Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(58)

“With potato chips?” Ethan asked, licking at his lips.

Olivia smiled and gave a nod, “I suppose,” she said, then turned toward the kitchen. Before starting breakfast, she called Clara and whispered, “He’s home.”

“Ethan Allen?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thank the Lord! I’ll be right there.”

“No,” Olivia said, “wait until this afternoon. We need to have some time alone.”

As soon as she set breakfast on the table, Ethan Allen dug in. He shoveled up mouthful after mouthful of syrupy pancakes, while Olivia couldn’t force down a single bite. “I’m really glad you decided to come back,” she said. “When you left here and didn’t come home all night, the most awful things ran through my mind. I couldn’t imagine where you’d gone to, and I was worried blue that you might be shivering to death in some icy cold alleyway, no jacket, no sweater…”

“I wasn’t even cold.”

“Not cold? With the temperature dropped down to thirty degrees?”

“Un-uh,” he slipped a piece of sausage to the dog, “I wrapped up in a blanket.”

“Where’d you get a blanket?”

“Mister Porter’s storage bin; he’s got a lot of good stuff—”

“The storage bin in the basement?”

Ethan nodded and passed down another piece of sausage. “He’s got a hockey stick, and some shotguns, and—”

“You broke into Seth Porter’s storage bin?”

“I didn’t break in; I just pried the door open enough to squeeze through.”

“You were hiding in there.” Olivia said, perching her hands on her hips, “…and didn’t bother to answer when every last soul in this building was calling out your name?”

“I was asleep. I didn’t hear nothing.”

“Asleep? In the storage bin?”

Ethan nodded, “Mister Porter’s got a whole bunch of furniture in his bin and I figured he wouldn’t mind none if I borrowed the sofa for a bit.”

“You shouldn’t be helping yourself to other people’s belongings!” Olivia said with an artificial air of disdain; then she let go of the issue, happy that the boy had enough sense to stay inside out of the cold.





There and Gone

Sam Cobb figured the kid was gone and that was that. Driving down to talk to Tom Behrens was probably a waste of time; but he jumped at the chance because it was an opportunity to work with a detective on a double murder, which was something that didn’t come along every day. Sam was tired of patrolling a town with very few crimes other than the vandalism of run amuck teenagers; and he had been looking for a way to prove himself for well over a year. He was ready—more than ready—to make detective, to be assigned homicides on his own, not simply because he happened to be the patrolman on duty when the report of a double murder came in. “We’d be better off questioning the neighbors,” he said as if he were the voice of authority, “chasing after that boy’s a waste of time. If he wants to run off, I say let him go. The probability is a kid like that won’t talk even if he does know something.”

“Could be you’re right, but I’ve got this feeling…” Mahoney said.

They arrived at the ESSO station shortly after lunch on Thursday. Mahoney stepped out of the patrol car and walked toward the attendant, “Tom?” he asked, extending his hand in a real friendly way.

“Yep,” Tom answered, “and you gotta be Jack Mahoney.”

After Mahoney introduced Patrolman Sam Cobb, the three men went inside the office and sat down. Tom poured the last of yesterday’s coffee into paper cups and handed it to his guests. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m fresh outta cream.”

“Coffee’s not much good without cream,” Cobb replied, then took a sip of the coffee which was thick as mud and gave off the smell of burnt rubber. “Whew…ee,” he grimaced, “You can’t be expecting I’d drink this!”

Without a word, Tom Behrens took the cup from Cobb’s hand and set it to the side of the counter. After that there was an edgy bit of a silence until Mahoney started chit-chatting about how the weather this year seemed to be unseasonably cold. “Before you know it we’ll be looking at frost,” he said. “Frost, before the end of September, can you believe it? Newspaper claims we could get snow early as November!”

They hadn’t yet gotten around to the issue of Ethan Allen, when a farm truck pulled up to the pump. “I got a customer,” Tom said and stepped outside.

As soon as he was beyond earshot, Mahoney looked over at Cobb and growled, “What’s with you? Are you deliberately trying to tick this guy off so he won’t give us anything on where the kid went?”

“Of course not,” Cobb answered, “but that was the worse coff—”

“You think I give a crap? If he comes back in here and hands you a cup of warm piss, you better drink it down with a smile on your face!”

Tom, a man unaccustomed to hurrying, left them sitting in the office for almost fifteen minutes. When he finally did return, there was more chit-chat, another customer interruption, and a half-hour of telling bits and pieces of the tragedy which occurred at the Doyle house. Eventually, Mahoney was able to ask, “The boy who came by here, you think you’d know his face were you to see it again?”