`Some place,’ Roscoe said.
I nodded. I was wondering if my brother had been there.
`I hear a car,’ she said.
We got back to the front of the house in time to see the big Bentley easing to a stop. The blonde 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.
The blonde 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.
`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.’
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.
`No problem,’ I said. `Where is he?’
`Taking care of some business,’ Charlie said. `I expect him back later.’
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.
`This is Ben,’ Charlie said. `And this is Lucy.’
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.
`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.’
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.
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.
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.