Cold Springs(54)

He was so unlike John. He was a grounding wire, a steel-beamed foundation, and even though she knew she didn't need a man to feel safe, something about Chadwick made her want to fold up inside him, take off the mental armor she had to wear as a leader, a professional, a mediator, and let him protect her.

Back in the old days, back in high school—that's the very feeling that scared her away from romance with him. She could be his friend, but she'd known instinctively that if they got involved, she would never become who she needed to be. She would become his shadow.

And ever since then, she'd been attracted to the wrong men—volatile, flashy ones, men who required her to be on her toes, to be calm and steady to balance them out. She remembered the day she'd met John—her first year as a kindergarten teacher, at a Noe Valley school long since defunct. He'd been dating a single mother whose child was in her class, and he'd come to the school picnic in Golden Gate Park, stood against a eucalyptus tree, and started lighting Kleenexes on fire for the children—throwing them into the air as they ignited—a dangerous and wildly inappropriate magic show. She'd known he was trouble, and known she would marry him, at almost the same moment.

What was wrong with her, that she had to marry the wrong person before she could recognize the right one?

“A woman called the bank,” Chadwick said.

“John has plenty of secretaries.”

“Maybe.”

But she could tell he wasn't comfortable with that explanation.

She thought about Norma, about the e-mail that had supposedly been sent from her computer. The past week, Ann had had her moments of doubt. Was Norma's friendship, her apparent forgiveness of Ann for stealing her husband, all a ruse leading up to this—one huge moment of revenge? But that was insane. Norma wasn't a plotter. She couldn't hide her anger that well.

Chadwick said, “Did Talia Montrose have any connection with John?”

“What do you mean?”

“Race Montrose warned Norma about the money. He knew this was going to happen.”

Hearing Race's name again made her shiver. It brought back the day she'd pulled the dull black pistol out of his lunch bag, the smell of gun oil mixing with pencil shavings and bologna and mayonnaise.

“I don't see how,” she said. “John hates Race. The Montroses are the last people he would tell anything.”

“Why did Mrs. Montrose send Race to Laurel Heights?”

“I told you—”

“Race is gifted. She wanted the best for him. And yet the morning before she was murdered, she sold her house, cashed in her checking account, and was getting ready to leave town, maybe without her son. Why?”

Ann wanted to rise to Talia's defense. She knew that Talia, in her better moments, really did care for her son. But she also remembered the parent conference Talia had come to stoned, the many other conferences she'd failed to make, the paperwork she never sent in. She remembered the time Talia had changed her phone number and forgotten to tell them—Race having an allergic reaction to a bee sting at school, an ambulance en route, and no emergency form on file from the mother. She remembered one particular argument between Talia and John, when they'd brought the fifth-grade People in Profile show to a standstill—Mallory and Race on stage, dressed up like Susan B. Anthony and Booker T. Washington, while John and Talia yelled at each other in the back of the room about which of their children was the bad influence. It had been such a nightmare Ann had blocked out exactly what Talia had said that night, but she'd been critical of Laurel Heights, as if she'd put Race there against her will. Almost as if it had been someone else's idea. Two days later, John and Ann had had the final argument of their marriage. He had struck her, permanently shattering any illusion that they should stay together for Mallory's sake.

“Talia wasn't perfect,” Ann said. “But if you're thinking she would make any kind of deal with John, forget it. They hated each other.”

“Race got a scholarship?”

“A half scholarship.”

“That's what—eight thousand a year?”

“Roughly.”

“She always pay on time?”

“I don't see what that's got to do with anything, but yes. Quarterly installments. Always cashier's check in the mail. It was never late.”

“Her handwriting on the envelopes?”

“My god, do you want me to dig one out of the files?”

His eyes stayed locked on hers, and she began to understand why he was asking.

Talia had never been late with a tuition check. Not once. And she'd never shown up to pay in person. It was always a cashier's check, never a personal check.

“Typed,” Ann remembered. “The envelopes were always typed.”

“Postmark city?”

“You're suggesting someone else was paying the bills for Race?”

“I'm suggesting someone was blackmailing John, taking his money, turning right back around and using it to fund Race's tuition at Laurel Heights. Talia went along with it, but I don't think it was her idea.”

“That's crazy.”

“If you wanted to punish John, really drive him over the edge, can you think of a better way than putting his daughter together with Race Montrose, after what happened to Katherine?”