Spare Change (38 page)

The rookie returned long
about the time Gomez gave up on questioning Olivia and Ethan Allen. “A few of
the neighbors claim they heard gunshots,” he said, “but nobody saw anything.
Fred McGinty, the man who lives directly beneath this apartment, he’s the one
who called the police. He claims he heard a commotion coming from this
apartment, then gunshots, that’s when he called it in.” 

“So nobody knows nothing,”
Gomez said, shaking his head in disgust.

The crime scene
investigation detectives had all but finished by the time Jack Mahoney arrived.
“What have we got?” he asked Gomez.

The detective shrugged, “A
questionable self-defense shooting.”

“Questionable?”

“It’s all just too pat.
Nobody saw nothing. Nobody saw this guy come into the building, nobody saw him
force his way into the apartment. The woman claims she opened the door thinking
it’s a neighbor and Scooter Cobb is standing there. Now, she just happens to
have a shotgun lying on the hall table, so when he attacks her, she bangs off
two shots, one of which nails him square in the middle of the chest. She does
all of this while she’s struggling to get loose from a guy who’s three times her
size.  Pretty skillful for somebody who’s supposedly never before used a
shotgun—no?”

Mahoney, with a grin playing
at the corner of his mouth, shrugged. “What about ballistics?” he asked, “You
got anything there?”

“Not likely. I’m sure her
prints are all over the shotgun, but the way that buckshot splattered, the lab
guys are just gonna be guessing at the trajectory.”

“I think she just might be
telling the truth,” Mahoney said. “Scooter Cobb’s a mean old bastard; I
wouldn’t doubt he came here to kill her and the boy. There’s an arrest warrant
out for Cobb, and enough evidence to prove he was the one who murdered the
boy’s daddy. That, let me tell you, was a brutal affair—one of the worst I’ve
ever seen.”

“You think maybe the kid
shot Cobb for revenge?”

Mahoney shrugged.
“Anything’s possible, I suppose.”

“Hmmm…”  Gomez raised an
eyebrow, “You figure if I push harder on the woman or the boy, I might get at
the truth?”

“I doubt it,” Mahoney said,
“I truly doubt it.”

O
f course, Gomez didn’t give up quite that easily. For
weeks on end he’d come knocking on Olivia’s door with some other question he’d
forgotten to ask. Two months after the shooting he gathered together a flimsy
packet of evidence and presented it to the District Attorney. “The kid did the
shooting, I’m certain of it,” he said; hoping to get the go ahead on an
indictment.

“Are you kidding?” the
District Attorney asked. “In an election year you want
me
to indict some
little kid on this kind of crappy evidence?” He accused Gomez of wasting the
tax-payers money and told him it was time to move on.

Afterwards, the question of
whether or not Olivia was telling the truth slid into oblivion and that was the
end of that.

Jack Mahoney

I
’ve worked many a case during my twenty years on the
force, but never one quite as loose-ended as the Doyle murders. My gut tells me
the kid’s story is true, but now that Scooter Cobb is dead, we’ll never know
the absolute truth of what came about. One thing I can say for sure, there’s a
sizeable amount of grief attached to the Cobbs. 

Sam left the force; he’s
running his daddy’s diner now, but with that bad leg of his he’s gotta sit more
than stand. Emma, poor woman, sold the house and moved off to Connecticut, to
live with her sister. The Doyle place went for taxes. Benjamin was up to his
ears in debt so there wasn’t really anything left to hold onto. I doubt the kid
much cared; neither he nor his grandma had any interest in coming back here and
I can’t say that I blame them. 

Olivia Doyle swore up and
down she was the one who shot Scooter Cobb and did so because he was trying to
break into her house. Gomez had his suspicions about the truth of her story,
but couldn’t get anyone to say otherwise. He finally gave up trying. Me? I
don’t doubt she’s covering for the boy; but listen, the kid’s already gone
through enough and besides Scooter Cobb probably got what he deserved. 

Christine always says the
Almighty doles out his own kind of justice, and you know what—I’m beginning to
think she’s right.

Thirty-two years later

E
than Allen Doyle, who for the past three years has
presided over Richmond County Family Court, is said to be the fairest Judge in
all of Virginia. He is also the youngest ever appointed to the bench. Some
claim it was the influence of his Grandmother that gave him a uniquely strong
character; others believe he was simply born with a clarity of purpose.  One
thing is for certain, the youngsters who appear before him seldom walk away
without a better understanding of life. 

Once a year Judge Doyle’s
courtroom is closed—no cases are heard, no young boys admonished to watch their
language, no children reset upon a pathway that’s more straight and narrow.
That day is always the eleventh of April, the anniversary of when his
grandmother passed away. On that day, Judge Doyle, his wife, Laura, and their
two boys visit the cemetery and place a large bouquet of flowers beside the
headstone that reads:  Olivia Ann Doyle, Wife of Charles and Beloved Grandmother
of Ethan Allen. On this, the fifth anniversary of her death, they do as they
have always done.

Spring is late this year,
some of the streams are still frozen and there are no crocuses poking their
heads from beneath the soil. On this particular morning there is a bitter chill
in the air and a wind that tears through overcoats like the pointy tip of an
icicle. But Laura bundles the boys in warm parkas and off they go.

Their first stop is the
florist; where despite the fact that cut flowers are astronomically expensive
this year, Judge Doyle buys a bouquet of twenty seven long stemmed red roses—one
for each year that he and his grandmother shared.

The younger boy, Charles,
was but a baby when she died so he has no memory of his great grandmother.
Oliver, the elder of the two, barely remembers her. Their father, Ethan Allen,
remembers her with more love than it seems possible for a heart to hold. “I
surely do miss you, Grandma,” he sighs, as he bows his head before the grey
headstone with an angel carved into the face of it. 

“How come Daddy always says
that?” Charles asks his Mother.

She looks over at her
husband and smiles. Ethan takes hold of the boy’s hand and answers, “Because I
do miss her. Your great grandma was quite a woman.” 

Laura can tell by the
upturned corners of Ethan’s mouth that he’s remembering the way it was. Soon,
he will, as he always does, launch into stories of the years they spent
together—the boy and his grandmother, a woman who at one point claimed to have
no use for children and then risked everything to protect him.

“I’m named after her,” the
eight year old Oliver boasts.

“So what!” Charles answers,
“I’m named after Grandpa Charlie!”

“Big deal,” Oliver taunts,
“Grandma Olivia is the one Daddy loved most.”

“Boys!” Laura chides, and
they stop bickering. 

“You’re right, Oliver,”
Ethan finally says, “I did love Grandma Olivia the most, but that was because I
never knew Grandpa Charlie. Grandma did, and she said he was the finest man who
ever walked the earth. She loved him till the day she died. A person has to be
pretty special to warrant that kind of loving, don’t you think?”

Charles gave a get-even
grin.

“Daddy had a special secret
with Grandma Olivia,” Oliver, needing to have the last word said. “Right, Dad?”

“That’s right, son. A very
special secret.”

“Tell us the secret,”
Charles whined.

“If I did that, it wouldn’t
be a secret anymore, would it?” Ethan said. He squatted beside the grey
tombstone and traced his fingers along the etching of his grandmother’s name. 

How easily it all came back
to mind—his mama dead without ever once seeing New York City, his daddy, beaten
so viciously that he was no longer recognizable. Ethan Allen had stood by and
let those things happen; what could he do he reasoned, he was just a kid. But
then, there was that fateful night, the night he finally found enough courage
to protect a person he loved. Killing wasn’t a thing to be proud of, but he was
proud. He was proud of being able to set his fear aside and do what had to be
done to save his grandma. He was proud enough to have shouted from rooftops his
doing of such a deed. But Grandma Olivia saw it differently; she wanted to
protect him as he had protected her. Only three people knew the truth of what
happened that night—two of them had died without telling, and if that was the
way Olivia wanted it to be, he also would take the secret to his grave. 

 Ethan silently said the
words to the Lord’s Prayer then he stood and turned to leave. In the misty grey
of an April morning, with his wife walking alongside and his boys bounding
several steps ahead, Ethan turned back and whispered, “I love you, Grandma.”

“I love you too,” Olivia
answered, but of course the words came to him only as a thought—a remembrance
of her having said those words countless times before. She said it at night
when she tucked him into bed, mornings as she sent him off to school, the day
he graduated high school, the day he graduated law school, the day he got
married, when each of the boys were born, she’d said it a million times, maybe
ten million—little wonder the memory of her saying such a thing was so easy to
call to mind.

Heaven

O
livia and Charlie Doyle linked hands as they watched
Ethan Allen and his family leave the cemetery. You can surely be proud of the
way you raised that boy, Charlie said without speaking the words—for in heaven
words are unnecessary, thoughts simply float from a person’s heart and settle
where intended.

I am, Olivia responded. 

He’s wrong, Charlie said;
wrong in thinking only three of you knew what happened that night. After I was
forced to leave the earth so suddenly, I began watching over you. I watched
over you every minute of your life, including that night. I knew you were
telling the truth when you told Detective Gomez you’d been the one to do the
shooting.

Olivia smiled the smile of
angels, not so much an upturning of lips, but a warm thought that floated
across in the same manner as words.

Charlie knew the truth of
what happened, he knew that Ethan Allen fired off the first shot then fainted
dead away. Scooter Cobb had been hit in the side; hit hard enough to be stunned
and fall over, but not hard enough to stay down. The man had barely hit the
floor before he was pushing himself back up and coming at Ethan Allen. Olivia,
who had tripped and fallen back onto the carpet, saw what was happening,
scrambled across, grabbed hold of the shotgun and fired the second barrel of
the Browning square into Scooter Cobb’s chest. She fired when he was less than
five feet from the boy; when that shot hit it ripped the man’s chest open and
cut through to his backbone. The second shot was the one that killed Scooter
Cobb.

You never told the boy the
truth of what happened that night, Charlie thought directing the words to
Olivia.

No, she answered, I didn’t.
I knew he got far more joy from believing he’d saved my life than he could have
ever gotten from knowing I’d saved his.

A soft chuckle touched down
in Olivia’s heart and she understood it came from Charlie. They kissed in the
manner of angels, a touching of hearts rather than lips; then turned their eyes
back to earth—to the Pancake Palace where the Doyle family was having
breakfast.

Ethan Allen, who had just
finished a cup of coffee turned to the two boys and said, “Did I ever tell you
about the time your great grandma…”

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

For I know the plans I have for you declares
The Lord…

Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you hope and a future…

                                       Jeremiah 29-11

Writing a novel is never easy;
writing a novel that explores both the good and bad in people offers an even
greater challenge and I could not have done it alone.
 Every day I thank Our Heavenly Father for blessing me
with the talent to do this and giving my heart the encouragement I need to go
on. I hope you’ll forgive me when my characters use profanity; it’s part of who
they are. Without exposure to the darker aspects of humankind, there is no
barometer by which to measure the goodness, generosity and love we have all
been gifted with.

I also want to thank the people
who have contributed to the story development of this book. I am extremely
grateful to Joanne Bliven for working with me to refine the language and
characteristics of an underprivileged child. I thank my friend and fellow
author Sunny Serafino for her wise advice and editorial guidance; and I thank
Geri Conway for reading every word I write, always believing me in me, being my
sister and helping me to remember the sage advice of our Southern Mama. And, as
always, I thank the wonderful women of my book club—for being avid readers,
astute listeners, caring friends and an unending source of inspiration.