the Pallbearers (2010) Read Online Free PDF

out of there. She could see I was still beating myself up. I smiled at her brightly. Since we were locked in this mild marital deception in front of a witness, there was nothing Alexa could do but agree to leave me there.
    "I just need a little more time," I said.
    She nodded and, ten minutes later, took my car and left.
    I don't know what I was thinking, what I was looking for, but like Sabas Vargas, I didn't believe the story here was as simple as it sounded. Or was I just trying to play catch up, making myself feel useful after it was really too late to help Pop at all?
    I found Diamond Peterson by the serving table and asked if I could have a minute. We walked out of the building and sat on one of the wood benches that lined the athletic field.
    "You really think Pop set fire to the office bungalow?" I asked.
    "No," she said softly. "I can't imagine that. Besides, if Pop did this, if he intentionally set the fire, then we won't get the insurance. He wouldn't do that because he knew we desperately need that money."
    "So who did it then?"
    "I don't know. Maybe nobody. Maybe it was bad wiring. The arson cops couldn't find an accelerant or even isolate a point of origin. The building was wood. It went up fast."
    We looked out at the sad, ramshackle campus of Huntington House Group Home. It was run down, but stumbling on. Tattered, limping, fiscally unhealthy. The evidence of neglect was everywhere. In the poor condition of the rusting vans parked out front, in the deferred maintenance that was visible all around us.
    "This place looks terrible," I finally said.
    "Yeah." Then Diamond s lip started quivering, and she put her head in her hands and began to cry. I put my hand on her shoulder and then held her as her large body was wracked with sobs. Finally, she struggled to pull herself together. We sat and waited until she was back under control.
    "Sorry," she said.
    "Don't be."
    "I don't know what to do anymore," she admitted. "We have so many problems."
    "Tell me."
    "I don't know how much you know about how the foster-care system works."
    "Almost nothing. When I was here, I was pretty locked up. It was just about me."
    She looked at me, tears still on her cheeks. Then she rubbed them angrily away, took a deep breath to settle herself down, and began.
    "Okay, well, starting at the beginning, you probably know Walt doesn't own this place anymore. After Elizabeth died it was taken over by a nonprofit corporation that kept him on as the paid executive director. Huntington House is currently owned by an outfit called Creative Solutions. Creative Solutions gets money for each child in residence here, then deposits the funds into our account and acts as a short-term bank for us if we run low. But we have to zero out with them at the end of each fiscal year. Also, the amount a group home gets per child can vary greatly."
    "How's that work?"
    "There's something called an RCL, which stands for Rate Classification Level. It's given by the California Department of Social Services and it's made up of a lot of stuff. How well-maintained the home is, the ratio of staff to children, how many staff have advanced degrees, rate of foster-home placement or adoption ... all kinds of things."
    She looked right into my eyes. "The higher the RCL, the more the state pays. It can go from as low as four thousand a child per month to in excess of six."
    She struggled again to hold back her tears. "Walt was such a dreamer," she continued. "Like him telling you we were gonna get that Astroturf, or rubberized grass, whatever the hell. That was gonna cost us over two hundred thousand to buy and install. There was no way we could afford that.
    "We'd been getting almost six thousand per child, but then we lost Dr. Logan to a better job, and our clinical psychologist quit to have a baby. We were running short of money from the state. I know six thousand a month for each kid sounds like a lot, but there's a lot to maintain. There's plain overhead--staff