Chapter 28 Jo
Chapter 28
Jo
Jo always looked forward to her weekly dinner with her father, because it was their chance to catch up with the latest news, and because Owen was a far better cook than she would ever be. When she arrived at his house that evening, she found his front door unlocked, as usual. That unlocked door never failed to irritate her, but Owen Thibodeau grew up in an era when nobody in town locked their doors because bad things just didn’t happen here, or so he claimed. She could give him a list of all the bad things that did happen nowadays, but she knew it wouldn’t shake Owen’s naive faith. He trusted his neighbors, his town, and so far, no one had broken into Owen’s house.
Probably because they knew his daughter was a cop.
She walked into the kitchen, where Owen was standing at the stove, mashing potatoes in a pot.
“There you are,” he said, without turning to look at her.
“You know, I could’ve been a burglar sneaking up behind you.”
“But you aren’t.”
She lifted the lid of another pot and inhaled the savory steam of simmering sauerkraut and Polish sausages—four huge ones. “Which army are you feeding tonight?”
“I’m going to freeze some for Finn. He’s coming to visit for a few days, and you know how your brother likes to eat. There’s beer in the fridge, if you want one.”
She grabbed a bottle of Shipyard Summer Ale and popped off the top. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she watched her dad drop a whole stick of butter into the mashed potatoes. So much for watching her diet tonight; dinner with her dad meant calories and more calories, almost always delicious ones. Even when her mother was still alive, it was Owen who’d get up early in the morning to cook the kids’ breakfast, Owen who gave them their first taste of coffee, although well diluted with milk.
“I spoke to someone you knew in high school,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Abigail Tarkin. She said to say hello. Said you were nice to her back then.”
“I try to be nice to everyone.” He scooped sauerkraut and sausages onto two plates and carried them to the kitchen table. “Especially to Abigail. Kids that age, they’re heartless. They showed her no mercy.”
“Because she was in a wheelchair?”
“That’s one of the reasons.”
“Why does she need it?”
“She had some kind of tumor in her spine when she was a kid. As long as I’ve known her, she’s been in that wheelchair.” He placed the pot of mashed potatoes on the table, and they both sat down. “Then after that thing happened—oh, Abigail went through some rough times. Both those kids did. For months, no one would talk to them. No one would even look at them.”
“You mean after what their father did.”
Owen nodded. “Abigail was old enough and levelheaded enough to deal with the aftermath, and she managed to carry on with her life. But Reuben, the kid was only twelve years old. That’s a tender age, especially for a boy. Having to deal with the shame, the humiliation. The out-and-out hatred .” Owen sighed. “The kid just retreated into his shell and never came out again. You hardly ever see him around town. He and his sister just hide out in that shack on Maiden Pond.”
“God, it must have been awful for them,” said Jo as she scooped potatoes onto her plate. “Having a crazy father.”
“Sam Tarkin wasn’t crazy.”
“He killed four people.”
“Well, that’s true. He did.”
“If he wasn’t crazy, then what was he? Evil?”
Her father didn’t answer right away, but sliced off a piece of sausage and chewed it as he considered his next words. “Not everyone fits into a nice, neat category. Sam certainly didn’t.”
She looked up from her plate. “You knew him?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How well?”
“Sam Tarkin helped my father build this house. He worked side by side with your grandpa, putting on this roof, laying down this oak floor. I saw that man here almost every day for nearly a year, hammering and sawing with my dad. He was always friendly, always reliable. Never a bad word out of his mouth. Your grandma, she wasn’t one to warm up to people easily, but she liked Sam Tarkin. Liked him well enough to feed him lunch whenever he was working here. And that’s about as high a recommendation as a man could have.”
“You never saw any warning of what he’d do?”
“Not a one. Sam worked with builders and contractors up and down the coast, and no one ever complained. He was a fine carpenter too. Built that cabinet right over there.” Owen pointed to the kitchen cupboard, something she’d probably opened and closed a thousand times. Now she looked at the cabinet door and thought: A killer’s hands built that.
“So why did he do it? Why kill those people?” she asked. “Something must have made him snap.”
“We all asked ourselves that question. Everyone who knew him, especially your grandma. Two of the people he ran over were complete strangers to him. Just tourists, here on a nice summer day, strolling down the street. He’d have no reason to kill them. He did know two of the victims, including the police officer, but he’d never had a problem with them.”
“What about his wife? Did she have any idea he’d do this?”
“She said she didn’t. Sure, money was tight in their family, with Abigail’s medical bills and all. But money’s tight for a lot of people around here. Maybe the stress caught up with him. Maybe something just tipped him over the edge. People who saw it happen said that after he shot the police officer, he was waving the gun around, yelling about monsters. He might have shot more people if he hadn’t been killed first.”
“That sounds to me like he had a psychotic break.”
“That’s what they said later, some sort of psychiatric crisis. Maybe money troubles finally got to him. Those medical bills for Abigail. Plus, his old van had just died, and he had to take out a loan to buy the new one. All that pressure, it could have set him off.”
Jo looked at the kitchen cabinet again and imagined Sam Tarkin’s hands sanding and varnishing that maple. He stood in this kitchen. He ate the lunches my grandmother prepared for him.
“Tell me about his kids,” she said.
“What about them?”
“I was at their house today.”
“Why?”
“To ask Reuben about Zoe Conover.”
Owen frowned at her. “Reuben’s not a suspect, is he?”
“Not now. He has a solid alibi for the day she disappeared, spent it at the hospital with his sister. But he does have a grudge against the Conovers. Do you know why?”
Owen shrugged. “They’ve got money, plus that big summerhouse. People like that, they tend to throw their weight around. That’s going to rile up people like Reuben and Abigail, who have almost nothing.”
She thought of Abigail’s medical bills and the burden of property taxes for a waterfront home, even one as derelict as theirs. “How do they manage? It doesn’t seem like Reuben has any steady job. And Abigail’s never worked, so she wouldn’t have any pension.”
“I have no idea. Maybe there was insurance.”
“There’s something else that bothers me about those two,” she said. “I felt like they weren’t completely honest. That they were holding back. Hiding something.”
“Oh, Jo. It must be hard for you, going through life like that. Thinking that everyone’s hiding something, everyone’s a suspect.”
“Yeah, well, I could use a suspect right now. I’ve run out of them.”
“I heard you arrested Luther Yount.”
“I had to release him. Not enough evidence.”
“Well, I never thought he was guilty. So where are you with the case?”
She sagged back against the chair and sighed. “Absolutely nowhere.”