The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (12 page)

“Let the man sleep. He’s tired out.”

A round, white-haired man with a bulbous purple nose had joined me at my father’s door.

“I’m the roommate.” He stuck a soggy unlit cigar into his mouth and held out his hand for a shake. “Name’s Leonard Parks.”

White stubble coated Leonard’s face. His brown slacks, the waist pulled up to his ribs, were unbuttoned; his belt hung open. “So, this new guy.” It was a sentence. “You’re the daughter? You ought to get him a haircut.” His face asked what was wrong with me, letting my father get so shaggy. “He got any other kids?”

“Just me.”

“Any grandkids? I got seven. Three in Seattle. One in Pittsburgh—his father’s my youngest, an architect. My middle son’s a CPA. And my eldest—he’s in real estate—his kids are all grown now, out of the nest. He’s in Kenya now. Wait. Let me get the itinerary.” He pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and set reading glasses on his nose while he opened the page. “Let’s see. Yes. Today, he’s on safari. In Kenya. Next, he’ll be in South Africa, in Cape Town.” He held up the list for me to see. “He’s on a trip around the world. Writes me every day, keeps me up-to-date, doesn’t want me to miss a beat. See, I’m staying here while he travels. Just for a few months. But listen, who can begrudge him? He’s earned it, my son. He’s worked hard, raised his family. Now it’s his time to enjoy. When he gets home, of course, I’ll go live with him and his wife at their home out in Malvern. I’m only here for a short time, for the interim.” He folded the itinerary, carefully put it away. “That’s probably why they put us together.”

I didn’t follow.

“Walter and me.” Leonard gestured into my father’s room. “He’s here for only a short time, too.”

“He is?” I must have misunderstood what Leonard meant.

“Sure, he’s going home in a couple weeks, back to his own place. Says a guy named Jack is there, waiting for him. That’s what he said.”

Damn. Didn’t my father get it? Nick and I had each explained that he was going to live here now, but apparently we’d have to go over it again. Maybe lots of times. Dr. Habib had warned that the strokes had damaged his short-term memory.

“So, we’re both just temporary.” Leonard tugged at his pants, hefting them up even higher.

I smiled, looking around toward the door, wondering where Nick was.

“It’s not a bad place, don’t get me wrong. But not a place you’d want to stay permanently unless you have to. Some of the people here, they have nobody who cares about them. So they end up here. Thank God, I’ve got my sons. And Walter has you.”

I blinked, excusing myself, saying how nice it was to meet him and that I’d come by later, and, before Leonard could go on, I backed out of the room.

I
FOUND NICK WAITING
in the hallway by the front office.

“Your dad fell asleep,” he told me. “The move wiped him out. And we have a small problem: He thinks he’s here on vacation, to rest for a while. He’s decided this place is a resort.”

I didn’t want to talk about it. “Give him time. He’ll figure it out.”

“Who’s Jack? He says he has to go look after Jack.”

“I don’t know.” Leonard had mentioned Jack, too, and Dad had talked about him in the hospital. But I had no idea who he was. For all I knew, Jack was long dead like my mother. “Can we go get lunch?” I changed the subject.

“Sure, how’s Le Bus?”

Le Bus was a casual restaurant in Manayunk, which was a Native American word meaning “place we go to drink.” Formerly a mill and factory neighborhood, Manayunk had been built along the Schuylkill River above Philadelphia. Now gentrified, its Main Street had become a trendy high-end shopping center, a narrow road lined with designer and fashion boutiques, high-caliber bars and eateries. Le Bus was not one of the fancy spots, just a place for reasonably priced hearty meals featuring home-baked breads and buttery mashed potatoes. Le Bus was a fine choice, but I managed only a mild, less than enthusiastic, “Okay.” I was hungry, but more than that, I was disturbed. My father, his deteriorating health, his ambiguous role in Beatrice’s death and, now, his declared plans to return home had darkened my mood, and I remained quiet until we were seated at the restaurant facing a basket of fresh warm bread.

“Don’t worry. He’ll be okay there, Zoe.” Nick took a piece of pumpernickel.

I slathered a slice of pumpkin-seed bread with melting butter.

“While you were doing the paperwork, Walter was chatting people up, joking around. He was real sociable.”

“Dad’s a real sociable guy. In a real sociopathic kind of way.”

Nick took a bite of bread. “Just out of curiosity. Why are you so mad at him?”

Oh, God. Did we have to talk about that? I gulped raspberry iced tea.

“Who said I was mad at him?”

“Zoe, he’s just an old man, not a monster.” He said that as if it were true. A given that everybody knew for certain. Nick spread butter on a roll; it melted instantly. “Look, you’re a grown woman. Whatever happened in your childhood, it’s long over with. Shouldn’t you move on?”

I looked into Nick’s eyes, determined to ignore the disturbing shadows flickering in my mind.

“I’ve got to tell you, Zoe, Walter’s growing on me. I kind of like the guy.”

Damn. I put down a slice of pecan raisin bread. “Oh, please, Nick. Don’t tell me you’re letting him con you. You’re too smart for that.”

“Just because I like him doesn’t mean he’s conning me. What did he do that was so terrible that you can’t forgive it in his old

age?”

I closed my eyes, glimpsed the dangling hem of a nightgown, refused the image, concentrating instead on the shiny butter knife in Nick’s hands.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Just anywhere.”

I squeezed my water glass and took a deep breath. Okay. I’d talk about it. Fine. Why not? While we’re at it, why didn’t I just take that butter knife and slice my veins open? “Dad’s a gambler. He used to borrow from loan sharks to pay off his bookies. We’d have to hide from the loan sharks because he couldn’t pay them back. He was always in debt, and we never knew who would come knocking at the door to collect. My father’s a gambling addict who cares about nothing more than the game. He’ll swear that he’s stopped, but he never stops. That’s why, when I found out about the betting slips in Beatrice’s throat, I knew my dad was involved—”

Nick blinked. “Wait, what?”

“She was his friend—she died in his kitchen. He had something to do with it. It’s no coincidence that her death involved gambling.”

Nick looked skeptical. “Your father’s eighty-three years old. I doubt he had anything to do with her murder—”

“You don’t know him, Nick. He charms people. He lies to your face. He promises to stop gambling, but he doesn’t stop. My childhood was a series of high-stakes card games and junkets, and a whole lot of hiding from gangsters. Don’t tell me he’s a likable guy. That likable man broke my mother’s heart so many times that, by the time I was six, she was dead.” My voice was too loud. I felt stares from all directions.

For once, Nick didn’t jump to defend my father. He reached for my hand, waiting for me to calm down. “If your mother was unhappy, why didn’t she leave?”

Why didn’t she leave? Well, in a way, she did. Again, I pictured her, an angel’s face, pale in death, imagined her floating, drifting nowhere, ghostlike above the ground. “She might have, but she died first.” I took a sip of water.

Nick studied me. “Okay. So you blame him. You blame your father for your mom’s death.”

Bingo. The guy was a genius. “Nick, can we please—”

“I finally get it. It makes sense.” He put what was left of his roll down, reached out for my other hand. “Zoe, sorry. I don’t mean to play shrink with you.”

Then don’t. Please. “Okay.”

“And I don’t pretend to know everything—I wasn’t there.”

No, you don’t and you weren’t. “But?”

“But you’re the therapist—you should be able to see what’s happening here. You were a kid when all this happened. And kids tend to confuse cause and effect with sequence. Your mom’s unhappy with your father; then she dies. So…maybe little Zoe’s mind connected these events. However illogically, she thought her dad must be responsible. Maybe she’s held that against him all these years. Is that a possibility?”

Definitely. Absolutely a possibility. “I guess.”

“But all this time later, you must see the fallacy there. Granted, your father was a bad parent—a miserable one. A gambler. An incorrigible liar. A complete cad.”

The list was too short, but so far, I was with him.

“But that doesn’t mean he caused your mom’s death. You see that, right?”

Oops. He’d lost me.

“So maybe, if you recognize all that, you can let go of some of your anger. I mean, I spent only a little while with him, but I’m a pretty good judge of character. And, to an outsider like me, your dad doesn’t seem so bad. He’s feisty. Spry. Funny. Likable.”

Oh, no. Likable? Spry? Please don’t tell me that. My father had gotten to Nick. Already. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll think about what you said.”

“Now you’re upset.” He shook his head, leaned back in his chair. “Why? Because I brought this up?”

Upset? Me? “No. I’m actually glad. We need to be able to talk about things.” Even fetid, infested things.

“I only want you two to have some peace while you still can, Zoe. After all, he’s eighty-some. And Walter doesn’t have that much time left.”

Did he think I didn’t realize that? Again, I heard Dr. Habib warn that my father could go at any time.

“And besides, he’s going to be my father-in-law”

Oh, God. Were they going to bond? Hang out and watch Sunday football?

“Nick, don’t worry about me and my dad. We’ll be okay.”

“Really?” He was still holding my hand; now he squeezed it.

“Really.” Can we change the subject now? Please?

He half-smiled. “Then why are you still scowling?”

I wanted to scream. “Talking about my father makes me scowl.”

“Okay. Then let’s change the subject.” He half-smiled again.

“Fine. What do you want to talk about?”

“How about your mom?” His eyes twinkled.

Was he serious? “What is this, Nick? Why do we have to talk about my family? I don’t like talking about them—”

“I don’t like to talk about my scar, either. But I told you about it the first time we had dinner together. It’s called ‘confiding.’ It’s what a person does to let someone else get close.”

I didn’t remind him that he’d left out major details in telling me about his scar. Like the fact that the woman who’d given it to him had been his wife. Or the fact that he’d been suspected of killing her afterward. Instead, I reassured him. “We are close, Nick.” I squeezed his hand. “I’m having your baby.”

“Thai turkey salad and a charbroiled cheddar burger.” The waitress smiled as she placed the plates in front of us. “Anything else? Can I get you more to drink?”

“No, thank you.” Nick politely returned the smile, but his cool blue eyes remained on mine.

The waitress nodded, moved awkwardly away.

I stiffened, anticipating what Nick would say. I expected him to say that I put walls around myself, that I didn’t let anyone close. I could hear the words before he said them. Not that he didn’t have his own walls—in fact, I knew almost nothing about his family or his childhood. All I knew about his brothers was their names and their unconventional religious training. But then, Nick’s background wasn’t the issue at the moment. Mine was. And he was right. I needed to trust him and open up.

“Okay.” I tried to dodge the spat. “I don’t remember much about my mom, but I can tell you what I do. What would you like to know?”

He shook his head. “What I want to know isn’t the point.”

It wasn’t? “It isn’t?”

“We’ve been through this before, Zoe. The point isn’t what I want to know—it’s what you want me to know. What do you want me to know about your family? Anything?”

“You already know my family. As far as I’m concerned, Molly is my family, my entire family. My mother’s been dead since I was a kid, and my father’s been out of my life until now. He’s been a non-relationship, completely irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant?” Nick’s eyebrows dropped into a doubting frown. “How? He’s your father.”

“Only technically.”

“Bullshit. You’re the shrink here. You know that family gives us our foundations. It teaches us how to care for others.”

“So?”

“So, according to you, you grew up without one. A dead mother and an irrelevant father.”

My mouth went dry. It sounded so cold. I thought of Hilda, the chubby, pink-cheeked German housekeeper who’d pretty much raised me without ever really speaking English.

“So maybe you never learned how to be part of a family. Maybe you don’t want to be part of one.” His eyes narrowed.

“I can’t help how I grew up, Nick.”

“But you can help what you do about it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning”—he met and held my eyes—”that just now, you said that Molly was your whole entire family. What about me? Am I not your family?”

Damn. “Oh, come on, Nick. Of course—”

“What about the baby? Is the baby not your family?”

“Nick, stop it. Of course it is. And so are you. You’re twisting my words.”

“Am I? Or am I simply repeating them?”

I could hear his thoughts. Is Zoe capable of letting down the walls? Is it possible to be close to her? Did her first marriage fail because she couldn’t manage the intimacy? Was her parents’ marriage so bad that she feels unable to succeed at her own? The questions pummeled me, even unasked. Nick studied my face.

Damn, I told myself. Tell him you’re insanely in love with him, that you consider him closer than family, that you adore his baby the same way that you adore Molly—that you’ll say anything he wants and do whatever it takes to make him blissfully happy for the rest of time. Maybe even talk about your parents.

“I’m sorry.” I was. I didn’t want friction or fights. I wanted peace.

“All I’m saying is…you’re always on edge lately. In your eyes, I can’t do anything right. I’m on your nerves all the time—”