Ли Чайлд - Этаж смерти with W_cat

[ 1156] Roscoe pulled up near the front door and we got out. It was silent. I could hear nothing except the heavy buzz of afternoon heat. We rang on the bell and knocked on the door. No response from inside. We shrugged at each other and walked across a lawn around the side of the house. There were acres of grass and a blaze of some kind of flowers surrounding a garden room. Then a wide patio and a long lawn sloping down to a giant swimming pool. The water was bright blue in the sun. I could smell the chlorine hanging in the hot air.

[ 1157] “Some place,” Roscoe said.

[ 1158] I nodded. I was wondering if my brother had been there.

[ 1159] “I hear a car,” she said.

[ 1160] We got back to the front of the house in time to see the big Bentley easing to a stop. The blond woman I’d seen driving away from the prison got out. She had two children with her. A boy and a girl. This was Hubble’s family. He loved them like crazy. But he wasn’t there with them.

[ 1161] The blond woman seemed to know Roscoe. They greeted each other and Roscoe introduced me to her. She shook my hand and said her name was Charlene, but I could call her Charlie. She was an expensive-looking woman, tall, slim, good bones, carefully dressed, carefully looked after. But she had a seam of spirit running through her face like a flaw. Enough spirit there to make me like her. She held on to my hand and smiled, but it was a smile with a whole lot of strain behind it.

[ 1162] “This hasn’t been the best weekend of my life, I’m afraid,” she said. “But it seems that I owe you a great deal of thanks, Mr. Reacher. My husband tells me you saved his life in prison.”

[ 1163] She said it with a lot of ice in her voice. Not aimed at me. Aimed at whatever circumstance it was forcing her to use the words “husband” and “prison” in the same sentence.

[ 1164] “No problem,” I said. “Where is he?”

[ 1165] “Taking care of some business,” Charlie said. “I expect him back later.”

[ 1166] I nodded. That had been Hubble’s plan. He’d said he would spin her some kind of a yarn and then try to settle things down. I wondered if Charlie wanted to talk about it, but the children were standing silently next to her, and I could see she wouldn’t talk in front of them. So I grinned at them. I hoped they would get all shy and run off somewhere, like children usually do with me, but they just grinned back.

[ 1167] “This is Ben,” Charlie said. “And this is Lucy.”

[ 1168] They were nice-looking kids. The girl still had that little-girl chubbiness. No front teeth. Fine sandy hair in pigtails. The boy wasn’t much bigger than his little sister. He had a slight frame and a serious face. Not a rowdy hooligan like some boys are. They were a nice pair of kids. Polite and quiet. They both shook hands with me and then stepped back to their mother’s side. I looked at the three of them and I could just about see the terrible cloud hanging there over them. If Hubble didn’t take care, he could get them all as dead as he’d gotten my brother.

[ 1169] “Will you come in for some iced tea?” Charlie asked us.

She stood there, her head cocked like she was waiting for an answer. She was maybe thirty, similar age to Roscoe. But she had a rich woman’s ways. A hundred and fifty years ago, she’d have been the mistress of a big plantation.

“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”

[ 1170] The kids ran off to play somewhere and Charlie ushered us in through the front door. I didn’t really want to drink any iced tea, but I did want to stick around in case Hubble got back. I wanted to catch him on my own for five minutes. I wanted to ask him some pretty urgent questions before Finlay started in with the Miranda warnings.

[ 1171] IT WAS A FABULOUS HOUSE. HUGE. BEAUTIFULLY FURNISHED. Light and fresh. Cool creams and sunny yellows. Flowers. Charlie led us through to the garden room we’d seen from the outside. It was like something from a magazine. Roscoe went off with her to help fix the tea. Left me alone in the room. It made me uneasy. I wasn’t accustomed to houses. Thirty-six years old and I’d never lived in a house. Lots of service accommodations and a terrible bare dormitory on the Hudson when I was up at the Point. That’s where I’d lived. I sat down like an ugly alien on a flowered cushion on a cane sofa and waited. Uneasy, numb, in that dead zone between action and reaction.

[ 1172] The two women came back with the tea. Charlie was carrying a silver tray. She was a handsome woman, but she was nothing next to Roscoe. Roscoe had a spark in her eyes so electric it made Charlie just about invisible.

[ 1173] Then something happened. Roscoe sat down next to me on the cane sofa. As she sat, she pushed my leg to one side. It was a casual thing but it was very intimate and familiar. A numbed nerve end suddenly clicked in and screamed at me: she likes you too. She likes you too. It was the way she touched my leg.

[ 1174] I went back and looked at things in that new light. Her manner as she took the fingerprints and the photographs. Bringing me the coffee. Her smile and her wink. Her laugh. Working Friday night and Saturday so she could get me out of Warburton. Driving all the way over there to pick me up. Holding my hand after I’d seen my brother’s broken body. Giving me a ride over here. She liked me too.

[ 1175] All of a sudden I was glad I had jumped off that damn bus. Glad I made that crazy last-minute decision. I suddenly relaxed. Felt better. The tiny voice in my head quieted down. Right then there was nothing for me to do. I’d speak to Hubble when I saw him. Until then I would sit on a sofa with a good-looking, friendly dark-haired woman in a soft cotton shirt. The trouble would start soon enough. It always does.

[ 1176] Charlie Hubble sat down opposite us and started pouring the iced tea from the pitcher. The smell of lemon and spices drifted over. She caught my eye and smiled the same strained smile she’d used before.

[ 1177] “Normally, at this point, I’d ask you how you were enjoying your visit with us here in Margrave,” she said, looking at me, strained, smiling.

[ 1178] I couldn’t think of a reply to that. I just shrugged. It was clear Charlie didn’t know anything. She thought her husband had been arrested because of some kind of a mistake. Not because he was grabbed up in some kind of trouble which had just got two people murdered. One of whom was the brother of the stranger she was busy smiling at. Roscoe rescued the conversation and the two of them started passing the time of day. I just sat there and drank the tea and waited for Hubble. He didn’t show up. Then the conversation died and we had to get out of there. Charlie was fidgeting like she had things to do. Roscoe put her hand on my arm. Her touch burned me like electricity.

[ 1179] “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll give you a ride back to town.”

[ 1180] I felt bad I wasn’t staying to wait for Hubble. It made me feel disloyal to Joe. But I just wanted to be on my own with Roscoe. I was burning up with it. Maybe some kind of repressed grief was intensifying it. I wanted to leave Joe’s problems until tomorrow. I told myself I had no choice anyway. Hubble hadn’t shown up. Nothing else I could do. So we got back in the Chevy together and nosed down the winding driveway. Cruised down Beckman. The buildings thickened up at the bottom of the mile. We jinked around the church. The little village green with the statue of old Caspar Teale was ahead.

[ 1181] “Reacher?” Roscoe said. “You’ll be around for a while, right? Until we get this thing about your brother straightened out?”

[ 1182] “I guess I will,” I said.

“Where are you going to stay?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

[ 1183] She pulled over to the curb near the lawn. Nudged the selector into Park. She had a tender look on her face.