Tell

Norah McClintock

orca soundings

Copyright © 2006 Norah McClintock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without
permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McClintock, Norah

Tell / Norah McClintock.

(Orca soundings)

ISBN 1-55143-672-8 (bound) ISBN 1-55143-511-X (pbk.)

PS8575.C62T44 2006    jC813'.54     C2006-903260-2

Summary:
When David's stepfather is murdered, he knows
more than he is telling.

First published in the United States, 2006

Library of Congress Control Number:
2006928470

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing
programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the
Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia
through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover design: Doug McCaffry
Cover photography: Firstlight

Orca Book Publishers                   Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 5626, Stn. B                          PO Box 468
Victoria, BC Canada                        Custer, WA USA
V8R 6S4                                            98240-0468

www.orcabook.com

Printed and bound in Canada.

09 08 07 06 • 5 4 3 2 1

To Willie and the rest of them

It was Saturday night when the cops came to our house. Actually, it was 2:00
AM
, so technically that made it Sunday morning. The doorbell rang twice before I heard my mother's slippered feet shuffling along the upstairs hall and down the stairs. I pressed the mute button on the tv remote and listened through my bedroom door to muffled voices in the front hall below. I heard my mother wail. It was a terrible sound, like an animal being tortured.
Her voice got higher and higher and she said, “No, no, no” over and over, louder and louder. I got up off my bed and went downstairs.

There were two people in the front hall. They were cops. One of them was a woman. She was trying to steer my mother into the living room where she could sit down. My mother was crying. She kept saying, “I don't know what I'm going to do without him.”

“Mom?” I said. “What's wrong? What's the matter?”

The two cops looked at me. The female cop managed to get my mother seated on the couch in the living room. The male cop introduced himself. “I'm Detective Antonelli,” he said. “I'm afraid we have some bad news.” He paused and looked at me.

“David,” I said. “I'm David.”

“We have some bad news, David. It's about your father.”

“You mean Phil?” I said. Detective Antonelli gave me a look. “He's not my father,” I said. “He's my stepfather.”
Then, because I knew how it would look if I didn't ask, I said, “Is he okay? Did he do something?”

My mother was sobbing in the living room.

Detective Antonelli pulled me aside. When he spoke, he kept his voice low.

“Is there anyone else in the house, David? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Any other relatives staying with you?”

I shook my head.

“What happened?” I said. “Where's Phil?”

“I'm afraid he was shot and killed a couple of hours ago,” Detective Antonelli said.

“
What?
” I said. “How? Why?”

“We're not sure about all the details. It looks like it might have been a robbery.” He was looking closely at me now, probably because it was so late and I was still wearing jeans and a T-shirt, not pajamas. “Did you just get home, David?”

“I was watching tv up in my room,” I said. “I guess I fell asleep.” I turned to look at my mother in the living room. The woman cop was talking quietly to
her. My mother was shaking her head and moaning softly. I looked at Detective Antonelli again. “I should see how my mom is,” I said.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions first, if that's okay,” Detective Antonelli said. He was talking softly and being polite. But I had the feeling that he would ask his questions even if I said it wasn't okay. “Why don't we step in here?” he said. He nodded toward the dining room, which was across the hall from the living room.

We went inside and sat down at the dining room table.

“When was the last time you saw your stepfather?” he said.

“What?” I don't know what I had been expecting him to ask me, but it sure wasn't that.

“I mean, was he home today?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But he went out at some point?” Detective Antonelli said.

“He left right after supper,” I said. “He went to play poker with some friends.”

“Do you know where?”

“At Jack's place,” I said. I explained that Jack Tower was a friend of Phil's.

“What about you and your mother?”

I stared at him. Why was he asking about us?

“Was your mother home all night?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Were you home with her?”

I had to fight the urge to turn to look at my mother again.

“I was out for a couple of hours,” I said.

“Where did you go?”

I shrugged. “Just out, you know? Walking around.”

“Were you with friends?”

Geez, why was he asking about me?

“No,” I said. “I just like to walk around. I think better when I'm walking.”

He kept staring at me, like he was waiting for me to say more.

“I write comic books,” I said. “With a friend of mine. He draws the pictures and I write the stories. I was trying to think up a new story.”

“When exactly were you out?” he said.

“I left the house around 8:00,” I said. My mother would be able to back me up on that. “I got back around 10:30.” My mother had been asleep in bed when I got home. Based on past experience and on the fact that she'd been on her feet from 8:00 in the morning until 5:00 at the supermarket where she worked as a cashier and then had made supper for Phil and me when she got home, I figured she must have crashed out around 9:00. She wouldn't be able to tell anyone for sure exactly when I had got home. “Why?” I said. “You don't think my mother had anything to do with it, do you?”

“We're trying to trace your stepfather's movements this evening, David.”

“But you said it was a robbery,” I said.

“It looks like it might have been a robbery,” Detective Antonelli said carefully. “He was found about half a block from an atm machine. We have reason to believe that he had just withdrawn some money.”

“Then probably someone saw him take out the money and robbed him,” I said. “You hear about stuff like that happening all the time.”

Detective Antonelli's expression was impossible to read.

“We didn't find a wallet,” he said. “We identified him from a utility bill that he had in one of his pockets. We didn't find any keys, either. Does your stepfather have a car?”

I nodded.

“Did he take it when he went out tonight?”

“Yes.”

He asked me about the car. I described it and gave him the license plate number. Then he asked me about Jack. I gave him Jack's address and phone number.

“You don't t h in k Jack shot him, do you?”

He didn't answer the question directly. He just said, “We like to be thorough.”

Across the hall, my mother was still quietly sobbing.

“I should see how she is,” I said.

Detective Antonelli nodded. I went into the living room, sat down on the couch beside my mother and put my arm around her. She sagged against me, still crying.

“It's going to be okay,” I told her. I sure hoped I was right.

A parade of people came to the house all day to tell my mother how sorry they were about what had happened and to drop off food. They drank so much coffee that my mother sent me to the store to buy more. When I got back, I found her in tears— again. She was crying this time because Detective Antonelli had telephoned her and asked her to come down to the police station to answer some more questions about Phil.

“I'll go with you,” I said. I figured it was the least I could do.

“We found your husband's car,” Detective Antonelli said after he had showed us into a small interview room. “It was parked up the street from where he was found. We also found his wallet and keys. I know this must be hard for you, Mrs. Benson, but it would really help us if you would take a look at his personal effects and tell us if anything is missing.”

My mother agreed, of course.

Phil's personal effects were:

(1) His wallet, which had been emptied of money, but which still contained his credit cards and his id. Also inside the wallet was a picture of my mother. She was wearing shorts and a tank top, and she looked nervous sitting at the end of a dock. There was a cottage in the background.

(2) His watch, which was about ten years old and was nothing special. It had a leather strap. It wasn't hard to figure out why whoever had killed him hadn't bothered to take it.

(3) His wedding ring. It was a plain gold band and was engraved on the inside with his initials and my mother's initials.

(4) A slip from an atm machine that showed he had withdrawn five hundred dollars on Saturday night.

(5) A brand-new deck of playing cards. The seal hadn't been broken.

(6) A lighter and two cigars. Phil liked to smoke cigars when he was driving or when he was playing poker at one of his buddies' places—if the buddy's wife or girlfriend allowed it.

(7) A key-ring chain with a fake-gold letter
P
attached to it, along with his house keys and car keys.

“We found the keys a couple of blocks from where we found the wallet. They were both found in opposite directions from the car,” Detective Antonelli said. He frowned, as if this was some kind of problem. “Maybe whoever robbed him planned to take the car but changed his mind. Maybe he couldn't find the car. Or maybe he didn't see your husband drive up, so he didn't know that he had a car with him.”

My mother's eyes widened. “Do you think that whoever killed Phil saw where we live, you know, from the driver's license in the wallet? Do you think he's planning to break into the house while we're at the funeral? I've heard that people do that. They rob the houses of people who are already grieving.”

“I think if that were the case, he would have kept the keys,” Detective Antonelli said.

My mother continued to look worried. She stared at Phil's key ring and started to cry again.

Detective Antonelli nudged a box of tissues closer to her.

“Is there anything that you can think of that might be missing?” he said.

My mother nodded as she wiped at her tears with a tissue. She blew her nose.

“The picture of Jamie,” she said. Jamie was my kid brother. “Phil always has a picture of Jamie with him.” I wondered if she noticed that she had said “has” instead of “had,” as if Phil was still alive.

“Jamie?” Detective Antonelli said.

“My other son,” my mother said. She got all choked up again as she explained that Jamie had drowned when he was eight years old. That was nearly six years ago now, when I had just turned ten.

“Phil has a picture of him,” she said. “It's in a little gold frame attached to his key chain. He says he carries it because he never wants to forget Jamie.”

Me, I was the opposite. I wished I could forget what had happened, but I couldn't. Instead I had replayed every detail of it in my mind every night for a couple of years. I still saw it a few times a month, like a movie, as clearly as if it were yesterday.