Joel Goldman - No way out

Nardelli was on point, nodding to the officer, who motioned to Peggy, leading her and the rest of us into the house. We gathered in the small living room, circling around Peggy, our reluctant, beer-soaked, scraggly-haired host. In need of a strong cup of coffee and a shower, she tottered, reaching out to Lucy, who guided her to a lumpy sofa. Kate sat next to her, and Nardelli and I stepped back, giving them room, Lucy taking the lead.

“How are you holding up?”

Peggy stared at the floor. “How do you think I’m holding up?”

“I can’t imagine. I don’t know how you get through the day.”

She raised her head. “I can’t take much more of this. I swear to God, I can’t.”

Her speech was clear, no slurring, just a drunk’s self-pity, one thing jumping out at me. She hadn’t asked whether her kids had been found, and she hadn’t asked why Adam had been arrested.

“Kate needs to ask you a few more questions. Are you up to that?”

She looked at Nardelli, stiffening as if sensing a threat. Nardelli’s face was flat, making no promises. Peggy shrugged.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Peggy, we’re doing everything we can to find Evan and Cara,” Kate said. “We may have gotten an important break, and we need your help to figure out if we’re on the right track.”

She looked at Kate, her face quivering, eyes welling. “It’s about Adam, isn’t it? About Adam and me.”

“Yes.”

She buried her face in her hands. “I am so sorry, so, so sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?”

She straightened, sniffling, taking a deep breath. “I should have told the police what Adam told me about Jimmy taking the kids, but I was too afraid.”

“Of what?”

“I thought Jimmy took the kids just to push my buttons. I thought he’d bring them back in a day or two at the most. I never thought he’d hurt them. But I was scared he’d get custody of them if he found out about Adam and me.”

Nardelli interrupted, unable to hide her disbelief. “Your husband was arrested for stealing. The judge won’t let him post bail because he won’t tell us a damn thing about your kids, and you kept quiet because you were afraid he’d get custody? He’ll do two to five years on the theft charge alone. You think he was going take the kids with him?”

She winced, like she’d been slapped. “Jimmy’s the kind who gets away with everything. He got this fancy lawyer. I thought he’d get off.”

“Peggy,” Kate asked, “what if Adam was lying about having seen Jimmy?”

“Lying? Why would he lie?”

“Did Adam talk to you about any problems he was having, anything he thought you could help him with?”

“Just his mother. She drove him crazy. Why? What are you talking about? Why would Adam lie to me?” And then she understood and started to shake, terrified at what she may have done. “Oh, my God, is that why the police arrested him? Did he take my babies?”

“We don’t know,” Kate said.

“Then what did he do?”

“He molested and killed Timmy Montgomery.”

The color vanished from her face, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted before she could scream.

Kate and I waited outside while a paramedic tended to Peggy, Lucy staying by her side. Kate brushed dirt off my jacket.

“You’re a mess.”

“Old news.”

“Very old. You should ride with Lucy to the Farm. And call Joy. She’s probably worried about you. I know I am.”

Lucy and Adrienne Nardelli came out of Peggy’s house, Nardelli twirling one finger in the air, telling us to get the show on the road.

I settled into the front seat of Lucy’s car and called Joy, leaving a message when she didn’t pick up that I was going back to the Farm with Lucy and didn’t know when I’d be home.

“Everything okay with you and Joy?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You grimaced when she didn’t answer, and it wasn’t a happy grimace.”

“Well, she isn’t happy that Kate is working on this case.”

“Do you blame her?”

“No, but it’s not my fault.”

“Doesn’t matter. If I lost Simon, all I’d think about is how much I want him back, and, if I got him back, I’d never stop worrying that I’d lose him again.”

“Trouble is, that gate swings both ways.”

“You and Kate?”

“Yeah. We both thought we’d moved on, but neither of us has moved on as far as we’d like to believe.”

“Forget it, Jack. I like Kate, but you can’t do that to Joy, not after what she’s been through and what she’s looking at.”

“I’m not doing anything to Joy. I’m doing my job, and right now, Kate’s part of the job, but that’s all she is. The rest will work itself out.”

“That’s a half-baked commitment to doing the right thing.”

“I’m glad you’re so certain about what’s right for Joy, Kate, and me. Soon as I figure it out, I’ll be all over it.”

Lucy grasped the wheel with both hands, biting her lip.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry about what I said about you knowing better than anyone what it’s like to lose a child. That was really, really stupid.”

“Except you were right about that. I do know better.”

“Even so, I shouldn’t have said it. Look what it did to you.”

I waved off her concern. “Comes with the territory. If I stopped talking to everyone who made me shake, I’d have to take a vow of silence. I can handle it if you can.”

She put the car in gear and fell in line behind Adrienne Nardelli and Kate. “So, what about Peggy? Do you think she killed her kids?”

“After that performance, no way. But if it turns out that Adam killed them, she’ll drown in a bottle before she turns forty.”

“Either way, the press will crucify her,” Lucy said. “They don’t give anybody a break because they don’t think anyone can change, turn their life around.”

“Like you did.”

She smiled. “Yeah, like I did.”

“Is that why you get your back up every time someone takes a shot at Peggy? You think she’s getting a raw deal?”

“Maybe. I guess. Probably. Look, just because she’s poor and her marriage fell apart and her husband stole so they could pay the mortgage doesn’t mean she or her kids deserve any of this.”

“It’s not about who deserves what. It’s about what happens when things go wrong and what you do about it. Besides, look at Joy and me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We had it made. We were both college graduates. I had a good job. Joy wanted to stay home with the kids. We had a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and none of that mattered. One day we let a neighbor give Kevin a ride, thinking we could trust him when all we did was deliver our son to the devil, and nothing, I mean nothing, was ever the same again. Wendy lived another twenty years, but the day we lost Kevin was the day she started to die. So zip code and tax brackets don’t have a damn thing to do with it, and if we don’t find Evan and Cara alive, Peggy Martin won’t make it either.”

“Is that why you went after Adam on your own?”

I thought of Jeannie Montgomery drifting through the crowd.

“We don’t need any more ghosts.”

Ethan Bonner was waiting for us with the jail superintendent, Annette Fibuch, when we arrived at the Farm. She had arranged for us to meet with Jimmy in the Women’s Recreation Area, just as before.

“There’s too many of us,” Kate said. “We’ll overwhelm him, and he won’t tell us his name, let alone anything else.”

“Kate can go in on her own, but I’m not letting Detective Nardelli in there without me,” Bonner said.

“I’ve got a better chance if I talk to him on my own,” Kate said.