Homicide Related (7 page)

I
f anyone had asked him,
Hey, imagine if Lorraine suddenly stopped breathing, what do you think you'd be doing the very next day?
, he never would have come up with what he was actually doing, which I was shoving books into his locker that he didn't need for the morning and pulling out others that he did need. He paused as his hand closed around his math textbook. What the hell was he even doing here? His mother had just died. You were supposed to do something when that happened, weren't you? Something besides the same-old same-old.

“Hey, Dooley,” someone said behind him.

He turned to look at Warren's moon-shaped face and his nervous eyes blinking behind black-rimmed glasses that made him look like the picked-on brainiac that he was.

“Hey, Warren,” Dooley said, even managing a smile so that maybe Warren would relax a little. Dooley wasn't sure why, but Warren approached him every time as if he wasn't quite sure if Dooley was going to shake his hand or rip off his head, and this after Dooley had saved his ass that one time and Warren had repaid the favor. “How you doing?”

“Good … I guess,” Warren said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced down to the end of the hall, like he was wishing he could be there instead of here at Dooley's locker.

“Everything okay?”

He looked miserable as he squared his shoulders and drew in a deep breath, looking to Dooley like a guy who was being forced at gunpoint to walk barefoot through a nest of rattlesnakes and was now thinking that a quick bullet in the head would be preferable to the sure but slower and more painful death by venom that lay in store.

“What's going on, Warren?”

Warren dug something out of the binder he was carrying—an envelope—and stared at it for a moment before thrusting it at Dooley.

“Alicia's birthday is coming up,” he said. Alicia was Warren's sister. She had Down's syndrome. She came by the video store at least once a week. For a few months, she'd been renting the penguin movie. Now she was into the one with the little girl and the talking bear, the one in full-body armor. She could have bought a library of DVDs with the money she spent renting the same movie over and over again, always when Dooley was on shift, always coming to Dooley's cash or, if he was on the floor instead, waiting up at the counter until Linelle or whoever else was up there called him and stepped aside so that he could scan Alicia's choice and take her money. “She wants you to come,” Warren mumbled, his eyes focused on his shoes. “You know, if you're not working or whatever.”

Dooley opened the envelope and pulled out an invitation.

“I'll check my schedule,” he said.

“Right,” Warren said, as if this were exactly the answer—the dodge—he'd been expecting.

“What I mean is, it's two weeks from now,” Dooley said. “If I
am
scheduled to work, I'll have plenty of time to switch my shift. Tell Alicia I'll be there.”

Warren perked up. “Really?” One thing you could say about him: He never took anything for granted.

“Yeah,” Dooley said.

“You're going to come?” Warren said, leaning in to Dooley to make sure he heard the answer clearly this time.

“Yeah, I'm going to come.”

Warren nodded slowly, as if he still wasn't sure he had it right. “She said to tell you she's having an ice-cream cake. Chocolate.”

“All the more reason,” Dooley said. And, bingo, Warren smiled. For the first time since Dooley had heard about Lorraine, he felt good. The feeling lasted until homeroom bell rang. He hated school.

At five that afternoon, he was fresh out of the shower and standing at the ironing board in the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel when his uncle walked through the door, surprising him. Fridays were busy dry-cleaning days. His uncle hardly ever came home this early on Fridays. He looked at what Dooley was doing and said, “You're not working tonight?”

Dooley shook his head.

His uncle zeroed in on the shirt Dooley was ironing. “Beth?”

“Yeah.” Dooley finished the shirt and put the ironing board back into the kitchen closet where his uncle kept it along with all his cleaning supplies.

He picked up his shirt and was headed out of the kitchen when his uncle said, “We should talk about the arrangements. But if you're in a hurry, it can wait until tomorrow.”

“No,” Dooley said. “We might as well get it over with.” The words came out with a hardness that surprised him. Well, why shouldn't they? Lorraine had never come to see him when they had him locked up. She'd never showed much concern before that, either. “What do you think we should do?” Dooley had never thought about funeral arrangements before.

For a moment his uncle looked lost, and Dooley thought he was waiting for Dooley to come up with a plan. Then he got that don't-even-think-about-giving-me-any-crap, copturned-dry-cleaner look of his on his face and sounded as hard as Dooley when he said, “I put a notice in the paper, in case she had any friends. I thought there should be a service of some kind. I was also thinking cremation.”

“Cremation?”

“Unless you want her someplace where you can go and visit her.”

Dooley thought about that for maybe two seconds. Lorraine had never visited him and all of a sudden he was going to—what?—make a pilgrimage once a week to some cemetery to talk to her headstone? Hell, past the age of twelve, he had hardly ever talked to
her.

“I'm okay with cremation,” he said. He'd be okay with just about anything if he could get the hell out of the kitchen, get dressed, and get over to Beth's.

That reminded him. He glanced at his uncle. Maybe this wasn't the best time to bring it up, but he couldn't think of any time that would be better.

“About Beth,” he said slowly. “I don't want you to think she doesn't care or anything.”

“Why would I think that?”

“You know, if she doesn't come to the funeral.”

“She comes, she doesn't come; it's her choice. She didn't know Lorraine.”

“Yeah,” Dooley said. He could have left it at that, but it wouldn't have been fair to Beth. “The thing is, she sort of thinks Lorraine died a long time ago.”

His uncle looked wordlessly at him, his eyes hard and disapproving.

“Come on,” Dooley said. “It's not like I committed a crime.” He wasn't proud of lying to Beth. He hadn't planned to do it. He hadn't planned to mention Lorraine to her at all. But she'd asked about his mother and he hadn't had the heart—the courage—to get into it. He was even more reluctant now, when a guy like Nevin was hanging around. Besides, at the time, he didn't think he'd ever see Lorraine again. He'd thought she was out of his life for good. And now, for sure, she was.

His uncle stared at Dooley's freshly ironed shirt for a few moments. “So, you taking her out somewhere?” he said at last. “Maybe to celebrate?”

Jesus. What kind of thing was that to say?

“Okay, look, I probably shouldn't have said Lorraine was dead,” Dooley said.

“Probably?”

“It's complicated.”

“No, it isn't,” his uncle said. “You were ashamed of her so you lied about her. Is that about the size of it?”

“I
like
Beth.”

“Oh, well then. All the more reason to tell her a whopper.”

Dooley regretted that he'd broached the subject.

“I'm sorry,” he said, even though he wasn't, not even remotely. He just wanted to go upstairs, get changed, and get over to Beth's. He would have done just that, too, except for one thing: Beth came over sometimes, and sometimes she talked to his uncle on the phone.

“What?” his uncle said, seeing how Dooley was eyeing him.

“I was wondering if you could maybe not mention it to her.”

“Not mention that my sister, your mother, just died, you mean?” Like Dooley had asked him to cover for Jeffrey Dahmer or Paul Bernardo.

“It's bad enough I had to tell her about me,” Dooley said. “And there's this other guy.” He hadn't meant to say that, but if his uncle mentioned Lorraine to Beth now, when Nevin was sniffing around … “He drives a Jag.”

“Yeah,” his uncle said. “I could see how a mother dying of a drug overdose would handicap you in
that
race.” He went to the fridge, pulled out a can of beer, popped it, and took a long, long,
long
swallow right in front of Dooley. “So what do you two have planned for tonight?”

Dooley didn't want to answer, not when his uncle was looking at him like that, ready to keep digging at him if he didn't answer. So okay, fine.

“She's making dinner.”

His uncle considered this. Dooley knew that he liked Beth. He probably thought she was a good influence. He sounded less pissed off when he said, “Is she a good cook?”

“I dunno.” She had never cooked for him before. “I gotta go. I don't want to be late.”

He was almost through the door when his uncle said, “They did the post-mortem today.”

“And?” Dooley said. “Was it an overdose?”

“She had pulmonary edema, so probably. But they won't be able to say until they've done toxicology. Even then they may not know. It's not like TV.”

Dooley knew that from his own experience.

“If it
was
an overdose,” he said, “will they be able to tell if it was accidental or, you know … whatever?”

“They'll look into it.”

“And they'll let you know?”

“Yeah.” His uncle pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked exhausted. “Have a good time with Beth.”

Dooley nodded and turned to go.

“You know about safe sex, right?” his uncle said.

“Yeah.”

“You got rubbers? Because if you don't—”

Dooley felt the heat rise in his cheeks.

“I'm covered,” he said. If there was one thing he did
not
want to discuss with his uncle, it was sex. He had a hard enough time some nights trying not to picture his uncle and Jeannie going at it, and now that his uncle had brought the subject up, he couldn't help picturing his uncle picturing him and Beth going at it. “I really gotta go.”

He was halfway to Beth's place before he thought, I should bring her something. If Nevin were going to her place for supper, he'd bring something.

But what?

Beth didn't drink—thank God, because that would have complicated everything. Dooley thought maybe dessert, maybe pastries, except that what if she had already bought something or made something—would she be offended? Then he thought, flowers. Girls like flowers, right?

He stopped at a small Italian supermarket and bought a colorful bouquet. The lady at the cash smiled approvingly at him as she wrapped the flowers in a paper cone.

Beth smiled, too, when he held them out to her. She went on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he should have brought something else. Something nicer. Something more personal. Trouble was, he didn't know what.

She had music on soft, like audio wallpaper. She'd set candles on the table, which she lit when he came into the apartment. She had made chicken in some kind of sauce with mushrooms, and rice, and salad. For dessert she'd made a pie—apple—which she served with ice cream. If his uncle asked again, he'd say, “Yeah, she's a terrific cook.”

After they ate, he helped her clear the table because if there was one thing he'd learned from his uncle, it was that you don't just sit there while someone else does all the work, especially if the work involves putting food in your belly. He'd been planning to help her wash whatever wouldn't go in the dishwasher but, as soon as everything was off the table, she smiled and took his hand and led him down to the end of a hall that ran off the living room and into her bedroom, which was so white it was like stepping into a cloud. The walls were painted white and so was the floor. The curtains on her windows were white, the blinds were white, the furniture was all white. The sheets and the bedspread were white. When he'd asked her about it that first time he'd seen it, she had said, “It's clean, you know?” For sure it was that; it was clean.