Sixteen

The meal began, and continued, in silence.

Lola folded her piece of pizza over on itself and raised it to her mouth. Munro and Malachi paused with knives and forks poised.

“I grew up eating it this way.” She took a defiant bite and chewed longer than necessary, the better to avoid talking.

Forks scraped two plates. Three jaws thoughtfully worked over bite after bite. Munro set his crust aside. Longing for Bub stabbed at Lola. The crust was his favorite, his reward for sitting apart from them while they ate, without overt begging, although his beseeching gaze from across the room was practically audible.

“Lola—Miss Wicks—is from Montana.”

“Oh, yeah?” Without the knit watch cap, Malachi’s hair fell free like his father’s. A little shorter, though, probably in deference to some school rule. Or, Lola thought, more likely his mother’s rule, given that she was LDS.

But maybe, just maybe, she was wrong about it being Malachi. In fact, probably. It had been dark the night she bought the pills. The courtroom had been so crowded. It couldn’t possibly be the same boy. Lola retrieved a new piece of pizza from the box that Munro had put in the middle of the table and rued an overactive imagination.

“How do you like Salt Lake, Miss Wicks? Seeing the sights?” Was the voice the same? She couldn’t remember. Again, the odds were against it. The guy in the park had been scared.

“She’s here to work. Or, she was.” Munro stabbed a piece of pepperoni with his fork.

Lola flinched. He wasn’t going to make this easy. “I haven’t had much time for sightseeing.”

Malachi slouched in his chair, all elbows and knees and too-big feet, not yet grown into his body, features still so soft as to be almost pretty. No way a kid like him could work the park. That crowd there would eat him alive.

“Even just driving around you must have seen some things, Miss Wicks.” The boy bit his lip, seeming almost abashed at his own nerve in speaking up. None of his father’s arrogance. Lola hoped he stayed that way.

“Like Pioneer Park. A really big park, right downtown. You’ve probably seen that. Right, Miss Wicks?”

Lola choked on her pizza. Munro pounded her back. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Malachi leaned across the table, face all concern but eyes gleaming malice. “Are you all right? Are you, Miss Wicks?”

She didn’t answer but sent him an unmistakable response with her eyes. Go to hell, kid.

“Actually,” she said when she’d recovered, “I did see the park. At least I think I did. What’s with that place? Such a beautiful park, but so many rough-looking people there.”

“Just homeless, more likely,” Munro said. “Didn’t you notice the streets around it?”

Lola braced herself for another comment on her inadequate powers of observation.

Munro answered his own question. “Soup kitchens. And shelters. There’s a cluster of them down there. Say what you want about the Mormons, they take care of people like nobody else. Salt Lake has some of the most progressive homeless shelters in the country. The rumor is that cops in the surrounding states buy their winos bus tickets and ship them our way. Other cities look to us when it comes to dealing with their own homeless issues.”

“Not all of them seemed homeless.” Lola shot Malachi a look. “It must attract drug dealers, too.” Two could play this game.

“And junkies,” Malachi said. “Even if they’re from out of town, they seem to find their way there.” Check and mate.

He shoved his chair back from the table. “May I be excused? I’m going to the library. Study group.”

“Is that what they call it?” Lola murmured as he passed. She thought he slammed the door on his way out. But the front door was heavy oak. Maybe that was the way it always sounded.

“Nice kid,” she said, trying to postpone the inevitable. “What grade is he in?”

“He’s a senior. Just like Frank Shumway.”

Lola had hoped to avoid the topic of the story for at least a little longer. “I guess he doesn’t know him. Different school districts and all, what with Frank living in the burbs.”

“Different districts, but same hockey team.”

Something Munro might have mentioned sooner. That explained Malachi’s attendance at Frank’s court appearance. The boys must be friends. Munro’s next words, though, made Lola wonder exactly why his son had gone to the hearing.

“Actually, he knows Frank pretty well. Frank beat him out for first string. Malachi plays center, too. He was sure he had that spot, but he said Frank skated like a maniac in the tryouts. Man.” A look crossed Munro’s face, equal parts pain and frustration. Anger, too; a look Lola was all too familiar with, summed up in a single word: kids. “Malachi was some kind of pissed off. Came home, threw his stick against the wall”—Munro pointed to a scar next to the refrigerator—“said he wasn’t going to play hockey anymore. Guess he’ll get that spot now.”

How badly had Malachi wanted that spot? Badly enough to kill—and to set his rival up to take the fall? Preposterous.

Except it wasn’t. There was that case, Texas, someplace like that, where a girl had killed a cheerleading rival. Kids had massacred other kids at Columbine and blamed their plan on bullying. And a California college student had driven down a street shooting people because he’d felt rejected by women.

Would Malachi have been capable of bashing Sariah Ballard’s brains in with a hockey stick? Not just any hockey stick, but his rival’s?

Improbable? Sure.

But impossible? No way.

She already knew that Malachi was capable of dealing drugs in a park full of older and presumably tougher types. What else was he capable of? What about his life had pushed him into crime? His parents’ divorce?

And why hadn’t Munro been asking the same questions? Or—Lola took an intense interest in her pizza, examining the half-eaten slice before her as though the answer lay beneath what appeared to be a canned mushroom—maybe he had. Maybe that’s why he was so insistent that she pursue the story. Because he couldn’t bear to be the one who found the answers himself. Or … or …

What if he’d pushed her toward the story, thinking she wasn’t capable of getting it? That way, he could persuade himself that he’d looked into it. And that, when she abandoned the story—as he knew she wanted to—he could tell himself he’d tried, and could stop worrying about any possibility of his son’s involvement.

“Wow.” Not just an asshole, but a manipulative one.

“Wow, what?”

“Nothing. Can I have another beer? And, uh, maybe a glass this time?”

Stupid. Who asked for a glass on the second beer? But she needed a couple of seconds to think. Munro had known she’d do a half-assed job. Maybe even counted on it. Her indignation, flaring so hot a moment earlier, receded to a bright ember of shame. Beer wasn’t going to do the trick.

“Actually, never mind on the beer. You said something about the hard stuff.”

Munro raised an eyebrow. “Scotch okay?”

It wasn’t her favorite. “Sure.”

He rummaged in a cabinet. “Ice?”

“God, no. Just a splash of water.”

He handed Lola a glass with a generous amount of amber liquid and dropped back into his chair. “So, you want out of the story.”

There it was. Her out. On the proverbial silver platter.

Handed to her because he knew she’d take it. More subtle than his son’s taunts, but with the same assumption that she wouldn’t push back.

A rushing sound in her ears. You’re a giant pain in the ass when you’re on a story. Always made me happy I wasn’t the story. Fun to watch, though.

She forced herself not to turn, not to swat at Charlie the way she always had when he teased her.

She could show this asshole Munro that she was capable of chasing down the story, even if it led right to his solid-oak front door. Which would serve him right. Then go back to Montana able to reassure Jan she was back in the saddle. Lola took a sip. And then another. Whatever was in the glass was fast changing her opinion of Scotch. She held up the glass, tilting it, watching the whisky slid up one side, then the other.

“What is this stuff, anyway?”

“Lagavulin. I decided I’d gone way too many years not drinking to waste my time on anything but the best.”

Bitter father. Bitter son.

Lola swirled the magical stuff in her mouth, letting it warm her. She stretched her lips and showed all of her teeth, willing him to see it as a smile.

“Out of the story? Not necessarily. But let’s talk about how long I’ll have to stay.”