Page 76 of The Summer that Changed Everything
But what were the chances? Her “poker brain” was always asking that question—about everything. “I can’t imagine how I’ll feel if that’s the case. If he was needlessly reviled, tried and imprisoned. He’s lostfifteen yearsof his life! I’ll regret that I didn’t do a better job of standing by him.”
“I’m sure it was all you could do just to be there for yourself.”
Ford was right. She’d almost folded, almost destroyed herself with drugs and alcohol. She could easily have become just another statistic.
“How’d you get by?” he asked.
For once, she couldn’t brush off this question. It’d been asked too earnestly. “I don’t know, to be honest,” she told him. “I got so lost for a while—doing drugs, hanging out with the wrong people. I never stayed in one place for too long, but it wasn’t hard to find a dealer. Eventually, once I could see what washappening to those around me, even to my boyfriend at the time, who rambled around with me, I decided that wasn’t the life I wanted to live.”
“So you got out of it.”
“It wasn’t that quick or easy but... eventually.”
“And now you’re here to fight for the truth, whatever that may be.”
“I’m just playing the cards I’ve been dealt—and hoping, at last, that I’m holding a winning hand.” She knitted her fingers together under her chin and grinned at him, watching to see if he’d catch on.
“What?” he said when he noticed the expectation on her face.
“I just told you what I do for a living.”
He looked confused. “You did?”
“Playing the cards I’ve been dealt? Hoping I’m holding a winning hand?”
The light dawned in his eyes. “Vegas. Cards. You gamble for a living?”
She could tell he could barely believe it. “I’m a professional poker player.”
“No way!”he said. “You must be good at it to be able to make a living.”
“I do okay.” But that wasn’t always the case. She knew what it felt like to lose—and she was gambling on much more than a game right now.
22
Ford was told Chief Claxton wasn’t available, so he allowed whoever had answered the phone at North Hampton PD to transfer him to Claxton’s voice mail. “It’s Ford.” He didn’t have to give his last name; his first name was recognizable enough. “Reggiewaslying. And now his sister has admitted as much. I think you have a problem. Call me as soon as you can.”
Lucy looked disappointed when he hit the End button. “Do you think he’ll call us back?”
“He’d better,” he said. Then he called Friedman.
Ford could tell Lucy was filled with anxiety, despite their walk, which he’d hoped would relieve some of her jitters. She hovered nearby as the phone started to ring.
“Hello?”
“Les?” Ford was surprised when it wasn’t the PI’s receptionist who answered. But it was after five; she was probably gone.
“You got me.”
“It’s Ford. Lucy’s here with me. We have a development on our end,” he said and let Lucy tell the investigator about what Joel Stover had come over to say.
“The case against your father for killing Aurora was never strong to begin with,” Les said when she was done. “And now this. That’s good.”
Ford sank into the soft leather chair closest to Lucy. “Thanks to Darren Clark, we know Mick wasn’t anywhere near Aurora when she was murdered. And we have someone close to Reggie who’s willing to say on record that he lied about Mick’s confession.”
“Now all we have to do is deal with the odd timing—that Aurora’s murder occurred so close to the Matteos’, where Mick’s DNA was found—which could easily be a coincidence,” Friedman said.
“Or whoever killed Aurora knew they’d have a better shot at getting away with it because of all the confusion and panic created by the Matteo murders,” Lucy chimed in. “The police force was even smaller back then and wasn’t used to—or prepared for—such serious crime.”
