The Concrete Guy passed him a cloth from his pocket.
Hailey could only sigh; her adrenaline was running dry. “How would acid get in our basement?”
The Steel Man shook his head. “I wouldn’t like to speculate—”
“Had to be during the early construction process,” the Concrete Guy said. “Once the foundation was poured, there would have been no access.”
His voice was drowned out by the Steel Man scraping away at a beam with a small tool. The sound made Hailey want to scream.
“See, this is just dissolving under the friction,” the Steel Man said once the scraping finally stopped. “Which means, I hate to tell you, that the house will eventually fail. Not tomorrow, not next week, but it will fail. I give it a year or so, tops.”
“Fail?” Businesses failed, students failed,housesdidn’t fail. “How could this happen?”
Words failed too: neither man answered her.
“I need to understand.” Hailey hoped Mack might hear her desperation and come out of his office. “How did acid get into our house? Did someone do this on purpose, is that what you are telling me?”
“Off the record,” said Concrete Guy, “I think it had to be. You don’t just have chemicals like this lying around on a construction site, so it’s not like there was some kind of spill.”
The Steel Man was nodding. “Vandalism is the only thing I can think of. Insurance’ll investigate, for sure, but my guess is someone poured a salt solution all over your S-beams during the construction process.”
“Butwhy? Why would anyone—”
The familiarity of the question stole the oxygen from Hailey’s lungs. “Did you say salt? Like saltwater?”
“You know,” said the Concrete Guy, “this beachfront access argument around here is pretty heated. I just poured the foundation for one hell of a fence for somebody over on Lake Shore, and I know some folks used to be able to get down to the water this way, before they built your houses here. Maybe someone’s got a bone to pick with this particular development. I’d check with your neighbors, see if they’ve had any issues that Simeon doesn’t know about yet.”
“Okay,” Hailey said weakly, though she had the crushing feeling that she and Mack were all alone in this nightmare.
She went to him, after she’d closed the door on the two men and deadbolted it again. She stopped for a minute outside the office door. Which to tell him first, that someone had sabotaged their home, or that, not five hours ago, his mother had died?
“Mack?” she began, but the look on his face threw her. Had he checked his phone, somehow heard the news about his mother?
“I found the guy online,” he said quietly, turning in his chair so Hailey could see his computer screen. “I used his address and worked backward.”
“The guy you were supposed to run over?”
“Yeah.” With a shaking finger, Mack pointed to a photograph of a balding bespeckled man on his screen. “That’s him. I’m certain of it. Richard Ashman. He lives at 57 Deerfield Lane.”
“Him?” said Hailey, squinting at the picture of a beaming Richard Ashman in front of his place of business, surrounded by a group of his white-coated colleagues. “Why would anyone want to kill a dentist?”
57.
Life is full of disappointment, my father used to say, and then you die.
The death of my third marriage (read into that what you will) was a big disappointment. There had been real love there at one point, but the end, despite my careful preparations, was messy. By the time the whole thing was over with, I was a shell of my former self, and this time there were children involved. They caused me all sorts of problems, cost me thousands in therapy. It reached a point where it was either cut them loose too, or distract ourselves with a new adventure.
I began to look for somewhere we could all start over. Somewhere isolated and quiet and separate. Svalbard, Nova Scotia, Papua New Guinea—I did my homework like always. Eventually I found it: an undiscovered oasis hidden right in the heart of this fine country, with a fascinating history, nice views, and plenty of parking. Bratenahl ticked all my boxes (especially the “no one will ever think to look for us here” box), and so off we went.
But my father was right about disappointment. It will follow you everywhere, even to Cleveland. It found me again this morning when I discovered that my 9:00 a.m. root canal was to go ahead as scheduled. This particular root canal will be on the house, I’ve been assured, on account of the fact that six months ago Dr. Ashman stuck his drill into the wrong molar, completely destroying the last undamaged tooth I had left in my mouth. You can probably intimate how upsetting this was, given my reaction.
Anyway, here’s another questionable Hemingway quote for you, Hailey Evans: “Never mistake motion for action.”
Hailey and Mack have been flapping around, going through the motions, wasting my time and money. And yet Dr. Ashman lives to see another day, to grind up another perfectly good molar. It makes meangry, frankly, and the time has come to show these Evanses what action looks like.
58.
Mack
