Change of Heart

by Norah McClintock

“I’m looking for her.”

  Colin looked at me with undisguised hostility. “You’re friends with the kid who murdered my brother.”

  I could have argued with him—about the murder part, not the friend part—but it would have got me nowhere. Instead, I concentrated on Lissa.

  “Do you have any idea where Tamara might be?” I said.

  “My mother found Sean,” Colin said. “Did you know that?” He had a loud, booming voice, but it quavered when he spoke to me. “How do you think she felt when she saw him lying there?”

  Morgan laid a hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault, Colin,” she said gently.

  “I should have been on time,” Colin said. “If I’d got there when I was supposed to, Sean would be alive.” His voice broke. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. His mother had made it clear that she blamed him for what had happened.

  Morgan squeezed his arm and held it for a moment. Lissa gave me a dismissive look. No one said another word. I had no choice. I turned away.

  Someone touched my sleeve as I made my way toward the cafeteria door. It was Dennis Hanson, math wizard and champion bird-rescuer.

  “Tamara’s at the TV station,” he said. His head was slightly bowed, and he didn’t look directly at me. “She spends most of her lunches there. She’s working on a program.”

  “Thanks, Dennis,” I said.

  “But you can’t just walk in there,” he said. “Not without an appointment. If you want me to, I could get you in.”

  “You can?”

  “My dad works there. I heard someone say you’re helping Billy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can get you in,” he said again. He still didn’t look at me.

  The local public broadcasting station where Tamara hosted a show for teens was two blocks from school. Dennis and I walked there together. I tried a couple of times to make conversation but got nowhere. I thought maybe he was shy, but when we got to the TV station he wasn’t at all intimidated by the high-security reception area with security cameras and electronic-pass entry system. He marched right up to the receptionist and, without looking directly at her either, said, “My friend wants to see the station.”

  The receptionist greeted him with a smile, gave us two security passes, and let us through.

  “Be careful on the third floor, Dennis,” she said. “They’ve been painting every night since last week. There’s wet paint everywhere.”

  Dennis led the way to the elevator.

  “Tamara is probably in Editing,” he said. “I’ll show you where it is.”

  We rode up to the third floor. When the elevator doors opened, I was overwhelmed with the smell of fresh paint. There were ladders, drop cloths, and paint cans everywhere.

  Dennis told me how to get where I was going.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” he said.

  I followed his directions to a door marked Editing. There was a schedule tacked to a small bulletin board on the wall beside the door. Sure enough, Tamara’s name was printed neatly in one of the boxes. I peeked through the window. The room appeared to be newly painted. Corkboards and framed pictures leaned against a couple of filing cabinets, waiting to be remounted. Tamara was working at a computer at the back of the room. The same preppy-looking young man who had accompanied her and her cameraman to the hockey game was bent over her. I pushed open the door.

  The man straightened up quickly when he heard the door click back shut. There was a pink glow to his cheeks. Then Tamara looked up. Her cheeks turned red.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Tamara glanced at the preppy-looking guy.

  “Yes, well, good work,” he said. He nodded curtly and left the room.

  Tamara watched him go before she turned her eyes on me.

  “Do I know you?” she said.

  Morgan was right about one thing: Tamara thought she was special—so special that she didn’t recognize someone she had passed in the hall at school probably a couple of hundred times. I knew who she was, but she didn’t know me.

  “I was watching TV last night,” I said. “I saw an interview you did with Sean Sloane. It was really good.”

  She leaned back in her chair and regarded me with new interest. “Another Seanette, huh?” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Another little girl who had the hots for Sean.”

  “No. No, I—”

  “Hey, I don’t mean it as a put down. He was a good-looking guy. Fantastic athlete. Great body. Lots of fun—well, most of the time.”

  “Everyone says he was going to end up in the big leagues,” I said. “In your documentary, you called him the next Wayne Gretzky.”

  “Yeah, except that from what I hear, Gretzky was always a gentleman. Always.”

  “And Sean wasn’t?”

  She laughed. It came out sounding bitter.

  “But you went out with him, didn’t you?”

  “For two years.” She studied me again. “No offense,” she said. “But what do you want? Did you know Sean? Because I don’t remember ever seeing him with you. And, believe me, I would have noticed.”

  “I’m a friend of Billy Royal.”

  Tamara’s face changed the way the weather does when a storm front moves in.

  “That’s the kid they arrested for murdering Sean,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “And you’re friends with him?”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “Yeah, right.” She turned back to what she had been doing.

  “That interview I saw last night was really good,” I said again. “Sean was so hot. How come you didn’t do a longer show on him? That could have really turned into something if he ever got drafted to the majors. You know, Sean Sloane, the early years.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t try,” Tamara said. “His team was going to win the finals. And whether he took one or not, he’d been offered full scholarships. A lot of schools here were interested in him.”

  “What do you mean, whether he took one or not? I heard he was smart. Didn’t he want to go to college?”

  “That’s what his mom wanted.” Morgan had told me the same thing. “She really wanted him to accept a scholarship. It was a big deal for her. She wanted him to get the best education. I thought he wanted that, too. I mean, it’s why he wasn’t playing major junior. If you do that, you lose your NCAA eligibility. You can always go to school later, but Mrs. Sloane knew how that usually went. Most guys in major junior let their grades slide. They all think they’re going to the NHL. Sean was really going to do it, though.” She shook her head. “There was definitely an audience for a doc on him—all those hockey fans who love to spot the next Great One, all those kids who want to be the next Great One, and all the girls who want to be with the next Great One. He was going to beat the odds. He really was.”

  “What odds?” I asked.

  “The one-in-a-million odds.” When I still looked puzzled, she rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea how many guys play minor hockey?”

  I shook my head.

  “Thousands,” she said. “Tens of thousands. Maybe more. And they all dream of making it to the NHL. But the reality is that one in a thousand will ever get drafted—and a third of them won’t ever play an NHL game. Only two in ten thousand will actually last a few years and have a shot at the big money. Everyone dreams, but hardly anyone makes it. Sean was going to make it, and everyone knew it. The thought of having to play NCAA for four years was really getting to him. It drove him crazy that his mom wouldn’t let him play major junior like his brothers did. I talked a producer here into letting me do a special feature on him. I had a budget for it, everything. Sean agreed to it. Then, when we broke up—”

  “I heard he dumped you.”

  Her cheeks turned red. “When he replaced me with that new little chicklette of his,” she said, “he also backed out of the project. Do you have any idea how that
made me look? I pitched my bosses on the piece. I promised them that I could deliver the goods. I told them he’d agreed to being interviewed and to having a camera on him during the lead-up to the playoffs. Then, at the last minute, he tells me to forget it.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “That must have made you angry,” I said.

  “You have no idea. I was ready to ki—” She looked at me. “Yeah, I was pretty mad.”

  Charlie Hart had asked Morgan where she was between ten and midnight the night Sean was killed. That had to mean that the police had narrowed the time of death to those two hours.

  “Tamara, where were you the night Sean was killed?” I said.

  She laughed. “What are you? A junior cop? I was here until midnight. I was editing a tape for an upcoming show. I had to give it to my producer the next day. You want to check with him?”

  “Everyone liked Sean,” I said. “Everyone said he didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  “Well, he had at least two,” she said.

  I waited.

  “Your friend Billy, who killed him,” she said. “And Jon.”

  “Jon Czerny? But he and Sean are—were—on the same team.”

  “Are you for real?” Tamara said. “Just because two guys are on the same team, that doesn’t mean they’re best buddies. Especially if they were both up for team captain and the one who got beat out is a bad loser. And if the one who got beat out had been pretty much guaranteed the position until the other one started making moves. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “I’m not saying anything. Look, the cops have the guy who did it. I hear your friend is a lovesick puppy. But just for the record, Sean wasn’t the angel everyone thought he was. He may have played like Gretzky on the ice, but he definitely didn’t act like him off it.” She turned back to her work, dismissing me once and for all.

  I went back to where I had left Dennis. He hadn’t moved a muscle. He was so engrossed in reading something on a clipboard that was sitting on a stack of paint cans that he didn’t even look up when I approached him.

  “Are you coming back to school, Dennis?” I asked.

  It took a moment before he pulled his eyes away from whatever he was reading. I glanced at it—a schedule of some kind.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said as we rode back down to the main floor.

  “I hope they let Billy go,” he said. “Spring migration is going to start soon. The birds need him.”

  I admit it: after seeing how aggressive Jon Czerny could be on the ice, I was a little afraid of him. But according to Tamara, he had a strong reason to dislike Sean. And I remembered how he had shoved Sean during the game. It wasn’t hard to picture someone who was that physical grabbing something and hitting Sean over the head with it.

  I looked for Jon in the cafeteria. He wasn’t there. I looked outside. He wasn’t there, either. Then the bell rang and I had to go to class. As soon as classes were over, I did the rounds of the school—no Jon. Then I thought, He’s a hockey player, the championship is coming up, and his team has just lost its captain and star player. If I were Jon, what would I be doing now?

  I headed for the arena.

  Sean’s team was on the ice. At first no one noticed me. Then the coach skated over and waved me to the boards.

  “This is a closed practice,” he said.

  “I just wanted to talk to Jon,” I said.

  The coach looked at me as if I were simple-minded. “He’s not available right now.”

  “When is practice over?”

  “We’ll be another hour at least. If you want to wait for him, you’ll have to wait outside.”

  As I left, I saw the coach skate over to Jon and gesture in my direction. Jon turned to look at me, but I couldn’t read his expression from that distance.

  It was chilly out in the early spring afternoon. The sun was already sinking toward the horizon. An hour later I was still huddled outside the players’ entrance and was starting to worry that the team had gone out the main door instead. But there were still cars in the parking lot, and I hadn’t seen anyone inside except the hockey team. I stomped my feet to stay warm and waited some more.

  Eventually the door burst open and hockey players poured out. They were loud and boisterous, jostling and teasing each other. Jon was the loudest of the bunch, but he broke away from the pack when he saw me and loped over to where I was standing. His eyes ran over me, and he smiled.

  “You were at the funeral,” he said, chewing and snapping a wad of gum. “Sean’s girl, what’s her name—”

  “Morgan,” I said. Morgan would have been livid if she had heard herself referred to as What’s-her-name.

  “Whatever,” Jon said. “She was screaming at you.” He seemed to enjoy the memory. “Coach said you wanted to talk to me. What’s up? You want an autograph?”

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s about Sean.”

  The slick smile slipped from his lips. “Yeah. Too bad about what happened, huh? The guy was loaded with potential.”

  “I heard he was big-league material.”

  Guys were getting into cars and driving away. The coach was standing a few meters behind Jon, watching us.

  “Czerny,” he called. “You want a lift or what?”

  Jon looked me over again. “There’s a place across the street. Can I buy you a coffee or something?”

  The way he was leering at me gave me the creeps, but I put Billy first and said, “Sure.”

  Jon turned to the coach. “Change of plans,” he said.

  “But we need to talk,” the coach said.

  “Later.” Jon’s tone made it clear that he considered himself to be in charge.

  The coach stood there a moment before shaking his head, wheeling around, and heading for one of the few cars still left in the parking lot.

  Jon and I crossed the street to a brightly lit diner and took a booth near the window. When a waitress appeared, Jon ordered a burger with fries and a chocolate milkshake.

  “Practice,” he said. “It takes a lot out of you, especially when it’s playoff season.”

  The waitress turned to me.

  “Hot chocolate, please,” I said.

  “So, you’re a hockey fan, huh ...” Jon began. He looked vaguely at me, and I realized that he had forgotten my name.

  “Robyn,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know much about hockey, other than that everyone said Sean was going to be the next Gretzky.”

  Jon snorted. When I gave him a look, he shrugged unapologetically.

  “Hey, I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead,” he said. “But you know what? There isn’t a hockey arena in the world that’s big enough to hold Sean Sloane.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “His ego. It was huge. Yeah, he came across as Mr. Nice Guy. Sucked up to all his teachers. Sucked up to the coaches. Sucked up to those college scouts who were here. Mr. Suck-Up—that’s what they should have called him. Or Mr. Manipulation. Hockey wasn’t the only game he knew how to play.”

  “Are you saying he didn’t deserve all the attention he was getting?”

  The waitress arrived with my hot chocolate and Jon’s food. Jon reached for the ketchup and drowned his burger in it. Then he poured ketchup all over his fries. I tried not to look at his plate when he dug in.

  “I tell you what he didn’t deserve,” Jon said, his mouth full of burger and fries. “He didn’t deserve to be team captain.”

  “But I thought—”

  “At the end of last season, Coach told me he was going to make me captain. I care about my career, sure. But I also care about the team. A hockey team isn’t just about one guy getting to shine. It’s about the whole team battling its way to the playoffs and then getting a shot to prove that it’s the best—not just one player. Sean—okay, so for a while he was a team player. But then he got the word that the scouts had an eye on him. A couple of them came up here, watched hi
m, talked to him. They look at hockey skills first. But they also look at academics and character, that kind of stuff. Coach decided Sean would be a shoo-in if he was team captain. You know, if he showed real leadership skills. The next thing you know, I’m bumped.”

  “What do you mean, bumped?”

  Jon shoveled a gigantic handful of fries into his mouth. “Coach calls me in and tells me, ‘Hey, Jon, I know I promised you, but here’s the deal with Sean.’ You get it? Because the coach is ready to do anything it takes to make sure Sean gets his shot. Sean, not me.”

  “Did schools scout you, too?”

  Jon stopped chewing. He glowered across the table at me, and right then I understood why, as Morgan had said, some guys were afraid of him.

  “I got some interest,” he said. “But with my grades ... hell, who cares what my grades are like? I want to be a hockey player, not a brain surgeon.”

  “I guess some of those schools care—”

  I shut up when he glowered at me again.

  “Yeah, well, if Sean was such a great guy, how come that kid offed him? And I bet he wasn’t the only person who wished Sean Sloane would drop dead. Look, I’m sorry for his parents. I’m sorry it happened. But you know what? It makes me sick how everyone is acting like the guy was a saint. He wasn’t. Not even close.”

  “Now that he’s gone, does that mean the team has no captain?”

  He took a hearty sip of his milkshake. “I’m captain now. And it’s my job to help the guys believe, really believe, that we can win without Sean. And you know what? We can. Sean was just one guy.”

  “But he was the best.” When Jon scowled at me again, I hastily added, “At least, that’s what everyone says.”

  “Yeah, well, everyone is just going to have to wait and see.”

  I thanked him for the hot chocolate.

  “You got a boyfriend?” he said, looking me over again as I stood up.

  “Yes.” It seemed easier to lie than to have to fend him off.

  He shrugged and turned his attention back to his food.

  “Can I ask you something, Jon?”

  He looked up from his plate.

  “The night Sean died, he was at the arena alone, practicing. How come the rest of the team wasn’t there?”