Chapter Nine

 

As the headlights from Nate’s pickup truck swept over the yard, Matt read the words crime scene on the yellow tape stretched across the driveway and the borders of the property. His chest tightened. Even the dazzling night sky seemed panicked. He wanted to see his mother, wanted to get Travis away from here. Matt leaped out of Detective Radhauser’s Bronco and opened the passenger door before Nate could turn off the ignition.

His mother slipped out of the truck and tried, unsuccessfully, to smile. She wore a pair of white slacks, a navy and pink striped shirt, and pink running shoes. Over her right shoulder, she carried a multicolored striped purse, big enough to hide Portugal—obviously an outfit she’d purchased for the honeymoon.

“Thanks for coming, Mom.” There was no other living adult who loved Travis as much as she did. Matt led her away from the truck. “I’m really sorry about the wedding.”

She looked terrible, exhausted, and as if she’d been crying for hours. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“The police won’t let you inside. Detective Radhauser is helping Travis pack a few things and then they have to secure the—”

Her gaze landed on the yellow tape. “Crime scene? Do the police think Crystal was murdered?”

He looked away. His Mom had eyes so dark the iris made one color with the pupil, giving them an intensity that could make Matt uncomfortable, especially if he tried to hide something. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Are you cold, honey?” she asked. “You keep rubbing your hands.”

Matt dropped his hands to his sides.

Under the glow of the porch light, their eyes met and she held his gaze for a moment—so many unsaid things between them. She stared at the T-shirt he was wearing. “What happened to your tuxedo shirt?”

He told her he’d spilled something on it and put it in the trunk of his car, along with the tuxedo jacket.

“Don’t look so worried,” she said. “I’ll wash it out.”

“I can handle it. And I can take it back on Monday, along with Nate’s if you want.”

“Some stains can be tricky to get out,” she said. “Especially after they dry.”

“I’ve become quite the laundry expert since you—”

A pained look spread over her face. “I’m happy to reapply for the job. Anytime you’re ready.”

He heard the eagerness in her voice and had a hard time meeting her gaze. He waited for her searching to settle, waited for her to see whatever answers she looked for on his face.

Her gaze dropped to his hands—his fingertips stained black.

“They fingerprinted us,” he said. “The ink is hard to get off.”

“I don’t understand. Are you and Travis suspects?”

He told her what Detective Radhauser said about eliminating prints of the people who spent a lot of time at the house.

Her face relaxed. She touched his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. Travis is lucky to have such a good friend.”

The word pounded away inside Matt’s head like machine-gun fire. Friend. Friend. Friend.

Travis and Detective Radhauser stepped through the front door. Radhauser carried a suitcase, Travis’s backpack of books, and the dirty baseball uniform he hadn’t gotten around to washing after his last game.

His mom gathered Travis into a hug. “I’m so sorry, honey.” She held him until his shoulders stopped shaking. “You’ll stay with Nate and me,” she said, still patting his back. “You can have the room we fixed for Matt. For as long as you want it.” There were tears rolling down her cheeks.

Travis wrenched away. “What about the honeymoon? You guys are leaving tomorrow.”

“No, we’re not. And don’t give me any fuss about it either. How could I go to Aruba knowing one of my boys needed me?” She hugged him again.

Though he wanted to, Matt was too scared to cry. He turned away, afraid Travis might read something in his face, then Nate’s arms folded around him. For one moment Matt forgot Nate had ever been the enemy, the man he’d hated for taking away any possibility Matt’s family would be reunited. His stepfather had understood any words, even kind ones, would have filled the space where Matt’s sorrow needed to be. Sometimes the world cracked open and revealed its goodness in a single instant.

After a few words with Detective Radhauser, Mom and Nate took charge of Travis.

While Nate carried Travis’s things to the truck, Matt stood outside Crystal’s bedroom window with his hand on Travis’s shoulder. The moon sat full and impossibly bright in the early morning sky. Travis cupped his hands over his eyebrows and stared into the window, as if trying to memorize this place filled with Crystal’s clothes, magazines and jewelry—a bed he’d probably shared as a small boy after a nightmare. A bed she’d shared with his best friend, Matt thought.

Travis sighed and walked away.

Matt followed him, grabbed his arm and tried to pull Travis into a guy hug. Though he knew he couldn’t say the words, he wanted Travis to know Matt was sorry, a prick, a real fucking jerk.

Travis pushed him away and kept walking. “Don’t go all homo on me.”

“I don’t know what you want,” Matt said, running to catch up. “I don’t know how to help you.”

Travis stopped and turned, a runaway train of sadness barreling straight toward Matt. “I want her back.”

Radhauser asked for an address and telephone number where he could get in touch with both Matt and Travis. He jotted Karina and Nate’s names and number in his notebook, along with Matt’s father’s phone number.

When Radhauser gave her a questioning look she added, “Matt lives with his father.”

As soon as she said it, Matt realized he couldn’t go back to his father’s house. There was no way he could leave Travis now. Matt tried to imagine what this loss must feel like to Travis. Before he’d left for the dance, his mother was alive. And after he returned, she was dead. Those two parts, the before and the after, how could Travis ever put them back together?

Matt hung his head.

* * *

It was nearly 3am when Matt stepped outside and sat on the porch steps in front of his mother’s swimming pool. He’d showered and changed out of the tuxedo pants and into a pair of Nate’s pajamas and a pair of Reeboks a half size too big. The pajamas smelled like the detergent his mom always used and a hint of Nate’s Stetson cologne. The bottoms were too long and Matt had rolled them up to his ankles.

He needed to process everything that had happened with Crystal and his role in it. Right now, he wasn’t a suspect. But if the police proved he was there and had sex with Crystal, he’d have to tell the truth. He worried about the cufflinks. He’d searched the area between the house and the carport. There were only two other places they could be—her living room or, God forbid, her bedroom.

Despite the drinking, Matt had been cognizant enough to hear the sound of water running. A car on the road at 10:38. He was pretty sure he’d heard the front door open and close around 11:20. Saw another vehicle turn right on Oracle Road. If he’d heard all of that, he couldn’t have slept through a murder, could he?

He thought about that for a moment. He didn’t know what was worse—if she’d died on purpose because of what they’d done, or if someone else had entered the house while he’d been in a drunken stupor and murdered her. Either way, Matt was not blameless. He knew he should make a plan, decide what to do next, but he couldn’t focus.

When he’d awakened, Crystal’s bedroom door was open. He remembered her pulling it closed when she’d left him. But maybe she came back for something before her bath. If someone else had entered the house and murdered Crystal, that person would have seen Matt’s car and maybe him asleep in her bed. Why hadn’t he been killed, too?

He had to go back to Catalina and find the cufflinks before it was too late.

As kids, he and Travis had played robbers, practicing their cat burglar moves so many times they’d kept a narrow putty knife over the back frame around the sliding glass door. All Matt needed to do was slide the knife into the gap between the door and its frame and lift up on the latch.

Through the kitchen window, he saw Nate and Travis at the table. The house had been recently purchased and this was the first time Matt had been inside since his mother, sister, and Nate had settled in.

Behind Travis, on the long family room wall, Matt’s mother had arranged a series of framed photographs of her children. Half the space designated for Sedona, the other half recorded events of Matt’s childhood. A dark, curly-haired toddler clad in a sagging diaper, forever standing at the edge of the ocean, the surf slapping, like foamy wings, against his plump brown feet. A dorky snapshot in his band uniform, his saxophone thrust out in front of him. An eight-by-ten enlargement of Matt and Justin—cousins born three days apart. Cousins who looked like brothers, their arms flung around each other’s bare shoulders, that summer they’d learned to water ski on Lake Powell. Matt quickly looked away.

His mom called out to him. “You need to eat something.” She’d made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. The meal she’d always fixed for him when he stayed home sick from school. Matt didn’t feel hungry, but he stepped back inside and washed his hands at the kitchen sink. Three rinsed-clean rocks were lined up in the windowsill. Matt stared at them for a moment, remembering the way his mother carried one home from every new place she discovered and loved. The way she’d carefully mark the rock’s underside with the location she’d found it. She believed you could feel the spirit of a place, just by warming its rock in the palms of your hands.

Over the years, she and Matt had gathered them along Oak Creek in Sedona—his mother’s favorite place and the source of his sister’s name. They’d filled their pockets along the Delaware and Colorado Rivers, on a hike at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and then carefully sorted them later, choosing the perfect one to represent each new place.

Now, he stared at the three rocks in the window—thought about his mom’s new life with Nate. Heat built behind his eyes—a pathetic, self-indulgent loser, about to cry over some stupid rocks when his best friend’s mother was dead. He looked out the window and tried to make himself think of something else.

“There’s plenty of soup left,” Nate said.

The kitchen smelled like buttery grilled bread, basil, and grief. “I’m not hungry. I think I’ll head home and pick up a few things. I’ll be back in an hour,” Matt said, hoping it would give him time to drive out to Catalina and retrieve his cufflinks.

Travis took a bite of his sandwich and left the rest on his plate. His soup remained in the bowl, untouched. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and rubbed them vigorously—looking so shaken Matt changed his mind. He couldn’t leave Travis now. There had to be another way.