One Fool At Least (18 page)

Slider nodded and ran after his father. He returned a short time later with car keys in his hand.

“He’s going to walk. He’ll be okay. And tomorrow the whole town is going to know that I’m back, you can bet on that,” Slider said grimly. “And then whoever wants to take a shot at me will have an easy mark.”

Molly pulled him back toward the house with a final wave at us. Slider’s words stayed with me even after their silhouettes had blended back into the night. The secret was out. Some predator out there would have a new, telling scent of his prey. I shivered in the gentle breeze.

Slider was right.
In the morning I saw the police cars up at Pat’s house, as well as a car I thought I recognized as Damian Wilde’s. Jack and I ate breakfast while darting glances out the window, waiting for something to happen. Finally Jack, under the weight of too much suspense, dialed Pat’s number.

“Hello. Molly? What’s up?” he asked. He listened then, running a hand through his wavy brown hair, still damp from a shower. He looked at me and shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. Finally he said his goodbyes to Molly and hung up.

“What?” I asked.

“Stranger than you’d imagine. Wilde managed to get there first and weasel Slider’s story out of him. Now Wilde is acting as sort of an advocate for the boy, against Hendricks, who is trying to make him feel like a criminal on the run.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I said.

“Meanwhile, none of them are focusing on the fact that Slider, Molly, maybe others, are still in danger from this lunatic.” Jack picked up the bread basket and threw it down again, scattering crumbs. His frustration was palpable.

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Do? Well…”

“Finn’s diary!” I said.

Jack nodded, relieved. “Let’s go up and get it from Slider. See if it points us in any one direction.”

“OH!” I said. “Jack, grab my jeans, the ones I was wearing last night.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know! Where were we when you took them off of me?”

Jack grinned momentarily, remembering the moment. “Upstairs,” he said, and he jogged away. He wore cut-offs today with a green T-shirt that said “Glacier National Park.” He called from the loft.

“Do you want them?”

“Just get the thing out of the pocket. It’s a sticky note that I found under Finn’s stove.”

Jack re-appeared, studying the note. “Daddy’s windfall?” he asked.

“We need to see whose number it is,” I said.

Jack shrugged, went to the phone, and dialed. He waited until someone answered, then said, “Sorry, wrong number.” He hung up, then turned to me. “It’s the accountant. The one we talked to about Slider.”

“Ah. So we have more than one guy making plans about his money. Finn must have been deciding what to do with the dough he suddenly had from Wilde. But that sounds sarcastic, doesn’t it? Calling him “Daddy?” I guess his
Daddy
wanted to make up for the past. Ardmore suggested it was a lot of money. Not to mention that Finn’s real mother left him as a beneficiary. He had decisions to make.”

“Hmmm,” Jack said. “And maybe there were certain family members that knew about those decisions. Aidan? Colleen?”

“Slider? Ardmore?” I asked doubtfully. “I can’t picture anyone we’ve met as a murderer, not even Damian Wilde.”

Jack had no response to that one. He didn’t like Wilde, and short of the man saving baby Max from a burning building, it didn’t look like he’d find a way into Jack’s good graces. Jack was doing some squats while standing in place. I regarded him with scorn, and perhaps a hint of jealousy. This is the last thing I would do with some time on my hands. Generally, standing in place makes me want to continue standing in place, or to transition into a sit. I shook my head at him, not understanding.

“We need to see the notebook,” he said. He stopped squatting, spun energetically and started doing dishes; I finished my breakfast in a restless silence, watching Pat’s house. Eventually one police car left, and Wilde’s elegant vehicle disappeared soon after.

The second police car came down the winding drive and parked in front of our little place. “Cheese it, it’s the cops,” I said into my juice glass.

“They’ll want to start the process of pressing charges.” Jack turned, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. I stared at the spots of moisture he made; anything to avoid his eyes. “Maddy—” he began warningly, but I was saved by the bell.

Chief Hendricks came in with his clompy boots and his air of authority. A uniformed lackey followed, obviously there to bask in the brilliance of Hendricks, and perhaps take notes. “Miz Shea. Mr. Shea,” said Hendricks. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Not at all,” Jack said. He pulled out a kitchen chair near mine, and Hendricks’ eyes, when he pulled off his mirrored sunglasses, were suddenly at my level. They were disconcerting, to say the least, because they didn’t change when his voice or manner did. They stayed fixed, like a pair of marbles pounded into his head. It was creepy, and I looked away.

“Miz Shea, we need to get the paperwork started on Randy and Jim. They are currently out on bail, because Mr. Damian Wilde feared what we had was simply a misunderstanding.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Jack, almost pleasantly.

Hendricks’ marble eyes flicked to Jack, then back to me. “So we’ll need to know if you’ll be pressing charges against those gentlemen. Your husband indicated last night that you weren’t in any state to make that decision, but pretty soon of course we’ll need your answer.”

I hesitated. Of course Jim and Randy deserved to go to jail; they committed a crime. They frightened me half out of my wits, they threatened me, in so many words, and Jim had a gun, which had terrified me. And yet I felt that they’d been patsies, manipulated by a man who knew he had nothing to lose. I thought of Randy with his Hubba Bubba and his country music, and the way he helped me walk to the bathroom, making stupid conversation about my little kidneys. I thought of Jim on the elevator on the night of my wedding, smoking and grinning and calling me “little bride” and suggesting that “they” sent him to give me a message. Who were “they?” Wilde and someone else? Someone other than Wilde?

I sighed. “Jack, I don’t see the point in—”

Jack stiffened. “The point is that they kidnapped you. They put you through emotional hell and they held you against your will, despite the fact that you obviously needed a doctor. They terrorized our whole family on what should have been a happy and beautiful day.”

“On the other hand, Chief,” I said, “Wouldn’t this drag on? Wouldn’t I have to be in court, maybe make repeated visits to the police station, for my testimony to be valid?”

I turned to Jack. “Do we really want that? To keep reliving it? How about a restraining order for them, and a demand for an apology?”

“An
apology
?” Jack stared at me and I could hear my brother’s voice floating on the wind, borne all the way from Illinois: “She’s Madeline Mann, see?
Mad-man
.”

“Chief, I guess we’ll have to get back to you on this,” I said, trying to look at his marble irises without cringing. “Perhaps we could call you later today? Here are your sunglasses.” I couldn’t wait for him to put them back on.

Chief Hendricks rose. I’d forgotten his minion, who stood flattened against the wall as though he feared schrapnel. “Ya’ll will need to make up your mind. There’s a lot going on in this town right now, but I’d like to give this the attention it deserves.”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” I said with my most brilliant smile. All I saw was my own reflection in his shades, my foot propped up on a chair and my teeth looking unusually large and predatory.

We watched them go. Jack had his back to me as he viewed the car’s departure, and I realized that I was in trouble. As usual, my husband was trying to frame his words carefully. I’ve come to know this as Jack’s pre-assault mode.

“Maddy—” he began, turning slowly, his eyes on the floor.

Again I was saved by the doorbell.

Jack opened the door to reveal Molly and Slider, who had been discussing a show on MTV, but switched to the tale of what had just occurred up at the house. They entered with much bluster and emotion, decrying the unfair police and wondering at the curious Mr. Wilde. “I don’t even know how he knew or why he showed up,” Slider began, watching Molly as she flounced into a chair and helped herself to a piece of bacon.

“Jack and I think he might fear Ardmore was involved,” I said.

Slider thought about that. “Ardmore was there, too. With his dad. They were actually really cool to me. Ardmore said that in a way we were like brothers, since we both had the same brother. I thought that was a great thing to say.”

“So you told them the truth? That you knew nothing about what happened?” Jack asked.

“Yup. And they seemed sort of relieved, so maybe you’re right. Anyway, then when Chief Hendricks showed up and started saying that it was really convenient that I disappeared right after a murder, they stood up for me. Ardmore said he would act as my lawyer until I got my own, if it came to that.”

“How can Ardmore act as your lawyer?”

“Oh, he is a lawyer, Maddy,” Molly put in. “He just has to take the bar. He was about to take it months ago, and then he and his dad got into a fight, and he got the pizza job. He doesn’t let people push him around much.”

“No,” I said.

“Anyway. The cops said they’d be investigating my story to see if it panned out, whatever that means.”

“It means they had nothing to hold you on, so they had to leave,” Jack said wryly.

“Yeah, well.” Slider sat down next to Molly and took her bacon-free hand in his. They looked ready to stay all day.

“What about the notebook? Any help?” I queried.

They looked mournfully at each other, and then at us. “Not that we can see. Maybe you’d like to look through it. It’s mostly just him jotting down ideas for the bar, some phone numbers here and there, even some poems that he wrote. There’s a girl’s name that appears a lot—Stacy or something—and she’s in lots of the poetry. You’d think he was the teenager,” Slider said with a grin.

“At one point he mentions Mom,” Molly said. “But it just says ‘talk to Libby Shea.’ ”

“But that refers to the time right before he died. Do you have it with you? What else does it say on that page?”

Slider slipped the notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it. “Here it is,” he said, handing it to me.

I skimmed the page, noting the reference to Libby. He’d put a little smiley face by her name, which I found disturbing. He’d also written some things about possible cheaper insurance for the restaurant, a few phone numbers of insurance companies, and then, on a line of its own, one cryptic question:
Family
:
Who meets the requirement
?

I showed it to Slider. “What does he mean by this?”

Slider shrugged. “I’m not sure. I know he’d been kind of thinking a lot about how his real brother—brothers, I guess, me and Ardmore—were more his relatives than his adopted ones. In a lot of ways blood was really important to Finn. For some adopted people, it’s not a big deal. Check out what he wrote on the next page.”

It was a poem, not very well written, about parents as the cause of every person’s suffering, and the general unpleasantness of the world.

“Slider,” I asked thoughtfully, “Finn never spoke to you about suicide, did he?”

Slider shook his head. “Nah. He liked life, he liked people. And he felt like he was starting life over, with his new family. Not that he was neglecting the old one. He had just invited Colleen to work in the restaurant, and he kept in touch with Aidan.”

Jack leaned on the kitchen island. “Has anyone called you about Finn’s will? Ardmore says you’re a beneficiary.”

Slider’s brows went up, and he and Molly exchanged a glance. “A lawyer left a message for me this morning, while the police were there. Maybe that’s what it’s about. I think it was Finn’s lawyer, a guy named Carmichael.”

“If you are a beneficiary, perhaps of a large amount of money, it could put you in danger,” I said. “We don’t know who we’re dealing with here, but with all these family connections and all that money at stake, it seems a good bet that money is the motive here.”

“So meet with him here, or in a very public place. Make sure Pat or one of us is with you, okay?”

Slider looked touched at Jack’s concern, almost flattered. “Yeah, okay. Now I have to go see my dad. I told him I would, last night, so—”

His expression suggested he’d been ordered to walk through a pit of annoyed rattlesnakes.

“I’ll go with you,” Molly said. “I’ll go on all your errands with you.”

“Take an adult, too,” Jack said. “Do you need me to go?”

Slider grinned. “No, but thanks, Jack. I think Pat or Libby will do it. You guys have been great. Really great. I appreciate—”

“We’re glad you’re home,” I said. “Do you want this notebook back, or can we look through it?”

“You can keep it. I don’t think it has anything useful, but you can decide.”

The two of them took their leave, hand in hand, comfortable with each other in the way that even newlyweds sometimes aren’t. I stole a glance at Jack, waiting to hear chastise me about forgiving Jim and Randy.

He surprised me. “How’s your foot today?” he asked.

“Not bad. I took my pill, so I don’t feel much.”

“How about if we get started on our sightseeing? There’s plenty of local stuff we can look at in the next couple of days, and then we could try venturing farther afield. We can see a lot just from the car, and here and there we can get out and wander a little.”

I felt a burst of love for him. “Jack.”

He sat down across from me and looked into my eyes. His were blue, the same blue as those mountains were, in certain moods. “Yes, Madeline.”

“I’m not trying to make you miserable. I’m not trying to be crazy. I just don’t feel right about it, that’s all, prosecuting those old men. Haven’t you ever had trouble doing something because it didn’t feel right?”

“Sure.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“What was it?”