Crow’s Row (17 page)

“Well?”

He shifted in his seat. “I’m not sure where to start.”

“Starting from the beginning seems to work for most people.”

“Starting from the beginning would take a very long time.”

This made me almost giddy, but I tried to keep it cool and shrugged, “Apparently I’m not going anywhere for a while, so talk as long as you need.”

His lips curved up at the corners. “I don’t need to talk. I’m doing this for you,” he stalled.

I crossed my arms over my chest, not giving him any other opportunity to delay what I needed to hear.

“Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “If you eat, I’ll talk.”

I picked up a half of the grilled cheese and dunked it in my pond of ketchup. I brought it to my mouth and waited to see if he was going to keep his end of the bargain.

“Let’s see,” he said with his eyes turned to the ceiling. His gaze then came back to me, attached to a crooked smile. “The first time I met Bill Sheppard, he beat the crap out of me.”

I took a bite of my sandwich and almost choked.

“Your brother had just been transferred to my school—”

“Which school?” I tested with a mouthful.

“Saint Emmanuel.”

Saint Emmanuel was the last private school my brother had attended before being shipped off to live with his uncle. “That’s one of the most expensive schools in the eastern United States.”

Cameron’s stare bore into me. “What shocks you more—the fact that I went to a private school, or that I went to school at all?”

“Neither,” I told him. “I just didn’t peg you for the snooty type.”

His smile returned. “I’m not. What’s your problem with rich people anyway?”

This was obviously another stall tactic—even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t going there. “So you met my brother at Saint Emmanuel’s, and he beat you up. Why?”

“Bill had decided that he was going start selling to the kids at school. One day, he caught me selling on what he thought was his turf, so he beat me up to teach me a lesson. I was just a kid back then,” he clarified, “and I thought for sure that Spider was going to kill him for giving me a black eye—”

“How long have you known Spider?” I interrupted.

“A long time,” he replied. He hesitated before he added, “We were roommates in juvi … Spider had come up with the same plan as your brother a couple of years before.”

“You were in juvenile detention?”

“Yeah, for a little while.” His face slightly flushed, and he hurriedly continued, “By the time your brother came along, Spider and I already had the school as our turf and had spent a lot of time building business with the rich kids—”

“What were you selling, exactly?” I asked.

Cameron sighed. “Emmy, the only way I’m going to tell you this is if it’s is a one-way conversation. That means no more questions.” He waited for my acknowledgement, so I nodded and bolted the imaginary lock on my lips. It hadn’t escaped me that he had called me Emmy, or that I really liked it when he had.

“Bill’s customers were actually my customers. And my customers were a paranoid bunch of kids who were always looking over their shoulder, afraid that people would know their dirty little secrets, embarrass their families. They never bought from anyone they didn’t know, or didn’t trust, even a persuasive young blood like your brother.” I smiled, picturing my big-headed brother. This was the world Bill and I knew too well—the hiding, the lying, the sham.

“When Bill finally figured out why he wasn’t getting any business, he decided that he was going to become my partner. At first, I told him to get lost.” Cameron grinned wider. “But, when he told me about his new plan, it made a lot of sense. So, I finally convinced Spider—which wasn’t easy—and your brother, Spider, and I became business partners. Spider kept the product coming in, I kept the school kids well supplied, Bill expanded the business to the parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, et cetera.” He paused to take another bite. “You know, Bill had a way of making people feel like they were untouchable. Spider said it was the smell of money that was ingrained in his skin. Whatever it was, your brother was a great salesman, and, for a while, with our customers’ deep pockets, we had so much business that we had a hard time keeping up.”

“But your brother had one major weakness: women—the kind that came with a lot of baggage. He always had to come to some girl’s rescue.” Cameron smiled mischievously at me, and I took great care in red-coating the second half of my sandwich, willing my face to stay its normal pallor.

“Seemed like he had a different girl hanging off his arm every other week. But once the excitement was over and he decided that he was done saving them, he’d move on to the next train wreck, leaving a bigger wreck behind. He got caught up with this one chick … girl …” He corrected himself for my benefit. “… whose boyfriend liked to use her as a punching bag. Bill came to her rescue and beat up the boyfriend.”

“Turned out that the boyfriend wasn’t just one of my regular customers, he was also the dean’s nephew. Just a string of bad luck,” he said, shaking his head. “Bill’s dorm room was searched, and they found the stash that was hidden under the floorboards. Bill got arrested and kicked out of school.” I remembered this. Bill had been sent home in a police cruiser. Of course, no charges were ever laid—the Sheppards were too well connected for something like that to ever happen. But not even the Sheppard name could stop the gossiping. Bill had to be sent to live with a distant relative, cut off from the family, for the family name’s sake.

Cameron held my gaze. “You know, I had bigger stashes in my room, so Bill could have used me as a scapegoat to save himself. But he never did.

“Spider and I kept the business going after your brother got kicked out. We kept it lower key though, selling only to the students I knew. When I finished high school, your brother came to find me. He had whopping plans to expand the business, beyond rich kids and their families, and needed a partner. I brought Spider in, and we spent the next couple of years getting new suppliers and building more contacts. Your brother had big dreams, and the business kept growing, so much so that we had trouble keeping track of all the money that came in. So Spider brought Carly in, and soon we had the competition working for us. No one made a move unless your brother approved it.”

Cameron paused. The smile left his face, replaced by darkness. “When you’re on top like that, things get a lot more … complicated,” he told me carefully. “Everywhere you look, there’s someone who wants to take you down so that he can get a piece of your action. You start having to look over your shoulder all the time because your friends can become your enemies overnight. Just trying to keep yourself …” He looked away. “… trying to keep the people you love alive becomes a twenty-four hour job. It’s exhausting.

“And your brother had started to … change. He became …” He was trying to find the right word and settled on, “… jittery. He started keeping secrets, disappearing from Spider, Carly, and me.” Cameron took a breath here. “Things started to really fall apart when our clients and the other partners noticed the change and second-guessed his decisions. Before we knew what was really going on, Bill was dead.”

We took our last few bites in silence.

Cameron then pulled his eyes back up and surveyed my face. “To answer your question, yes, I knew your brother very well, and yes, I knew him well enough to know who you are, Emmy. Your brother was my best friend, and he talked about you all the time.” He stopped and waited anxiously.

“Why didn’t you tell me before now? Why did you say that you were never going to tell me about my brother?”

He pressed his lips together. “Because your brother wouldn’t have wanted you to know.”

“How would you know what was going though his mind?”

“He would have told you, wouldn’t he?” he pointed out.

“Maybe he just ran out of time.”

“Believe me, Emmy,” he insisted darkly, “Bill wouldn’t want you to know this much about his life.” Cameron picked up our empty plates and glasses and walked them back to the kitchen.

“Okay …” I decided to let it go and moved on. “Why are you telling me this now?”

He came back from the kitchen and leaned against the counter, searching my face again. “I had no other choice. I know how close you and Bill were and that it was difficult for you when he died.” He forced a smile. “I also know that you wouldn’t let up until you heard the truth. I wanted you to hear it from me … and to stop harassing my kid brother for information that he doesn’t have. He had no idea who Bill was or who you were. You’re making it very hard on me to keep the kid away from all that stuff.”

“Rocco wants to be part of all that stuff,” I reminded him.

“That’s not up to him.” He was adamant about this. I wouldn’t press him on that.

“Spider and Carly—they knew who I was, though.”

“Yes. They did,” he confessed quickly. He came to take the seat next to me. I could feel the heat off his arm. I wondered if he did this on purpose, to confound me.

“I have to leave for a little while,” he told me quietly. “I know that you have a lot of questions, but I meant what I said: the less you know, the safer you are.” He smiled his crooked smile. “Please don’t start any more hunger strikes while I’m gone. Rocco will not feed you, and from the smells that come out of his room I don’t think that he would even notice the smell of a decomposing body.”

His brown eyes were fixed on mine. I wanted to touch him, just a little bit to see if he was real, but I just yawned a long, boorish yawn. He chuckled and he reached out to gently squeeze my shoulder. My heart thudded—he was very real. “It’s late. You need to go to bed.”

I squinted toward the clock in the living room. Though my eyes were burning and my neck felt like it was holding up a bowling ball, I didn’t want to go to bed.

“When will you be back?” I asked, stupidly yawning again.

“I don’t know,” he told me. “Could be a couple days, could be a week. It depends on how things progress. I have a lot of catching up to do.” He winked at me, “I have to finish the business that was interrupted last time I was in the city.”

This time my yawn hit my eyes and made them tear up. This made him chuckle. “Go to bed, Emmy. I promise we’ll talk when I get back.”

He got up and hesitated before extending his hand to help me up. I took it—without comment this time. His hand was warm and it awakened something.

After he had led me to his bedroom door and after there was an awkward pause between us, he turned on his heels and started to walk away.

“What made you think that Daniel was my son?” he asked as I was grabbing the door handle.

I shrugged shyly. “Why else would you be paying Frances?”

Cameron considered this for a moment. “He’s not mine,” he told me, and with my heart still hotly pounding, I closed the bedroom door and pushed Meatball over before crashing into bed, still fully clothed.

There was overwhelming desolation. I had sensed it as soon as my eyes had fluttered open; even before I had noticed the string of light that was poking through the curtain borders and before Meatball started whining at the door to be let out of our cave. Whatever place Cameron had come to occupy inside of me was now being wrenched by distance. Weirdly, I felt him far away, and the only way I could explain this to myself was that he had quickly become the only true tie I had left to my brother. It was the closest I had ever come to knowing about my brother’s other life and I was starved for more. The fact that Bill had been involved in something most likely highly illegal wasn’t all that surprising to me—I was even a little proud of this. How entrenched he had been in these extracurricular activities and what part Cameron had played and might still have been playing in these endeavors, I didn’t know. Part of me wondered if the whole truth—and I was starting to have an idea what that truth might look like—would even perturb me, change how I felt.

My sixth sense was validated when I went outside to let Meatball get to his business and saw that Cameron’s car was gone.

Rocco and Griff were on the front stoop, so I held back the deep sigh that was inflating my chest and resigned to pinching my lips together.

“Ginger!” Griff exclaimed through a cloud of his cigarette smoke. “Where have you been hiding, love?”

The place looked abandoned. The vans and cars were all gone, and there were just a few guards left marching about the property line.

I smiled meekly at Griff while Rocco watched poor Meatball dash for the first patch of green he could find. “What’s Meatball doing here? He should be with the chief.”

I could feel my cheeks picking up color. “I guess he forgot to bring him,” I said, feeling guilty for having forgotten to let him out at a decent time.

“Doubt it,” Rocco muttered. He coughed out smoke signals, his lungs refusing to inhale the toxins from the cigarette he was trying to smoke. He quickly gave up the habit and put it out with barely a puff’s worth gone from it. Griff had already finished his and snuffed it out with his sneaker. He kept his twinkling eyes on me.

“Is everyone gone?” I asked, changing the subject and holding on to a miniscule glimmer of hope that my intuition was flawed.

“Yep,” Rocco confirmed gloomily. “Everyone is gone.”