Don't Cry Now (5 page)

T
he door opened and Sam Wheeler spilled inside, like a tall glass of water. He was wrapped in a multitude of layers, an open khaki jacket over an army-style camouflage shirt, itself worn over an olive-green T-shirt, all of which hung over the top of a pair of faded and baggy brown pants. On his feet were expensive brand-name high-topped sneakers, their laces undone and twisting around his feet, like snakes. His hair was uncombed and so black it radiated blue, blotting out the natural color of his eyes, so that they looked like two empty sockets, incongruously nestled beneath extraordinarily long lashes. A small gold loop curved around the outside of his left nostril.

Right behind Sam was another boy, not as tall, a little more muscular, a series of tattoos running up and down his bare arms. Long brown hair framed a decidedly handsome face, but there was something almost rude about the boy's good looks, a sneer in his gray eyes as well as his posture. He wore a black T-shirt over black jeans and black pointed-toed leather boots. The pungently sweet odor of marijuana surrounded him like an overpowering cologne, his trademark, Bonnie knew. Wasn't that why everybody called him Haze—because he was always in one? Her eyes moved rapidly back and forth between the two teenage boys.

“What's going on?” Sam said instead of hello, al
though neither his face nor his voice registered any surprise at seeing them there.

“Hey, Mrs. Wheeler,” Haze said, his eyes focusing in on her torn lip, like a camera lens. “What happened to your face?”

“My wife had a little accident,” Rod explained quickly.

Hadn't he used the same word when describing Joan's death to his daughter? Bonnie found it an interesting choice, in that it absolved anyone of blame.

“That your car in the driveway?” Sam asked Bonnie, barely acknowledging that his father had spoken.

Bonnie nodded. “We need to talk to you, Sam,” she said.

Sam shrugged. So talk, the shrug said.

“Maybe it would be better if we could talk alone.” Rod glanced toward Haze.

“Maybe it wouldn't,” Sam told him.

Beside him, Haze chuckled.

“This is Harold Gleason,” Bonnie said, introducing her husband to his son's friend. “He's in my first-period class.” He's disruptive, he never does his assignments, he's failing, she could have added, but didn't. “Everybody calls him Haze.”

“Looks like somebody hit you, Mrs. Wheeler,” Haze said, ignoring her introduction and moving a step closer, the scent of marijuana radiating provocatively from his hair and clothes, stretching toward her like a third hand. “Yeah,” he observed. “Looks like somebody nailed you one pretty good there, Mrs. Wheeler.”

“Sam, this is important,” Rod said impatiently.

“I'm listening.”

“Something's happened to your mother,” Rod began, then stopped, looking up the stairs.

Sam's eyes followed his father's. “What's the matter with her? Did she get drunk and fall out of bed? Did she call you to come over? Is that what you're doing here?”

“Your mother is dead, Sam,” Rod said quietly.

There was silence. Bonnie watched Sam's face for any hint of what he might be feeling, but his face was resolutely blank, betraying nothing of whatever might be going on behind those inexpressive black eyes.

“How'd it happen, man?” Haze asked.

“She was shot,” Bonnie answered simply, still monitoring Sam's face for some reaction. But there was none, not a tear, not a twitch, not even a blink. “I was the one who found her,” she continued, automatically taking a step back, protecting her mouth with the back of her hand.

Still no response.

“She called me this morning, said there was something she had to tell me, asked me to meet her at an open house she was having on Lombard Street. When I got there, she was dead.”

Sam's eyes narrowed slightly.

“Do you have any idea why she wanted to see me, Sam?” Bonnie asked.

Sam shook his head.

“I think she was trying to warn me about something,” Bonnie elaborated. “Maybe if we knew what—”

“Who shot her, man?” Haze asked, nervously rubbing the side of his nose with his fingers. Bonnie saw his arm muscle flex beneath his black T-shirt, a red tattooed heart swelling involuntarily with the motion. MOTHER, it said above the heart; FUCKER, it said below.

“We don't know yet,” Bonnie told him, grateful that someone was asking the appropriate questions.

“What happened to her car?” Sam said.

“Pardon?” Bonnie was sure she'd heard him incorrectly. Had Sam really asked about his mother's car?

“Where's her car?” Sam repeated.

“I guess it's still on Lombard Street,” Bonnie told him, the words emerging slowly.

“That's an expensive car,” Sam said. “The police can't impound it, can they?”

Bonnie didn't know how to respond. She hadn't given a thought to Joan's car. “I don't know what the procedure
is,” she said, glancing at Rod, who looked as confused as she was.

Sam shuffled aimlessly, his eyes refusing to linger more than half a second in any one spot. “Is Lauren home?”

“She's upstairs.”

“You told her?”

Bonnie nodded.

“So now what?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” Bonnie admitted. “The police will be here soon….”

“I should get going,” Haze announced instantly, hands reaching for the door, as if the police were already at his back, guns drawn. “I'm real sorry about your mom, Sammy. Catch you later, man.” The front door opened and closed, a hint of cool April air grappling with the stale scent of marijuana.

“I have nothing to say to the police,” Sam said.

“I don't think you have any choice in the matter,” Rod told him.

“Look, what are you doing here, anyway?” Sam looked from his father to Bonnie and then back again to his father. “I mean, you came, you saw, you delivered the bad news—ding dong, the witch is dead—so you don't have to stick around here anymore, do you? You can go back to your new home and your new family and forget all about us for another seven years.”

Bonnie felt the scene around her starting to unravel, like a skein from a fat ball of yarn.
Ding dong, the witch is dead?

“Sam?” a thin voice called from the top of the stairs.

All eyes looked toward the pale young girl who stood trembling on the upstairs landing.

“Did you hear what happened?” Lauren whimpered, eyes unfocused as she moved slowly down the steps, as if in her sleep. “Did you hear what happened to Mommy?”

 

“It'll be a few days before we get the final report back from the medical examiner,” Captain Mahoney was say
ing, his large body all but overpowering the delicate blue-and-gold living room chair in which he was sitting. Sam, fidgeting and looking bored, and Lauren, not moving and barely breathing, sat across from him on the pink silk sofa, while Bonnie perched at the end of a dining room chair that Rod had brought into the room. Both Rod and Detective Kritzic remained standing, Rod by the large brick fireplace, Detective Kritzic in front of the stained-glass windows.

“What do you want to ask us?” Sam said.

“When was the last time you saw your mother?” Captain Mahoney asked.

“Last night.” Sam tucked a strand of wayward hair behind his right ear. “I went in to say goodnight to her at around two o'clock.”

“And how did she seem to you?”

“You mean, was she drunk?”

“Was she?”

Sam shrugged. “Probably.”

“What about you, Lauren?” Detective Kritzic asked, her voice gentle and soft.

“I went in to kiss her good-bye this morning before I went to school.”

“I thought it was a P.D. day,” Captain Mahoney interjected, eyes on Bonnie.

“I go to a private school,” Lauren told him.

“Did your mother say anything to you about her plans for the day?”

“She said she had an open house this morning, and that she wouldn't be late.”

“Did she sound anxious or worried about anything?”

“No.”

“Did she say anything about meeting with Bonnie Wheeler this morning?”

“No.”

“Did she say anything about wanting to warn Bonnie Wheeler that she was in danger?”

Lauren shook her head. “What kind of danger?”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm your mother?” Captain Mahoney's gaze traveled between the two teen-agers.

“No,” Sam said simply.

Lauren looked over at Bonnie. She said nothing, though the inference was clear.

My new family, Bonnie acknowledged silently. A boy who doesn't seem to give a damn that his mother has been murdered, and a girl who thinks I killed her. Great. Well, at least they have each other, she thought, although looking at them now, sitting side by side, like two ceramic figurines, not touching, features etched in stone, blank eyes directed inward, she thought it unlikely they would be of much comfort to each other in the difficult weeks ahead. And they certainly aren't about to let me comfort them, Bonnie thought, knowing any such gesture wouldn't be tolerated, let alone appreciated. They barely know me, but they know they hate me.

Could she blame them? Hadn't she felt the same way toward the woman her father had married after her parents' divorce? Hadn't she openly rejoiced when that marriage had fallen apart? Even now, weren't her feelings something less than cordial toward wife number three? And what about the brother she hadn't spoken to since their mother's untimely death? How much comfort had he ever provided?

Bonnie closed her eyes, fighting back bitter tears. Now was hardly the time to reopen ugly wounds, to drag old skeletons from the closet. She had far more immediate concerns.

We have a lot in common, she wanted to tell Lauren. I can help you, if you'll let me. Maybe we can help each other.

She felt movement around her and opened her eyes. Captain Mahoney had risen to his feet and was motioning toward the front hall. “I'd like to have a look around now,” he said.

“M
y God, what happened here?” The words were out of Bonnie's mouth before she had a chance to stop them.

“I guess she didn't have a chance to clean up yet,” Lauren replied defensively.

“Watch where you step,” Captain Mahoney cautioned. “Try not to touch anything.”

Together, they filed into Joan's upstairs bedroom: Bonnie, her husband, his children, Captain Mahoney, and Detective Kritzic. They walked as if they were tiptoeing on glass, taking exaggerated steps, knees lifting high into the air, feet careful where they landed. No one spoke, their silence more shocked than respectful, although the expressions on the faces of Joan's children reflected little of anything at all.

“She just didn't have a chance to tidy up yet,” Lauren repeated, finding an empty patch of carpet beside an open closet door.

“It's always like this,” Sam said, leaning back against one pale pink wall.

“It wasn't like she was expecting company,” Lauren said.

Company? Bonnie thought, turning in small circles in the center of the room, trying to overcome her natural revulsion, to wipe her face clean of judgment. The room was a disaster area, a war zone, a dump site, barely fit for
any form of human life, let alone company.

Bonnie's eyes swept across the room like a broom, as if she were trying somehow to visually transport all the assorted debris into its center, to pull together all the old newspapers that grew along the sides of the walls like weeds, to scoop up the various books and magazines that lay open and twisted on the rose-colored broadloom, to rake in the layers of discarded clothing that spilled from the closet and were strewn everywhere like autumn leaves, to pick up the multitude of crusted-over dishes and half-empty cups of coffee, to empty the scores of ashtrays spilling their ashes everywhere, including the carpet and the once-white bed sheets, the bed looking as if it hadn't been made in weeks, maybe months. Empty liquor bottles lay scattered across the pillows; a white phone, its cord hopelessly twisted and looped around an open address book, sat in the middle of the bed beside a half-eaten hamburger, relish and mustard still clinging to its paper wrapper. More empty bottles protruded from just underneath the bed. Wine bottles, Bonnie recognized, trying not to stare.

“It's so neat downstairs,” Bonnie muttered, trying to reconcile the two areas.

“No one ever uses the downstairs,” Sam said.

“What about dinner?” Bonnie tried not to focus on the half-eaten hamburger. “Who made dinner? Where did you eat?”

“We ate out,” Sam said. “Or we ordered in, ate in our rooms.” He said this as if it were the most normal thing in the world for families to behave this way.

“The real estate business isn't exactly nine to five,” Lauren continued. “It's hard to coordinate everybody's schedules. My mother did the best she could.”

“Of course she did,” Bonnie agreed.

“A little mess isn't the end of the world.”

“No, of course it's not.”

“Who asked you?” the girl said.

Bonnie was aware of Captain Mahoney standing by the
bed, watching this exchange, his large hands diligently working to extricate the address book from the phone wire. She felt faint, the odor of discarded food and stale cigarettes swirling around her head, like a dense fog, summoning forth reminders of earlier odors, even more unpleasant. The smell of blood and torn flesh and human wastes. The smell of violent, unexpected death.

Bonnie felt Rod's arms wrap protectively around her, as if he knew what she was thinking, and felt her own body sway, then sink, against his side.

Captain Mahoney lifted the open address book from the bed, the phone wire snapping back against the sheet like an elastic band. “Anybody know Sally Gardiner, Lyle and Caroline Gossett, Linda Giradelli?” he read, the address book obviously open to the letter G.

“We used to be friends with the Gossetts,” Rod remarked. “They live across the street.”

“My mother had a lot of friends,” Lauren said.

“Drinking buddies,” Rod whispered under his breath.

“What about a Dr. Walter Greenspoon?”

“The psychiatrist?” Bonnie asked.

“You know him?”

“I know
of
him. He writes a weekly column for the
Globe
.”

“And we've used him as a consultant on our show a number of times,” Rod added.

“Any chance your ex-wife might have been a patient of his?”

“I have no idea.”

Captain Mahoney looked toward Sam and Lauren. Both shrugged. The police captain flipped to another page. “How about Donna Fisher or Wendy Findlayson?”

Rod and Bonnie shook their heads. Again Sam and Lauren shrugged.

“Josh Freeman?”

“There's a Josh Freeman who teaches at Weston Secondary,” Bonnie said, startled by the familiar name.

“He's my art teacher,” Sam concurred.

“Is that the school's phone number?” Captain Mahoney stretched the book toward Bonnie.

“No,” she said, picturing the tall, slightly rumpled-looking widower who was new to the school this year, wondering what Joan would have been doing with his home number.

Captain Mahoney handed the red leather address book to Detective Kritzic, then returned his attention to the bed, pushing the phone and the partly eaten hamburger aside, and pulling back the sheet. “What have we here?” he asked, although the question was obviously rhetorical.

Bonnie watched him lift a large paper scrapbook into his arms and open it, quickly flipping through the pages. “Anybody know a Scott Dunphy?” he asked after a moment's pause.

Bonnie felt an uncomfortable twinge of recognition, although she wasn't sure why. She didn't know anyone named Scott Dunphy.

“What about Nicholas Lonergan?”

Bonnie gasped, the small twinge twisting into a large cramp, filling her stomach.

“I take it the name is familiar,” Captain Mahoney stated, eyes narrowing and lifting toward Bonnie.

“Nicholas Lonergan is my brother,” Bonnie said. Her back stiffened even as she felt her legs turn to jelly.

“Interesting,” Captain Mahoney remarked casually. “I see he got himself into a bit of trouble a few years back.” He flipped to the next page.

“I don't understand….”

“What about a Steve Lonergan?”

Bonnie felt as if she had just stepped into some kind of peculiar time warp, as if the words she was hearing, the words she was speaking, were coming from somewhere and someone else. “My father,” she acknowledged. What was going on? What were her father and brother, two men she hadn't spoken to in over three years, doing here in this room with her now? In what perverse way had Joan's murder served to reunite them?

“You might want to have a look through this,” Captain Mahoney said, dropping the open scrapbook into her arms. It felt surprisingly light, considering he had just dumped the entire weight of her past into her hands.

Bonnie glanced down at the first page, almost afraid of what she might see. A small newspaper clipping occupied the center of the otherwise blank space.
The marriage is announced of Bonnie Lonergan to Rod Wheeler on June 27, 1989. Ms. Lonergan is a high school English teacher. Mr. Wheeler is the news director at television station WHDH in Boston. The couple will honeymoon in the Bahamas
.

Why would Joan have saved her wedding announcement? Bonnie wondered, turning the page, conscious of Rod reading over her shoulder, his breath warm on the back of her neck. A small line of perspiration broke out along her upper lip as she read the second clipping, dated November 5 of that same year.
WARRANTS ISSUED IN LAND FRAUD SCHEME
said the headline.
Warrants have been issued for two men believed to have been involved in a scheme to defraud investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Scott Dunphy and Nicholas Lonergan, both of Boston, are believed to have spearheaded an attempt to defraud hundreds of potential investors….

“My God,” Bonnie whispered, skipping the balance of the article she already knew by heart and moving quickly to the next page, seeing a large, grainy black-and-white photograph of her brother in handcuffs, his handsome face obscured by chin-length shaggy blond hair. Then on the next page:
PAIR ACQUITTED IN LAND DEVELOPMENT SCHEME
.
Judge cites lack of evidence
.

And then another small announcement in the middle of an otherwise blank page:
The marriage is announced of Steve Lonergan to Adeline Sewell on March 15, 1990. Mr. Lonergan is an employment counselor. Ms. Sewell runs a travel agency. They will honeymoon in Las Vegas
. The announcement neglected to mention it was the third marriage for each of them.

The next page was filled with news about Rod: a flattering profile, including photographs, of the hotshot director of news at station WHDH; and the announcement of the creation of
Marla!
with Rod at the helm, a picture of the dynamic duo arm in arm, and a chart of the program's growing success.

And then back to more unflattering shots of her brother in handcuffs, looking a little older, a lot more haggard, an oddly smiling Scott Dunphy beside him, this time under the lurid headline
PAIR FOUND GUILTY OF CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER
.

Bonnie quickly turned the page. She had no desire to relive those awful months wedged between her mother's death and the birth of her child, both announcements suitably enshrined on the next few pages, Bonnie noted with mounting unease.

The last page in the album was entirely taken up with a newspaper picture of her daughter, Amanda, snapped that past Christmas when they were in Toys “R” Us. A photographer had caught the child standing wistfully in front of a giant stuffed kangaroo, one hand at her mouth, her thumb lost between her lips, the other hand in the paw of the huge stuffed marsupial. The photograph had made the front page of the Life section of the
Globe
. Bonnie had a large framed copy of it sitting on her desk at home.

“I don't understand,” Bonnie said again, her voice echoing the numbness she was feeling. She looked over at Sam and Lauren. “Why would your mother keep a scrapbook like this?”

But Sam and Lauren said nothing, their silence underlining either ignorance or disinterest, perhaps a combination of both.

“There's a Nick Lonergan listed in here,” Detective Kritzic announced, holding Joan's address book into the air, as if it were a Bible.

Bonnie was conscious of her heart starting to race. “That can't be,” she protested, feeling that she was sinking into quicksand and grabbing for Rod's arm for sup
port. “They didn't even know each other.”

Detective Kritzic read the number aloud.

Bonnie nodded recognition. “That's my father's number,” she said, then lapsed into silence. How many times could she say, “I don't understand”?

“Did your mother own a gun?” Captain Mahoney asked, switching the focus of his questioning to Sam and Lauren. If he had any more questions about what her brother's name might be doing in Joan's address book, he was keeping them to himself.

“Yes,” Lauren said.

“She kept it in the top drawer of her dresser,” Sam added, pointing to the tall walnut armoire that stood beside the window on the wall opposite the bedroom door, its bottom drawers open, several bright-colored blouses hanging over the sides.

Two large strides brought Captain Mahoney to the armoire. He pulled open the top drawer, sweeping his hand across Joan's more intimate belongings, several pairs of panty hose escaping his grasp to float aimlessly to the floor and land gently across the top of his black shoes. “What kind of gun was it, do you know?”

“I don't know anything about guns,” Sam said.

“Ask my dad,” Lauren told him. “It was his gun.”

All eyes turned to Rod, who looked as stunned as Bonnie had felt only moments ago.

“I thought you said you didn't own a gun, Mr. Wheeler,” Captain Mahoney reminded him.

“I used to have a thirty-eight revolver,” Rod stammered, after a pause. “Frankly, I'd forgotten all about it. Joan kept it after we separated. She claimed she was afraid to be alone.”

“There's no gun here,” Captain Mahoney stated, after checking each drawer in turn. “But we'll do a more thorough search after you leave.”

“Where are we going?” Sam asked.

“You'll come home with us,” Bonnie told him, looking to Rod for confirmation, receiving only a blank stare
in reply. “Why don't you throw a few things into a suitcase. We can come back later in the week for the rest.”

“What if we don't want to go with you?” Lauren asked, panic evident in her voice.

“You can go with your father or I can take you to Juvenile Hall,” Captain Mahoney intervened. “I think you might prefer going with your father.”

Bonnie nodded gratefully. Surely the fact that he was encouraging Sam and Lauren to go home with them meant that he didn't seriously consider either one a suspect.

Sam and Lauren took several seconds to consider their options, then turned and walked silently from the room, Bonnie and Rod following numbly after them.

Sam's bedroom was immediately across the hall from his mother's, his bed unmade, the top of his dresser covered with books and paper and what looked like hundreds of loose pennies. There was a poster of Guns N' Roses's star Axl Rose in his underwear beside a picture of a topless Cindy Crawford. An acoustic guitar, its surface scratched, one string broken, lay on the brown carpet beside a discarded flannel shirt, an open pack of Camel cigarettes protruding from its pocket. A large rectangular glass tank sat on the sill beneath the bedroom window. A large snake lay stretched out inside it.

“My God,” Bonnie whispered. “What on earth is that?”

“That's L'il Abner,” Sam answered proudly, his face noticeably animated for the first time since he'd come home. “He's only eighteen months old, but he's already over four feet long. Boa constrictors can grow to nine, maybe even twelve, feet. Longer in the wild.”