The Popsicle Tree (29 page)

Well, there was one way to find out.

*

I didn't want to try to reach Jan at work, so made a mental note to call her from home.

The afternoon passed, and I left the office early enough to swing by and pick up Jonathan before going to Happy Day for Joshua. Not particularly wanting to see either of the Bronson sisters at the moment, I waited in the car while Jonathan went in to get him. He was gone what seemed like a very long time, and when he came out with Joshua, he did not look happy.

“Something wrong?” I asked after Jonathan had put Joshua in the back seat and gotten in the front seat beside me.

“We'll talk about it later.”

I didn't think I liked the sound of that. And when Joshua wanted to get in the front seat with us, Jonathan firmly told him “No.”

I had no idea what was going on, but didn't want to step into anything until I knew more about it.

When we got home, Jonathan told Joshua to go play in his room while Jonathan and I talked about grown-up things. I followed Jonathan into the kitchen and fixed my Manhattan, opened a can of Coke for him, then joined him at the kitchen table.

“Okay, what's the problem?”

“He got into a fight today with another boy.”

“He's four years old. How much of a fight could it have been?”

Jonathan scowled at me. “That's not the point! He gave the boy a bloody nose!”

“So what was it all about?”

He took a long drink of his Coke before replying. “Apparently the other boy said something about the fact that while every other kid there has a mother or a father, Joshua doesn't, and Joshua just lit into him! I'm not going to have him turning into a bully!”

“That hardly sounds like being a bully to me.”

“You're defending him?” Jonathan asked, obviously not pleased.

“No, I'm not defending him. He shouldn't have hit the kid, but I can understand why he did. He's four years old! He doesn't know how else to react.”

“Well he'd damned well better learn,” Jonathan said firmly.

The fact that Jonathan seldom swore underscored the intensity of his feelings. There had been a couple of previous occasions when Jonathan and I didn't agree on how to handle Joshua's behavior, and I usually deferred to Jonathan, since Joshua was his blood relation. But as time went on and it began to sink in that Joshua was going to be a permanent part of both our lives, I'd been a little less hesitant about putting my own opinions forward. I still tried to do it diplomatically.

I reached across the table and took Jonathan's hand.

“And he'll learn. We just have to strike a balance between overreacting and underreacting. What did the Bronsons say? Were they upset?”

“Well, they certainly weren't happy about it, but Bonnie said she would talk with the boy's mother and try to explain what happened. I'm just worried that if it happens again, they might try to throw Joshua out. Then what would we do?”

I smiled…I hoped reassuringly. “I don't think that's likely to happen. The Bronsons have had a lot more experience dealing with squabbling kids than we have.”

I was surprised to have a sudden thought that I hoped Bonnie Bronson was not involved in Carlene's death, because if she were, Happy Day might have to close. A pretty odd thought, and a pretty big sea change from the old nobody-to-worry-about-but-me Dick Hardesty.

When Jonathan didn't say anything, I continued. “So what do you want to do about this?”

He took another swig of his Coke. “What do
you
suggest?”

I was pleased that he was acknowledging that it was something we both were part of.

“I suppose we should start out with a talk with Joshua.”

Jonathan nodded. “And an apology to the other boy,” he added.

“Definitely.”

And another crisis resolved—at least for the moment.

*

After dinner we took the opportunity of a communal dishwashing/drying to talk with Joshua about how big boys were expected to behave when challenged, and I gained new respect for the art of parenting.

Later, I dug out and called Jan Houston's number, hoping she'd be home. Again, I had no idea when I picked up the phone exactly what I was going to say if she was there, but I'd become fairly good at winging it over the years.

The phone rang three times when I heard it being picked up. “Hello?”

“Jan, this is Dick Hardesty. I…”

She cut me off before I could finish the sentence.

“What do you want now? Why can't you just leave me the hell alone?”

“Because I'm still trying to find out why Carlene was killed.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I don't know anything at all about it?” she said, a little wearily, I thought.

“Because like it or not, you're a central figure in the whole thing.”

Silence.

“Tell me, when you lived in Louisville, did you ever know a man named Eddie Styles?”

“Eddie Styles? Where did you hear that name?”

“Someone I know in Louisville was mentioning it.”

“So why ask me if I know him? Do you have any idea how many people live in Louisville?”

“A lot, I'm sure. But you do know him, don't you?” Actually, I had no idea whether she did or not. If she did it was a pretty small world, but I didn't really have anything to lose.

So imagine my surprise when, after yet another pause, she said, “Yes, I know—knew—him. I haven't seen or talked to him since I was a kid. What does he have to do with anything?”

I reminded myself to go out and buy a fistful of lottery tickets!

“Do you know what he does for a living?”

“How should I know? I said I haven't seen or talked to him since I was a kid.”

Time to drop the bombshell.

“Then you didn't know he was driving the van that killed Carlene?”

Utter silence. I waited for a full thirty seconds, then said, “Hello? You still there?”

“I…Yes, I'm here. What are you saying? What are you trying to tell me? It can't be the same Eddie Styles! That's impossible. I…”

“Can I ask how you know…knew…him?”

“He's my godfather.”

CHAPTER 14

What do they call it?
Deus ex machina
? Something from so far out of left field you're left shaking your head wondering where in the hell
that
came from!

How did I ever associate Eddie Styles and Jan Houston in the first place? Because they were both from Kentucky? So were several million other people. Both from Louisville? Okay, that narrows it down to only about…what?…950,000?

Yeah, but while I've never really been quite sure how or why my mind comes up with the things it does, more often than not it turns out to have a reason. It seems to be pretty good at putting tiny pieces of a puzzle together, even if I'm not sure of the connection at the time.

And Louisville was a definite link between Carlene and Jan and Roy. So maybe the
Deus
wasn't totally
ex machina.

That Jan Houston
did
know Eddie Styles of course could be seen as practically an admission that she was behind Carlene's death. But if she was, why would she admit to even knowing who Eddie Styles was? She didn't have to, and I'd have had a heck of a time trying to find it out on my own. But maybe she thought I knew more than I did, and was admitting to knowing him to throw me off track. And maybe the Easter Bunny lays colored eggs.

Before I'd hung up on my call to Jan Houston, she had said again that she had never had much contact with her godfather and hadn't seen or heard from him in years, had no idea how to reach him, where he lived or what he did for a living, or even that he was still alive. She didn't even know why he had been named as her godfather. Obviously, he'd been a friend of her parents…maybe through Jan's father having been involved in gambling.

And the revelation of her knowing Eddie Styles had so disconcerted me I hadn't even mentioned the D'Angelos.

And there was something else…another piece to the puzzle, relating to the D'Angelos…
come on, mind, give it up!
…Roy's dad?…auto repair shops and…?…
bookies!
Carlene said Roy's dad was a bookie! So was Jan's dad! A link there? Eddie Styles could have known them both? Even in a city the size of Louisville, it's pretty likely that most of the shady characters know one another.

Put two and two together, Hardesty
, a mind-voice urged.

Jan and Roy are brother and sister?
I asked myself incredulously.

Uh, no,
my mind responded.
I don't think you have to go quite that far. Nobody's even so much as suggested that Jan had a brother.

But she could!
I thought.

Yes, she could. And the Easter Bunny really might lay colored eggs. But “could” and “does” are two different words. Don't try too hard to make them interchangeable.

Granted—a racetrack town like Louisville was bound to have more than one bookie. Well, Jan at least knew Roy, somehow, and actively disliked him. There had to be a reason.

Okay, so there was a more-than-possible chance that Eddie Styles was some sort of link between Jan's family and Roy's…which meant that Roy might well know Eddie Styles too, and that if Jan Houston didn't hire Eddie to kill Carlene, maybe Roy D'Angelo did!

Roy had denied knowing Eddie when I'd asked him about it, but I'd doubted his answer when he gave it, and I doubted it even more now. Same with Angelina.

So what to do? Well, the bull-in-the-china-shop approach might work. One thing I've learned is that if you have some sort of title (like “private investigator”) and sound like you know what you're talking about, most people tend to accept that you do. And with people from families as dysfunctional as Roy D'Angelo's seemed to be, that might be a definite advantage. Considering the apparent strain between his mother and him and his mother and his aunt, he probably couldn't really be sure how much I might have learned from talking with them all.

I'd call him in the morning.

*

I suddenly was aware that Joshua was bouncing Bunny up and down on my lap, obviously trying to get my attention.

“Come on!” Joshua said impatiently. “It's time to read a story!”

I was surprised to see him standing there in his pajamas, hair still damp from his bath, his face freshly scrubbed to that fantastic little-kid shine. I looked up at Jonathan and he just returned the look with a grin and a slow shake of his head.

“You've been away.”

I realized he was right. I hate it when I do that.

When we got Joshua into bed, he announced that tonight
he
was going to read to
us
! When I asked him which of his books he was going to read, he pulled
The Popsicle Tree
out from under his pillow. I could definitely see a bit of collusion going on here; Jonathan sat there with a barely repressed smile.

We all sat propped up with pillows against the headboard, Bunny on Jonathan's lap. With great fanfare, Joshua opened the book and began to read. Considering the number of times he'd had the book read to him, it wasn't surprising he knew most of it by heart, and he did a very convincing job of it, getting off track only occasionally as something in one of the pictures would catch his eye and he would stop to point at it and make some sort of stream-of-consciousness observation about it. But then Jonathan would cue him with a few words from whatever page we were on, and Joshua picked it right up.

It was sort of an improvisational rendition, not word for word, of course, and there were numerous chunks of the story out of order, but it was all there, and I was delighted that he so loved books at such an early age. And Joshua, of course, was very proud of himself, as well he should have been.

When he'd finished, Jonathan and I each gave him a big hug and told him what a smart boy he was.

“Now
you
read one,” Joshua said.

Knowing he wouldn't go to sleep until we did, Jonathan got off the bed to get
The Littlest Tractor
. Joshua was out like a light after ten pages, and we got up and left the room. After we'd turned out the lights in the living room and kitchen and gone into our bedroom, Jonathan slipped his arm around my waist, his face in a huge mischievous grin, and said, “Hey, Farmer Jones, feel like plowing the south forty?”

As a matter of fact, I did.

*

At the office in the morning, after my coffee/paper/crossword puzzle ritual, I thought of Roy D'Angelo. On the grounds that I really had very little to lose, I looked up his Saint Matthews phone number I'd written on an index card and dialed, not expecting him to be home. He wasn't, nor was his girlfriend. But I left a message on his machine to have him call me, collect—to save him the excuse of “I ain't gonna spend my money to call anybody long distance,” and I was hoping he'd be curious enough to return the call to find out what I knew.