“Tell me the truth,” I said. “How are you?”
“Actually,” she said, “it was probably a good thing, spending time with my mother. She’s just one little bundle of gray-haired energy. We went shopping and we cleaned her cellar and she had people I haven’t seen since high school over for dinner, and I even convinced her that I really did want to talk about Brian and Jake. She surprised me. She listened and she understood and she didn’t insist I talk to her priest. I think I’m … coming to grips with it. I’m starting to realize I’ve got a life to live and I might as well start doing it.” She sighed and shook her head. “I have my moments, still. It’s going to take a while. I know that.”
The Band was singing “It Makes No Difference,” a very beautiful, very sad love song that always got to me. I found myself thinking about Evie.
“I’m okay about Jake, I think,” said Sharon after a couple of minutes. “I saw—I had to identify his body. They wanted me to look at a video, but I told them, I said I want to see him, not a picture of him. So I know Jake is dead, you see? But Brian … . . .” She shook her head. “I still can’t …”
I hitched closer to her and took her hand. Don’t give up on Brian, I wanted to tell her. I’m going to bring him home to you if it’s the last thing I do.
But I said nothing. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, and I felt like a hypocrite, sitting there sympathizing with her about her dead son when I knew he was still alive. But I’d given my word.
“What about you?” said Sharon after a minute. “How are you doing?”
“Me? Oh, I’m fine.”
“So why aren’t you with your lady tonight?”
I smiled. “Because I’m here.”
She nodded. “You men all think you’ve got to be so damned stoic. Jake was that way. So was Brian. Just fifteen, and he had already learned to keep it all inside.”
“Keep what inside?” I said.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever was bothering him. Nothing particular, I guess. Kids that age, they think everything is so important, you know?”
I nodded. “Was anything different before—?”
“Before he died?” She smiled quickly. “It’s okay, Brady. You can say it.” She shook her head. “To answer your question, I don’t know. Yes, maybe. I thought he was, you know, just being a teenager. Noncommunicative. Not telling us where he was going or where he’d been or what he was doing. Staying out late. Locking his bedroom door. I tried to get him to talk, but he made it clear he didn’t want to, at least not with his mother. I didn’t think too much about it. Everybody I know who has teenagers always says the same thing. You just have to get through it. It used to make Jake crazy. Of course, Jake was the last person on earth Brian would talk to.” She cocked her head and frowned at me. “Why are you asking?”
Because your boy is still alive, I wanted to tell her. Because he has a secret, and he thinks it’s so terrible that he’d rather you believed he was dead than have you hear it.
I waved my hand. “No particular reason,” I said. “What about the girl? Jenny? What was she like?”
“I hardly knew her,” Sharon said. “Brian brought her home a couple times. I kept asking him if he’d like to have her for dinner or something, but he wasn’t interested in that. She was almost two years older than Brian. She looked about twelve, but I had the impression that she was ten times more mature than he was. I used to think about them—you know, together. Petting. Her seducing him. Having sex.”
I sipped my drink and remembered the photos. “Remember when you were that age?” I said.
She smiled. “God, do I. I hate to think I’d ever forget.” She shook her head. “It was so strange, coming home last night. It felt like I’d been away forever. I expected it to be hard. You know, like Brian would be here, and Jake. But it wasn’t like that. The house was empty, but that wasn’t it …”
I waited, and when she didn’t continue, I said, “What, Sharon?”
She shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. It’s just—it felt like someone had been here. I don’t mean like ghosts.” She turned to me and put her hand on my arm. “Brian’s bedroom door was ajar.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve kept it shut ever since—since he died. I didn’t want to see in there. Jake used to go in, but I didn’t. I would’ve sworn I shut his door when I went to my mother’s.”
“You probably left it unlatched. A draft or something blew it open.”
She nodded. “I guess so. It just felt spooky. When I saw it open, I had this overwhelming feeling of panic. Like Brian had come back, and if I looked in there, I’d see him, hunched over his desk doing his homework.” She tried to smile. “I know. I’ll have times like that for a while. I’ll hear something, think it’s one of my men coming in the room, or the phone will ring, or the floor will creak, and …” She waved her hand. “Well, anyway. About ready for dinner?”
“I’m famished.”
“I’ve just got to saute the shrimp. They’ll only take a few minutes.” She pushed herself to her feet. “You relax, enjoy your drink, sing as loud as you want to the music. I’ll call when it’s ready.”
“Actually,” I said, “I need to use your bathroom.”
“Off the downstairs hallway or top of the stairs. Your choice.” She turned and went into the kitchen.
I went upstairs. The bathroom was next to Brian’s room, which was my actual destination. Sharon had latched his door. I opened it, went in, and closed it behind me. The room looked the same as it had last time I’d been there.
I knelt in front of the steamer trunk at the foot of his bed, lifted the top, pulled out the blankets, removed the false bottom, and peered in.
The scraps of torn-up money were gone.
My first thought was Brian. He’d slipped into his house while his mother was away to remove the last evidence of his shameful secret.
The money and the photos, hidden away in his trunk. He’d been paid to pose for those evil pictures. Or to keep his mouth shut about them. Dirty photos, dirty money.
Brian had ripped up the money.
I wondered why he hadn’t destroyed the photographs, too.
Jake had found the photos and brought them to me for safekeeping, and then he’d gone looking for the people who’d corrupted his son.
He’d found them, too. Or else they’d found him. They’d watched while Bobby Klemm tortured Jake until he told them everything he knew. Then they’d had Klemm kill him, and they set about to clean up after themselves.
They sent Bobby Klemm to kill Ed Sprague, and then Klemm went to my office to retrieve the photos … and to kill me.
Then somebody came here, to Sharon’s house.
Maybe it had been Brian.
It wasn’t Bobby Klemm. He was already dead.
I realized that any vague thought—or hope—I might’ve still had that Bobby Klemm had been acting alone was wrong. As both Horowitz and Gus Nash insisted, Klemm was just the hired gun. This was not over with yet.
Jake had probably carried a house key in his pocket. They’d taken it when they killed him—whoever “they” were—and they used it to slip into Sharon’s house. Maybe they came specifically for that ripped-up money. Maybe they had to be sure that all the photographs were gone. Fortunately, they’d come while Sharon was at her mother’s.
I fitted the false bottom back in the trunk, returned the blankets, and shut it. Then I closed Brian’s door behind me, went into the bathroom, and flushed the toilet.
I washed my hands and splashed water on my face. Should I tell Sharon that whoever had hired Bobby Klemm to torture and kill Jake might have a key to her house? If I did, I’d have to explain about the money scraps in Brian’s trunk, which meant I’d have to tell her how her son had earned that money, and about the photographs, and I’d have to tell her about Bobby Klemm, and why Jake had been killed, and why Klemm had come to my office, and what I had in my safe.
And I’d have to tell her that Brian w
as still alive, or at least he had been a couple nights ago, but now he had disappeared again, thanks to my bumbling.
I decided to tell Sharon nothing.
If that turned out to be the wrong decision …
I couldn’t allow myself to think about it.
I went downstairs. Sharon had replaced The Band with Dave Brubeck. A pair of tall candles flickered on the dining room table, and the vase of spring blooms sat in the middle. She’d set places with heavy silver and linen napkins. My open bottle of white wine sat in a pewter ice bucket.
I followed the aroma of garlic and butter into the kitchen. Shrimp scampi, with wild rice and asparagus.
Sharon was at the stove with her back to me. She was wearing an old-fashioned flowered apron tied in a bow behind her waist.
“Smells awesome,” I said.
She smiled over her shoulder. “Go sit. I’ll bring the salads.”
I went into the dining room but didn’t sit, and a minute later she came in with a salad bowl in each hand. She put them at our places, then said, “Help me with the apron?”
She turned her back to me and bowed her head. I untied the apron, lifted her hair, and eased the loop over her head. She turned to face me, holding out her arms, and I slid the apron off.
I held her chair for her, filled our wineglasses, then sat at my place across from her.
She lifted her glass. I did the same.
“To life,” she said. “To the future. To everything that’s good. Good friends, especially.”
I nodded, tried to smile, and sipped my wine.
The salad featured avocado with cherry tomatoes, scallions, and ripe pitted olives on Bibb lettuce and a light vinaigrette dressing.
The candlelight danced on Sharon’s face across from me. She kept looking up at me and smiling.
She was trying hard to be happy.
No way would I spoil that. I’d keep my secrets as long as I could.
“I don’t remember the last time we sat down like a family and ate in here,” she said quietly. “Brian was always off somewhere, and Jake hardly ever …”
She let the thought slide.
When we finished our salads, Sharon got up to clear away the bowls. I started to push back my chair to help, but she put her hand on my shoulder. “Please,” she said. “Relax. I want to wait on you.”
“I’m not comfortable,” I said, “being waited on.”
“You’ll just have to suffer, then.”
After we ate, we took slabs of hot apple pie and coffee back into the living room. I prowled through Jake’s collection of CDs and found Erroll Garner’s Misty album, an old favorite of mine.
When it began, I realized that under the circumstances, this slow, sad song of love and loss and regret had been a monumentally stupid choice.
Sharon, sitting down at the other end of the sofa, was humming softly.
Look at me. I’m as helpless as a kitchen up a tree …
“I’m going to change the music,” I said.
“No, please,” she said. “I like this.”
… never knowing my right foot from my left, my hat from my glove …
Sharon’s eyes, I saw, were indeed misty.
We ate our pie without talking. Then I lit a cigarette, and we sipped our coffee.
After a few minutes, Sharon cleared her throat. “Brady,” she said softly, “you’ve been avoiding the subject.”
“Jake?”
“Yes. And Ed. And Brian, of course. And that man you killed.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know you heard about that.”
She nodded. “I talked on the phone to one of my neighbors when I was at my mother’s. She told me.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “The police are working on it.”
She shook her head. “Please. I’m not stupid. You can’t put me off like that. This has to be connected to Jake and Brian. You know something, and I have a right to know, too.”
I nodded. “I agree that you have a right to know. But suspicious and speculations wouldn’t do you any good. That’s all I have now.”
“They are connected, aren’t they? All those—those deaths?”
“It looks that way.”
“Brian, too?”
I shrugged.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
I shook my head. “Not until I know. Please trust me. When I know something, I’ll tell you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Even if you think it will hurt me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I have a right to that,” she said. “And you have no right to protect me from the truth.”
“I agree.”
“I consider this a solemn vow, Brady Coyne.”
“So do I.”
“You do whatever you need to do to find out the truth for me. Okay?”
“I intend to,” I said. “For both of us.”
She nodded and settled back on the sofa.
We finished our coffee and listened to the music, and an hour or so later I looked at my watch and said, “Well, I should probably get going.”
“So soon?” said Sharon.
“It’s after eleven. It’s been a long week.”
She followed me to the front door. I slid into my coat, gave her a hug, and stepped out onto the porch.
The snow on the porch steps came up to my boottops and was swirling in the streetlights. Sharon’s street had not been plowed, and my car was a snow-covered lump in her driveway.
I turned back to the door. Sharon was standing in the foyer, watching me through the storm door. She pushed it open for me. “Bad, huh?”
“No way I can drive,” I told her. “I better crash on your sofa. Do you mind?”
“You can use the guest room upstairs,” she said. “The bed’s all made up.”
“I don’t want your neighbors talking.”
“Actually,” she said, “it would be comforting, not being alone. This house feels awfully empty at night. And the hell with the neighbors.”
I remembered that somebody might be running around with a key to Sharon’s house. I saw no reason why he’d come back. On the other hand, there were a lot of things I didn’t understand.
“I’ll try not to snore,” I said.
“I’d find that comforting, too,” she said.
TWENTY-SIX
Sharon’s guest room doubled as Jake’s office. It was lined with gray metal file cabinets, sagging book shelves, and an old oak desk with a Macintosh computer and an ink-jet printer and a rack of meerschaum and briar pipes on it. A twin bed was pushed against one wall. I wondered how many nights Jake had slept here instead of down the hall with his wife.
I kept the light on for a long time after I said good-night to Sharon. I flipped through some of Jake’s books, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and thought about Evie, wondering if she’d tried to call. When I finally turned off the light, I lay there listening to the icy snow rattle against the side of the house and watching the light and shadows from the streetlight outside the window play on the ceiling.
The house groaned in the storm.
I thought of Sharon. She was trying desperately to get used to being alone. I wished I could tell her that her boy was alive, that one day soon she wouldn’t be alone. But I didn’t know how or when that was going to happen.
I hoped Evie was safely tucked in her bed.
And Brian. I hoped he was sleeping somewhere warm and safe, missing his mother, understanding that nothing he had done could diminish her love. I hoped he was deciding that it was time to come home.
Maybe I dozed off, though it didn’t feel as if I had, when I heard a floorboard creak outside my door. Then the knob turned and the latch clicked and the door squeaked as it opened.
I closed my eyes and breathed slowly.
I heard a faint silky rustle approaching my bed. Sharon’s scent filled the r
oom.
I pretended to sleep.
I sensed her standing beside me. My stomach clenched against the tension that was rising almost unbearably in my groin.
The candlelight, the music, the flowers, the food and wine. Sharon’s perfume, her bare feet. It had all felt profoundly intimate. A prelude to something.
I realized I’d been repressing it all evening.
I risked slitting open my eyes. She was standing beside my pillow, so close I could’ve reached out and touched her. She was wearing a floor-length diaphanous gown. I could see the shape of her legs outlined against the light from the window.
I closed my eyes again and waited.
She stood there for a long minute. I sensed her bending over me, and then I felt her hand touch my cheek, hesitate, then move to my shoulder. She let out a soft, ragged breath. I thought she might be crying.
Her hand rested lightly on my shoulder for just a moment, but it seemed like much longer.
Then her touch was gone, and an instant later the door closed softly behind her.
I lay awake for a long time.
The aroma of bacon woke me up the next morning. When I walked into the kitchen, Sharon was unloading the dishwasher. She was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and white cotton socks. Her dark hair hung loose down her back.
She smiled at me over her shoulder. “The coffee’s ready.” She jerked her head at the electric pot.
I poured myself a mug and sat at the table.
“How’d you sleep?” she said.
“Great,” I lied. “Like a baby.”
“So did I,” she said.
I figured she was lying, too.
Scrambled eggs, corn muffins, bacon, orange juice. A fisherman’s breakfast. It would get me through the whole day.
Afterward, I helped her clean up, and then we had more coffee at the kitchen table. Sharon was quiet, and I didn’t have much to say.
I finished my coffee, stood up, and put my mug in the sink. “Well—”
“Brady?” she said quickly.
I looked at her.
Scar Tissue Page 20
