Dark Room (Pete 'Monty' Montgomery 2)

“Morgan, I want you to think,” he said. “Who provided the food for your mother’s Christmas party at the shelter that night?”

“I don’t have to think. Lenny did. Or at least he would have if—” Her breath caught as Lane grabbed her hand, pulled her through the room. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”

“You’ll see.” He stopped in front of Lenny and Rhoda, who were chuckling with a couple of guests. “Lenny, can I see you for a minute? It’s important.”

Lenny’s brows rose in surprise. “Of course.” A hint of apprehension. “It isn’t…Nothing happened to…”

“Jonah’s fine,” Lane answered quietly. “Almost ready to go home. Now, please, come with me.” He glanced at Rhoda and the others, forcing a natural and apologetic smile. “Excuse us. I have to borrow Lenny for a few minutes.”

“Take him,” Rhoda said with an affectionate grin. “It’ll give me a chance to talk for a while.”

Lane clapped a hand on Lenny’s shoulder, guided him toward the yoga room, his other hand still tightly clasping Morgan’s.

“What’s this about?” Lenny looked totally confused, and a little wary. “Where are we going?”

“To join Monty and Arthur. They’re talking.”

They reached the door. Lane twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Both Arthur and Monty whipped around to stare at them.

Lane prodded Lenny in. After that, he paused in the doorway for a heartbeat of a second, turning his back to the room and speaking softly to Morgan. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “You have no idea how sorry.”

Before she could reply, he led her inside and shut the door with a firm click.

“Lane,” Monty began. “We’re right in the middle of—”

“I know what you’re in the middle of. I’m just here for the ending.” He glared at Arthur, stared him down. “Let me guess. You denied everything. Even in light of all the evidence Monty presented.”

“You’re damned right I denied it,” Arthur responded, pain and anger flashing across his face as he saw Morgan. “You brought Morgan here? You filled her head with this garbage? How could you subject her to—”

“Cut the crap, Arthur,” Lane interrupted. “You’re in way too deep to play the loving surrogate father. So, for my own edification—and Morgan’s—were the murders planned? Or did they just happen? Were you an accomplice? Or just the cleanup committee? Which one of you brought the gun—you or your father?”

Arthur’s mouth opened, then snapped shut.

“His father?” Morgan asked weakly.

Lane glared at Arthur with utter disgust. “Does it give you some sick sense of power to know your father is so blind to who you really are that he’d kill to protect you? That two amazing human beings were murdered because you knocked up an underage teenager and wouldn’t face the consequences? That Lenny refused to let you face the consequences or even to listen to Lara and Jack?”

Everyone was staring at this point, even Monty.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Lenny made a tortured sound deep in his throat. “Lane, please. Don’t do this. Not in front of Morgan. I can’t bear for her to hear it. She was a child…a little girl…”

“Dad, be quiet,” Arthur commanded. “They’ve got nothing. They’re fishing.”

“I wish I was.” Lane fought the urge to punch Arthur’s lights out. “I have proof, Arthur. Physical evidence.” He pulled out the prints, one by one, then knelt down and slapped them onto the yoga mats. “The imprint of Lenny’s gold initial ring on Jack Winter’s face. His blood on the floor from the fistfight, and his bloody knuckle prints on Jack’s face. See the wet, sticky consistency? That’s because Lenny’s blood is slow to coagulate because of the Coumadin he takes for his atrial fibrillation. Today’s DNA testing is balls-on accurate. It’ll prove the blood is Lenny’s. Then there’s this clean, round space where an empty bucket of Spackle was removed—right here.” Lane pointed. “That’s where Arthur threw his bloody shirt after he mopped up Lenny’s face and hands, wiped his prints off everything, and made it look like the Winters had been killed during a random burglary.”

Lane heard Morgan’s gasp, felt her violent trembling as she hovered beside him. But he couldn’t quit, not yet. Not until he had both confessions he’d come for.

He shot a quick look at Monty. “Another bit of evidence for you. I gave Anya a call on my way over here. Like us, she knows how conscientious Lenny is. His deli’s always open, even on Christmas day. Well, she distinctly remembers just two days he called in sick during her entire twenty years at the deli. Guess when those days were? Christmas day and the day after, 1989. She remembers because it was right after his son’s friends were killed. But he didn’t look good when he came back—his face had cuts and bruises on it. He said he fell. I say he was beaten up in a fight with Jack Winter, who was defending his wife’s life and his own.”

By this time Lenny was openly weeping, his hands covering his face as if he couldn’t bear the shame or the sorrow. “It shouldn’t…I never meant…”

“Dad!” Arthur barked out again.

Lane turned back to Arthur, shook his head in utter disbelief. “You don’t even feel remorse, do you? You certainly didn’t then. You just plucked the valuables off Jack and Lara’s bodies, chucked the Walther PPK in the Fountain Avenue dump, and went back to a goddamned Christmas party being held in your honor. Like nothing ever happened. You didn’t miss a beat.”

“He did,” Lenny chimed in, defending his son to the last. “You should have seen him when it happened. The whole time he cleaned up, tried to cover for me, he cried like a baby. Then, when the cops were called, he was the first one at the scene. Dear God, Lane, neither of us knew Morgan was upstairs. We never imagined she’d be the one who’d find them. And when we realized she had, when Arthur saw what it had done to her, it tore his insides out. Mine, too. From that moment on, she became a Shore. She still is. In our hearts, she’s Arthur’s daughter and my granddaughter. We swore nothing would ever hurt her again. And we kept our promise. All these years, we’ve tried to make up for what happened—even though we knew nothing really could. But Elyse is a wonderful mother. And Jill is a sister in all ways but blood. We all cared for her, sheltered her, loved her, and—”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” The words exploded from Morgan’s mouth, from her heart and her soul, as she stared at this man—these two men—she didn’t know and couldn’t stomach.