Reilly 02 - Invasion of Privacy (30 page)

"She called about my father. That’s one of the things I couldn’t talk to you about. I felt like I was on my own."

His voice was thin, as though he was about to start crying. Nina said, "Shhh, it’s all right. Go ahead and tell me, honey. I promise I won’t be mad."

"She said, ’Bobby?’ and she was really happy it was me and not somebody else, and she said"—he clutched at her now, as if he realized what he’d done in not telling her earlier, stammering in his haste—"she said, ’Your father’s here visiting me, and he wants so much to meet you’...."

"What did you do?"

"I snuck out and went there on my bike after everyone was in bed, like before. I had to, Mom! My father!"

"It’s all right, I’m listening...."

"I got to her house on Coyote. The light was on in the little building down the trail and the gate was open. I put my bike down and I was just about to go in, when I felt this hand on my shoulder! If I had been on my bike I would’ve fallen off! It was Uncle Matt, Mom. He took the bike and took my hand. He didn’t even yell, he was so mad. Then we went around the corner and down the block to his truck and he made me get in there. He locked it up and told me if I got out, he’d beat my butt!

"Then he left for a few minutes. He wasn’t gone very long. Then he unlocked the driver door on the truck and we took off fast and came home."

"So you never went through the gate? Look at me! You never went through the gate?"

"No, trust me, Mom, I didn’t get that far."

Oh, thank you, thank you, Matt, you saved my silly boy from I don’t know what—

But why hadn’t Matt told her? And what had he been doing there?

"Uncle Matt brought my bike back. We talked about how stupid I was. He said that woman was a liar and she might have hurt me. My father wasn’t there at all. Is that true, Mom?"

She took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Why didn’t you tell me! Why!"

"I wanted to, but Uncle Matt said he wanted to tell you! Ow, you’re hurting me!" She let go and he fell back on the bed.

It took her a minute to find herself again. In the steadiest tone she could muster, she said, "Listen, Bob. I’m glad you told me all this. I wish you had told me earlier. I’m going to talk to Uncle Matt when he gets home, and we’ll get this all straightened out."

"Go ahead, ground me again. I deserve it," Bob said. She released him and stood up. Tears glistened in his eyes. He rubbed the squeaky seal against his cheek as if it were a soft hand.

He was just a child, with a stuffed toy.

"We’ll straighten this out," she repeated. "Don’t worry, honey."

He pulled up his blanket, comforted, and she checked the window one more time before she left the room, her heart pounding.

31

WHEN MATT AND ANDREA CAME HOME, NINA’S FILES covered the kitchen table. They breezed in on a drift of cold night air, arm in arm, full of thanks, Andrea laughing, Matt tilting slightly to one side as she leaned her full weight on him.

Matt took one look at Nina and said, "Go on to bed, Andrea, okay?"

"How about a nightcap?" she said teasingly, sneaking an arm around him, trying to tickle his waist. "Not that we need one more thing."

He extricated himself from her, saying, "I’ll be up in a bit."

She looked from Matt to Nina and back. "What’s up?" she asked.

"Nina and I need to talk."

"Can’t I listen?"

Nina said, "Why not? No more secrets, right, Matt?"

"Why don’t we sit on the porch? It’s stuffy in here," Matt said.

"Let’s talk here. I’m not going outside," Nina said.

"Goblins? The Jabberwock?"

"I’m staying right here. And now, the truth, little brother. I talked to Bobby."

"That’s obvious," Matt said. "I think I’ll have that nightcap." He went to the cabinet above the stove and came out with a shot glass full of whiskey, which he downed in one gulp.

"It must be bad," Andrea said. "The last time I saw you do that, you thought one of your parasailing clients had passed out before landing." She pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I meant to tell you right away, Nina, but you were in such a goddamn hurry. You took the case before I could explain," Matt said, standing at the cabinet.

"You don’t like to talk about bad things, Matt. Remember when Mom and Dad separated? None of us talked at all. We pretended everything was normal, when really it was awful. That’s when you got into drugs for a while, remember?"

"And you started sleeping with everything that moved," Matt said. He went back to the cabinet again, this time returning with the bottle. He wore plaid shorts and a white hooded sweatshirt, his tan thin face fine of feature, with Harlan’s shock of hair and their mother’s blue eyes.

"Nina, sweetie, you look like you’ve lost your best friend," Andrea said.

"You’ve got a lot of nerve, acting like I’m the problem around here," Matt said. He put the bottle on the table, sat down again, and crossed his legs. Nina knew his expression. Defiant. She thought about a time when their parents had decided to give their dog away, and Matt had run down the block with the dog and hid in Mrs. Fielding’s garage. He had been eleven, and she had been thirteen. She had known where to find the runaways. His expression had been the same. She’d told him to come home, and he’d said he’d rather run to Albuquerque.

"Tell me what happened that night, Matt. I need to know."

"Yeah. You do." He began to talk, hesitatingly at first.

Bobby had told Matt about Terry the day she came to the school. He told him about the dog, and everything that was said, and Matt decided to handle it, not to go crying to Nina, but to protect her from needless worry because the situation seemed harmless enough. He had also scolded Bob and warned him to stay away from Terry. And he had started watching out for him.

A few days after the incident at the school, Matt overheard Bob on the telephone. "I guess we’ve learned Bob doesn’t let bedtime stop him," he said. "So I was still watching that night. And damn if the little sucker didn’t hop out of bed and slip out the kitchen door. He jumped on his bike and took off. I was astounded, but I pulled my pants on and went out to the truck and followed him with the lights off."

"Nothing he does could astound me anymore," Andrea said. "I believe I’ll have a drink myself." She poured a shot into the glass Matt had set on the table and drank it down. "Okay, I’m fortified," she said.

"Go ahead, Matt," Nina said.

His first instinct had been to stop Bob before he hit the porch, but then he decided to find out the tale in its entirety, so as Bob rode down the hill in the full moonlight, Matt followed a long way behind, following Pioneer Trail toward Meyers for several miles.

"Bobby loves maps," Nina said. "He probably knows more than we do about getting around Tahoe at this point."

"He turned off on Coyote and walked his bike up the hill. I went on around the corner and down the street. I parked and ran around to see what he was doing. I almost didn’t catch him. He’d parked his bike in the trees, like he didn’t want anyone to see he was there. He opened the gate and a dog came running out, but it didn’t give him any trouble. Then he started up the path toward this little detached building I could see past the gate. I moved up fast on him and I grabbed him.

"I marched him and the bike back to my truck. I put him in there and I said to him, ’It’s all over, whatever you thought you were doing. You stay right here. I’ll be right back.’ I locked him in the car. He wasn’t moving. He knew how much trouble he was in. I was boiling mad. I went back to check it out."

"Oh, really?" Nina said, and Matt gave her a puzzled look.

"What, do you think I’m lying?"

"You parked Bob safe and sound in the truck?"

"Yes! That’s what I’m telling you! Do you want to hear this, or not?"

"Don’t let me stop you," Nina said.

"But you didn’t go in the gate. You got in the truck and went home," Andrea suggested.

"I wish to God I had," Matt said. "I went up to the studio, but she had dark curtains or something on the windows, too thick for me to see anything. I went around back through the trees and saw a back door. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I knew the black dog, so I knew she was the woman who had been talking to Bobby at the school grounds. Some watchdog. He wanted to lick me into submission.

"I didn’t understand, Nina. A woman letting a kid play with her dog—what’s the harm? But I couldn’t imagine what story she had concocted to lure him to that place in the woods, or what she wanted with him. I was getting more pissed off by the second. I decided to tell her to lay off my nephew.

"I tried the knob on the back door, and it was open, so I went in."

Andrea, who finally realized the direction this story was heading, shook her head. "Stop, Matt. Stop right now! This is going too far! They’ll make you testify against Scott." When Matt said nothing, just shook his head, she turned to Nina. "Nina, don’t do this to him. Don’t make him send Bob’s dad away!"

Nina said, "Let’s hear his story." She put her elbows on the kitchen table and cupped her chin in the palm of her hand. Matt was pouring himself another shot. His face was flushed.

"The porch light in front was on, but inside, all the lights were out," he said. "She was burning incense. I could hear noises, like electronic equipment operating, and I could see a bank of red lights on the right. Then I heard her voice out of the gloom, harsh, saying, ’Who the hell are you?’

"And I said, ’Turn on some lights, I want to talk to you. I’m Bob’s uncle.’

" ’The hell you are,’ " she said, and she didn’t seem to move to turn on the light. I felt as though she could see me but I couldn’t see her, her eyes were used to the light, and I felt menaced, you know, Nina?"

"Go on," Nina said. "Finish your story."

"Bob was safe in the car," Matt said. "I decided to get the hell out of there. But she said, ’What do you want to talk about?’ So I said, ’I want you to leave Bob alone. Stay away from him, or I’ll see to you personally.’

"And she said, very coolly, ’He’s outside, isn’t he? He’s here to see his father. You can’t stop him.’

"So I asked her why. She said, ’Because I’m staging a little family reunion here today. His father will be here any minute to join in the fun. Is Bobby outside? Move slowly, now. Let’s go get him.’ She came toward me, and that’s when I saw she had a rifle trained on me.

"It’s funny, I didn’t even feel scared. I was still feeling I could get out of there, that she’d get over whatever was bugging her and let me go. She motioned for me to go out front. And then I saw her eyes. I have never seen a look like that in any woman’s eyes, Nina, drunk or sober. She had murder in there. Uncontrolled, rampant, out-of-her-mind blind bloodlust."

Andrea, silent, pale, and shocked, listened intently to Matt’s voice, staring at Nina.

"I turned and started to move back toward the back door instead, but I heard a click, like she’d released the safety on the rifle. She said, ’C’mon. Let’s get him.’ But then there was a knock on the front door. I felt her behind me, and the rifle poking in my back. Right at that moment, I think she wanted to shoot me, but she was afraid she would be heard by whoever was outside. She pushed me into a storage closet on one side of the room, near the back door, and closed the closet door very softly. I heard her jingling some keys and fiddling with the lock, and another knock came on the door. She got it locked and said, ’One word, and I kill you both.’

"What the hell could I do? I checked the closet, but the only way out was through the door. I got my Swiss Army knife out and started picking the lock, listening. She was talking to a man, someone I didn’t know then. But I knew this had to be the guy she called Bob’s father."

He stopped. Nina nudged him with her hand. "Come on," she said. "Finish."

"They had this ... surreal conversation. She said she needed to tell him a few things, and then she would introduce him to his son. She wanted to give it all ’the proper context.’

"She started ranting about a baby, saying everything was his fault. He had lied to her and made her have this baby and he had never loved her. He kept trying to interrupt her, saying things like, so it was all just a story, he didn’t have another child, that she was a cruel bitch and he’d had enough of her and she’d better stay away from you and him. I was pretty shocked to hear your name come up in this nasty argument, Nina."

Andrea said mournfully, "Oh, Matt."

"She was losing it, and he started trying to calm her down. ’I’m going now,’ he said to her. Her voice changed then, like she knew he meant it. She said, ’I don’t think so,’ and there was this horrible silence for a minute. I thought he was a goner. I huddled in my closet, cringing like a kitten while I worked on the lock."

"What else could you do, Matt?" Andrea said. She took his hand.

"He said, ’This is the end for us, Terry. But if you do anything, anything at all to hurt Nina Reilly, you can see me one last time when I come back to kill you.

"I was going to bust out and make a run for the back door as soon as she blew him away. That was my entire plan. I couldn’t get heroic. She’d go get Bob.

"That’s when I heard the shot. The front door banged. She was screaming."

"He came back," said Andrea. "He came back and shot her."

"I thought of Bobby out there in the car. The lock clicked open, and I pushed open the storage closet door. She was standing there by the closet not two feet from me with the rifle in both hands, staring into space, just holding it, so I tried to get by her. She raised it and pointed it at me, finger on the trigger, getting ready to kill me dead right at that moment. I got a good look in her eyes, Nina. I saw it. My own death. You know, Nina. You’ve been there."

Nina said nothing. She was conscious only of waiting.

"She said, ’You’re not going anywhere,’ but I had my hands on the rifle by then. We fought for it, moving toward the front again. The rifle went off We both staggered back; I saw my chance and took off through the back door."

"Matt," Andrea cried, her anguished voice so different from Matt’s matter-of-fact tone. He held his finger to his lips, and kept on, looking down at the table.

"I ran along the fence in the woods to the corner of the property. That stupid dog ran alongside me, not barking, just out there having a frolic. I climbed the fence out to the road, and I got out of there with Bob. I told him I would talk to you about it, and he looked relieved. I think he fell asleep. It was way past his bedtime and he’d been out pedaling halfway across town. He was out of it.

"I drove the rest of the way home, going as fast as I could without creaming the car. I ran in the kitchen door. I didn’t turn on the light, and I sent Bob off to bed."

Matt leaned toward Andrea wearily. She stroked his cheek, murmured to him.

Then she turned to Nina, and Nina saw the same defiant expression Matt had worn earlier. "He did it to protect Bobby," she said.

"Yes, he did," Nina said. "And he still is protecting Bobby."

She got up painfully as an invalid, splashing cold water on her face at the sink, unable to look at her brother, thinking of Kurt and Matt and Bobby, and the darkness Terry had brought into all their lives.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Andrea said.

Nina walked back to the table and picked up the evidence list she had been examining before they arrived. She pushed it in front of Matt, saying, "It’s a good story. You’ve got the Irish gift for embellishment and credibility in spite of facts to the contrary. But the black corduroy baseball cap’s there on the list of items collected by the police in the studio. I turned the house upside down hunting for Bob’s hat, Matt. It isn’t here. That’s because Bob left his No Fear hat in the studio that night, didn’t he, Matt? He told you that story, didn’t he?

"So tell me the whole truth this time. Did Bobby see Kurt kill her? Or ... did Bobby kill her?"