“Wouldn’t Cracker and Rhonda—?”
A derisive snort cut short that suggestion. There was nothing phony about Boxer’s reaction. He had neither fondness nor respect for his uncle and aunt.
“I may have an idea about where you can stay,” Liss said, “but I don’t know how much time we have before the state police come here looking for you again. I need you to answer some questions for me. Okay?”
He shrugged. She took that as a yes.
“Do you know why they arrested your mother?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “She didn’t say. Doesn’t matter. She didn’t do it. She’s so clean she squeaks.” A hint of pride crept into his voice.
“You talked to her?”
“Hey, she gets one phone call. Everybody knows that.”
“And it’s usually a good idea to use it to call a lawyer. Hilary has been accused of murder, Boxer. They think she killed Ned Boyd.”
Boxer’s jaw dropped. “Killed—? Naw. Not possible. She can’t even stomp on a bug.”
“Did Ned come here when he got out of jail? Did your mother let him borrow her car?”
A sullen silence answered Liss.
“Boxer, it’s important. I’m trying to help.”
“Yeah, okay. She went and picked him up. He stayed here a couple of days. Then he left. No big deal.”
Liss had more questions, but she was afraid he’d balk at answering. Besides, she wanted to get him away from Hilary’s trailer before that state trooper reappeared. What Boxer had already told her was enough to convince her that Margaret might be right. Boxer could be Ned’s son.
“The thing is, Boxer,” Liss began, “the state won’t let you stay here on your own. In fact, I’m surprised that a caseworker from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services didn’t meet the school bus or come straight to the school after your mother’s arrest and take you out of class.”
“I’d like to see one try.” This time the sneer was forced. Behind his brash façade, the kid was scared.
“Well, as it happens, there’s another possibility—a place for you to live that doesn’t involve foster care or any of the Snipes clan.” She took a deep breath. “You remember my aunt, Margaret Boyd? She, uh, she’d like you to come stay with her.” Knowing there was no easy way to break news of this nature, Liss just blurted it out. “Margaret may be your grandmother.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He shrugged. “Like I couldn’t figure that one out.”
“You already knew—?”
“Well, yeah. No big deal.”
“But . . . how did you know?”
With a long-suffering sigh, Boxer shuffled back to his room and emerged again almost at once carrying a lockbox. He set it on the kitchen table and opened it with the key Hilary evidently left in the lock. He pawed through the papers inside until he found the one he wanted and handed it over to Liss.
It was his birth certificate. Under FATHER’S NAME it read Edward MacCrimmon Boyd.
“So, I guess this makes us cousins, huh?”
Boxer’s lopsided grin tugged at her heart. Liss had to swallow hard before she could answer. “Yes, it does. I wish we’d known sooner, Boxer. Ned never told us about you.”
“Mom never told me, either. Not until she brought him here last September.”
But, somehow, Margaret had suspected.
Liss now had dozens of questions for both her newfound cousin and her aunt, but there would be time later to ask them. The priority at the moment was looking after Boxer. The birth certificate would go a long way toward securing Margaret’s right to take responsibility for him.
“Okay, Boxer. Here are your choices. Come with me to Margaret’s or wait around for the cops to pick you up and call in Child Protective Services. You’ll probably have to talk to a caseworker at some point, but if we can postpone that interview until you’re already settled at my aunt’s apartment, then chances are good that they’ll let you stay put. These days, unless the family is radically unstable, DHHS almost always leaves kids with relatives.”
It didn’t take Boxer long to pack clothes and books in a suitcase that was plainly his mother’s—it was bright pink and at least twenty years old. He collected the lockbox and his school backpack, then gestured toward the flat-screen TV.
“I can’t leave that here. Someone will walk off with it. Mom had to save up for a really long time to buy it for us.”
“I guess we could take it with us,” Liss said doubtfully. “I can store it in the stockroom at the Emporium.”
Boxer unplugged the television and unhooked it from the cable box. It took both of them to wrestle it into Liss’s hatchback.
“What about—?”
“We can come back later for more of your stuff,” Liss interrupted. “Right now we need to get moving. Before that trooper shows up again,” she added when a mutinous look came into his eyes.
Boxer got into the car without another word of protest.
Chapter Twelve
It didn’t take long to settle Boxer into the guest room. His lip curled at the “girly” décor, but he dug into the hearty supper Margaret had waiting like the growing preteen he was. While he worked his way through a second helping, Liss slipped downstairs into the Emporium and phoned Gordon Tandy.
It was not a pleasant conversation, but it ended the way Liss wanted it to. She took another few minutes to phone home and give Dan the capsule version of the day’s events before returning to her aunt’s apartment.
“Officer Tandy will be here to talk to you in the morning,” she told Boxer. “Margaret will stay with you during the interview, since you’re a minor.”
“What if I don’t want to talk to the cops?”
“Then they’re going to think you know more than you’re saying. That won’t help your mother. Besides, if they’ve arrested Hilary, they must already know something that makes them think she’s guilty.”
Liss glanced from Boxer to Margaret. Somehow, she’d expected one or the other of them to be more ill at ease. After all, Boxer’s mother had been accused of murdering Margaret’s son. Remarkably, she saw no signs of tension between them. Margaret looked more relaxed than she had in months.
“What? You two bonded over chicken and dumplings?”
Margaret chuckled.
Boxer glanced up from the gigantic slice of chocolate cake on his dessert plate. “I told her Mom didn’t do it. She believes me.”
Hearing the challenge in his voice, Liss considered for a moment before she spoke. “I honestly don’t know what to believe, Boxer. Why don’t you tell me how, after all these years, Ned persuaded your mother to loan him her car and do his banking for him.”
Someone had taught Boxer manners. He didn’t try to talk with his mouth full. He swallowed before saying, “She said she owed him.” He took a swig of milk and forked up more cake.
Liss thought that should have been the other way around, but given that Margaret was Ned’s mother and Boxer was his son, she kept her opinion to herself.
“He phoned her and asked her to pick him up when he got out of jail.” Boxer licked the last of the frosting off his fork and set it neatly atop the empty plate. “She brought him back to our place. Introduced us.” He shrugged and shot an apologetic look at Margaret. “I wasn’t real thrilled to have a father all of a sudden, but he didn’t stay long.”
“He moved into the Chadwick mansion,” Liss said. “Why?”
Boxer’s answer was another shrug, but he was paying way too much attention to the pattern on his plate. Liss didn’t buy the nonchalant act.
“You knew he was living there, didn’t you? And you must have guessed that he was responsible for the things that went missing. Did he give your mother my jacket?”
At that accusation, Boxer’s head shot up. “He didn’t . . . I didn’t . . . I don’t have to tell you anything. You’re not the cops.”
Margaret put her arm around the boy’s thin shoulders. “Liss is only trying to help. She’s good at finding t
hings out. She’ll help clear your mother of the charges against her if you tell her what she needs to know.”
“At this point, I don’t care who did what in the Chadwick house,” Liss said, “so long as I can get it all straight in my head.” She desperately needed to make a “who did what when” list. Never mind their motivations.
“I took the coat,” Boxer mumbled.
“You did? Why?” Hearing the sharpness in her voice, Liss moderated her tone. “I’m not mad at you. I just need to understand the sequence of events. It could be important. Okay?”
Another shrug. Then the dam burst. “I took it because he was living there and I wanted him to get caught. I was pissed at him.” He shot a sideways glance at Margaret. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t like him much. We were doing just fine without him. I figured if he got caught hiding out at the mansion, they’d send him back to jail.”
“It’s all right,” Margaret said. “Believe me, I am well aware of Ned’s faults. Please go on.”
“I thought Ned took the things that went missing.” Liss settled in on the opposite side of the kitchen island from her newfound cousin, a spot from which she could watch his face and body language as they talked.
“Some of them. The lantern and the ladder and the hammer. But I took the wooden tub. I hid it in the woods. And I took that dressed-up dummy, too. I thought if you really looked for that stuff, you’d find him.” The accusation was back in Boxer’s voice.
“You might have dropped a hint about the location of the hidden room.”
“I didn’t know where it was. Not exactly.” He sounded sulky.
“And the tunnel? Did you know about that?”
Boxer squirmed a bit before he confessed to following Ned when he’d moved out of Hilary’s trailer. “He didn’t say where he was going, but he told her he had this plan that was going to make him rich.”
Him, Liss thought, not them. Was it any wonder Hilary was a suspect in his murder? Aloud, Liss said, “He already had plans to search the mansion for Blackie’s loot before he got out of prison. That has to be the answer. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Not that much sense,” Margaret muttered.
“How about you, Boxer?” Liss asked. “Just why did you volunteer for the Halloween committee?”
The boy wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Heard Beth talking about it. She was telling her friend Luanne how there was this great old haunted house in town, trying to talk Luanne into helping out with the plans for the festival. I figured she had to mean the Chadwick mansion.”
“And Ned was already squatting there?”
Boxer nodded. “I thought that if I was on the committee, I could keep an eye on what he was up to. Maybe cause him some trouble, too.”
“Did you see Ned again after he moved out of your trailer? Did Hilary?”
“Mom did. He borrowed her car a couple of times and once he had her go down to Fallstown for him.”
“Was that, by chance, right before she bought that new TV?”
Boxer narrowed his eyes at her. “Maybe.”
Liss considered keeping her theories to herself, but decided it would be better for Boxer to be forewarned. “Here’s what I think made the police arrest your mother. Ned got Hilary to make a deposit for him at the bank in Fallstown. She took two hundred dollars of that money for herself. When he found out about what she’d done, they quarreled. The police will try to prove that their argument escalated into murder. Is there any chance she would have gone out to the mansion to meet him?” If she’d left fingerprints there, that would be even more reason to suspect her.
“I dunno,” Boxer mumbled.
“Did she know he was living there?”
Another shrug.
Liss interpreted that to mean Boxer had been the one to tell Hilary where to find Ned. He looked so miserable she decided not to probe further in that direction. Instead, she asked, “How did your mother end up with my blue jacket?”
“Hey, that was an accident. I was going to return it to you, same way I put back the tub and the dummy.”
“Manikin.”
“Whatever. I took the coat home with me and hid it in my room, so it wouldn’t get dirty. Mom found it when she was collecting the laundry. I couldn’t tell her where I really got it, so I made up this story about buying it for five bucks at the lost-and-found auction at school. Once a year, they put all the unclaimed stuff up for bids.”
“Did she believe you?”
“Oh, yeah. That was the problem. I mean, look at it. It’s a girl color. What was she gonna think except that I got it as a present for her? She really liked it, too, and as soon as the weather got warm enough, she started wearing it all the time. That’s how you caught on, isn’t it? You saw her and recognized your stupid coat.”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, Boxer, but I mentioned it to Officer Campbell and she called the state police detective who’s investigating Ned’s murder. We thought your mother might know something about what Ned had been up to. That she might have killed him never crossed my mind.”
“Well, good,” Boxer said. “Because she didn’t.” He hopped down from his stool and began to prowl.
The apartment belonged to a woman in her mid-sixties. There wasn’t much to interest a boy of twelve. Margaret hadn’t even traded in her VCR for a DVD player. She was perfectly content to watch old videotapes, not that she had much time for them. Like Liss, she kept busy with work and activities within the community and when she had a spare moment to relax, she tended to spend it with her nose in a book.
“How long have you suspected Boxer was Ned’s son?” Liss asked in a low voice as she and Margaret watched the boy explore the living room of his temporary home.
“Only since I met him,” Margaret replied, her tone soft and sad. “Once I got a good look at him and found out who his mother is, I put two and two together. The first summer Ned was home from college, he was seeing Hilary.”
“Why didn’t I know that?” Liss asked.
“You’d left Moosetookalook by then.”
Liss had been away for a decade before she returned for good. She supposed she’d missed quite a few tidbits of local gossip in the interim.
“Anyway,” Margaret continued, “they didn’t date for very long. They’d broken up by the time she realized she was pregnant. Ned was already seeing someone else—you remember Lois Patterson? He thought he was in love with Lois. He even talked about marrying her. It didn’t work out, but at the time—”
“At the time,” Liss finished for her, “Ned didn’t want either you or Lois to know he’d fathered a child by someone else.”
“By a Snipes, you mean.” Although they’d been speaking quietly, Boxer had overheard. Liss couldn’t blame him for sounding bitter.
“Her family didn’t matter to me.” Margaret caught Boxer’s arm when he tried to escape down the hall to the guest room. She turned him to face her and looked him right in the eyes. “Not then and not now . . . but at the time I didn’t think my son would lie to me. When I asked Ned about a rumor I’d heard—that he’d gotten Hilary pregnant—he insisted that he’d never slept with her. I believed him, Boxer. I’m very sorry now that I did. I’d have liked to have been a part of your life from the start.”
When she hugged him, Boxer didn’t pull away, but neither did he return the embrace.
Liss watched them in silence, fighting tears. Ned and Hilary couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty at the time Boxer was conceived. Young. Foolish. And, in Ned’s case, careless of the consequences of his behavior. He’d gone back to college, leaving Hilary alone to bear his child.
Liss wondered if Ned had paid Hilary not to make a fuss. Maybe he’d kept on paying her. Margaret had been generous with his allowance. He’d been a spoiled mama’s boy. Until two years ago, when he’d been arrested, Margaret had remained deliberately blind to her son’s many flaws.
“I swear I’ll do everything I can to help your mother.” The vehemence behind Marg
aret’s words pulled Liss out of her reverie and focused her full attention on her aunt. “I just hope you’ll let me be a part of your life for this next little while,” Margaret continued.
“How long?” Boxer’s voice was unsteady. He kept his eyes lowered, making Liss suspect they were as damp as her own. “How long do I have to stay here?”
Margaret’s quick glance at her niece spoke volumes. “Until Liss finds out who really did kill your father.”
“The problem,” Liss confided to Sherri the next day, “is that I’m not entirely convinced Hilary Snipes is innocent. She wouldn’t have been arrested if there wasn’t solid evidence against her.”
Together they walked through the newly renovated rooms in what had once been the second floor of Liss’s house. They now formed a cozy apartment with two bedrooms, a small bath, a kitchen, and a central living room, Sherri and Pete were set to move in as soon as the smell of fresh paint cleared.
“You know as much as I do.” Sherri poked her head into a closet and came out smiling at the amount of storage space it contained. “And that’s only what’s been in the news. Does she have a lawyer?”
“Margaret hired one for her—the same one who defended Ned.”
“But this time the charge is murder. I don’t think stabbing someone in the throat can be argued down to manslaughter.”
“Self-defense?”
“Did Ned have a weapon? I don’t think so.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Liss plunked herself down on a built-in window seat/storage chest in the room that would soon be Adam’s and let her head fall back against the panes. It wasn’t like her to be indecisive, but for once she wasn’t sure she wanted to discover the truth.
“Maybe you should talk to Hilary,” Sherri suggested.
“And say what? Ask her if she killed Ned?”
“You’ve really got it in for her, don’t you?”
“Of course not. I want her to be innocent. I just don’t think she is.”
“Because she’s a Snipes?”
Liss winced. Was that it? In spite of all the times she’d railed at others for defaming Boxer, was she letting simple prejudice and a family’s bad reputation push her into leaping to unfounded conclusions about his mother?
Vampires, Bones and Treacle Scones Page 16
