Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

Ashlyn reached out to smack Connie, but Connie caught her hand and held it tight. She was Veronica O’Brien’s daughter, after all. She said, “Come to peace with yourself, Ashlyn, and then you’ll be able to come to peace with your father’s decision.”

Connie didn’t regret saying any of this, although she did regret what she said later, after the funeral. And she regretted not doing more when Ashlyn climbed into the Aston Martin. Connie should have laid her body down in front of the car. She should have chased after her.

Connie had found out-through Jake and Iris-that Ashlyn had taken a job with a hospital in Tallahassee. She had moved down there with Bridget. Jake and Iris claimed they only heard from Ashlyn sporadically, and they promised that when they had important news, they would let Connie know. (Most of the reason Connie didn’t like Iris was because Iris knew more about her daughter than she did.) Connie continued to call Ashlyn’s cell phone every week, and every week she was treated to voice mail.

The call that came to Connie’s phone on the day the photograph of Meredith was left on the porch was the most promising lead Connie had had since Ashlyn drove away in the Aston Martin.

Connie descended the stairs to the front door. That she hadn’t called Ashlyn yesterday now seemed like it might be a positive thing. How can I miss you when you won’t go away? Ashlyn would, at the very least, be curious about her mother’s lapsed communication. And maybe even worried.

Connie would wait a few days, then try again with the new phone number.

That decided, Connie felt better. She was moving on with her life, finally. She had experienced two Julys and two Augusts since Wolf died, but only now, today, did she feel like it was actually summertime. She would go to the Sconset Market and get the paper and some snickerdoodle coffee and freshly baked peach muffins. When Connie got back, Meredith would be awake, and they could deconstruct the night before minute by minute.

If nothing else, it was a wonderful distraction.

Connie stepped outside and knew immediately that something was wrong. Something with her car. It was parked in front of the house, the windows were intact, the body work was unscathed, at least on the side facing the house. But the car looked sick. It was sunken, listing.

Connie moved closer to inspect. “Oh,” she whispered.

The tires had been slashed.

They had been sliced open in ragged gashes. And then Connie noticed a piece of paper tucked under the windshield wiper. She plucked it out, opened it up, read it.

In black marker it said, “Theif, go home.”

Connie’s first instinct was to crumple the note and throw it away, but they would need it as evidence for the police. The police again. Oh, her poor car. Connie spun around and surveyed her property. The day was bright and sunny, with enough breeze to make the eelgrass dance. This spot was idyllic. It had been safe, until she brought Meredith here. Now they were under attack.

Theif, go home.

Whoever wrote the note didn’t know how to spell. So it was somebody young, or somebody stupid, or somebody foreign.

Or was it Connie who was being stupid? First her house, now her car. What would be next? Meredith and Connie had bull’s-eyes painted on their backs. What if this escalated? What if they got hurt? Connie was placing her well-being on the line for Meredith’s sake. But Meredith was her friend. They hadn’t spoken for three years-those had been awful, lonely years-and now Connie had her back.

Theif, go home. Connie was assaulted by contradictory thoughts. Meredith had said horrible things to her; Meredith had put Freddy and his contemptible dealings before her lifelong friendship with Connie. Meredith was still under investigation-she knew more than she was telling, that was for damn sure. But Meredith had never stolen or cheated in her life. She was the only senior girl who never sneaked sips of the Communion wine; she was the only one who didn’t cheat on her Good Friday fast-not a single Ritz cracker, not one chocolate chip from the bag her mother kept in the baking cabinet. Connie had watched Meredith march up the steps of Saint Mary’s the other day, and she’d thought, There is a woman who still believes in God. How does she do it? Meredith’s number one glaring fault was that she had always been so goddamned perfect, and nobody liked a perfect person. Pull the stick out of your ass! How many times had Connie wanted to shout that out over the years? Now that Meredith’s perfection had come to a screeching halt, Connie loved her more. Just last night, Meredith had sung at the bar; she had been terrific fun, a good sport, and Connie had been shocked. She remembered Meredith’s face as she belted out the song: shining with sweat, her glasses slipping to the end of her nose.

Theif, go home.

As far as Connie was concerned, Meredith was home.

Connie regarded her shredded tires. She understood how they had gotten to this point, but that didn’t make it any easier.

She went back inside to wake up Meredith.

Chief Kapenash inspected the four slashed tires, took the note as evidence, and gave Connie and Meredith his sincere apology. He’d had a squad car scheduled to cruise the road every hour, and last night it had made the run between midnight and 4 a.m. Before midnight, that particular officer had been called to break up a party of underage drinkers on the beach, and after four that officer had been called to a domestic dispute all the way out in Madaket. So the vandalism had taken place either while Connie and Meredith were out on the town or in the early-morning hours.

It didn’t matter. Either way, Meredith was scared. Slashed tires: it seemed so violent. When she asked the chief what kind of tool could slash a tire, he’d said, “In this case, it looks like a hunting knife.” And then there was the matter of the note. Theif, go home. It had been written in block letters, making it impossible to identify a male or female hand. (Meredith had secretly checked the handwriting against the handwriting on the back of Dan Flynn’s business card. She liked Dan, and it seemed that Dan liked her, but in the world that Meredith now knew to be hiding all kinds of secrets, she wondered if Dan was asking Connie out so he could hurt Meredith. Thankfully, the handwriting didn’t match up.) Theif, go home. The only clue they had to go on was the misspelling.

Dan showed up and changed all four tires. The labor for that was gratis, but Meredith offered to pay for the tires, which had cost six hundred dollars, and while she was at it, she threw in four hundred dollars for the power washing. She held out a thousand dollars in cash to Connie, her hand trembling.

Connie looked at the money and said, “Put it away.”

“Please, Connie. You have to let me pay.”

“We’re in this together,” Connie said. She then confided that, while changing the tires, Dan had invited her out on his boat on Thursday. They were going to cruise around the harbor and check the lobster pots. “And you’re coming with us.”

“No,” Meredith said flatly. “I’m not.”

“You have to,” Connie said.

“The man wants you to himself,” Meredith said. “Last night was fine, but I’m not going to be a tagalong all summer.”

“Well, I can’t leave you here by yourself,” Connie said. “Not after what happened this morning.”

“I’m a big girl,” Meredith said. “I’ll be fine.”

Connie grinned. It was amazing what a little romance did for a person. Her tires had been slashed with a hunting knife, and yet Connie was floating. Meredith thought she might insist one more time that Meredith come along, and if she had, Meredith would have agreed. She liked the sound of a boat ride-out on the open water, Meredith wouldn’t be confronted with anyone she knew. And she was afraid to be left home by herself. She would spend the day behind locked doors, huddled on the floor of her closet.

But Connie didn’t insist, and Meredith figured that Connie was ready to be alone with Dan. The phone in the house rang just then, and Meredith nearly jumped out of her skin. Connie hurried to get it-she may have thought it was Dan, or the police with a suspect. A few seconds later, she said, “Meredith? It’s for you.”

Leo! Meredith thought. Carver! But then Meredith chastised herself. She had to stop thinking like that. It was hope, ultimately, that would bring her down.

“Who is it?” Meredith asked.

“Some fifteen-year-old boy who says he’s your attorney,” Connie said.

Meredith took the phone. She felt a surge of jangly nerves. Good news? Bad news? Bad news, she decided. It was always bad news.

“Meredith?” the voice said. It was Dev. Meredith pictured his shaggy black hair, his vampire teeth, his rimless glasses. She hadn’t made the connection before, but she realized she now wore the same kind of glasses as Dev. They looked far better on him.

“Dev?” she said.

“Hey,” he said. His tone was soft, nearly tender. “How’s it going?”

“Oh,” she said. She thought for a moment that Dev had heard about the slashed tires and was calling to offer her some legal counsel-but that was impossible. “It goes.”

“Listen,” Dev said. “Burt and I had a meeting with the Feds. They’re now convinced there is upwards of ten billion dollars stashed somewhere overseas. Freddy’s still not talking. The Feds are willing to hold off pressing conspiracy charges on you, and possibly Leo also, if they get your cooperation.”

Meredith sank into one of the dining-room chairs. From there, she could see the blue of the ocean. It was a dark, Yankee blue, different from the turquoise water in Palm Beach or the azure water of Cap d’Antibes. “What kind of cooperation?” Meredith said. She sighed. “I’ve already told you everything.”

“I need ideas about where that money might be,” Dev said.

“I thought I was clear,” Meredith said. She took a metered breath. “I don’t know.”

“Meredith.”

“I don’t know!” Meredith said. She stood up and walked over to the window. “You were very kind to me back in New York. And I repaid you by being honest. I told the Feds the truth. Now they’re trying to bribe me with my own freedom and, worse still, my son’s freedom, which we deserve anyway, because I didn’t know the first thing about what was going on. And you know and I know and Julie Schwarz knows that Leo didn’t either. I wasn’t privy to any of Freddy’s business deals. They didn’t interest me. I’m not a numbers person. I majored in American literature. I read Hemingway and Frost, okay? I did my thesis on Edith Wharton. I can give you a detailed explanation on the use of the outsider in The Age of Innocence, but I don’t know what a derivative is. I don’t properly know what a hedge fund is.”

“Meredith.”

“I don’t know where Freddy put his money.” Meredith was screaming now, though in a low voice, so as not to alarm Connie. “There was an office in London. Have you checked there?”

“The Feds are investigating the people in London.”

“I never once visited the London office. I didn’t know a single person who worked there. And those were the bad guys, right?”

“Those were some of the bad guys,” Dev said.

“I don’t even know their names,” Meredith said. “I was never introduced. I couldn’t pick them out of a crowd of two. Freddy took me to London three times, and the first time we were college kids, backpacking. The other two times Freddy visited the office, and do you know where I went? I went to the Tate Gallery to see the Turners and the Constables. I went to Westminster blinking Abbey.”

“What the Feds are looking for are buzzwords,” Dev said. “Phrases. People’s names. Things Freddy repeated that might not have made sense. One of the words that turned up in the files is ‘dial.’ Do you know the meaning of the word ‘dial’?”

Meredith gave a short laugh. “That was the name of Fred’s eating club at Princeton.”

“Really?” Dev said. He sounded like he’d discovered a gold nugget in his sieve.

“Really,” said Meredith. Freddy had been the king of the pool table at Dial. He had wooed Meredith with his dead eye, twelve ball in the right corner pocket. They used to get drunk on keg beer and raid the kitchen at Dial late at night, and Freddy would whip up his specialty-a fried chicken patty with a slice of tomato and Russian dressing. Nothing Meredith had eaten before or since had tasted better. Freddy had been able to let loose back then-drink too much, stay up late. He had those incredible looks-the black hair, the clear blue eyes. Meredith remembered asking him if he resembled his father or his mother. I don’t look like my mother, he said. And I never met my father, so I couldn’t say. What kind of name was Delinn, anyway? Meredith asked. Because it sounded French. It’s a French name, Freddy said. But my mother always said the old man was Irish. I didn’t grow up the way you grew up, Meredith. I don’t have a pedigree. Just pretend like I hatched from an egg.