by Lora Roberts
Turning the corner onto Andy’s street, I saw a car pulled up in front of mine—the car Detective O’Malley had been driving the day before. He was sitting in the open side door of the bus.
Barker didn’t like that much. As we approached, the fur on his neck got tall, and he started growling deep in his throat, around the stick he still clutched.
O’Malley put out a cigarette and glanced up placidly when I stopped in front of him, holding Barker by the collar. “You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked.” He shut the book he’d been reading and put it down beside him.
I recognized the book. “Did you lose my place?”
He shrugged. “Might have. Didn’t know you had a place.” Negligently he held a hand down toward Barker. After a suspicious sniff, Barker dropped the stick and backed away. His fur was still up, but he wasn’t growling anymore. “Didn’t have you pegged for the kind of person who reads Juvenal,” he went on. “He’s big among police officers, you know.”
I didn’t tell him that the Juvenal, a translation borrowed from Drake, was my current sleeping-pill book. It’s my habit to read myself to sleep, and an exciting mystery or my favorite Victorian authors don’t work too well for that. “Did you want to talk to me, Detective? Kind of early for that, isn’t it?”
“I was driving by,” he said, shifting over to make more room in the doorway. “Saw that your door was open, and was afraid something awful had happened to you—like your relatives tossing you in the Platte. Thought I’d wait a while.”
I handed him Barker’s leash. “Well, I don’t have many comforts, but I can do better than sitting in the doorway. Hold this for a minute.”
He stood beside the bus, watching Barker with a wary expression that mirrored the dog’s. I folded the bed back, tossed my sleeping bag into the cargo area, pulled up the table, and got a couple of oranges out of the cupboard. I noticed while I was in there that some papers in my file box were rearranged. I always stack them neatly, because the box is just barely big enough to hold my file folders. O’Malley had made himself at home, it seemed. I began to wonder if he’d watched for me to leave so he could search my space.
I put the oranges on the table. “Voilá.”
“Nice little place you got here.” He climbed in and handed me the leash. Barker’s fur was still up, so I made him sit by me after I took the leash off. He sat on the bench seat, staring fixedly at O’Malley, who took the seat that faced backward behind the driver’s seat.
“It’s good for traveling.” I rolled an orange toward him. “I can heat some water if you’d like tea.”
He looked a little uncomfortable. “No thanks.”
I peeled my orange. I was hungry. “Officer Gutierrez seemed to think you’d be badgering Kyle this morning, not me.”
“I wondered if I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.” He glanced around.
“You think I would have brought him here?” I began to laugh. “My brother would really hit the ceiling then. Might be amusing at that.”
“You didn’t go to his place.”
“No, of course not. We’re just sort of friends—at least we were ten years ago. He’s a nice guy.”
“What did he say when you told him you were coming back for a visit?”
I put the orange down. “Maybe you’d better spell out what you’re after here, O’Malley. I didn’t tell him or anyone I was coming back. My niece told me my mother was ill, and I decided on the spur of the minute. I would never have told Kyle even if I’d known how to reach him.”
“Why’s that?” He leaned forward, his voice soft and persuasive. “Because you knew he would want to protect you against your ex-husband? Because you knew he would kill Naylor and dump the body where you’d find it?” He sat back a little. “Just like this old cat I had once,” he added. “Used to bring ground squirrels she’d killed and lay ‘em right on the doormat.”
I shook my head, trying not to dwell on the monstrous picture he’d conjured. “You’re really reaching here, O’Malley. Kyle’s probably got a girlfriend—it’s a sure bet he hasn’t been pining for me the past ten years. And nobody knew—I didn’t know myself—when I’d get here. I’m sure when you talk to Kyle he’ll be able to set your mind at rest. He was Tony’s friend more than mine. The only person I know who’d kill someone because of me is— was—Tony. And the person he’d kill wasn’t Kyle.”
O’Malley frowned. “What do you mean? Do you have other old boyfriends around?”
I shook my head. I had gotten into the habit of talking to Drake, forgetting that other policemen aren’t always willing to listen with an open mind. “The person Tony would have killed is me, Detective. He came close a couple of times. Not over other men, because there weren’t any.” It was too much. All the feelings I had been trying to revise for the past year came boiling to the surface—the anger, the fear, the disgust. “Do you suppose I could have trusted any man that way—after Tony?”
He studied me a moment, curiously. “So you like women, is that it?”
Barker’s cold nose shoved in my arm a couple of times helped me control myself. “You really need to know about my sex life? I’ll tell you. There is none. It’s that simple.”
For the first time, his gaze fell, and a slight blush appeared. “Okay, already.”
Heady with the power of discomfiting him, I pushed.
“So you’ll have to drop me and my family from your list of potential bad guys, right?”
He shook his head. “You wish. Think about it, Missus. Your ex-husband didn’t end up on your parents’ doorstep by accident. Someone put him there for a reason.”
“Someone who heard that he was bothering my mom, that my dad threatened him—”
O’Malley cocked an eyebrow at me. “Your dad doesn’t admit that, of course. And your nephew, young Byron—” He pursed his lips. “That boy’s inches away from trouble.”
“Look, O’Malley. You’re wasting your time trying to find a culprit among the Sullivans. Do us both a favor here.” I realized I was leaning forward, jabbing my finger toward his bemused face. I tried to relax in my seat. “Stop concentrating on me and my family. We didn’t do anything. Find out who did, and give them the third degree. And do it soon. I want to go home.”
O’Malley shook his head. “You got a lot of gall, talking to me like that.” He didn’t sound angry, just surprised. “I could haul your ass in, you know.”
“On what grounds? Your case is so flimsy you couldn’t even hold me.” I had learned a few things from listening to Drake talk, and one was that arrests were expensive, prisoners were expensive, and the DA didn’t like having to let people go again because there was no evidence. “And if you think you can railroad me, or use me to obscure any funny business that’s going on among your fellow cops, think again. I’m a writer, you know. In my experience, local papers always like to run exposés of police misbehavior.
“Are you threatening me?” His face turned dull purple, all traces of amusement gone. I had gone too far; it was a bad habit of mine.
“No more than you were threatening me yesterday, when you pointed out how well I’d come out of a trial. I’m keeping a journal, O’Malley. I’ll have lots of material for a series of articles—‘Justice in Denver’ sounds like a good title.” I tried to sound calm. “Up to you whether it has a period or a question mark behind it.”
O’Malley stared at me for a moment longer and then turned on his heel. I watched through the windshield as he slammed his car door and drove away. Now he was my enemy, and I had only my own big mouth to blame for it.
Andy opened the front door, staring after the departing O’Malley, then at me. “Come in for breakfast.” It was not a question.
I was still fired up to slash and burn, but Barker had no ambiguities. He jumped down and pranced up the sidewalk, ready to see his idol, Amy.
I followed, trying to conceal my surliness beneath a thin veneer of decent civility. It was hard.
In the kitchen, Renee
was dishing up plates of ham and eggs, with hot biscuits and red-eye gravy. It was an instant flashback to my growing up. Every morning my dad would sit with arms guarding his heaped-up plate, waiting for us to get to the table—absence wasn’t tolerated. The theory was that he burned it all off, and certainly my mother filled his lunch box to the brim as well. He never seemed to get fat, but I noticed that Andy was no longer very trim around the waist. My brothers had joined my dad in the laborer’s breakfast when they started working construction, but Andy was a foreman now, though he still ate like a laborer.
I accepted my plate and sat down beside Amy, who managed to smile at me, chew an enormous bite, and highlight something in a big textbook at the same time. The food was good, although I noticed the spiral cardboard of a refrigerator-biscuit carton in the trash and immediately felt less inadequate. Renee served me with a parody of hospitality, which seemed to be saying, “Remember how badly you fed me when I was your guest?” Fine, I’d never fixed her ham and eggs—or anyone, for that matter. The rich food tasted good going down, but sat in my stomach like a lump. I should have eaten granola in my bus.
“Fooling around with that computer instead of getting your homework done,” Andy growled between bites. Renee refilled his coffee cup and her own, and silently offered me a cup with a tea bag string sticking out of it. Lipton. And lukewarm water, too. It was thoughtful of her not to offer coffee, though. I thanked her and wondered how soon I could escape.
“I’m getting it done, okay? Get off my back,” Amy said in that prefight tone of voice that I recognized from my own adolescence. “What are you doing today, Aunt Liz?”
I cleared my throat and took a sip of the lukewarm tea. “Well, I’m going to see if I can do laundry or marketing or cleaning for your gramma.”
“Don’t upset the old man,” Renee said sharply. “You’ve done enough, I’d say.”
I shook my head. “I came to help, and I’m stuck for now, so I’ll help. What especially needs doing? Clean the bathroom?”
She said grudgingly, “Well, if you want something to do, that would save me from the job. And you can clean the kitchen cabinets if you like.”
Andy started to protest, and Renee rounded on him. “Well, why shouldn’t she?” Her voice was shrill with passion. “God knows I slave over there on top of my own work to keep that place going, now that your mom is laid up and your dad just sits there, expecting to be waited on like always. Let Liz get her hands dirty with it. She’s never helped before!”
Andy turned to me, a little shamefaced. “I’ve been thinking. About what you said last night.” He glanced around, as if dissatisfied with his audience, but went on resolutely. “You have a point. We could of at least beat the shit out of Tony when we knew he was hitting you, but we kind of thought it was between the two of you.” He stared at Renee. “God knows women can drive you crazy.”
“Marriage is hazardous.” I stood up. “I’d better get going. I have some errands to do. Can I pick anything up for you, Renee? Groceries or such?”
She shook her head. “Thanks.” It was reluctantly said, but at least it happened.
“You’re welcome.”
“Don’t you want a shower, Aunt Liz?” Amy pushed her wet hair out of her eyes.
“If it wouldn’t be a bother.”
“Go ahead.” Renee shrugged, picking up plates.
“Can I help with the dishes?”
“I just load the dishwasher,” she said, flouncing off.
Amy slapped her book shut and came out to the bus with me while I collected my washing stuff. “You can give me a ride again if you’re fast enough,” she suggested.
I agreed to this. It doesn’t take me long to clean up, and I wanted desperately to get out of my brother’s house. Despite his (for him) handsome apology, I felt smothered there.
Amy and I were climbing into the bus when a white pickup roared up and dived for the curb right in front of Babe. Biff leaped out of the driver’s seat and came striding over to us. This time he didn’t have his chorus of muscle-bound friends along. The scowling eyebrows gave his face a Neanderthal air.
“Look,” he said without preamble. “I don’t like cop-loving snitches.” He came to a halt in front of me, his big fists clenching and unclenching.
“Get out of here, Byron.” Amy jumped between us, and he pushed her out of the way.
“You get out, freak.” He didn’t take his angry gaze from me. “Stay out of my space, Auntie.” He gave the word a mean emphasis. “We don’t want nosy bitches like you around. The sooner you get out of here, the safer you’ll be.”
I felt paralyzed by the raw anger that poured from him. He got back in his truck and roared away just as Andy came out.
“What did Biff want?” He looked from Amy to me.
“The usual,” Amy answered, sounding a little dazed. “Total world domination.”
Andy laughed indulgently. “That Biff.”
Neither of us joined in.
Chapter 17
My mom was leaning against the kitchen counter while she filled the glass pot of the coffeemaker with water. The only sign of my dad was the faint sound of water running from the bathroom.
“Should you be out of bed?” I took the carafe from her trembling hands and poured the water into the coffeemaker.
“Lizzie.” She sank into a chair and rested her arms on the table. “Thought you weren’t coming back. Your father isn’t going to like you being here.”
“Tough.” I studied the coffeemaker and flipped it on; it was a relatively simple machine, not like Drake’s Italian monster. “I came to help out, and I can’t help if I’m not here. What does Dad get for breakfast these days?”
“The doctor told him, no more bacon.” She smiled a little. “He doesn’t like that, but he wouldn’t cook it for himself, so it works out okay. I make him an egg, over easy, and some toast.”
“I can handle that.” I found the little cast-iron skillet, then exchanged it for a bigger one. “You’d like an egg, too, right?”
She sighed. “I just don’t feel hungry at all.”
“You can eat one egg, though.” The butter was in the same white melamine butter dish embossed with butterflies that had once been gold but were now pale and streaky. The eggs occupied their usual spot in a bin inside the avocado-green refrigerator. I remembered when that refrigerator was new, when I was in high school. The whole kitchen was in a time warp.
“So, you must be feeling better if you’re up.” I mixed some frozen orange juice while the butter melted. “What did you eat yesterday?”
She told me about the soup Molly had brought. Encounters with Biff fresh in my mind, I asked about Molly’s kids.
“Those boys are so spirited.” Mom beamed when she talked about them. They sounded like out-of-control, hormone-driven wild men to me, but I’m admittedly a maiden aunt where rowdy nephews are concerned. I remembered the oldest, Brendan, as a malevolent six-year-old, tormenting his younger brother and the new baby.
“So Amy and Byron go to the same school?”
“He likes to be called Biff, for some reason.” Mom shook her head, smiling fondly. “We saw two of the boys on Labor Day. Brewster and Biff are so tall. Had to bend way down to kiss their gramma.”
“You haven’t seen them since then?”
Her face clouded. “Biff was here the other day—you know. I told you about it. When him and your dad found Tony here. It certainly made me feel better to have a strong young man like Biff around then.”
“Right.” As long as he’s on your side.
“He came by once more for just a minute, but he didn’t have time to sit with his gramma. The boys are so busy, and so is Molly, just running around everywhere, never a moment to sit and talk.” She sighed. “I’ve been such a burden on them with this illness.”
Guilt struck like a well-thrown dart. I had been no help at all for the past sixteen years. Long-buried experience told me I would never be able to expiate my overdue account. I sti
fled an urge to burst into self-justification. My mother stated nothing more than the truth. If anyone should be doing more to care for her, it would be my dad. She had cared for him so long.
I turned back to the eggs, using the familiar old pancake turner, its wooden handle worn smooth. The faint sound of water stopped. I put toast in the toaster and poured another glass of juice. My mother sat up a little straighter when I put the juice and some silverware at the head of the table, facing into the living room, the place Dad sat in my memories.
The toast popped up, and I arranged it in buttered triangles on the faded blue forget-me-nots of the melamine plates. The eggs were done, too. Footsteps shuffled down the hall—not the ponderous strides I remembered.
“Smells good.” My dad appeared in the archway, sniffing. With his bent back and sunken chin, he was much smaller than the imposing, intimidating figure of my youth. He saw me and grabbed at the back of a chair.
“Hi, Dad.” I dished up the eggs, two on his plate, one on Mom’s. “I’m cooking this morning.”
Those bushy eyebrows came down; his mouth worked. His freshly shaven skin looked pink, but papery; the big nose was seamed with veins. His hands, the knuckles swollen and red, clutched the chair back for a moment before he drew himself up.
“We don’t need your help.” His voice was thick. He cleared his throat impatiently. “You’re not welcome here.”
My mother made a faint sound of protest. He shot her a fierce look.
Somehow, though, the melodramatic words tickled my funny bone. That big, stern lay-down-the-law man from my childhood was much more frightening than this old fellow.
“Welcome or not, I’ve made your breakfast.” I put the plate down at his place, and set one in front of my mother. I brought them each a cup of coffee, though I wasn’t sure my mother should have any, and a cup of tea I’d brewed for myself. “Sit down, Dad. Eat it while it’s hot.”
He moved around the table until he was staring down at the food. For a moment I thought he would throw the plate on the floor, like the ungovernable child he’d sometimes seemed. I pulled out the chair across from my mother and sat down with my tea. She was paler than ever, her eyes fixed on him in mute appeal.
