The Most Dangerous Thing (29 page)

Chapter Forty

D
oris watches Tim come and go until it is almost 2
P.M
. He does not tell her what he is doing. He barely speaks to her at all. Why? Why is he mad at her? She did what a mother should do, tried to protect her son. It was no different from washing his sheets.

She found the guitar under his bed a week or so after the night of the hurricane. She knew there was no way that Go-Go could have come honestly by such a possession. She didn’t know what to do. He had been through so much. It seemed wrong to ask him about the guitar. She took it away, put it in the attic. And over the years she was the one who made sure they had no reason to go up there. She moved the stepladder to the garage, put the Christmas ornaments in the basement. By the time she was done, the only things up in the crawl space were the guitar, the hockey costume, some old boxes, and the rope ladder. As far as she knew, Go-Go didn’t even remember it was there.

Something bad,
she told Tim. She has always known that the guitar stood for something very bad. But how bad could a little boy be, especially Go-Go, who didn’t have a mean bone in his body? Yet it wasn’t long after the discovery of the guitar that the bed-wetting started. Then he showed up with that hockey stuff, also expensive. She pretended to Tim Senior that she bought it, told him she used money from a birthday check from one of her aunts, withstood his criticism for being wasteful when the household needed every dime.

Something bad
. The truly bad thing was when Doris told Go-Go about his father, what he had done for him. Her intention wasn’t only to raise Tim Senior up in his son’s memory. She also—oh, what parent feels like this?—yearned to tear Go-Go down a little, let him know of the sacrifices made for him. She was tired of his brooding, his “poor me, poor me, poor me” routine. He had a house nicer than any Doris had ever known, two beautiful little girls, and a good-enough wife.

All she wanted him to say was thank you, or words to that effect. To say that Tim and Doris did right by him, the best they could. To tell her that it wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t get his life together. Was that wrong? She tried to explain herself to Father Andrew yesterday, without telling him all the details. But Father Andrew isn’t as satisfactory a confidant, now that he’s not a priest. She isn’t sure why that should be, and maybe it’s just her own prejudice, but he seems less wise to her now, and much less sympathetic. He’s of the world now. He has lost his perspective. He wears a turquoise ring.

Tim goes out to his car, carrying the guitar. Good. She should have gotten rid of it long ago.

“Are you going to throw it in Leakin Park?” she asks him.

“Throw it—?” He shakes his head. “Sure. Why not? It’s where all Baltimore’s best dead bodies go.”

“Will you be here for lunch tomorrow?”

“It’s Easter. We’re always here for Easter lunch.”

“So you don’t hate me?”

He could be a little quicker in his reply, but when he does answer, he seems sincere. “No, Mom. I don’t hate you. I know you always had Go-Go’s best interests at heart.”

“When I told him about your father—I thought it would make him happy. Well, not happy, but proud. Loved.”

“I know, Mom.” He kisses her on the forehead. “You meant well. You always meant well.”

“You called me the enemy of fun.”

“What?”

Even Doris is surprised by how this old grievance bubbles up. “Your father, but all of you agreed, behind my back. You didn’t know that I knew, but I knew. You thought I wasn’t fun.”

“Being fun isn’t the most important thing in the world.”

“We’ll have fun tomorrow,” she says. “With the girls and Easter lunch. I have all the usual things. Ham and sweet potatoes.”

“We’ll have fun tomorrow.” Although he’s only echoing her words, and with less conviction than she would like, it has the weight of a promise. They’ll have fun tomorrow. Whatever is happening is happening only now, and it will be forgotten by tomorrow. A person can forget a lot, if she’s willing to try. Doris has always been willing.

Chapter Forty-one

G
wen finds
herself almost laughing—almost—when Tim tells her the guitar is in the trunk of
his car.

“Exhibit A, prosecutor?”

“I know,” he says. “It’s ridiculous. But I wanted
it out of my mother’s house. She thinks I should throw it into Leakin Park, and
maybe I will.”

“So why bring it?”

“Because it’s concrete. Real. Nothing else is.
Real, that is. We have our memories, but Mickey is the only person left who can
tell us what really happened that night, why she covered for Go-Go.”

“And my father.” She has to ask. “Tim—can he be
prosecuted?”

“Legally? Yes. Your father says he witnessed a
homicide and didn’t report it. At the same time, he also says he didn’t believe
it, not until my mother visited him a few weeks ago. He managed to persuade
himself that he couldn’t know, in fact, that my father killed Chicken George.
But my dad’s dying declaration changed that.”

“As an officer of the court—are you obligated to
tell someone? Someone official?”

“Yes.”

She wants to cry, she wants to pummel him, she
wants to throw herself out of the car. It’s unfair, this mess that his father
has left behind for hers. Before she can do any of these things, Tim says: “But
I’m not going to.
We
didn’t do anything, Gwen. You,
me, and Sean. We agreed not to tell the grown-ups that Mickey pushed Chicken
George, or that we had an ongoing relationship with him. But we believed
everything we said. My father believed us. Your father, too.”

“What about Rick? He was there as well.”

“He died a year ago. I found his obituary online. I
think this is a case where all the lucky ones are dead.”

“You can’t call Go-Go lucky.”

“No—no, that’s true.”

“I wish we could find Sean,” Gwen says. They have
both tried him repeatedly, but his cell phone goes straight to voice mail, and
they have been reluctant to leave any message beyond “Call me.” Gwen is actually
a little hurt by Sean’s inattention.

Tim gives a laugh that’s a good imitation of the
sound she made when she heard about the guitar. “I have a hunch he’ll meet us
there.”

M
cKey’s apartment has a security system that requires visitors to call
up. But when Gwen reaches for the receiver, Tim grabs her and sweeps her up in
an embrace, pressing her against the wall and pretending to kiss her, although
he has his hand over her mouth. Frightened by his odd behavior, Gwen is getting
ready to kick him in the shins, then stops when she realizes his intent. He is
counting on the person entering the vestibule to be embarrassed and not protest
when Tim grabs the open door and hustles in behind them.

“It’s not much of a security system, especially if
the apartment number is next to the name,” he says. “They should use random
codes, so people can’t find someone if they sneak in as we did.”

“It was a neat trick.”

“Thanks. I stole it from a movie.”

He pounds on McKey’s door even as he presses a
button on his phone, sighing when he hears a distinctive ring tone from the
other side, a burst of classical music.

“You have McKey’s number in your phone?” Gwen asks,
mystified.

“No,” Tim says. He pounds again, speaks in a firm
voice. “It’s Gwen and Tim. You have to let us in.” There is no sound on the
other side of the door. Tim presses a button on his phone again, the same ring
tone sounds from the other side of the door. But what does this prove, Gwen
thinks. McKey clearly is not here. She just happened to leave her phone
behind.

Tim speaks into the door. “I’ve got Vivian’s number
in my phone, too. I’m dialing that one next.”

Vivian?

“It’s a three-one-seven number, right? Is that the
cell or the home phone?”

McKey answers the door, wearing a floor-length
robe, a bit of floaty lavender far too pretty to be useful. Gwen cannot begin to
read the look on her face. Triumphant? Smug? Angry?

“Why did you bring Gwen? Do you think it makes you
look less pathetic?”

“I don’t think I’m the pathetic one in this
situation. I mean, I’m not the one who had to make up a lie about a golf date so
I could cheat on my wife.” He walks over to her coffee table. Gwen sees a bottle
of wine, two glasses, both with some dregs.

“I thought you were in AA,” Gwen says stupidly.
It’s easier to focus on this small detail than the larger one, the buzz of words
from Tim, the details that don’t track. Two glasses. Cheat. Golf date. That
robe.

“I was,” McKey says. “Then I realized I’m not an
alcoholic, that I was just a little unnerved by some episodes before the
holidays. I can drink in moderation.”

“Yeah, two glasses is really moderate,” Tim says.
“Look, let’s not drag this out. His phone is here. We heard it ring.”

“He stopped by earlier today. I didn’t realize he
left it here. This is awkward. I’m entertaining.”

“I bet you are,” Tim says, holding his phone out at
arm’s length. Gwen understands. He can’t read the screen close up without
reading glasses. “Here’s Vivian’s number—I wonder if I can set up a conference
call among our three phones.”

Sean comes into the living room, fully dressed.
Gwen wants to laugh at the silliness of it, this odd little moment straight out
of a bedroom farce. Sean proper and composed, as if the fact of his clothing,
his combed hair, proves he’s innocent. Yet she’s sad for him, too.
Oh, Sean. I wish you had told me what you were thinking.
Because I would have talked you out of it.
Not out of jealousy,
although she admits to herself that she is jealous, that she does feel as if
McKey has seized something that was hers. But mainly she’s sad because he’s done
something he can never take back. And she knows he’ll want to take it back,
whatever the outcome, even if there is no outcome. Her father may be right about
people being too honest. But the problem with cheating is that you can never be
spared that knowledge about yourself, whether you tell or not.

“We forgot our prop,” she says to Tim, not wanting
to think about what’s happening here and now.

“That’s okay. We won’t need it. We might all need
alcohol, though.” McKey has no intention of playing the hostess, so Gwen goes to
the kitchen, finds it stocked with wine and beer and a healthy array of whiskey,
although no food. She brings a selection to the table, with a choice of glasses.
She herself selects bourbon. She’s not driving in any sense of the word. Let Tim
take the wheel.

“Over the past twenty-four hours, Gwen and I,
separately and together, have learned a lot of things that change everything
about what we thought we knew about the night of the hurricane.” Tim is in his
professional mode. “First—and this is going to be hard to hear, Sean—Gwen’s
father says that Chicken George was probably alive when they got to him, but our
father killed him, beat him to death with a flashlight. And our father told Mom
as much the night he died.”

Sean shakes his head. “If that’s so, it would have
been reported at the time. There weren’t so many bodies dumped in Leakin Park
that such a thing would have gone overlooked.”

“It didn’t. But the body was out there for a very
long time, much longer than anyone could have guessed, washed into a culvert. It
was months before it was found, but it happens that there is an open case from
the winter of 1980.” Tim looks at McKey. “Was it hard, going back and seeing him
there, or had the stream already washed him away?”

Gwen understands that Tim is testing McKey. There’s
no reason to believe that she took the guitar, but the accusation might shake
something loose.

“I didn’t go back.”

“Someone did. I found the guitar in my family’s
attic today. And it’s hard for me to imagine Go-Go going back by himself, to see
the body of the man who allegedly molested him.”

Gwen sees Sean’s head snap up at the adverb
allegedly
. McKey has no reaction, and that’s reaction
enough.

But all she says is: “I don’t know why Go-Go did
what he did. He’s dead, so I’ll guess we’ll never know.”

“Want to know something interesting about Go-Go’s
death, Mickey? A few months ago, an old priest from our parish asked Go-Go to be
a character witness for him. A former student had come forward, said he had
recovered memories of sexual abuse, seemed to be interested in shaking cash out
of the archdiocese or even the priest himself, who comes from a well-to-do
family and has pockets deep enough to be attractive to someone angling for a
quickie settlement. Go-Go agreed to be his character witness. Then he abruptly
backed out, wouldn’t even answer phone calls from the person trying to set up
the deposition. Why would he do that?”

“Why do you keep asking me about Go-Go, what he
did? He’s not
my
brother.”

Gwen realizes that McKey is even smarter than she
ever knew, careful not to say anything. She has not made a single assertion so
far, other than insisting that she didn’t take the guitar, and she may be
telling the truth. But she knows Go-Go wasn’t molested by Chicken George.

“Go-Go did tell Father Andrew that he wanted to do
this for him because years ago he was molested by two high school boys, but he
lied and blamed it on someone else. The weird thing is, based on what he told
Father Andrew, he was molested by the older kids in 1980. So what really
happened the night of the hurricane? What did you see? Why was Chicken George
chasing you, trying to grab you? You, Mickey, not Go-Go. He tried to grab
you—and you pushed him.”

“Only because I was closer to him. Go-Go was
faster. I went to the cabin. I saw Chicken George touching Go-Go. He chased
us.”

“I think you took the guitar that night and that’s
why he chased you. It never made sense for him to run after you with it, as you
said.”

McKey smiles. Why is she smiling? “Suit yourself.
But, as you recall, your brother and I agreed on what happened. What little boy
would tell such a story if it wasn’t true? As for the high school boys—I don’t
know what that’s about. Maybe Go-Go thought that was more credible. Maybe Go-Go
liked sex with men.”

Sean has been listening intently, trying to catch
up. He is uncomfortable, Gwen knows, with having the least information of anyone
in the group, and now he breaks in. “That’s ridiculous. Go-Go wasn’t gay.”

“I’m not saying he was.” McKey’s tone, when talking
to Sean, is earnest, sweet. She’s trying to create teams. With only four of
them, they can go two-on-two. “I’m just playing Tim’s game. He’s making stuff
up. I’m making stuff up, to show him how ridiculous it is. Look, I’m truly sorry
about your dads. It can’t be fun, finding out your fathers are killers. It was
easier on everyone when we thought this was an accident.”

“Rick was there, too,” Tim says, even as Gwen tries
to parse McKey’s grammar, her tenses.
It was easier on
everyone—
She already knew this part. She knows about what Tim Senior
did. Yet Go-Go didn’t even tell his brothers. Why would he confide in McKey?
Because she’s as responsible as he is for whatever happened.

“Yes. Well, Rick wasn’t my father. It’s different.
Still, they did what they did. Don’t make this about me.”

“Go-Go told Father Andrew—”

“According to Father Andrew. And who knows what
Go-Go would say on any given day?”

Something tugs at Gwen’s memory. Tim said something
about picking pockets. She hears a squeal of brakes, a woman’s laugh. She is
standing on the steps of the private detective’s office. No, it’s not that
moment. It was something from earlier in their conversation, something about her
methods, which even she found deplorable.

“You went to AA to spy on Go-Go, just like the
private detective’s operative did. No, not spy, because obviously he saw you and
knew you were there. You wanted him to see you, wanted him to know you were
watching him. You wanted to make sure that he didn’t talk in AA, the way he did
to Father Andrew. Why did you care, McKey? What secret did you need Go-Go to
keep? Chicken George’s death? Something else?”

McKey drops her eyes to her lap and picks at the
embroidery on her robe. It’s pretty, feminine, the kind of thing that Tally used
to wear. In fact, it’s a dead ringer for an old robe of Tally’s that was in
Gwen’s dress-up box. They played dress-up on the rare days they spent indoors,
and McKey, who lived in overalls and cutoffs, always chose the frilly, girly
items.

Gwen thinks about the cabin, the night of the
storm. Why would McKey and Go-Go have gone there together? It has never made
sense, McKey stumbling on him there, two of them winding up there independently.
No one went there alone—except Sean and Gwen, and she didn’t want to go anymore
because she thought someone was watching them. Tim said straight out that he
tried to watch them only once, in the Halloran basement. So if someone was
watching—

“Did you spy on us, in the woods. You and Go-Go?
Did you watch us?”

McKey’s posture is defiant, but she won’t meet
Gwen’s eyes. “It was an accident. We went there to play and you were
. . . already playing. Anyone would do what we did.”

“But it wasn’t just the one time, was it? You went
back. You went back again and again. You went back the night of the storm, but
we weren’t there.” No, she and Sean were in her bedroom, trying to figure out
how much they could do without arousing Tally’s suspicions. And Gwen, as always,
was the bolder one. Sean was scared to death of being caught.

“You went to watch us, but we weren’t there. We
hadn’t been there for a while. What did you do, Mickey?” There is no doubt in
Gwen’s mind that Mickey, not McKey, is the person to whom she needs to talk, the one who has
the answers. “What did Chicken George see?”

“Nothing.”

“Mickey—”

“A game. Just a game.”