Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(29)

“Asleep? This late in the day?”

“I might’ve been up a while, but…”

“Well, how exactly did your mama and daddy die?”

“I don’t know. They was dead when I found them.”

“Where’d you find them?”

“Right where they died.” It went on like that, question after question, meaningless answer after meaningless answer until he heard the police car screeching to a stop in the front yard. Ethan Allen hung up the telephone then watched from behind the screen door as two policemen climbed from the car. Jack Mahoney, the short light-haired detective, he’d seen at the diner. But the other one, the one wearing a blue uniform with a silver badge shined up brighter than an automobile headlight, the one nearly the size of Scooter Cobb, he was someone Ethan Allen had never before seen; not at the diner and not around town.

“Boy,” the big one called out, “you know what happened here?”

“No sir,” Ethan answered, stepping outside the door. “I must’ve been sleeping.” He’d swallowed down the last word because he’d looked up and read the policeman’s badge. Samuel Cobb. Scooter’s boy—the policeman his mother said would claim he was telling lies on people and quick as a wink toss him into reform school for a thousand years. “I sleep real sound,” Ethan added, “Mama used to say a shotgun blast couldn’t wake me!”

“Is that so?” Cobb answered. “I suppose then you didn’t hear a bit of whatever scuffle took place in this here yard?”

“No sir. Not me. Not last night. I was sound asleep ‘fore my head hit the pillow.”

Officer Cobb took note of how the boy kept his eyes to the ground and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Asleep, huh?”

Ethan Allen nodded.

“A fight such as this, and you didn’t hear nothing? No hollering? No breaking glass?” Cobb gave a dubious frown.

Susanna always claimed she knew when a boy was lying and now Ethan Allen began to worry Scooter’s son was gifted with the same ability. The boy nervously shook his head side to side, his eyes turned away. He was afraid to look up. One wrong move and Cobb might see straight through to where the truth was hidden. Ethan felt something dreadful wriggling along his back, it was probably what his mama always said would happen—a lying snake had come to call on its kin.

“Seems when that window broke you would’ve heard it,” Cobb said.

“I done told you, I didn’t hear nothing.” Ethan was suddenly starting to feel sicker than ever—Cobb knew he was lying, he was certain of it.

“You sure you’re telling me the truth?”

“Me? Yes sir.” Ethan wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.

“Good. Because if I thought you was lying, I’d have to arrest you. Not telling what you know is concealing evidence.”

“I ain’t lying! You keep asking me all these questions but I done told you, I don’t know nothing. I was asleep. I swear.”

“Oh, really? And, exactly what time did you go to bed?”

“Before dark. Seven, seven-thirty, maybe.”

Mahoney, who up until that moment had been busy securing the ground area around Benjamin’s body and calling for a unit of crime scene investigation detectives to be sent out, said, “Ain’t that a bit early? Most nights you’re hanging around the diner till ten or eleven.”

“Yeah, but my mama wasn’t working last night.”

“How come? Don’t she usually work on Friday?”

Ethan Allen shrugged. “She stayed home ‘cause I was feeling sick.”

“I thought you said you went to bed early last night.”

“Yeah,” Ethan Allen’s fingers suddenly got so fidgety, he had to stuff his hands into his pockets, “but it was ‘cause I didn’t feel good.”

“So, you just went to bed and slept through what must’ve been one hell of a commotion going on out here?”

“I told you, I didn’t hear nothing; I didn’t see nothing. I was asleep.”

“Let’s take a look at where you were sleeping so soundly,” Cobb said. He followed Ethan into a small alcove adjacent to the living room. “This is where you were doing all that sleeping?” he asked, eyeing a bed with several empty cartons and a stack of towels piled on top of it.

“Yes sir.”

“Close as this is, you didn’t hear a thing?”

“No sir.”

“No arguing? No fighting?”

The boy shook his head side to side, but his heart was thumping so hard he thought for sure Cobb would hear it. “I done told you,” he said, “Ten times I told you, I didn’t hear nothing; and for certain didn’t see nothing!”

“That’s what you told me,” Cobb replied, pushing the cartons aside and folding back the coverlet, “but, I got a hunch it ain’t the full and honest truth. The way this stuff is piled up here, makes me wonder if this bed’s even been slept in.”

Ethan Allen just stood there staring down at his feet.

“Leave the boy be,” Mahoney finally said, “he don’t know nothing.”

“I ain’t so sure,” Cobb replied, as he turned toward the back bedroom.