Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Ed Tarkington

  “Oh, they’re just some boys from Richmond, come to help us out,” Carwile said. “I thought if it was OK with you, they might look around some. It’s standard procedure.”

  A look of confusion crept over my mother’s face.

  “We just want to make sure there aren’t any signs that your house has been bothered by the same people who did this,” Carwile said.

  A car appeared at the end of the driveway—a black BMW M3, speeding toward us. The car skidded to a halt behind the van. Rayner Newcomb stepped out from the driver’s side door, dressed in a generously cut gray suit and pink tie, what hair he had left smoothed to his head with some sort of pomade. In the passenger seat was Paul.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Rayner said.

  “Late?” my mother said.

  “Come on, now, Carwile,” Rayner said. “You weren’t planning on interviewing my client without her attorney present, were you?”

  Bobby Carwile turned back to my mother.

  “Now what would you need an attorney for, ma’am?”

  “I don’t,” my mother said. “Do I?”

  “Bobby, really,” Rayner said. “I thought you had better manners.”

  “Now, what are you up to, Ray?” Carwile asked.

  “It’s like my daddy told me they used to say when he was a kid during the war,” Rayner drawled, his mouth widening into an unseemly grin. “Loose lips sink ships.”

  Carwile smiled uneasily at my mother.

  “Don’t let Ray here frighten you, ma’am. Like I said, we’re here for your benefit,” he said. “And for your protection.”

  My mother glanced at Rayner, who shook his head slowly. Then she looked back at Carwile.

  “Can I have a minute, Detective?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Carwile, a hint of resignation in his voice.

  Rayner and Paul approached the stairs and brushed past Carwile and the crime lab boys and into the house.

  “How did you know to come here, Rayner?” my mother asked.

  “Those rubes from the sheriff’s office never had anything this interesting happen to them in their entire lives, Mrs. Askew,” Rayner said. “They couldn’t keep a secret to stay out of hell.”

  My mother looked at the door as if she were breaching decorum to leave the genial Bobby Carwile standing too long on the stoop.

  “He told me it was for our benefit,” my mother said.

  “How could it possibly benefit you to have those men handling your belongings, Mrs. Askew?” Rayner asked.

  “But we haven’t anything to hide,” she said. “Have we, Paul?”

  “Remember what happened with the Old Man and the kitchen knife, Alice?” Paul said.

  “How could I forget?” my mother said.

  “They interviewed William this morning,” Paul said. “He told them everything.”

  It would be unfair to condemn William as a traitor for telling the truth. Perhaps he was afraid of being accused himself. Or perhaps he was just naive. I was willing to consider any possibility other than the notion that William might take revenge for the loss of his job by pointing a finger at any of us—least of all the Old Man.

  “You don’t think they suspect Dick!” my mother said. “That’s just foolishness.”

  “Mrs. Askew, people are scared,” Rayner said. “These yokels haven’t got a clue who did this. They will grasp at any straw that presents itself to them.”

  My mother scowled at Paul, as if she were certain that, one way or another, this was all his doing.

  “And what if they have a warrant?” she asked Rayner.

  “If they had a warrant, ma’am,” Rayner said, “they wouldn’t be sitting out there waiting for your permission.”

  My mother sighed.

  “All right then,” my mother said. “What do we do, Rayner?”

  “Are you retaining me as counsel, Mrs. Askew?” Rayner asked.

  “I’ll warn you, Rayner,” my mother said. “We’re flat broke.”

  Rayner couldn’t contain his glee.

  “I know that, ma’am,” he said.

  Paul rolled his eyes and sighed.

  “So what am I to tell young Mr. Carwile?” my mother asked.

  “Leave everything to me,” Rayner said.

  Rayner opened the front door with a flourish. The crime lab men were back down behind the panel van having a smoke. Bobby Carwile stood on the porch, his hand on the railing, one foot planted on the topmost step, his face darkening with politely restrained fury.

  “You’re welcome to come in, Investigator,” Rayner said. “But you’ll have to leave the dogs outside.”

  Carwile’s interview with my mother lasted half an hour. Paul and I were dismissed to the kitchen. Paul prepared coffee while I crept back out to eavesdrop.

  Bobby Carwile respectfully questioned my mother, patiently tolerating Rayner’s interjections. Many of the questions puzzled me until Rayner was able to clarify them all for us after Bobby Carwile and his posse left. I did not know then, for instance, about the bullet that had been removed from Brad Culver’s thigh. So it had seemed strange to me when Carwile asked my mother whether the Old Man had ever owned a .38-caliber pistol and whether it was still in our possession.

  My mother answered truthfully that she had given all the guns in the house to Paul to dispose of when she began to worry that the Old Man might accidentally shoot himself or someone else, and that Paul had told her he’d sold them, with Rayner’s help. Rayner explained that he himself had purchased the gun as a favor to Paul. Rayner also offered, without being asked, to produce the gun for the police to inspect.

  Carwile also surprised me by asking my mother whether it was true that she had given Leigh Bowman a pair of women’s size 9 running shoes and whether Leigh had ever returned the shoes. Yes, my mother said, she had given Leigh the shoes, and no, Leigh had not yet returned them. Carwile explained that one of the scant bits of evidence collected from the crime scene was the imprint in mud outside the sliding glass door at the rear of the house of a size 9 running shoe.

  “If I showed you a pair of shoes, could you tell me if they were the same ones you gave Leigh Bowman?”

  “I don’t know,” my mother said. “Maybe.”

  “And the knife your husband had with him when William Nowlin brought him home that afternoon,” Carwile asked. “Do you still have that knife?”

  William Nowlin, I thought. It was the first time I’d ever heard his last name.

  “I don’t know which knife it was,” my mother said.

  “Would you mind if I had a look at your knives, Mrs. Askew?” Carwile asked.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Rayner said.

  “Why not?” my mother asked.

  Behind me, Paul paced the kitchen floor. I pressed my ear harder against the door, trying not to miss any of the conversation. So absorbed were we all that we had forgotten about the Old Man. None of us heard him rise and steal away down the corridor and through the entrance hall, his shuffling steps and the halting progress of his walker muffled by his thick wool socks and the set of four tennis balls William had thoughtfully sliced open and placed over the four prongs of the walker’s legs to soften the impact on the Old Man’s arthritic shoulders. I became aware of his presence only when I heard his voice break into the conversation, stunning all of us with his bellowing.

  “I killed that son of a bitch,” the Old Man boomed. “And I’d do it again!”

  24

  IT TOOK ALL THREE of us to subdue the Old Man. Paul and I dragged him back to the Royal Chamber, where my mother talked him down while we held him in his armchair. We spoke calmingly to him until the tension in his grip released. I stood and stepped back and worked the ache out of my palm where the Old Man had grasped it. Paul knelt at his side.

  “It’s all right, Dad,” Paul said.

  “I did it,” the Old Man mumbled.

  “No, you didn’t, Dad,” said Paul.

  “Yes, I did,” he moane
d. “I did them both.”

  “No, you didn’t, Dad,” Paul repeated.

  The Old Man looked up at Paul with wet, pleading eyes.

  “Run, boy,” he whispered. “While you still can!”

  “I’m staying right here, Dad,” Paul said. “Right here with you.”

  His voice was soothing; his eyes were warm and unworried. He stroked the leathery, liver-spotted skin of the Old Man’s hand, which was clutching his own.

  RAYNER HAD GOTTEN rid of Bobby Carwile. He handed my mother a business card.

  “Here,” Rayner said. “If they come back, you call me right away.”

  My mother held the card out in front of her as if it were stained with bird shit.

  “Thank you, Rayner,” my mother said.

  “Call anytime,” Rayner said. “Day or night.”

  Paul left with Rayner to retrieve his truck, promising he’d be back in time to take me to rehearsal. But I didn’t really care. I wouldn’t have been angry at him if he’d never come back at all. Part of me hoped that he wouldn’t—that he would run, like the Old Man had begged him to.

  Paul returned just in time for supper—boiled cabbage and kielbasa sautéed with onions. Only the Old Man seemed interested at all in food.

  Paul pushed his chair back and stood.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re going to be late.”

  As usual, I walked around to the driver’s side. Wordlessly I started the engine, shifted into first gear, and eased the car down the driveway, turning slowly onto Boone’s Ferry. We had turned onto Riverdale before Paul noticed it—or at least before he pointed it out to me.

  “Look,” he said, pointing at the rearview mirror.

  The police cruiser was unmarked but not inconspicuous, thanks to the searchlight mounted above the driver’s side-view mirror.

  Paul took his pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his coat and shook one up into his mouth, then replaced the pack and removed his Zippo and lit up.

  “Where were you on Thursday, Paul?” I asked.

  “I told you,” he said. “Over at Rayner’s.”

  He took a long drag and exhaled slowly.

  “And Leigh was with you?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “And what about that call from Judge Bowman, Paul?” I asked. “What about the skinny-dipping?”

  Paul chuckled dryly. Why was I even bothering to ask him these questions? What did I expect him to tell me?

  “Coming over to pick you up, I saw her peddling down the road,” he said. “Her clothes and hair were soaking wet. She’d gone out for a ride after dinner on the path down by Hat Creek. She’d steered too close to the edge, she said, and had fallen in. Well, I couldn’t take her home all soaked and covered in creek mud. After her little climb up onto the roof at Twin Oaks, I figured old Prentiss was a hair away from having her shipped back to the loony bin. So I took her over to Rayner’s so she could clean up and throw her clothes in the dryer before I took her home. Rayner’s wife heard the shower running and woke up. When she saw Leigh come out of the bathroom wearing Rayner’s clothes, she jumped to the wrong conclusion, so we had to leave in a bit of a hurry.”

  “I think I’d be a little scared of the woman who could get Rayner to kick his friends out of the house,” I said.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Paul said. “Anyway, I knew I was late to pick you up, so I came up with the skinny-dipping story. I told Leigh it’d be better for her if she just let the old bastard lay it on me.”

  Leigh tumbling off her bicycle into an icy creek was more plausible, I supposed, than her collaborating with Paul to commit a heinous double murder. Wasn’t it?

  “I guess that explains why you were acting so weird,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know,” I said. “When you picked us up. You were just acting weird, that’s all.”

  Paul lit another cigarette and sighed angrily.

  “Well, Rocky,” he said, “what can I tell you? Watching the love of your life fall to pieces right before your eyes might make you act a little weird. Knowing that you played a big part in her being so royally fucked up—yeah, you know, that might make you act a little fucking odd. It might drive you out of your own fucking mind every now and then, don’t you think?”

  By then we had reached the school. I pulled the truck to a stop at the curb in front of the loading dock.

  “You never told me that before,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “That Leigh was the love of your life.”

  “Christ,” Paul said, exasperated. “Do I have to say it?”

  We sat alone in the darkness. Behind us, the police cruiser was at the far edge of the parking lot, presumably trying to look inconspicuous.

  “If Leigh is the love of your life, Paul,” I asked quietly, “why’d you let her go off on her own? Why didn’t you come after her?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that question for a long time,” he said. “But you know what, Rocky? You can’t change the past. You just have to find a way to live with it.”

  I couldn’t help myself.

  “Paul?” I said.

  “What?” Paul asked.

  “What shoes was Leigh wearing when you found her that night?” I asked.

  Paul opened the door and stepped out. He flipped his cigarette into the grass behind him.

  “Shit, Rocky,” he said. “If you really believe I had something to do with what happened to those people, surely you don’t think I’d have any trouble lying to you about it.”

  25

  THE NEXT DAY, AS we sat under our tree at lunch, Cinnamon surprised me with an unexpected proposition.

  “Hey,” she said. “I want to come over to your place today. After school.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “To see the murder house,” she said.

  I doubt I was very successful at concealing my excitement.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. OK.”

  “Great,” she said.

  “Paul can give us a ride back for rehearsal,” I said. “He lets me drive.”

  Cinnamon nodded.

  “Cool,” she said.

  Idiot, I thought. Just shut up already. What did Paul say? Girls don’t like it when you act like you care.

  “I can’t wait to meet your mom,” she said. “Do you think she’ll like me?”

  “No,” I said.

  A fluttering of voices rose up from the crowd at the end of the yard.

  Cinnamon stood and trudged through the tall grass, me trailing after. We arrived at the fence just in time to see Leigh Bowman setting her bicycle with the wide seat and the basket on the handlebars into the bike rack in front of the annex before calmly walking inside.

  “Maybe she’s going to read to them,” Cinnamon said.

  Leigh’s surprising appearance at the annex somewhat dampened my excitement about taking Cinnamon home with me and showing her Twin Oaks. The rest of the afternoon, the halls were atwitter with the rumor that Leigh Bowman had turned herself in to the police. I overheard one voice say she’d had the murder weapon in her bicycle basket. Someone else claimed to know for a fact that her father was forcing Leigh to testify against Paul Askew. The word had already been circulating for days that Judge Bowman’s influence was the only reason Paul and Leigh hadn’t been arrested already. Everyone seemed to expect an announcement that the case had been solved on the five o’clock news.

  By the time the bell at the end of eighth period rang and the herd flowed out from a dozen different doors and down to the buses and the cars in the student lot, Leigh’s bicycle was gone. When Paul’s truck pulled up to the curb in front of the loading dock, the rubberneckers shifted their attention, drawing away from the annex to form a line at the edge of the sidewalk, staring and pointing at Paul like he was one of the giant pandas at the National Zoo.

  “What’s with them?” he said as Cinnamon and I climbed into the truck next to him. />
  “You don’t know?” I said.

  We told him what we had seen that afternoon during lunch period.

  “Shit,” Paul said. “I told her not to do that.”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Leigh’s crazy, but she’s not ignorant,” Paul said. “She knows what people are saying. Somehow she got it in her head that she ought to just go down and introduce herself to the task force boys. Set the record straight, so to speak. I told her it was a bad idea. So did Rayner. And Miss Anita. And Judge Bowman. It might be the first time that old bastard and I ever agreed about anything.”

  He lit a cigarette and reached across me to offer the light to Cinnamon.

  “It’s probably fine,” he said. “You only need to talk to Leigh for about a minute to see how harmless she is.”

  As we reached the midpoint of the driveway, Twin Oaks came into view at the top of the hill, rising up from the pasture. Even Cinnamon had to stop and stare speechlessly when she got her first full glimpse of the white columns across the long field, greener every day with the onset of spring. The yellow crime scene tape still encircled the house, but there was no sign of any vehicles or police presence in the driveway.

  Paul parked and went in to check on the Old Man, leaving us alone at the fence looking up at Twin Oaks.

  “Shall we?” I said.

  When we reached the house, we stopped in front of the yellow tape, which fluttered in the light breeze. Cinnamon bent and deftly ducked under the sagging plastic as if it were electrified.

  “Where do I look?” she whispered.

  “Here,” I said.

  I stepped up to the window first and peered through. The sight was the same—the sliver of space between the shades revealing the dark, almost black stains on the floor and the rusty characters on the wall. I stepped back so Cinnamon could take my place at the window.

  “Wow,” she said. “This is heavy.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I should have been thinking about important things—the gruesomeness of what had happened on the other side of that door, whether Paul and Leigh were responsible for it, how they were going to get out from under the weight of the gossip and suspicion, and so forth. Instead I thought of whether Cinnamon was impressed—whether she genuinely liked me and whether the next time she kissed me it would be on the mouth instead of the cheek. So distracted was I by these thoughts that I had been staring at the sheriff’s department squad car coming up the road past our house and toward the driveway of Twin Oaks for at least five seconds or so without registering it. By the time I reacted, the patrol car was turning through the gate.