Mother May I(66)

That should have been it. He had work to do. He stayed in his seat, though. She was about to have one hell of an ugly conversation with her husband. He was trying not to think about that. What Trey’s story might be. He knew Spence. He’d seen Gabrielle’s face when Spence had trapped her in that copy room. Spence had never, to his knowledge, behaved that way to another female associate, but they were not likely to confide in Marshall. Not to mention, all the others were white and most were from wealthy families.

Gabrielle came from money, but she was a black woman, and the partners were almost universally white and male. There was one woman, but she was a junior partner. The only black partner was male and very conservative.

That made Gabrielle a pioneer, and as such she was vulnerable. Now he was wondering if some paralegals and administrative assistants might have seen a side of Spence that he kept hidden from the elegant white daughters of wealthy men. Spence married women like that. And cheated on them. And lost them. His pent aggression, his anger as his divorce had gotten uglier, it had to have gone somewhere.

Lexie Pine had been poor. Vulnerable. Unconnected. Meanwhile there was probably a Shaw law-library wing or building on that campus. So while he had ideas about what Lexie’s story might entail, he couldn’t make the most obvious explanations line up with what he knew of Trey.

Moreover, if he was a decent human being, he couldn’t want Trey to be a bad guy. If Trey was, at his root, just another Spencer Shaw, then Bree would leave him. She would not want her daughters in the care of such a man. She would not want her son raised in that mind-set. Though that might not be up to her, if she left him.

Trey was wealthy, and his parents were one-percenters. Bree had a B.A. in theater from a state university and no real employment record or family resources. She’d be vivisected by the best lawyers in the country; she’d lose everything. If Trey was angry enough, if he let those lawyers take the gloves off, she could lose custody of her kids.

Marshall couldn’t want any of that, which meant that he could not want Bree. Any good person would hope and pray her husband was as decent as he seemed and that he had an explanation she could live with.

So he said, “Good luck,” to Bree and tried like hell to mean it. To his surprise it was easy. He loved her. He wanted her to be safe and happy more than he wanted her to be his.

“Good luck,” she echoed.

He undid his seat belt, ready to go, but she lurched at him, and then she was in his arms, her hands clutching him, her rose-scented hair pressing against his face. It was the last thing he needed. It was the only thing he wanted. For a moment the pressure lifted. He might as well have been on Cara’s lake. Sunshine and Jet Skis.

When she pulled away, he had to send a conscious message to his arms, telling them to release her.

She got out of his car, already gone from him. Her mind was on her son and her husband and all that the next few hours would bring. He wanted to stay with her, help her through it. Hear what Trey had to say for himself. But once he was back in the driver’s seat, once he was in motion, reality settled back around him like a darkness falling. It was not his place. It never would be. Time to get to work.

First stop his house, to raid his gun safe. He was heading into Lexie’s world now. The Methlands. He wanted to be armed. He took his .38 in his shoulder holster, plus a Beretta Nano at his ankle. Then on to the place Lexie had shared with Toby when she was on parole.

It was a rental with peeling paint and sagging shutters, set close to the road on a block down in southwest Atlanta that had yet to gentrify.

It was full dark now. He could see that the lights were on, and there was a shit-colored Civic in the driveway. He got up, and as he came close, he heard music playing. Creedence. Someone was home.

He stepped up onto the low porch, the boards bowing to his weight, and knocked.

The music cut off, and then Toby Leland cracked the door. Same cotton-fluff hair, but longer. Same neck tat. Marshall could see it through the gap as Toby peered out. The stink of old cigarettes wafted by in a puff of escaping air. It almost hid the skunky whiff of pot.

Toby’s fingers, holding the door, were stained yellow from nicotine. He rolled his own, Marshall thought. It went with the slicked-back rockabilly hair and the white T-shirt. The only visible sleeve was rolled up, as if this man in his fifties had mistaken his age for the decade.

Greaser, Marshall thought. An aging S. E. Hinton character. But not Ponyboy or Soda. Someone harder. Rumble Fish gone wrong.

Toby’s upper lip peeled back, revealing soft, gray teeth in a dog’s smile that did not reach his eyes.

Marshall knew why. He had retained his cop look. A habitual offender like Toby would clock Marshall as a cop if Marshall were a hundred years old and dead in a coffin.

“Hi, Toby. I just got off the phone with Stewart Dobbs,” Marshall said. A lie. Dobbs was Toby’s probation officer. At his name Toby’s lip-curl smile widened, trying to look friendlier. It did not go well. “I’m not here for you. So if you’re hiding a piece behind this door, I suggest you put it someplace I won’t see it and then talk to me.”

Toby’s eyebrows puzzled up. After a brief, slack stare, he stepped back from the door, leaving it cracked. Marshall heard him rustling around. Maybe shoving a pistol under a chair cushion or down the waistband of his pants. Toby reappeared and swung the door open a little wider.

“You alone in there?” Marshall asked.