All for One (22 page)

“Steak and eggs with home fries,” Joel confirmed. “And a coke.”

Dooley gave his companion a look. “With breakfast?”

Joel shrugged and fiddled with a packet of creamer. “It’s caffeine.”

“And you, sir?” the waitress prompted Dooley.

“Same as him, no potatoes, and the eggs scrambled
dry
.” There was nothing worse that a mouthful of eggs that reminded one more of embryos than food. “And just coffee for me.”

The waitress scribbled on her pad and retreated behind the long counter that faced into the kitchen. She ripped their order off the pad and stuck it under a clip on a shiny silver wheel suspended above the glowing food warmers. Unseen hands spun it and Dooley heard eggs cracking into a bowl, and likely cheap meat hissing as it hit the griddle.

“We had a good dump of snow last night,” Joel said. “Why did you want to drive all the way out here to tell me something? You couldn’t tell me when you called?”

“I couldn’t talk,” Dooley said. “And I didn’t drive in. I stayed here last night.”

“You did? Usually the truckers get all the rooms when we have a good storm.”

“I stayed at Mary Austin’s house.”

Joel considered that silently as his coke arrived. When the waitress left he said, “You did what?”

“I was talking to her, the weather was shitty, and she asked me to stay.”

“Asked?” Joel reacted. “Not ‘offered’?”

Dooley held his hand over his coffee and said, “You’d better rein in Chuck Edmond.”

“Why?”

“He’s breaking more glass.”

“Where? At her place?”

Dooley nodded. “She didn’t eyeball him doing it.”

“The little bastard,” Joel swore quietly. “Not one of them are any good. You should see their school records sometime. Nature or nurture, that family is messed up both ways.”

“She was frightened. That’s why I stayed.”

Dooley looked away far too quickly for Joel to believe that completely. “She’s a material part of this case.”

“She’s a person who’s being terrorized,” Dooley countered, an imaginary
Proceed With Caution
sign tagged to his words.

Another time, Joel decided. Let it lay for now. “What were you talking to her about?”

“Talking to the kids.”

“I thought you weren’t having any luck.”

Dooley shook his head. “
Her
talking to them. They trust her.”

“And?”

“And she said she’d do it.”

“She will,” Joel responded, surprised. “I thought she believed in some lawyer-client privilege sort of thing with them.”

“I think she just doesn’t want them to get hurt.”

A straw clung to the sweating glass of soda before Joel. He peeled the paper from the slender red and white tube and stabbed it through the thick layer of crushed ice floating at the top. “Why is she doing this for you?”

“She’s not doing it for me,” Dooley disagreed.

Joel drew on his soda through the straw and nodded. “I asked her, other people asked her. Why now and not then?”

“Do you want me to tell her not to?” Dooley asked, irritated.

“No,” Joel said. He puckered on the straw and sucked half an inch from the glass. Let this go, too, he told himself, and be glad the teacher was going to help. “We’re running some scenarios tomorrow to clear up some of the time problems.”

“You’re reenacting it?”

“Just for the time stuff from statements. When did the office first hear? Was anyone on the phone so we can pinpoint the time? Blah, blah, blah.” Joel stirred the ice with his straw. “You’re welcome to be there.”

“I have a commitment,” Dooley said. A commitment? He wondered if it was best to think of it as that, and not something he wanted to do. The difference between washing a Ferrari and driving one, he figured.

“No problem. I’ll fill you in.”

“I’m going to drop by the school on my way home,” Dooley said.

“It’s Saturday.”

“Exactly why I’m going. It should be deserted.”

Joel didn’t get it. “You want to walk around an empty school?”

“I just want to see where he died without a bunch of kids traipsing by.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Dooley smiled and shook his head. “I’m not dancing on the spot or anything.”

“You probably wouldn’t be the first if you did,” Joel commented.

A few minutes passed and their breakfast arrived, a different waitress making the delivery.

Dooley had the bottle of hot sauce in hand before he saw the runny mass of yellow and white oozing around the steak. “Excuse me.”

The waitress looked back over one shoulder as she walked away. Her face was tired, the tired he remembered in his mother’s expression. Worn but not beaten. A proud tired.

In this woman an angry tired.

“I asked for scrambled dry,” Dooley said evenly.

The woman turned to face him now, arms crossing defiantly below smallish breasts. Over the left one ‘
Vick’
was embroidered. “Those are as dry as you’re getting. If you don’t like ‘em...”

Dooley looked, dumbfounded, to Joel as the waitress disappeared behind the dining counter. “What the hell was that?”

Joel scooped a forkful of home fries into his mouth and half mumbled, “That was Vicki Allenton.”

Dooley’s eyes dropped to the contents of his plate, warmed over chicken embryos and fatty beef. He was no longer hungry. “Wonderful.”

“You haven’t made friends with their parents,” Joel observed.

Dooley tossed his paper napkin onto his plate and slid out of the booth. “Remember when I told you I might hate you when this was all over?”

Joel chewed as he looked up, waiting.

“I over estimated the time,” Dooley said. He walked out of Happy Jack’s Grill into the cold, clearing morning, leaving the check for the man who’d brought him into this.

*  *  *

It took Joey twenty-five minutes to get to her house. Cutting through Galloway’s Orchard would have gotten him there in ten.

It was where she lived, actually. Not a house. Not a house by a long shot.

Joey stopped just short of the long, muddy driveway that, when it rained or the snow melted, spilled itself onto Olympia Street. Already the previous night’s early blast of winter was dissolving, gouging long, vein-like ruts in the earthen track, carrying what it chewed loose away in a flow that approached the color and consistency of a thin gravy. The mild brown torrent washed past Joey, swishing waves over the black toes of his rubbers, and joined the larger stream of snowmelt racing down the gutter.

She lives here, Joey thought, his eyes moving over the six unit apartment building from one depressing feature to the next. Three doors on the bottom floor faced a muddy circle of earth that, in some deluded dream, might be termed a courtyard. A broken tricycle, its left rear wheel missing and nowhere to be seen, lay on its side just about where the ‘courtyard’ narrowed and became the driveway. Two old truck tires leaned against the side of the building. Joey could imagine the kids that must live here twisting themselves into the centers and having their friends roll them down the driveway’s incline to Olympia. It would be a heck of a ride, he thought. A pretty good time.

And then what?

The sadness of no answer to his question to himself spurred him on. He began to walk up the driveway, sloshing through the dirty melt with each step. PJ’s apartment was number 3, the farthest door on the bottom floor, right below number 6. The landing for the upstairs apartments was also a covering of sorts for the minor stoop that rose just one step up from ground level. To Joey it looked like the landing was sagging. As he drew closer he thought the whole building was leaning.

He found himself shocked by what he was seeing. It was his first time here, though he had tried once before to come. Tried, but had been stopped.

At the top of the driveway, looking left beyond the building, Joey could see the orchard’s gray tentacles poking through the thinning blanket of white, clawing naked at the morning sky. He stopped and listened, and when he heard laughter the skin beneath his warm clothes broke into a million little bumps, and the chill that he’d felt tingling his nose and cheeks on the walk over now seemed hot compared to the frigid wave trickling over him. His breath stopped momentarily, choked off midway down his throat, the laughter growing louder and multiplying, almost echoing as if there was more than one terrible mouth spitting the sound. Definitely more than one, Joey realized, his thoughts swimming now, eyes locked on the orchard’s slumbering growth. More than one laugh, and not from in there. Not from in the—

“Joey?”

He turned fast toward the voice. The voice he knew. The voice he’d know in a dark forest with a storm raging all around.

“What are you doing here?” PJ asked from her open front door, a gaggle of five little ones coming around from the back of the building and passing between her and Joey at a dead run, giddy laughter chasing them as they chased each other.

Joey’s eyes followed the children, none of whom could have been more than six, as they ran off, the lot of them disappearing into the orchard after a moment, laughing all the way.

“Joey?” PJ repeated, stepping onto the cement slab that was her porch, drawing her arms tight across her front, high enough to cover the budding breasts beneath her thin tee shirt. Her only bra was with her mom, who was stopping at the laundromat after her breakfast shift. “Is something wrong?”

Something inside did the unseen equivalent of slapping him across the face, and instantly his thoughts turned from the odd laughter which had been the laughter of the living, left that fuzzing interlude completely behind and seized the sight of PJ. Standing there in the cold, in bare feet, her toes doing a dance all their own, curling up from contact with the icy stoop. Her brown hair pulled back, her green eyes clear and almost frightened as they considered him. Her lips thin and pink. Everything perfect, Joey thought. Everything perfect. “No,” he said, his head shaking. “Nothing’s wrong.”

PJ looked left and right, then back at Joey. “What are you doing here?”

Joey took the few remaining steps that put him close to her, the toes of his rubbers nudged up to the edge of the stoop. “I tried to call, but there was a recording...”

PJ gave a quick nod, trying not to show her embarrassment. She could make up some excuse, but Joey would know it was just that. He knew her. He was standing right here. He could see where and how she lived. Put that all together and the recording, which said simply
‘The number you have reached is temporarily out of service’
, might as well have said
‘We’re sorry, but the people here used to have a working phone, but, well, yesterday we pulled the plug because they decided this month they’d rather be warm than in touch.’
And, well, it was warm. The furnace was going full blast. She could feel it on her back.

PJ glanced back over her shoulder, into the apartment. Bobby was on his stomach on the living room floor watching Bugs Bunny tie a knot in Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. As she looked back to Joey she heard the cartoon gun go off and her little brother wail with glee. “Yeah, I know. Is, um, there something you want?”

“Yeah,” Joey said, nodding. “You’re correcting the spelling tests this weekend, right?”

“Yeah.” There was a nervousness in his voice that PJ almost wondered if Joey was going to ask her to make sure he got them all correct. But this was Joey she was talking to. No way would he do that. No way would he even think it. “Why?”

“I need to borrow them.”

“Borrow them? Why would you want to borrow a bunch of spelling tests?”

Now Joey looked around, and peered past PJ into her apartment.

“What is it, Joey?”

“Is your mom home?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

She shook her head. “Just me and my little brother. He’s busy watching TV.” Worry lines scored her brow. “What is it?”

He told her what Jeff had told him on the phone last night, about the note in the suggestion box. And about an idea they’d thought of to figure out who had written it.

After a hard swallow and picking her jaw up off the ground, PJ went back inside and gathered all the tests into a stack. She put them in a folder and gave them to Joey as she came back out. “They shouldn’t fall out of that.”

Joey tucked the thick paper folio inside his jacket. “Thanks. I’ll finish correcting them for you.”

“Okay,” she said, her gaze low and lost, thinking about the tests not at all.
‘I saw who did it’
? Who could have seen them? Who could have possibly seen them?

“I can give them back Monday before school,” Joey said, then offered, “Or I could bring them by tomorrow after church.”

“Okay,” PJ repeated blankly again, the note’s contents still vexing her. The possibility of the note’s contents being true, actually. After a few seconds contemplation of that awful scenario she looked back up to Joey. “When do you think you guys will know?”

“Jeff’s coming over in a while.”

Just inside the apartment the Looney Tunes theme began to play. Bugs had won another one. PJ looked and saw Bobby fixated on a cereal commercial, the one where little chocolate chip cookies leapt from a springboard into a bowl of milk and splashed happily like little kids in a pool on a hot summer day.

PJ focused on the chocolate chip cookies and told herself everything was okay, and everything was going to stay just that way.

“When we find out who wrote it I can...” Joey paused, unsure of where to take what he’d started to say.

“The phone might be working later,” PJ said, her chin rising into a little nod. Her mom had mentioned something about maybe borrowing the money and paying the phone bill in town after doing the laundry. It might happen. “Or you can just tell me Monday.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Joey patted the bulge under his jacket and took a step backward, his eyes fixed on PJ. He’d never told a soul this, but he thought she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. It didn’t matter that she was standing there barefoot in her sweats and a tee shirt. She could have been wearing a gorilla suit. Just as long as it was her inside. “Well, you should go inside. It’s cold.”

Her lips curved into a quiet smile. She gave a little wave to him with one hand and backed into her apartment and closed the door.