Chapter 16: Not Wrong

The Ledger's article ran to six pages, and Leona had cried in every one.

She said she had come home to say goodbye.

She said Lawrence's wife had slapped her twice, in a shop full of customers, while she was dying.

She did not say a word about two million dollars.

By noon the clip of me in the flower shop had a million views.

Roxy stood behind her counter with her arms folded and watched the phone ring.

"Three cancellations," she said. "A bride, a funeral home, a woman who called me a name."

"I'll fix it."

"I know you will. I just wanted you to hear the number."

Lawrence found me in the back, among the buckets.

He had been on the phone since seven, and he had a folder in his hand again. This one was new.

"My investigator called," he said. "Leona's car didn't go into the river by itself. He's been on the dealerships west of the city since the gala."

"And?"

He laid a photograph on the workbench.

It was a silver convertible on a car lot in Phoenix, with a paper plate in the back window.

A woman in a white coat stood beside it with a pen in her hand. She was signing something on the hood.

The date stamp in the corner was the day after the river.

"She bought it with my mother's check," he said. "She drove out of Boston in it while I was standing at her grave."

I looked at her face in the picture.

She was smiling. She looked happy.

"Saturday is the winter food drive," I said.

"Yes."

"The one the Foundation hosts at the Armory, with the television crew."

"They stream it live."

"Frame it," I said. "Make it big."

Saturday morning the Armory smelled of coffee and wet wool.

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