Cold Springs(52)

“And Ann would?”

The anger in her eyes turned brittle. “I will not do this. I will not have another argument with you about the Zedmans.”

“What did Race tell you? How did he know about the money?”

“No,” she repeated. “I will not—”

The reporter called, “Ms. Reyes? Norma Reyes?”

Norma's lips started trembling.

Chadwick stepped toward her, some involuntary reflex telling him to protect her, despite all their history. The familiar rose scent of her hair made him feel hollow, hungry in a way he did not want to admit. He cupped his hand around her arm. “Get in your car. Come on.”

Norma pulled away. “Go back to Texas, Chadwick. Just . . . get away, all right?”

She slipped into her Audi, started the engine and pulled away from the curb, almost clipping the reporter's leg. The faint scent of rose remained on Chadwick's clothes.

“Sir?” the reporter asked.

Chadwick walked across the street. The reporter followed him, his cameraman lumbering behind.

“Sir? Excuse me—”

Chadwick turned on the reporter, made him back straight into the camera lens.

He couldn't have been more than twenty-five. Whatever hard-edge attitude he'd put on that morning along with his foundation and rouge crumbled immediately.

“Leave,” Chadwick told him.

“But—”

“Now,” Chadwick said, rolling Norma's newspaper into a tighter baton. “Or I show you why I prefer print.”

“Ah,” the reporter said.

He scurried back to the news van, pulling the cameraman along by his belt loop, hissing at him, “You weren't filming? What do you mean you weren't filming?”

Another minute and they were packed and gone.

Chadwick glanced at his rental car.

If Kindra Jones had watched the exchange, she gave no sign. She was still reading her novel, chewing gum, bobbing her head to whatever music she'd found on the radio.

Chadwick looked up at Laurel Heights.

It seemed impossible that potato-print pictures could still hang from clothespins in the windows, that children could still shriek with delight on the playground. If $27 million had really vanished, the place should collapse. The yard should be silent, the gate draped in black.

The color and energy of Laurel Heights suddenly made him resentful, the way it had nine years ago, when the world had also failed to stop.

He took a deep breath, then walked up the steps of the school.

Ann would not allow her knees to shake. She would not let her hands tremble, or her voice quiver.

She told herself she must stay in control. This was her school—her legacy. They would not take Laurel Heights away from her with their well-meaning concern, their polite questions, their uncomfortable silences.

They sat in a semicircle—an impromptu Star Chamber made from student desks: five board members and Mark Jasper, the president, who until today had been Ann's biggest supporter. David Kraft, poor David, who'd been up forty-eight hours straight, trying to help her figure out the disaster, was slouched against the radiator in the corner, his eyes bleary, the tails of his dress shirt untucked.

“So you don't know.” Mark Jasper spread his hands. “You have no idea.”

He'd come straight from his art studio, smelling like turpentine, his polo shirt and faded jeans flecked with paint from whatever million-dollar commission he was completing.

His expression was calm and sympathetic, but Ann knew better than to trust his friendship. Mark was the archetypical Laurel Heights parent—a liberal artist who doubled as a cutthroat businessman. As much as he professed to love Ann's idealistic vision for the school, if he began to consider her a liability he would orchestrate her firing with as little remorse as an auto plant manager ordering a layoff.

“I'm cooperating with the police,” Ann told him. “We're working tirelessly on this.”

“Tirelessly,” he repeated. “I wish we could give the school community a better answer than that, Ann. This is a lot of money we're talking about.”

The other board members studied her—their faces morose, anger smoldering under the surface. She knew what they were thinking. She had pushed, and pushed, and pushed this capital campaign, let it drag on for ten years. She had insisted that the new building was the answer to the school's falling enrollment. She had bled the school community with constant fund-raising. And now, $3 million shy of her goal, the final auction tomorrow—this had happened. A crater, blown right in the middle of her career.

It was her fund. It must be her fault.

“You asked Norma Reyes to give you a week before she told anyone,” Mark said. “Even us. Is that correct?”

“Mark—it was Thanksgiving weekend. I didn't want to cause a panic if it was some . . . mistake. I didn't want—”

“And then when Norma informed you, this morning, that she had to tell this board, and the police, you asked her for yet more time. Is that correct?”

The floor was sand, eroding under her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chadwick appear in the classroom doorway—a tower of beige, his expression as grave as that of the members of the board. Her mind must be playing tricks on her—lack of sleep, too many days of stress. Chadwick was in Texas. But it made sense that he would appear to her now, like some Jacobean ghost.