Murder at the Courthouse (10 page)

“Do you know who Anthony's father is?” Michael asked.

Although the sheriff's smile didn't change, his eyes did as if Michael had asked one too many questions. Still he answered in his same easy tone. “That'd be hard to say. Of course, there were rumors, but none you could believe. Actually Roxanne didn't have much to do with folks around here. So I figure the kid's father was a passer through. Could be he never even knew about the kid.”

Michael dared the sheriff's ill temper with another question. “What rumors?”

The sheriff waved his hand as if to dismiss the whole thing. “You know how folks are around here. Always ready to gossip about anything and everything. Roxanne gave them plenty to gossip about. Not so much that she was having a baby but that she wouldn't name the father. That made everybody talk that much more. Me, I always figured she didn't know herself, but anyway, folks around town gave credit to just about anybody in britches. I even heard a few rumors about Roxanne and me, and seeing as how I knew for certain those tales weren't true, I figured none of the others I heard were either. Best to ignore them all. Nothing to be done about it anyway. Not unless Roxanne decided to sue whoever it was for child support and she didn't. Some things are better left buried.”

“I guess you're right.”

“I am. Folks do like to talk, and especially about their elected officials. Anybody who had ever been seen eating out there at Billy's place got some kind of story told about them.” The sheriff laughed a little. “Folks could hardly wait for Roxanne to have that baby so they could decide who it looked like. Then when the kid was born, he was the spitting image of Roxanne, and that was that. After a while the rumors died down. There's no need in stirring them up again after all these years.”

“I just thought it might help Anthony if he knew.”

“I can't see how. Not after all this time. The boy's just gonna have to quit thinking the world owes him something because he had a rough time as a kid. Lots of kids have rough times.”

“Anthony may not have done this.” Michael nodded back toward the office.

“Maybe not.” The sheriff looked skeptical. “But you can't go soft on the job just because you feel sorry for the kid. If he did it, he'll have to face up to it, and so will you. Some kids you just can't help.”

The sheriff's words kept circling through Michael's head as he drove to Aunt Lindy's house.
Some kids you just can't
help.
Michael didn't want to believe that about Anthony. Or any kid. After Aunt Lindy prayed Michael out of the darkness that swallowed him after the wreck, she was always telling him the Lord had a reason to let him live. She wanted it to be something monumental, but Michael was okay with the idea the Lord might be using him one on one to help kids going through dark times. The way he'd helped Hallie. The way he was trying to help Anthony.

The dark times they knew weren't the same. Michael couldn't do a thing about the wreck that had nearly killed him. Hallie had been caught in a web of circumstances pushing her into a desperate situation. While Anthony had some of those unfortunate circumstances in his life too, at the same time, he seemed to gather the dark around him like a comfort blanket. The sheriff could be right. Michael might not find a way to jerk the kid off destruction road.

Michael blew out a sigh and remembered the sneaker tracks in Wilbur's barn. About Anthony's size. At the barn, Michael had fought the urge to brush the tracks away. He didn't want to have to arrest Anthony, but if the kid had done the crime, he needed to pay the price. The sheriff was definitely right about that.

The trouble was, sometimes Anthony wouldn't deny doing
a thing even when he hadn't done it. He said nobody ever believed him anyway, so he might as well save everybody a lot of hassle and just say what they wanted to hear. That didn't make Michael's job any easier, but Anthony didn't care. He worked hard at not caring about anything or anybody.

But he had cared about his mother. That was plain enough from the stories. Michael wondered if there was yet a way to track her down after all these years. Maybe Michael would ask Alex about it when she came to town this weekend.

She always liked a challenge, and it would give them something to talk about other than Michael's lack of ambition. Of course, she'd probably tell him she was a lawyer, not a private detective. That he was the one whose job it was to find missing persons.

Maybe there were some things he could try. First, he needed to find out all he could about Roxanne Blake. The rumors the sheriff talked about regarding Anthony's father seemed as good a place to start as any. Michael's mind clicked through the people who might tell him something. Billy Samuels out at the diner. Aunt Lindy.

Michael shook his head there. She'd be like Sheriff Potter about the rumors, even if she did remember them. She would think he was making trouble for Anthony instead of helping him. Judge Campbell would remember the stories, but that didn't mean he'd repeat them. He wouldn't want to make any enemies with a possible state representative race in the offing.

Joe Jamison's name surfaced in Michael's mind. Joe never forgot anything. Every story, every bit of gossip or scandal he'd ever heard, was filed away somewhere in his head, and if you could figure out the right way to ask, sometimes he
would pull out the file you wanted and let you leaf through it with questions while he cut your hair. Michael was sure Joe would remember the rumors about Anthony's father the same as he was sure there was something about yesterday morning and the body on the courthouse steps Joe hadn't told him.

Michael was going to have to come up with a lot of right questions when Joe got back from visiting his sister.

Aunt Lindy lived in what some townsfolk called the Keane mansion, but the house was far from mansion size. It did have about ten more rooms than Aunt Lindy needed, except at Christmas when she opened up the house to the community. A Keane family tradition. Michael helped her unpack and arrange the decorations, but the open-house parties were never the same after his parents died.

Michael could still remember the spicy delicious fragrance of his mother's Christmas cookies baking and the special feeling of expectation in the air as he helped his father trim the trees, set up the nativity scenes, and arrange the lighted village houses in the fake snow on the oak library table.

The first Christmas after the wreck, Michael couldn't believe Aunt Lindy would even consider having the open house. He was still having trouble walking and hadn't started back to school, and while he had begun to remember or relearn a lot that the wreck had robbed from his mind, he felt far from ready to face the entire town.

Aunt Lindy paid no attention to his protests. She claimed they owed it to the town to have the open house the same
as always. The day of the event Michael did his best to disappear in shadowy corners, but people found him anyway, smiling and talking too loudly while their eyes leaked their unspoken words.
Poor Michael. Such a
shame. They say he may never be right again.

By the next year, his limp was almost gone, he was back in school, and people knew he hadn't lost his faculties. So that Christmas the open house, while not exactly enjoyable, was bearable. In the years since, Michael thought the house might actually be at its best filled with the lights and sounds of Christmas. The rest of the year the unused rooms seemed to be in limbo waiting for the next Christmas.

Aunt Lindy claimed it wasn't Christmas but him the house was waiting for. It was his house, his heritage. She had moved back into the house with him after the wreck, but when he married, she'd find an apartment. That way he and his bride could live there and continue the Keane family tradition. She didn't want to hear it when he told her the thought of moving back into the house was enough to make him a confirmed bachelor.

Michael paused now on the front walk and looked at the house in the reflection of the streetlamps. It sat at the end of the dead-end street, and he had to admit the house had a certain stately air about it, almost as if the very stones and windows were aware of their prominence in the town's history. It seemed to look down a bit on Judge Campbell's impressive brick house next door and to completely look over Reece Sheridan's comfortable two-story frame house across the street.

Michael headed across the yard toward the back of the house. He didn't like going in the front way. They'd always
used the back door. He still remembered getting home from the hospital after the wreck and staring at the handicap ramp some men from the church had built up to the porch. That added to the strangeness of the day. Going in the wrong door. Seeing his parents' empty chairs in front of the fireplace. Catching the faint scent of his mother's perfume. Wanting to cry, but knowing tears would disappoint Aunt Lindy. She expected him to be happy to be home. To be strong.

Michael refused to go in and out of the front door after that. He found a way to negotiate the steps in the back, and without comment, Aunt Lindy had the platform removed.

Michael ran up those back steps now, the struggle it had once been long forgotten. The doctors at the hospital had told Aunt Lindy not to expect Michael to ever be like he was before the wreck, that even a partial recovery would be a miracle. But Aunt Lindy informed them the Lord wasn't in the partial-miracle business.

Dr. Winthrop used to laugh about it when he treated Michael after the accident. “Those doctors didn't know what hit them when Malinda Keane moved into the hospital room with you. I could have told them if they'd listened. The truth of it is, you didn't have any choice but to get better. Malinda wasn't going to accept any other outcome. The same as I'm thinking every last one of Malinda's students will know how to do fractions on the day they die.”

Michael smiled at the memory as Aunt Lindy held up her cheek for his kiss when he went inside. “Good timing. Anthony and I just finished up our lesson.”

She led the way back through the kitchen into the comfortably shabby den. Bright yellow and orange pillows littered a worn brown couch that invited sitters. Aunt Lindy's cat, Gri
malkin, was curled up on the cushion in one of the wooden rockers that provided the rest of the seating in the room since Aunt Lindy believed rocking enhanced the thought process. A wall of shelves held well-worn books and a hodgepodge of knickknacks presented to her by students over the years. In this room, it was easy for Michael to forget about the rest of the house crouched out there, waiting for him.

Anthony Blake sat at a battered card table in the middle of the room. When he raised his eyes from his book, Michael studied the boy in an attempt to picture the mother the sheriff said he looked like.

She would have taken more care with the black wavy hair, using it to her favor, just as she would have highlighted the vivid blue eyes. Perhaps her features would have been softer and not pulled so taut with anger. Or maybe not, for Roxanne might have had reason to be angry too. Even so, she would have surely known the value of her looks and used it to her advantage.

Anthony gave no sign of caring how he looked. His black hair was shaggy, in need of both a cut and a comb. He obviously hadn't shaved for a week, and the frown that tightened the skin around his eyes stole some of the light from their remarkable blue.

“I'll get us some drinks.” Aunt Lindy went back out to the kitchen, firmly shutting the door behind her.

Anthony stared at the closed door. “This feels like a setup. You planning to take me in or something?” His voice was carefully casual.

“Have you done something you need taking in for?” Michael sat down at the card table across from Anthony.

“When did that ever matter?”

“It always matters.” If he could keep from liking the boy, it might make things easier.

The boy's lips turned up a fraction, but his eyes stayed the same hard blue. “What am I, Deputy? Your special charity case?” He didn't give Michael time to answer. “Well, give it up. You're wasting your time on me.”

“It's my time to waste.” Michael didn't smile.

Anthony lifted his eyebrows a bit. “I could make you sorry.”

“You could.” Michael stared straight at the boy.

Anthony dropped his gaze to the table and began tapping his pencil against his book. “Get on with it. Say whatever it is you've come to say.”

“You know you're supposed to go to school, Anthony.”

Anthony tapped his pencil faster against the book. “Yeah, yeah. I was sick, okay? Puking sick.”

“On the courthouse lawn?”

“When you gotta puke, it don't much matter where you are.”

“Your aunt Vera know you were sick?”

“Aunt Vera wouldn't notice if I dropped dead.” Then Anthony laughed without humor. “Wait, I take that back. She'd have a party if I dropped dead. A big party.”

“Did you go to school today?”

“Yeah. I wasn't puking today.” Anthony looked up at Michael. “Is the third degree over now? Can I leave?”

Michael stabbed his next question at Anthony before he could look away again. “What do you know about that guy getting shot on the courthouse steps yesterday?”

For a moment the pencil froze in Anthony's hands. Then he shifted his eyes away from Michael to stare across the
room at the bookshelves. Casually he began to drum the pencil against the book again. “Why would I know anything about that? You cops don't even know anything about that.”

Michael frowned as he tried to figure out the look that had flashed through Anthony's eyes. Not fear or guilt. Michael had seen both of those emotions on enough faces to recognize them instantly. Not anger. Anthony wore that all the time, but this was different. Raw. Real.

A memory stirred in Michael's head. It wasn't in Anthony's eyes he'd seen the look before, but in his own. It was despair. The same kind of despair he used to see in the mirror when he was Anthony's age and remembered the townsfolk's prediction that he would never be “right” again. But what about Jay Rayburn's murder would cause Anthony to feel that way?

Michael put his hand on the pencil to stop Anthony tapping it. He waited until Anthony looked at him. “I don't know why you would know anything about it, Anthony. You tell me. Did you know the guy?”

“I can't believe this.” Anthony's eyes were hard, his emotions under control again. “Can't you cops find anybody better to pin that on? Me, I skip school, steal a few hubcaps. I don't shoot people.” He yanked the pencil away.

“I didn't say you did. But you do know something, don't you?”

“Not me. Don't know a thing. Nothing.” The boy slouched in his chair, looking bored. “You leaning on everybody who was there or just picking on me?”

“It's you I'm talking to right now.” Michael kept his face expressionless. He wanted to grab the boy and shake the truth out of him.

The curved-up lips were back again. “Okay, so here's how it is. I was there. I saw the crowd and came along for the ride same as everybody else.”

Michael went for another deliberate jab. “What do you remember about your mother?”

This time there was no mistaking the look on Anthony's face as he jumped up so fast his chair crashed over backward. Pure, hot anger. Not just a shell to hide his other feelings. The table wobbled precariously between them as Anthony leaned on it to glare at Michael. His voice was tight. “I don't talk about my mother.”

Michael met his glare without a flicker. “Why not? Are you afraid of what you might find out?”

Anthony shoved off the table, knocking it toward Michael and sending books and papers flying. Michael steadied the table, but didn't stand up.

“You don't know nothing, Deputy,” Anthony yelled, balling up his hands into fists.

“Don't even think it, Anthony.” Michael kept his eyes steady on Anthony's face. “Hitting me won't help anyway. You're the one who has to face the truth about your mother.”

Anthony's face flushed even redder. “You don't know nothing about my mother either.”

“Nope.” Michael kept his voice steady. “Except that it's time you found out what happened to her.”

“I know what happened.” Anthony's voice lowered, but there was still anguish there. “Everybody knows what happened.” He spun away from Michael and kicked the rocking chair where Grimalkin was napping. With a yowl, the cat scrambled to the top of the bookshelves.