Light from a Distant Star (42 page)

“And to your knowledge, Mr. Devaney never once went into Dolly Bedelia’s apartment the whole time he was there?”

She wasn’t sure whether to answer yes, he never once did, or no, he didn’t. “He never went into her apartment.” Couldn’t be clearer than that.

“Now, earlier you said you heard a commotion coming from that apartment. Was Mr. Devaney there when you heard it?”

“No.”

“How do you know, how can you be certain he wasn’t there?”

“Because he hadn’t come yet, I mean, his truck, it wasn’t there.”

“Not in the driveway, you mean.”

“It wasn’t in the driveway, or the street either. And I know because I kept looking. Henry, my brother and me, we were supposed to go to the mall, but we couldn’t leave until Max came. Which is when I was supposed to call my father. For him to come, so we could leave.” There! She was getting back on track.

“So the first time you saw Mr. Devaney, the very first time you heard him or knew he was there, was when his truck pulled into the driveway. At three-fifty-five. Five of four in the afternoon, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a very observant girl,” he said with a cocky nod.

“Thank you.” She liked Wright. She’d been wrong. He was as tough
as she was. Together they’d set Max free. She frowned, anticipating the next key question, the lethal blow.

“So at five of four you actually saw the truck pull into the driveway, is that correct?”

“Yes, but first I heard it. The truck—it’s loud,” she said, not that she really remembered, but to make her point.

“So if the truck had come at any time before that, would you have heard it?”

“Oh yeah. It’s really loud, like rattling, shaking-all-over kind of loud.”

“Pretty loud then.” He looked amused.

“Yeah, even with the fans so loud, I would’ve heard, it’s so loud.”

“I see.” Wright gave a stiff nod.

Her mind raced, needing to make this work, to put the fans in logical context. “And then right after that Max turned the fans off so I would’ve heard. I mean …” She stared at him. “I mean when I went upstairs. Those two times. I would’ve heard. If anything happened, I mean.”

Seeing Wright start to turn, she panicked. “Oh, and there’s something else!” she called out. “I just thought of it, Max’s cut, the one on his hand. When I came back down, the first time, that’s when I saw it. And the reason I know he got it in the cellar’s because the cloth he wrapped around, it was from the ragbag next to the dryer.” Her lightning bolt, proof he hadn’t cut himself in an earlier struggle with Dolly, but as he’d said, on one of the pipes. “Green-and-white striped, from my mother’s old nightgown,” she added and saw her mother’s fingers twisting in her lap.

Wright’s eyes flickered in wild assessment, struggling for some way to turn this to his client’s advantage. Instead, he thanked her, then told the judge he had no further questions of the witness.

No further questions? she thought, stunned by the brevity of his effort. Was that it? His best defense of an innocent man? As she left the witness stand, she paused, looked right at Max and smiled. His hand covered his mouth, but his eyes told her he knew she’d tried.

T
HE CAR DOORS WEREN’T EVEN CLOSED AND SHE WAS COMPLAINING
about Max’s lawyer. “Why’d he quit like that?” she sputtered from the backseat. “It’s not like he ran out of time or anything. He’s just lazy, that’s why.” Seat belts clicked. No one answered. Her father started the car and her mother stared out the side window. Did she want to be dropped off at the salon, he asked. No, she was way too drained, she said. All she wanted was to climb into bed and pull the covers over her head, she sighed, which should have been Nellie’s cue, but indignation and frustration had far surpassed shame. “I mean, look at all the questions Mr. Cowie had,” she said. “The other guy, he just wanted to finish. Like,
that’s it
!
Don’t wanna hear any more!
”

“I think we’ve had enough legalities for one day,” her father said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“But the rag proves it,” she persisted. “He—”

“That’s enough!” Her mother’s first words to her since they’d left. She looked back at her.

“Sandy,” her father warned.

“Well, he’s not a very good lawyer,” Nellie muttered, when she turned away. “Hardly even tried.”

Her mother spun around on the seat.

“But it’s true!” Nellie cried.

“True?! Excuse me, young lady,
you
want to talk about what’s true? I mean, why did you do that? How could you? How could you get up there in front of all those people and lie? With us sitting right there! And under oath, no less. Nellie, I don’t even know what to say to you. I don’t think you know the difference anymore between the truth
and a lie. That wasn’t some game you were playing back there, some school play. That man’s on trial for murder. Murder, Nellie! And you look right straight out at people and tell one lie after another? Oh, my God!” She kept shaking her head.

“One, that’s all I told,” she said quietly, sliding low onto the seat. “And I’m sorry.”

“One? You kept saying it!” She gripped the top of her head with both hands. “So of course he didn’t want to ask you too many questions. He was afraid!”

“Now, Sandy, that’s a little too—”

“What? What, Ben? A little too honest?” she cried.

The car swerved a little as her father pulled out of traffic, and into a parking space. With the engine running, he sat with one arm over the back of the seat. He reached for Nellie’s hand, but her arms stayed folded. They’d been going to wait for this discussion until they got home, he said, but some things were just too important to be put on hold.

“You see, Nell, that’s the trouble with a lie,” he said. “It taints everything. You should’ve told the truth right from the start and let the chips fall where they may.”

“I did, but you wouldn’t listen!” She began to cry with the futility of it all. “You didn’t believe me! I told you about Mr. Cooper! You know I did!”

“Stop it, Nellie!” her mother demanded, and now she was crying, too. “Stop it right now! What’re you trying to do, destroy us? And besides, who on earth would believe you now? About anything?”

Nellie curled up on the seat.

Her father pulled back into traffic and delivered his weeping family safely home.

T
HE TRIAL CONTINUED
without her. She wasn’t called back for any more testimony so, apparently, her mother had been right. In a way it was a relief, though at least, she could have seen Max again. She thought of him often in the next few days, how depressed he must be, how helpless. She’d only made things worse for him, and for that, she hated herself, her indecision and weakness, her fear. She had to believe
he’d be found not guilty, but there was no one she could talk to, no one. Her lie under oath had not only fortified her position in the family as a habitual liar, but now there was talk of her emotional problems. She’d sneezed suddenly the other night and everyone had jumped. Even Henry was treating her differently. Her mother wanted her to see someone. Her father agreed. As long as it was the right person, he said. Of course, her mother said. A search had been launched, and Ruth was deeply involved. Or so she had Nellie believing.

They’d made an appointment with Dr. Willington, Ruth told her, but had canceled it when she reminded them that Alicia Boudreau was Dr. Willington’s stepdaughter. Alicia was in Nellie’s class.

“So now they’re checking out shrinks from some other town,” Ruth said from her desk. She was doing math homework on her calculator.

“I don’t care,” Nellie said, moving around her room. She’d come up looking for a clear cover for her history report. She was only allowed in here with Ruth’s permission, and never alone.

“Well, you should. You should care about something, don’t you think, instead of yourself all the time,” she said, and Nellie rolled her eyes.

“So are you gonna go?” Nellie was reading the most recent letter from her sister’s “real” father, as Ruth took great pleasure in saying. Alongside his newspaper clipping, the letter was tacked to Ruth’s bulletin board. He’d invited her to come stay with him and his family for a few weeks next summer: “The girls can’t wait to meet their big sister.” Nellie bristled, wondering where she’d fit into this new constellation, half stepsister, step half sister?

“Well, yeah! I just need enough for the plane ticket.”

“How much is that?”

“Three thousand.”

Might as well try and raise enough for a ticket to the moon
, she wanted to say but didn’t. The dribs of Ruth’s forgiveness were still being eked out. Sometimes she made it seem as if Nellie was the reason her father had ignored her existence from birth.

“What about him, your real father, can he give you any?” Nellie knew he couldn’t.

“I’ve already got eight hundred, and Mom and Ben’ll help. Soon as they sell the store. Few more weeks and we’ll be rich, rich, rich.” She
swiveled around on her chair. “Hey, how come you’re not friends with Jessica anymore?”

“I don’t know.” Nellie hated it when she called him Ben.

“Well, you must know. You always used to be friends.”

“Well, for one thing, she’s really mean. Especially to Henry. And she steals stuff. And she’s always talking about how much she hates her mother. She even said she—”

“Well, guess what,” Ruth interrupted, rolling closer on her chair. “Guess who Louie Cooper wants to go out with?” Grinning, she held out her arms. “Moi!”

“He’s a drug dealer!”

“Oh, my God.” Ruth shook her head. “You’ve gotta stop, you can’t keep doing this, Nellie. It’s—”

“But it’s true! I saw it. With my own eyes. Jessica showed me. Bags of it, pot, in his room. She took the key down—she showed me.”

Ruth wheeled back to her desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a clear plastic cover. “Go,” she said, flipping it onto her bed. “Will you please just go?”

W
HEN THEY FINALLY
saw Lazlo’s completed painting, she and Henry were disappointed. They stared, not knowing what to say. It looked like their tree house, but it didn’t. His was a nest of boards and sticks, without nails or bolts, more image than structure. More hope than reality. An idea that with the first strong wind would come crashing down.

“What do you think?” Lazlo asked.

“Very nice,” they answered in unison. “I like the colors,” Nellie added.

“Our tree’s bigger though,” Henry said, and she pressed against him, hoping to stop him there.

“You’re right,” Lazlo said, taping more bubble wrap around a painting. He’d been packing them for his booth at Art in the Park. “Mine’s not as substantial as yours.” The wrapped paintings were stacked by the front door, waiting to be carried out to his car. It was Saturday and her father and mother were both at work. Not wanting them to stay in the house all day, they’d left a list of things to do. After helping
Lazlo, they were supposed to walk down to the store and help their father pack up all the junk in the cellar. Every day he brought some to Charlie’s. Mr. Cooper had finally gotten financing. He was hoping to pass papers on the property sometime before Christmas. It was up to the lawyers now, only a matter of scheduling, he’d assured her father.

“And,” Henry said, peering closer, “we don’t have electricity in our tree house.

The tree house in the painting glowed against a darkening sky. “Maybe it’s just a reflection,” Lazlo said, lifting it off the easel to be wrapped. “Or a candle, or the Humboldt’s motion detector.”

“How come you don’t know?” Henry asked, and Lazlo laughed.

“That’s so not the point, my young philistine,” he said, then waving a strip of bubble wrap toward the kitchen, asked him to get his car keys. They were hanging over the sink. Henry cringed back. Each gestured for the other to do it.

He asked you
, Nellie mouthed, pointing, then seeing her brother’s fear, forced herself to enter that tiny kitchen where Dolly still lay even with gleaming vinyl flooring and fresh paint, her head near the table, her soiled feet by the cupboard door. Had she run in here trying to escape to the cellar? Or was this where her killer had found her? The door had been painted, forever obscuring Max’s bloody thumbprint. Had he left it on his way in or his way out? The only signs of struggle had been in here. She snatched the key from the hook and hurried back to Lazlo.

“How can you live in here?” she blurted. “Don’t you get freaked out?”

“Sometimes. But don’t forget this was my home a long time before that happened. Plus, I didn’t know her like you guys did,” Lazlo said as they carried out the larger paintings first. He arranged them in his trunk, layering blankets between the frames. “That’s probably the hardest part. Right?”

“She wasn’t a very nice lady,” Henry declared.

“What’re you talking about? You hardly even knew her,” Nellie snapped, which triggered one of those volleys of bickering they’d had so many of lately.

“Like that time she was mean to Max, I heard what she said.”

“So did I.”

“Not all of it. You went inside, and she said if he didn’t stop bothering her, she was gonna call the police and tell ’em he shouldn’t be hanging around us kids all the time. He said something, so then she called him a pervert and he got in his truck real fast and peeled out.”