The Night Shift(72)

The young agent makes a call, then motions for Ella to go inside.

“Who’re you?” the agent asks Chris.

Ella says, “He’s my lawyer.”

The agent relents and waves Chris along with her.

Inside the mansion, Ella’s mother, a distinguished and commanding figure, gives Chris a dismissive once-over, then turns to her lawyers. “I need a moment with my daughter.” Without waiting for assent, she pushes through the imposing door to what looks like a library. Ella follows her in and the door bangs shut.

Chris turns to the two lawyers. “What’s all this? A search warrant? What are they looking for?”

In a hushed tone, the older lawyer says, “They’re looking for trouble.” He hands Chris a sheaf of papers. The warrant and supporting affidavit. “And I’m afraid they just may find it.”





CHAPTER 65


ELLA





“What the hell’s going on, Mom?”

“Sit,” Phyllis says, motioning to the leather chair. The library is softly lit, but tonight it has the eerie feel of an old Hitchcock movie.

Ella lacks the energy to fight. She collapses into her father’s favorite chair.

Phyllis walks over to the bar and pours them both a drink. She seems to be searching for the words, which by itself worries Ella. It’s not like Phyllis to be at a loss for words. Her wealth has given her the confidence, no, the sense of entitlement, to say whatever comes to mind, without filter.

“They’re digging up the garden,” she says.

“Dad’s garden? What in the world…?”

Phyllis sits, takes a deep breath. “New Year’s Eve. I should’ve been there for you.”

Ella’s confused. This isn’t the time for belated apologies. Federal agents have raided the grounds.

“After what happened with your brother,” Phyllis continues, “I shut down. But your father, he got angry.”

Ella never saw him that way. Yes, Dad was different after what happened to Shane. More assertive with her mother, more independent from her. It seemed he’d finally gotten out from under Phyllis’s heavy thumb. But Ella never saw him as angry. Sad, yes. A man who cried in the dark in this very chair. And in the garden.

She has an immediate sense of dread. In the garden.

“What are they looking for?”

“He loved you so much,” Phyllis says, avoiding the question.

“What are they looking for?” Ella repeats, more urgently.

Phyllis hesitates for a moment. “When they released that boy from jail—it released something in your father. I’d never seen him like that. You were still recovering and it was just too much for your father to take.”

“What are they looking for?” Ella asks a third time, her voice quivering because she thinks she knows.

“That night, I heard him on the phone talking to the other fathers. The religious one always got your father fired up.” Her mother coughs a laugh. “Your father didn’t spend a day in church in all the years we were married, but that man with his eye-for-an-eye scripture talk…”

Ella braces for the devastating news she knows is coming.

“All I know is, the night before that boy supposedly ran off your father and some men were in the garden.”

“What men?”

Phyllis simply looks at her. “He came inside late, covered in dirt, drenched in sweat. Like he’d been—”

“Digging.” Ella’s own voice sounds hollow and distant.

“I should’ve done more. After you left for college, your father fell into another depression. He came to me, said he was going to turn himself in,” her mother says. “He couldn’t live with the guilt of what they’d done.”

Ella is having a hard time processing.

Her mother continues, “I told him it would devastate you, that you couldn’t take any more. I begged him not to turn himself in.”

“And he didn’t,” Ella says. “He took his own life.”

“He did that to protect you. He must’ve thought it was the only way to end the pain, to protect you from knowing what he’d done.”

Ella stares at her mother with disgust.

“I had no idea he would … I was desperate, Eloise. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get your father to talk to a psychiatrist, to talk to his brother. I even called that teacher you worshipped so much and asked him to try to talk some sense into your father. To explain what turning himself in would do to you.”

Ella does a double take. “You mean Mr. Steadman? He talked to Dad about—”

There’s a loud knock on the library door.

It’s an agent. The pregnant woman Ella met at Corky’s. Agent Keller. They’ve found what they were digging for. She’s not smug, she looks more sad than anything.

“Ms. Monroe, I’d like to ask you some questions,” the agent says to Ella’s mother.

This time the lawyer interjects. “Phyllis, I strongly advise you to not answer any questions. At least right now,” he adds.

“What he said,” Phyllis tells the agent.

Keller nods. “How about you, Ella?”

As she asks this, Chris walks into the library. He’s not looking well. His skin is ashen, beaded in sweat, and he winces at the light. But he manages to get out the words: “She has nothing to say.”