“Careful, punk, or we’ll mess with something else,” Nick warned, then turned back to the girl. “What is it, Julie?”
“My mom . . . I talked with her about a week before she died,” she said, and Robert, in a dramatic show of exasperation meant to shut her up, rolled his eyes and muttering loudly, stormed into the kitchen where he kicked the cupboards so loudly, Julie jumped and the cat scrambled toward the bedroom for a better hiding spot. “Stop it, Robert!” she screamed. “Just stop it.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll stop it, all right. Sure.” Robert shot out of the kitchen, keys in hand. “I’m outta here. If you want to kill a good deal, fine, but count me out.” He blew out the door in a cloud of self-righteous fury. His shoulder connected with Nick’s as he shoved the door open and it was all Nick could do not to grab him by the scruff of his hot neck and knock some sense into him. Instead he let the kid pass and the door slammed shut behind him with a bang. A second later the sound of a motorcycle engine revving cut through the night. Tires screamed and the bike, gears grinding, shrieked out of the lot.
“Good riddance,” Julie muttered, folding her arms over her chest. “I don’t know why the hell I married him.” Then, as if she realized she had an audience who’d overheard her unhappiness, she leaned back in the chair and began rocking. Her lip trembled and she stuck it out in anger. “Ungrateful prick.”
“What about your
mother,” Nick said, trying to get Julie’s mind back on track. “Do you know where she was going that night?”
“I think so. She called. Needed a place to hang out for a while, a place no one would find her, and there was an apartment down at school that my friends had rented, but they were gonna be out of town for the weekend. I fixed it so Mom could stay there.”
“Why did she want a place to hide?”
“It was something to do with a book she was writing. A book about adoption and parents’ rights or something. She was kinda into all that at one time. She called and said she needed a place pronto, that she had something to do first but then needed a place to crash. It was all real frantic. She said she had a friend who needed help because she wanted to leave her husband but he wouldn’t let her have custody of her baby. I—I didn’t know that it was Marla Cahill. I mean, I wouldn’t have . . . oh, shit, it doesn’t matter. Mom told me she was gonna do some research and work with the woman, try to help her find a way to keep the kid and instead of a retainer, she got the woman’s story for her book.”
Marla. Marla had planned to take Alex’s kids away from him.
“She was gonna use my story, too, as part of the plot, but I wasn’t cool with it. Even though it was part fiction, I thought people would find out. I didn’t want my friends to know about the baby . . .” she shrugged. “Anyway it’s not gonna happen now.” More tears rained from her eyes. “Why . . . why do you think someone killed her? That woman that was driving, did she do it on purpose? Dad wants to sue her. She . . . she’s Alexander’s wife, isn’t she?”
“We think someone caused the accident, made the driver swerve,” Walt said, and Nick noted the girl referred to Alex familiarly. What the hell was this all about?
“Who made her swerve?”
“We don’t know,” Nick admitted, though the suspect list was narrowing and his brother was being elevated to the top. That thought made his blood congeal. Even now Marla could be with Alex.
“So what was the ‘sweet deal’ Robert was talking about?” Walt persisted.
“Oh, God . . .” she hesitated. Worked at her thumbnail until there wasn’t much left. “It’s weird now, when I figured out that everybody’s related. I . . . I kinda got involved with an older man when I was at Cahill House. He, um, he liked me. Robert and I were broken up over the baby and this man . . . he was nice. Treated me good. Mom found out and nearly had a stroke. She contacted some lawyer she knew and started ranting and raving that she was going to sue whoever it was. All she knew was that he was older and married but she was ready to string him up by his balls.”
“So when did she find out the guy was the preacher?” Walt asked.
Julie opened her mouth, started to say something, but snapped her teeth together and folded her lips together.
Walt said, “You don’t remember?”
She blinked hard.
“Julie?” Nick prodded.
“He wasn’t the guy who came on to me,” she whispered, casting her eyes to the floor.
“Wait a minute.” Walt rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought you and he—”
She shook her head. “Everyone did. That’s what everyone’s supposed to think. That’s the deal Robert was talking about.” She looked earnestly at Nick and her little face, streaked with black, crumpled. “It wasn’t like everyone thought. He was just being nice and, well, Alex . . .” she whispered, her lips trembling.
“My brother?”
“Yes! He worked out a deal with me and Reverend Favier so that it seemed like he was the one, so that my Mom wouldn’t insist that I press charges.”
“Why would Donald Favier let his name be smeared?” Nick asked. “It could have cost him his congregation. I’m surprised they didn’t string him up at the church and throw him out.”
“It’s his church. There’s no other one like it,” Julie said. “It’s not like a franchise for McDonald’s, it’s not part of a bigger deal. There’s no archbishop or pope or supreme poohbah or anything.”
“Still, his reputation took a major hit,” Nick said. “Why would he take the fall?”
Julie’s lips twisted into a cynical smile that was far older than her years. “Well, duh, why do you think?” she asked, swiping at her nose with the back of her hand. “For the same reason I did. For the money.”