Dooley’s uncle looked at him for a few moments, like he was trying to decide how to answer or, maybe, whether to answer.
“I asked her about you while she was still in the hospital,” he said finally. “I asked where you were.”
Dooley bet she had no clue.
“She was a little vague on the subject,” his uncle said.
There you go.
“Anyway,” his uncle went on, fiddling with a packet of sugar that Dooley hadn’t used, avoiding eye contact now, “when I finally tracked you down …” He shrugged. It was a few seconds before his eyes met Dooley’s. “She was right back in it. I know she was your mother. She was my sister.”
Except she wasn’t. Not really.
“She was a baby when we got her. Not even a year old.” His uncle picked at the edges of the sugar packet, folding it and unfolding it.
“Maybe it explains something about the way she was,” Dooley said. “It’s hard enough sometimes, not knowing where you belong.”
Dooley’s uncle shook his head slowly.
“I went out there to see you the first time because I wanted to see what kind of screwed-up kid she had raised,” he said. “I told myself I wasn’t surprised, given how fucked up she was. I went back the second time because I felt sorry for you. After that—” He shrugged. “Fifteen is pretty young—too young to give up on a person. I thought maybe if someone took you in hand, you could turn out okay.”
“But I’m not related to you. You’re not really my uncle.”
“Lorraine was my sister, even if she was adopted. That makes you my nephew and me your uncle. I don’t have a problem with that. Do you?”
Dooley didn’t know what to say.
“I gave her some incentive to stay away from you,” his uncle said.
“She probably wouldn’t have come to see me anyway,” Dooley said, although he thought she might have, maybe once. Or maybe not.
Probably not.
Dooley thought for a moment before meeting his uncle’s eyes.
“That day you said you were going downtown to see your financial advisor …” Larry Quayle had had no record of an appointment.
“I went to meet Lorraine. She was a no-show.”
“And the night she died?”
“Same story. I went to talk to her. When she was at the house that time, she told me that she wanted to get involved in your life again. She tried to convince me that things would be different this time. I wanted her to stay the hell out of it. The night she died, I went to see if we could come to some kind of arrangement. Instead we got into an argument. She told me she’d already made contact with you and there was nothing I could do about it. I was pretty pissed off.”
Pissed off enough to get drunk and lose track of time? Dooley couldn’t believe it. Did his uncle really care that much?
“She was trying to make changes.”
“But with her track record …” He shook his head again. “Maybe I should have given her a little more credit. I’m sorry.”
Dooley didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t felt any differently than his uncle had. If his uncle had been wrong not to give her a second chance, so had Dooley.
“If you want to make alternative living arrangements,” his uncle said, “I’ll understand.”
“You want me to move out?” Dooley said. Where would he go?
“I want you to stay. But after what happened … if you’d rather not live with me, I’d understand.”
“I didn’t give her much credit, either,” Dooley said. Even now, he wasn’t sure that he’d been wrong.
“You want to think it over?”
Dooley shook his head. “I already made up my mind.”
Dooley looked up from the scanner when he heard the electronic bell sound over the video store door. Detective Randall walked in. He came straight to the counter where Dooley was scanning returns.
“How’s it going, Ryan?” he said.
“You tell me,” Dooley said.
“How about I buy you a cup of coffee?”
Kevin, who had been coming up an aisle toward the cash when Detective Randall came in, said, “Break time’s not for two hours, Dooley.”
Randall glanced at Kevin, pulled out his ID and said, “Official police business.”
Kevin stared at the ID. He didn’t say anything as Dooley came out from behind the counter, went into the back room to grab his jacket, and walked with Randall to the coffee shop a couple of doors down from the video store.
“I thought you’d like to know,” Randall said after he’d put some coffee in front of Dooley. “Malone made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“We got him on Jeffrey. His DNA is a match for what we found under Jeffrey’s fingernails. We also got him on your mother. What was stolen from her—we held that back. Your uncle said she had a purse with her when she got out of his car. He said there was a bottle of prescription medication inside.” Anti-depressants, he’d told Dooley. “Malone as good as told you that the purse was gone by the time she was found. He knew there were pills in the purse, and he knew she didn’t have any ID.”
“He could say he was just assuming,” Dooley said.
“He could try. He could also try to explain how he knew she was found behind a dumpster,” Randall said. “The only thing we released was she was found in an alley.”
“The person who found her might have told someone. Word gets around.”
Randall gave him a look. “Which side are you on, Ryan?” he said. “Besides having him for Jeffrey, we have traces of Lorraine’s blood in his car from where she cut herself. We have him unaccounted for during the time frame when she was murdered. We have traces of narcotics. And the best one—we have a usable fingerprint from the dumpster. We got him. You did good.”
Good, but too late. He stood up, ready to go, then turned back to the detective.
“Jeffie told me that Malone reminded him of me, but I don’t see the resemblance, do you?”
Randall studied him.
“Maybe a little,” he said. “Around the eyes and the mouth. And maybe the cheekbones.”
Dooley had a one-thirty dentist appointment the next day. There was no point in going back to school, so he decided to go up to Beth’s school and surprise her. He was standing out on the street when the bell rang and girls came flooding out of the building. When Beth saw him, her face lit up. She broke away from the girls she was with and came running toward him.
A car horn tooted just as she arrived.
Dooley glanced over his shoulder. It was a midnight blue Jag. The driver’s side window whirred down.
“Beth,” a voice called. Nevin’s voice. “I’m glad I caught you. Here.” A hand came out the window. There was a sweater in it—a soft blue sweater that Dooley recognized. “You left it at the cottage on the weekend. My mother’s been nagging me to get it back to you.”
Beth looked from the sweater to Dooley. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Dooley thought, I’m not the only one with secrets.
Twenty-Two
Dooley was contemplating the possible consequences of putting his fist through the wall of his bedroom when his uncle called up to him.
“You’ve got company.”
Company? What company could he possibly have?
He got up off his bed and headed downstairs.
He saw her before his foot hit the third step: Beth.
She was standing on the mat in the front hall. Usually when she dropped by, she chatted comfortably with Dooley’s uncle. His uncle was standing in the front hall with her, but neither of them was talking. They both turned when they heard Dooley on the stairs. Beth looked up nervously at him. Jesus, now what?
His uncle tactfully retired to the kitchen. Beth glanced around, frowning.
“Do you think we could go outside?” she said.
The weather had turned during the night. Fall was past tense. Winter was now. And she wanted to go outside? Not a good sign. It meant she wanted to t
alk to him somewhere where there was no chance his uncle would overhear. It meant she was going to dump him.
“Okay, sure,” he said, trying to hide the dead feeling inside him. He grabbed his jacket from the closet and stepped out onto the porch with her. He had to hand it to her—she looked at him full on. She wasn’t shying away from what she had come here to do.
“It’s about Nevin,” she said.
Here it comes, he thought. He had to fight the urge to pummel something—the reinforced front door, the porch railing, the brick exterior of his uncle’s house—something that would bloody his fists and make physical the pain that was ripping him apart.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Right.
“My mother really likes him. She’s been friends with his parents forever. They helped her a lot after my father died.”
All the more reason, he supposed.
“I’ve known him for a long time, too.”
It just got better and better.
“He never came near me when Mark was alive.” Mark was her brother. “I think he was afraid to.” Here she offered a faint smile. “Anyway—”
He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t take the tension that was building as she prefaced what she had to say.
“Look, Beth—”
“My mother would probably think she was in heaven if I went out with Nevin,” she said. “I know she would. And I know Nevin likes me, too. I’m pretty sure that’s why he acts the way he does.”
Yeah. Chauffeuring her around in that Jag of his. Taking her on in impromptu debates. Dropping in on her and scoring eager invitations to dinner from her mother. Spending a weekend with her up at some country place that, Dooley bet, had all the conveniences of home, plus a waterfront view.
She looked down at the steel-gray paint of the front-porch floor.
“It’s my fault, too,” she said.
It felt like a hand had reached right into Dooley, had grabbed his stomach, and was squeezing it and twisting it all at the same time.
“I was mad when I found out about your mother,” she said. Her eyes met his again. He looked deep into them but couldn’t see himself reflected there. “And I was mad when I heard you’d been in the building. I thought you were checking up on me.”
“I guess I was,” he said. Jesus, I guess? Could he be more of a weasel?
“And I should have told you where my mom took me for the weekend, except …”
Except by then she probably thought it was none of his business.
Her eyes slipped away from his again. Her fingers picked at one of the buttons on her coat.
“His parents are my mom’s best friends,” she said. “That makes him hard to avoid. The thing is …” She shook her head. She looked annoyed.
Dooley closed his eyes.
“I don’t know how to say this,” she said. “I don’t want you to think—” She took one of his hands in hers. He opened his eyes. “I was mad,” she said, “because I thought I knew you.”
Jesus, the best thing that ever happened to him, and he had fucked it up by fudging the truth. Fudging? There he was, being a weasel again. He had lied to her. To Beth, of all people. Okay. Time to come clean.
“I thought if I told you about my mother, you’d—”
“I love you,” she said.
He stared at her.
“There, I said it. If you don’t feel the same way, I’ll understand. But I wanted you to know. What happened before I met you, all that stuff with your mother, that’s not you. At least, it’s not the you that I know. And Nevin—he’s not a bad person. Actually, he’s pretty nice. But he acted like a jerk when he returned my sweater. He did it on purpose. He doesn’t like you.”
No kidding.
“So, anyway,” she said, picking at the button again, uncertain again, “I just wanted to tell you that. And, like I said, if you don’t feel the same way—”
He caught hold of her other hand and pulled her to him. He didn’t know what to say, so, instead, he kissed her.
About the Author
Norah McClintock is the author of more than thirty novels for young adults. She is a five-time winner of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She lives in Toronto with her family.
Homicide Related Page 27