“What?” Trevor asked.
“An advantage. He wanted to use me to further his ambitions. Wanted me to snitch on others in the department. And I can’t help but wonder if he’d find an angle using you.”
“I just drive, Dad.”
“Okay. I’ve got one last thing I’ll say, and then I’ll shut up about it. Don’t ever compromise yourself with him. Keep your nose clean and don’t make mistakes. Because if he’s got something on you, I promise you, sooner or later, that son of a bitch will use it.”
Trevor’s eyelid fluttered.
“What?” Duckworth asked.
“Nothing,” Trevor said. “I hear ya. I gotta go or I’m going to be late.”
Duckworth stepped back, allowing Trevor to close the door. He started up the van, turned it around in their driveway, and took off up the street.
THIRTY-SIX
David
I popped in to see Ethan before he was out of bed, told him I had a lot of things to do today, and that he’d have to get himself to school. No ride.
“Okay,” he said.
“You feel better?” I asked. It was meant as a general question. Did he feel better about Carl, after their meeting the night before? After showing him Dad’s model railroad? And after getting the pocket watch back?
“My tummy’s okay this morning,” he said. So he’d taken the question more literally, but in a way, answered the question I thought I’d asked. If he wasn’t feigning illness, and wasn’t anxious about attending school, then maybe he did feel better about things generally.
I hadn’t planned to have breakfast, but Mom had already put a cup of coffee at my place at the table. I grabbed it without sitting down, took a sip, set it on the counter.
“I have to go,” I said. To Dad, who was struggling as usual with the tablet, jabbing it like he was Moe poking Curly’s eyes out, I said, “Ethan can walk today. Scoot him out in plenty of time to get to school.”
“Sure. He gonna have any more trouble with that boy?”
“I hope not.”
Dad nodded. “That’s good.”
There was something different about him today. Actually, I’d noticed it first late yesterday. He was more pensive. When he’d put his arms around me in the garage and intimated he wasn’t the good man I’d always thought he was, I’d wondered what he was beating himself up about. Maybe it had something to do with Mom. I could tell something was going on with her. That she was becoming more forgetful, that Dad was covering up her mistakes. I could see that getting him down, but if Dad was being any less attentive, less supportive, the evidence wasn’t there. He seemed as devoted to her as always.
“I saw that girl,” Mom said, sitting down with her own coffee.
“What girl?”
“The one who came over last night with her boy. She seemed nice.”
“You didn’t even talk to her, Mom. I didn’t even know you’d seen her.”
“I was looking out the window,” she said.
Ethan and I had to get out of this house.
“Yes, she seemed nice,” I said. “But she’s got plenty of baggage.”
“Who doesn’t?” Mom asked. “You think we didn’t have baggage when we met each other?”
Dad looked up from the tablet. “David doesn’t need to take on another woman with a checkered past,” he said. “What did that detective say?”
“What detective?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“In the books. There were a whole bunch of them.” Dad had read a lot of crime fiction over the years. “This one had ‘money’ in the title, I think. The detective says something like, ‘Never go to bed with a girl who’s got more troubles than you do.’”
“Donald!” Mom said.
The thing was, Dad, or the detective he was quoting, was right. I didn’t need more problems. I had something of a history trying to rescue damsels in distress and it had not gone well. Sam Worthington sounded like another one. An ex-husband serving time for bank robbery and nasty in-laws who wanted custody of Carl.
That wasn’t a checkered past. That was a shitstorm.
And despite that, I hadn’t stopped thinking about Sam all night.
I needed to get her out of my head. I had more than enough to worry about. I had a new job working for Randall Finley, and was committed to looking into Marla’s situation, hoping I might find something that would help her.
I’d start with that.
“I really have to go,” I said. I took one more sip of the coffee and poured the rest into the sink.
When I opened the door, I nearly ran down my aunt, but managed to stop short.
She was just about to ring the bell. “Aunt Agnes,” I said.
“David,” she said. “I apologize for coming by unannounced.”
“No, that’s okay. Come in.”
As she stepped inside she said, “Your mother’s been calling about Marla, and I thought I’d drop by and bring everyone up-to-date.”