Chapter 12 #2
“Hm, yes. Both boys preferred to be outside. I think Calvin especially felt pent up when he had to be indoors for too long. School was terrible for him. For Dwayne, too, but for different reasons. I tried my best, but their teachers never listened.” She smiled slightly and swiped at her eyes.
“You can be honest. I know they weren’t good boys, that they acted out.
I can’t tell you how many times the school called me about their behavior. But they were good to me.”
“Right. Aside from the Weisses, who did Calvin call a friend? Did he have anyone close, someone special? Or did Dwayne?”
Kelly looked thoughtful. “Well, Calvin never had a girlfriend that he brought around, if that’s what you’re pussyfooting around about.
Dwayne.” A spasm of grief flashed across her face.
“He was shy, you know. He only ever went out with Calvin. Even as a boy, he was quiet, maybe quieter. But he’d do anything for his brother—or me. ”
“What about their father’s side of the family?”
“The only good thing Brad Perkins ever did was give me Calvin and Dwayne. He fucked off when the boys were toddlers, leaving us on our own. Good riddance too. For all his big-man-about-town nonsense, he was nothing but a tool, a cog in the machine. I knew it, but I still let him charm the pants off me. Twice.”
Casey wasn’t sure what to make of that statement and didn’t want to think about Kelly Perkins’s pants being charmed by anyone.
Thankfully, the tea water came to a boil and the kettle clicked off.
Kelly dropped a tea bag into each of the mugs she’d taken from the full dish drainer and filled them with hot water.
“They didn’t have a relationship with their father after he left?” Casey had wondered if that was a possibility, but it seemed not.
Kelly held a mug out to him. “Not as far as I ever knew. Maybe when they were adults. Brad didn’t try for custody, and child support was a joke. I didn’t talk bad about him to the boys, but I didn’t tell them he was a saint either.”
Accepting the tea, Casey wrapped his fingers around the mug. The day promised to be pleasant, but Kelly’s house had a chill to it.
“So, you don’t know of anyone your boys were friendly with?”
“Friendly? That’s a bit different. There was a time when Calvin and Gordon MacDonald palled around. I remember there was an auto club or something they tried to get started—with vintage cars, I think. But something happened between them. I don’t know what it was, Calvin refused to say.”
Calvin had been a bully, and Gordon MacDonald had been one of his targets, as had Casey back in the day.
Thinking back, it seemed that Calvin had gotten wilder and less manageable as he got older.
When Casey had interacted with Calvin the last few years, his behavior had seemed more erratic and unhinged than what Casey would’ve considered usual for him.
He’d wondered if Calvin had been using drugs before the murder.
Not a question he planned on asking Kelly Perkins.
Kelly sipped her tea, clearly trying to recall just who Calvin might have befriended.
Casey waited, doing his best to be patient.
Both men were dead and there was no urgency other than a mother’s desire to understand why she’d had two sons and now she had none.
And Casey’s uneasy feeling that things were not as they appeared.
There were a lot of conveniently dead people lately in Twana County. And now Roy Wilson was added to the mix, although a link between Wilson and the brothers would be a stretch. After all, Wilson had found religion back when Calvin and Dwayne were still in junior high.
Kelly finally offered, “The three of us used to go to the Geoduck Inn over on the highway. The boys liked taking me there for special occasions. My birthday, Mother’s Day, that sort of thing.
Last year—maybe the year before? Definitely at least two years ago.
Anyway, I had the feeling that Calvin and our waitress were friendly.
I don’t know exactly why.” She shook her head regretfully.
“It was the way they looked at each other, I think. Later, when I mentioned it, Calvin just laughed and said that I wished. Dwayne was there when I asked, and Calvin didn’t see him do it, but Dwayne nodded.
So, I think there was something going on.
But that was a long time ago. I doubt it means anything. ”
Casey figured it was a long shot, but he asked, “I don’t suppose you remember the waitress’s name?”
Kelly tried to laugh, but it was more of a hiccup. “I do, but not because I have a great memory. It was the same as my gran’s name and my middle name. Nicole.”
A waitress named Nicole who worked at the Geoduck probably didn’t have anything to do with Calvin Perkins’s death, especially if all this happened two or more years ago. But he made a mental note anyway.
“What about the auto club idea? Were there other people involved in that, do you know? Did you ever hear any names other than Gordon’s?
” Gordon MacDonald was an old-car fanatic, but this was the first time he’d heard that Calvin had been.
Maybe he’d just pretended in order to get something from Gordon. That wouldn’t surprise him.
“Honestly, I don’t remember. Maybe? There had to be other folks involved, or else how would it be a club? When he mentioned it to me, Calvin made it sound like a regional thing, so maybe people from other places?”
“If you remember a name, or really anything, will you let me know?” Finishing the last of his tea, he set the mug down on the counter next to the sink. “Thank you again for the tea, and for agreeing to talk to me.”
Nodding, Kelly sniffled and swiped at her eyes again.
“I’ll let myself out,” he said, heading back toward the living room.
“You know,” Kelly said from behind him, “last summer the boys stopped by and Calvin was in a rage. Not at me, but something had happened. Dwayne was trying to calm him down, but Calvin was so angry.”
“Did they ever say what was wrong?”
“No,” she said, her eyebrows drawn together, “but I remember Calvin saying something about the Russians moving in again. I thought that was strange because we’ve had people from Eastern Europe moving here since the eighties. They never went anywhere and came back.”
This was the first Casey had heard of any dealings with Russians. Also, he wondered if Calvin had been using Russian to mean anyone with a vaguely Eastern European-sounding last name or with an accent. The Perkins brothers hadn’t been the most enlightened.
“Anything else?”
“No. Dwayne hushed him up and they both tried to pretend everything was fine.” She shrugged and wrung her hands. “Maybe that’s when everything started to go wrong. I should have done something.”
“Whoever is responsible for their deaths is the person to blame, not yourself.”
It was a relief to step back outside and into the late-morning sunshine. Casey could relate to Calvin Perkins’s intense desire not to be enclosed by four walls and a ceiling. Maybe he and Calvin had more in common than Casey had imagined. He didn’t want to think so, yet there it was.
Checking his phone, he saw that his chat with Kelly Perkins had taken less than half an hour.
It meant he had time to add asking Gordon MacDonald some questions—if he was home— to his list before heading back up to where they’d found Peter Vale’s vehicle.
Today, he reasoned, would be his last chance to escape from his office shifts until September.
Unless you go on your day off, a little voice in his head pointed out.
A louder voice hushed the quieter one.