‘We sitting here or moving on?’ Lucy asked, and she had changed into khaki slacks and a denim shirt with the FBI logo embroidered on it. She wore hiking boots and a sturdy leather belt. All that was missing was a cap and a gun.
Marino was more interested in Janet, who could fill a polo shirt in a manner that was riveting. ‘So, let’s talk about what was in this envelope,’ he said to me, unable to shift his eyes from Janet’s chest.
‘Let’s don’t do it here,’ I said.
Marino’s truck was a big blue Ford he kept much cleaner than his police car. His truck had a CB radio and a gun rack, and other than cigarette butts filling the ashtray, there was no trash to be seen. I sat in front, where air fresheners suspended from the rearview mirror gave the darkness a potent scent of pine.
‘Tell me exactly what was in the envelope,’ Marino said to Lucy, who was in back with her friend.
‘I can’t tell you exactly,’ Lucy said, scooting forward and resting a hand on top of my seat.
Marino crept past the guard booth, then shifted gears as his truck loudly got interested in being alive.
‘Think.’ He raised his voice.
Janet quietly spoke to Lucy, and for a moment they conversed in murmurs. The narrow road was black, firing ranges unusually still. I had never ridden in Marino’s truck, and it struck me as a bold symbol of his male pride.
Lucy started talking. ‘I had some letters from Grans, Aunt Kay, and E-mail from Prodigy.’
‘From Carrie, you mean,’ Marino said.
She hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘What else?’
‘Birthday cards.’
‘From who?’ Marino asked.
‘The same people.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘No.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘I don’t have anything from him.’
‘Her father died when she was very small,’ I reminded Marino.
‘When you wrote Lucy did you use a return address?’ he asked me.
‘Yes. My stationery would have that.’
‘A post office box?’
‘No. My personal mail is delivered to my house. Everything else goes to the office.’ ‘What are you trying to find out?’ Lucy said with a trace of resentment.
‘Okay,’ Marino said as he drove through dark countryside, ‘let me tell you what your thief knows so far. He knows where you go to school, where your aunt Kay lives in Richmond, where your grandmother in Florida lives. He knows what you look like and when you were born.
‘Plus he knows about your friendship with Carrie because of the E-mail thing.’ He glanced into the rearview mirror. ‘And that’s just the minimum of what this toad knows about you. I haven’t read the letters and notes to see what else he’s found out.’
‘She knew most of all that anyway,’ Lucy said angrily.
‘She?’ Marino pointedly asked.
Lucy was silent.
It was Janet who gently spoke. ‘Lucy, you’ve got to get over it. You’ve got to give it up.’
‘What else?’ Marino asked my niece. ‘Try to remember the smallest thing. What else was in the envelope?’
‘A few autographs and a few old coins. Just things from when I was a kid. Things that would have no value to anyone but me. Like a shell from the beach I picked up when I was with Aunt Kay one time when I was little.’
She thought for a moment. ‘My passport. And there were a few papers I did in high school.’
The pain in her voice tugged at my heart, and I wanted to hug her. But when Lucy was sad she pushed everyone away. She fought.
‘Why did you keep them in the envelope?’ Marino was asking.
‘I had to keep them somewhere,’ she snapped. ‘It was my damn stuff, okay? And if I’d left it in Miami my mother probably would have thrown it in the trash.’
‘The papers you did in high school,’ I said. ‘What were they about, Lucy?’
The truck got quiet, filled with no voice but its own. The sound of its engine rose and fell with acceleration and the shifting of gears as Marino drove into the tiny town of Triangle. Roadside diners were lit up, and I suspected many of the cars out were driven by marines.