She had to save her mother.
20
It took more coaxing than it should have to get Arietta into the car. The nurse for Shannon’s father had already been there for more than twenty minutes before Shannon was able to start the engine and get them out of there. In the passenger seat, Arietta shook violently, her eyes to her knees as they clacked together. Shannon didn’t bother with the radio. The silence felt heavy, like molasses in their ears.
At the station, Shannon led Arietta into the front room, where a secretary with a bad perm clacked on an ancient-looking computer. Shannon guessed there wasn’t a whole lot to do in a place like Nantucket. Any crime being committed was probably white-collar and handled at a higher level. The FBI had to be involved.
The woman at the desk raised her eyebrows at Shannon and Arietta. Her face echoed surprise. It was only then that Shannon realized their states: Arietta still had last night’s makeup all over her face, and Shannon was still in her big sleep T-shirt. Why hadn’t they thought to put anything else on? Shock, of course. But she hoped it wouldn’t hurt their case.
“We need to talk to an officer about several incidents,” Shannon explained. “My mother is being blackmailed.”
The woman didn’t flinch. She pressed a button on the desk, and a man who introduced himself as Officer Turnwell came into the front room. His pants were baggy around his waist, and he was balding with a big suntan line on his forehead. “Morning, ladies,” he said. “Step into my office, please.”
Shannon had the sense that they were high schoolers in trouble and being called into the principal’s office. They sat and crossed their ankles, waiting for Officer Turnwell to bring up the online form into which, he said, he’d “write up their report.”
When Arietta couldn’t speak at first, Shannon did her best to explain the situation. “My mother received a letter demanding twenty thousand dollars,” she said. “The blackmailers told her that they would expose her and my father if she didn’t pay up.”
“But I didn’t know what they meant,” Arietta hurried to add. “I still don’t really know.”
“Huh.” Officer Turnwell typed that into his computer, then crossed his arms. “You paid these people?”
Arietta nodded, her face pained. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So, I take it you wanted them to remain hush-hush about whatever it was they knew,” Officer Turnwell said, puffing out his chest, as though he’d already figured it all out.
Arietta looked stricken. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try, please,” Officer Turnwell said. “That’s why we’re filing this report. We need information.” He spoke to Arietta as though she were five.
Shannon fumed. She wanted to tell this officer that they’d been through enough. They hadn’t come here to be belittled.
“My husband had a stroke. It’s been about two months now,” Arietta went on. “It’s been chaotic, to say the least: moving him here to the island and finding a rhythm within our days. He can’tspeak, read, walk or do anything he used to do. I don’t mind, of course. I love him, and he loves me, and it’s my duty to do these things as his wife. But…”
Shannon’s stomach flipped. She wondered why her mother felt she needed to tell the cop this last bit.
Officer Turnwell sighed. “But you paid them? Twenty grand?”
Arietta let her chin fall to her chest.
“I feel like you’re not telling me everything, Mrs. Peters,” Officer Turnwell said, sounding flippant. “I can’t understand why you’d pay twenty grand to people you don’t know, to hide a secret you say you don’t know. It’s all too murky for me to understand.”
“They told her it would be over if she sent the twenty grand,” Shannon interjected. “She wanted to get them off her back. But of course, they’re now asking for more.”
“One hundred thousand dollars,” Arietta said in a meek voice.
Office Turnwell blew all the air from his lungs. “Now that’s something.”
They remained quiet for a moment.
“We went through my dad’s calendar,” Shannon said finally. “By the looks of things, he had a life that none of us knew anything about.”
“An affair,” Officer Turnwell said simply.
Arietta let out a strangled sob, then dropped her eyes to the ground.
“We don’t know for sure,” Shannon said. “But what we do have is the bank information for the blackmailers. Mom, can you show them?”
Arietta had taken a screenshot of the bank information and showed it to Officer Turnwell. He took his sweet time entering that information into their file. When he followed the lead,however, it led to an anonymous banking website, one that needed to be “cracked” via FBI intervention to identify the account owner.