Light from a Distant Star

by Morris, Mary Mcgarry

  “Which I already did,” Charlie said, folding the sheet of loose leaf back into the envelope.

  “What?” She looked around feeling sick inside. She hadn’t seen Boone since she’d been here. She found it chilling that Max could so easily request the death of his closest companion.

  “Took it. More mine, I figured, than any cop’s. That’s what they do, just slip it in the back pocket, and who the hell’s gonna call ’em on it?”

  “So where’s Boone then?”

  “Down back—that’s where I keep him now. No way the Shelbys’re getting by him there.”

  Boone was tied up to a junked truck, Charlie explained. The rope was long enough for roaming and still being able to jump up onto the truck bed come nightfall.

  “That’s not right,” she said, and Charlie assured her the animal had plenty of water and food.

  “A lot better’n the alternative, don’t you think?” He waved the envelope.

  THINKING, THAT’S ALL she was doing. Especially now after Max’s letter. If he had killed Dolly, then he could be sentenced to death, which also meant Boone’s death. Everyone she knew thought he’d done it. Even Max’s own lawyer, or so it seemed. Eggleston Jay Wright. His name made her expect a neat and slender man, like her father. Wasn’t a public defender a man of principle and tempered appetites, eager to save the less fortunate from any injustice? Well, not this one—at least, this was her first disappointing impression. His office was a mess, and so was he. The unmanned reception desk in the outer office was covered with legal boxes. Every time the phone rang, Attorney Wright answered it himself, seizing it midsentence, hungrily, desperately. His thin, reddish hair was parted just above one ear in a sad attempt to cover his shiny, freckled pate. His short-sleeved white shirt was wrinkled and there was a soil line rimming his sweaty collar above his loosened tie.

  Her father had brought her here. Attorney Wright had offered to come to the house, but her mother couldn’t bear the thought of it, everyone knowing, all the neighbors. As it was, Patty and Kirk Lane-Bush, the young couple from across the street, had gone public with their displeasure. They had sent a letter to the zoning board complaining about the apartment in the Pecks’ house. They said when they bought their house last year, they’d been told it was zoned an A-1 neighborhood, for “residence only.” And now this, “a murdered stripper in an illegal apartment,” the letter went on to say, which devastated Nellie’s mother, even though Benjamin insisted the apartment had long ago been “grandfathered in.”

  Nellie was beginning to see just how complicated life could be. Nothing stood alone. Every action had a reaction, and every reaction had multiple reactions, on and on, in a chain of insidious combustion they couldn’t quite pin down, much less prevent, and now was everywhere. Their own nuclear fallout, for here they sat, right in the center of the blast radius, still trying to seem normal, she and her father, across the desk from the pasty-faced lawyer. He had a copy of her statement to the detective. He kept looking at different pages and rephrasing the questions, or he’d repeat her answers, then ask if that’s what she’d told the police.

  “So the whole time he was in the cellar, you were there, too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then how come he says you left a couple times?” Squinting, he wet his finger and flipped the page. “ ‘To mind Boone,’ he says.” He looked up.

  “I don’t know, maybe he didn’t see me, that’s all.” So that’s why the police kept returning to that same question. Her answer was harmless, not so much a lie as the only way to prove Max’s innocence without turning this into a bigger mess than it already was.

  “See you where?”

  “Down there, in the cellar.” She’d twisted the drawstring on her shirt tightly around her thumb.

  “So Mr. Devaney’d already been in the apartment, then, before you got there, right?” He kept reading.

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, he knew she was in there.” He sounded exasperated. “Dead.”

  “He didn’t say that.” She unwound the drawstring and examined the ridges it had left on her finger.

  “Well, what did he say?”

  “Just that I should open the door.”

  “And he wasn’t surprised that it was unlocked, right?”

  “Why would he be? I was the one that told him.” She rewound the drawstring again.

  Her father’s feet scraped. She knew by his look he didn’t like her tone.

  “All right,” the attorney sighed. “But then he tells you to open the door. He tells you to go inside. That’s what it says here, anyway.”

  “Because it was my house. He was like that. You know, polite.”

  He glanced at her father with raised eyebrows. “Polite,” he repeated with a caustic snort. “So how’d he know she was dead then?”

  “Because she was?” Such a dumb question. “I mean, there she was. On the floor. You could tell. We just knew.” Her fingertip was turning purple. It felt numb.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “All right.” His chair kept creaking. The office was getting hotter. The air-conditioning was temperamental, he had already told them twice. He was reading again, clucking his tongue as he ran his finger from line to line, his nails bitten to the quick. Like Jessica’s, which always sickened her. But an adult doing it seemed like a real character flaw.

  “Well, I guess that about does it,” he said after a moment. He closed the file and tapped it on the desk. “I think we’ve covered everything.” He pushed back his chair and got up.

  Her father stood then. She undid the drawstring, checking for marks again. The two men shook hands and talked about another lawyer, some long-ago, mutual friend who’d gotten caught embezzling from his client. Apparently, they knew each other from another time, which whenever adults did that, seemed to shunt her aside, as if their earlier attention had been merely to humor her. Her father asked Attorney Wright how his wife was doing.

  “Good as can be expected,” Wright said. “After enough zaps, there’s not much left.”

  She could see that made her father uncomfortable. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Anyway, tell her I was asking for her.”

  For all the good it’ll do, Wright’s listless harrumph seemed to say.

  “And thank you, Ellen—”

  “Nellie,” she corrected, and his eyes flashed. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like her.

  “Well now, in the courtroom, I will be calling you by your given name. If that’s all right with you.” He winked. And that’s when she understood. This wasn’t even for real. The questions were routine, the answers didn’t really matter.

  “Are you going to ask me those same questions?” She pointed to the folder.

  Fleshy lips pursed, he nodded with a slightly amused shrug. “I should imagine so.” He smiled at her father.

  “Well, what’s the point then? I mean, they already know all that.” Still seated, she looked between the two men.

  “Nellie,” her father gently warned.

  “No. No, Ben. That’s what I’m here for. And besides, what does she know? I mean, think of it. Young girl like her caught up in something like this. Of course she’s going to be nervous.” He eased back down into his creaking chair and stared into her unblinking eyes. “Now, listen to me. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Nothing at all. No surprises, no questions you can’t answer. It’s not gonna be like some crazy TV thing with people yelling and browbeating you. It’s all pretty cut-and-dried. So don’t give it a second thought. You’ll be fine.” He looked up at her father. “I’ll take good care, Ben, don’t you worry.”

  “I know you will, Egg.”

  “So you think he’s guilty too?” she asked the attorney. Seemed like a fair enough question, though she’d never seen a grown man’s face burn so red so fast.

  Unmoving, he seemed to stretch across the desk. “Of course not,” he said through clenched teeth.

  The car door had barely closed, and even though h
er father spoke sternly, she didn’t think he was angry, at least not at her. “Nothing about this is going to be easy. Nothing.” He was straining to see over his shoulder as he backed out of the narrow parking space. “And as much as I wish it had never happened, the fact is that it did, and now everyone’s got to do the right thing and see it through to the end. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that your mother’s all right and that you’re all right, and that this isn’t any uglier for any of us than it has to be.” They both jerked forward a little as he braked in the middle of the lot. He turned to her. “But, if you think for one minute this somehow entitles you to say whatever you please anytime you want, then you’re in for a very rude awakening, young lady.”

  She was stunned. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. She really didn’t. “I was just trying to answer the questions.”

  “You could’ve done it in a lot nicer way. And the next time an adult speaks to you, I expect you to be respectful, do you hear me?” He started driving again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, though only sorry to have him upset with her. Because she knew that for him that was hardest, not her disrespect but that he’d had to sink to that sorry level, of scolding her. And so she felt bad for him.

  “I hope so.” Well, he never should have said that.

  “He didn’t do it. He’s not guilty.”

  “You don’t know that. No one does. Not for sure, anyway.”

  “Yes, I do. Because someone else was there. Before Max even came. And I saw him, too. In the side yard, by Dolly’s back door. It was Mr. Cooper. He said he had some papers for you. But he wasn’t acting right. It was like I scared him or something.” Her brain was a jumble of moving parts, flashing, squealing into place. Just saying it was an enormous relief.

  “Nellie.” He could only look at her. “That’s a terrible thing you just said. I mean, Mr. Cooper, he’s—”

  “He used to go there. I know he did. He’d, like, sneak in, late when nobody was around. He was her boyfriend. That’s what she called him.”

  “Who? Dolly? She said that? She called Mr. Cooper her boyfriend?”

  “Something like that.” No. But now Nellie knew that’s exactly who she’d meant.

  “Nellie, do you have any idea what you’re saying? Do you understand what could happen? The damage to an innocent man’s reputation? His family? Once something like this is spoken, its mere utterance becomes a kind of reality. It takes on a life of its own. And no matter how hard you might try to change it later on, it keeps growing, giving off energy. Negative, vicious energy.”

  Well, it’s true, she wanted to interrupt, but didn’t. Trees, houses, cars blurred past, everything speeding up and strange—even the way he was driving, racing up to the stop light then sitting there until a horn sounded behind them.

  “And as a matter of fact,” he continued, almost breathlessly. “He was looking for me that day. Because that’s when he made the offer. And a very generous offer, at that. We must’ve been on the phone for an hour anyway. I remember I came home and told your mother. Even with that nightmare going on, it was the one bright moment for her. Relief after a long, hard struggle. She hasn’t had an easy time of it lately,” he added, and Nellie couldn’t help feeling he was trying to convince himself more than her.

  “I know, but still … it was weird. It was like he was trying to hide behind the bushes. And his face!” She suddenly remembered. “He had these, like, scratches.”

  “Nellie, please. You mustn’t do this. I’m begging you. One word and it’ll turn into a witch hunt. Think of the fallout from this, the lives you could destroy. An entire family.”

  Unnerved by the way he kept blinking, she had to look away. Whose family was he begging her not to destroy? The Coopers’? Theirs? Or both?

  SO THERE IT was. She thought she knew but wasn’t sure. And the one person she needed to believe her could not.

  Chapter 15

  MONEY WAS TIGHTER THAN EVER. WITH WORD AROUND town that Peck Hardware was as good as closed, a good day might mean ten or fifteen dollars in sales. Some days there were none. Business was also slow at the beauty shop. Many of her mother’s clients were away on vacation. Or maybe, she worried, they’d gone elsewhere. And now without rent from the apartment, things were going from bad to worse. Yesterday her mother had had to borrow money from Ruth for the electric and telephone bills. Her father had spent the previous weekend painting the apartment, and at her mother’s insistence, he’d even put down new vinyl tiles in the kitchen. Not that there was anything wrong with the old floor other than its violation by death. The apartment was ready, her father said, so now they could put an ad in the paper. They were eating dinner as the conversation went back and forth across the table. As soon as Ruth finished eating, she ran up to her room. Her friends were picking her up soon for a pool party. Every time Henry wiped his mouth, he spit more broccoli into the napkin, but Nellie was the only one who’d noticed. She envied her little brother’s invisibility in the family. With all the turmoil, he could do pretty much what he wanted.

  “But what about all that yellow tape?” Her mother pointed toward the window. She’d called Detective Des La Forges about it last week, and he said he’d come by as soon as he could.

  “Just take it down.” Her father sounded impatient. Andy Cooper wasn’t returning his calls. And when he’d dropped by his office on Monday, the secretary had said he wasn’t in, even though his car was in the parking lot.

  “The police have to do that,” she said.

  “Who said?”

  “Detective Des La Forges.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The police haven’t been here in two weeks.”

  “But they will, you know they will,” her mother said.

  “The investigation’s over,” he said with rare, thin-lipped finality.

  “Maybe not,” Nellie piped up. “Maybe they’re just waiting for more clues. Maybe there’s some new evidence.”

  With both hands gripping the table, her father stared at her. “They’ve got the man they want.”

  “Well, they’re wrong then.” She stared back.

  “Don’t say that,” her mother gasped with a shudder. “Oh, my God, just the thought of it.”

  Her father stood up then and marched outside. He started ripping off the barricade of yellow tape strung from the trees and bushes to the porch railing.

  “Don’t, Ben. Please, please, don’t, her mother pleaded on his heels around the back of the house. “We don’t have permission yet. Why?” she said as he continued rolling up the tape. “Why’re you doing this?”

  “Because this is our home. It’s not a crime scene,” he declared, tossing the balled up tape into the trash barrel.

  NELLIE HAD BEEN sent up to the third floor because the downstairs lights kept flickering.

  She waited a moment on the landing, then knocked on Ruth’s door again.

  “Just a minute!” Ruth shouted over the music. She held on to the opening door so Nellie couldn’t come in. “What?” she demanded, holding her fuzzy green bathrobe closed. Half her hair was set with heated pink rollers. The rest of the house was hot, and it was freezing in there.

  “Turn something off!” Nellie shouted. “Mom’s afraid the fuse’ll blow again!”

  “Yeah, and, like, it’s my fault, right?”

  She shrugged, always best with her sister, that and a blank stare. After a long, pained sigh, Ruth stomped back in, with Nellie close behind. Racing around the room, she turned down the iPod speakers and yanked out the plug for the electric curlers. She climbed onto a purple milk crate, and pulled out the extension cord to the string of Chinese lantern patio lights tacked along the highest peak of her gabled ceiling, a touch that hadn’t been here during Nellie’s last ransacking, which hadn’t happened in a while. Not since …—she still had a hard time saying it—the murder. Next, Ruth turned off two lamps, but not the air conditioner.

  “Okay?” she snapped, snatching an electric roller from the
set on her dresser. “I hafta finish before they cool off.”

  “Just don’t shoot the messenger,” Nellie said under her breath, and Ruth scowled at her through the mirror.

  “Do you mind?” she growled. “I’m tryna get ready.”

  “Okay.” Nellie nodded, perfectly willing to endure her annoyance. At least it was attention, more than she’d gotten lately from her. Or from anyone else for that matter. They’d all closed themselves off, not just from prying outsiders but from one another.

  “Like I need an audience, right?” Ruth grumbled.

  Not wanting to look too ensconced, she half sat, half leaned against the bed. “She said to turn off the air conditioner. It’s not even hot out,” she added to soften the command. Just being here was contentment enough. Watching her sister’s nimble fingers twist and turn her blond hair onto the rollers was almost as hypnotic as when she used to set Nellie’s hair like that and polish her nails—when Ruth used to like her, before she realized what a loser she’d become.

  “Can you? I’m late. I’m so wicked late.”

  Nellie turned off the air conditioner, then crept back to the edge of the bed, motionless in the sudden silence, expecting imminent eviction. With her long hair away from her face, Nellie saw how pretty Ruth really was. Looking into the mirror was like watching someone from a long time ago. Their mother, Nellie realized, her eyes the same bright blue. A party, she said, when Nellie asked what she was late for. A pool party, Ruth continued, surprising her. It had been a long time since she’d shared anything with her, air space or information. Catherine Larson was having it. Of the four girls invited, Ruth was the only junior. Catherine’s sister was Linda, who also worked at Rollie’s.

  “Their pool’s all curvy, like some kind of lagoon, black stone with this, like, waterfall at one end. All lit up and ripply,” she said, spearing the last roller with a long silver pick.

  “How come you’re setting your hair then? It’s just gonna get all wet and ruined,” Nellie warned, sitting on the bed now, cross-legged.