Homicide Related (11 page)

“… relationship with Lorraine,” Jerry was saying. “How you two hit it off, how often you saw each other, that kind of thing. He asked me a lot of weird shit, Gary.”

Silence.

Then Jerry's voice again, Dooley's uncle not having said a word.

“I didn't get where they were going, but I didn't like the questions, you know what I mean? There was something behind them. It was like that prick Randall was insinuating something. I told him I didn't know anything. I told him if he had any questions, he should ask you.”

More silence before his uncle finally said, “Thanks for coming by, Jerry.”

Dooley slipped back to the table and was staring at his math text when Jerry and his uncle came out of the kitchen.

“If there's anything I can do—” Jerry said.

“I appreciate it,” Dooley's uncle said. He didn't even look at Dooley as he walked Jerry through to the front door and saw him out. He stood in the front hall for a few moments after that, looking more tired than Dooley had ever seen him.

“Is everything okay?” Dooley said.

“Everything's just hunky-dory,” his uncle said.

“It's just that he sounded concerned.”

“He was expressing his sympathy.”

His uncle went back into the kitchen. It wasn't long before the phone rang. Dooley heard his uncle talking but couldn't make out what it was about. After he hung up, his uncle called Dooley for supper. When they had finished eating and Dooley was clearing the table, his uncle said, “I have to go downtown tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” Dooley said. He waited.

“The guys in Homicide want to talk to me.”

Dooley paused on his way to the sink, a dirty dinner plate in each hand. “What about?”

“What do you think?” his uncle said. “Lorraine.”

“I told you, they're treating her death as suspicious.”

“Yeah, and—?”

“And they want to talk to me.” His uncle looked pointedly at the plates. Dooley rinsed them, set them in the dishwasher, and went back to the table to clear the cutlery.

“But everything's okay, right?” Dooley said. He picked up knives, forks, a couple of serving spoons.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why do they want to talk to
you
?”

“I mean, Jerry will alibi you, you know, in case the cops think you had anything to do with it.”

His uncle looked at him. “Why would they think I had anything to do with it?”

Dooley couldn't stand sitting around the house. He couldn't stand the buzz from the TV that he knew his uncle wasn't even watching. He called Beth. They talked for a while and Dooley thought she sounded different—distant, maybe distracted. He had to work at filling the gaps in the conversation, which he'd never had to do before. Then, just when he was wondering what he'd done, or what Nevin had done, something in her voice changed and she said, “They're doing inventory at the store tonight.”

Dooley perked up. “Yeah?”

Every couple of months the store where Beth's mother worked, did inventory. That always meant two, maybe three nights when Beth's mother didn't get home until past midnight.

“Yeah,” Beth said. “You want to come over?”

She'd asked him—him, not Nevin. Maybe the things he'd seen didn't mean anything. Maybe it was like she said—maybe they were just debating. Maybe he had nothing to worry about.

“Well?” Beth said.

“I'll be right there.”

His uncle didn't take his eyes off the TV when Dooley told him where he was going.

“Be home by eleven,” he said.

When Dooley got to work the next day after school, Beth was at the front counter, talking to Linelle. At first he smiled. He still felt good from the night before. He wondered if she did, too. Maybe she wanted to tell him how great it had been. Maybe her mother was doing inventory again tonight.

She turned when she heard the electronic buzzer over the door, and the smile faded on Dooley's lips. He could see right away that something was wrong. He glanced at Linelle, who shrugged—wait a minute, was that an
apologetic
shrug? Before he could even begin to decipher what she might be apologizing for, Beth was in his face.

“You told me your mother was dead,” she said.

Dooley shot Linelle another look. She raised her arms in a gesture of surrender:
So shoot me.
He looked back at Beth.

“She is.”

“Very funny.” But, boy, no way was she even remotely close to amused. “You lied to me, Dooley.”

“Well, she's dead now,” Dooley said. “And, anyway, what difference does it make?”

He knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he'd taken the worst possible approach. This was Beth he was talking to. Beth had lost her father
and
her brother. She'd cared a lot about both of them. She took family seriously. That's why she was staring at him like his skin had split open and she could finally see what lay under that Dooley face and what was hidden inside that Dooley body: Satan. Dooley took her by the arm to lead her outside where they could talk without Linelle and, now, Kevin, watching and hearing everything, but she shook off his hand. She hadn't been this angry in a long time.

“I can explain,” Dooley said in a quiet voice.

She turned abruptly, her long dark hair flicking him in the face as it spun out around her, and did what he'd asked her to do in the first place—go outside—but marching out not because it was what he wanted but because it was what
she
wanted, which was to punish him. Dooley ran after her and caught her by the arm again.

“Come on,” he said, begging her. She faced him, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin jutting out, her eyes filled with fury. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I should have told you.”

“You were
with
me,” she said. “You were with me on Friday night and again last night, and you didn't tell me.” Her eyes were hard on him. “But you told Linelle.”

Yes, he had done that. And it had been a mistake. He regretted it. He should have kept his mouth shut. He shouldn't have told anyone.

“She was messed up,” he said. “Seriously messed up. I hadn't seen her or talked to her in years.”

“What happened?” Beth said. “How did she die?” Her tone told him that she was softening a little. She was concerned. She wanted to know. But he was pretty sure she would stiffen up again when he told her the truth.

“Drug overdose.” The words had the effect of a cattle prod, sending a shock through her and making her retreat a pace.

“You mean, like sleeping pills?” she said.

He shook his head. She was dead, for Christ's sake, and she was still fucking him up.

“The kind of drugs she used aren't the kind you get from your neighborhood pharmacist. She had a problem, okay?”

She peered at him like a jeweler examining a suspect stone: Was he kidding? Of
course
he was kidding—wasn't he?

“That's why I didn't tell you,” he said.

“What's why?”

“The way you're looking at me now. It's why I didn't tell you about her.” What was the point? “Look, she wasn't part of my life. We never talked. She wasn't interested in me.”

“But she was your mother.”

“That doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.”

She seemed to think about that. Or maybe she was thinking about what it might mean when you were going with a guy and his mother, who you thought was long dead, suddenly passed away from a drug overdose.

“Linelle said there was a funeral,” she said at last. “She said she wasn't clear whether you'd gone or not. Did you?”

He nodded. He couldn't tell whether she was happy with his answer—at least he'd cared enough to do the right thing—or whether it made things worse—he had gone to his mother's funeral but hadn't asked her to come, hadn't even told her about it. He stepped toward her. She did not shrink back.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I should have told you. But I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what you'd think.”

She tipped her head back so that she could look him in the eyes.

“Is there anything else you haven't told me?”

Boy, how could he even start to answer a question like that?

“I have to get back inside,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Kevin's disapproving face on the other side of the glass. “I'll call you later, okay?”

“I have a history team meeting,” she said. “I'll be late.” There was something in her voice—a stiffness and a weariness—that jarred him.

“Okay, tomorrow then,” he said.

“We're doing a field trip tomorrow night for English. We're going to a play. I won't be home until late.”

“I have to work Friday night,” he said. “Come on, Beth.”

Kevin rapped on the glass. When Dooley turned, Kevin pointed to his watch.

“You'd better go,” Beth said.

For the first time in a long time, she didn't go up on tiptoes and kiss him before she left.

Shit.

He called her cell phone on his break. She didn't answer. He left her a voice mail. He tried her cell again later, when he got off work. Voice mail again. He had already said what he had to say. He didn't leave another message.

Dooley's uncle was sitting in front of the TV, when Dooley got home.

“So, how did it go?” Dooley said.

“How did what go?”

“The cops. You went to talk to them, right?”

“Yeah, I talked to them.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did they want? How come they wanted to talk to you?”

His uncle leaned forward toward the TV, trying to catch the weather report, like that was more important than answering Dooley's question, maybe even more important than going in to talk to the cops.

“What did they want?” Dooley said again, going for patience but not quite getting there.

His uncle kept his eyes on the TV screen. “They wanted to know where I was the night she died.”

That was a no-brainer. They'd asked Dooley the same question. It was police investigation 101.

“You were at the poker game,” Dooley said. “You already told them that, right?”

“Yeah,” his uncle said.

Something was wrong. Dooley saw it in the dullness of his uncle's eyes, the slump of his shoulders.

“What else?” he said.

“They wanted to know where I was between eleven and eleven-thirty.”

“Is that when she died?” Dooley said.

His uncle nodded.

No way, Dooley thought. There was no way they could have narrowed down the time of death to such a small time frame. Thanks to all those crime-scene shows, everyone knew they couldn't do that. The time frame was always longer.

“She was wearing a cheap watch,” his uncle said. “They showed it to me. It was broken. Time said eleven-thirteen. I think they think that means something.”