Tell (3 page)

My mother stared at the broken end of the chain.

“There were some of Phil's things in the dryer from before,” she said slowly. She didn't come right out and say before what.

“There you go,” I said. “You know what probably happened? The chain broke and Phil put the picture in his pocket so he wouldn't lose it. But he forgot it was there when he put his pants in the wash. And you didn't notice.” It sounded like something that really could have happened. “When you took Phil's stuff out of the dryer and put my stuff in—which, by the way, Mom, you didn't have to do, you know—you probably didn't see it there. You didn't see it until you took my stuff out.”

I could see she was thinking it over.

“I guess you're right,” she said at last. I couldn't tell for sure if she was convinced or not. But what other explanation could she come up with? After all, it wasn't like my prints were on the frame or the glass or anything.

Jack rang the doorbell at 6:00 that night. When I opened the door, he was standing on the porch with two big brown paper bags.

“I brought supper,” he said. “I figured your mother wouldn't feel much like cooking.”

When Jack walked into the kitchen with the bags, my mother smiled. I hadn't seen her do that in days. Then, when she saw what was in the bags, she started to cry. I glanced at Jack. But before I could ask my mother what was wrong, she threw her arms around Jack and hugged him and said, “Thank you.” She looked down at what she was wearing—an old T-shirt and some sweatpants—and said, “Oh my God, I'm a mess.”

“You look terrific, Melanie,” Jack said. “Like always.”

He was right. My mother was nice-looking. She was small and slim and she looked after herself. She said that was important. She said a man didn't want to come home after being away all week and see his wife looking like a hag.

“Just let me run up and change,” she said. “David, you can set the table.”

While she was upstairs, I looked in the bags that Jack had brought. The containers told me right away that we were having Chinese food for supper. That explained my mother's reaction. She loved Chinese food. But we only ever ordered take-out when Phil was home and could pay for it, and Phil didn't like Chinese food. He didn't like Indian or Thai or Japanese food either. “I like to know what I'm eating,” he always said. He said he didn't trust people who served food all chopped up into little pieces and covered with sauce so that you couldn't tell right away what was on your plate. Needless to say, he never took my mother to a Chinese restaurant. He always went for steak houses or, better yet, bars and pubs where he could drink plenty of beer with his wings or his chicken fingers.

When my mother came back downstairs, she had taken her hair out of the ponytail she had been wearing. Now it hung down
to her shoulders in waves. She had put on some makeup and had changed into a sleeveless top and a pair of tight-fitting black pants. She looked great, even if she was my mother. She opened a couple of beers for Jack and herself, and we ate fried rice and egg rolls, chicken balls and little spareribs, beef with broccoli, and chicken with cashews. It was all great.

After we finished eating, Jack made coffee for my mother and told her to go and relax. He and I cleaned up the kitchen. While he gathered up all the empty containers, I said, “You never answered my question.”

“What question?” Jack said.

“About my dad. I asked you if you knew him, but you never answered.”

“Why are you so interested in that all of a sudden?” Jack said.

I shrugged. “I always thought you were Phil's friend. I didn't know you'd known Mom for so long. So
did
you know him too? Did you know my dad?”

Jack glanced toward the living room, where my mother was sitting with her
coffee. We could hear the tv. She was watching
Wheel of Fortune
, which she loved because she was pretty good at figuring out the puzzles before the contestants did.

“Yeah,” he said this time. “I knew him.”

“What was he like?”

Jack hesitated. He looked around, as if he was checking to see if we were alone.

“I probably shouldn't tell you this, David,” he said. “It's none of my business. But if someone asks me a question, I'm not going to lie. That's not the kind of person I am. You understand?”

I said I did.

We went out onto the back porch and Jack closed the door. We sat on the steps and he started talking—about my dad. When he was finished, I didn't know what to say.

“Listen, David,” Jack said. “I know you're probably going to want to talk to your mother about this. But maybe this isn't the right time, what with Phil dying and everything. I think maybe you should wait a while, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, even though I felt like I was bursting.

Jack stuck around for a while after we finished cleaning up, and we played a couple of rounds of Yahtzee. My mother smiled all night. After he left, I couldn't stay quiet, no matter what I had promised Jack.

“I wish my real father was still alive,” I told her. “Things would really have been different for us, wouldn't they, Mom?”

My mother looked at me, surprised, I think, that I'd mentioned him.

“Tell me about him, Mom,” I said.

One hand went to her hair, which was dyed blond and which she wore down to her shoulders because Phil liked blonds and he loved long hair. She tucked it behind her ear and fiddled with the ends of it. It was the kind of thing a shy kid would do.

“What's there to tell, David?” she said. “You already know everything.”

“I know,” I said. “I just thought—it's just the two of us now, Mom. I just thought it would be nice to talk about my father.”

She had told me before she met Phil that my father was in medical school when he and my mother got together, but that he died just before he graduated, when I was two years old and Jamie was just a baby. I didn't remember him at all. She had told me it was a car accident. She had said that he'd stayed up all night studying and had gone to classes, then to the hospital for a shift. She had said that he'd fallen asleep at the wheel on his way home. She always said, “At least he was the only one. At least he didn't slam into another car and take someone with him.” She seemed to take comfort in that thought. But after she got together with Phil, she never wanted to talk about my father again. She always said, “That's all water under the bridge.”

She was still fiddling with the ends of her hair, twirling them around and around her finger, when she looked at me now and said, “That's all water under the bridge, David. It's bad enough having to think that Phil is gone. I don't want to remember any more deaths.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
Oh boy, she was going to cry again. “What are we going to do, David?”

I couldn't believe what was happening. And I didn't have an answer to her question.

Detective Antonelli called the next morning just before I was supposed to leave for school. He asked to speak to my mother. Her hand shook when she took the phone from me. Maybe she thought he was going to tell her that they had caught whoever had shot Phil. By the time she hung up the phone, her hand was shaking even worse and her face was pale.

“He said they want to talk to you, David.”

“They?” I said. “The cops?”

She nodded.

“What for?” I don't think I ever worked harder at getting just two words out of my mouth. I tried to sound like I had no idea what the cops would want with me.

“He didn't say,” she said. “He just said that they want to talk to you and that it's about Phil. Give me a minute to find my shoes and we'll go.”

“You're coming with me?” I said.

“Of course I'm going with you. You're my son.”

She found her shoes and her purse and dug out her car keys. We rode in silence. My mother was probably wondering why the cops would want to talk to me about what had happened to Phil. So was I. I told myself over and over that I hadn't done anything. Besides, the cops had told us that no one had seen anything. They had canvassed the whole area. Phil had been killed at a bank machine on a street that had nothing but stores on both sides. They were almost all carpet stores and clothing stores, plus a couple of check-cashing
places, a furniture store, a place that sold hats, and a place that sold lamps. All of the stores had been closed at the time. The police hadn't been able to find anyone who had been on that block when it happened. They told my mother that they found a clerk at a convenience store who thought he heard a bang, but who just assumed it was a car backfiring. No one in any of the houses on the streets nearby had heard or seen anything.

Detective Antonelli came out to meet us. He escorted us to an interview room. He started right in telling me that he was investigating Phil's shooting and that he wanted to ask me some questions. He told me that I didn't have to answer his questions, but that if I did answer, anything that I said could be used as evidence against me. My mouth went dry, but the rest of my body got slick with sweat.

“Why are you telling him that?” my mother said. Her voice was higher than normal. It always got shrill when she was upset or mad. “What's going on?”

Detective Antonelli told my mother that he had reason to believe I knew more than I was telling about what had happened to Phil. He told me that I had the right to a lawyer. He told me I could have a lawyer or my mother or any other adult with me while I answered his questions.

“I don't understand,” my mother said. “What's going on? You don't think David shot Phil, do you?”

I said I didn't want a lawyer, even though I kind of wished I could have one. But I was afraid to ask for one. I was afraid it would make me look like I had done something. Detective Antonelli told me that if I changed my mind, I should tell him and he would stop asking questions until I had a chance to talk to a lawyer.

“What about your mother, David?” Detective Antonelli said. “Do you want her to stay with you while you answer my questions?”

I looked at my mother. I couldn't decide if I wanted her in the room with me or not.
Finally I said I wanted her to stay.

“David,” Detective Antonelli said, “your stepfather was killed at approximately fifteen m inutes before m idnight on Saturday night. We know that because we have the slip from the atm machine where he withdrew money. It has the time on it.”

I waited. My throat was so dry I thought I would choke.

“You told us that on the night your stepfather was killed, you went out. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

“You said you left the house at 8:00 and that you came back at 10:30. Is that correct?”

I had to force myself not to look at my mother as I nodded again.

“Where did you go, David?”

“I was just walking around.”

“Were you with friends?”

I shook my head. “I was by myself. I like to walk around.” It was true. I did.

“Where were you walking around?”

Why was he asking me that? Did he already know the answer or was he trying to find out?

“I was just walking around,” I said. “Down by First and Main. Around there.”

“And you're sure you were home by 10:30 that night?”

My mother was staring at me now. I started to worry about what she might be thinking.

“I'm pretty sure,” I said. I didn't want to sound too definite until I knew why he was asking.

“I don't know if you know this, David, but banks have security cameras at their bank machines.”

I was pretty sure I had heard that somewhere, but I didn't see what it had to do with me.

“We checked the security video from the bank machine. We saw your stepfather making a withdrawal from his account. But we didn't see anyone else near the bank machine at the same time. We didn't see anyone using the machine
just before your stepfather used it or just after either.”

Why was he telling me this? What did it have to do with me?

“One of the other things we did, David, to try to find out anything that might help us identify the person who shot your stepfather, is that we collected security surveillance videos from all the businesses in the area. That gave us an idea of who else might have been in the area at the time the crime was committed.”

Oh.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother staring at me. Detective Antonelli was staring at me too, straight in the eye. I wanted to look somewhere else, but I was afraid that if I did, he would think that I had something to hide.

Detective Antonelli said, “David, can you explain why you appear in a surveillance video at a convenience store one block from where your stepfather was shot just ten minutes before it happened?”

Think fast
, I thought to myself.

I said to Detective Antonelli, “Well, I remember I went into a store and bought an ice-cream bar.” I said it as calmly as I could, like I was trying to be as helpful as possible.

“You didn't mention that before.”

“You didn't ask me,” I said. It was true. “I didn't think it was important. It was just ice-cream.”

Detective Antonelli gave me a hard look. It scared me.

“Your stepfather was killed at approximately fifteen minutes before midnight, David,” he said. “We have you on the security surveillance video in that store at twenty-five minutes to midnight. Yet you told me—you told me
twice
now—that you were home by 10:30. But you weren't. You were at that store at twenty-five minutes to midnight. That means that if you walked home from that store, you couldn't have been home before midnight. That's one and a half hours
later
than what you told us. Why did you lie, David?”

I glanced at my mother. Her face was white. She was staring at me like we were strangers. I looked at Detective Antonelli.