“The last time I spoke with my Charlie was the night it happened,” she said. “I could tell he was preoccupied. I always could. I asked him what was bothering him. He said nothing was bothering him. I told him something was bothering him. He told me I didn’t know everything. I said, ‘About you I do, old-timer.’ Then he laughed and told me he loved me and said he’d call me later, he thought he might have caught the bastards.”
“That was all?”
“Like he had all the time in the world,” she said. “Like the two of us, old as we were, had all the time in the world.”
She started to cry now. She was one tough old broad, in all the good, old-fashioned definitions of that, from the old days, when you could call someone as terrific as Miss Emma a great broad and not get flogged in the public square.
She didn’t make a sound as the tears fell over her cheeks. She just sat there, looking at him across the table, until she finally reached up and dried them with her napkin.
“Still an old fool,” she said.
“Still agreeing to disagree.”
Jesse paid the check. Miss Emma pointed at both their salad bowls and said the next time they met up to not eat, lunch was on her. Jesse told her he never passed up a free meal, especially when it was with a pretty girl.
“Shut it,” Miss Emma said.
Twenty-Seven
Molly followed Matt Loes once he pulled out of the students’ parking lot at Paradise High after school let out. She had told Suit what she planned to do. He wanted to go with her. But Jesse had told him to take the day and Molly told him the same thing, because Jesse had told her why he wanted Suit to take the day.
“Suit always says he wants you to teach him everything you know,” Molly told Jesse. “But I’d always assumed he already knew how to drink. Or, in your case, how not to drink.”
“I can’t believe I’ve lived in Paradise this long and was never married to you,” Jesse said.
“You know why. I pledged my love to another a long time ago.”
“Poor bastard.”
Molly knew she was following a basic Sunny Randall rule of detecting: When you’re uncertain of what your next move should be, follow somebody.
Or annoy somebody.
Or both.
Matt Loes drove an Audi that appeared to have some miles on it. He stopped at the Dunkin’ drive-thru, then made his way out of Paradise before getting on Route 32 and heading for Marshport. Molly managed to stay a car or two behind him, but really was unconcerned that the kid would even dream he was being followed, much less being followed by a cop.
Sunny swore up and down that following people, for no good reason, often worked like a charm for her.
Molly still spoke to Sunny on the phone from time to time, but they had drifted apart, primarily because she and Jesse were no longer seeing each other. Molly missed her, though. Just not as much as Jesse did, whether he’d ever admit that to Molly, or himself, or not.
Molly knew from Jesse that Nellie Shofner had it in her head that Molly didn’t like her.
Not true.
She just didn’t like her for Jesse.
Big difference.
Molly knew it bothered Nellie, thinking Jesse’s best friend didn’t like her. But she was young. Plenty of time for her to recover from a case of hurt feelings.
Eventually Matt Loes arrived at his destination at Silver Lake, up in the northwest section of Marshport, an area Molly knew well from her high school days.
There was a small dock there for locals who couldn’t afford the dock prices over in Paradise. If you didn’t want to battle the ocean waves, it was as nice a place to swim as there was in the area. The beach wasn’t very wide, and too rocky in most places to suit Molly. But it was big enough on which to party, as long as you cleaned up afterward, because Mike Pearl, the Marshport chief of police, was well known for handing out littering tickets that rivaled anything you could get for speeding.
Matt Loes pulled up and stopped in front of the small white house with bright red trim that served as the dockmaster’s office. Even from where she’d parked her old Cherokee on a dirt road just past the Silver Lake lot, Molly could see the big sign on the door that read gone fishing.
There was another car, a blue Range Rover, parked in front of the office. Molly could see the big paradise beach sticker on the back window. No shocker there. There were so many Range Rovers back in Paradise, Molly sometimes imagined them reproducing like rabbits.
When Matt Loes got out of his car, Ainsley Walsh got out on the driver’s side of the Range Rover.
Scott Ford got out on the passenger side. He was moving gingerly. But obviously well enough to be riding around in a car. Maybe he was a fast healer, even after getting the crap kicked out of him.
Molly quietly closed the door to the Cherokee, grabbed her Nikon from the backseat, walked up through a small patch of woods to give herself a better view of the kids, using some trees for cover.
Matt Loes, Ainsley Walsh, Scott Ford.
Apparently Loes and Ford had patched up their differences, fairly quickly.
They all sat down on the front steps to the dockmaster’s office. Ainsley lit a cigarette.
Bad girl, Molly thought.
But how bad?
The three of them sat there for ten minutes before a third car pulled up next to Ainsley Walsh’s Range Rover. A newer model Cherokee, by a lot, than Molly’s, and in much better shape.
Coach Hal Fortin got out.
Molly leaned against the closest tree, and began shooting pictures.
Fortin walked over to the kids, said something, immediately slapped Matt Loes hard across the face. Snapped the kid’s head to the side. Loes took it. Molly just kept shooting. Fortin now pointed toward the water in the distance. The three kids started walking. Fortin walked behind them until they were out of sight.
Molly put down her camera, then said something Sunny used to say when a clue presented itself.
“Oh, ho,” Deputy Chief Molly Crane said.
Twenty-Eight
Jesse and Molly and Suit were waiting for Hal Fortin when he arrived at Jesse’s office. Suit had brought in an extra chair from the squad room, and placed it between his and Molly’s.
Fortin was a big man, six-four at least, had been a star first baseman at Paradise High when he was a kid, the kind of prospect Jack Carlisle was. But halfway through his senior year he took a fastball to the face, and even with the flap on his batting helmet, the pitch did so much damage to his right eye that his career was over in that moment, just like that.
Jesse knew the feeling. He noticed now, this close to Fortin, that the eye still drooped slightly.
“You better have a good reason for wasting my time like this,” Fortin said as he took his seat. “We’ve still got a state tournament that we’re going to try to win without our best player.”
“Show must go on,” Jesse said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Another way of saying that we’re all moving forward from Jack’s death.”
“Like I don’t know that?” Fortin said.
Jesse wondered how long it would take for Fortin to annoy him even more than he did when he was coaching a game. Now he had his answer. He wasn’t just too goddamn loud on a ballfield.
“So what’s this all about?” Fortin asked.
Jesse said, “I wanted to ask you what you were doing at Silver Lake last night with two of your players and Ainsley Walsh.”
“The boss means he wants to know what you were doing with Matt Loes and Scott Ford and Ainsley after you slapped Loes, who, as I’m sure you know, just beat up Ford bad enough to put him in the hospital,” Suit said. “Sounds like their friendship survived, huh?”