Follow You Down Read online

  “You’d still have chosen Ms. Waldstein.”

  Neil laughed. “Perhaps you’re right.” He tapped the desk with his finger. “If you won’t run away with me, how about a quickie here on the desk?”

  Some would call his comments sexual harassment, but he knew Jenni would never complain. She was paid well enough to tolerate his occasional inappropriate behavior. She’d be hard pressed to find an equivalent salary anywhere else. Besides, she seemed to enjoy their little tete-a-tetes. And who knew? Maybe one day she’d give in to his advances.

  As she touched his shoulder, Jenni gave him a mischievous grin. “You’re a naughty boy, Mr. Brewster.”

  “You can call me Neil, you know.”

  She turned toward the door. “I know, Mr. Brewster.”

  With his eyes swaying in accord with Jenni’s departing hips, Neil gave a soft whistle, causing her to stop just long enough to wag her index finger at him. When she pulled the door closed behind her, Neil began laughing out loud. Grabbing his mug from the desktop, Neil returned to the window.

  When he entered the conference room, Neil’s three legal aides were already seated around the oval table, awaiting his arrival. Kaitlyn Stranton looked up as he crossed the threshold, sliding the tortoiseshell reading glasses from her round face.

  “Good morning, sir.” The laptop resting on the table before her cast a whitish glow on her tanned skin. She’d changed her hairstyle over the weekend, Neil noticed. The charcoal hair was now close cropped and parted over her left eye. Makes her look like a man, he thought.

  Jamie Peters, who was sitting across the table from Kaitlyn, pushed his laptop closed and rested his hands on top. Neil had only ever found one way to adequately describe Jamie—Ichabod Crane from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. That seemed to say it all.

  Emily Ross, the oldest of his three aides, didn’t even look up when Neil entered. Her fingers continued to tap with a fervor on her laptop keyboard. Her molasses-colored hair, which she had pulled back into a ponytail, was streaked with gray. The gold medallion around her neck was accented with an oval-shaped piece of turquoise. Neil thought it, as well as the matching earrings, were gaudy as hell.

  “Nice necklace,” he said, hoping his sarcasm wasn’t too subtle.

  Rounding to the table’s far end, Neil folded his arms, looking back down at his three aides. They were supposedly the best in the firm, but Neil sometimes wondered. These three, by far, had lasted the longest. There had been a time when Neil went through legal aides about every three to four months. On at least two occasions, he’d sent a crying aide running from the office, never to return. These three were pushing a year, with Emily Ross having the most seniority.

  “I’m assuming you all worked through the weekend. Tell me it was fruitful.”

  Jamie was the first to speak up. “Harriet McCartney—the witness who claimed to have seen our client tossing the baseball bat into the trunk of his car—she’s got a rap sheet a mile long.”

  “Tell me more, Peters.”

  “All petty crimes, along with a little prostitution, too. Turns out that street corner where she claims to have seen everything is the same corner where she’s been picked up several times by the cops for soliciting sex.”

  “I like it. Nothing pisses off a jury of women more than a low-class hooker. Ross, make a note that we’ll have to stack the jury with women when we go in for selection.” Smiling, Neil added, “Your overtime wasn’t completely in vain, Peters.”

  Jamie grinned, leaned back in his chair, and pushed away from the conference table. With the flurry of movement, Neil caught sight of Jamie’s feet, and his smile quickly faded to a frown. From under Jamie’s dark pinstripe trousers peeked red canvas high-top sneakers. A misstep during a rainstorm the previous week had resulted in the ruin of Jamie’s patent leather shoes. His only pair, according to Jamie. The next day marked the first, and Neil had hoped, last appearance of the red sneakers adorning his feet.

  “Peters, what happened this weekend?”

  Jamie looked at Neil, puzzled. “Huh?”

  “Your feet. Why are those damn things still on your feet?”

  Neil wondered if it’d been just involuntary instinct that caused Jamie to slide his feet back under the table out of sight. Neil leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the table. “I gave you one day with those goddamn sneakers. One day. That was being generous. And today you show up wearing those damn things again! Did I not make myself clear on Friday? What part of ‘do not wear those things here again’ did you not understand?”

  Unlike his fellow lawyers, Neil had never been in favor of casual attire in the office. He paused for a moment, just for effect. “Do you not make enough money to afford a new pair of shoes? I’m sure I could find at least a dozen other monkeys who would happily wear a diaper, if I asked them to, just to get your job. You see where I’m coming from? Don’t push your luck with me.”

  Jamie had slouched down in his seat while Emily and Kaitlyn watched in silence. With his head bowed, the young legal aide avoided looking his boss in the eye. Opening his mouth to unleash further denunciation, Neil was interrupted by a buzz from the office intercom centered on the table. Pressing the green button, Neil gave a terse “What?”

  Jenni’s husky voice filtered into the room through the speaker. “Mr. Brewster, there’s a call for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “He wouldn’t say. But he says it’s important.”

  Neil paused for a moment. “I’ll take it in my office.”

  Heading toward the conference-room door, Neil halted, spun around, and glared at Jamie Peters. “Leave now. Get new shoes. Come back.”

  Pushing the door to his office closed, Neil crossed to his desk, dropping into the leather office chair behind it. He reached for the phone on his desk and brought the receiver to his ear.

  “Neil Brewster.”

  “Neil? Is that really you? Holy shit! You sound different!”

  The voice held a twinge of familiarity, but Neil couldn’t place it. “Who is this?”

  “I didn’t think your secretary would put me through. Damn, she sounds hot!”

  Neil didn’t have time to play games. “Who’s speaking?”

  “You don’t recognize my voice? Hell, no reason you would. It’s been eighteen years! It’s Steve O’Reilly!”

  The name invoked visions of a simpler time and a simpler life, of playing baseball in the field behind his development, getting covered in dried leaves while playing football on an autumn afternoon, and racing bicycles down Wilberforce Drive.

  A smile crossed Neil’s face. “Steve? What the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to find out if you’re coming to the reunion.”

  The invitation hanging on his refrigerator flashed to the forefront of his mind. He recalled its arrival, inviting him to a reunion at Camp Tenskwatawa, an old summer camp in the woodlands of southern New Jersey. The camp had been the furthest thing from his mind for over eighteen years. But the Saturday after the invitation had arrived, Neil found himself digging through a stack of old boxes in the back corner of a closet, dragging one particular box into the living room. Sitting on the floor, he spent the next few hours pulling out old photographs and mementos, and reliving the “good ole days.” One stack of Polaroids, held together with a deteriorating rubber band, had fused together over time and could only be salvaged by carefully peeling each photo off the stack with a slow, precise hand.

  Neil’s parents had given him the Polaroid camera for his fifteenth birthday, and he’d taken it every summer, along with a backpack full of film. As he dug through the Polaroids, he found posed shots of old friends, candid scenes from around camp, and even the occasional nude photos of a few girl counselors. He’d gotten a good chuckle out of those, recalling how he could charm them into showing a little skin for the camera. Then everything went back into
the box, and the invitation went up on the refrigerator, unanswered.

  “Did you get the invite?” Steve asked.

  “Yeah, I got it. I’m not sure if I’m going to make it.”

  “You’re kidding! Neil, it won’t be the same without you.”

  Hearing the disappointment in Steve’s voice, Neil leaned back in his chair, considering what to say next. It’d be easy to lie to his friend, saying that he was simply too busy with this upcoming case to take off for a three-day-weekend. It wouldn’t have been that far from the truth. But it wasn’t the whole truth. Camp Tenskwatawa had been a part of Neil’s life that he’d left behind, along with the rest of his childhood. Moving on to bigger and better things was all he’d ever been concerned about.

  “Look, Steve. I don’t really feel like going back to camp, especially to see a bunch of people that I didn’t like then, and surely don’t like now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I mean. Dwelling on the past is for people who can’t aspire to greater things. I don’t need to get together with fifty or sixty losers for a weekend of reminiscing.”

  Steve began to laugh. “You never change. Neil, that’s the beauty of this reunion. There’s only gonna be five of us. Just Los Cinco Amigos. That’s it! Just you, me, Rob, Jeremy, and Patrick. Like John Belushi said in The Blues Brothers, ‘we’re getting the band back together.’”

  Chapter Three

  The DeWalt cordless drill went silent, causing Sammy Wilcox to glance down toward her father. He was kneeling on the floor across the room, facing away from her. She watched him set the black and yellow drill down near a small pile of wood shavings that had accumulated on the pine wood floor. A frown crossed her face when her father’s hands trembled. His bald head and round face were coated in perspiration. He’s overexerted himself again, she thought. She’d told her father that he didn’t need to help, but he’d insisted. She’d tried to convince him to stay downstairs and relax in front of the television, but he was having none of that. As she tilted her head, a few strands of auburn hair fell in front of her face. She brushed them back in place with her hand and climbed off the step stool on which she’d been standing.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  As she crossed the room, her father shifted his knees and sat down on the floor, stretching his legs out before him.

  “Yeah, Samantha. Just need a breather.”

  Sammy cringed. No matter how hard she tried, she’d never been able to get her father to call her anything other than Samantha. After thirty-four years, she’d given up on trying to correct him, but it didn’t mean she had to like it.

  Kneeling beside him, she touched his shoulder, giving it a comforting rub. Her father was breathing heavily, his wheezing worse than usual. She worried that he wouldn’t live to see this through. They’d been making these plans for a long time, and she didn’t want to end up going through it alone.

  “Relax, Dad. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  She rose to her feet and crossed to the nearby dresser. Watching her father suffer with his cancer was getting more difficult each day, and she felt her emotions welling up again. She had to find something to distract herself before she broke down and cried. Her hands picked up the old clock, and holding it in her palm, she turned the small knob on the back. When she’d finished winding the clock, she turned it over and stared at the face. The hour and minute hands stood still while the red second hand raced around and around. What was the old saying, “time heals all wounds”? There was one wound time hadn’t healed, leaving her with no choice but to take matters into her own hands. But it wouldn’t be healing. It’d be justice. The threat of tears abated. There’d be plenty of time to cry after . . .

  “Samantha?”

  Her father’s voice sounded soft and weak. Turning, she set the clock back on the dresser. He was gazing up at her, his eyes holding her in a lackluster stare. She wrestled with the tears forming in her eyes, hoping he didn’t notice.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  He held out his hand. “Can you give me the hook?”

  “Sure.”

  She crossed to the twin bed along the far wall, grabbing a large steel hook that had been resting on the pale blue comforter. Placing the hook into her father’s hand, she saw his mouth crack a faint smile. Sammy didn’t see her father smile very often anymore. It’d been eighteen years since she’d seen him truly happy, and since the cancer diagnosis six months ago, he’d gone from being apathetic to darkly despondent.

  Her father’s hands quivered as he tried to insert the threaded end of the hook into the hole he’d just drilled in the wall. Sammy could only watch him struggle for a moment before she leaned over his shoulder and steadied his hand. With the hook inserted into the hole, Sammy stepped back, allowing her father to screw the hook into the wall. With slow turns of his wrist, her father turned the hook around, sinking it into the wall stud behind the pine wood paneling. Grabbing another hook from the bed, Sammy stepped back up onto the step stool, inserting it into the hole she’d made earlier in the ceiling.

  “Are you sure these can hold the weight?” she asked.

  “As long as they’re in the stud. Biggest ones they had at Home Depot.”

  With her hook secured in the ceiling, Sammy returned to her father’s side. He’d stopped working again and was staring, unmoving, at the hook in the wall. These moments of immobility had been occurring more and more frequently over the past few weeks.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m sorry, Samantha. I don’t think I can go through with this.”

  She sat down next to him. “Why not? We’ve both wanted this for so long.”

  “I know. But it’s not going to fix anything. He’ll still be gone.”

  This wasn’t what Sammy wanted to hear. Their plans had progressed so far that it would be almost impossible to stop now. Besides, she didn’t want to stop. She, more than anything, wanted to see things through to the end.

  “Dad, I need you to help me with this. I don’t want to do this alone.”

  Closing his eyes, her father shook his head. “What’s it gonna achieve?”

  “Closure. It’ll give us closure.”

  “Closure? We should’ve had that eighteen years ago. Now . . .” His voice faded for a moment. “Now it’s just rubbing salt in the wound.”

  Sammy rubbed her eyes with her fingers, frustrated by her father’s sudden reluctance. “We’ve been talking about this for years. You wanted this as much as I did. You can’t back out on me now. Not after all that I’ve done to arrange things.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be worth it. Trust me.”

  He turned his head away from her, avoiding eye contact. She didn’t want to pressure him, but she wanted him to understand that she needed him. She was prepared to go through it alone, but Sammy preferred to have her father by her side.

  “Do the ends justify the means?” he asked suddenly.

  “In this case, yes.”

  He turned to look at her. “Are you sure, Samantha? Are you sure?”

  Chapter Four

  “Los Cinco Amigos? Damn, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” Neil said.

  Steve let out hearty laugh. “Yep. Remember who branded us with that moniker?”

  “Miss Fleming.”

  “Yeah, what an odious little witch!”

  Neil closed his eyes, smiling at the memory. “The polyester queen herself.”

  “She did love her plastic clothes.”

  “Three years of Spanish and all I remember is how she rolled the ‘r’s every time she said ‘Señor Brewster.’ I hated that bitch.”

  Another loud laugh came through the phone. “We all did.”

  “It’s just the five of us?”

  “Yep. We’ve got the whole camp to ourselves for three days. No one else b
ut Los Cinco Amigos!”

  Picking up his mobile phone from the desk, he noted the date. The third week of March meant that Camp Tenskwatawa would soon be ramping up for the summer-camp season. “How’d you pull that off?”

  “Oh, you probably didn’t hear. The camp closed down two years ago—money issues. My company bought the whole place up.”

  “Your company?”

  “Well, the company I work for. Tyndale Real Estate Group. We’re going to clear out the camp, the forest—just about everything—and put up a high-end gated community surrounding Lake Friendship,” Steve said. “Starting price, seven hundred and fifty grand. Big ass houses, loaded with all the amenities. We’re dumping a few million into this project, figuring it’ll pay out big.”

  “Hmmm. What do you do at Tyndale?”

  “CFO. Been there nine years. Truth be told, you might as well just call me the head accountant. We might be a multimillion-dollar real estate developer, but I’ve only got a staff of three other accountants under me.”

  Neil laughed. “Steve, that still doesn’t explain how we’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”

  “We start demolition in June. Before it’s all gone, I thought it would be nice to have one last weekend there. I bent the CEO’s ear a bit, and he gave me the okay. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Who else has agreed to come?”

  “Everyone’s RSVPed except you,” Steve said. “You’re the one holdout that can make or break a perfect weekend. Are you coming?”

  Neil spun around in his chair until he could see out his office window across Central Park. The mid-morning sun was high in the cloudless blue sky, much the same way it had been the weekend after he’d received the invitation in the mail. He recalled Sheila’s inquisitiveness about Camp Tenskwatawa; it had been a topic he’d never brought up with her before. His past was something he didn’t talk about. Not with her, not with anyone.

  While they had been taking an afternoon stroll through Central Park, he remembered her suddenly asking, “What’s Camp Tens . . . Tenwatata?”