Guilty (16 page)

She means, he didn't kill my mother.

Now it takes me a few moments to gather myself.

“I get that you loved your dad,” I say finally. “I can see it in your eyes when you talk about him. I never thought about it before, you know, that he had a family and how his family might feel. I get it now. But—” I hate to be saying that word. It turns every sentence into its opposite. “But, Lila—” It's the first time I've said her name out loud. It sounds nice. “They found the stolen jewelry in his place. It was right there where he was sleeping. If he didn't do it, how come he had the jewelry?”

“I don't know,” she says. “I just know that something's wrong. My dad knew a lot of people—not nice people, you know? Maybe one of them did it and framed my dad.”

I want to tell her she's crazy. At the very least, she's grasping at straws.

“If someone wanted to frame your dad for stealing my mom's jewelry, why would they leave all the jewelry at his place where the cops could find it? My dad got it all back. Nothing was missing. If I were going to frame someone, I'd leave the least valuable pieces to make the cops think he did it. I wouldn't leave everything.”

She is silent for a long time.

“Maybe,” she says slowly, her eyes meeting mine again, “it wasn't about the robbery.”

I shake my head right away. I have to. I mean, what she's suggesting is so ridiculous that it's not even worth thinking about, because if it wasn't about the robbery, then the only other thing it could have been about is my mother. She's saying someone
wanted
to kill my mother.

No way.

“Lila,” I say. I try to be as understanding as I can. I try not to hurt her, but it's like stabbing someone gently. “Your dad confessed. He told the police he did it. Why would he do that if he was innocent?”

Her shoulders slump, and I actually feel bad that I've taken away all she had left—her belief in her father.

“I don't know,” she says.

Then I say something that I regret almost instantly. “He came here. He killed Tracie, and he tried to kill my dad. I know. I saw the whole thing.”

She hangs her head, as if she's ashamed.

“That's my fault,” she says, her voice so soft I barely catch the words.

“What?”

“It's my fault. He wanted me to go to university. I was supposed to be the first in the family. But I screwed up. I didn't get a scholarship. He came here to get money.”

I already knew he wanted money. My dad had told me.

“Did he tell you he was going to do it?” I demand, on edge again. Because if he did, and she didn't say anything…

She shakes her head. “The cops told me—after. I mean, they sort of told me. They asked me if he said anything about needing money. He needed it all right. For me. I guess he thought, well…” She glanced around, making her point. If you want money, a rich man is your best bet. “I'm sorry,” she says. “It's all my fault.”

She stands up and turns away from me. Her hand goes to her face, and I know she is wiping away her tears before I can see them. Then she spins around. She reaches in her pocket, pulls out some folded papers and throws them onto the kitchen table. They're the articles she printed from the Internet, the ones I saw at her place when I went by the first time. “I have to go,” she says. “I have to get things ready for the Salvation Army. I have to call my aunt. I have to go home.”

“I'll show you out.”

She shakes her head.

“Don't,” she says.

“Lila, I—”

She shakes her head again. I watch her walk out of the kitchen. A few moments later, I hear the front door open and close again.

Twenty-Six

FINN

I
sit there for a long time staring at the papers but not really seeing them. Instead, I think about Lila. I think about that crappy apartment she's living in and wonder what she meant when she said she had to get things ready for the Salvation Army. Does she mean her dad's things? Is she getting rid of them? There can't even be that much. From what I understand, he was only out of prison for a couple of days before he showed up at our house asking for my dad. I think about what else I saw at her place, which was nothing. There was no sign of anyone else living there. That's when it occurs to me that there isn't anyone else. I have my dad. She has no one.

I start to get up. Something catches my eye. A subheading from one of the articles she printed from the Internet:
Murder weapon never recovered.
Another piece of information I never knew—or asked about. I drop back down into my chair and reach for the papers. I read them slowly, one by one, and a feeling comes over me: What kind of person am I that I never read all this stuff before now? What kind of son am I? Okay, so I freaked out when it happened. I was seven. What seven-year-old wouldn't have freaked out? And I'm pretty sure my dad did whatever he could to shield me from thinking about that night. Why wouldn't he? I had nightmares for years. I was in therapy. I was a messed-up kid for a long time. But still…

The articles she printed cover a lot of ground. There's information about the actual break-in and shooting, including the information that I was the one who found her. There's information about the arrest and about the suspect, Louis Ouimette, who, according to one article, was known to police and was a reputed small-time thief and drug addict. It is noted that Ouimette worked at my dad's club. There's even a quote from my dad on the subject: “We thought we were doing the right thing when we offered a second chance to the man. I believe in second chances. I still do. I'm only sorry that he let us down.”

There's a small article, just a couple of paragraphs:

Fairlane Heiress Murderer Confesses

Louis Ouimette, 35, a reported drug addict with a criminal
record, confessed today to police that he broke into the home
of Robert Newsome and Angela Fairlane Newsome, 30, heiress to the Fairlane family fortune, and shot Mrs. Newsome
dead in the course of a robbery.

Police believe that Ouimette, who worked at a nightclub
owned by Mr. Newsome, gained access to security codes to the
Newsome house that Mr. Newsome kept in his office. They say
that Ouimette originally claimed to be under the influence
of drugs that night and did not remember anything about
either the break-in or the shooting, but that he confessed in
the face of irrefutable evidence of his involvement in the form
of jewelry stolen from Mrs. Newsome
.

Another brief article:
Fairlane Heiress Murderer Pleads
to Manslaughter, Sentenced to Ten Years.

Manslaughter?

I read the article.

In the absence of a murder weapon and proof that Louis
Ouimette acted alone and was the one who pulled the trigger
of the gun that killed Mrs. Angela Fairlane Newsome, heir to
the Fairlane family fortune, the Crown attorney has agreed
to a plea of manslaughter. Ouimette has been sentenced to
ten years on that charge and five years each on the break-and-
enter and theft, all sentences to run concurrently.

There are a couple of articles, too, on my mother's family. Her mother passed away the year I was born, when Mom was only twenty-three. Her father died a year later. One of the articles was about how my grandfather had made his fortune. Another one was a long article from a business magazine following his death. According to that article, my mother was going to come into a lot of money one day.

I sigh and get up. This whole thing is giving me a headache.

Then I think about Lila and about everything she's been through. I'm not mad at her for what happened, even though she probably thinks I am. Sure, I hated her at first. But now I can see she was hurt by everything, just like I was. I can see she's just trying to make sense of it all. And I can sure see that she loved her dad, even if I don't quite understand that part of it. It takes a lot to love a dad who, the minute he's out of prison, decides, even for a good reason, to rob someone at gunpoint and ends up shooting someone. But then, I never met the man. All I know is his reputation. Maybe his brain was scrambled by all those drugs.

On the other hand, he learned to read and write.

I put the pizza plates and the juice glasses into the dishwasher. When I straighten up, I glance out the kitchen window. From where I am, I have a perfect view of the front of the garage, and I think back to the night Tracie died. Was shot.

I think about earlier that night too, when a stranger, who turned out to be Lila's dad, came to the house looking for my dad. Maybe if I'd called my dad… But what would I have told him? “There was a man here who wanted to see you.” But what man? He didn't give me a name. And if I'd asked, what are the chances that he would have said Louis Ouimette? No, he would have given me a made-up name. He wouldn't have wanted my dad to have any warning.

Great, I've convinced myself that none of what happened was my fault.

I go upstairs. I'm about to flop down on my bed when I catch sight of a piece of paper sticking out from one of my schoolbooks.

It's the bill I found stuck between drawers in Tracie's closet. What was it doing there? Did she toss it there one day when she was in a rush? Or was it there for some other reason? I pull it out and take another look at it. This time I zero in on the date, which confuses me even more. My mom was still alive when this bill was issued. So how come Tracie had it?

I think about what Lila told me. I think about all the things I know now that I didn't know back then. I think about the questions raised by everything that's new to me.

Slowly, as if I'm walking in my sleep, I go to my computer, sit down, and boot it up. I type in the address on the invoice. I grab a jacket, my keys and the papers Lila left. I leave the house.

Twenty-Seven

LILA

W
hen I get back to the apartment, there's a note on the door. The Salvation Army truck has been by, and I missed it. The note tells me it will come by again later, which is fine with me.

I let myself in. I head directly to the kitchen to put the kettle on. While I wait for it to boil, everything that I've been holding back comes flooding out. I weep until my tears dry up, my head aches and my eyes are so puffy I can barely see out of them.

I should call Aunt Jenny. I should tell her that I'm coming home.

But I'm so tired. I turn the kettle off without making tea and instead lie down on the couch.

Twenty-Eight

FINN

A
lthaus and Son is in the east end of the city on a dreary street that runs off one of the main drags. On one side of the street is a tavern, a burger joint and a U-Store-It facility. On the other side stand a couple of tired houses and, wedged into the end of the street just before the railroad tracks, what looks like a lumberyard but isn't. I pull my car up in front of it and get out. I walk past the stacked wood to the small building in the middle of the lot. I knock on the door.

No one answers.

I try the doorknob. It turns, so I go in.

Right away I see that the little building is well-maintained and spotless inside. There are tools everywhere, but they are all neatly hung on the walls or sit in big, wheeled toolboxes. There's a desk, also spotless; a filing cabinet; a big table that looks like it's used for drafting. There's also a small counter with a computer and a bell on it.

I ring the bell.

A man appears through a door. As the door opens and closes, I can see through it to a large workshop. Clearly the small building isn't as small as it appeared from the outside. The man wipes his hands on a rag and looks at me.

“Can I help you?”

“I—I need some information.”

The man—sandy-haired, stout, middle-aged—waits.

“It's about some work that was done at a nightclub. The Siren.”

Recognition flickers in his eyes, but he shakes his head.

“We never did any work there,” he says.

“Yes, you did. About ten years ago.”

He tosses the rag on the counter and shakes his head again, but now I see irritation in his face.

“I don't know where you're getting your information, kid,” he says, “or even why it's any of your business, but I'm telling you, we never did any work at The Siren, and I should know. I've been working here since I was eighteen years old.”

I'm guessing he's Althaus's son.

“Maybe your father—” I begin, but he cuts me off with a wave of his hand.

“My dad passed,” he says.

“I'm sorry.”

He grunts, appreciative, I think, of the sentiment. I pull the invoice out of my pocket, unfold it and hand it to him.

He squints at it, crosses to his desk and pulls a pair of glasses out of a drawer. He puts them on and studies the invoice.

“Well, that's us, all right,” he says, looking up at me. “And that's my dad's handwriting.” He looks at the invoice again. “Looks like he wrote this just before…” He clears his throat. “He died not long after he wrote this. Cancer.”

“I'm sorry,” I say again.

He hands the invoice back to me.

“I don't know anything about this,” he says. “And even if I did, I still don't see how it's any business of yours.”

“My dad owns The Siren,” I say.

The man looks me over again.

“They were planning a big renovation about ten years ago,” he said. “They put out a request for bids. My dad bid on the job. It was a fair price. Maybe not as cheap as some, but my dad was a real craftsman. You paid, but you always got better quality than you paid for. We didn't get the job. And, anyway, if we had got it—” He has to draw in a deep breath to compose himself. “He would never have been able to handle something that big. His health was failing. He died a few months later.”