by Karen Young
“If she was that bad, I’m surprised you liked her well enough to marry her.”
“I was an idiot.”
She smiled. “Aren’t we all?”
He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “At least Ted managed to behave most of the time you were married.”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
Huh. He’d suspected that, but didn’t know Rachel did. And dragging Ted’s sleazy behavior into this to avoid her questions was hitting below the belt. Besides, she was just going to stand there and shoot back one-liners for every reason he gave to stay away from Cara. Rachel wouldn’t see things the way he did, regardless of what Cara might say now. And for him, it wouldn’t change anything. He was convinced that if Jack had been living with him and not Cara, he would still be alive today. Which was small comfort. No comfort.
“What could it hurt to try?” Rachel said, relentless now that she had him against the ropes.
Her eyes were soft and full of understanding, silently urging. It made him think of escape again, and though he didn’t move, he wanted to. She had an uncanny way of reaching something inside him, which probably accounted for her success as a psychologist. No, damn it, she hadn’t been insightful with Jack, he reminded himself. Just the opposite. She’d been as blind as Cara, when you got right down to it.
“And think of the payoff if she is able to shed some light,” Rachel said, driving home one more point. “You’ve tortured yourself for years, being in the dark. You may learn something that—”
“For God’s sake, Rachel!”
“I’m sorry,” she said instantly. “I can see that it’s still too difficult for you to—”
“No. No,” he said, blowing out a defeated sigh. “It’s logical. It makes perfect sense. It’s just—” He stared at his shoes for a beat or two, then looked at her. “I’m the one who should apologize,” he said. “I know you mean well. I’m sorry.” Almost choking on the words. Unfamiliar words. He didn’t remember the last time he’d said them. Living as he did, avoiding anything resembling intimacy, he didn’t ever have to apologize. To anybody.
“Then just think about it, that’s all I’m suggesting.”
He gave a reluctant laugh, watching her load up the tray. “Why do I get the feeling that I won the argument but lost the battle?” he mused.
“This is not a battle, Cam,” she said, adding the picante to the tray. “Aren’t we both working toward the same goal? Don’t we both want to prevent another tragedy at school?” Sensing the question was rhetorical, Cam was silent. “So, to get back to my original question,” she said, “you picked up nothing from Jack to make you think something might have been going on in Monk’s organization?”
“Actually, there was something and he wanted to talk about it. He phoned me the night he…died.” He took the loaded tray from her and they walked to the door. “I don’t know what was on his mind, except that he said it was something about the team and ‘some trouble.’ Those were his exact words. I went to see Monk Tyson after the funeral, but he claimed to be clueless. No trouble of any kind with his kids, he assured me.”
“I would hardly expect him to admit to trouble,” Rachel said dryly. “He’s going to hang on to his little kingdom until he’s offered something bigger and better.”
“He appears very loyal to Rose Hill,” Cam said. “I’m told he’s been offered opportunities to go to bigger, more visible schools where the money is considerably more, but has turned them down.”
Rachel frowned. “That really surprises me. It’s odd, if true. A bigger school with higher visibility means more celebrity and Monk thrives on that. He’s unmarried, so there’s no wife and kids who might object to being uprooted. In fact, I hardly ever see him in a social setting unless it relates to something going on at school. On the other hand, I know nothing about his private life. Or if he even has a life separate from Rose Hill’s sports program.”
“Enough about Monk Tyson.” Cam motioned her to open the door, eager to get with other people before she could zero in on him again. “Let’s go check if your friends need help with those shelves.”
Twelve
Nick hit the back door in a rush of male teenage energy, smelling like popcorn and a potpourri of expensive men’s cologne. “Hey, didn’t I tell you the shelves would be a piece of cake, Mom? Me and Ward couldn’t do it any better.”
“Then you can do it next time,” Rachel said, giving him a whack on his arm. Then, making a big thing of the way he smelled, she backed up, waving a hand back and forth in front of her face. “Been at the cologne counter in Dillard’s, right?”
“It was Kristin,” Nick said, snagging a banana from a bowl of fruit on his way to the fridge. Noticing Cam propped on a bar stool, he grinned with real welcome. Then, something about the situation struck him. They both looked kinda…funny. Was Cam interested in his mom…that way? If so, he was wasting his time. Mom was totally deaf, dumb and blind to that stuff, in Nick’s opinion. Clueless. Her every thought these days was about how to straighten out their lives since his dad had split.
“Nick. How’s it hangin’?”
“Loose, very loose.”
“Glad to hear it.” Nick finished the banana, tossed the peel overhand into the trash and studied the contents of the fridge. Spotting leftover pizza, he grabbed the box. Nothing better than leftover pizza except a fresh, hot one. “Kristin loves this cologne by Ralph Lauren,” he said, chomping into a cheesy wedge. “You can get it for girls or guys.”
“So you tested that one and a few others,” Rachel guessed.
“Yeah, but we learned in bio that the human nose can only distinguish between about four different smells at once, even though Kristin said no way, she didn’t believe it. So then Ward volunteered to be her guinea pig, which surprised me. He’s been kinda moody lately, but he let Kristin squirt him down pretty good, too. He’s hot for Kristin, but he denies it.” He finished a wedge of pizza and started in on another. “Anyway, between us, we musta tested about ten flavors.” He pulled at his sweatshirt with two fingers, wrinkling his nose. “I guess I need a shower.”
“I guess you do,” Rachel said, stopping him midstride as he moved past her carrying the pizza box. “And don’t take that to your room, buddy-boy. Finish it here in the kitchen or forget it.”
“Aw, Mom, those are your rules, not Gran’s. She knows I’m not gonna leave anything lying around for the roaches.”
“That’s true, because no food is leaving this kitchen, Nicholas.”
Nick, with his eyebrows raised in mock alarm, looked at Cam. “Uh-oh, when Mom goes into three-syllable mode, look out.”
Cam slipped off the stool. “What’s the rule for eating in the garage?”
“There’s not one, as far as I know.” Nick chewed noisily on his way back to the fridge for a can of soda. “Yet.”
“Close your mouth when you chew,” his mother ordered.
“How ’bout we go out there and finish the job your mom’s friends started,” Cam suggested as Nick popped the top on a root beer. “They’re assembled and standing, but they still need to be fastened to the wall. You don’t want to take a chance they’ll topple over once they’re loaded.”
“Nobody mentioned that possibility!” Rachel said. She tossed her dish towel down, ready to go out in the garage and, Nick assumed, use her body, if necessary, to hold the shelves in place. But Cam stopped her before she got to the door.
“Nick and I can take care of it, Rachel. You’ve been on the go most of the day. Why don’t you pour yourself a glass of wine, crank up a good CD and relax for a few minutes?”
Nick recognized the look on his mother’s face. It was her I-know-something’s-up-but-not-exactly-what-but-just-give-me-a-minute expression. Not as simple as trying to read Cam, Nick thought, making a stab at it, anyway, with a sharp study of the man’s face. For some reason, Cam wanted him outside, away from his mom. With a shrug, he snagged the last piece of pizza, stuffed the box in the trash and follow
ed the man outside.
“Let’s walk across to my place,” Cam said. “I’ve got some brackets that’ll work to secure the shelves to the wall, plus it’ll go easier with my power drill.”
“Okay,” Nick said, unable to read anything in his profile. Cam was pretty good at keeping a poker face.
They trudged in silence across the space that separated the two properties. Nick had always liked Cam’s house, even though it was old-fashioned. Something about it was really interesting. Like it had history. It suited Cam, like they both had a sort of dark streak, him and his house.
“I’m thinking of putting up a basketball hoop,” Cam said, indicating a space in the center of the garage’s pitched roof.
“Cool,” Nick said. “We had one at our other house. I miss it.”
“I bet. So once I get it up, feel free to use it. With your friends.”
“Hey, that’s—well, thanks.”
Cam went into his garage and took a sturdy black case from a shelf. The power drill, Nick guessed. Next, he opened a drawer in a big wood cabinet, rummaged around until he found the brackets and handed them over to Nick. “Here, you carry these while I see if I can find screws the right size. They should be here somewhere.” Another neat little cubbyhole thing mounted to the wall held about a dozen small drawers, each one labeled with screws, bolts, nails, washers. The guy was organized. Must come with his type of work. Nick didn’t see how anybody could string together all the facts in a real murder case, taking about five hundred pages to do it and have it make any sense…unless you were real organized, like inside-your-head organized. He watched Cam sort through the screws he’d need for fixing the brackets in place.
“This is a really cool workshop,” he said.
“When I lived in New York, I had so few tools that one metal box held everything I owned and still fit under the kitchen sink with room to spare.” Cam closed the drawer and put the screws in the pocket of his jeans. “When I decided to move back here, the house needed a lot of repairs. I decided to do it myself. Turned out, I liked it so much that—although I didn’t plan it—it turned into a restoration of the original house.” He gave a chuckle. “It’s been, as they say, a learning experience. For instance, to replace the stained glass and do it myself from scratch, I had to take a course.”
Nick moved to a piece of machinery across the floor. “This is a lathe, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m working on replacement dowels for the banisters, which requires a lathe. That, I didn’t have to take a class to do.” He smiled. “I bought a how-to video.”
Nick stroked a piece of wood sanded as smooth as satin. “This is really neat.”
Cam smiled. “I think so now, but when I was your age, all I knew about carpentry I learned in a year of wood shop in high school.” He stood looking around at the collection of machinery and projects in progress. “It’s a challenge, restoring the house and making things look the way they did almost a century ago. Fortunately, I don’t have to work to a schedule, just do what comes up when it comes up.”
“It’s a great old house,” Nick said. “Maybe I could lend a hand sometimes, that is, if you need a helper. Pay you back for installing the shelves for my mom, me taking off like I did and going to the mall.”
“Actually, Marta and Pete installed the shelves.”
“Pete? Who’s Pete?”
“According to your mom, he’s Marta’s ex-fiancé.”
Nick’s jaw dropped. “Whoa, that Pete. Man, as long as I can remember, I’ve heard Ms. Marta rant and rave about what a jerk he was! How’d it happen that he was here?”
“Your mother ran into him at Home Depot today while you were getting the cart.”
“And she invited him over?”
“I think he just showed up.”
“And Ms. Marta didn’t shoot him?”
Smiling, Cam brushed a few wood shavings into the trash. “No, but she didn’t seem thrilled, either.” And if Nick was reading him right, neither did Cam.
Man, you never could tell about grown-ups. Well, women. Nick studied the brackets in his hand, thinking it was pretty unlikely that Pete, the ex-fiancé, would have been invited to the house under any circumstances, considering Ms. Marta’s bad attitude all these years. “I guess this means I owe him, too.”
Cam went to an apartment-size fridge and took out two canned drinks. “You don’t owe either one of us, but I’ll take you up on your offer to help and be glad of it. I’m going to lay some flooring in the attic soon and I could use help getting the sheets of plywood up those stairs. In fact, if you want to mention it to Ward, I could use both of you.” He tossed a can to Nick and popped open his own. “The pay’s nothing to brag about, but it beats minimum wage.”
“Um, great. Wow. Just let us know what time.” So the reason for wanting to get him out of range of his mom was to offer him a job? Uh-uh, the way Cam was studying the top of that can, he still had something on his mind.
“I’ll call or tell your mom,” he said, after tasting the soda.
Definitely something else on his mind. “Cool.”
Cam propped an elbow on the tool cabinet. “How’re things going for you at school?”
“You mean, did I have that talk with Coach Monk?”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.” He bent and picked up a small wood chip. “To tell the truth, I made up some excuses like I had to take a makeup test and my mom was overloaded with moving and the divorce, plus my dad needed me for something—which was a crock, as you know.”
“How did he take it?”
“Coach? Well, he didn’t throw me off the team, which he could have. He told me to give it a while and when things ease off with my situation at home and stuff, he’d still find time to help me work out some kinks.”
“Huh.” Cam was noncommittal. “So, otherwise, how are things?”
Nick shrugged. “Okay. Same old, same old.”
“Did Ward quit, too?”
“Uh-uh. He had some stuff to say when I told him I was backing off from the coach. Thinks I’m nuts. Told me he wasn’t gonna toss away a chance to get into the big leagues like his brother, Jimbo, and Coach Tyson is the way to get there.”
“What did you mean when you said Ward was kind of moody lately?”
Nick leaned back against a nearby sawhorse, thinking. With his eyes on the can, he frowned. “I don’t know exactly, just that he used to be a lot more fun, not so…moody is the best word. He used to, you know, blow off stuff. Now he’s real touchy. His temper’s right out there. One minute he’s okay, the next he’s like, um, somebody set a match to him.”
“And this is out of character for Ward?”
“Well, sure. He never used to be so…up and down.”
Cam crossed his arms, balancing the can of soda on one bicep. “You think it has something to do with Monk’s demands on him?” When Nick’s frown deepened, thinking it over, Cam added, “Just because his brother excelled under Monk’s coaching doesn’t mean that Ward has the same gift. Maybe he’s feeling pressure. Maybe it’s too much pressure.”
“I don’t know. Ward was really thrilled when Coach Monk first told us he’d give us some special help and, like I said, way more than I was. I mean, I realized the significance of being chosen by The Man, but to Ward, it meant the chance to shine like Jimbo.”
“Shine like his brother,” Cam said, “or outshine his brother?”
“You guessed it. Outshine him. Which would be a surefire way of making his dad sit up and take notice. Finally.”
Cam smiled. “Ward ‘doesn’t get no respect,’ is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Most of the time he feels he’s, like, a runner-up. Always comes in second to Jimbo.”
“So, could it be that Monk isn’t particularly pleased with how Ward’s shaping up, which means his dad won’t be impressed, either, and he’ll continue to walk in Jimbo’s shadow? Could that be what’s making him moody?”
“If Ward’s thinking that, he’s n
uts,” Nick said, dismissing the notion. “He’s lookin’ great out there on the field.”
“But you aren’t with him all the time he’s getting coached by Monk, are you?”
“Well…no.” Nick frowned, making a stab at analyzing Ward’s situation for the first time. “But to tell the truth, I don’t think it’s that. If Coach Monk was disappointed in Ward and how he’s shaping up, The Man would let it be known. It’s like he uses people who screw up to push everyone else to their maximum best. Makes ’em an example of where not to go.”
“Nobody likes to be labeled a loser,” Cam murmured.
“You got it.” Nick drank some soda, trying to get a fix on Cam’s interest in what was happening in the sports program at Rose Hill. He sensed it was related in some way to Cam’s son who’d committed suicide.
“How about yourself, Nick? Have you ever felt as if something wasn’t quite right in Monk’s sports program? I mean, the overall program. Have you ever suspected that some of the athletes were overly pressured?”
“They’re pressured, sure. You hear people say winning’s not everything, it’s how you play the game, right?” Nick gave a short laugh and rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. Winning is all it’s about.”
“Well, have you ever sensed anything like…say, fear on the part of the athletes?”
This time, Nick’s laugh was genuine. “Yeah. Coach will climb their rear ends if he doesn’t get a hundred and ten percent.”
“Everything you’ve said applies to any athletic program and to most coaches,” Cam said. He spotted a loose nail on the garage floor and bent to pick it up. “I’m not hearing anything unusual. Are you saying you backed away from Tyson’s teaching because you don’t want to look as if you’re receiving special favors?”
“Yeah, mostly that.”
Cam gave him a quick look. “There’s something else?”
“I sometimes do get a feeling that there’s an air, you know, a kind of thing that’s happening, but not out in the open—” He broke off, shaking his head. “That sounds pretty goofy, like some of the stuff John Edward ‘sees’—” he used his fingers as quotes “—on his TV program, doesn’t it?”