Raveled

by McAneny, Anne

  Kevin stared at the oak floor, very near the spot where he’d scratched it with a toy truck at age seven. Mom had yelled at him then and he sure as heck felt her yelling at him now through the pressure on his shoulder.

  “About that,” Kevin mumbled, receiving Mom’s message of the less said the better, “I’m not real sure. I’m just talking shit.”

  “Kevin!” Mom shouted. She never was one for cursing.

  “Let him talk, Justine,” Chief Fred said. “Kevin, are you saying Bobby killed Rusty?”

  “Look,” Kevin said, “I don’t know where Rusty got to. I’m hung over and I’m a mite confused and I don’t know nothing ‘bout Bobby except he dropped off his Chevy yesterday.”

  The chief waited a good, long twenty seconds to see if Kevin would continue, but Kevin had shut off the spigot and everyone in the room could tell he was fixin’ to keep it that way. Chief Fred finally lifted his head to my mom. “Justine, Bobby Kettrick was found this morning, tied up in Artie’s shop, shot through the heart. Or near enough the heart anyway that he’s dead.”

  My mother released Kevin. She clutched the counter with one hand and the fold of her robe with the other, but her face and eyes stayed frozen in place, an expression I’d never seen before. Instinctively, I rose from my hiding place on the stairs and went to catch her. But she didn’t faint. Not even close. She suddenly bucked up and seemed several inches taller, some maternal thing I didn’t understand at the time and probably never would. Meanwhile, Kevin sat dumbfounded, like a friend was playing a practical joke on him and he couldn’t figure out how the chief had gotten pulled into it.

  “Now, Justine,” Chief Fred said, standing, “I know this is upsetting but we need to take Kevin here down to the station, check his hands for gunshot residue, get a statement, some DNA samples, the whole shebang.”

  My mom filled her lungs with a deep inhale, turning stoic and certain in the course of the one breath. “He just told you, Fred. He was shooting the gun last night. They all were. Of course there’s going to be gunshot residue on his hands. I watch the shows, for God’s sake.”

  “All the same, he’s a suspect until we get this thing straightened out.”

  “And where is Artie?” she asked, her hand subconsciously touching her mouth as if she didn’t want the chief to speak the answer.

  “We have him down at the station. He’s in bad shape.”

  I pictured the cops beating my dad to a pulp, his lips bloody and eyes swollen shut. Why else would he be in bad shape?

  “I’ll get my things,” my mom said.

  The next few minutes passed in a blur as I tried desperately to blend into the shiny wood of the kitchen cabinets my dad had refinished the month before. In what seemed like an instant, my mother was changed and ready to go, her hair fluffed yet stiff, her skin sporting a thin, flattering coat of make-up. When she opened the door to leave the house, cold air rushed in. So unusual for that time of year. Chief Fred wouldn’t allow her to ride with Kevin so she was forced to follow alone in her own car. I couldn’t imagine the mad swirl of thoughts flying through her head during that short, lonely drive. Peeking out the kitchen window, I saw Kevin sulking in the back of a regular squad car, confusion turning his pleasant features dark. He looked cold, too, his shoulders hunched forward with his hands cuffed behind him. He’d only been allowed to slip on a thin shirt and some jeans and hadn’t eaten or drunk anything to help combat what must have been a massive hangover. The brisk scent of the coffee filled my nostrils. It already smelled burnt.

  My mother’s final words to me that morning were, “Be good, Allison.” Ha! I could have set the house on fire and danced on the embers and still have been an angel compared to my dad and brother.

  I relayed most of the story to Detective Barkley, the parts I thought he could handle, anyway.

  “Wow,” the detective said. “A lot for a kid to handle. Had to affect you.”

  Little did he know. No close friends. Few serious ex-boyfriends. No desire for either. A lack of confidence in human beings. And the constant sensation that life was a slippery mat off which I might slide any moment without caring too much about the landing.

  “Yup,” I said simply.

  He leaned onto the car, crossed his arms and stared at me until I met his gaze. “I’d like to hear about it. Someday.”

  I didn’t outright fall and break a hip upon hearing the words, but they did pack a wallop. Maybe because I never discussed the case or dwelled on it for more than a moment’s time, the idea of someone wanting to explore its personal effects jarred me hard and fast from my comfort zone. I showed it with the subtlest of nods.

  “So no thoughts about your dad doling out his own justice?”

  “Capital punishment for petit larceny? Seems a bit severe, even if my father would smack someone upside the head for an overcooked steak.”

  The bright whites behind the blue of Blake Barkley’s eyes flashed at me. Maybe he hadn’t known that tidbit about Daddy Dearest. I watched him file it in his brain under P for Potential Asshole. “But who’s to say my dad didn’t rouse himself into a homicidal state over a few tools?”

  “Me,” Barkley said.

  “Okay, as long as it’s you. Between the strong inclinations of you and my brother, it sure makes it worth my time to dig up a bunch of warped memories from people with mixed motives to see if I can’t exonerate the name of a dead man.”

  “What about your name?”

  “It’s Allison. Sometimes Allie, Al, Lis, Alley Cat, even Joey if Joanna’s playing around with the name tags.”

  It was true. I, the valedictorian of my high school class, was the disembodied, pretty hand that put your drink on the bar after deftly slipping a napkin beneath it. The hand that swiped the spills and scooped the dollars from the mahogany when the stools stood empty. My drinks were perfect, my pours lethal, my customers happy and my mind numb. People came and went, with only a few who even glanced at my face. Travelers assumed I spent my days in auditions; regulars didn’t give it a second thought. They flitted in and out of my life like a swinging tavern door. In-motion hands didn’t allow time for reflection. They stayed as busy as the front legs of a fly that never rested. As they should. It was like I’d spilled my last name on the bar one day, wiped it away with a towel, and made it disappear forever.

  “That’s all you want?” Detective Barkley said. “A job that doesn’t require a last name?”

  “What’s it to you, Detective?”

  He fixed me with a frown. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand the bitterness, but he sure didn’t like it. Maybe he saw in me the same thing he’d seen in dear old dad—the desire to get it over with. The look of an innocent who’d given up.

  “Honestly?” he said. “I think you like your no-name life. But you’ve shut out more than you know and it’s a convenient excuse not to succeed.”

  Cutting, but his comment slipped off me like melted butter. “You and my brother ought to get together. Teach a philosophy class or something. Feng Shui, acupuncture, hypnosis, the works.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve probably overstepped my bounds.”

  “No worries, Detective. Something tells me it won’t be the last time.” I lightened the comment with a twisted grin, got in my car and drove away as the box in the trunk slid right and left, making a muted scratching sound. Just itching to get out.

  Chapter 7

  Allison… present

  Enzo Rodriguez had strayed far from being the immigrant son of farm workers who, years ago, had landed himself a legitimate job at an auto mechanic shop. But he hadn’t strayed too far. He now owned a franchise operation with over 200 locations. One of those places you popped into 1000 miles late and then overpaid to get your oil changed while reading a magazine with half the words smudged into oblivion. By the time you needed to do it again, the crappy sticker on the windshield had curled over itself so many times, it was unreadable or floating around your feet, maybe stuck to the underside of t
he gas pedal. I’d have to tell Enzo that if he could come up with a decent sticker, he might be able to double his business.

  He’d agreed to meet me at Kitty’s Diner in town for a late lunch. Despite its name, it was one of the fancier places to eat in Lavitte, although its age showed around the margins. The cracked vinyl seat kept catching my skirt and pinching my thigh, and the peeling wallpaper revealed a layer of greyish sheetrock sporting ancient drip trails. At some point, that same moisture had seeped between the double-paned windows, creating spotty condensation that obscured the bottom fifteen inches of the view. Since the view consisted of a dry cleaner and a boarded-up video rental store, I wasn’t missing much.

  The rapidity with which this meeting had come about had left me little time for mental preparation, so I was doubly shocked when Enzo walked in. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles, as he did when he testified at my dad’s trial, that it wasn’t him. He stood a good eight inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than the Enzo I remembered. Back then, he was strong, but in that underfed, spindly way, slim from shoulders to hips. His head had seemed large for his gaunt body, like a beach umbrella about to topple in the wind. But not anymore. He’d grown up and out, like a sapling coming into its sturdy branches and healthy leaves. A smile made his café au lait face downright gorgeous, setting off the bumps in his nose that emanated a well-earned manliness. His coal-touched eyes lay deep in his face above jutting cheekbones while his shoulders, no longer slender, tapered down to a lean waist. Though muscular, his arms fit like a well-oiled nut and bolt in his custom-made suit. At least the shiny, black hair looked the same, slicked back but not greasy, and no doubt trimmed and styled by a professional every three weeks.

  He waved in my direction immediately. Not as challenging to recognize me, apparently, since I’d reached my full height of 5’3” by age thirteen and had barely gained or lost a pound since. My hair had always hung in the same dark, wavy chestnut, thick like my mother’s but glossy, and I still pushed it behind my ears.

  Striding to the booth in the same energetic manner I remembered from his youth, Enzo leaned down and planted a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Allison, my goodness, you look exactly the same. I’m so happy to see you.” He paused for a moment to look me in the eyes. Although it was a warm gesture, his left eye seemed to remain in a permanent squint of assessment, shaded over by a crooked brow that gave off an air of both intelligence and mystery.

  The poise and grace of Enzo’s greeting threw me for a loop. This was not the jerky, impulsive kid my dad would disparage lightly over dinner. That damn Enzo screwed up another transmission today... kid drops more tools than a monkey on drugs... should pay him in pesos for all the money his family sends back to Mexico. And on and on. From what I understood, my father hadn’t exactly held back on the criticism to Enzo’s face, but had leveled it with an undercurrent of tenderness, maybe even paternal affection. More than I usually got.

  “Nice to see you, too, Enzo. Thanks for coming.”

  Enzo took a moment to fit his sizeable frame into the booth. The hungry cracks in the red vinyl would feast on those expensive, pressed pants. When the waitress approached, we both ordered iced tea, his sweetened, mine plain. She filled our waters, slapped two menus down in front of us, and disappeared without another word.

  “I’ve got to be honest,” I said, “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  He laughed from deep within his throat and shook his head. “I was only seventeen when I started with your dad. Eighteen when the whole Bobby thing went down.”

  Very gentlemanly use of the passive description. For my sake or his?

  “I didn’t really grow ‘til I turned twenty-one, not coincidentally the year I got away from my family.”

  “They repressed you?”

  “No, I never had anything to eat,” he said, grinning. “There were sixteen of us living under that roof, mostly male and trying to grow. Thank God for your mother’s cooking.”

  My mother had often sent leftovers to the garage for Enzo. I’d sometimes accompany her as she delivered fresh-baked, slightly dry muffins, cookies, or a rabbit stew to the garage when it stayed open late. Enzo had scoffed it all down gratefully. I remember thinking my mother’s cooking must have been better than I’d realized, my opinion having been influenced by Dad’s complaints over the years. Turns out Enzo was just hungry.

  “How is your mother, by the way?”

  I talked around my mother’s bad bouts with memory, tried to make Kevin’s stint in rehab sound like a good thing, and then asked about his crazy family. The waitress appeared with our drinks and despite neither of us having touched the menus, Enzo ordered chicken salad while I went for tuna. He sucked down half his tea before I’d touched mine and I used the natural break in conversation to bring the meeting around to its intended purpose.

  “My brother and I are taking another look into my dad’s case.”

  Enzo’s face stiffened, trying and failing to hide a look of disappointment. Surely, he didn’t think I’d called him to shoot the bull about the good old days when we’d only seen each other a dozen times in a couple years—several of those at my father’s trial.

  “Mind if I ask you a few questions?” I said.

  At first hesitant, his face soon softened and he reached out across the table, placing both hands palms down. If mine had been available, he may well have covered them. He was one of those earnest people. Luckily, one of my hands was busy adjusting my skirt and the other was crushing a Saltine crumb into dust. I’d opened the packet on the table and had munched on one before Enzo’s arrival.

  “Of course,” he said. “Anything you need to know. But I wonder if you can’t get a copy of the case files. They’d be more accurate than anything I can remember.”

  I’d read the transcript of Enzo’s interview before he arrived. His statement and testimony had been pretty straightforward: He’d arrived at work around four; Bobby Kettrick had pushed his car in for service; my dad had taken the car in and said that he’d look at it that evening. My brother had arrived around 5:30 p.m. and they’d all worked until 9:00 p.m. before celebrating the end of the week with a little drinking.

  My dad used to say that people’s cars broke down at closing time, so he’d finally changed closing time. At least three nights a week, he’d stay late at the garage. Mom would be in bed by the time he got home. Safe, I used to think.

  “Whatever you can remember will be fine, Enzo. From what I’ve learned, the truth doesn’t change much, only its embellishments.”

  “Yeah? And where’d you learn a lesson like that?”

  “I tend bar at Puccio’s. In New York. I know way more than I should about far less than I want to.”

  He shook his head. “Might need a drink to wrap my head around that one.”

  “As long as it’s not that battery acid you guys drank at the garage.”

  The thoughtless comment caused a sharp pain to cross Enzo’s face. It sliced away the self-assured man, revealing a flash of the guilty boy lingering beneath, the one who’d served the battery acid cocktail.

  “So Enzo,” I said, “what was your impression of my dad?”

  “Mr. Artie? He wasn’t too bad. A little rough around the edges, told it like it was, but he gave me a chance when no one else would. Not to slight Lavitte, but it wasn’t the friendliest place for a family of struggling Hispanics, half illegal, the other half doing illegal things.”

  “Would you say you liked him?”

  He gave some thought to it before answering, using the time to unwrap his silverware and place his napkin on his lap. “I did. We had our own way with each other. He gave me a hard time once in a while, but I deserved it. I was one heck of a lousy mechanic. More going on here,” he said while tapping his head, “than here.” He splayed his fingers and wiggled them.

  “Do you think my dad committed murder?”

  Enzo, who knew me as a sweet, soft-spoken girl, pulled back in his seat, feeling the pointed edge of my qu
estion.

  “Geez, Allison,” he said. “Just come right out with it.” He paused, assessing me more directly than most people would deem acceptable, likely wondering what had become of the polite girl who used to smile at him from beneath a shy crest of hair.

  “No,” he said. “No way. Your dad wasn’t a killer.”

  “You must have thought about that night many times over the years.”

  “More than you know,” he said, catching the waitress’ eye and raising his empty glass to request more tea. He then desperately tapped the glass to emphasize his sudden thirst lest the waitress think he was toasting her.

  “Then you must have a theory,” I said.

  The business mogul came out to play. Steely eyes, everything controlled, thoughts racing behind a placid façade. “Must I?” Enzo said, settling for a sip of his small glass of water.

  I understood his reluctance in discussing a dark chapter from his youth but he needed to get over it and remember that he had roots here, burrowing scavengers that were intertwined with a murder. I returned the metallic gaze, noted the depth of his eyes nearly matching my own, and I parried with a thrust. “Absolutely. The person who donates annually and anonymously to the fund for my mother wouldn’t do so without a theory.”

  The steel of his eyes melted to single ions of iron and carbon. They didn’t dare recombine. His lips and eyes teamed up to form an expression of appreciation for a hand well played. That’s right. Stupid little drink mixer knows how to uncover the routing codes behind anonymous donations. Had to know who was supporting Mommy all these years.

  Enzo relented with a long, nasal exhalation. “I’m not sure I understand the point of me telling you a bunch of unfounded, random thoughts.”