Betsy’s shop carried a counted cross-stitch pattern of a romanticized country lane that was not as pretty as this, nor could it capture the heady fragrance. No wonder people paid ridiculous prices for houses in Excelsior!
She suddenly remembered why she was there, and her pleasant reverie faded. She collected her wits and went up the sidewalk to ring the doorbell.
The door was opened promptly by a short, thin woman with dark brown hair tucked behind her ears. There were brown shadows under her brown eyes, but her sleeveless white blouse and pale plaid shorts were crisp. “Yes?” she said.
“Faith Sinclair? I’m Betsy Devonshire.”
“Oh, of course. Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you.” Betsy smiled to herself. Faith had never met Betsy, and was probably expecting a tall, thin sleuth with piercing gray eyes and a lot of presence. But Betsy was not tall, or slender, and the only thing gray about her would have been her hair if she didn’t make regular trips to a hairdresser.
The woman led Betsy into a small, warm living room—no air-conditioning. The place looked and smelled immaculate, but the furniture and carpet were badly worn. On the couch were a girl and a young woman, and standing in front of an easy chair was a good-looking man in a nice suit and thick hair, all one shade of brown.
“Ms. Devonshire, these are my daughters, Kristal and Kathy, and that is my ex-husband, Greg.” There was the slightest emphasis on that.
“How do you do?” said Betsy.
The girls mumbled something, then became interested in how their arms crossed their chests. There was an unhappy tension in the air that somehow did not seem linked to her visit.
“How do you do?” said Greg, stepping forward and extending his hand. His grip was firm, his expression that of someone hoping his show of pleasantness would disguise the tension. She noticed a few gray hairs in Greg’s eyebrows and, when he stepped back, a shiny new wedding band on his left hand—a reason to dye one’s hair, certainly. But the girls narrowed their eyes at him, not liking his false show, or perhaps the man himself, their father with a shiny new wife.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Faith. “May I bring you something? A Coke? Bottled water?”
“Water would be nice,” said Betsy. Greg stepped away from the easy chair and gestured that she should take it. He looked at the couch, but the hostile eyes of his daughters warned him off, so he went to a wooden chair with a flat pillow tied to its seat and sat down.
“I understand you’ve done several successful investigations,” he said.
“Yes.” Betsy disliked bragging and didn’t elaborate.
“I hope you’re able to help us.”
“Me, too.”
“Did you talk to Mickey in the jail?” asked the younger girl, Kathy. She was an attractive creature, with curly brown hair like her brother’s, and his blue eyes, but her forehead was wrinkled with distress. She wore cutoff jeans, thick-soled sandals on bare feet, and a tube top that made a display of her budding breasts. She looked about fourteen and so was probably around twelve.
“Yes, just briefly. He’s . . . angry.”
“Of course he is,” said Faith, coming into the room with a glass and a green bottle on a tray. She put the tray down on a little side table beside Betsy’s chair. “It’s perfectly understandable.”
“Yeah, that’s how he always reacts when he gets caught,” said the older girl, Kristal. She had her mother’s dark hair and eyes, and was pretty in a little pink knit dress with spaghetti straps, but her voice and expression were hard. She was that young-adult age, which can be anything from seventeen to twenty-four; whatever, she was Mickey’s big sister.
Betsy, surprised, stopped pouring to say, “I thought you were sure he was innocent!”
“He is innocent!” said Faith, frowning at her daughters.
“Innocent of murder, certainly. But I have no doubt he was at The Common.”
Kristal made a disparaging face and nudged her sister, who nudged back, imitating the face.
“He denies that,” said Betsy.
“Faith has no faith in our son,” said Greg.
“I have more than you!” said Faith, so sharply Betsy was sure this was the source of the tension, and that it was a continuation of a quarrel that had begun at least as long ago as Mickey’s arrest, and possibly before Greg became Faith’s ex-husband. She looked at Betsy. “But I’m sure he was there and doing something . . . inappropriate. He told me the night before that he was going to The Common to meet some of his friends. I didn’t want him to go, but he went.”
“Do you know the names of those friends?” asked Betsy.
“The police have talked to them already,” said Faith, “and the boys said they didn’t see him there. But by then they knew Mickey had been arrested, and I’m sure they were lying for him, the way boys do.”
But Betsy, feeling she’d at last asked a question that might lead somewhere useful, rummaged in her purse for a pen and a little notebook. “Tell me their names anyway,” she said, opening the notebook and clicking out the point of the pen.
“Well, there’s Noose, I don’t know his real first name; his last name is Levsky. And there’s the Martinson boy, I think his first name is Chris, though he likes people to call him Thief. And Billy Swenson, though I’m not sure he was there, the other boys said they didn’t see him, either; and I’ve told Mickey he’s not to hang out with him anymore.”
“A fine set of friends,” noted Greg, “Noose, Thief, and Bad Billy Swenson.”
“I’ve been doing the best I can!” said Faith, taking the remark as criticism of herself. “May I remind you that you haven’t exactly been holding up your end?”
“How could I? You almost never let me have him! Always some excuse—he’s sick, he’s going someplace with his friends. It’s wrong, you’re wrong. He’s a boy, and a boy needs his father.”
“A boy needs a stable, two-parent home, which Mickey doesn’t have anymore, and a father with some integrity, which he never had!”
“Excuse me,” said Betsy, trying to head off the storm that was about to break over their heads. “I’m here to discuss Mickey and what you want me to do for him.”
“Yes, of course, I’m sorry,” said Faith, contrite.
“Whatever,” muttered Greg.
“Can I say something?” interjected Kristal. When everyone looked at her, she brushed shyly at the brief skirt of her pink dress, but then raised her chin to say, “I don’t think Ms. Devonshire should get involved. We’ve tried long enough to do something for Mickey; nobody can help him now.”
“Don’t say things like that,” said Faith.
“Face it, Mother,” argued Kristal, “he’s gone from stealing to murder. It’s the logical next step for someone who’s been in trouble ever since his voice broke and he started turning into a ‘man.’” There was a bitter twist on the last word.
“That’s enough!” said Faith, too sharply. She paused long enough to replace her frown with a false smile at Betsy that asked her to ignore Kristal’s words. But there was real concern in her voice when she asked, “Are they treating him all right? He catches anything that’s going around, and being in close quarters with all those other boys, some of them . . .” But now she was in danger of becoming politically incorrect, so she let the sentence trail off unfinished.
“That’s because he smokes pot,” announced Kathy. “Pot makes you sick and stupid.”
“Just being Mickey makes you sick and stupid,” said Kristal.
“Hush up, both of you,” said Greg.
“You aren’t the boss of us anymore!” said Kristal, her contempt now reaching to her father.
“Not one more word,” warned Faith, and the girls recrossed their arms and slouched deeper into the couch.
“Tell me about Mickey,” said Betsy.
“Well, he just turned sixteen three weeks ago,” said Faith. “He’ll be a sophomore in high school this fall—”
“Yah, he flunked fifth grade,�
�� sneered Kathy, with the superior air of someone who would be in sixth grade come fall.
“Kathy, if you can’t be quiet, or at least helpful, you may go to your room!” said Faith.
“Okay, I will!” Kathy rose to her feet, her face twisted with anger. “Mickey is a bad person, I hope he stays in jail forever!”
Kristal stood in solidarity, but she tried a reasonable tone when she said, “We can’t afford to throw more money away on him, Mother. Kathy and I always go without so you can buy Mickey out of trouble, and we’re sick and tired of it. Besides, not even the miracle worker here can help Mickey this time.”
Betsy said, surprised, “I’m not a miracle worker—and I don’t charge anything for my investigations.”
Kristal was surprised in turn. “Then why are you doing this?”
“Because I have a talent for discovering whether someone innocent has been accused of a crime.”
She and her sister offered identical snorts of incredulity. “Mickey’s never been innocent in his life!” said Kristal.
“Yeah!” agreed Kathy.
“I think perhaps he may be in this case.”
“I give up, you’re all crazy,” said Kristal, and she left the room, Kathy marching in total agreement behind her.
“Okay, now the disrupting influences have left the room,” remarked Greg, as if beginning a sentence. But he didn’t finish it, only cast a wary eye on his ex-wife.
“Do you really believe Mickey is innocent?” Faith asked Betsy, desperate to hear “Yes” in reply.
“I think perhaps he is. You said you were sure he was at The Common, but he says he wasn’t.”
“He’s . . . a bit of a liar,” said Faith.
“He’s a big fat liar,” amended Greg.
“Why is that?” asked Betsy.
“Because he wants to be a man, and doesn’t know how,” said Greg. “Faith has no idea how to help a boy become a man.”
“Not being one yourself, neither do you!” said Faith.
Surprisingly, Greg didn’t reply, and she continued to Betsy, “Mickey’s just like his father, always trying to prove himself. I tried to tell him that real men have flaws and weaknesses just like women do, but he wouldn’t believe me. He brags about how strong he is, and lies about how well he’s doing, always denying that he’s scared or tired or unable to handle a situation. Greg told him he was the man of the house—”
“Once. One time,” interrupted Greg.
“So he started trying to boss us around. I told the girls they don’t have to take orders from him, so he fights with them all the time. And me. And after a fight he storms out of the house, and next thing we know, he’s done something really inappropriate.”
“Is that what happened last Sunday?” asked Betsy.
Faith sighed. “Yes. It wasn’t a worse fight than usual, but it ended with the usual slamming door.”
Greg said, “I think Faith has some kind of notion about ‘testosterone poisoning,’ which started as a feminist joke but has become gospel. She used to get angry with Mickey when he was little because he was loud instead of quiet, messy instead of neat, and ran instead of walked. He was just a normal boy, but she couldn’t see that, all she could see was that he wasn’t like Kristal when she was his age. It got worse, a lot worse, after the divorce. He had just turned twelve and didn’t know how to handle his anger and resentment—and I wasn’t there to show her that acting out is part of the struggle toward manhood, and show him how to handle the feelings he was having. He’s my son, and I was proud to have a son, but we both failed him.”
“It got worse because of the divorce,” amended Faith.
“You were the one who wanted a divorce,” Greg reminded her.
“You were the one who started staying out at night!” she flared.
“You’re the one who kept running me out of the house!”
“We’re talking about Mickey,” said Betsy, trying the heading-off technique again.
“This is about Mickey!” snapped Faith. “It’s about boyhood and manhood and, all right, the whole testosterone thing!” She flung herself down on the couch, propped her head on one hand, and took several deep breaths. “I’m sorry, Greg’s right, it wasn’t just him, we both handled it badly.” She raised her head. “But I can tell you from my heart, I absolutely know that Mickey didn’t murder that artist!”
Driving home an hour later, Betsy shrugged several times and moved her head around, trying to make her shoulder muscles loosen up. What a family! No wonder Mickey Sinclair was in trouble, coming from a home like that.
She grabbed that thought and decapitated it. Plenty of children had come out of worse homes and done well.
Once, long ago, Betsy had had a friend who was a dog breeder. This friend explained that breeders were—or should be—as interested in behavior as in looks, and could select for both. She told Betsy that the Doberman was bred to guard territory—unlike the German shepherd, which was bred to interact with people—and that its indifference to people made it a dangerous animal, much more savage in its attacks on an intruder, or what it considered an intruder. People who loved the aerodynamic lines of the Doberman nevertheless wouldn’t buy one because of its reputation for ferocity. So breeders responded with selective breeding that produced a warm and friendly personality with the same sleek silhouette.
In Betsy’s mother’s day, human babies were thought to be very different from animals. They even had a term for it—tabula rasa, the blank slate—meaning a baby was a creature on which any personality might be written. It was during those dark times that a child who turned out autistic, homosexual, criminal, cowardly, a pedophile, or even just lazy was thought to be the product of bad mothering. Betsy’s mother hadn’t believed it. Her best friend, she said, had a lazy son who even in utero was so lumpish she had twice gone to the doctor, certain the child had died in her womb. Betsy’s mother had pointed to Betsy and her sister as examples of two very different girls who had been raised in very similar surroundings by the same two parents.
But people were very adaptable, Betsy thought. Just look at the variation in culture around the world. Personality, she was sure, might be colored or channeled by environment; but the environment had a person’s innate character to deal with, which produced different results with different characters. A television program had pointed out recently that almost all serial killers were sociopaths, which is a personality defect that makes its victims unable to empathize. On the other hand, a person born with that defect normally didn’t turn into a serial killer unless he also survived a sickeningly cruel upbringing. Was sociopathy itself a genetic defect, inheritable? Because sociopaths made terrible parents.
Mickey’s parents weren’t sociopaths. He had a mother who disliked, maybe feared, men and taught her two daughters to be the same way. He had a father who couldn’t manage to be there for his son. But Mickey had a personality that couldn’t compensate for that, and so he was the kind of child who began behaving inappropriately at age twelve.
Betsy’s mouth twisted. What a word, “inappropriate”! Like a lot of euphemisms, it was imprecise; but this one was wildly so. Especially considering the long list of Mickey’s sins, as detailed by his parents. Yelling at his sisters was inappropriate. Smoking in the school lavatory was inappropriate. Getting tattooed was inappropriate. Shoplifting, stealing bicycles, punching a classmate’s front teeth out, running away from home—once as far as Kansas City—all inappropriate. That description made them seem all equally bad behaviors.
But had Mickey escalated his bad behavior all the way to the top, to murder? Mickey was an angry boy, a troubled and troublesome boy. An unlikable boy. And the evidence seemed convincing—even his mother was sure he’d been in the park. But stir in the facts that the parents were also unlikable, his sisters aggravating snots—Betsy didn’t need this. Maybe she should just back off, say she didn’t have time for this investigation. She felt a rush of relief at the thought. She wasn’t a professional, assigned to
cases. She could pick and choose.
But there had been that little glimpse, hadn’t there? That brief look at a terrified child grabbing at hope when someone had offered to believe he was innocent.
But that mere glimpse wasn’t evidence, or not evidence enough. Mickey had every reason to be afraid, and to hope desperately for someone to believe he wasn’t guilty. Betsy needed more than that.
Well, Mickey had pointed out that the money found in his room wasn’t the same amount as the money stolen from the victim. His explanation of where it had come from was lame, but that might be because it was the product of marijuana sales. A kid who needed money for pot might well get it by becoming a dealer.
On the other hand, if Rob McFey’s fingerprints had been found on the money . . .
She wished she could ask Jill what Malloy had found out in his investigation. But Jill was done talking about police business to Betsy, that was for sure.
Well, then, what else? There were those bad-influence friends of Mickey’s. Faith had said the police had talked to Noose, Thief, and Bad Billy Swenson, all of whom said they hadn’t seen Mickey in the park. Faith was sure they were lying to protect Mickey. And maybe they were. But could one or more of them be lying to protect themselves?
So okay, there were a few angles she could investigate—provided she decided to investigate. Which she wasn’t sure she was going to do.
Betsy was coming up Lake Street toward her shop. Parked in front of the door was a large, square-cut green car of ancient vintage. It had a single brass lantern for a taillight, and the wheels had wooden spokes painted a bright yellow. A wisp of steam was coming from near the rear underside. Betsy began to smile.
The car was a 1911 Stanley Steamer belonging to Lars Larson, whom Betsy had sponsored last year in an antique car run. She had been the only person of his acquaintance to find the car fascinating, and still enjoyed going for a ride in it. The car’s boiler had been damaged last year, and Betsy had thought Lars might sell it. But he hadn’t, and people were getting used to seeing the pioneer machine in the area.
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