Chapter 37
I sat, stunned, listening to Cam prattle on, making excuses for himself until he ran out of useful information and we were all sick of him.
Detective Aycock finally cautioned him, officially, for concealing a body and a few other things, and radioed for some colleagues waiting downstairs to come take Cam away, in handcuffs.
I couldn’t even enjoy that. When the cops appeared in the doorway, their sidearms at their waists, I froze.
They collected Cam, who was finally sapped of fight and his dirtbag righteousness, and escorted him out. Aycock called down the stairs after them, “Hey, fellas? See if that gentleman might like to ride in the trunk.”
Aycock turned back in the room and sighed.
“They won’t really…” I said.
He shot me a look. It wasn’t just the landlord Aycock was tired of.
“What happens next?” Alex asked.
“We’ll get some crime scene people here,” he said, rubbing at his forehead.
“Again. But the blood evidence we found in McPhee’s alley …
I don’t think this changes anything. The evidence supports the scenario that Mr. Hartnett was killed in the alley next to the pub.
His body does show signs of having been moved, lividity…
” He looked at us. “Discoloration caused by blood pooling at the lowest point of the body at the time of—”
“I know,” I said. “Even if I don’t watch the CSIs, okay?”
“He was killed there in your alley,” Aycock said patiently. “Then dumped here, by someone who presumably knew he lived here. Then…” He gestured toward the doorway, toward Cam and everything he’d told us.
“And then dumped back at McPhee’s?” I said. “Is there a car-service app for corpses I don’t know about? Why would anyone do that?”
“You have once again asked the very question on the tip of my tongue,” Aycock said.
“But that’s for me to figure out, not you.
You get me? Now, let me make sure I’ve got this timeline worked out.
” He pulled out a chair and motioned Alex into it.
“Joseph Hartnett left this apartment and was not seen or heard from by you—”
“He went to his sister’s house,” I said. “He was at her house all week—”
“Painting a nursery, yes,” Aycock said. “And giving you the silent treatment. Then he shows up at your pub, Mr. McPhee, and you…? Refused him service, fair to say?”
“He didn’t ask for service,” Alex said.
“Why not let your daughter, er … why not let him talk to Miss Devine?”
“She didn’t want to see him. She said—”
“I thought he’d taken the rent money and run,” I interrupted, in case Alex was about to say I’d threatened to kill Joey. Which I probably had. “I’d lost my boyfriend, and then the apartment because of him. And then my job because of that.”
“And she had a show,” Alex said.
“That slime you just arrested barely let me grab a handful of my own underwear,” I said. “I was dragging everything I owned around in a garbage bag on Wednesday afternoon. So did I want to see Joey right that minute? No. Alex wasn’t wrong about that.”
Aycock nodded, looking between us and settling, finally, on Alex. “Have you miraculously remembered anything else about that day, sir?”
He was still hot for Alex. I stared at the tabletop, thinking about that security video footage. I needed to delete it, immediately.
“Anything odd?” Aycock said. “Unexpected?”
Unexpected.
“My mother showed up,” I said.
Alex flinched.
Detective Aycock turned to me. “That’s unusual?”
“It is, actually. But then she disappeared. Like, for real? Her wife and daughter don’t know where she is. Her other daughter,” I added, when I caught Aycock’s squinting eye, trying to keep score. “My half sister. Who I didn’t know about. Until this week.”
Aycock got out his notebook, asked for Marisa’s name and the Youngs’ address, jotted some notes. I watched his hand moving across the paper. When it stopped, I could feel the weight of his attention on me.
Look, I’m used to attention, but this had a different quality.
He said, “Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“I didn’t think it could have anything to do with Joey,” I said.
“She went missing from her home?”
“From the pub,” Alex said.
Aycock closed his notebook, looking between us as though he’d rather we went missing right now. “From the pub. Is that right?”
“No,” I said. “She…”
But I wasn’t supposed to have the footage I was relying on. What did I know and how could I know it? Finally, I had it. “She left the pub. Her friend spoke to her on the street. Edith Maxwell, you can ask her. She’ll tell you.”
He flipped the notebook open again. “You both spoke to Mrs. Young, when she was at the pub on Wednesday night?”
“She talked to me,” Alex said. “I didn’t talk to her.”
“Yes,” I jumped in to snare Aycock’s attention away from Alex. I didn’t like the way the cop was eyeballing him. “But … my mother and I weren’t what you’d call close,” I said. “She’d never met Joey. Her disappearance couldn’t possibly be connected … could it?”
“I’ll figure that out. If you think of anything else that couldn’t possibly be connected to Mr. Hartnett’s death, Miss Devine,” the detective said, “could you please let me decide that?”
Alex was staring off toward the window. No help at all.
“Um, the pub was broken into this morning?” I said. “Maybe … that?”
The detective gazed at me now with half-lowered eyelids. “Any dead bodies dumped there? Any more mothers go missing?”
“Ah,” I said. “No. And nothing missing from the pub that I could see. Just some kids messing around, probably. I already cleaned up most of the damage in the storeroom.”
He started to say something, thought better of it, tried again. “You already cleaned it. Is it a crime scene? Or isn’t it?”
“It’s not kids,” Alex piped up. “It’s people looking for the treasure.”
“The what, now?” Aycock slid his look from Alex to me, and I knew that look, that is-he-for-real aside that people did when they caught on that Alex wasn’t just quiet but neuro-divergent. Different, they might say.
Different from what, Dragnet? I will fight you.
I folded my arms across my chest and dared Aycock to say a word wrong or insinuate anything.
“The, um, what, Mr. McPhee?” he said.
“The treasure,” Alex said. “The lost treasure of Al Capone.”
“Was there lost … treasure? In regards to Capone?” Aycock said.
“People seem to think so,” I said.
“And they think it’s in your pub,” Aycock said.
“They also think a ghost keeps watch over it,” I said. “She’s been awful noisy lately, so maybe someone’s getting close to finding it.”
Alex laughed.
I leaned back to let the sound wash over me, already smiling. Alex didn’t laugh that often, even though he could be really funny. When he found something to laugh about, when he smiled, it lifted his whole face and warmed the room. As good as the spring sun after a long winter.
“What’s funny, Alex?” I said, before Aycock said it more rudely.
“Someone getting close to finding the treasure,” Alex said. “That’s funny.”
Aycock arched an eyebrow at me, but I wouldn’t play along. And I wouldn’t ruin Alex’s good time by telling him about the damage to the floor next door or point out that he might be making himself the prime suspect in a murder and a disappearance.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s funny.” But I wasn’t laughing.
ALEX AND I WAITED FOR the bus back to the pub in the open-sided shelter across the street. We’d taken a rideshare service over to the apartment, but frugality—Alex’s—and empty pockets—mine—prevailed on the trip back.
We hadn’t been able to search the apartment for the ring, not with the crime scene techs called back in, but Aycock had allowed me to take a scarf and mittens I’d found in a bin by the door.
They were Joey’s. The scarf was long, blue, handmade.
By his sister? A former girlfriend? If only he had stuck it out with her, he might still be alive.
The mittens were the color of heartbreak, gray. I made my hands into fists inside of them and stood with my back to the wind.
Missing rent money, missing ring. It all might as well be the lost treasure of Al Capone. They were myth, too, at this point. I would never see that money again, and I only hoped Heather would have her mother’s ring returned, somehow. I didn’t want to be a swear upon Joey’s family’s lips.
Well, maybe that was unavoidable. They’d definitely be talking about my nonsense for a long time. Joey was a song?
I held my head in my hands, warming my ears with his mittens. But Sachin had said—
“Take my hat,” Alex said.
“What? No, it’s okay,” I said. “Then you won’t have one.”
He pulled the beanie off his head. His hair whipped forward in the wind, and I saw a few strands of silver I’d never noticed before. He came over and pulled the hat down over my ears. “That’s how it works,” he said. “What song was that?”
Was I singing? I tugged the hat all the way down. “Something I’m working on?”
“Writing a song of your own,” he said. “Like Dolly Parton.”
“Just like,” I said, but then was reminded of saying the same thing to Sicily’s other mom. How had they really not located Marisa yet? If she would only reappear, that would be one less thing to accuse Alex of. One less thing for Sicily to worry about.
I looked over at Alex. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if he simply didn’t come home one day. But if Joey’s death went unsolved, if Marisa was never found … It might all come back to the pub. To Alex.
Even in mittens, scarf, hat, I shivered.
Alex edged closer to me, facing me so that his lumberjack shoulders blocked the wind.
My breath was visible against his coat. I thought of the night I discovered Joey’s body, the animal scent coming off Alex.
But we weren’t hugging people—maybe it was just the human smell of him I’d detected, unexpected because I never got this close to him. To anyone.
Maybe the scent had only reminded me of Alex’s mortality as I absorbed the reality of Joey’s—had only reminded me of Alex’s weaknesses. Of his vulnerability. And mine.
Alex was my vulnerability.
“I know there wasn’t a glitch in the security footage that night,” I said. “I watched it.”
“But,” Alex said, “I deleted that.”
“I had that day’s feed downloaded, already. Before—before the whole thing with Joey, to help Marisa’s kid.” My teeth were chattering, and not entirely from the cold.
“Did it help?”
Obviously not. “The file’s still there on the hard drive now,” I said. “But it doesn’t have to be.”
“You didn’t say,” Alex said.
I let him think about what I was offering.
“We could watch it,” he said finally. “We could give it to the police.”
“I thought you didn’t want the police to have it,” I said.
“It was you I was trying to keep from seeing it,” Alex said. “I was protecting you, from having to see Joey.”
“And I’m protecting you,” I said patiently. “From being connected to his death.”
“But I didn’t have anything to do with his death,” he said.
The vise that had been clamped tight around my heart let loose. Of course he hadn’t. Of course. I watched down the street for the bus through watery eyes. “But not everyone will know that,” I said.
“I’ll tell them.”
This neuro-spicy guy honestly didn’t know his word wouldn’t be enough? “Some people lie to the police,” I said. “They might not believe you. And that security video … it might only confuse things. And there’s also Marisa. She’s still missing, Alex. Do you get it?”
Alex went quiet.
I was using all my mind tricks to bring the bus rattling along, come on, Chicago, waiting to see what he would come up with. If he could understand how much trouble he might still be in.
“Did the security video confuse you?” he asked.
That vise on my heart wasn’t gone, not entirely. Had I really believed that Alex could hurt someone? For days, I had let that possibility live and breathe alongside us, between us.
“A little,” I admitted, swiping at my cheeks with Joey’s mittens.
The expression on Alex’s face cycled through his range of emotions, some of them devastating to witness. “Oh,” he said.
“But just a little,” I said. My cheek brushed the wool of his coat, and I nearly lay my head against him. “And not for very long.”