Homicide Related (33 page)

“The past couple of years,” Dooley said, “what's that been all about?”

His uncle just sat there. Jesus, what a hard-ass.

“I know about the money,” Dooley said. “I know you were paying her regularly for at least the last couple of years.”

There it was, out in the open and hanging between them now, the complicated thing his uncle didn't want to talk about. And what did his uncle do? He stood up and hammered on the door, summoning a guard, that's what.

Shit.

That night: Customers looking to fry their brains with the latest in mindless entertainment. The busiest night of the week, and Dooley was stepping outside every time Kevin turned his back to try Beth's cell number again.

Thinking about Beth.

Thinking about Lorraine, too, and about the regular cash payments that she regularly transformed into a good time—until six months ago when the partying had stopped and she'd opened up a savings account. His uncle had still been giving her money then. He'd seen the spreadsheets. Had she started saving all that money? She'd cleaned up her act, too. Were the two things related—saving instead of partying and getting herself together? And that day outside his school, she had looked good. She'd looked almost like a regular mom, not some cheap slut party girl. Why had she all of a sudden changed? Had she got religion? He couldn't see that happening. But it had to be something. If there was one thing Dooley knew, it was that someone who was that long and that far gone didn't just wake up one morning and think, hmm, why don't I try the straight life for a while? No, there had to be a reason. Everyone he'd ever met who'd made the change had come face to face with a reason—a hard-core one. Was she sick? Sometimes that happened. People with lung cancer finally stopped smoking. People who were HIV-positive gave up the needle. Some people quit because they'd had a life-altering experience; maybe they'd climbed behind the wheel while under the influence and ended up killing or maiming or paralyzing someone. When that happens, what do you do, assuming they don't lock you up for it? You either change or you get yourself more fucked up. Or maybe your doctor says, unless you make some serious lifestyle changes, you'll be dead in six months. Maybe you don't care. But if you do, if you're not ready to check out, you make some changes. You start eating right, you exercise a little, you butt out. It's always something. There's always a reason.

Something had put Lorraine straight. But what?

Who would know? Who could tell him?

A hand fell on Dooley's shoulder. He spun around.

Linelle. She said, “Kevin says to tell you if you don't get back into the store right now and do your job, he's going to write you up. He's such an asshole.”

Dooley glanced through the store window and saw Kevin's pinched face looking out at him.

“Tell him I'll be there in a minute,” Dooley said.

“He's an asshole, but he's a pissed-off asshole, Dooley. This could get you fired. And if that happens, I'll pretty much have to kill myself. You're the only thing that makes this job tolerable.”

He looked at her. “Yeah?”

“Definitely,” she said. “I would have bled out a long time ago if it wasn't for you.”

Good old Linelle. She always said the right thing.

“Two minutes, I promise,” he said. He punched in another number, talked fast, made an appointment, and then went inside and did something he'd never done before. He apologized to Kevin. Kevin was so stunned that all he could do was flap his gums; no words came out.

Dooley's cell phone rang at one in the morning, just as he was getting into bed. It was Beth.

“I've been calling you,” Dooley said.

“My mother confiscated my phone,” she said, confirming one of Dooley's theories and dispelling all the Beth-dumps-Dooley scenarios that had been plaguing him ever since her mother had marched out of his uncle's house. “She totally freaked out, Dooley.” She was talking softly, as if she were afraid she might be overheard. “She told me she wants to send me down east to live with my uncle and aunt.”

Anything, Dooley thought, to keep her away from me.

“I told her if she did, I'd run away. She forbids me to see you anymore.”

“Beth, I—”

“I told her she can't forbid me to do anything. I told her if she tries to stop me from seeing you, I'll move out, get a job, and get my own place, and there's nothing she can do about it. She's trying to lay this trip on me, Dooley, how I'm all she has left and it's her responsibility to make sure I get the very best—the best education, the best start in life, meet the best people, stuff like that. I know you probably don't like her, but she's not really the way she comes across. It's just been hard, you know—first my father, then Mark. She worries all the time. She keeps thinking that something's going to happen to me and then she won't have anyone. She thinks we should go for counseling—her and me. I told her I would—she's my
mother.
I don't want to be fighting with her all the time. But I told her if I did it, she had to stop giving me a hard time about you. She finally said she would be prepared to do that.”

Dooley let out a sigh of relief.

“When can I see you?” he said.

“We're up north,” Beth said. “We left right after school yesterday.”

“Up north where?”

“At a place in the country,” Beth said. She said something else, but her voice faded out.

“I can hardly hear you,” Dooley said.

“That's because everyone's asleep. I found my mother's cell phone and snuck out of the house. I can see stars, Dooley. You can't believe how many there are. I wish you were here.” Dooley wished he was, too. “My mom wanted us to spend the weekend connecting, you know? She says she feels like she doesn't know me anymore. We went for a hike this morning and then we spent the afternoon at a spa. I won't be back until late tomorrow night. But I wanted to talk to you. I didn't want you to worry.”

“I'm glad you called,” Dooley said.

“So I'll see you when I get back?”

“I can't wait.”

Eighteen

G
loria Thomas was working on a bowl of latte when Dooley arrived at the coffee shop the next morning. Dooley grabbed a coffee and sat down opposite her. She studied him for a moment, searching his eyes. What was she looking for? Did she see some of Lorraine in him? Or had Lorraine spilled her guts about him and was Gloria wondering what he was doing to get through the day?

“How can I help you, Dooley?” she said.

Yeah, that was probably what she was thinking.

“I want to know why she did it—why she joined a group, why she was trying to get clean.”

“We really didn't talk about that.”

“But you were her sponsor.”

“She called me when she felt tempted or when she felt she couldn't hang on anymore. We'd get together for a coffee—just like this—and she'd talk.”

“She must have said something,” Dooley said.

“She said a lot. She talked a lot about you. She said she felt that she never really knew you.”

Dooley shook his head. How could you know someone you never paid any attention to?

“She said she was sorry about that,” Gloria Thomas said.

“She had a funny way of showing it,” Dooley said, with more acid than he'd intended.

“She said she knew she wasn't a good mother. She regretted that. She had a lot of regrets. She talked about them all the time—people she'd known, relationships she'd been in, some of the things she'd done or hadn't done.”

“Did she talk about my uncle?”

“No.”

“Her parents—her adopted parents, I mean?”

“No.”

Dooley sighed. He'd been hoping.

“I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I felt that she was getting to a place where she felt she could move out of the past and take some steps forward—make amends, if that's what she felt she had to do, re-establish relationships, plan for the future.”

“But why? Something must have made her clean up her act,” he said. “Was she sick?”

“No sicker than anyone else in her situation.”

“Was she in trouble with the law?”

“Not that I'm aware of.”

Dooley didn't get it.

Gloria Thomas sipped her latte. “She didn't come right out and say so,” she said slowly, “but I always had the feeling that she was doing it for someone besides herself.”

“What do you mean?”

“She never said. But I think it involved a man.”

There you go. A man. Not Dooley. Not her son. Of course not. Some things never changed.

“Did she say who it was?”

Gloria Thomas shook her head.

“She said she wanted to change her life. She said she had her reasons but that she didn't want to talk about it because she didn't want to jinx it. I don't know, there was just something about the look on her face that made me think it was a man. I could be wrong. That's all I know. I'm sorry.”

“When did she start?”

Gloria Thomas frowned.

“I mean, when did she get her act together?” Dooley said.

“Six or seven months ago. Why?”

Six, seven months ago—about the time she started saving instead of spending.

Dooley stopped by Teresa's place to ask her if she needed anything. He buzzed and buzzed. No answer. He put his mouth up to the letterbox and called her name.

“It's me,” he said. “It's Dooley.”

He stepped back on the sidewalk, almost to the curb, and looked up. A curtain fluttered. He went back to the door and peered in again. This time he was buzzed through and saw Teresa standing at the top of the stairs, a frying pan in her hand.

“I just wanted to see how you're doing,” he said.

She nodded, a signal for him to come up.

She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and Dooley saw that the bruises on her arms had darkened to black and purple. She was still holding the frying pan. It was one of those heavy cast-iron ones, the kind that could inflict serious brain or spinal cord damage if you hit the right spot with the right amount of force. Her knuckles were white around its black handle.