this is unraveling for both of us—not just me. We have to hang together. We’ll find a way out, I know it. You’re just panicking.”
“The thing isn’t unraveling, you’re unraveling,” he said. “You’re not thinking straight. There’s only one move—reconciliation—and you refuse to make it. And you don’t know me as well as you think. When Dahlia got hurt, that did it for me. I crossed the line and there’s no going back. And Abby’s wrong. I’m no good. And I don’t much care what happens to me.”
“Then why don’t you turn us in?” said Natalie. “Why don’t you scamper on down to the police station with your tail between your legs and confess?”
“Because of Abby. If there’s a way out of this mess where he never finds out I was behind the whole thing, then that’s what I need to do. If he knew, it would kill him.”
“I’ll stop seeing Jerome,” said Natalie. “I swear. He’s nothing but entertainment for me. Can you let it go? Everyone’s entitled to one mistake. Let it go. It was meaningless.”
“Don’t bust up with him for my sake. I don’t care.”
She slapped him. He didn’t flinch and didn’t put his hand to his check where it burned.
“Yes, you do care,” she said. “I was involved with him long before you, and I didn’t know how to break it off. I’m weak. You know that. Very weak. But it’s you I’m crazy about, and I know you know it.”
Lock stood up and looked down at Natalie as she continued to sit.
“That’s hilarious,” he said. “You’re weak.”
Natalie reached into her pocket and fidgeted with her car keys.
“All I care about is keeping Abby in the dark,” said Lock. “I don’t care about me, or you—not anything. I won’t break his heart if I can help it.”
“Maybe I started off with a rotten idea in mind, but I’ve changed,” she said. “I’m in love with you. What about my heart?”
“Your heart will be fine. It’s made of marble like the columns of the cloister. Cold marble.”
Natalie glared. She said nothing.
“Do you know how many crimes we committed?” Lock asked.
“You committed.”
Lock bit his lower lip. “Here they are,” he said, closing his eyes. “Abduction, attempted murder, child endangerment, reckless endangerment, criminal negligence, aggravated assault, false repor
t to law enforcement, battery, insurance fraud, conspiracy. And that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Believe me, there are others. And those are just the criminal charges. The civil charges will be as bad. We plotted the whole thing. You and me. And wait until Jacoby starts thinking about all the publicity he’ll get if he can break the case.”
“I don’t threaten people, Lock, but I’m going to protect myself and my children, whatever I need to do.”
“I know,” he said. The bitterness was audible. “You always do whatever you feel like doing.”
“If you don’t care who gets in trouble, why should I? I don’t care who gets hurt, either.”
“Like Abby.”
“Yes, and like me. Like you,” she said.
“And Witt will have the kids while you’re in jail. For a long time.”
“It won’t matter. According to you, I won’t be getting any settlement anyway, so I may as well be rotting in jail.”
“Go ahead, Natalie.”
Natalie stood up and faced Lock. She looked him right in the eyes.
“Lock,” she said, taking a deep breath. She reached to take his hand, but he backed up a pace. “Why are we fighting? We can get through this. It’s harder than we planned. That’s all. But we can do it. Together.”
Lock sat back down on the bench and sighed. “What we did to your husband and Dahlia destroyed us, Natalie.”
“You have to give me another chance,” Natalie said. “Please. You’ll see. Give me a chance to prove how good I can be for you.”
He sized her up. A pretty face on a pound of poison.
Natalie said nothing else, then turned and walked across the floor toward the stairs that led to the exit.
Lock sat there for a couple of minutes so that he wouldn’t see her in the parking lot. Once he figured she’d had enough time to start her car and drive away, he left too. The image of a craps table in Atlantic City leapt into his mind’s eye, but with some effort, he dismissed it. Instead, he headed back to the office.
Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel Page 18
