Truth Be Told

6

“Somebody’s dead. Got to be.” Jane flapped her notebook against her leg, impatient. “If someone’s just hurt, the EMTs would’ve been running like hell.”

The screen door stayed closed.

“Yup.” TJ aimed his voice at her, kept his eyes on the door. “But listen.”

A blue-and-white Boston police cruiser, blue lights whirling, siren screaming, peeled around the corner of Sycamore, flew onto Waverly, skidded to a stop at the end of the driveway.

The cruiser’s blue light mixed with the ambulance’s red. The tall EMT jogged toward the car.

“Here we go.” Jane squinted against the sunshine, hoping to ID the arriving cops. If they were pals, she might have an inside track to the story. She yanked on her sunglasses to cut the glare. That made it dark. Tried again without them.

The passenger side door opened.

Work boots. Levis. Black T-shirt. Sandy hair. Sunglasses.

Jake.

Jane?

Jake slammed his cruiser door, waited a beat for DeLuca to join him. Shaded his eyes, surveyed the crime scene. Some man in a Lexus, on the phone. Who was he? A neighbor? Two EMTs standing on the porch. Jake pointed at them, then at the house. One gave a thumbs down. Jake nodded. DOA.

And Jane.

Jane raised a palm at him, acknowledging, but stayed where she was, whispering with the guy shooting video. Must be the new on-line gig she’d described. Weird to see her with a camera again, after all the-

“My, my.” DeLuca cocked his head toward Jane. “You two lovebirds have got to stop meeting like this.”

“Right,” Jake said. “Let’s get in there. See what they got.”

He and DeLuca had a sometimes-silent truce about their private lives-DeLuca knew about Jane, enough at least, Jake knew about DeLuca and Kat McMahan, the medical examiner who’d soon be arriving, if the deputies had their facts right.

Jake knew he and Jane were going to have to make a decision. Soon. In fact, by this weekend. They couldn’t keep sneaking. Cop and reporter? Reporter and cop? Right at the edge of ethical. Over the edge, according to police SOP. The newspaper’s, too. They’d tried to stay apart, but that was a miserable failure. To stay together, one of them would have to quit. Which was impossible. The whole thing was impossible.

Jake raised a hand back as they passed. Jane’s shooter was getting it all on tape.

“Eviction, huh?” Jake pulled out his cell phone, opened a file. Thumbed in his to-dos. He’d have to check the sheriff’s paperwork. Get bank stuff. Get registry records, check ownership, track down tenants or whoever once lived here. “Whoever got thrown out, they’re not gonna be happy, that’s for sure. There’s a motive.”

The EMTs moved aside, let them through as the screen door squeaked open.

Inside, dust motes floated on sunlight streaming through curtainless windows, the living room empty, the hardwood floor bare. A pile of rags teetered, stashed in a charred brick fireplace. Place smelled like fire, and bleach. One flight of bare stairs to a second floor. Two uniforms blocked what was probably the opening to the kitchen. Vitucci and Callum. Good guys. Who did not look happy. They’d been detailed here, off duty. Not expecting to actually do any work. Surprise, surprise.

“Hey, Vitooch. We were at HQ, dispatch just radioed us the call. Got here fast as we could. Thanks for holding the fort,” Jake said. “Where’s…?”

“Hey, Jake,” Vitucci said. “Upstairs. With the sheriff’s deputies. It’s an eviction, right? Look, uh, Jake? Thing is-”

“Thing?” Jake said. “Thing” meant problem. Glitch. Snafu. “Thing” meant Jake’s day was about to get complicated. “There’s a ‘thing’?”

“Mr. Iantosca? Mrs. Iantosca?” Lizzie-Liz-came around from behind her desk, gestured her customers to the two new visitor chairs. They’d been delivered that very morning; in fact, no one had ever sat in them before. Liz spotted a paper receipt still taped underneath one of them.

“I’m Liz McDivitt,” she said. “Thank you for coming. May I offer you some water? Or coffee?”

Colleen Iantosca looked like she hadn’t slept in a year, thin as a memory, eyes red-rimmed. Her dark cardigan, buttoned high over a white blouse, had a tiny hole in the left shoulder. She gave Liz a wisp of a smile, shook her head no, then picked at the clasp of the flat black purse she clutched in her lap. Drew a breath with a little gasp.

Her husband reached out a hand, put it on top of hers.

“Honey,” he said. “Thank you, Miss McDivitt. No.”

“We’ll never be able to-,” Colleen Iantosca began. Then she stopped, looking at her husband again.

“My wife is right.” Christian Iantosca patted his wife’s hand, then clamped his palms on his knees.

His suit, a good one, had also seen better days. Liz knew from their records the husband had been a bakery manager before Scones and Co. went bankrupt; the wife still worked in the back of a West End dry cleaner. Reliable, trusting, honest people. Now with one big mortgage and one small salary.

“We understand why you’ve called us here. We understand the bank has no choice. But I do have some jobs in line, and I guess we’d hoped-well, you see our position.”

Liz remained standing, didn’t want to put the desk between them. She took a breath, smiled, and broke the law.

“I have some good news for you, Mr. and Mrs. Iantosca,” she said.

She paused, thinking it through one last time. She controlled these accounts, the foreclosure paperwork had not yet progressed through unalterable channels. She understood the work-arounds necessary to avoid the transparent and ridiculously vulnerable protocols the bank inserted to catch manually entered overrides. Numbers always did what she wanted them to. She almost felt her father’s presence. Hi, Dad, she thought. Guess what.

“It appears,” she said, “there has been an error in your records.”

“An error?” Christian Iantosca frowned. “We didn’t do anything wr-”

“What kind of an-,” his wife began.

The whisper of hope in the woman’s eyes almost broke Lizzie’s heart.

Yes. Lizzie-Liz-was doing the right thing.

She put up both palms. “I’m happy to show you the documentation, at some point, after our auditors have reassessed the financial essentials and fiduciary elements.” That was pure drivel, but they’d never know. “However, bottom line, as they say, the balance of your mortgage, with the calculation of the compounding interest and the escrow payments, as well as the federal allowance offered under Title M for first-time homeowners-” She stopped, as if this actually meant something. Sighed, as if clearing her mind.

“Getting to the point. We’re stopping the foreclosure.”

Colleen Iantosca made a sound, a gasp or a gulp. Her cheeks went pink, and she covered her mouth with two sinewy hands. Her eyes went wide, then welled with tears.

“How could-,” Christian Iantosca began. “But what about the-”

“I understand you’ll have questions.” Liz went behind her desk, sat in her new swivel chair, felt tall. She tapped on her keyboard, bringing up a blank spreadsheet, and turned the monitor so the Iantoscas could see. Not that it would show them anything. “I’ll be your direct and only contact on this,” she said, pointing to the empty grid. “Okay?”

Both Iantoscas nodded.

“Two things.” Liz thought of something. “Oh, first, you didn’t have a closing attorney, correct? You and the bank handled this directly.”

Both Iantoscas nodded.

Okay, then. “And your house is on the lis pendens list at the registry of deeds, the pre-foreclosure notice, you understand?”

“Yes, they told us that,” Christian said. “The bank’s real estate person came to see us. The man, Mr…?” He checked with his wife.

“Gianelli,” Colleen Iantosca said. “We had to show him the house, and he told us we might have to be out in eight weeks.”

Aaron. Liz couldn’t believe how perfectly this was going.

“I’ll speak to him,” Liz said. “Meanwhile, I’ll withdraw the lis pendens. Then I have to reorganize your debit situation in accordance with the overpayments you’ve been charged in the years past. When I recalculate your payments, I’ll inform you, in person, of your obligations.”

She stood, fingertips on her lovely big brand-new desk.

“But for now? Go home.” Liz smiled. In control. “Don’t worry. Find a job, Mr. Iantosca. But your home is your home. And so it shall stay.”