Rose Hill (34 page)

“So did Theo know Brad might be Billy’s father?”

“No, he didn’t,” she said, and blew smoke in Scott’s face. “Not ‘til Saturday night.”

Scott felt the headache escalate; it was going to be a bad one. On top of the smoke, there was a kerosene heater somewhere in the place, and those fumes were noxious.

“And you’re sure about Brad.”

“I don’t know for sure. It could have been one of several other lucky losers I palled around with that summer.”

“Does this have anything to do with Theo being murdered?”

“Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you,” she said.

“Get to it,” Scott said, his patience gone, and his stomach rolling. “This place is making me sick.”

“You’re such a mama’s boy, Scott; always have been, always will be. You think Maggie Fitzpatrick wants a mama’s boy in her bed? She doesn’t. Now me, I wouldn’t mind it. I wouldn’t mind it at all.”

Phyllis ran her foot up the side of Scott’s calf and he pushed it off.

“C’mon Phyllis, stick with the subject. What happened that night?”

She rolled her eyes and put out her cigarette, but immediately lit another. Scott didn’t know if he was going to be able to stand it much longer.

“Theo came over in a crappy mood. He was still mad about the damn dog Ed stole from him. He was drunk, as usual. He wanted to stay but I wasn’t in the mood. We fought. Then he started on Billy. When was he going to get a real job or go to school? Why did he wash dishes all day and play video games all night? Why didn’t he have a girlfriend? Well, I agree with most of that, but Billy’s my kid and only I get to yell at him. Billy and Theo got into it then. I tried to break it up but they were going at it pretty fierce.”

She signaled for another drink and Scott willed himself not to be sick at the table. The nausea part of the migraine had arrived.

“Go on,” he said, “and make it the short version.”

“All right, keep your shorts on. You brought me here, remember? You’re asking me the questions. I’m helping you out. You remember that.”

“Get on with it. What happened?”

“You know Billy’s got a mouth on him, and it seemed like he couldn’t back down. Finally Theo dared him to take the first swing and Billy ran off. Then Theo turned on me. Theo said something about how Billy was a worthless excuse for a person, no better than the white trash he came from, and I said, ‘then you’re calling your little brother white trash, cause Brad’s his Daddy.’ Well that set him back on his freakin’ heels, I’m telling ya. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open and this crazy look on his face. Then he up and popped me one.”

“Did he say anything else?” Scott asked, and closed one eye to stop the double vision he was now experiencing.

“Said he’d see me in hell before he’d let me or Billy have one dollar of his family’s money.”

“What then?”

“Well, I told him to leave, so he left, and I went to bed.”

“When did Billy come home?”

“Oh, right away, right after Theo left,” she said.

“What time was it?”

“I don’t know. Theo usually shows up after last call at the bar, so it must have been around 1:15, 1:30.”

“Anything else happen?”

“I went to bed with a bag of frozen tater tots on my eye. I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Why didn’t you claim Billy was Brad’s son earlier, after he died, or when their old man died? You could have got some money then.”

“Well, the truth is, Scotty-boy, I did get me some money from that old man. A little while after Brad died I went to ole Teddy Bear and asked for help, and he paid me a little something every month up until he died, and no one was ever the wiser.

“After the old man died and Theo came back, he and I started seeing each other. I wasn’t sure Brad really was the father, and I thought maybe I could get Theo to marry me; he was always saying he would. By then they had those tests, you know, those DNA tests. If I claimed Brad was the father and a test showed he wasn’t, I’d have blown it with Theo. I thought marrying Theo was a safer bet. Some stupid idiot I was. I know it’s a crapshoot, but if Billy really is Brad’s kid, we are owed some serious money. We’re gonna get us a lawyer.”

“Let me ask you something,” Scott said. “How do you think you’re going to prove Billy is Brad’s son now? Brad’s been dead almost twenty years.”

“I watch those crime shows,” she said. “They can check DNA even after you’re dead. They can dig him up.”

“Brad was cremated,” Scott said. “Just like Theo was this week. Brad’s ashes were scattered over Bear Lake after the funeral. If you’d bothered to be there you’d know. There are only grave markers at the cemetery, not bodies.”

Phyllis looked shocked, but quickly recovered.

“Gwyneth and Caroline have the same DNA as Brad; we could check Billy’s against theirs.”

“I’ve got news for you, Phyllis,” Scott said. “Brad and Caroline were adopted.”

Phyllis had gone pale, and now the yellow, puffy bruise around her eye was easy to see in contrast.

“So there is no body to get Brad’s DNA from,” Scott said, “and Brad was not related to the family by blood, so his sisters would not have the same DNA.”

“That’s not true,” Phyllis said. “Theo would’ve told me.”

“No, he wouldn’t have, Phyllis,” Scott said. “You didn’t mean anything to Theo. He didn’t trust you. He didn’t care about you. He used you. You were disposable to him.”

Scott was seeing bright auras now around all the lights in the bar.
The edges of his peripheral vision were wavy, with a kaleidoscope effect.

“How did you know about that adoption thing?” Phyllis hissed.

“Because Brad told us; we were his friends. It was one of the things Theo picked on him about,” Scott said.

He pressed on his temples to try to relieve the pressure, which felt like a steel band squeezing the top of his head. It hurt so badly he thought he might pass out.

“Oh my God,” Phyllis said quietly, as of to herself. “It was all for nothing.”

“Did Billy kill Theo?”

“I don’t know,” Phyllis said. “He disappeared after Theo left. When he came back he had blood on his clothes. I was afraid to ask him. He’s my son … but I’m afraid of him.”

With that admission Phyllis jumped up and ran out of the bar. Scott’s headache had reached the point of no return now. He was starting to get the tunnel vision which presaged a major migraine. He took out his cell phone but couldn’t focus well enough to punch in the numbers to call for help. He stumbled on his way to the bar and several people laughed at him. He got the bartender’s attention, showed his badge, and told the man what number to dial.

Maggie answered her cell phone on the first ring.

Scott had been getting migraines for as long as Maggie had known him. He was able to ward them off with medication if he took it as soon as he detected the telltale signs one was coming on. Once it took hold there was nothing he could do but rest in a dark, quiet room until it passed.

Maggie knew these headaches were the main reason Scott never sought to move up into county or state law enforcement. The county and state required a more thorough pre-employment screening process that would include a review of his medical records, which would disclose the condition. Some people still considered migraines a psychological disorder rather than a medical condition. If he was branded as having psychological problems he would be unemployable in law enforcement.

Maggie thought Scott was through the worst of it tonight. She had been horrified to find him slumped over in the front seat of the squad car in the parking lot of the Roadhouse. On the drive home Maggie called Patrick, who had been with Scott before during these attacks. He was waiting for her when she got to Scott’s house. He helped her get him inside, clean him up as best they could, and managed to get some water down him. It was just as important to keep him hydrated as medicated; she knew this from previous experiences with him.

He had been lucid enough at one point to tell her about Phyllis and Billy, and to plead with her to call Sarah and tell her. As soon as they got him put to bed she went through his wallet, found Sarah’s card, and gave her a call.

Sarah was surprised to hear from her, and although she didn’t understand why she couldn’t talk to Scott, who Maggie claimed had a bad case of food poisoning, she took Maggie seriously, listened to everything she had to say, and said she’d take it from there.

Tommy was eating a bowl of cereal and watching TV when he heard Phyllis come home. He peered through the curtains and saw her get out of a car he’d never seen before, and she was stumbling drunk. Phyllis went inside her trailer and Tommy could hear Billy and her screaming at each other. He thought he heard Billy yell he was going to kill her.

He felt paralyzed and didn’t know what to do, but when he heard the sound of glass breaking, he thought, ‘I will go tell Ed. Ed will know what to do.’

He left the trailer as quietly as he could. Several neighbors had come out to see what was going on, but none of them paid any attention to him. Tommy rode his bike as fast as he could over the icy bricks of the alley to the newspaper office, but Ed was not there. He didn’t know what else to do, so he turned back toward home.

As Tommy turned down the alley, Ed rounded the opposite corner in time to see him go, and then was horrified to hear a car come crashing down the alley. Ed heard a loud bang, and what sounded like trash cans being bounced around, before Billy slid his mother’s big Buick out of the alley and fishtailed up Pine Mountain Road. He r
an a red light, narrowly missed another car, and left behind a cacophony of horn honking and a few near fender benders.

Ed ran down the sidewalk into the alley with his heart in his throat, fearing the worst. He passed the mangled bike and reach
ed the jumble of trashcans just as Tommy got to his feet. He picked the boy up in his arms and carried him all the way back to the newspaper office, where he gently placed him on top of the worktable before calling his mother.

Mandy ran into the office, breathless and panicked, still wearing her hairnet and a flour-covered apron from the bakery next door. Ed suggested, over the boy's protests he was fine, that they take Tommy to the 24-hour medical center out on the highway, to be looked over, just in case. Mandy and Ed helped Tommy into the cab of Ed’s truck and Ed drove slowly over the icy streets, out toward the interstate, and the nearest emergency medical help.

Mandy held Tommy tightly to her and wiped his face as he cried, telling her what happened.

“I thought he was trying to kill me,” Tommy said, in between ragged sobs.

“Why in the world would anybody want to kill you?” Mandy asked him, and Ed said, “I can tell you.”

He told Mandy about Tommy seeing Billy follow Theo the night he was murdered and being worried about Billy finding out he told.

“You told me you told your mama,” Ed said to Tommy sternly, and then to Mandy, “I’m so sorry, Mandy. I should have told you myself.”

Mandy told Tommy not to worry about it now, they would sort it all out later, and then she gave Ed the evil eye.

“You and I will talk about this later,” she told him.

Snow was coming down steadily, and the temperature was dropping fast. Snowplows were out, and they made traveling the roads slow going. When they finally reached the little strip mall which held the medical center, they helped Tommy in, told the receptionist why they were there, filled out paperwork, and took their seats in the waiting room.

Ed was so mad at himself for believing Tommy when he said he'd tell his mother himself. He was also mad at himself for not protecting the boy better.

‘He could have been killed,’ Ed thought.

A nurse came out and took Mandy and Tommy back, and Ed went to the payphone to call Scott. He got his voice mail, so he called the station and told Skip what was going on.

Mandy came back out alone and crooked her finger at Ed to follow her outside, her face reflecting strong emotions. Ed prepared himself for the tongue-lashing of his life, and was amazed when Mandy threw her arms around him and burst into tears. Unaccustomed to such emotional outbursts, let alone young women throwing themselves into his arms,
Ed just stood there for a moment and let her cry before coming to his senses, fishing out a semi-clean handkerchief, and helping her dry her eyes.

“Thank you for saving his life,” she cried, and Ed noticed, though not for the first time, that despite her red eyes, flushed face, hair stuffed up in a hairnet, and body wrapped in a flour-covered apron, what a pretty woman Tommy's mother was.

Back inside, Mandy untied her apron and pulled off the hair net, and shook out her long blonde hair. Ed watched, fascinated. She had green eyes and a dimple in her cheek. She smelled like fresh baked bread and a pretty perfume.

Tommy had two cracked ribs and several bumps and bruises, and although they didn’t think he had suffered a concussion, the doctor on duty wanted to keep him under observation overnight, just in case.

Tommy had pulled his old buddy Ed's bacon out of the fire by claiming he'd saved his life in the alley, and none of Ed's protestations to the contrary could convince the grateful mother otherwise. Evening turned into night. Ed and Mandy waited in Tommy’s examining room, where first Tommy talked, and then Mandy talked.