Panama. Until now, it had meant nothing to Ryan but a famous canal and an infamous dethroned dictator named Noriega. When his mother had told him about the safe deposit box, he’d figured it might be as far away as Denver.
What the hell was Dad doing with a safe deposit box in Panama?
The key and related documentation were in a locked strongbox in the bedroom closet, right where his mother had said they would be. Box 242 at the Banco Nacional in Panama City. There was even a city map. Dad’s passport was in there, too. Ryan didn’t even know he’d owned one. He thumbed through the pages. Most were blank. The passport was like new, stamped only twice. A trip to Panama nineteen years ago and a return to the United States the very next day. Not much of a vacation. It had to be business.
The business of extortion.
Ryan took the box up to his room and spent most of Friday night in bed awake, his mind racing. He ran though every human being he’d ever seen his father with, every man and woman his father had ever mentioned. He couldn’t come up with a single person who had the financial wherewithal to pay two million dollars in extortion. He certainly couldn’t think of anyone with connections to Panama.
At two in the morning he finally formed a semblance of a plan. He rose quietly and peeked in his mother’s room, making sure she was asleep. Then he sneaked downstairs. The money was still under the couch, where he’d stashed it when his mother had pulled up unexpectedly. He had a mini-ware-house near the clinic where he stored extra supplies, some old office furniture. Not even Liz knew it existed. Like a cat burglar, he slipped silently out the front door, pushing his Jeep Cherokee to the end of the driveway so that the engine noise wouldn’t wake his mother. He drove straight to the warehouse and hid the money in the bottom drawer of an old file cabinet. It would be safe there. Both the cabinet and the metal suitcase his father had left him were fireproof. He returned home, went straight to bed, and waited for the sun to rise.
He rose early Saturday morning, having managed only a couple of hours of sleep. He showered, dressed, and brought the box down to the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the Lamar Daily News, a local paper put out by the nearest “metropolis” — Lamar, population 8,500. It was usually no more than sixteen pages, three or four of which would typically be devoted to a photographic recap of the annual Granada High School class reunion or the 4-H Horse Show. The sight of his mother and her small-town news made it all the more absurd, the thought of his father flying to Panama and opening a safe deposit box.
“I’ve looked everything over,” said Ryan.
His mother stared even more intently at her newspaper.
“Don’t you want to know exactly what’s in there?” he asked.
“Nope.”
Ryan stood and waited, hoping she’d just look at him. The wall of newspaper between them seemed impenetrable. Fitting, thought Ryan. Most people in Piedmont Springs at least once in a while read the Pueblo Chieftain, the Denver Post, or even the Wall Street Journal. Not Mom. Her world was filtered through the Lamar Daily News. Some things she just didn’t need to know.
“Mom, I’m going to take all this stuff with me, if that’s okay with you.”
She didn’t respond. Ryan waited a full minute, expecting her at the very least to ask where he was going. She simply turned the page, never making eye contact. “I’ll be back late tonight,” he said on his way out the kitchen door.
He put the box in the backseat of his Jeep Cherokee and fired up the engine. The sun was just rising over the cornfields. Miles and miles of corn, all for animal feed, not the sweet corn grown for human consumption. A cloud of dust kicked up as he sped along the lonely dirt road, a shortcut to Highway 50, the first leg of the two-hundred-mile trip to Denver.
The air conditioner in Amy’s truck was still broken, making the Saturday afternoon traffic jam even more unbearable. According to historians, Arapaho Indian Chief Niwot once said that “people seeing the beauty of the Boulder Valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” Inching toward the fourth cycle of the traffic light at 28th Street and Arapahoe Avenue, Amy was beginning to see the truth in what locals referred to as “Niwot’s curse.”
Amy had a twelve-thirty lunch reservation at her favorite restaurant. Gram had graciously agreed to babysit until three o’clock. For Taylor, that meant nonstop reruns of Three’s Company and The Dukes of Hazzard, at least until she went down for her afternoon nap. It made Amy feel a bit like a child abuser, but tomorrow she’d figure out some way to reverse the brain damage.
She parked near Broadway and walked up to the Pearl Street Mall. For all its natural beauty, Boulder was ironically quite famous for its mall. The four-block open-air walkway was the city’s original downtown area, converted for pedestrians only. Historic old buildings and some tastefully designed new ones lined the brick-paved streets, home to numerous shops, galleries, microbreweries, offices, and cafes. The mall was prime people-watching territory, especially on weekends. Jugglers, musicians, sword swallowers, and other street performers created a carnival atmosphere. Amy smiled as she passed “Zip Code Man,” a virtual human computer who, with no more information than your zip code, could identify and often even describe your neighborhood, no matter how far away. Taylor had stumped him last December, using the zip code she’d posted on her letter to Santa Claus.
Narayan’s Nepal Restaurant was a sizable downstairs restaurant right on the mall, offering a distinctive mountain fare at bargain prices. As a graduate student, Amy had shared many a lunch and dinner at Narayan’s with Maria Perez, her old faculty advisor from the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. Together, they’d plotted the course of her doctoral research over stuffed roti or the ever-popular vegetable sampler. Amy hadn’t seen much of Maria since she’d left astronomy. Even though she still considered her a friend, she found it hard to just pick up the phone and give her a call. Partly, she felt she’d let Maria down. Mostly, she felt she’d let herself down.
Maria was waiting at the entrance when Amy arrived.
“How are you, stranger?” she said as they embraced.
“So good to see you,” said Amy.
They kept right on talking as the hostess led them to a small table near the window. There was lots of catching up to do. Maria had recently bagged her eighth fourteener — Colorado lingo, meaning she’d climbed eight of the state’s fifty-four mountain peaks that exceeded fourteen thousand feet. Maria was a bona fide fitness fanatic, a fairly common breed in a city where winter snow-plows sometimes cleared the bicycle paths before the streets. She never ate meat and actually had a chin-up bar in her puny office. Amy was the only one in the department who had even come close to keeping up with her on the jogging trail.
The waitress took their orders, and then they marveled over the latest pictures of Taylor while sipping house chardonnay. Finally, the conversation wound its way down the career path.
“So, are you ready for law school this fall?”
“I guess.”
Maria smirked. “I’m glad to see your enthusiasm has grown since last we talked.”
“Actually, I have some potentially good news on that front.”
“What?”
“It’s highly confidential. If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone. Not even your husband.”
“Don’t worry about Nate, honey. I could tell him I just uncovered the secret formula for Coca-Cola, and his response would probably be something like, ‘That’s nice, sweetie. Have you seen my car keys?’ Come on,” she said eagerly. “What’s the big secret?”
Amy paused for effect, then said, “I may be reenrolling in the fall.”
Maria shrieked. Heads turned at neighboring tables, but she kept on gushing. “That’s great! It’s better than great. It’s fabulous. But why is it a secret?”
“Because the law firm I’m working for is giving me a partial scholarship to law school. If they find out I’m having second thoughts, I’m afraid they’ll pull the scholarship. If my astronomy plans don’t work out, then I’d be screwed all the way around.”
Maria gestured, zipping her lip. “Your secret is safe with me. When will you know for sure?”
“By the end of the week, hopefully.”
“God, I’m so happy you’ve had a change of heart.”
“My heart never changed. It’s more a change in circumstances. Money, to be exact.”
“What, somebody died and left you a fortune?”
“Actually, yes.”
Her smile faded. “Great. I mean, I’m sorry about the death. But good for you, in a way. Hell, you know what I mean.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t really know the guy.”
“Somebody you didn’t know is leaving you a pot of money?”
“Possibly, yes. I met with his son yesterday to make sure everything checks out. It’s a little sticky. He’s in the middle of a divorce.”
“Oh,” she said. It was an ominous “oh.”
“Why the look?”
“Some guy you don’t know dies and leaves you money. His son is in the middle of a divorce. Don’t you think you’re being a little optimistic about enrolling in the fall? Those kinds of legal problems can drag out indefinitely.”
Amy hesitated. It was even more complicated, but it was best to keep it simple. “He promised to have everything cleared up by next Friday.”
“Friday,” she said, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. “To be honest with you, that might not be soon enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong. No one would be more excited than me to see you come back. But it’s already mid-July. I’m not sure we can line things up for the fall term.”
“What’s the big deal? I just pick up where I left off.”
“It’s not that simple. With most of your coursework already behind you, your primary focus this fall is your independent research. There’s already a lot of research being done in the field on the birth and death of stars and the possible existence of other planetary systems around them. If you’re going to generate a dissertation of publishable quality, the best place to conduct your research is the Meyer-Womble Observatory on Mt. Evans.”
Amy was aware of that. At better than four thousand meters above sea level, they were pulling images from Mt. Evans that rivaled Hubble Space Telescope quality. “What do we have to do to get me in?”
“The site is operated by the University of Denver under a U.S. Forest Service special use permit, so the department will have to work out some kind of collaborative research arrangement with DU. That needs to be done well in advance. It’s not just a question of access to the telescope. It’s also a matter of getting to and from the observatory. Living accommodations are limited on the mountain, especially if you’re going to take your daughter and grandmother with you. You can’t be driving back and forth from Boulder every day. It’s not only time-consuming, but come November, the roads could be impassable.”
Amy sipped her wine, thinking. “I promise to let you know by next Friday.”
“I can’t guarantee anything.”
“Come on. Cut me a little slack, okay? What’s the absolute deadline?”
“Yesterday. Or to be even more precise, last month. If I’m going to bust my political hump to work you back into the fall program, I need a commitment from you. And I need it right away. I’m being straight with you, Amy. As a friend.”
She snagged her lip with her tooth. She had agreed to give Ryan Duffy a week to pull together the records, but that wasn’t written in stone. “Okay,” she said with a quick nod. “I’ll let you know by Monday.”