BUT HE WAST’T about to find out anything.
“Clarence Mahood is a slug,” said Birdie.
“You know him?”
She turned to Dec in the back seat of the Rendezvous, one pencil-thin painted-on eyebrow raised. “It’s a small town, kiddo. I’ve known Clare since kindergarten.”
Dec was suddenly struck by the implication of what Birdie had said. “So you knew Runyon, too!”
“Never said I didn’t.”
But that wasn’t the point. She had never said she did! Dec was too flabbergasted to speak.
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “It has nothing to do with anything.”
“If it’s no big deal, why did you keep it a secret?”
“Pipe down. It was not a secret. Like I said, it’s a small town.”
Bernard cleared his throat. “To tell you the truth, Dec, we tried not to talk about the incident at all, for Sunny’s sake, especially. And for you as well.”
“Thanks a lot. But I’m not six, okay?”
His father sighed and shook his head. “Please, Dec,” he said. “It has been a very long day. What is it you want to know?”
Dec made eye contact with his father in the rearview mirror. “I want to know what happened in there.”
Bernard sighed again. “It’s nothing, really. Just an endlessly detailed account of what everybody already knows.”
“Mostly legal mumbo jumbo,” said Birdie.
“And it’ll be over soon,” said Bernard. “Probably tomorrow.”
Dec stared at the back of his father’s head, unable to believe what they were doing to him — the two of them, together.
“It’s been three days,” he said. “How long can you talk about a guy falling over?”
His father glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “A man died, Declan. Show a little respect.”
“A smart man,” said Declan, “doing a really stupid thing.”
Birdie laughed. “Smart. I like that.”
“I just meant he wasn’t dumb enough to waste his time stealing a piece of junk like the Plato bust.”
Bernard held up his hand. “Excuse me, Son, but that bust is not a piece of junk. To a common burglar it might easily have seemed more valuable than it was.”
Dec stared out the window. “Common burglar,” he muttered. “Runyon sure didn’t seem common to me.”
The comment was met with stony silence, but Dec turned to see a glance pass between Birdie and his father. Then Birdie turned again, a long-suffering look in her eye. “As your dad said, it’s been a real tiring day. How ‘bout you just give it a rest, okay?”
Dec crossed his arms. “Sure,” he said. “For now.”
Again he met his father’s reflected gaze. “When there’s something to tell you, we’ll tell you,” he said. But his eyes said something else. His eyes said, What has come over you? His eyes said, Why all this acting out? His eyes said, I hope this is not a foretaste of things to come.