“Are you playing hooky today, Jamie?”
Before I could answer, Mom cut in, smooth as silk. “I usually pick him up when he gets out of school, but I thought I might not get back in time today, so we swung by to get him. Didn’t we, Liz?”
“Roger that,” Liz said. “Officers, we didn’t check the study, so I can’t tell you if it’s locked or not.”
“Housekeeper left it open with the body inside,” the one who’d talked to me said. “But she gave me her keys and we’ll lock up after we have a quick look around.”
“You might tell them there was no foul play,” Mr. Thomas said. “I had a heart attack. Hurt like the devil.”
I was going to tell them no such thing. I was only nine, but that didn’t make me stupid.
“Is there also a key to the gate?” Liz asked. She was being all pro now. “Because it was open when we arrived.”
“There is, and we’ll lock it when we leave,” the second cop said. “Good move parking your car there, detective.”
Liz spread her hands, as if to say it was all in a day’s work. “If you’re set, we’ll get out of your way.”
The cop who had spoken to me said, “We should know what that valuable manuscript looks like so we can make sure it’s safe.”
This was a ball my mother could carry. “He sent the original to me just last week. On a thumb drive. I don’t think there’s another copy. He was pretty paranoid.”
“I was,” Mr. Thomas admitted. His shorts were sinking again.
“Glad you were here to keep an eye out,” the second cop said. He and the other one shook hands with Mom and Liz, also with me. Then they started down the gravel path to the little green building where Mr. Thomas had died. Later on I found out a whole lot of writers died at their desks. Must be a Type A occupation.
“Let’s go, Champ,” Liz said. She tried to take my hand, but I wouldn’t let her.
“Go stand over by the swimming pool for a minute,” I said. “Both of you.”
“Why?” Mom asked.
I looked at my mother in a way I don’t think I ever had before—as if she was stupid. And right then, I thought she was being stupid. Both of them were. Not to mention rude as fuck.
“Because you got what you wanted and I need to say thank you.”
“Oh my God,” Mom said, and slapped her brow again. “What was I thinking? Thank you, Regis. So much.”
Mom was directing her thank-you to a flower bed, so I took her arm and turned her. “He’s over here, Mom.”
She said another thank you, to which Mr. Thomas didn’t respond. He didn’t seem to care. Then she walked over to where Liz was standing by the empty pool, lighting another cigarette.
I didn’t really need to say thank you, by then I knew that dead people don’t give much of a shit about things like that, but I said thanks anyway. It was only polite, and besides, I wanted something else.
“My mom’s friend,” I said. “Liz?”
Mr. Thomas didn’t reply, but he looked at her.
“She still mostly thinks I’m making it up about seeing you. I mean, she knows something weird happened, because no kid could make up that whole story—by the way, I loved what happened to George Threadgill—”
“Thank you. He deserved no better.”
“But she’ll work it around in her head so in the end she’s got it the way she wants it.”
“She will rationalize.”
“If that’s what you call it.”
“It is.”
“Well, is there any way you can show her you’re here?” I was thinking about how Mr. Burkett scratched his cheek when his wife kissed him.
“I don’t know. Jimmy, do you have any idea what comes next for me?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas. I don’t.”
“I suppose I will find out for myself.”
He walked toward the pool where he’d never swim again. Someone might fill it when warm weather returned, but by then he would be long gone. Mom and Liz were talking quietly and sharing Liz’s cigarette. One of the things I didn’t like about Liz was how she’d gotten my mother smoking again. Only a little, and only with her, but still.
Mr. Thomas stood in front of Liz, drew in a deep breath, and blew it out. Liz didn’t have bangs to blow on, her hair was pulled back tight and tied in a ponytail, but she still slitted her eyes the way you will when the wind gusts in your face, and recoiled. She would have fallen into the pool, I think, if Mom hadn’t grabbed her.
I said, “Did you feel that?” Stupid question, of course she had. “That was Mr. Thomas.”
Who was now walking away from us, back toward his study.
“Thanks again, Mr. Thomas!” I called. He didn’t turn, but raised a hand to me before putting it back in the pocket of his shorts. I was getting an excellent view of his plumber’s crack (that’s what Mom called it when she spotted a guy wearing low-riding jeans), and if that’s also too much information for you, too bad. We made him tell us—in one hour!—everything it had taken him months of thinking to come up with. He couldn’t say no, and maybe that gave him the right to show us his ass.
Of course I was the only one who could see it.
14
It’s time to talk about Liz Dutton, so check it out. Check her out.
She was about five-six, my mom’s height, with shoulder-length black hair (when it wasn’t yanked back in her cop-approved ponytail, that was), and she had what some of the boys in my fourth grade class would call—as if they had any idea what they were talking about—a “smokin’ hot bod.” She had a great smile and gray eyes that were usually warm. Unless she was mad, that is. When she was mad, those gray eyes could turn as cold as a sleety day in November.
I liked her because she could be kind, like when my mouth and throat were so dry and she gave me what was left in that Burger King Coke without me having to ask her (my mother was just fixated on getting the ins and outs of Mr. Thomas’s unwritten last book). Also, she would sometimes bring me a Matchbox car to add to my growing collection and once in awhile would get right down on the floor beside me and we’d play together. Sometimes she’d give me a hug and ruffle my hair. Sometimes she’d tickle me until I screamed for her to stop or I’d pee myself… which she called “watering my Jockeys.”
I didn’t like her because sometimes, especially after our trip to Cobblestone Cottage, I’d look up and catch her studying me like I was a bug on a slide. There was no warmth in her gray eyes then. Or she’d tell me my room was a mess, which in fairness it usually was, although my mom didn’t seem to mind. “It hurts my eyes,” Liz would say. Or, “Are you going to live that way all your life, Jamie?” She also thought I was too old for a nightlight, but my mother put an end to that discussion, just saying “Leave him alone, Liz. He’ll give it up when he’s ready.”
The biggest thing? She stole a lot of my mother’s attention and affection that I used to get. Much later, when I read some of Freud’s theories in a sophomore psych class, it occurred to me that as a kid I’d had a classic mother fixation, seeing Liz as a rival.
Well, duh.
Of course I was jealous, and I had good reason to be. I had no father, didn’t even know who the fuck he was because my mother wouldn’t talk about him. Later I found out she had good reason for that, but at the time all I knew was that it was “You and me against the world, Jamie.” Until Liz came along, that was. And remember this, I didn’t have a whole lot of Mom even before Liz, because Mom was too busy trying to save the agency after she and Uncle Harry got fucked by James Mackenzie (I hated that he and I had the same first name). Mom was always mining for gold in the slush pile, hoping to come across another Jane Reynolds.