Dew Drop Dead (12 page)

Sebastian grimaced. “As David says, ‘Oy vay.'”

This got Katie laughing. “Sebastian,” she said, “I
don't make promises I can't keep, but I will promise you this. There will be happier times ahead.”

Her words made him think of Corrie. And of Abraham. And of the man who had died young at the Dew Drop Inn.

THE NEXT DAY
after school, Sebastian and David rode their bikes out to radio station WEB-FM.

Denise, the receptionist, looked up from her knitting and greeted them with a warm hello. “Well, well, well, do my eyes deceive me?” she said. “Or is this not Sebastian Barth, famous detective and former talk show host, and his faithful companion and writer, David Lepinsky?”

“Gee, thanks, Denise,” David said. “At least you didn't call me Tonto.”

“Who's Tonto?”

“The Lone Ranger's sidekick. I thought you'd know that.”

Denise pursed her lips. “Before my time, dear heart. Now what can I do you for?”

“We just dropped by to see my dad,” Sebastian said. He looked around at the faded furniture in the waiting area. Before, when this place had been his second home, the sofas and chairs had seemed comfortable; now all they looked was shabby.

“You getting fired too, Denise?” David asked.

Denise's laughter rippled through the room like a breeze through an open window. “Honey,” she said, “you are too much. No one is getting fired that I know of.” She leaned across her desk and was about to whisper something when the door opened and Harry Dobbs appeared.

“Boys!” he shouted. “Where have you been keeping yourselves?” He threw his arms open wide as if Sebastian and David were a couple of toddlers he was waiting to gobble up. He had known both boys most of their lives and loved them as if they were his own flesh and blood, which, since he had no real family of his own, they may as well have been. They were so fond of him they called him Uncle Harry, even though he was old enough to be their grandfather. Sebastian had worried for a long time that Harry's days at the station were numbered. With all that had been going on of late, he was pretty sure the numbers were fast approaching zero.

“Hi, Uncle Harry,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“As well as can be expected,” said Harry, his arms still airborne, as if he'd forgotten where he'd put them, “considering that even as we speak one can hear the executioner's ax being sharpened in the adjacent chamber.”

“That's the copy machine,” said Denise.

Harry roared with laughter. “Ah, Denise,” he
cried, “if I were only blessed with your practical view of the world. As long as the copy machine keeps running, we're in business, eh?”

Annoyed, Denise shrugged. “Why not?” she said. “At least I have a reason to get up in the morning. And I don't pack my lunch in a bottle, like some people I could name. If you get my drift.”

Harry kept laughing, but the sound of it had changed.

“We'll see you later, Uncle Harry,” Sebastian said, eager to escape. “We, uh . . . we wanted to say hi to Dad.”

“Right you are,” said Harry Dobbs, looking as worn as the furniture. “You know where to find him—down the hall, one door past the sound of the executioner's ax.”

“Is Uncle Harry drinking again?” Sebastian asked his father as David closed the door behind them.

“Again?” said Will Barth. “When did he stop?”

David shook his head sadly. “What'll happen to him if he's fired?”

“That's a question I've asked myself repeatedly,” Will said, looking off. “When I haven't been busy asking what's going to happen to me, that is.” He turned his eyes to the boys and brought them into focus. “What's up?”

“Nothing,” Sebastian said, trying to appear nonchalant. “I haven't seen you a whole lot lately, that's all.”

“I know. And I'm sorry about that, I really am. But I think the worst is over. You'll see, things will get better soon.”

“That's what Mom says.”

Will smiled. “At least we agree on something,” he said. Then, catching the look of discomfort on David's face, he quickly changed the subject. “Where's Corrie?”

Sebastian picked up a crystal paperweight from his father's desk. “Football practice,” he answered, recognizing the object as an industry award Will had received a couple of months earlier.

“Is she doing all right? I spoke to her father this morning. He's pretty shook up to think he was harboring a murderer at the church. And who can blame him? Alex says the evidence is really stacked against this guy. He may get off on insanity, though.”

“Corrie doesn't think Abraham's guilty,” David said.

“No?”

Holding the paperweight, Sebastian studied the words:
FOR EXCELLENCE IN BROADCASTING
. “She says there's no way Abraham could kill anybody,” he told his father. “She says he wouldn't even hurt a fly.”

“And I say she's nuts,” David said. “I mean, did you ever see this guy when he starts talking crazy? Whoa, let me outa here. He did it, all right. Corrie's just gone soft, that's all.”

“Well,” Will said, “maybe she got a little too involved. Not that I blame her. She's all heart, and more power to her for that. But when your heart gets in the way, your eyes don't always see clearly.”

Sebastian said, “I get the feeling that she thinks if she says something enough times, it'll come true.”

“What's she been saying?”

“‘He didn't do it.'” Running his fingers over the engraving on the paperweight, Sebastian said, “Every time I saw her in school today, that's all she could say. ‘He didn't do it, Sebastian. I'm telling you, he didn't do it, he didn't do it.'”

“And what do you think?” Will asked.

“I'm not sure what to think anymore,” said Sebastian, putting the paperweight back in its place on his father's desk.

“HE DIDN'T DO IT
.”

The words were not Corrie's this time, but Alex's. Corrie, who had convinced Sebastian to drop by the police station Friday afternoon after school in the hope of visiting Abraham, was so stunned to hear what the chief had just told them she'd already forgotten her initial disappointment in learning Abraham wasn't being held there but in the county jail.

“What do you mean?” Sebastian asked, since Corrie appeared to have been rendered speechless. “Did somebody else confess?”

Alex shook his head. “There was no murder,” he said.

“No murder? I don't get it. There was a body, right?”

“Sit down, you two. Here, Sebastian, pull that chair over.” Corrie and Sebastian sat on two uncomfortable wooden chairs—purposely uncomfortable, Sebastian imagined—and waited for Alex to begin. First, he mopped his forehead with a new handkerchief. “I'm buying them by the dozen,” he said half-apologetically. “Okay, here's the story.

“The coroner did us a favor and rushed his report. We got it this morning. Kevin Moore did not die of a blow to the head.”

“He didn't?” Sebastian said.

“Nope. He died of hypothermia. Translated, means he froze to death.”

“Oh, no,” Corrie whispered.

“It happens sometimes to people living out in the elements, though it's rare that it happens to someone so young. Thing is, Kevin was a heavy drinker. Alcohol alone lowers your body temperature. Combined with all this below-freezing weather we've been having and the fact that he wasn't in good health to begin with, well . . .”

“The poor man,” said Corrie. Sebastian nodded, unable even to imagine what it would be like to freeze to death.

“But what about Abraham?” he asked. “Where was he?”

“In bed, I guess. Our theory is that Kevin was out when Abraham went to sleep that night. Kevin either came back intoxicated or drank himself unconscious once he was back at the inn. In either case, he fell asleep without protecting himself from the cold—and Abraham was already asleep, so he couldn't do anything about it. We talked to Abraham in order to piece together what happened the next day. Bear in mind we are dealing with a very confused individual. The best we can figure is this.

“When he woke up, he discovered his friend wasn't breathing. Not only did he not know what to do, he probably wasn't even clear about what had happened. At some point, he started to feel guilty; if he hadn't been sleeping, after all, his friend might still be alive. He was scared, immobilized. Then you showed up. Abraham heard you, hid somewhere—in a closet, maybe in a shadow.”

Corrie shivered. “So we
weren't
alone,” she said.

“Definitely not. Although I don't think he really saw you; there wasn't enough light. And anyway, he never seemed to recognize you at the church. Okay, so he knew the body had been found. Once you left, he did the first thing that came to his mind—he removed the body from the inn. While he was at it, he tore the sleeve of the shirt Kevin was wearing and then, between the inn and the woods, dropped the body so that it hit something. That's the blow to the head and that's—”

“The blood on David's rock,” said Sebastian, finishing the sentence for him.

“Why didn't he just run away?” Corrie asked.

“Because Kevin was his friend. He felt he needed to protect him. Remember, I said he's a confused individual. Once he had Kevin hidden in the woods, he thought about it and realized he couldn't go back to the inn to live. He took Kevin's shirt—for warmth, for remembrance, who knows?—then gathered a few
of his own belongings together and hit the road. The only thing he didn't take was his Bible, which must have fallen out of his pocket when he was hiding Kevin's body.

“Somewhere out there, your father found him. And he in turn found his way to the church. And there he made another friend, Corrie. You.”

Corrie sat quietly for a minute, taking it all in. “Do you think they'd let me see him at the county jail? I'm sure my mom or dad would take me.”

“He's not there.”

“But you said—”

“I said he
was
there. He's no longer a suspect, Corrie. He had to be released.”

Corrie said, “Where is he then?” But even as she asked the question, she knew the answer Alex would give.

“Somewhere out there.”

A LOUD BUZZ
jarred Corrie from her thoughts.

“Yes,” Alex said into the box on his desk.

“A Mrs. Weatherall to see you, Chief.” Sebastian recognized the obsequious voice on the other end as belonging to the small sergeant at the front desk.

“Thank you, Sergeant Macy. Ask her to come in.” He turned to Sebastian and Corrie. ‘I'm sorry,” he said, “you'll have to excuse me.”

“Is it okay if we wait outside?” Sebastian asked. “We told David to meet us here.”

“It's fine with me,” Alex replied, rising in anticipation of his next appointment. “Just stay clear of Sergeant Macy. He doesn't hold kids in particularly high regard.”

“I noticed,” said Sebastian. There was a knock on the door. Alex opened it and a tall, nervous-looking woman, one hand still raised, was waiting on the other side.

“Mrs. Weatherall,” Alex said, “please come in.”

Corrie and Sebastian nodded to the stranger,
whose eyes barely registered their presence, and went out into the main room.

They seated themselves on a long bench as far from Sergeant Macy as they could get. After a time, Corrie said, “My sister, Alice, says it's dumb to get involved in other people's lives. Maybe she's right, I don't know. She never gets hurt.”

“I thought you said she cried all the time.”

“Over boys. That's different. Alice goes through boys faster than she goes through fingernail polish. And you know what? It takes her polish longer to dry than her tears. No, I'm talking about real hurt.”

“The kind you're feeling?”

Corrie nodded. “Remember the other day, before we went to the inn, David said we should just stay young forever? Maybe we should.”

“Hey, listen,” Sebastian said, “in the end, even Peter Pan got hurt, didn't he?”

They felt a cold rush of wind as the front door of the police station blew open and David hurried in. Sergeant Macy made noises about the draft, but no one paid attention. When David spotted his friends, he waved and ran over to them.

“Hey, guess what,” Sebastian said. “Abraham's innocent.”

“He's what?”

“He's even been set free,” said Corrie. “There wasn't a murder, after all.”

David pinched the back of his hand. “Have I been dreaming this whole thing?” he asked. “Didn't we see a body?”

Before Sebastian or Corrie could answer, Alex's door opened. “Good, I'm glad you're still here,” he called across the room. “You want to come in for a minute?”

Sergeant Macy stood, picking up a notepad as he did. “Not you, Sergeant. I'm talking to my friends there.”

“What friends?” the sergeant asked. “I just see a bunch of kids.”

“Those are my friends. Come on, I want you to meet someone. I think you'll find this quite interesting.”

The woman they had passed in Alex's doorway now sat on the chair Corrie had previously occupied. She looked calmer, although still clearly upset. When Alex saw that there weren't enough chairs, he called out to Sergeant Macy to bring in two more, winking slyly at the kids as he did so. It was easy to see whose side Alex was on.

When they were all seated, Alex said, “This is Catherine Weatherall. She and her husband are the owners of the Dew Drop Inn.”

“More to the point,” said the woman, “I am Bill Conroy's sister.”

David and Corrie were puzzled, but Sebastian got it at once. “Bill Conroy is Abraham,” he said.

“He called himself Abraham, yes. Bill is the reason
my husband and I left the inn the way we did, why we disappeared without a trace.”