Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [46]
Brewster Cortland Payne II had raised his family, now grown and gone, in a large house on four acres on Providence Road in Wallingford. It had been in the Payne family for more than two centuries.
What was now the kitchen and the sewing room had been the whole house when it had been built of fieldstone before the Revolution. Additions and modifications over two centuries had turned it into a large rambling structure that fit no specific architectural category, although a real estate sales-woman had once remarked in the hearing of Mrs. Patricia (Mrs. Brewster C.) Payne that "the Payne place just looked like old, old money."
The house was comfortable, even luxurious, but not ostentatious. There was neither swimming pool nor tennis court, but there was, in what a century before had been a stable, a four-car garage. The Payne family swam, as well as rode, at the Rose Tree Hunt Club. They had a summer house in Cape May, New Jersey, which did have a tennis court, as well as a berth for their boat, a fifty-eight-foot Hatteras called Final Tort V.
Matt made it safely into the drive, and as he approached the house, saw a two-year-old, somewhat battered, GMC Suburban parked with one of its front wheels on the grass beside the parking area by the garage. It had been Brewster Payne's gift to his daughter, Amelia Payne, M.D., not because she needed such a large vehicle, but in the hope that the truck-sized--and truck-strong--vehicle would keep her alive. Amy Payne's inability to conduct a motor vehicle over the roads of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania without, on the average of once a week, at least grazing other motor vehicles, street signs, and on memorable occasion, a fire hydrant, was almost legendary.
Amy Payne was in the kitchen with her mother and Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, the Payne housekeeper, when Matt walked in. They were peeling shrimp. Amy was a not-quite-pretty young woman who wore her hair short, not for purposes of beauty but because it was easier to care for that way.
Mrs. Newman was a comfortable-looking gray-haired woman in her fifties. Patricia Payne was older than she looked at first glance. She was trim, for one thing, with a luxuriant head of dark brown, almost reddish hair, and she had the fair skin of the Irish.
"Well, if it isn't the famous soon-to-be Sergeant Matthew Payne," Amy greeted her brother. "How good of you to find time in your busy schedule for us."
"Amy!" Patricia Payne protested.
"Got another fire hydrant, did you, Sigmund?" Matt said, as he walked to the table and kissed his mother.
"You were on television," Patricia Payne said. "I guess you know."
"That wasn't my idea," Matt said. "The mayor's press guy grabbed my arm and said 'You stand there.' "
"You did look uncomfortable," his mother said. "Well, I guess congratulations are in order, aren't they?"
"That's what I came out to tell you," Matt said. "How did you find out?"
"Not from you, obviously," Amy said.
"Hey, I tried to call when I found out," Matt said. "Didn't I, Elizabeth?"
"Yes, he did."
"And she told me you and Dad were going to be overnight in Wilmington," Matt said, and added, "I even tried to call you, Sigmund Freud."
"I thought that had to be you. Sophomoric humor."
"I'm almost afraid to ask," Patricia Payne said.
"He told the receptionist to tell me they were going to repossess my television unless they got paid," Amy said.
"Matt, you didn't," Patricia Payne said, but her face revealed that she found a certain element of humor in the situation.
"I walked into the office, and the receptionist, all embarrassed, whispered in my ear and said that the finance company had called--"
Mrs. Newman laughed