Found Money - James Grippando [79]
“Why not? Hasn’t it occurred to you that she might be the safety valve I talked about? Maybe she has the information that your father used to extort the five million dollars. Maybe it was her job to release the information to the public if anything untoward ever happened to your father.”
“Yes, I did think of that. But it’s not fair to get her involved until I’ve ruled out one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
Ryan lowered his eyes, speaking softly, almost ashamed. The fact that he had felt some early chemistry with Amy made it even more difficult to explain. “I need to know if she’s connected to the victim. Of the rape, I mean.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure. We know my father was convicted of rape as a juvenile. That means there had to be a victim. Obviously, Amy is too young to have been the victim herself. But maybe her mother or her aunt or someone in her family was raped. I just want to make sure that the money my father gave to Amy wasn’t Dad’s way of making amends for that, a way of easing his own guilt.”
Norm nodded, seeming to understand. “Problem is, those court records are sealed. Hell, they were probably destroyed years ago. By law, juvenile records are destroyed once the offender reaches a certain age, usually somewhere in his twenties. I don’t see how you could ever verify the victim’s name.”
“Right now, it’s my number-one priority. When we met last Friday, she gave me a one-week deadline to prove that the money came from a legitimate source. That means she should be calling me tomorrow or Friday.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, staring out the window.
“But by tomorrow, I better think of something.”
“That’s a pretty short fuse. What if you’re stumped?”
He glanced at Norm, troubled by the thought of telling anyone his father was a rapist—let alone a woman who might have known the victim. “Then I’ll do the only thing I can do.”
“What?”
He looked away again. “I’ll ask her.”
37
On Thursday morning, Ryan was ready to call home. His father wouldn’t answer.
That was a fact Ryan had not yet gotten used to. His father had always been the one to answer. Mom hated talking on the phone. Frank Duffy used to love it. You could hear it in his voice, the way he would answer. Not a lazy “Hello.” It was a distinctive and energetic “Hay-low,” a genuine greeting to anyone who did him the favor of dialing his number. It had been somewhat of a joke among friends, the way people would call for Ryan, Sarah, or their mother and end up speaking to Frank. He always wanted to hear what was going on.
Ryan wondered if he was listening now.
Last night had been tough. He’d spent most of it thinking how best to tell his mother what he’d learned, especially about the rape. There was no easy way. Face-to-face was probably best, but with the FBI on his tail he at least had to bring her into the loop.
At the first sign of daylight, he placed the call from Norm’s spare bedroom. It hadn’t occurred to him that his mom would be anything but wide awake and dressed for the day—and it wasn’t just because of the neighbor’s blasted roosters that rattled the Duffy homestead with every sunrise. Jeanette Duffy wasn’t a Duffy at all. She was a Greene, part of a pioneer family that more than a century ago had planted roots on the plains with two mules and a sod house. She had always been an early riser, as if genetically programmed to get up before dawn to milk the cows and feed the chickens, even if they didn’t own any cows or chickens. Since the funeral, she’d been rising even earlier than usual. The big house was empty without Frank and his booming voice. Lying around in bed could only make it seem emptier. The image saddened Ryan. The loss had siphoned her frontier spirit. She looked older to him now, even in his mind’s eye. He envisioned her sitting at the kitchen table with the phone to her ear, watching her morning toast and coffee get cold as Ryan tried to tell her the truth about the man she had married.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said again, firmly.