“Vick?”
“Oh, sorry, I just keep thinking everybody knows all the details. Victor Rooney. The one who nearly became our son-in-law. They were going to get married in three more months. He kind of went off the deep end, too. Started drinking hard. Never finished his degree in chemical engineering, got a job with the fire department. But the drinking got worse. They did their best for him, considering the circumstances and all. Sent him a couple of times to one of those places to dry out, get himself straightened up, but he never did pull it together. I think they finally fired him, or he quit, don’t know which, and if he ever found any other work I don’t know. See him the odd time just driving around town in his van. Too bad. Seemed like a good kid. I met him back when he had a summer job once with the town, working in the water treatment plant.”
“They still got Tate Whitehead working there? See him around town once in a while. He must be due to retire soon.”
“On the night shift, I think,” Walden said. “Where he can do the least damage.”
“Yeah, well, Tate has a good heart but he’s no nuclear physicist,” Don said. “The school’s just up here.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” Walden said.
“Sure.”
Don found a parking spot, left the keys so Walden could listen to the radio if he wanted, and went into the building, following the signs to the office. As soon as he walked in, he saw his grandson seated in a chair this side of a raised counter. Ethan’s face was scraped, and there was a tear in one knee of his jeans. His eyes were red.
The boy was startled. “I didn’t know you were coming,” Ethan said. “I thought it would be Dad.”
“He’s got his hands full,” Don said.
“A job interview?”
Don shook his head. “I wish.”
A woman seated at a desk behind the counter got up and approached. “May I help you?”
“I’m Ethan’s grandfather. Who are you?”
“I’m Ms. Harrow. I’m the vice principal.”
“There was some kind of trouble?”
“He and another boy got into a fight. They’re both suspended for the rest of the day.”
“Who’s the other kid? Where’s he?” Don asked.
“That’d be Carl Worthington.”
“Who started it?” Don asked.
“That’s not really the issue,” Harrow said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy about fighting. So they’re both being disciplined.”
“You start it?” Don asked his grandson.
“No,” Ethan said meekly.
“There,” he said to the vice principal. “If he didn’t start it, why’s he being suspended?”
“Carl says it was Ethan who started it. I just got off the phone with Sam Worthington having this very same discussion.”
“That’s the father of the kid that started it?”
The vice principal started to speak but Don held up his hand. “Save it. I’ll take him home. In my day, we’d just let the kids sort it out and didn’t get so goddamn involved. Let’s go, Ethan.”
Don tried to get some details out of Ethan on the way to the car, but he didn’t want to talk about it. But when he saw someone sitting in the front seat of the Crown Victoria, he asked, “Who’s that?”
“Friend of mine. Well, sort of. Someone I worked with a long time ago, before I retired. Don’t be asking him anything about anybody.”
“What would I ask him?”
“I don’t know. But just don’t, okay?”
Ethan got into the back of the car. Walden Fisher turned in his seat and extended a hand.
“I’m Walden,” he said.
Ethan accepted the handshake warily. “I’m Ethan. I don’t have anything else to say.”
“Okay, then,” Walden said.
When they got back home, Ethan burst out of the car like it was rigged to explode and ran in ahead of his grandfather. He found Arlene on the living room couch watching CNN, an ice pack on her leg. She tried to ask him what had happened, but he ran up to his room and closed the door.
Don asked his wife how she was doing, said he didn’t have to go have a coffee with Walden if she needed his help, but she said she was fine, which was not the answer he was hoping for.
So, with some reluctance, Don Harwood went to Kelly’s, where he had a coffee and a piece of cherry pie with whipped cream on top, and spent the better part of an hour talking to Walden about blueprints and water-main bursts and buried electrical lines, and when it was all over he came home and plunked down in his reclining chair with the intention of taking a nap.
But he could not sleep.
FIFTEEN
David
“HOW are you involved in all this?” Barry Duckworth asked me.
We’d moved to his unmarked cruiser. He was behind the wheel and I was up front next to him.
“Marla’s my cousin,” I explained. I told him about dropping by that morning with some food my mother had prepared.
“Why would your mother do that?”