I&#39ll Be There (13 page)

As soon as he snooped on the older boy in the bathroom, he’d see what was going on with Riddle. The lock was broken, so that wasn’t a problem. Clarence slowly opened the bathroom
door. Sam was behind the mildewed grey plastic shower curtain and didn’t see or hear him. Good.

Clarence silently congratulated himself on his skills. He still had what it took. He scanned the room. Sam’s clothing was folded up on top of the closed toilet seat. That struck Clarence
as strange. It should have been in a heap on the floor.

The kid had to be hiding something.

Moving nothing but his arm, Clarence picked up the pile and in a one-handed grip removed the clothing and was out the door.

He knew right away that there was something in the jeans because they were heavier than they should have been. Clarence slipped his hand in the front pocket and pulled out the cell phone.

What the hell was the kid doing with a cell phone? Had he stolen it? Was he finally beginning to pull his own weight?

Clarence looked closer. It wasn’t a very expensive phone. And they were hard to unlock anyway. He’d have to explain to the kid that if you were going to go to the trouble of breaking
into a parked car, or walking off with someone’s gym bag, you had to have some pay dirt at the other end.

Clarence started to put the phone down and then noticed that there was a message. He pressed the button and looked as the text appeared. It read,
I need to talk to you
.

Clarence wondered if Sam had taken some girl’s purse. That was the kind of thing that would be on a girl’s phone. ‘I need.’ Girl talk.

Clarence looked at the previous message.
Do you and Riddle want to come to dinner?

He froze. His eyes now landed on the name at the top of the message.
Emily.

Do you and Riddle want to come to dinner?

What the hell?

Clarence looked down at his hand. Adrenaline surged through his system like a shot of tequila invading an empty stomach.

Think fast.

The voices now spoke to him.

Put it back.

Clarence slipped the phone into the jeans pocket, grabbed the doorknob, silently turned, and in four seconds had the pile of clothing back on the toilet seat. He then expertly shut the door at
the exact moment that the water was turned off.

Perfect.

He had just missed the scheming traitor.

Clarence, red-faced with fury, walked straight out the back of the falling-apart house and headed to his truck. He unlocked the door, climbed inside and lit a cigarette. He needed to put this
all together.

Those two good-for-nothing excuses for humanity were keeping things from him. They were liars.

He hated liars.

He should have realised lying would be because of a girl. The two boys disappeared now for long stretches of time. And it wasn’t to go out and jack something, which he would have approved
of. It was to meet someone.

He should have seen the signs. When did the changes begin?

It all started with the haircuts. The clean clothes followed soon after.

So Sam had met a girl. And the girl had to have money, because she’d given him a phone.

The more he thought about it, the more he seethed.

He should take the shotgun out of the back of the truck and go in there right now and scare the crap out of both of them. He reached back and grabbed the gun. He held it in his hands and felt
his heart rate surge. He’d let them know who was running things around here.

But no.

Think it through. Think it through. Think it through.

He lowered the gun to the seat. The voices were in a chorus now.

They could leave right now. He could pack up, get them in the truck and be in another state so fast, they wouldn’t know what hit them.

But no.

There had to be an opportunity here. A teaching moment. Isn’t that what he’d heard a lady with an accent like she was in a circus call it? He had to teach them who was in charge.

Right now they suspected nothing. The snake would strike first.

After Bobby snapped the photo, he drove to his parents’ building.

Upstairs, Merle Kleingrove was at the front desk. She did the accounting and answered the phones and in general kept track of everything for both of his parents. Merle had known Bobby since he
was a baby and fussed over him, like everyone did.

Merle looked at the handsome young man as he walked through the door. Expensive running shoes. Imported shirt from the online place his father liked. Jeans that were made out of lighter, softer,
fine-weave denim.

He was spoiled.

Merle paid the bills, so she knew that. There was not a thing the kid wanted that he didn’t get. But she had to admit that his mother and father were the ones piling the stuff on.

Bobby didn’t ask for things. It wasn’t his fault that he was an only child with parents who made good money. They’d rather buy him a new car than run out and get one for
themselves.

But still. Merle gave him a big smile and told the handsome young man that there was half a box of donuts in the kitchen. His mother was out but should be back soon.

Bobby, always polite, thanked her, but went in the other direction.

They had connections.

That was one of the most important things a detective could have. And since his mother gave great bottles of twenty-year-old, single-malt Scotch to all her friends at the police station every
Christmas, they were hooked up.

It wasn’t the first time Bobby had run a check on a license plate. And it wasn’t the first time he’d done a property search.

But it was the first time he’d been this excited about doing it.

Bobby dropped into the desk chair in front of his mom’s computer and sent an email. It took only three minutes before he had a reply.

The license plate he’d asked about was registered to a two-year-old Honda sedan owned by Evan Scheuer of Central County.

Bobby then searched his mother’s telephone database for Evan Scheuer and found him living two hundred miles away in Backton. Bobby knew that the truck was certainly not a two-year-old
Honda, but he still picked up the phone and called Evan Scheuer.

The phone rang twice, and then a man answered. ‘Hello . . . ?’

Bobby lowered his already deep voice and then, adopting the confidence and slightly bullying authority he’d witnessed both his parents exert every day of his life, he asked, ‘Hello,
my name is Andrew Miller, and I’m calling from the Department of Motor Vehicles about license plate seven-M-M-S nine-two-four, which was registered under your name to a Honda
sedan.’

The voice on the other end was neither friendly nor hostile. ‘That car was totalled over a year ago in an accident on Route Ninety-nine.’

Bobby nodded. Of course it was.

He could have just hung up, but he pressed on because, well, he could, and because he was now enjoying being Andrew Miller from the DMV.

‘Yes, Mr Scheuer, we’re aware of that. I’m calling because the license plate from that vehicle appears to currently be in someone else’s possession, and we are in the
process of taking legal action. We may need an affidavit.’

Evan Scheuer was now paying attention. The word
affidavit
did that. ‘Okay, of course, no problem.’

Bobby was having so much fun he forgot to lower his voice as he closed with, ‘Thank you for your time, sir. We’ll be in touch as the situation unfolds.’

He sounded like a different person. But it didn’t matter. He was still in charge. He hung up the phone and leaned back in the desk chair.

So Emily Bell liked a guy who lived in a crap house off River Road on Needle Lane. The guy had a father (didn’t the creepy guy in the truck look like a lesser version of the kid she
liked?) who drove a black truck with license plates that constituted at least a fifth-degree felony for stolen property.

Nice.

Bobby got to his feet and went to have one of the chocolate iced donuts with multicoloured sprinkles that Merle had said were in the kitchen.

He felt that he’d earned it.

Sam and Riddle went out the back door of the house on Needle Lane. It was now dark. They passed by the front of the truck and the driver’s side door suddenly swung open,
hitting Sam hard in the knees.

He stepped back, wincing in pain. Riddle, behind him, jumped like a frightened cat into the dark shadows.

Clarence appeared, now standing behind the open truck door, staring at the two boys. His voice was tight but controlled. ‘Where are you two going?’

Sam looked at his father, the truck door separating them. He could see that Clarence had his shotgun in his hands.

‘To get some food.’

Clarence didn’t move a muscle. He and the door were now effectively a barrier to keep anyone from going anywhere.

‘Yeah? Where?’

Sam kept his gaze evenly on his father. To the world, he couldn’t lie, but to his father, he had trouble telling the truth.

‘We’ll start at the Seven-Eleven.’

Clarence stared hard at the kids. Riddle was looking off into the distance, his head tilted at an odd angle.

But Sam kept his eyes connected with his father’s. It was a stand-off.

Finally Clarence gave way, pulling the door in. Sam awkwardly went through the small gap that now presented itself between the truck and the peeling, painted side of the old house. Riddle was
right on his heels.

Sam eyed the shotgun held in his father’s twitching hands, but he didn’t break his stride.

Moments later, the two boys were on the sidewalk, heading away from the house.

Clarence waited until they were at the end of the street before he set the shotgun down on the seat and started after them.

Moving in the shadows of yards, off the sidewalk, Clarence followed the boys down to River Road. They crossed over to the other side of the four lanes and then walked two
blocks to a bus stop enclosure.

So they were taking a bus.

They were leaving the neighbourhood. That made it all the more interesting.

Clarence turned around and jogged back to the house.

Move quickly, but do not rush.

He was in the truck and back on River Road in less than five minutes.

Fortune was smiling on him, as he knew it would. He could see that the two boys were still in the distance waiting.

Clarence turned the opposite direction, went to the first light, and swung around, pulling to the kerb away from the glow of the liquor store sign.

When the city bus chugged by, eight minutes later, he let three cars go ahead of him. And then he followed.

Clarence sat behind the wheel of the parked truck, staring at the house. First a dog had run out. He couldn’t stand dogs. Feed a vet, not a pet. And then a pretty girl
seconds later was on the porch. Was this Emily? The boys had disappeared inside after the pretty girl had taken Sam’s hand. It was all so disgusting.

Clarence reached under the seat and removed an old brown plastic bottle of someone else’s prescription cough medicine. He took a swig of the purple concoction as if it were whiskey.
Codeine was a friend. And the world had so many enemies.

His eyes took in the property. These people had big money, that was for sure. But how had Sam met them? And how the hell had he been able to get Riddle through the front door?

It was because Sam was good-looking. That was a fact. And obviously it opened doors. Doors in nice neighbourhoods. Doors that wouldn’t want to have anything to do with John Smith or
Clarence Border.

Clarence ground his teeth. Hard. He looked down and saw the shotgun angled between the seat and the floor. He should go in there and let them know who was running this show. They were his boys.
He’d raised them as a single parent. He’d sacrificed everything for them.

But the voices said,
Not yet. Not now.

Knowledge is power. Better to know more before he pulled a trigger.

Sam and Emily sat outside behind the house at the picnic table. Riddle and Felix were inside.

Emily hadn’t said anything to her mother about what she saw online about school. She wanted to talk to Sam first. But before she could even get to it, he blurted out, ‘My father
found the cell phone.’

Emily waited for more. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? The look on his face said bad. He finally continued. ‘He doesn’t know that I saw him go through my things while I was in
the shower. But he had to have found it. And now he’ll cause trouble.’

Emily’s brow furrowed. ‘What kind of trouble?’

His father was unpredictable. Sam had no way of knowing. But he guessed. ‘He’ll want to leave town. He’ll pack us up and move.’

Emily’s eyes widened. What was he talking about? ‘You’d move because he found a cell phone? That doesn’t make any sense . . .’

Sam hesitated.

Emily stared at him. He wasn’t going to continue. So she did. ‘That’s crazy!’

Of course it was crazy. Completely crazy. Her family had shown him for the first time just how crazy. Because, until meeting them, Sam didn’t know there was anything in the world
other
than crazy.

Emily continued, trying to understand. ‘Is it some kind of religious thing? Is he one of those people who doesn’t use electricity or believe in technology?’

But Sam remained silent. This had nothing to do with God or technology. It had nothing to do with any kind of philosophy or way of organised thinking. It certainly didn’t have to do with
anything anyone believed.

How could he explain that his father was one of those people who didn’t believe in anything but himself?

What did you call those kinds of people?

Inside, Riddle sat on a stool and carefully sliced the ends off of green beans while Debbie stirred three tablespoons of mustard into a bowl of potatoes.

This was their routine now. He did the prep. She did the assembly. Debbie joked to her husband that Riddle was everything in the kitchen that she’d ever wanted. He loved to wash and cut
vegetables. He liked to stir sauce and to clean pots and pans. Mostly he just liked being in the warm house when food was cooking and Debbie, in a low patter, spoke to him.