Ear-Witness (14 page)

“Mrs. Tammi has a close friend?” Flavia said. “Does that mean she has a boyfriend? So soon?”

We were stopped at a corner, waiting to cross. Jon and I shrugged at the same time.

“If he lives around here,” Jon said, “we could try to find him.”

“The cops must have done that already,” I said.

Flavia looked thoughtful. “We could look also. It is possible that people would tell us things they would not tell the police.”

“Sure,” Jon said. “We could go door to door. Ask people if they know him. Check out names on mailboxes.”

“OK,” I said. “Let's do it.”

Our block has fourteen houses that are chopped up into apartments, one duplex, one triplex (ours), a ten-unit building, a twelve-unit building (where Raffi lives) and at the far end of the street, an old-age home.

The mail boxes were brass-coloured wall units, with slots holding name cards and individual keyholes. It took over an hour to cover the whole block, but a lot of that time we were just fooling around.

We told some of the neighbours that we were doing a survey on front halls. We told others that we were counting cats. The neighbours told us about the cop who'd been around asking questions about the night of the murder. Nobody could remember being asked about Al Green.

We graded the halls on a scale of one to ten for cleanliness, smells and security. Our building was a nine and a half, demoted from ten because of a pile of advertising flyers in one corner. The worst was a minus fifteen, which smelled like a drunk had just upchucked his last meal. Outside, after I'd taken a deep breath, I turned to Jon.

“You know who lives there?” I said.

“Yup. The Roaches. Rotten Ronny and his old man.”

We counted between thirteen and fifteen cats: eight grey-striped tabbies; between one and three solid-coloured blacks, depending on how fast they travelled and which of us was counting; two blacks with white markings; one white with black markings, and one very unhappy Siamese caged beside an open window.

We didn't count the kids, but there were dozens of them, from all over the world, playing together. Africans, Central Americans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indians. Kids from countries I probably never even heard of. We found one family of Browns, but no Greens at all, not even one.

When we left the school Kelly and I turned towards my place, like we had hundreds of times before. Thousands of times, probably — about three days a week since we were in kindergarten.

Kelly was serious today. “I'm really tired of being a kid,” she said.

I laughed. “What does that mean? You aren't a kid.”

She shook her head, like she couldn't believe how thick I was. “I'm cutting out,” she said. “For good.”

“You mean you're leaving? You're quitting school?”

“Quitting school and leaving home,” she said. “Joey and me, we're going out west.”

I grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the grass, away from a horde of students bearing down on us. “Have you told your parents?” I said. It was a dumb question. What could they do? How could they stop her? They'd have to tie her up.

“Not yet,” she said. She lifted my hand from her arm and moved back onto the sidewalk.

My head got the message, but my mouth didn't. “I thought you wanted to teach kindergarten.”

She shrugged and looked away.

“I'm saying such dumb things,” I said. “Do you have any money?”

She laughed then, the old Kelly laugh, a wheezing giggle. “Thirteen dollars,” she said. “Joey has a brother in Vancouver. We can crash at his place. For a while, anyway.”

I slid my backpack to the sidewalk, pulled out my emergency ten-dollar bill and tucked it into her shirt pocket. “Will you write?”

“Sure,” she said. “Well ...” She grinned her kindergarten grin, turned and walked away from me.

I didn't even get to say goodbye. I didn't even hug her. I just stood there on the corner, watching her until she was out of sight.

When I got home, Mom was in the shower. Parents stick together. If she found out, she'd be on the phone to Kelly's mother before I could blink.

When the shower stopped, I knocked on the bathroom door. “I'm home,” I said. “I have a headache. I'm going to have a nap.”

“Are you getting a cold?” she asked. “You sound funny.”

“Probably,” I said.

Two days later Mrs. Curran phoned Mom. I got blasted as I walked in the door.

“Did you know Kelly was leaving?” she said. Like a lot of the stuff Mom says, there was more there than the actual words.
If you knew and didn't say anything, you're in big trouble
.

There was no point in lying, she wouldn't believe me. “Sort of,” I said.

“That's why you've been so quiet, isn't it? Moping in your room? Drooping like some wilted flower?”

I nodded.

“I don't suppose it occurred to you that you had an obligation to tell her parents about this?”

I buttoned my lips together and looked at the floor. It had occurred to me. The obligation to keep my former best friend's secret had occurred to me too, and that obligation won. There wasn't much to say, so I just shrugged.

“Mrs. Curran wants to talk to you. She's in a real snit, and I don't blame her, so you'd better get yourself over there right away,” she said.

“Do I have to?” I looked at the floor again. “If she feels any worse than I do, I'm really sorry for her,” I said.

Mom put her hand on the back of my head. She even cried a little. “It's the least you can do,” she said. “And if you know anything, tell her.”

I was just heading out the door, when she called me back. “Jess! Remember what Mrs. Carelli said. Ask Flavia to go with you.”

Mrs. Curran hugged me, and I hugged her back, but I didn't like the way she looked at Flavia, as if there was something wrong with her being there, something wrong with me having a new friend.

The Pain was doing little jumps all around us, hopping with both feet at the same time. She made me tired to look at her. Then she started chanting: “Kelly split, Kelly split, Kelly is a stupid twit.”

“Enough, Melissa. Quiet down, or go upstairs!” Mrs. Curran took her apron off and, still carrying it, ushered us into their front room. I didn't take this as a good sign.

“Jessica, I'm going to take it for granted that you knew exactly what was going on,” she said.

“Well, not exactly,” I said. “I mean, I really didn't know exactly.” I sounded pitiful even to myself, but I never thought this was going to be easy. “When did she leave?” I said.

“You don't know?”

“No. She told me she was going, but she didn't say when.”

Mrs. Curran wiped at her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Sometime yesterday afternoon. I'd just dropped over to the store, to pick up a few things for dinner. Nothing I couldn't have done without...”

“Do you know where they went?”

She shook her head. “Her dad's over at the Montes' now, talking to them, seeing if Joey left any messages, but it's not likely, is it?”

“She told me they were going out west, to Joey's brother's,” I said. “In Vancouver.”

Mrs. Curran frowned. “As far as I know,” she said, “the only brother Joey has is seven years old.”

When Mrs. Curran bustled to the phone, the Pain entertained us by doing backwards somersaults on the living-room floor, with commentary. “You really fell for that one, didn't you, Jess?”

“Maybe he has another brother,” I said.

But he didn't. No sisters either. It was a false trail, and what bugged me most, was that Kelly got me to lay it.

Jon's hand felt sweaty in the heat, and our bare arms brushed against each other. I always thought hanging onto a guy in public was sort of tacky, but that was before I had anybody to hang onto.

We were crossing the pedestrian bridge to get to the lake. “I have a whole lot of stuff to tell you,” I said. I was practically running to keep up with him. “Could you slow down or take smaller steps or something?”

“Sure,” he said.

The lake was a deep blue satin, rippled by the wind, and seemed to go on forever. Sailboats from the marinas along the shore flashed in the sunlight. We sat on an uncomfortable slatted bench; Jon stretched his legs out in front of him, then he turned to me and smiled. “You know more about the murder?”

I nodded. “You know the man in Tammi's apartment that night?” I said. “Well, I remembered something about him. Something important.” I looked at the sky, then I looked back at Jon again. “He knew me. He actually said my name, like he was surprised to see me there.”

“Oh-oh,” Jon said. “Raffi?”

That was the one question I didn't want to answer, or even think about, but I couldn't put it off any longer. “I don't think so,” I said. “At least I didn't
recognize
Raffi, not at all. Not one thing reminded me of him. But who else could it be?”

Jon's arm slid along the back of the bench behind me, as if it was moving without any connection to his brain. “Who knew you were babysitting that night?” he said.

“Mom. All the Orellana family. And Tammi, of course. Why?”

“What about Raffi? Did he know?”

“Yeah.”

“So why do you think it would be him? Why would he be surprised...?”

I flung myself back on the bench and threw my arms to the sky. “He wouldn't! He wouldn't have been surprised! It
couldn't
have been Raffi! Oh, I'm so happy! Thank you, Jon, thank you! You're brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”

His whole face was grinning. “What can I say?” he said. “Brilliant is probably a
slight
exaggeration, but ...”

“I can't believe I didn't think of that,” I said. I stared at the lake for a while longer, then I twisted my fingers together, hard.

Jon rested his hand on my wrist. “What's going on?” he said. “All of a sudden you tensed right up. I won't bite, I promise.”

I sighed. “It makes me feel better to know it wasn't Raffi, a whole lot better, but the cops still suspect him. He had to go to the police station today, to be in some line-up.”

“Maybe it's not important,” Jon said. He didn't really think that, I could tell. He was just trying to make me feel better.

“There's something else, too,” I said. “I don't want to tell Sheena.”

“That the guy knew you?”

I nodded.

“Because she'll think it was Raffi?”

“Yeah. But if I don't tell her, I'm in trouble. She was talking about
...withholding information
. Like it was a crime or something. I don't want to go to jail!”

“Maybe we should ask somebody about that. A lawyer.”

“My father's a lawyer,” I said.

“He is? Well, why don't you call him?”

“No,” I said. “I'd feel too stupid. I haven't seen him for three years. More than that, actually.”

“If you don't do it soon, you never will,” Jon said. “And right now you've got a really good reason...”

“I can't,” I said. The waves were bigger now because the wind was stronger. Two sailboats were lying on their sides in the water, and a third tipped over as I watched. Somebody in a power boat was busy rescuing everybody.

“Why did you stop seeing him?” Jon said.

The sky was robin's-egg blue, with some wisps of cotton-wool clouds whipping around. “I'm not sure,” I said. “He and Mom had
this big fight, and after that she got all upset whenever he came to get me. So I got upset too Then one day she told me I didn't
have
to see him if I didn't want to.” I was quiet for a while, thinking. “I was just a kid,” I said. “I didn't want her to be unhappy.”

“If you see him now, will she get unhappy again?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Probably. She never wants to talk about him. Even though ...”