“Sorry, I was out of line.”
“Okay.”
Molly angled herself enough to see her face a little better.
“I could have had any boy in school,” Ainsley continued. “But I wanted Jack.”
“So he broke it off.”
Ainsley Walsh nodded, her face almost solemn. “It turned out he didn’t love me the way I loved him.”
“That’s a hard thing to accept.”
Now Ainsley turned to face Molly.
“Does it get easier?” she asked.
Molly smiled. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to find out again.”
It was high tide by now, the crash of the waves below them getting louder with each break on the beach.
Molly had always loved this time of day on the water.
“Here’s what I’ve learned,” Molly said. “Or at least what I think I’ve learned about Jack. Everybody at school knew him, obviously. But I get the sense that hardly anybody really knew him.”
“Not even me,” Ainsley said.
The girl was different today from the first time they’d talked. Molly knew this age, what it was like, especially for girls, with college staring them in the face. Like they had to become women whether they were ready or not.
“So he let people in,” Molly said, “but only so far?”
“Yes,” Ainsley said. “That’s a good way of putting it.”
“Who’s Pepsquad1234?” Molly asked her now.
“You know about that?”
“I’m old,” Molly said, “but I can find my way around social media.”
“I don’t know who it is. None of us do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Swear.”
“So what’s the promise you have to be reminded to keep?” Molly asked.
“To keep being Jack’s friend even though he’s gone.”
“That’s it?”
“And that’s all.”
The water got louder suddenly, a tremendous wave making more of the sand below them disappear.
“Was there another girl?” Molly said.
“No,” Ainsley said.
“Could he possibly have been getting another girl pregnant, even if he really wasn’t with her?”
“No!” the girl said. “For the love of fuck? Is that what you think this is about?”
“I had to ask.”
“Well, asked and answered, okay?”
There was one more thing to ask now, something she or Jesse or Suit or somebody should have asked already. She knew why they hadn’t. At least why Jesse and Suit hadn’t. Jack Carlisle was the golden boy in Paradise. Big man on campus. Star jock. On his way to college on a scholarship. Maybe on his way to the major leagues after that, making it to The Show Jesse had talked about endlessly, for as long as Molly had known him.
Ask her.
“Was Jack gay?” Molly asked Ainsley Walsh.
Sixty-Three
The Paradise High baseball team had lost in the first round of the state tournament the day before, with a team meeting scheduled for today. Jesse told Suit to make another run at Coach Hal Fortin, if for no other reason than to piss him off. Molly’d said she was going to make a run at Ainsley Walsh, just not in a rousty way.
“If we’re going to jam somebody up, let’s make it the coach,” Jesse said.
“It will be both an honor, and a pleasure,” Suit said.
“Suit?” Jesse said before he left. “I promise you we’ll find out what happened to that kid.”
“You’re the one always telling me that cops should never make promises they can’t keep,” Suit said.
“Not planning to start now, Luther,” Jesse said. “No matter what we find out. Wherever the evidence takes us.”
Suit grinned. “If we ever get any evidence.”
After that Jesse walked the town for an hour or so. He did that sometimes. Wondering how many secrets there were behind all these doors, inside all these buildings, even in a small town like this. Wondering how well he really knew the people he was hired to protect. Molly he knew. Suit he knew. And Nellie. And Crow, for better or worse. He knew what Crow was capable of, all the trouble Jesse knew he still carried around inside him. But he knew where he stood with Crow. It mattered.
Charlie he had known. And he knew as much about Dix as Dix wanted him to know.
He had spent a lot of time over the last week wondering how well anybody knew Jack Carlisle, including his own uncle.
He walked to the ballfield and back, thinking that the next games to be played there would be in Paradise Men’s Softball, Jesse still having not decided if he wanted to play one more year. If he wanted to still be a shortstop.
He looked into the window at Rocky’s Ace Hardware when he was back on Main Street, and saw himself smiling.
As if you ever stopped being a shortstop.
It was nearly five o’clock by now. He walked up to More Chocolate. Closing time. People started to come through the front door. Jesse had thought about going inside, but decided to wait out here.
Hillary More came out about ten minutes later, phone to her ear, chattering away.
She put it away when she saw Jesse.
“Well,” she said, “isn’t this a pleasant surprise?”
“Is it?”
She sat down next to him on the bench. Another day when she looked like a million damn dollars. The woman who had done so much to build up the town’s economy after COVID. Saying she was going to make More Chocolate the main plaza of Paradise.
“Something tells me that to my everlasting regret, this isn’t a social visit.”
“You know the scam calls I’ve told you about with Charlie Farrell?” Jesse said.
“You thought they might somehow have been connected to Charlie’s death.”
“Well, it turns out that Emma Cleary, Charlie’s lady friend, right before Charlie died, never got off their list.”
“I’m sorry for her; those calls are particularly cruel for the elderly,” she said. “But what does any of this have to do with me?”
“One of those calls was placed from your office,” Jesse said.
Sixty-Four
That’s impossible,” Hillary More said.
“I read somewhere once,” Jesse said, “I forget where, I wish I had Miss Emma’s memory, that the impossible becomes possible with the discovery of a new truth.”
He stood then.
“Walk with me,” he said.
“So we can be in motion when you suggest that someone who works for me might have tried to con an old woman?” she said. “What if I don’t want to?”
“No reason for you not to want to,” Jesse said.
He was standing over her. She’d made no move to get up off the bench. More Chocolate workers kept walking past them, some calling out greetings. Hillary would put on a smile for them, or nod or wave.
“I’m sure there’s an explanation for this,” she said. “No one who works for me would do anything like that.”
She was up then and they were walking up to the corner of Main and Elm and up Elm until they got to Marian Park, with its swings and slides and monkey bars and what looked to be a world-class sandbox. Empty now on a Friday night. The place was filled with mothers and small children in the mornings.
They sat on another bench now, across from the swings. Jesse handed Hillary More the phone bill.
“I recognized the number because it’s popped up as Nicholas Farrell’s work number on my phone,” he said.
She handed the bill back to him.
“Obviously somebody spoofed our number,” she said. “Isn’t that what these people do? Or do they call it ghosting? My son explained it to me one time when we got one of those calls on our landline at home and it looked like a real number. That must be it.”