Lisa Scottoline - Daddy's Girl

"Okay." Barb sank slowly into a chair across the small table, folding her hands at the edge of the table. There was a glass of water at her right, which Nat knew she would need.

Don't pretty it up. "Would you like me to tell you what happened, or do you want to ask me questions?"

Barb swallowed, visibly. "I want you to tell me everything, and then I want to ask you questions. I do have some, if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind." The kitchen was quiet except for the pounding rain outside. A warm golden light emanated from an overhead lamp. Nat lay her hand down on the table. "Gimme your hand, and we'll get through this together."

Barb put her hand in Nat's.

"Good girl." Nat began the story from when she saw Graf coming out of the staff office, then noticed that Ron Saunders was still alive on the floor.

"Did he… suffer?" Barb interjected, her voice wavering.

"No. I don't think so."

"Thank God." Barb blinked tears away. "Thank you, Jesus."

Nat waited for her to recover her composure.

"You tried to save him, I know," Barb said, after a moment.

"I did." Nat felt a stab of guilt. She described what she did, then brought the story to her point. "He did give me a message for you."

Barb gasped. "He did?"

"Yes."

"Did he say he loved me?"

Tell the truth. You're just the messenger. Nat answered, "Honestly, he could only get a few words out, and he had another important message for you."

"He didn't say he loved me?" Barb's lower lip puckered, and tears welled in her eyes. She grabbed a napkin and dabbed at them, smudging her mascara. "Not anything? Not even my name? The boys?" She held the napkin at the corner of her eye.

Nat squeezed her other hand. "Barb, do you have any doubt in this world that your husband loved you and the boys?"

"No. We were happy."

"Then feel it. Know it. Because he told me a message you don't know. I promised him I would tell you."

Barb lowered the napkin, her eyes reddish. "Okay, what?"

"He said, 'Tell my wife, it's under the floor.'"

"What?" Barb frowned, her forehead a network of premature wrinkles. "What's under the floor?"

"I don't know. He didn't say."

"I don't know what that means. What floor? What's under it?" Barb ran a trembling finger-rake through her hair. "What kind of message is that?"

Nat didn't know if she should go further. "Can you handle it if I tell you something that's worrying me?" Barb kept frowning. "Sure."

"I'm worried that the burglary here wasn't coincidental. Since the cushions were slashed, it looks like it wasn't a real burglary. It looks like-"

"Somebody was looking for something? That's what my mom said, too."

"Do you know what it could be?"

"No idea." Barb blinked, mystified, but Nat didn't have the heart to tell her Angus's suspicions.

"Barb, was Ron friends with Joe Graf?"

"Sure, Joe was his best friend. We went out with them all the time." Suddenly, Barb's blue eyes rounded. "My God! I know what Ron means! I remember now!"

"What?" Nat asked, then caught herself. "Wait. It's not my business." Still, she was dying to know what was under the damn floor.

"No, no, it's okay," Barb said excitedly. "Ron has a workshop in the garage. He used to keep things under the floor there. It was like his hiding place. We put our wills in there, which we got after Timothy was born, and also life insurance papers, because it's fireproof."

"Do you think that's what he meant? Was he talking about your wills?"

"No. We both knew where our wills were. My sister knows, too. He must have put something else there for me. Something I don't know about." Barb leapt to her feet, full of new purpose. "Come on!"

Nat rose, and Barb was already in motion, leaving the kitchen.

"I have to warn you," she said, over her shoulder. "There's a video we made there, too. Nothing hardcore, just dumb stuff, for us. We put it there so the kids wouldn't find it." She giggled, then her smile faded. They hustled through the living room to a door. "That can't be what he meant, can it? Why would anybody want to find that?"

Nat lingered at the threshold while Barb opened the door, flicked on a panel of fluorescent lights, and hurried to a corner of the garage and rolled aside a green Rubbermaid trash can on wheels. She bent over and moved a box of old rags aside to reveal a large door in the floor, which had apparently been installed when the concrete had been poured.

Nat held her breath as Barb moved the heavy lid aside.

The two women stood over a square hole almost as big as a safe. The hole stood empty, and its contents sat stacked on the concrete floor-a videotape labeled, Barb and Ron's Excellent Adventure, two life insurance policies, a joint last will and testament in a blue backer, and four old copies of Playboy.

It's under the floor? Nat couldn't explain it.

Barb looked over at her in confusion. "There's nothing under the floor. What's going on?"

"I have no idea."

"Maybe there's something in the magazines?" Nat picked up the magazines and thumbed through them, like a flip book of flesh tones. Subscription cards blew out and fluttered to the floor. She picked them up, examined them for good measure, then stuck them back in one of the magazines. "Nothing."

Barb moaned, covering her face with her hands. "Ron, what do you mean?"

Nat went over and touched her back, spiny in the thin knit. Is there another floor hiding place?"

"Not that I know of."

"I'm so sorry. I don't know what he meant."

"Neither do I." Barb lifted her face, now tinged with red. "That's a great message, lemme tell you."

"I'm so sorry. Maybe I misunderstood." Nat flashed on Saunders dying. "What else could he have said? 'It's under the door?' Do you have a door we could look under?"

"No."

"Core? Shore? Boor? Sore? Tour? Fore? More? Lore? Any of that make sense to you?"

"No. Thanks a whole helluva lot, Ron!" Barb said, her mood darkening. She gritted her teeth. "Great message, hon! Nor that you love me! Not that you love our kids!" She picked up a Playboy and threw it at the wall, knocking into one of the levels hanging there. "Just look under the floor. For your friggin' porn!"

"Maybe it's here but we're just not seeing it."

"Like where?" Barb whirled around on her sneakers.

"Anywhere." Nat surveyed the room, looking for a clue. It was a garage used for a workshop and storage area. Hammers and saws hung neatly on a brown pegboard on one wall, next to a tall metal toolbox on wheels, stacks of tiny plastic drawers, and a Craftsman workbench. Kids' toys and bikes, balls and Wiffle bats, and a plastic Little Tykes three-wheeler sat stowed in boxes toward the front of the room, against the metal garage door, the kind that slid up. The rain thundered outside, the room uninsulated from noise and cold.

Barb eyed the place, her hands resting on her hips. "I suppose I could look some more. He was so handy. He could have hidden something here. Or even in the house."

"I'll help you. We could search pretty thoroughly, together. Let's start here, then if we don't find anything, we'll look in the house, under some rugs, okay?"

"Okay." Barb sighed, pushing up the knit sleeves of her sweater. "We've got three hours before the boys get home."

"Then let's get busy."

It wasn't until ten o'clock that Nat hit the road, driving home through the dark countryside in a continuous downpour. Hard rain pounded the car's roof, and the wipers worked frantically to clear the windshield. There were only a few other cars on the road, but she drove cautiously in the storm, too nervous to call Angus or Hank. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts anyway, which tumbled over themselves in confusion.

She and Barb had searched everywhere, but they hadn't found anything under the floor, much less money from drug sales or otherwise. Maybe the burglars had taken whatever they were looking for, or whatever it was was never there in the first place. Maybe Nat had misunderstood Saunders, or he had been delirious, in extremis. Either way, she felt terrible for delivering a message that made no sense, and for linking the message to a burglary that may have been just a burglary. She had been playing sleuth and failing miserably. She was a lousy Nancy Drew.