What Happened to the Bennetts(46)

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s bullshit and you shouldn’t bother with it.”

“You say that, but Lucinda saw it online. Ethan, too. The thing that worries me is that they’re not gonna stop, either. The one citizen detective, Bryan, he’s going to investigate.” I had gone online last night and checked the website. “He drove by our house and took pictures of it burned to the ground. He did the same thing with my office and Lucinda’s studio.”

“I saw. You can’t pay any attention to that.”

“How do you guys deal with this? You must have experience.”

“Uh, no.” Dom snorted. “Not a lot of citizens trying to find out what our usual applicant is up to. Anyway, I’ll talk to Gremmie.”

I felt ragged, running slow. “Any progress on Milo?”

“No, sorry.”

“I’m worried we lost him, Dom. I’m worried we’ll never get him. That he’ll never go to trial. That he’ll never pay for what he did to Allison.”

“Trust me. We’re all over it. I’ll keep you posted.” Dom glanced over, pained. “You getting any sleep? You don’t look it.”

“I’m fine,” I said, but I wasn’t. I’d spent most of last night researching Mexican cartels, as if you could learn anything about Mexican cartels from Google. “I want to talk to Gremmie myself, okay? About Milo and Bryan Krieger?”

“Okay. Just don’t call him Gremmie. “

“I won’t if you get me that Zoom call.”

Dom laughed. “Maybe you do have swag,” he said, then took off.





Chapter Twenty-Five



I sat at the kitchen table while Lucinda held the phone, waiting for a cue from Dom. He had set up a FaceTime call with my mother-in-law on a secured iPhone. I was grateful, and Lucinda was over the moon. The CEO of Bay Horse had agreed to keep the call confidential, and none of the staff in Memory Care knew that the young female lawyer visiting my mother-in-law was really an FBI agent.

Ethan hung out with Dom in the living room, waiting for the call to start. I was happily surprised he’d wanted to take part.

Lucinda looked over, her eyes animated with anticipation. “I’ll talk to her first, then bring in you and Ethan.”

“Fine.” I leaned out of view, to avoid confusion. My mother-in-law’s Alzheimer’s was in Stage IV, moderately severe. Every illness was awful, but Alzheimer’s had a unique sort of staged cruelty. Lucinda felt as if she were losing her mother bit by bit, like a death in life, a purgatory no different from hell. Stage V was the final stage of the illness, but the neurologist had no idea when she would enter that stage.

Dom motioned to us, holding another phone to his ear. “Okay, they’re ready. Call, and Special Agent Lingermann will answer.”

“Thank you.” Lucinda pressed the button, and the phone rang once, then connected.

“Hello, Mrs. Bennett,” answered Special Agent Lingermann, and I leaned over to see what she looked like. Tall and youngish, with an angular face, horn-rimmed glasses, and a professional smile. She was wearing a stiff white shirt and a dressy suit that female lawyers hadn’t worn for a while, but it was a good effort.

“Yes, hi, is she there?”

“Yes, and she’s sitting at the desk. I explained to her that you’re going to be on FaceTime, but I’m not sure she gets the concept.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay, here we go.”

I moved away as my mother-in-law popped onto the phone screen, still lovely despite her advancing illness. She kept her feathered haircut coiffed by weekly visits to Bay Horse’s beauty salon and maintained its dark blond color, so there was practically no gray. She had on a navy blue cardigan with a gold necklace, and the only jarring note was the plastic doll she cradled, as if it were a real infant. The doll’s head was of grimy plastic, with blue eyes and painted-on blond curls, and its trunk was made of flesh-colored fabric.

My heart lurched when I remembered where the doll had come from. Allison always had a special relationship with her grandmother, so good we called her The Muggy Whisperer. It had been Allison’s idea to give Muggy her old Bitty Baby, since we had seen that other patients in the wings had stuffed animals.

“Mom, hi, it’s your daughter Lucinda!” Lucinda was saying, and I returned to the present. I wondered if memories were good things, if they came embedded in grief, and Lucinda had more than her share. My father-in-law had fallen ill with leukemia right after he retired, and the disease had taken him a year later. Then Caitlin had come down with breast cancer, enduring chemo, radiation, and surgery that Lucinda had seen her through until her death. Then after Caitlin’s passing, my mother-in-law began to show signs of forgetfulness, in a cascade of calamity that would’ve been hard to believe if I hadn’t lived it. Lucinda handled it all, though I knew it had taken a toll.

“Cindy, I don’t see you.” My mother-in-law was looking around the room, her cloudy gaze jittery. Deep folds creased her forehead and bracketed her mouth.

“Look at the screen, Mom. See me now?” Lucinda waved, smiling. “I’m on the screen. I can’t come in person, but we can visit this way.”

“I don’t understand,” my mother-in-law said, frowning. The doll slipped, throttled under her forearm. “I don’t understand.”