“I think you would have gotten a phone call.”
He supposed it made sense. But something else was bothering him about the whole thing. They were riding in silence along the George Washington Parkway. Kelleher started to turn on the radio. Stevie grabbed his hand and said, “Hang on a second.”
Kelleher left the radio alone.
“You know what makes no sense at all in all this?” Stevie said. “The whole David meeting with Susan Carol thing. What was that about? It wasn’t as if any of us were looking for this story or asking questions about it. We sat there at breakfast and bought the whole Disney-movie scenario. Why would David tell Susan Carol something off the record when she had absolutely no idea there was anything to tell? Morra’s different because she probably knows that I do know something, and she’s trying to do damage control. I get that. But the David part I don’t get at all.”
It was now Kelleher’s turn to be silent for a moment. “Good point,” he said finally. “The only thing I can think of is that he somehow saw telling Susan Carol the story as an excuse to see her alone.”
“You mean put the moves on her by telling her that his dad killed his mom?”
“I’m not sure I would phrase it quite that way, but yes. Look, we don’t even know for sure what David and Morra know about that night. Maybe David wants sympathy from Susan Carol, or maybe there’s still something we don’t know. In fact, I think there’s a very good chance we haven’t got the whole story yet. Stuff like this is rarely black and white, good guys and bad guys. It’s a lot grayer than that. So it’s hard to know what David was doing until we know what he thinks happened that night. And really, just wanting to spend time with Susan Carol isn’t the craziest thing I’ve heard so far.”
Stevie laughed. “I know it sounds awful,” he said, “but if that’s what it is, you have to give the guy props for coming up with a unique way to try to impress a girl.”
They pulled into the driveway. Tamara’s car was already in the garage. She always wrote, Stevie had noticed, a little bit faster than Kelleher. He had no idea what Susan Carol had written about, since they hadn’t really spoken for twenty-four hours. Tamara and Susan Carol were sitting at the kitchen table when they walked in.
“You are really slowing down in your old age,” Tamara said as Kelleher put down his computer bag and Stevie dropped his backpack off his shoulders.
“I try to write in English,” Kelleher answered his wife, walking over to give her a kiss.
Tamara looked at Stevie. “So, young sleuth, you want to tell us about your day?”
Stevie looked at Kelleher. Technically, Tamara and Susan Carol were their competition, since they worked for the Post, but that didn’t really matter. This, however, felt different.
“I think we need to talk first,” Kelleher said. He had poured himself a Coke and sat down across from Susan Carol. Stevie was standing at the counter, his mouth feeling dry, but not, he suspected, because he was thirsty.
“What do we need to talk about?” Susan Carol asked, no doubt sensing that she was not going to like it.
“Well, to be honest, Susan Carol, we need to know if we can trust you,” Kelleher said. “I respect that you want to keep the promise you made to David-whether it was made to him as a source or a friend-even though it’s a big pain for us to deal with. What worries me is the idea that you’re telling David what we know.”
“WHAT?!”
“Morra wants to meet with Stevie to discuss what David told you.”
“WHAT?!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Stevie put in. “Maybe she wants to tell me how her dad killed her mom and the cops covered it up for him.”
“Quiet, Stevie,” Kelleher said sharply. He wasn’t sure if he was shutting him up because he was revealing too much or because he didn’t like the tone of voice he was speaking to Susan Carol in. Probably both, he figured.
“The story’s not that simple, Stevie,” Susan Carol said. “There’s more to it than that.”
Tamara kept looking from Bobby to Stevie to Susan Carol, as if trying to figure out what in the world they were talking about. Now, though, she put her arm around Susan Carol’s shoulders and said softly, “Then you should tell us the rest. Off the record doesn’t mean you can’t talk to other people about what you know as long as you know they won’t print it based on what you tell them. If Stevie and Bobby are going in the wrong direction, you need to give them some guidance.”
“I can’t,” Susan Carol said. “It wasn’t just off the record, it was a secret.”
Stevie threw his arms up in disgust. “What is this, first grade? Doesn’t it bother you that this guy basically got away with murder?”
“He did not!” Susan Carol said angrily. “He’s lived with the guilt for twelve years, and he’ll live with it the rest of his life. You just want to hate him because you think I like David.”
“Do you?” Stevie asked.
She didn’t answer, but the red in her cheeks was enough answer for Stevie.
“Okay, hang on,” Kelleher said. “Let’s try to be reasonable here. Susan Carol, if we tell you what Stevie found out today, do you promise to keep it a secret from David?”
“That seems fair,” Tamara said.
Susan Carol nodded. “Okay,” she said.
“And if you think we’ve got something wrong, you need to give us some clue so we don’t go in a direction that’s unfair to the Doyles,” Kelleher said. “We aren’t even sure there’s a story here. We need all the facts.”
She nodded again.
Kelleher looked at Stevie. “Go ahead,” he said.
Stevie went through the entire day.
When he was finished, Tamara shook her head and said, “Wow.” The three of them waited Susan Carol out, staying quiet.
“All I can tell you,” she finally said, “is that you have most of the facts but not the story-you’re spinning it in a way that isn’t the truth.”
“Or maybe someone spun the story for you in a way that was designed to get your sympathy-is that possible?” Kelleher said gently.
“I really don’t know for sure, do I?” Susan Carol said. “And neither do you guys. The only person who knows for sure is Norbert, so you’ll have to get it from him. But I don’t think you will. It’s his story and he’s got a right to decide whether he wants to go public with it or not.”
“That’s true,” Kelleher said. “Unless the story he and David Felkoff are pitching to Hollywood and New York publishers is the fantasy he pitched to you and Stevie in Boston. He definitely has a right to his privacy, but he doesn’t have a right to lie to the public and try to make a fortune from that lie.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Susan Carol said, her eyes filling with tears. She got up and ran from the room. Stevie couldn’t help but notice that this was getting to be a nightly occurrence.
Tamara stood up. “I’ll talk to her,” she said.
“Good idea,” Kelleher said. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
“Try to remember she’s fourteen, Bobby,” Tamara said.
“So’s Stevie,” Kelleher said. “He may not like it that she likes David, but he’s not bursting into tears and running from the room every ten minutes.”
For the first time since he had met them, Stevie sensed tension between Tamara and Bobby.
“Cool it, Bobby,” Tamara said. “She’s our friend, not a ballplayer or a coach or an agent.”
She turned on her heel and followed Susan Carol out of the room.
“Well,” Kelleher said. “That went well, didn’t it?”
No, it certainly hadn’t gone well. But Stevie actually felt a little better. Kelleher had answered the question that he had been trying to answer on the train ride back: what was the story they were chasing? Now he knew: the story was about an athlete living a lie-no, more than that, selling a lie.
17: MEETING WITH MORRA
THE BEST NEWS OF THE LONG DAY for Stevie was that he was so tired when he went upstairs to bed he h
ad no trouble sleeping. He tossed and turned briefly, wondering if he and Susan Carol would ever be friends again, but fell sound asleep soon after.
He hadn’t set an alarm and no one came to wake him, but he was still up by seven-thirty He went downstairs and, to his surprise, found Susan Carol sitting by herself drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.
“Mind if I have some of your coffee?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said.
He poured himself some coffee and sat down across from her. She had the Herald’s Sports section in front of her, so he picked up the Post’s.
“What’d Tamara write about?” he asked, hoping to make conversation.
“Stan Kasten,” she answered. “She wrote about what it means to him to get this team into the World Series after starting from scratch the way he did back in Atlanta.”
“Good idea,” he said.
She sipped and read, so he sipped and read. He wasn’t really reading, though. He kept trying to read Mearns’s column but couldn’t seem to get past the paragraph where she described how Kasten, when the Nats were struggling, had handed out cards that said “Stan Kasten-Village Idiot” on them.
“Look, Stevie, I need to tell you something,” Susan Carol finally said, pushing the paper away. “I know Morra told you your meeting isn’t a setup, that she just wants to talk. She’s lying. It is a setup.”
“How? I mean, how do you know?”
She shrugged. “David sent me a text last night.”
“You guys communicating pretty regularly?”
“Yes,” she said, looking him right in the eye.
He decided to steer the conversation in another direction. “What do you mean it’s a setup?”
“They know you were in Lynchburg yesterday.”
“How?!”
“I don’t know, he didn’t say. But the fact that they know and they care makes me wonder if something isn’t rotten in Denmark.”
“ Denmark?”
She gave him the old “You are too stupid to live” look, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. “I forgot you only read Sports sections. It’s a line from Hamlet. It means something is suspicious.”
Of course it was a line from Hamlet.
“Sorry,” he said. And then, perhaps because she had almost smiled, he added, “And I’m sorry I’ve been acting like a jealous dope.”
This time she gave him the real Smile. “Thanks for saying that,” she said. “I haven’t exactly been easy to deal with the last couple of days either. Look, I’m honestly not sure what’s going on here. The story David told me in Boston was pretty convincing-and very sad. But based on what you learned yesterday, and the fact that they must be snooping around themselves, it makes me wonder if it’s the truth.”
“It’s possible that David doesn’t even know the truth,” Stevie said, surprising himself by taking a position favorable to David.
“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “But somewhere along the line the grown-ups-Norbert, Felkoff, someone-has involved David and Morra in all this. It wouldn’t shock me if the twins know about Felkoff sending Walsh down there.”
“Did you tell David how much I know?” he asked.
“No!” she answered, flashing anger again. “I didn’t tell him anything. All he knows is that you were in Lynchburg and that you and Bobby are looking into the accident.”
“Which makes them nervous because their father has been lying about what happened.”
She sighed. “Like I said, I’m not sure if he’s lying or not. Unfortunately, I made a promise, and even though I regret that promise right now, I’m not going to break it. But Morra is probably going to try to get you off the story today, and, well, I want to be sure you don’t let her do it.”
“You think she’s going to dazzle me with her beauty?”
She almost smiled. “Funnily enough, I don’t think you dazzle that easily. She’ll bat her eyes at you a lot and she’ll probably cry too. But more important, she’ll try to get you to agree to hear the whole story off the record. You can’t fall into that trap.”
“Is that what happened to you in Boston?” he asked.
“Sort of,” she said.
Stevie stayed quiet. He wasn’t really sure whether he wanted her to elaborate or not.
She sighed. “Look, he called me after you and I left the hotel. He wanted to know if I was doing anything that afternoon. I wasn’t, so I agreed to meet him at Faneuil Hall. It started very innocently, me just kind of babbling about how amazing his father’s story was becoming, especially with him starting in the World Series.”
“And?”
“He was talking about how proud he was of his dad, how much he’d overcome, more than anyone knew. That’s when he told me the whole story-I mean everything-and swore me to secrecy.”
“Do you think he was trying to make sure you didn’t pursue the story?”
“No,” she said, looking him in the eye. “I think he was trying to make me feel sympathetic toward him.”
“So he was trying to put the moves on you, basically.”
“Basically.”
Stevie’s stomach was twisted in a knot. The next question was obvious, but he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to hear the answer. He took a deep breath and asked anyway.
“Did it work?”
She looked out the window for a second, which scared him, then back at him. “Almost,” she said. “When we went for a walk on the Freedom Trail, he tried to hold my hand and I let him. Then, at the end, he tried to kiss me.”
She stopped, leaving Stevie in a cold sweat. “I’m not going to tell you I wasn’t tempted, Stevie. He’s handsome and he’s smart and I did feel for him after he told me the story. So in that sense his plan worked. But I stopped him and told him I had a boyfriend.”
Stevie felt his heart start to pump again. He felt an adrenaline rush. “Has he tried again?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I’ve made a point of not being alone with him since then.”
“Really?” Stevie said. He felt overwhelmingly grateful for this news.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, she gave him the Smile. “Remember what I said? I have a boyfriend. If he still wants to be my boyfriend.”
She gave him the Smile again. That was all the encouragement he needed.
He stood up, walked to where she was sitting, leaned down, and kissed her. He was about to put his arm around her when he heard Tamara’s voice behind him.
“Well, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes,” she said.
Stevie jumped back, embarrassed but fully aware that he had a silly grin on his face.
Tamara was smiling but was too polite to say anything more. “I guess I need to make more coffee,” she said, looking at the empty pot and the half-empty mugs on the table.
“Sorry,” Susan Carol said. “I should have made more.”
“No worries,” Tamara said. “I think your time was well-spent.”
She was still grinning. So was Susan Carol. Suddenly, Stevie’s day was looking up.
Kelleher showed up in the kitchen a few minutes after his wife. Susan Carol volunteered to make eggs for everyone, and they spent a while discussing that night’s pitching matchup- Boston ’s Jon Lester against Washington ’s Jordan Zimmerman-while they ate.
“Lester is a great story himself,” Kelleher said. “Cancer survivor. Came back to pitch the clinching game in the 2007 World Series and then pitched a no-hitter last year.”
“And his story’s the real deal,” Stevie said, feeling emboldened after his conversation with Susan Carol.
“As far as we know,” Tamara said.
Stevie showered after breakfast, called his parents to tell them everything had gone fine in Lynchburg-he was grateful his dad answered and didn’t ask for details the way his mom would have-and then called Morra Doyle’s cell phone number shortly after nine o’clock. She answered on the first ring.
“I was afraid you might not call,” she
said.
She had, he noticed, just a hint of a Southern accent. It wasn’t as pronounced as Susan Carol’s, but it was there.
“Of course I’d call,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She didn’t respond to the question. “Is there any way we can meet for lunch?” she asked. “We’re staying downtown at the Renaissance Hotel on Ninth Street.”
“I can find out where that is, I’m sure,” he said. “I’m staying out in Maryland. Is there anyplace to eat nearby?”
“We ate at a place called Clyde ’s the other day,” she said. “It was very good. It’s right near the Verizon Center.”
Stevie knew the Verizon Center was the downtown arena where Washington ’s NBA and NHL teams played.
“I’m sure I can find it. Why don’t I meet you there at noon?”
“Great!” she said, sounding a little bit, Stevie thought, as if they’d just made a prom date. “I’ll see you then.”
Stevie told Kelleher about the conversation. “ Clyde ’s is easy,” he said. “It’s a few blocks from my office. I need to go in for a couple hours today anyway. I’ll drop you off, and then you can walk over there and meet me when you’re finished.”
“When do we talk to Doyle or Felkoff?” Stevie asked.
“Easy there,” Kelleher said. “Let’s see what Miss Morra has to say first.”
Stevie killed the rest of the morning reading the papers-easier to do when he wasn’t a nervous wreck-and, grudgingly, trying to finish The Great Gatsby. Susan Carol reminded him one more time about not being charmed by Morra before he and Kelleher left.
“If she comes on to you, remember to tell her you have a girlfriend,” she said, smiling. She leaned down and gave him a quick kiss as he was going out the door, causing Stevie to climb into the car with what he knew was a goofy grin.
“So all is well in paradise again?” Kelleher said.
“Yup,” Stevie said. “He came on to her, but she told him she had a boyfriend.”
“You see?” Kelleher said. “You should never underestimate Susan Carol.”
“I should know that by now, shouldn’t I?” Stevie said.
The trip downtown passed quickly. Traffic on a Saturday morning was light. As Kelleher pulled up to the restaurant, they could see Morra Doyle waiting outside. The day was warm, and she was wearing a light blue sundress and high-heeled sandals.
Change-up: Mystery at the World Series Page 14