Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(34)

A few moments later the clouds passed by and the moon was bright as a streetlight. Ethan glanced down to get a feel for exactly where he was, but looking at the ground from such a height caused something inside his head to start spinning. “Stay with me, Lord,” he whispered. After a moment the dizziness left him, and by then he knew he was on the northwest side of the house, somewhat close to the back. Remaining on his hands and knees, he began crabbing his way toward the place where a back porch ought to be. He moved slowly until he finally spotted a drainpipe. It was a reach, two feet, maybe more, but it was a way down. He flattened himself out and inched past a darkened window praying no one was inside the room and that no one would spot him. On the far edge of the roof he eased his right foot onto the gutter of the drainpipe and got ready for the leap. There would be a thump when he landed, of that he was certain, but all he could do was pray nobody heard it. “I believe in you, Jesus,” he mumbled, “so help me out here.” He swung his legs across and latched onto the pipe. Ever so slowly he shimmied down, as concerned about not making noise as he was about making progress—until the moment his foot touched the ground, then he took off running like a jack rabbit.

It was almost midnight when Scooter Cobb came through the door. Emma, quite used to the irregularity of his hours, was sitting in the living room working on a piece of embroidery she hoped to have finished for Christmas. “I put the boy in Sammy’s old room,” she said without looking up.

“Good,” Scooter grunted. “He asleep?”

Emma nodded, “…has been for hours.” She knotted the thread she’d been working with and set the embroidery aside. “I feel real sorry for the boy,” she sighed, “imagine the grief of losing both a mama and daddy as he did.”

“That daddy of his was no loss; the man was a rotten son-of-a-bitch!”

“Hush such talk…”

“I’m speaking the truth! He’s the one to blame for the boy being wild as he is. Susanna used to say…” Even a stranger who was blind in one eye would have noticed the look on Scooter’s face when he spoke Susanna’s name.

“Do you think I don’t know?” Emma asked, an ocean of hurt brimming her eyes.

“Know what?” Scooter replied apprehensively.

“Know what’s been going on between you and Susanna Doyle.”

Figuring the boy had told, he shot back, “You believe a kid like that?”

“I believe what my heart tells me.”

“What kind of bullshit is that supposed to be?”

“For months I’ve known you were carrying on. I could tell by the way you’d splash on a half bottle of cologne to go fry hamburgers then stay out biggest part of the night. You think a wife don’t notice when her husband keeps to the far side of the bed?” Scooter opened his mouth as if to answer, but she continued on. “I figured a man who’s been married for thirty years is bound to have an occasional itch or two; but I told myself—just wait, give it time. I thought this thing with Susanna would eventually burn itself out, but,” she moaned, “it obviously didn’t.”

“It wasn’t what you think,” Scooter said defensively, “I was simply being kind to the woman, listening to her problems…”

Emma gave him a hard glare and went on. “That’s not the end of it. Today, when I started to launder that shirt you wore last night, I found blood all over it. Not little specks, such as you’d get from a splash of meat, but a sizable amount. It didn’t make much sense till Jack Mahoney brought the boy to the house and told me the story of how Susanna had been killed and her husband beaten to a pulp. ‘It had to be a monster of a man,’ Jack said. A monster of a man…”

“You can’t think it was me?”

“I don’t think—I know.”

“Good God, Emma! After all the years we been together, you ought to realize I’d never do such a thing.”

“Really? You’re practically a stranger to me now. At one time I might have known if you would do, or not do, a thing. But now, I can’t begin to imagine the ungodly deeds you’re capable of!”

“That’s great!” he exclaimed. “Really great! You think I murdered the woman I was supposedly having an affair with?”

“No,” she answered coolly, “but I wouldn’t doubt you had something to do with the beating of her husband.”

Scooter looked visibly shaken. “Is that what you told Jack Mahoney?” he asked.

“No.” She allowed the word to hang in the air a long time before she spoke again. “But if you ever so much as glance at another woman again, I will.” She turned and picked up her embroidery.

“You’re crazy, Emma,” Scooter shouted, “crazy as a loon to think you can threaten me with a thing such as that!”

“Perhaps…” she drawled, slipping a thread of blue yarn through the eye of the needle, “I forgot to mention that I never did get around to washing the shirt.”

Scooter narrowed his black eyes and glared at Emma, but seeing the iron set look of determination on her face, he bit down on his lip and wisely said nothing. When she went back to her embroidery, he turned away and stomped up the stairs.

“Don’t you dare wake the boy,” she called out before he was halfway to the landing, then she circled the thread around her needle and eased a lovers knot into place. “He’s already been through more than any child should have to endure.”