“Some,” she said. “Though he was more of a friend to Neville. Oliver and Teddy didn’t really get along.”
“Why not?”
“I guess because he got between Oliver and Neville. Teddy was a troublemaker and he teased Oliver about being shy and bookish. Whenever Teddy was over, there was always a problem.”
“So you didn’t like him.”
“You’re twisting my words. I didn’t like what he did to the family dynamics, how he came between the twins, but that was their business, not mine. Teddy didn’t have much use for me.”
“But Ryan did.”
“Not then.”
“Teddy wasn’t adopted.” The remark came out of left field.
She felt a shift in the atmosphere, sensed his eyes focus a little sharper. “He wasn’t? I guess not, I don’t really know. It wasn’t something I ever talked about with Ryan.” She frowned. “What’s Teddy got to do with anything?”
“He died in a car wreck when he’d just turned thirteen. Ryan was at the wheel.”
She nodded, feeling the need to tread carefully. “A horrible accident.”
“I know. I read the report. Ryan was an inexperienced driver, barely sixteen, coming back from a football game, about this time of year.”
“I guess…” Shannon said, trying not to nervously pluck at the arm of the chair. Where the hell was Paterno going with this line of questioning?
“According to all the eyewitnesses, and the skid evidence taken at the scene, Ryan swerved to miss a deer, hit gravel, lost control and the car smashed into a tree on the side of the road. Witnesses at the scene testified that Ryan tried to pull the kid out, but the car exploded into a ball of fire. Autopsy reports show that it was too late anyway, Teddy wasn’t wearing a shoulder restraint. He died instantly from a broken neck.”
Shannon shivered. Teddy had been a trial, always causing trouble between the twins, but it was a shame he’d died so young.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that Teddy was thirteen when this happened? He’d just turned a week or so earlier, and now your daughter, Travis Settler’s kid, she turns thirteen and she’s abducted, presumably brought down here, though we can’t be sure of that, and now these recent fires…similar to the ones that were set by the Stealth Torcher. Doesn’t it all seem tied together?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it’s all connected somehow, you know what I mean? Like knitting, you pull one thread and everything starts to unravel.”
“Then pull a thread,” she said, tired of the unspoken accusations, the innuendos that she’d recognized during the interview.
“Your brothers, they were tight?”
“Pardon?”
“The twins. You know how that is. They were close.”
“Very.” She nodded but didn’t relax. Just because the questions had gotten easier, she didn’t want to be lulled into a sense of security; not with Paterno.
“Didn’t the twins hang out with other kids?”
“Some. Especially Neville. Of the two, he is…was…the most outgoing.”
“Was?” Paterno asked. The rocker squeaked as Rossi changed positions. “You think he’s dead?”
Shannon shook her head in lieu of an answer.
“He just up and disappeared. Right after the fire that took your husband’s life.”
“Well…about three weeks later, I think.”
“You saw him in those three weeks?”