Chapter Seven #4
“Sure,” Cal says. This is the first moment he’s had to let the relief sink in. He almost reaches over to mess up her hair, or something. “Course you can. Text your mama.”
Trey rolls her eyes, but she pulls out her phone. “How come you didn’t ask that fucker why he sicced Donie on us?”
“ ’Cause he wouldn’t tell me, and I can’t make him. I was a cop too long to ask questions when I won’t get an answer. Sets the wrong tone.”
Trey nods, acknowledging that. “Hang on,” she says suddenly, as they round the bend towards the village. “Pull over.”
“You OK?”
“Yeah. Turn your lights off.”
“What for?” Cal says, but he pulls over on the shoulder and switches off the lights.
“Back in a minute,” Trey says. She slides out of the car and is over the wall like a fox.
Cal leans across to her door, but she’s already invisible, just a rustle in the field, and he can’t call after her; any sound travels for miles out here. “Shit,” he says, to no one.
He sits there, hoping no one happens to pass by, and listening.
In spring and summer, the nights around here are alive with creatures mating, hunting, fighting, raising their babies.
With autumn, things turn silent, as birds leave and animals draw deeper into the warmth of hidden shelters; only a few creatures are out and about tonight.
Their sparse scattering of noises seem sudden and loud as warnings.
After what feels like an hour but is actually only sixteen minutes, Cal hears that rustle again, and a shadow drops over the wall. “Let’s go,” Trey says, hopping into her seat. “Keep the lights off.”
Cal moves off as quietly as the Pajero can manage. “What’d you do? They see you?”
“Nah,” Trey says, with scorn. “I wasn’t gonna go into Moynihans’, with them stupid floodlights. I just kept low and went up to the corner of the wall. Tommy wouldn’t bring that little scut inside his house, all mucky and everything; I knew he’d talk to him outside.”
“You hear anything?”
“Yeah. Tommy wants us out.”
“Who? Out like what?”
“Like out. Outa our house. Donie said—he was just sitting there on the step like a fuckin’ kid; Tommy musta done his wrists with wire cutters, and Donie was poking at his ankles like he was waiting for his mammy to come do it for him.
Donie was bitching about wanting money, and Tommy was like, ‘I don’t owe you anything.
I was paying you to get them out. They’re still fuckin’ there.
And now they know it was you, and you’ve been warned off, I’ll have to start from scratch.
I oughta be getting a refund off you.’ Then he slammed the door and Donie started banging on it with the wire cutters, so I done a legger in case Tommy called the Guards. ”
“Tommy’s not gonna call the Guards,” Cal says, before he realizes: Tommy isn’t your standard country boy who considers the police to be useless at best and a royal pain in the ass at worst. Tommy has plenty of uses for the Guards, and regardless of how dirty his hands are, he can call them in all he wants.
Trey says, in a voice that’s set for warfare, “We’re not leaving that fuckin’ house.”
“Damn right you’re not,” Cal says. His anger at Tommy is rising, too, but it can wait; he needs to think.
This still doesn’t make sense. There was a time when running the Reddys out of town would probably have won a few votes, but that time is over, and anyone with Tommy’s connections would know that.
This has to be personal. “You guys piss Tommy off? Or Eugene? Or Clodagh?”
“Never even see ’em. Don’t wanta.”
Cal is thinking about the ugly story Mart told him, about Tommy’s daddy and the woman. He wonders what Sheila would say, if she was asked whether she’s had any problems with Tommy. It’s not a question Cal could ask her, but Sheila and Lena go way back. Then he wonders what Rachel would say.
“You reckon they want the house?” Trey asks. “For Eugene to live in, or something?”
The Reddys’ place is a chunky little cottage, about the same vintage as Cal’s, that they rent from some kind of cousin-in-law of Lena’s—Cal still doesn’t have all the relationships straight around here, but he doesn’t spend too much time on it, since the simplest thing is to just assume everyone is related half a dozen ways.
The cottage has three bedrooms, a faint year-round smell of damp, and cracks in unsettling places.
Even if Mart is right and Eugene is planning on moving back to the boonies to run for office, Cal can’t imagine that Tommy would want the place for him.
“Nah,” he says. “It wouldn’t be up to their standards. No conservatory.”
“Then what the fuck?”
“I dunno, kid,” Cal says. “We’ll find out.” Mart would laugh his ass off: apparently Cal is turning out to be someone’s PI after all. “Meanwhile, you tell your mama to make sure the house is in good shape. Food in the fridge, clean clothes on everyone, no dirty dishes lying around.”
“We already do that. How come?”
“ ’Cause,” Cal says. “Now that Tommy can’t use Donie any more, he’s gonna go looking for another way to scare you guys out. I reckon there’s a decent chance he’ll try siccing Child Protective Services on you, or whatever it’s called around here.”
“Fuck him,” Trey says, clear and hard. “He better not.”
“You just stay one step ahead,” Cal says, “and it’ll be fine.” He’s nowhere near as relaxed about this as he’s trying to sound. “You guys been going to school lately?”
“Yeah. Mostly.”
“Good. Then he can’t use the truant officer. Any of you been stealing from Noreen?” Trey used to shoplift from Noreen on a semi-regular basis, partly out of need, partly as a fuck-you. A while back Cal explained to Trey that this left him obligated to pay her debts, and that was the end of that.
“Not me,” Trey says promptly. “Swear to God. And not Alanna. Don’t think Maeve and Liam do, but I dunno.”
“Tell them if they do, they need to quit. All of you need to be squeaky-clean, the next while, till we figure out what’s going on here.
” Cal peers out the windscreen, trying to spot his turn.
He’s taking the long way home, skirting around the village, where a car at this hour is unusual enough that Noreen or someone wakeful might take a look out their window.
“How much do the little kids know about what’s been going down? ”
“They heard him throwing rocks at the windows, but I told them it was my mates messing. Maeve saw the flower beds. The shite on the door, and the fox, I found those, so I got rid of them before anyone saw.”
Cal swallows down, for now, the thought of Trey cleaning up Donie’s messes. “How about your mama?”
“She knows most of it. Not about me and the lads hiding out for Donie, like. But she saw the stuff he did.”
Cal doesn’t fool himself that he has the measure of Sheila Reddy, or anywhere near it. Sheila had a tough life, married to Trey’s daddy; it turned her into a tough woman, one who thinks along strange concealed lines.
“Did she have any guesses about who was doing it?” he asks. “Or why?”
Trey shrugs. “Nah. I left Banjo with them,” she adds, a little defensively. “When I went out.”
“I know,” Cal says. As a guard dog, Banjo is about as useful as a cheese sandwich, but he makes a good alarm system.
The thought of the kid trying to balance living her life with protecting her family makes him wish he had dislocated Donie’s shoulders while he had the chance.
“You did good. But, kid: leave it, for now. Don’t do anything. ”
“Like what?”
“Don’t give me ‘like what,’ ” Cal says, craning his neck for the next turn, which should be hidden among the hedges somewhere, unless he’s lost. “Like anything. About Tommy, or Eugene, or Donie. Not till we get a better idea what’s going on here.
I know you want to start cracking heads, and I don’t blame you.
But with a guy like Tommy, you don’t get mad, you get smart. ”
“So I’ll find out what’s going on,” Trey says. “Like I just did.”
“Well,” Cal says. He needs to be careful. If he forbids her to do something she’s going to do anyway, all that will change is that she’ll keep it to herself. “You can keep your ears open, talk to people, see what you pick up. But you gotta be subtle. Nothing that anyone would notice.”
“Turn’s there,” Trey says helpfully, pointing.
“Kid.”
“OK,” Trey says, after a second. “For now.”
“I got your word on that?”
“Yeah.”
Trey takes her word seriously. “Good,” Cal says, swinging into the turn. “If we need to do something, we’ll do it, don’t worry. Just not yet.”
Trey nods. “Thanks,” she says gruffly, to her window. “For coming over, and everything. Sorry for getting you outa bed.”
“It’s fine,” Cal says. “I’m glad you did. Only thing I wish is that you’d called me in earlier. I’m right here, I might as well come in handy.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I mean it,” Cal says. “You wanna do something nice for me, in exchange for tonight? Next time, call me in before you’ve got some mope tied up with garden wire.”
Trey rolls her eyes. Cal can’t tell whether she’ll do it, but he hopes she’s at least accepted the option.
“And, kid,” he says. “The part about the Moynihans, and that stuff you heard. I’d rather you kept that to yourself, for now.
We don’t need it spreading all around town.
You don’t need to lie to your buddies; just let ’em think we dumped Donie at home. ”
He knows he might be asking too much. Her buddies are the center of the universe; keeping things from them is against nature. Trey nods promptly, though. “Ross’d talk,” she says. “Aidan wouldn’t, but he’d tell Ciara, and she would.” She glances over at him. “Kate won’t.”
Her face in the dashboard’s glow, shadowed in strange places, looks older and mysterious. “OK,” Cal says. “You gonna tell her?”
“I reckon. Yeah.” She watches to see if he’s going to cut up rough.
“All right,” Cal says. “You know her; your call. Just keep in mind, kid: Tommy’s a scuzzball, and we haven’t figured out what he’s playing at. The less Kate knows, the safer she is.”
“She won’t care,” Trey assures him.
“Oh well then,” Cal says. He manages not to point out that Kate’s mama and daddy might care a lot. Being responsible for Trey is about all he can handle right now; Kate’s mama and daddy are going to have to look out for themselves. “The rest of ’em gonna tell people about Donie?”
“They might,” Trey says, after a second. She looks younger again and anxious, watching him to see if she screwed up. “Prob’ly. I can tell them not to, but…”
“But the story’s too good to waste,” Cal says. “Don’t worry about it. Donie doing Donie-type crap isn’t gonna raise anyone’s suspicions. You guys’ll probably get a medal for taking him down.”
Trey grins, reassured. “C’n I have the knife?” she asks.
“No,” Cal says. They’re coming up towards Mart’s place; he dims his lights and slows down to a crawl. “And if you make one single sound before ten in the morning, I’m gonna whup your ass.”
Trey, unintimidated, grins again and settles back in her seat to start texting somebody. As Cal turns in at his gate, he hears her humming “She Looks So Perfect” to herself.