CHAPTER
23
JAMIE WATCHED HER mother come out of the pawnshop and slip between the buildings to the alley that ran behind the storefronts. Phoebe turned over a plastic bucket and sat on it, lit a cigarette, and started flipping through a magazine. The back door of the diner was propped open and the air was filled with smoke and the smell of frying grease. It was a full minute before Phoebe looked up from the magazine and saw Jamie. When she threw her cigarette down, its smoke drifted sideways along the wet ground. She lit another one and offered the pack to Jamie.
“I don’t smoke.”
Phoebe blew a cloud out the side of her mouth along with the words, “Don’t start.”
Jamie leaned against the back porch steps and wondered why it was so hard to talk to the woman. Never mind that their lives hadn’t been normal for years, mothers and daughters should be able to talk. A decade ago there’d been an ease between them. At least that’s how Jamie remembered things.
“What is it?” Phoebe asked.
“What do you think?” She closed the back door of the diner and checked over her shoulder. “That cop has been following me.”
“Asking questions?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s been coming in the diner, too. Tommy says he’s not from around here, came down from Albany a few years back. Moved here after a divorce or something. He gives me the creeps. Nosy effer. I think he might’ve seen me catch a hanger sticking an ace on that last hand. But they were all too drunk to be sure.”
“You caught a hanger? That’s it? All this happened because of a hanger?”
“It wasn’t just that. It was a big bet.”
“Bets are always big at the end of a game.”
“A really big bet. Keating wanted fireworks. You know how it is. He doesn’t care about the money. He just wants to crush people, leave ’em reeling, stand back and smirk.”
“Maim and neuter.”
“Yep. But he pays, so he gets what he wants.”
“What about the next night? Why were you there?”
Phoebe sucked on her cigarette and studied the dirt beneath her nails.
“Jeez.” Jamie shook off the image of that bloated man and her mother, alone in the dark. Jack came to mind but she pushed that thought away, too.
Phoebe exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I was lonely. It was just one night.”
“You think TJ came back to get even?”
“He came to get what he’d lost.”
“In the middle of the night? He broke into a judge’s house to get his money back, or did he really come to get that ring?”
Phoebe looked around the alley and got to her feet. She felt under the neck of her lapel and pulled a string from under her blouse. “Look at it.”
The ring was enormous. Bright and shiny. Impossible to mistake for anything other than a Super Bowl ring.
“How the hell did you get ahold of that?” But she knew the answer as soon as she asked. Her mother in the window that night at Keating’s. His rage that Phoebe had stolen something from his house.
“You had that all along, didn’t you?” She looked up and down the alley. “That complicates things.”
Phoebe tucked the ring back under her blouse. She opened the catalog and pointed to a dog-eared page. “Look at these prices. With these diamonds? This is worth a fortune. Enough to get us out of Blind River forever. Enough to start over.”
All her life, Jamie had heard random bits and pieces of stories about her family. Jilkins often hinted at the criminal tendencies of the Elders clan. Loyal never talked about his brother or his death, but she knew they had been in business together. Every story she’d ever heard had the same thread running through it: theft.
She couldn’t look her mother in the eye. She looked at the buttons on her blouse instead and, referring to the thing hidden there, said, “You’re going to fence a dead man’s ring?”
Phoebe stood and held the catalog at her side. Jamie waited for the slap, wanted it, and the permission to walk away it would bring. One single blow would make it easy to leave. But her mother turned and threw the catalog into the dumpster. Her hair was uneven in the back where she’d tried to trim it in the mirror. The waist of her skirt puckered at the belt loops. And Jamie understood—it was stupid to think Phoebe Elders could resist a payout this big.
“They’re going to be looking for it, you know? If they find the body. That thing will tie you to that.”
“We could get a long way from here before then,” Phoebe said, flipping the ashes off her cigarette.
“We?”
“You and me.” She cocked her head sideways. “You could come with me.”
Jamie considered the idea. “What? You want to be a team now? Go all Thelma and Louise or something?”
“Don’t be stupid, Jamie. You need to get out of here. There will be trouble if you stay. Why do you think Loyal had you help him that night?”
She raised her shoulders. “I owe him, so sometimes I help him.”
“Is that what happened to your face? You helping him?” Phoebe reached out and touched Jamie’s cheek, but Jamie pushed her hand away.
“You’re a scrawny kid who eats like a bird. He needed you to help him move a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man?” She pushed her bangs off her forehead. “Watch yourself, Jamie. He put you at that scene for a reason. DNA, fingerprints. He’s leaving a trail in case he needs to cover his tracks. He and Keating need to put this on someone, and it’s not going to be me. I am not going back to prison. Not in this lifetime.”
“What happened that night?”
The back door bounced open and Tommy stuck his head out. “Pheebs!” he yelled. “They’re backing up at the counter.” He tapped a spatula against his leg and locked eyes with Jamie. “Everything okay out here?”
“Go back inside, Tommy. I’m coming.”
Tommy went back inside and Phoebe took a long drag off her cigarette.
“He recognized my face, Jamie. From the Saturday night game.” Smoke clouded the air in front of her face and she waved it away. “He charged. What do you think happened? He surprised us.”
“So you what? You just killed him?”
“What?” Phoebe stepped backward, her face turning to a sneer. “God. I never know what to expect from you.”
“To expect from me? What you expect is for me to clean up after you.” Liquid rage weakened her legs, but she couldn’t back down now.
“What mess did I ever leave for you to clean up?”
“Toby! You left me to take care of him.”
“Lower your voice,” Phoebe said. “I couldn’t help that and you know it.”
Jamie braced herself against the back porch, the muscles in her legs turning hot.
“Fuck this.” Phoebe threw her cigarette on the ground and went inside.
“Right, just walk away!” Jamie yelled, but Phoebe had already slammed the door behind her.
The woman was weak. Weak and selfish and she obviously didn’t care about anything but money. Jamie picked up the bucket and slung it against the dumpster. Picked it up and threw it again. The handle flew off and hit her leg. The pain calmed her down. As she rubbed her shin she watched the smoke from her mother’s cigarette snag on a breeze, twist, and disappear into the air.