Infamous (23 page)

“I remember,” he assured her. “Plus, you’d need twice the proof. That’s the model I’m … hoping to work with.”

She smiled, and A.J.’s pulse skipped. “Me, too,” she said. “That’s the … Model. I’d prefer. With a reminder that if you’re lying—”

“I’m not.”

“But if you are,” she said, her voice trailing off in a dot-dot-dot. She didn’t need to put words to her threat.

Because he wasn’t going to lie to her.

“Kid,” Jamie said, apparently unable to read A.J.’s mind, which was interesting. “Think about this. If you just—”

“I have been thinking about it,” A.J. told him, told Alison, too. “I’m not lying—I’m not going to lie.” He glanced at Jamie. “Okay?”

“Really?” Jamie asked.

“Really,” A.J. told Alison, too. “But I’m wondering … What happens in January? You go back to Boston College …?”

“That’s the current plan,” Alison answered. “Yeah. How about you? After the movie …?”

“Back home,” he said. “At least that’s my plan. Currently.”

She nodded. Laughed. “I hear you,” she said. “May I be blunt and quit with the coded messages and just say, I think
we’re both on the same page? I’m not looking for something long term, and I’m
certainly
not looking for anything long distance. But at the same time, I’m always willing to acknowledge that there’s a chance—a slim chance, because I suck at relationships—that it could turn into something bigger or … I don’t know exactly, but I’m not looking to force anything, and I’m definitely not going to hold my breath.” She paused.
“Are
we on the same page?”

“Mostly,” A.J. said, and then, because he’d just told her that he wasn’t going to lie, he added, “I have a terrible track record with relationships myself, but … I don’t know what it is about you. I’m just, um … Smitten.”

“Nice one, kid,” Jamie said with approval.

A.J. shot him a quick look—
Go. Away
.—and the ghost made a zipping and locking motion across his mouth, tossing away the imaginary key. As if that were going to help.

But now Alison was looking at A.J. the same way she’d looked at him in the alley, when she’d told him that she couldn’t kiss him because she was working. “I am, too,” she whispered. “Smitten. What a good word for it. And … how lovely that it’s mutual.”

A.J. nodded, looking back down at the dinner he’d barely touched. “How often does that happen?” he asked.

“Never,” Alison said. She’d stopped eating, too.

“Once in a lifetime,” Jamie murmured. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, kid. Sorry. Sorry. I’ll … Shhh.”

It was a moment—a very nice moment—despite Jamie’s interruption. A.J. was getting damn good at ignoring the man—it wasn’t hard to do when he lost himself in Alison’s pretty eyes.

And there they sat, gazing at each other, thunder rumbling more persistently now, but still in the distance, until Alison looked away first. She stabbed at a few kidney beans, pretending to eat. “Did you get a chance to call your grandfather?” she asked. “You know, to ask about Caldwell?”

Across the room, Jamie sat up straight. “Did she just say …?”

“Caldwell James Gallagher, known to his friends as Wells,” A.J. repeated for Jamie’s benefit, because the ghost hadn’t been there when Alison had first brought up the subject of his older brother. And face it—the idea of Jamie sitting there silently was a ludicrous one. If he were there, he might as well contribute. “The theory being that Caldwell didn’t die back in 1891, that he was Austin James’s cohort in the robbery of the Jubilation bank. That he survived even though Jamie and Melody didn’t, and he went to Alaska and started calling himself Jamie and settled down with a woman that he told me and the rest of the family was Melody Quinn, but really wasn’t.”

Alison was amused. “Nicely summarized.”

“Wells was dead,” Jamie said flatly. “He died—the same day I left Philadelphia.”

A.J. glanced at him.
Go on
.

But the ghost shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

And wasn’t that the ultimate irony.

“I haven’t reached him yet,” A.J. told Alison. “Adam. It’s possible he knows, but … I’m betting he doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t,” Jamie said. He was disgusted. “I knew, Mel knew, but that was it. What the hell does
Wells
have to do with—”

“When you talk to him,” Alison instructed, “ask him if your great-grandfather ever mentioned his reasons for leaving Pennsylvania. The thing I find curious is that Jamie’s not the only Gallagher who wasn’t buried in the family plot. It’s understandable why he’s not—he was a black sheep, he left home and broke the law, his family disowned him—the list is long. Plus he was killed—according to my information, okay? Let’s not throw down about that right now. But according to my sources, he died in the middle of the desert in the summer, and was buried by Quinn right where he fell. But Caldwell …” She shook her head. “Records show he died in Philadelphia. But we just have that single piece of information—the date of his death. We don’t know why he died—was he sick, was there an accident?—plus no one I’ve
spoken to has any idea why he wasn’t buried with the rest of his family.”

Over on the sofa, Jamie was still grimly shaking his head. “Wells wasn’t buried with the family,” he said, “because he supposedly killed himself, and they wouldn’t lay him to rest in consecrated ground. He blew out his brains, right in my father’s study—at least that’s how the old man’s story goes. But it’s not the truth. I saw what really happened. That gun was in my father’s hand. He shot Wells, his own son, right in the face, point-blank.”

Jesus.

A.J. pushed his chair back from the desk, put his napkin on the tray. “I’m sorry,” he said to Alison. “May I, um, use your bathroom?”

She pointed down toward the narrow little door at the far end of the trailer. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I just, um … Excuse me.” He shot Jamie a look as he went past the sofa.

The bathroom was tiny, like something you’d find in a train, with a sink that pulled down from the wall, directly over the toilet. A.J. closed the door behind him, turned on the fan overhead and it rattled and bumped as it fought the wind outside—but Jamie didn’t appear.

“Come on, Gramps,” A.J. said softly, aware of how thin these walls were.

And Jamie appeared. He stood petulantly in the tiny shower, arms crossed.

“Now you see why I didn’t want to talk about it,” he said, his mouth a tight line. “It didn’t have anything to do with anything.”

“You saw your father murder your brother,” A.J. pointed out as quietly as he could manage. “It has everything to do with everything. To start, it made you leave home.”

“I was gonna do that anyway. Just maybe not quite that soon.” Jamie sighed. “I really shouldn’t have told you, kid. You didn’t need to know. It was an awful thing. For years, I blamed myself. I didn’t stop him. I didn’t even try.”

“You were fifteen,” A.J. reminded him.

Before this, he’d never quite understood why Jamie had left home. He’d always thought that his great-grandfather had been a spoiled rich boy, playing the outlaw, getting away—quite literally—with highway robbery. Somehow he’d survived the thieving phase of his career, and by the time he’d hit his late teens, he’d gained a reputation as a professional gambler, in possession of one hell of a quick draw and not a whole lot of scruples when it came to winning the game.

A.J. had always thought that Melody, by needing to be rescued, had somehow tamed Jamie. Forced him, out of necessity, to grow up. To man up. But now it was clear that there was so much more to the old family legend.

“I was the only witness to the murder,” Jamie told him now as the fan rattled overhead. “And I heard my father telling the servants to call the police as well as the parish priest. I heard him lie and say that Wells had killed himself.”

As Jamie spoke, he changed, and A.J. realized that he was getting smaller, younger. Right before A.J.’s eyes, he became the fifteen-year-old boy that he’d once been, with shaggy dark hair, his face rounder, more like a child’s, his frame slighter, skinnier.

“And I knew, in that instant, if I claimed that my father killed Wells, it would come down to his word against mine.” Jamie shook his head. “And I would lose.”

“Why would he kill his own son?” A.J. asked softly.

“I don’t know,” the boy said, confusion and disbelief in his brilliant blue eyes. “I didn’t hear the beginning of the fight, but I did hear the raised voices, so I came downstairs to see what was happening. I stayed in the hall, because it didn’t make sense. Wells didn’t fight with my father—I did. He was the golden boy. He could only do right
—I
was the family screw-up. But then, that day … I couldn’t hear what my father was saying. He’d stopped shouting, but Wells was crying. He was … just weeping, and he just kept saying
I’m sorry, I’m sorry
.… I don’t for the life of me know what he did. But whatever it was, sorry wasn’t good enough. Not for my father. When he pulled that gun, I was so surprised. I
couldn’t believe it was more than a melodramatic threat. A stage prop to gesture with. I didn’t believe it was loaded, but it was. He never loaded it, it was a showpiece, but this time he must’ve done it in advance. It was goddamn premeditated murder—he was intending to use it. And he pointed that thing at Wells and he said—and I remembered this to the day I died:
I gave you life, boy, and it’s mine to take it away at will
. And he pulled that trigger. I saw him do it, but I never told anyone.”

Just like that, he was back—the twenty-something man. “Except Mel,” Jamie said, in his deeper, grown-up voice. “I told Mel, of course. Because the sins of the fathers are not revisited upon their children, I don’t care what it says in Exodus—that’s just plain wrong. A child is innocent and cannot be blamed for his father’s crimes. And this I don’t just believe—this I know. And I told her about my father, so that she would understand.”

“I’m sorry you went through that,” A.J. whispered.

“I wish Wells
had
gone west with me,” Jamie told him. “Whatever he’d done, I would’ve forgiven him. He brought such light and life to everything he did. He was one of God’s miracles, truly gentle and kind. But he died, Age. Alison’s grasping at straws.”

A.J. nodded. “If you don’t want me to, I don’t have to tell her about—”

“No,” Jamie said. “It’s all right. You can tell her whatever you want. You know, consecrated ground or not, I’ve run into Wells a few times. In the after. But I’ve never come face-to-face with my father. I’ll let you do that math.” He motioned toward the door with his head. “You better get back out there. But first …” He pointed to the handle of the john.

Right. “Thanks,” A.J. said, and flushed, running the water a bit in the sink, too.

He unlocked the door and …

Alison was sitting behind her desk, wearing that nice shirt, with her pretty face made up just a little bit more than usual. And he should’ve said,
Hey, sorry about that. I just had to have a private conference with the ghost of my great-grandfather
who, it turns out, witnessed a brutal murder as an impressionable child
. But instead, he said, “The cemetery where the Gallaghers are buried. It just occurred to me—that’s probably consecrated ground.”

“Whoa,” she said, and the questioning look in her eyes—
Did you seriously just get up to take a leak in the middle of our dinner conversation, practically right after saying you were smitten with me
—instantly was replaced by realization. “You’re right. I never thought of that, but … Suicide. Of course. If Caldwell Gallagher had killed himself, he wouldn’t have been allowed to be buried there.” She reached down to open a drawer and pulled out a legal pad and pen, and made a note on it. “There also wouldn’t have been any news about it—a suicide—in the papers. The Gallaghers were powerful enough to hush up something like that—and they would’ve wanted to. Imagine the talk.”

“I actually just remembered,” A.J. said as he sat down across from her. And it wasn’t a lie, because he
did
just remember Jamie telling him this, even though it was only moments earlier, “Jamie talking about witnessing something terrible—something his father did—the day he left home for good.”

“Something his
father
did,” Alison asked. “Not his brother? Although, wow, here’s a theory—when you bring suicide in as a possible reason for the lack of both Caldwell’s grave and any newspaper articles about his death, it’s also possible that a family as powerful as the Gallaghers covered up a murder by calling it a suicide. Can you imagine? If Jamie killed Caldwell and then ran?”

“No,” A.J. said. “That’s not—”

“Just hear me out,” she interrupted him. “It’s just a theory, but it’s a good one. What if Jamie kills Caldwell and runs, only his father knows the family reputation will be in jeopardy if there’s a huge manhunt, so he covers it up. Caldwell’s death is called a suicide, and Jamie’s disowned by the family.”

“Except that’s not what happened,” A.J. said.

“But you don’t know what happened,” Alison pointed out. “You just said that yourself.”

And there it was.

The perfect invitation to tell her how he
hadn’t
known what had happened a few minutes ago when he’d said just that, and yet how he
did
know now.

I see dead people
.…

Lightning flashed outside, lighting the windows and brightening the room even more. A.J. braced himself for the thunder, but it was still relatively far away.

“I’ll see what Adam knows,” he said instead.

Alison nodded as she flipped a page on her pad. “Why don’t we get a record of what you
do
know. You told me this morning that Gallagher first came to Jubilation in July.”

“July 8, 1898,” A.J. confirmed.

“Right around the same time that the Kelly Gang returned to town,” she commented.

“That’s not quite true.” A.J. glanced over to Jamie, who was back on the couch. It was hard, now, to look at him without seeing that young boy who’d witnessed a horrible crime—and had left home rather than live in wealth and comfort with a father who’d literally gotten away with murder.