A Soft Place to Fall (39 page)

"You need more peppermint tea and something
to eat," Sweeney said.

Annie made a face. "What I need is a martini
but I'll settle for the tea."

"Now's not the time to stop eating."

"Sweeney, for God's sake, don't start acting
like you're my mother. I'll eat when I want to eat and that's the
end of that."

Wonderful. Now she sounded like a pregnant
perimenopausal four-year-old.

She was about to make herself that cup of hot
tea when somebody rapped on the door. "Can't you read?" she
mumbled. "Closed means closed."

"It's Hall," Sweeney said, peering over the
top of her newspaper. "Gee, I wonder what he wants."

Annie unlocked the door and ushered Hall in.
"If you're here to gloat or gossip, you might as well leave."

His aristocratic cheeks reddened just enough
for her to notice. "I'm here to apologize."

"What for?"

"For being a bastard."

She stared at him in surprise.
"
Bastard
takes in a lot of territory."

He inclined his head in Sweeney's direction.
"Is there some place we can talk privately?"

Sweeney looked up. "You can talk right here,"
she said as she pushed back her chair. "I'll just ask Annie for the
details later."

"I didn't mean to insult her," Hall said as
Sweeney swept past him and out the back door.

"You can apologize to her too, if you
like."

"You don't sound like yourself today,
Annie."

"Well, maybe that's because I've never had a
day like today before." She found it difficult to disguise her
impatience. "So why do you think you have to apologize to me?"

"Because I think I'm the one who caused this
whole mess."

Take a number,
she thought. "And how
did you do that?" First Claudia had tried to take the blame for
Sam's troubles, and then old Teddy Webb from the
Weekly
had
stopped by to apologize for the Labor Day photo of Annie and Sam
kissing. "Never meant to blow his cover," Teddy said, sounding like
a character in an old spy movie. Now here was Hall claiming full
responsibility.

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I was worried about you, Annie. There was
something familiar about Sam. Ellen and I both noticed it. I
couldn't shake the feeling that I knew him from somewhere so when
that photo of the two of you ran right after the picnic, I faxed a
copy of it to a few friends in New York and one of them came back
with some information about him."

She hated him in that moment, a fierce burst
of emotion that almost buckled her knees. That one selfish decision
might have lost her the man she loved.

He told her that Sam had been a financial
analyst with a huge clientele and lots of publicity. His track
record and gift of gab landed him on a Manhattan cable station
which was how both Ellen and Hall were familiar with him. They had
watched his show while they were attending a conference in the
city. "They fired him this summer, Annie. Rumor has it he was
stealing money from his clients and putting into his own
account."

"Embezzlement?" It hurt to think of Sam being
anything less than the man she had believed him to be.

"Looks like it."

"People don't get fired for embezzlement,
Hall. They go to prison."
And they don't end up flat broke in
Shelter Rock Cove.

Hall looked at her with an expression of such
deep sadness that she wanted to haul off and smack him. "That might
happen yet."

"And you felt I really needed to know
this."

"I didn't want you to get hurt. I felt I owed
it to you."

"You owed it to me to investigate Sam behind
my back?"

"I owed it to you as a friend to give you the
information and allow you to make your own choices." He paused and
she could see he was struggling with what to say but she refused to
feel any compassion for him whatsoever. "It's what I should have
done the first time around."

"Now you've lost me."

Their eyes met and suddenly she knew.

"Kevin?" she asked and he nodded.

"He came to me for money a few days before he
died and I refused him. It wasn't the first time, Annie. Maybe if
I'd told you –"

All of the anger and fight went out of her.
"It wouldn't have made a difference, Hall. You did what you thought
was right, same as I did and Warren did and Claudia and everyone
else in town."

"I'm a doctor. I know what stress can do to a
man with a bad heart. Maybe if I'd helped him out with a few bucks,
his stress level would've gone down and he might have survived the
heart attack."

"And maybe I shouldn't have threatened to
leave him an hour before he died."

"Ah Jesus, Annie --"

"We're all guilty and innocent and every
shade of grey in between. I've spent twenty years of my life trying
to make sense of this and that's still the best I can do."

"I didn't want to see you get hurt again.
That's the only reason I looked into Sam's background."

"No other motive?"

"A month earlier there might have been," he
admitted, "but even I catch on eventually. You two are right for
each other. I hope it works out."

She offered him a cup of tea which he
refused. He said he had patients due within a half hour and she
didn't press him. Too much had passed between them today. How sad
that one gifted man's weakness could still cause so much sadness
and dissension even now, two years after his death.

And yet in a strange way, this was exactly
what she needed. She had learned more about her own life and
marriage in the last twenty-four hours than in the thirty-eight
years that had come before it and the things she had learned helped
ease the guilt she had carried around like a shield. She had loved
Kevin and stood by him but it was time to move on. Kevin had been
her first love but it was Sam who would be her last.

#

Annie remained glued to the small television
set in the workroom behind the display area while Claudia and
Sweeney handled the chores up front. She was hungry for every bit
of information she could glean about Sam. Warren had been unable to
reach Agent Briscoe and his other sources were suddenly dry as a
bone. She noticed a dark blue car that seemed to be following her
around and recognized the driver as one of the agents who had
answered to Briscoe. Even she was under a cloud of suspicion.

At three o'clock the all-day cable news
networks reported that government agents had closed down the firm
of Mason, Marx, and Daniels and made numerous arrests. She waited
and prayed but there was no news about Sam until the phone rang a
little after five o'clock.

"They found him!" Warren's voice was
triumphant. "They found him in some shack on St. John's. He's in
protective custody."

"Protective custody?" Annie said. "That means
they think he's innocent, doesn't it? You don't put a criminal in
protective custody."

"Quick!" Claudia called from the front of the
store. "Channel 49 – they're talking about Sam."

Annie zapped the channels in time to hear: "
. . . found the former top-rated executive in an abandoned building
near the piers. He was badly bruised but otherwise unhurt. Local
law enforcement took Butler into custody, pending arrival of U. S.
officials who will be looking into the apparent kidnapping."

Claudia, who had joined Annie in the work
room, gathered her into her arms. "It's going to be okay, honey,"
she said, smoothing Annie's hair. "It's all over. He'll be home
before you know it."

#

But as the days passed Annie began to wonder
if Sam was coming home at all. She followed the events as they
unfolded around the Mason, Marx, and Daniels sting and committed
every sentence about Sam to memory. Thank God, the one thing about
which there was no longer any doubt was that he had been in league
with the Justice Department against his former company. Talk of a
set-up or double sting had been abandoned for the juicier story of
an in-house informant. Depending upon who was doing the talking,
Sam was either a hero or the worst kind of rat. Popular opinion
leaned heavily toward the latter.

By day three well-meaning visits to Annie's
Flowers had dwindled to almost nothing. By day four even Claudia
was finding it difficult to meet her eyes.

"Isn't this taking an awfully long time?" she
asked Warren who seemed to know about such things.

"It takes as long as it takes," said Warren,
which was really no help at all. "Let it unfold the way it needs
to, Annie. He'll be here before you know it."

"You old coot," said Claudia who had happened
into the back room and overheard some of the conversation. "She's
in love with the man. Has it been so long that you can't remember
how that felt?"

The two of them launched into one of their
patented sparring contests that Annie knew were a display of
affection between them. Thank God for those two wonderful, generous
people. She couldn't imagine how she would have made it through the
last few days without their rock-solid love and support. They were
parents to her in every way that mattered except blood and she knew
her son or daughter would be blessed to have two such wonderful
grandparents.

Because that was what Claudia and Warren
would be. Maybe it was unorthodox, maybe it would raise an eyebrow
or two, but Annie felt the rightness of it deep inside her soul and
she knew Sam would feel it too once he came home to her.

If he came home to her.

#

Sam leaned forward and tapped the driver on
the shoulder. "You can let me out here."

"You were promised door-to-door service," the
driver said. "It's on the government. You won't be hearing that
again anytime soon."

"Here is good."

"Bet it's good to be home," the driver said
and Sam laughed.

"Better than you can imagine."

The driver wished him well and left him at
the corner of Main Street and the docks. He stood there in the late
afternoon sun and breathed in the briny salt air that had always
powered his dreams. There was Cappy's about two hundred yards to
his left and Rich's Bait and Tackle Shop near the stop sign. If he
angled his head just a little bit more he could make out the church
steeple where Warren's museum was taking shape.

And, if he followed his heart straight up
Main Street, it would lead him home to Annie Galloway.

Home.

He tried the word on for size and found it a
perfect fit. This tiny dot on the map called Shelter Rock Cove was
home because Annie Galloway was there. For four days his every
waking thought had revolved around the woman he loved and his need
to be with her again and now that he was a three minute walk away
from her arms he found himself scared into immobility.

Would she want him now? He hadn't a clue.
He'd been shown some of the news coverage of the downfall of Mason,
Marx, and Daniels and it hadn't been pretty. He had been portrayed
in an unfavorable light in most of it and, the world being what it
was, it wasn't very likely that his redemption would be mentioned
at all. Annie had cast him early on as a hero. How would she feel
about him as a man who had made mistakes a better man would have
had the strength to avoid?

He had no answers for any of it. All he knew,
all he cared about, was seeing her again.

Much of the last few days was a blur for him.
He'd regained consciousness when they landed for refueling
somewhere near Miami where he conned one of his captors into
uncuffing him so he could use the john. He had managed to pry open
the window over the toilet and was about to shove himself through
the opening when the son of a bitch came in to see what was taking
him so long.

They would both be carrying around a shitload
of bruises after that encounter.

The plan had been to deliver him to a
designated safe house in the Bahamas where some of Mason, Marx, and
Daniels' best and brightest would try to convince him that his life
would be much happier if he took them up on their generous offer of
money for silence. He never did get to hear the details – or the
chance to tell them to shove it – because by the time they reached
the safe house it was clear that the bottom had dropped out of
their scheme. The Justice Department was closing in on associates
in New York, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, and London.

They tied Sam to a chair in the middle of the
safe house then took off, and that was where local cops finally
found him. They turned him over to the f,eds who ferried him to a
small hospital where he remained overnight for observation then
spirited him back to Miami where he was subjected to intense
questioning by a series of interrogators, each of whom seemed
determined to prove him guilty.

He had a lot to tell Annie, but there would
be time enough for all of the stories. A lifetime, if they were
lucky. One day he wanted her to meet Mrs. Ruggiero; he owed the old
woman a debt of gratitude even if Mrs. R didn't know it. The same
act of compassion that had cost him his job had turned out to be
the key to setting him free. The trail he had inadvertently created
when he tried to bail out Mrs. R, Lila, and Mr. Ashkenazy ran
counter to the one the company had hung his name on and only his
trail stood up under questioning. His own sense of guilt ran deep
but in the eyes of the law he was innocent. He would be deposed at
a later date and eventually called upon to testify in court but all
charges against him had been officially dropped and he was a free
man.

But not for long. Life was too short and he
loved her too much to wait any longer. He liked the man he was when
he was with her. He liked the way she made him laugh and think and
dream. He knew that in the eyes of the world he was a loser, a
thirty-five year old man who could fit everything he owned in the
back seat of his Trooper, but when Annie Galloway smiled at him he
felt like a king.