A Shiver of Wonder

by Daniel Kelley

  “You know, I spent some time doing research on Mr. Wilcott’s background,” Ormsby said casually. “I wonder what would turn up on you if I poked around.”

  A look of wariness flitted across Bill’s face, and then evaporated just as quickly. “Clean as a whistle,” he growled. “Have at it.”

  “I can’t help but question,” Ormsby continued, “how it is that a man got the life beaten out of him, yet you were only a few feet away and purportedly heard nothing.”

  The cigar was removed from his mouth. Bill inched closer. “You smug turd,” he said in a low, dangerous rumble. “You know damn well what I was doin’ at the time.”

  “Cleaning a fountain,” Ormsby sneered. “A more ridiculous excuse for a grown man making a living I’ve never – ”

  “Hey, hey, hey!” David interjected, stepping between the two men as Bill surged toward the policeman. “Cool it, cool it. Bill, let it go. It’s not worth it.”

  Ormsby had barely even shifted. “Mr. Wilcott’s had some experience with the police before,” he said lightly. “Better take his advice, Lo-pes.”

  And this time it was Bill grabbing David as he tensed, desiring nothing more than to punch the pompous detective right in the teeth.

  Instead, David forced himself to back away, from both of the men. “The fountain is in the courtyard, at least seventy feet away from Janice’s door,” he said, his voice strained and a touch shaky. “Bill cleans it in the middle of the day each week.” He found that his hands were quivering as well. “You’re serving no purpose here, Ormsby, except perhaps to provide yourself with some sort of sick amusement. Either tell one of us that we’re under arrest or leave.”

  Ormsby appeared entertained. Bill was staring at David with his mouth hanging open.

  David’s voice grew stronger, the shake evening out to form a core to his words. “That’s what I thought. You’ve got nothing. I don’t have a clue what your motive is for this sorry excuse for an interrogation, but I’m going to go let my dog out now, and Bill is coming with me.” He stepped toward the lobby of the Rainbow Arms, roughly grabbing Bill as he did so.

  “I told you he was an asshole,” Bill muttered, as behind them Ormsby started to laugh, a raucous, braying chortle.

  “You need to brush your teeth, Bill,” David replied. “You could sterilize the entire fountain with a single whiff of that stench.”

  The laughter continued, becoming hollow as the men entered the lobby.

  “Is it that bad?” Bill asked, actually sounding worried. “Sorry, David. I’ll fix it up in a jiff. I mighta had one too many last night, I think.”

  David patted his friend’s back. “More like ten too many, but I’m not gonna judge ya.”

  Bill smiled at him, keeping his lips closed. And then he aimed his next words away. “I bet I don’t stink half as bad as that pig back there. That Ormsky’s been dippin’ into the squirrel stash.”

  “That’s a truth,” David replied with a grin. “That’s a truth.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was twenty-seven years earlier that David’s parents, Ned and Penny Wilcott, first came into some good money. David had been four, his sisters Nancy and Fran six and seven, and with three growing kids eating them out of house and home, it was about Goddamned time that the Wilcotts finally figured out how to make the sales game pay off.

  For two and a half years, the commission checks rolled in, rolled in, rolled in. Penny kept the books; Ned stayed out on the road, pounding the pavement and beating the bushes. David recalled most of his childhood as having taken place in a household populated solely by older females.

  The kickbacks to buyers were eventually unearthed by the corporate mother ship, though, and Penny’s books, beautifully cooked to a crisp, were dissected, reconstructed, and then buried. The Wilcotts moved right out of their brand new four-bedroom with a pool in suburbia, and back into an apartment.

  This pattern repeated itself, with varying lengths, throughout David’s formative years. The unraveling of what fortune had blown the Wilcotts’ way was never due to identical factors, but unravel things did, over and over and over.

  David, smaller than most of the boys his age while growing up, had been teased, bullied, and beaten up. His one weapon of counteraction had been his gradually acquired ability to make his tormentors laugh. If he could break through their determined harassment with his wit, he would usually be sent on his way with only a few sore spots as opposed to a bumper crop of bruises.

  His repartee fell flat at home, though. Penny, worn, bitter, and resentful of all that the world had taken away from her, had no patience for her weakling of a son or his pathetic attempts at drollery. Fran and Nancy, desperate to move on to any pasture other than their own – greener or not – ignored David, became adults as fast as humanly possible, and bailed on the family unit at eighteen. Ned had rarely been around, but tended to find his underdeveloped male progeny irritating and strange.

  David was strange because he was smart. Really smart. He picked up math so easily that by the time he entered ninth grade, he was already far beyond Calculus and Trigonometry. Sciences were a breeze. Computers were mere toys, begging to be taken apart and put back together again in newer, better ways.

  It was no wonder that the other boys enjoyed giving him a good licking every so often.

  Confidence. Confidence was one attribute of which David was in seriously short supply. Nobody seemed to truly like him. Not his family, not his peers, not even the occasional girls who would go out with him, usually around the time they had some project due that required more knowledge and skill than they possessed. Even his teachers hadn’t found themselves overly enamored of this nerdy boy genius who without any effort at all could upstage them, or shred their authority with another perfectly timed zinger.

  It was when he went to college that David finally began to come into his own. Surrounded by fellow geeks, inspired by the explosion of online companies that every day seemed to be taking the world by storm, he became an entrepreneur. At first, he was simply a go-to guy for quiet questions about shortcuts, or about access to servers not meant to be accessed. By his sophomore year, he was involved in three different undertakings designed to separate people from their wallets while purportedly bettering their lives. By the end of his senior year, his grades had tanked due to truancy, but David was receiving a cut of the action from some nineteen different websites, all of which he had had some part in creating.

  He’d become popular. Really popular. Having money can do that for people.

  Along with the popularity had come confidence. Confidence in himself, confidence in his abilities, confidence in his abilities with other people. The best part of this for David was that he found that other people liked him. A lot. He was helping to make them popular and confident, too.

  He had a girlfriend for a while. Her name was Stephanie. After Stephanie came Julie. After Julie came Rosa. It was still a long, slippery slope upwards until Camber, but David’s fears regarding what the opposite sex thought of him had begun to dissipate.

  After college, he had set up shop. A three-story townhouse only steps from a bustling nightclub district became the center of his world. He was available for hire, and, because of his willingness to look the other way on occasion, always busy. He covered his tracks, covered his clients’ tracks, and nobody appeared to be the wiser.

  No matter what David did – or didn’t do, to be more accurate – he always tried to be a nice guy. He remembered all too well the thrashings he had suffered, the loneliness at school, the coldness of being shut out at home by his family. He tipped generously. He made friends with doormen, janitors, and cleaning ladies. He made sure that he knew the names of all the kids in his neighborhood, as well as those of their parents and grandparents, too.

  But he pined for more. He had done well, he could do better. When he turned 26, and was asked to be a principal in a new venture, an idea an acquaintance had had to combine social media and dog owners, just
thinking about the potential for advertising dollars had made David’s head spin. He’d signed on within minutes. He ceased all work on other projects to begin building one of the most comprehensive websites ever, capable of efficiently handling the enormous volume of traffic that he knew this golden opportunity would generate.

  It had been a fantastic idea. But the line between an undeniable success and becoming an easy punch line for comics mining other people’s failures for material is sometimes a thin one. And David had found himself on the wrong side of that line, even before the heightened scrutiny of the enterprise brought his prior, less-than-blameless, dealings to light. The pressures of work, combined with the promise of unimaginable wealth, had delivered to him new friends, new pleasures, and new stresses.

  David had lost himself. And then he had lost everything.

  Other than Grandpa Wilcott and a single phone call from his sister Nancy asking for a loan, he had had no contact with his family in years. When the bottom fell out of his life, he had no one to turn to, nowhere to go. Messages weren’t acknowledged, his former clients were understandably loathe to renew any association with him, his ‘friends’ couldn’t remember ever having been friends with him.

  Even Nancy hadn’t called him back. He hadn’t wanted her to return the money he’d given her, he had only wanted to talk.

  David had wanted to disappear off the map. And so he had.

  He had moved to Shady Grove.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I’m sorry about Harvey.”

  “Harvey?”

  Genevieve’s eyebrows rose. “Your favorite detective.”

  “Oh. Oh! How did you…”

  She rolled her eyes with a smile. “He stopped by the house this afternoon. I was a little surprised to see him, it’s been so long. I actually thought it might be you, but when I answered the door, it was him.”

  David couldn’t help but grin. “Harvey Ormsby. If he hadn’t been such a complete jerk, I’d almost feel sorry for him with a name like that.”

  “He said he might have come down a little hard on you. Earlier, I guess, earlier today. At first I thought he meant on Thursday, or whenever it was you’d said he wasn’t very nice to you.”

  “That would be every time I’ve seen him,” David replied dryly. “I don’t think he has any nice in him, anywhere. Ever.”

  She reached forward to take his hand. “He can be all right at times. He’s just not very… sensitive, like you. He’s less complicated, more…”

  “Manly?” But David wasn’t trying to make himself feel bad. The adjective seemed an appropriate descriptor for the obvious hunk of beef that was Detective Ormsby.

  “Yes,” Genevieve agreed. “But in the least complimentary terms that word can imply.” She pulled his hand toward her. “Thank you for making a reservation here. Thank you for forgiving me for being snippy yesterday.”

  David wasn’t sure if ‘snippy’ quite covered the way Genevieve had acted when she’d spotted him with Janice the day before, but it didn’t matter. She was here with him, smiling at him, and, for once, pulling him closer to her.

  “We’ve only come here twice,” he said. “On our year anniversary, and with Abby that time. I was happy to manufacture an excuse for another visit.”

  She released him. “Well, if my behavior gives you a good excuse for this, we should be coming here weekly, right?”

  “I could never afford it!”

  “But aren’t I worth it?”

  She beamed at him, and David felt a flush of warmth infuse the whole of his being. In an elegant forest green dress with gold accents and radiant jewelry to match, with her hair done up in a fetching swoop and a lively pair of eyes that were right now focused wholly on him, Genevieve was that most beautiful of creatures on Earth, a woman in love.

  He was glad that he’d chosen Longworth House for their dinner tonight. Situated in the hills above town, it was the former residence of the Dr. Longworth after whom the Avenue was named. Overlooking the eastern end of the Shady Grove business district as well as a good part of the town, the restaurant was luxurious, private, and renowned for its desserts, nearly all of which were quietly created by Gâteaupia.

  David had walked to Genevieve’s house, and then she had driven the two of them to dinner.

  “You never really told me what you and Jess talked about,” she said as their salad plates were cleared in preparation for the main course.

  “She didn’t spill all to you?” he asked, testing the wine that their server had just poured.

  “Uh, uh! She told me that it was up to you to share. Is it good?”

  He nodded. “Perfect for lamb. So am I supposed to detail all of my sinful questions to you now?”

  She winked. “I already knew what they were. But in all seriousness, David, was it helpful to talk to her? I’d thought about it before, but never followed through, with either of you.”

  Again, he nodded. “I liked her. I think it was brilliant to have her just call me; I would have been totally scared out of my wits if I’d known about it beforehand.”

  “Should the fact that you answered her call without even knowing who it was worry me? When I can’t ever seem to catch you myself?”

  He laughed. “It was a fluke. I literally had just gone hunting for my phone, and as I picked it up, bingo!”

  “A cute girl on the other end of the line.”

  “Exactly! Though I have no idea if she’s cute or not. If she looks anything like you, you’re in trouble when I meet her.”

  “Did you like her voice?” Genevieve asked. “I just complimented you by saying you’re sensitive. I’d hate for that to be disproved so rapidly by your judging Jess solely on her looks.”

  “Hey! I said I liked her! Though at first I thought she was cold calling me, and I was prepared to chew her out for bothering me so late at night. But she’s… she’s warm. And funny. And she certainly knows you.”

  “Oh, that she does, poor girl,” Genevieve snickered. “All about everything. I almost feel sorry for her!” She reached for her wineglass and took a leisurely sip. “Was she able to answer your questions about Todd?”

  David looked down, fussed with his napkin, straightened the edges of the tablecloth. While stalling, he marveled yet again at Genevieve’s seemingly endless capacity for bringing up Todd, discussing the subject with an almost clinical detachment, and then chastising him for obsessing over her former fiancé into the wee hours of the night.

  Todd was a paragon. Todd was a selfish tool. Todd had managed to last seven years with the high-strung, controlling Genevieve.

  David didn’t know what Todd looked like either, but he was probably better off in the dark.

  “She said he wasn’t honest,” David said aloud. “With you. For a lot of the time you were together.”

  “Mmm. An entirely accurate statement.” Her hand moved toward her wine again.

  “It’s funny. After I got off the phone with Jess, it occurred to me that in all the times we’ve… talked about him, you’ve mentioned anger, heartbreak, desolation, occasional disgust, and drunkenness. But you’ve never once said the word ‘untruthful.’ Ever.”

  She had grasped her wineglass but not lifted it. “Shouldn’t that have been obvious?”

  “No.” David shook his head. “No, it wasn’t obvious. A lot of other things were, but that untruthfulness thing… it’s kind of its own little island. I should know, Genevieve. I was untruthful with myself all those years. It’s nothing like anger, or loneliness, or… well, any of them. I can’t speak for you regarding what Todd may have done, but it was the worst part of what I went through, waking up one day and realizing that I’d been lying to myself, let alone everyone around me.”

  Genevieve was watching him, carefully, her gaze soft and thoughtful. Her hand retreated from the wineglass, and she began to rub a knife with her thumb. “It wasn’t you Harvey wanted to punish,” she said. “It’s who you represent. He’s hurt because Todd left Shady Grove,
and he’s only bothered to get in touch with him a few times since. He admired Todd, a lot. He was two years behind him in school, so Todd was the quarterback on the football team for two seasons running while Harvey played defensive end.

  “No. Wait!” Genevieve’s hand had come up as David began to open his mouth. “I know what he said to you. I know how completely and utterly terrible he must have made you feel today. It’s all related. Let me just finish, please.”

  His mouth had already snapped shut. He nodded to her as her fingers returned to the knife.

  “When Todd moved back to Shady Grove after college, Harvey was in heaven. He’d just joined the police department, and here came his idol, the former hero come back home to teach science at the high school and coach the football team. Harvey immediately signed up to assistant coach, and then persuaded Todd to become a volunteer on the force. They were best buds, pals through thick and thin, real men who knew without a doubt that they were superior to any ordinary sort of man.”

  Her head was shaking as she once again rolled her eyes. The knife was being lifted, dropped, lifted.

  “So after almost a dozen years of this, this incredible, manly friendship – with Harvey married to his job, and Todd finally engaged to his long-term girlfriend – Todd takes off. No warning, no warning signs. He at least waited until the end of the school year in June. But while I certainly had an inkling that it was coming, that our engagement would never transition into marriage, Harvey was knocked cold with it when he stopped by the store one morning to ask why Todd hadn’t come over the night before for brewskis and some b-ball.”

  Her eyes closed as she began replaying the scene in her head. “ ‘He didn’t tell you?’ I asked him. ‘Tell me what?’ he said back, looking upset because he probably thought that Todd had found another friend to hang out with. ‘He left,’ I told him. ‘When’s he coming back?’ he asked. And then I made the mistake of saying, ‘Probably never, if I had to guess.’ And that was when Harvey lost it. He began to shout at me: ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’ He was so furious, with Todd, with me. He had no idea what had just happened to him, and the few customers we had in the store right then could only stare at him as he railed and railed, smashing his fist down into his palm over and over. Lydia came over and, as always, saved the day, moving us outside in the most diplomatic way, walking us halfway down the block so we could ‘talk more privately.’ ”