High Plains Hearts

by Janet Spaeth

  “Uh-uh. So what kind of car are we buying?”

  They finally told one of the secretaries farther down the hall that they’d left the keys in Mr. Palmer’s office, and she was able to retrieve them.

  “Wow,” Lily breathed when they were outside. “That’s bizarre. Money laundering!”

  “And beyond that, it’s going to get even weirder. They don’t launder money just because it’s smudged. It’s drug money or gambling profits or something illegal. This is big-league stuff.”

  “Ric, before we go pick up Todd, can we go somewhere and have a cup of coffee or something so my heart can start beating normally again? I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  Within minutes, they were in the real-world environment of a brightly lit coffee shop.

  “I’m still overwhelmed by it all,” she said. “And I’ve got to admit, I’m getting worried. Do you think they’ll do anything to us? I’m worried about Todd.”

  “I think Newton is probably more at risk than you are. I know practically nothing about crime, but I imagine he’s not the big cheese of the operation. He probably has to answer to others higher up. And I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes in the next couple of months.”

  His heart was still pounding away wildly. The closest he’d ever gotten to this kind of criminal activity was late at night on his couch, a safe distance from the cops show on television.

  Lily sipped her coffee. “I can’t stand it,” she burst out. “I know I said I didn’t want Todd to see me until I’d calmed down, but at this rate, I won’t see him for years. Can we go get him now?”

  “Sure,” Ric said easily. “Let’s go.”

  Twenty-four minutes later, a tiny rocket named Todd propelled himself into Lily’s arms while her mother beamed at Ric and asked him: “What’s your address?”

  Chapter 12

  Ric grinned as he caught Lily’s attention over her mother’s shoulder. “Do you think I can trust her?” he asked Lily.

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on it. You know, she’s had offers to buy her mailing list from those junk mail distributors. But she does send out nice Christmas cards.”

  “Lily Marie Chamberlain!” her mother said. “You tell him the truth right now.”

  The sheer normalness of this conversation, this loving bicker between mother and daughter settled on her soul like the balm of Gilead.

  She hugged her mother. “You are a wonderful, wonderful woman. I absolutely adore you.”

  “What’s all this about?” her mother asked, but as Lily noticed the pleased smile that played across her face, she mentally resolved to tell her more frequently how much she loved her.

  “Well, did you have a good time with Gran?” she asked Todd, who was buzzing around the group of adults like an excited bee.

  “The best! We went to a couple of movies, and we ate lots and lots of ice cream, and we made cookies. I meant to save some for you, but I ate them on a accident.”

  “You ate them ‘on a accident’?” she asked. “Is that compared to eating them ‘on a purpose’?”

  “I guess so. I was just standing there, and the cookies were on this plate, and we were waiting for you, and the next thing I knew, the cookies weren’t on the plate, but they were in my tummy.” He made an exaggerated expression of regret as he looked at his mother.

  “That’s okay, tiger. I can live without the cookies.” She turned to Ric. “I suppose we should go now.”

  “Oh no, not so soon!” her mother objected. “Can’t you stay tonight, too?”

  Lily knew her mother had enjoyed having Todd stay with her, but she could see the exhaustion in her face. This time with Todd had been short, but it had been just on the edge of too much for her. She knew that as soon as they left, her mother would go in and take a nap.

  “We’ll be back next month, maybe during Labor Day. How does that sound?” she suggested when she saw her mother’s tiredness battling with the urge to spend time with her daughter and grandson. “That’s only a couple of weeks away.”

  Her mother nodded. “I’ll be counting the days.” Then she turned to Ric. “You’re invited, too.”

  Lily started to say something, but Ric smoothly intercepted her remark with, “I’d be delighted to see you again.”

  When they were in the car and on their way back to Wildwood with Todd in the backseat happily playing with his new toys, courtesy of his indulgent grandmother, she mentioned it.

  He looked at her, his blue eyes soft. “I was serious. If you don’t mind, I’d kind of enjoy going with you and Todd. I like your mom.”

  “I like her, too,” Todd piped up from the backseat. “She’s really neat, and she knows how to play ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano, and she taught me how to play it, too. When we get back, I’ll play it for you. And you know what else, when we were at the museum, we—”

  The sun was warm, she was with Ric, and Todd was safely with her again. For just a while, she was able to push the worries of her life into the back of her mind and bring those things that had been in the back to the front. The switch was relaxing, and she felt herself smiling drowsily.

  Ric broke into her reverie. “Thinking deep thoughts, Lily?”

  “I’m not thinking. I’m simply enjoying being here with you and Todd and reveling in having spent some time with my kooky mother and pretending there is nothing, absolutely nothing else in the world.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” he commented briefly. “I wasn’t kidding about liking your mother. She’s terrific. And I felt like I wasn’t a stranger.”

  “You weren’t,” Todd contributed from behind them. “She already knew about you.”

  “Yes, Todd,” Lily said. “We’re all friends through God, right?”

  “Not just that.” He paused to put the wheel back on one of his toy cars. “I told her all about you, Ric. She liked to hear me talk about you, so I told her lots and lots and lots.”

  Ric looked at the boy in the rearview mirror. “And what did you tell your grandmother?” he asked, his voice casual.

  “I told her that I liked you a lot, and that you were a good guy, and that Mommy liked you a lot, and that we were going to live in a brick house with a fireplace and a place to grow carrots.”

  “You told her about the house you and I are looking at?” Lily asked.

  He nodded. “And I told her we were going to live there and maybe we would buy it if the basement wasn’t cracked in half.”

  “And who all did you say was going to live there?” she asked warily.

  “Four of us.”

  “Four?”

  “You, me, Ric, and Snap.”

  Her concerns about having Ric included in the group evaporated upon the unexpected appearance of Snap in the group.

  “Who,” she asked cautiously, “is Snap?”

  “I am me, you are you, Ric is Ric,” Todd explained carefully, “and Snap is my dog.”

  For the remainder of the trip back to Wildwood, Todd entertained them with the adventures of his invisible dog, Snap, whom he had apparently found in a park in Mandan. More than ever, Lily promised herself, she would do all she could to settle them into a house where he could have a dog named Snap.

  From the day care came the sounds of singing.

  “Listen,” Pastor Mike said. He stood at Ric’s elbow, amusement in his voice as they listened to the children. “You know Corie, the little girl who Todd befriended? It turns out the girl has quite a voice, even if she doesn’t always get the lyrics quite right.”

  “Jesus loves me, thistle snow!” Corie caroled out. “Forty Bibles tell me so!”

  “Well, I’m not sure about the thistle snow, but she’s got the forty Bibles right,” the senior minister said. “Actually, I like her version even better. The more Bibles, the better!”

  “Todd’s really brought her out of her shell. He’s quite a kid. I’ll tell you, I missed him fiercely when he was visiting his grandmother. This place was entirely too quiet.” Ric grinned as Corie t
ook on more words to the song: “Little buds to Him be song. They wear wink, but He spells strong.”

  “Again,” Pastor Mike noted, “I can’t argue with the girl.”

  They walked down the hall toward the office. “We’re still waiting for word about the day care situation, aren’t we?” the older man asked.

  “Yes, but there is hope breaking on the horizon. Let’s go into your study, and I’ll fill you in,” Ric suggested.

  Nearly an hour later, Ric leaned back in one of the green, overstuffed chairs in the minister’s office, nearly spent after filling in Pastor Mike on the events in Bismarck. “So I think it’ll all take care of itself eventually.”

  “It sounds to me like the scoundrel was counting on Lily to take the road of least resistance,” Pastor Mike mused. “As long as she didn’t say anything, his game was still alive. He could do anything. And once she left, he was free to do whatever he wanted with the records.”

  “And that’s going to be his undoing,” Ric said. “You know the Bible says in Proverbs 16: ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.’ The more Douglas Newton felt that he was unbreakable, the more he laid his own trap.”

  “It is one of the greatest learning lines in the Bible, isn’t it?” Pastor Mike leaned forward and made a note on the pad on his desk. “I think I’ll do a sermon about it. We often collapse the verse into the more modern interpretation of ‘pride goeth before a fall,’ and it certainly does, but there’s more to this verse than that.”

  Ric tilted his head. This was one of his favorite parts of this job, talking about the Bible with such a wise man.

  The senior pastor continued. “The verse says that pride takes us to destruction, not to just a fall. It’s ruin. Now, sheer snootiness, that’s a different story. You’re snooty? You’ll fall. Will you end up destroyed? Maybe. But the two are definitely separated in the Bible.”

  Ric’s thoughts flew right to Victoria Campbell. She had definitely qualified as what Pastor Mike called “snooty,” and she had fallen. Yet she wasn’t defeated, and now she was back with a clean spirit and better intentions.

  God was pleased. Ric knew that.

  He was about to share his deep thoughts with his fellow minister, but the door flew open as Todd barreled in, a Styrofoam cup in his hand.

  “This is for you, Pastor Mike,” Todd said, leaning on tiptoe and sliding the cup across the polished wooden desk as little bits of soil escaped onto the sleek surface. “It’s a plant. See? It’s just a little guy. We grew it from a teeny-tiny seed. It’s from us at the day care, all of us, although Miss Eileen planted it, but she let each of us poke our fingers in the dirt once. It’s a Marry Gold. Are you married?”

  “Well Todd, thank you, and it’s wonderful, and yes, I’m married.” Pastor Mike’s eyes crinkled with laughter.

  “Good. Otherwise I don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to have a Marry Gold. You,” Todd said, turning toward Ric, “don’t get one, and I’m sorry because I kind of knocked it off the ledge where the books are. We have another one planted for you, but it hasn’t popped out yet, so there’s nothing to see, but you can come see it if you want to. Even though there isn’t anything to see. It just looks like dirt, but you know what? There’s a Marry Gold growing under it, and one day it’ll pop out, and then you can see it.”

  Eileen’s voice called from the hall. “Todd? Todd? You were supposed to wait….”

  “Bye,” the little boy said, and as quickly as he’d appeared, he vanished.

  “It just looks like dirt, but under it all, there’s a seed growing,” Ric said thoughtfully. “Sorry, Mike, but I’m taking that one for the children’s sermon!”

  Lily had just arrived the next morning when Marnie hailed her from the office. “You have a call on line two. I think it’s that Mr. Palmer. I’ll transfer it to you.”

  Lily dashed down the hall and unlocked the door to her office with trembling fingers. What would he have to say to her?

  “Ms. Chamberlain, this is Carl Palmer. I wanted to update you on your case.”

  Her voice sounded remarkably calm as she answered, “I appreciate it.”

  “We’re examining the bank accounts in your name as well as those of the Nanny Group, and we’re looking into the statement you made in my office. Now between you and me, those aspects of the current situation that you brought to my attention are serious, but I didn’t hear you make any allegations or claims, and I will say so in a court of law if necessary.”

  “What does that mean?” Lily asked. He might as well have been speaking another language. She didn’t understand a word he said.

  There was a pause, and then he said, “In case Newton attempts to discredit you.”

  “He’s already done that,” Lily responded.

  “Perhaps ‘discredit’ is too weak of a word. Maybe I should say in case he would try to charge you with defamation.”

  Defamation? He might charge her with defamation? Lily was almost surprised that she didn’t react in anger. Instead, she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I wouldn’t put it above him,” she said to Mr. Palmer.

  “It is a defense that is occasionally used, although it doesn’t often go to court. Usually it’s merely a way of trying to get the other person to back down.” His voice was noncommittal, but she could sense an undercurrent in his words: Be careful.

  “At any rate, you can expect a visit from two officers of the law who will take your statement formally, and there may be others as well from both state and federal agencies as this thing expands. I’m not sure at this stage who all will be involved.”

  “I understand.”

  “Ms. Chamberlain,” he said, his voice lowering a bit, “ask for identification. Keep track of who you talk to, their names, agencies, everything you can. Don’t get in a car with anyone to ride to an interview. Meet them there or offer to make your statement in your office. And if you know someone reliable, perhaps that young man who accompanied you to see me, have that person with you during the statement. And remember, you do have the right to legal counsel if things get too dicey. If you ask for it, they must stop interrogating you at that point. Actually, you might want to think about retaining counsel now.”

  The conversation ended with a few pleasantries that floated over and around her head, and at some point she hung up the phone.

  She stood up and, on shaky feet, walked down the hall to Marnie’s office, where she was talking to Victoria Campbell. Ric looked up through the open door of his office, and suddenly all was quiet.

  “I need a lawyer.”

  Her words fell into the silence with the strength of a megaton blast.

  Ric was at her side in a second, and soon all three were asking her questions at once.

  She related the conversation, pausing occasionally to fill Victoria in on the gaps, and at the end Ric leaned back thoughtfully.

  “I think it’s a good sign,” he said at last.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Lily couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “I think it means that he is convinced you’re not guilty. Otherwise, I don’t think the conversation would have gone the way you’ve relayed it to us. It would have been much more matter-of-fact, and I doubt he would have advised you to get a lawyer. He probably would have asked if you had a lawyer.”

  “But why do I need a lawyer if I’m not going to jail?” she wailed.

  “You need a lawyer so you don’t go to jail,” Marnie said.

  “My ex is a lawyer,” Victoria said. “We had our problems when we were married, but as lousy as he was as a husband, he was a superb lawyer. And one thing I learned from him was that lawyers, among other things, protect the process of law, even though it may not seem that way to us. So you need a lawyer to make sure your rights aren’t trampled on in the search for justice.”

  “What does that mean?” Marnie asked.

  “I’ll try to clarify,” Victoria responded. “Heaven knows I heard the spiel enough
times from him. The government is set up as a system of checks and balances, and one of the balances comes from lawyers, who make sure that when their clients enter the court system, all the rules are followed. That’s why you hear about these awful people getting out on technicalities.”

  She motioned for them all to sit down. “Sorry. This takes awhile to go through. We’re—all of us—given legal rights regarding searches and evidence and admissibility and that kind of stuff. For every single case, a good lawyer will make sure that those rights are preserved.”

  “Yeah, but that stinks when somebody gets out because something was wrong with the arrest!” Marnie said.

  “I agree, but in the long run, it’s a protection, because if it’s ignored once, it can become precedent and become like a new regulation or law, and that’s wrong.” Victoria raised her eyebrows. “Wow. I usually don’t give speeches. Maybe I was paying closer attention than I thought when Mr. Wonderful was talking.”

  “But how on earth am I going to get a lawyer?” Lily stood up and walked to the window. Outside the sky was blue, and she could hear a bird singing.

  Victoria picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Max Campbell, please.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Watch this. Max? This is Victoria. A friend of mine needs some legal backup, someone to be with her when she’s questioned by the feds, and really, to make sure that whoever’s doing the interrogation is legit.”

  She paused and smiled. “No, she’s innocent. She really is. She’s too good to do something like—yeah, it’s her. Yes. You will? Great! I’ll send her down, and smooches to you and the missus. Bye!”

  She hung up the phone with a big grin. “You got a lawyer!”

  “But I thought you and your ex weren’t on good terms,” Lily said slowly. “How did you …?”

  Victoria smiled. “After our talk, I called him, and he and I and his new wife sat down, and we talked the whole thing out, and while I still think she’s a money-grubbing husband stealer, well, to put it nicely, it’s a perfect match. We’ve come to a new understanding, and we’re all happier, especially Edgar. So Max is willing to give you a helping hand, no problem, in gratitude for all you’ve done for us.”