The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (5 page)

I was expected to stand at attention with Dad and Doris and be introduced to everyone who came to visit us in our informal receiving line, though I immediately forgot any names that were told to me.

Though Doris had invited everyone in the immediate neighborhood, only the people who attended Dad's church showed for the party. Whether because of the threat of eternal damnation or social obligation, it wasn't clear. I got the sense that Doris made people uncomfortable, with her rural interpretation of Martha Stewart perfection and her icy smile.

There were only a few people I really remembered meeting at the party. One of those was Police Chief James Perry. He was exactly the person a Hollywood studio would have cast as a small-town southern sheriff—tall and broad through the shoulder, in good shape, and without the usual paunch of a middle-aged man. His black hair was cut with military precision, and his gray eyes seemed to suddenly know everything there was to know about a person with one fluid glance.

Police Chief Perry arrived in uniform, explaining to Doris as he greeted her that he would be heading in to work as soon as he left the party. When his gaze turned on me I experienced a twinge of guilt—for what, I don't know. But there it was.

“Hello, Frank,” the police chief said as he extended a hand first to Dad, then to me. “This is your son, I take it. We're glad to have you here,” he said to me, though the way his eyes appraised me implied he was still reserving judgment about how glad he was to have me there.

“Thanks. We're glad to have him here, too,” Dad said affably.

Doris's smile never wavered, but she couldn't muster the enthusiasm to lie and say she too was glad to have me there. I clashed with her ideal public image the same way my Louder Than Bombs poster clashed with her plaid drapes in the spare bedroom.

“This is my daughter,” Chief Perry said as he half turned to reveal a teenage girl who stood just behind him, her long hair matching his own in color. “Delilah, say hello,” he said with just the hint of an edge to his tone, like the words he expected to come out of her mouth would be something less than polite talk for a man of God and his son.

“Hello,” the girl said, looking bored, not giving either of us her eyes for more than a second.

“Well, hello, Delilah,” Dad said, beaming at her, and I cringed mentally as I waited for him to make some cripplingly embarrassing remark. “We've missed you at church.”

An awkward silence followed while Delilah said nothing, Dad grinned expectantly, waiting for her to say something in return about how much she missed church, and the police chief's jaw muscles bunched as he ground his teeth with restrained anger.

“Delilah, meet my son, Luke,” Dad said finally to smother the horrible silence.

“Sure,” Delilah said. “The wildcat slayer. I know you.”

Chief Perry seemed puzzled by this comment, and I bit down on an angry retort. She let the awkward silence drag on for a minute while I stewed.

“Luke. That short for Lucas?” she asked me, her gaze now alert with sudden interest. Her eyes were the same color as her father's and held the same amount of judgment.

“No, just Luke,” I said with a small shake of my head as I started to fumble the whole interaction by, one, forgetting to extend my hand to shake hers and, two, keeping my gaze on her longer than I should as I cataloged her features—long, wavy black hair, knockout smoky gray eyes, even if they did register only boredom when she looked at me. It was almost impossible to tell what kind of body she had since it was hidden beneath an oversize cardigan sweater and boyfriend-cut jeans. Her outfit wasn't grunge enough to qualify her as a rebel. More like she just didn't really give a crap.

“Yeah?” she asked. “Is that what people call you? ‘Just Luke'?”

“Ju—Luke. My name is Luke,” I said, now feeling like a complete idiot as she had me tripping over my own words while Dad and Chief Perry watched. Chief Perry's expression communicated that he thought I was an idiot and, at the same time, a threat to his daughter's virtue. I tried to keep my eyes from wandering to any part of Delilah's anatomy other than her face.

“Luke's a senior,” Dad said, coming to the rescue as I found myself suddenly in the position of being less cool than a middle-aged preacher.

“Delilah's a senior, too,” Chief Perry said, “and she's very focused on her studies.” This with a meaningful glance at me to make sure I wasn't getting any funny ideas. I caught the roll of Delilah's eyes, but her expression remained placid and indifferent.

“I guess I'll see you around, Just Luke,” Delilah said in a suggestive purr that raised Chief Perry's eyebrow—and his ire.

“Yeah, that … uh,” I fumbled again, trying to be polite without showing too much interest in Chief Perry's precious daughter. “I'll see you around,” I finished lamely.

*   *   *

The party graduated from awkward to painful as Doris tried to inject life into the whole debacle by entertaining people with small talk and forced enthusiasm. Her smile was practically a weapon. When she targeted people with it, they scrambled to engage someone—anyone—else in conversation, or made a quick retreat to the bathroom or the buffet.

I had taken up a stronghold in a corner with a cup of the sugary punch and kept rubbing my tongue around my mouth to scrub away the fuzzy feeling on my teeth.

Two elderly women I recognized from Dad's church sidled up to me and took up offensive positions on each side.

“Hello, Luke,” the shorter one said.

“Hello … uh.” I hesitated, not remembering either of their names.

“I'm Miss Wingfield, and this is my sister, Miss Mitze,” the taller of the two said. She was regal in her tailored jacket and skirt. The silk flowers covering her hat in an uncertain heap were a major distraction. My eyes kept wandering up to study details like the obviously fake spray of leaves with white berries. The berries trembled each time she raised a hand to adjust the lapels of her jacket or to touch the brooch at her throat. “You may call me Miss Tucker.”

“Okay,” I said, for lack of anything better.

“Tucker is my Christian name, given to me because my mother's mother was a Tucker. Do you like my hat?” she asked with an arched brow. “I notice that you keep studying it.”

“It's … interesting,” I said.

“I do the design work for all of my own hats,” she said. “Normally I would not feel it necessary to invite a compliment about one of my creations, but social graces don't seem to be your particular strength. You don't really have the … polished manners of your father, but I suppose that type of honesty is refreshing. People from the northern cities are like that.”

Washington was not a northern city by any map I had ever studied in school, but I let that one go.

“We saw you talking to the young Miss Delilah,” Miss Mitze said with a crafty smile, and her sister shot her a look of disapproval.

Miss Mitze was as disheveled as her sister was polished. Miss Tucker's hair was a steely gray, shot through with one last stubborn streak of brown and pulled into a bun at her neck. In contrast, Miss Mitze's hair was a soft halo, with a faint blue cast to it that made me think of cotton candy.

“She
could
be quite lovely,” Miss Tucker said, picking up the conversation. “I'm speaking about her appearance, of course. Her manners leave a lot to be desired.”

“She takes after her mother in her looks,” Miss Mitze said with a wistful sigh. “And maybe her personality too.”

“Her mother was a Lefferts,” Miss Tucker said, leaning in conspiratorially, though the name meant nothing to me.

“Mm,” Mitze breathed in agreement.

“The Lefferts were always a bit eccentric,” Tucker said diplomatically from my left.

“Insanity,” Mitze clarified from my right.

“Yes. Though it usually skips a generation,” Tucker said.

“You think Delilah is insane?” I asked, thinking maybe everyone in Ashland was crazy.

“Her grandmother was,” Tucker said.

“Usually skips a generation,” Mitze repeated. “But you never know.”

“The cancer,” Tucker said, and her expression softened as she still looked at Delilah. Mitze nodded in agreement, her eyes shutting with dramatic effect.

Before I could ask for any explanation, Tucker continued: “It's hard to really know someone without knowing their family tree,” she said, moving nimbly to an entirely new topic while I was still trying to get up to speed on insanity and cancer. She said this with an inviting look at me, presumably for me to disclose something worthwhile about my own family tree. Again our gazes tracked together, this time toward my dad and Doris, who were strong-arming an elderly couple into conversation. The husband kept glancing hopefully toward the buffet, while his wife sipped at her iced tea, nodding and smiling woodenly.

“Well,” I said with a sigh, “if I have to be judged according to who I'm related to, I might as well give up the fight right now.”

Mitze and Tucker both smiled but gracefully let the topic drop as we all continued to watch the party around us.

 

7

When I returned to the auto shop after our first meeting, Roger hired me to help him out after school—answering phones, keeping the office clean and organized, occasionally helping him with the cars for minor repairs like oil changes. There was only one other guy who worked at Roger's shop—a guy named Tiny who was anything but. He had wavy black hair to his shoulders, a grizzled goatee, rheumy eyes, and an impressive collection of tattoos, some of which might have been acquired in prison.

The Camaro was relocated to the driveway at home so I could work on it during my free hours in the evenings and on weekends. The exterior of the car was filthy, but the body was free of rust and the interior was in almost pristine condition. Doris blanched when the tow truck showed up at the house with the Camaro perched on its bed. “Where are you going to put it?” she asked, distaste evident in her tone.

“I told Dad,” I said, “it will just be in the driveway until I get it running. I'll clean it, fix it up.”

The Camaro stood out like a sore thumb against the backdrop of Doris's carefully pruned azaleas and hydrangeas. I felt like the Camaro and I had that in common. Neither one of us fit in to this life, this town. We were meant for each other.

Now instead of spending most evenings in my room with a book or watching television, I worked on the Camaro after dinner in the failing daylight. Roger had given me four almost-new tires, saying as he did, “If you end up killing yourself driving on those bald tires, I don't want the blame to get traced back to me.”

The evening after Roger gave me the tires I was out in the driveway, working free the lug nuts, which had frozen after years of neglect. I was intent on my task so I did not even notice when Delilah Perry wandered into the yard and came to stand over me.

I don't know how long she had been standing there, watching me, when she finally spoke. I was listening to a new remix of an Andhim song on my iPhone and so hadn't noticed her approach. At the sound of her voice I jerked in surprise and looked up to find her appraising me with her cool gray eyes. She wore a pair of black leggings and an oversize hoodie, the hood up, forcing her hair to obscure most of her face.

“Hello, Delilah,” I said absently as I kicked at the tire to loosen it from its mount. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just out for a walk,” she said. “This your car?” she asked with a nod at the Camaro.

“Will be,” I said, “once I get it fixed up.”

I was mildly surprised when she sat down on the pavement near me and crossed her legs tailor fashion, plucking idly at the frayed drawstring of her hood.

“So how do you like Ashland, Just Luke?” she asked without any hint of humor as she buried her hands in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

“Well, Delilah,” I said, “I've got to be honest with you. So far, this place sucks pretty hard.”

“People call me Del. No one calls me Delilah unless they're old.”

“Well, I do,” I said. “As long as you keep using that ‘Just Luke' joke, I'm going to call you Delilah.”

“Yeah, well, we're neighbors,” she said as she pointed to the houses beyond the rear fence of my house. “I live on the street behind you. In fact, I can see into your bedroom window at night.”

My face immediately flushed with heat at the thought of her watching me in my most private moments, even though I knew without a doubt she couldn't possibly. My bedroom was on the first floor, at the front of the house, and I always kept my shades carefully drawn. I spent far too much time watching porn on my phone to ever be inclined to let much daylight enter my room. The thought of the porn, and a girl knowing this intimate part of my life, kept the blush there long enough that Delilah got a full minute to enjoy it, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly with a triumphant smirk.

“You're very funny,” I said. And she might have been, if her taunts were directed at someone else.

“My dad says preachers' kids are nothing but trouble,” she said in almost a sigh, maybe from annoyance with her dad and his opinions, maybe because she thought I was a disappointment to this stereotype. “Told me I should stay away from you.” After saying this she carefully studied my face, staring at me in a way I would soon learn to dread, her wonder and judgment evident, though her actual thoughts were hidden. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” I asked, so disarmed by her stare that I had already forgotten her words.

“Are you trouble?” she asked.

Trying to recover some lost ground I said, matching her earnest tone, “In my experience, girls whose dads are cops are the biggest whores. Are you a whore?”

Actually, I had no personal experience with girls of just about any kind, least of all the daughters of police officers. But I was new in town. People only knew what I told them, or, in the case of Principal Sherman, what was in my school records.