Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(63)

After supper, while Ethan Allen was sitting at the table counting up his money for the fourth time, Olivia brought up the subject of school. “You’ve got to go,” she said, “or else the truant officer will come looking for you.”

Ethan Allen felt quite comfortable with the amount of schooling he already had so he said, “How can he come looking for me, when he don’t even know I’m here?”

“The truant officer rides around town looking for kids who are out playing at times they ought to be in school.”

“I ain’t playing. I’m running errands!”

“All the same,” she said, “you’ve got to go to school.” That was her final word on the subject. “Tomorrow,” she told him, “we’ll get you registered and you can start on Monday.”

When she turned back to washing the dishes, Ethan thumbed his nose at her back.

On Monday morning Olivia was up at the first light of dawn; she set a skillet of sausages to sizzling and mixed up a bowl of pancake batter with fresh blueberries thrown in for good measure; then she woke the boy. “Get up, Ethan,” she whispered, giving his shoulder a gentle shake, “it’s time to get ready for school.”

“Do I have to?” he moaned, wrapping himself in a tighter ball of drowsiness.

“Yes,” she tugged the blanket loose from his grip. Once he was up and headed for the bathroom, she returned to the kitchen and set about fixing chicken sandwiches to pack in the Superman lunch box. After a considerable amount of time, he arrived at the breakfast table, looking more reluctant than ever. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he mumbled.

“Nonsense.” Olivia placed a plate of pancakes in front of him. “Now, hurry up and eat your breakfast,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, “You’re going to love school, I’m sure of it. You’ll meet new friends—”

“I already got friends.”

“Honey,” Olivia knelt beside him, “…I know you consider the folks in this building your friends, but we’re a bunch of old fogeys, you need to meet some kids so you can play with boys your own age.”

“No I don’t.”

Olivia knew by the look of determination in his eyes, she could argue the point till the moon settled on top of the mountain and it wouldn’t change his mind. She also knew that if he rode his bike to school, he’d end up elsewhere—which is why she insisted on driving him that first day. Had he ridden the bike, he might have arrived home earlier; he might have already been off on some errand to the Piggly Wiggly, or upstairs with his eyes glued to the television—but, with the walk home taking considerably longer, he turned into the building walkway just as Sam Cobb stepped from the car. “Holy shit!” the boy gasped, then took off running like a scared rabbit. He went around the building through the back entrance and up the stairwell. He burst through the apartment door a full minute before Mahoney and Cobb arrived. “Say I ain’t here!” he screamed before Olivia could ask how his day at school had gone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, following him into the bedroom.

“Please,” he begged, “tell those policeman you ain’t seen hide nor hair of me!” He rolled under the bed, and just then there was a knock at the door.

When Olivia opened the door Mahoney said, “Afternoon, ma’am.” He smiled, showed his badge, then introduced both himself and Sam Cobb. “We’d like a word with Ethan Allen Doyle,” he said rather pleasantly.

Olivia could feel a swell of conscience rising up into her throat—it might be excusable to tell a little white lie when you had cause; but to do what Ethan Allen asked, was flat out lying to the law. Once she’d told an officer her speedometer read forty miles per hour, when in truth it had been waggling somewhere between fifty-five and sixty—it didn’t work out very well that time and she was reluctant to try again. Olivia hesitated for a minute, then without perjuring herself as to whether or not the boy was there, asked, “What business do you have with my grandson?”

“There are a few questions we’d like to ask,” Mahoney replied.

“What kind of questions?”

“Has the boy told you what happened to his parents?”

Olivia nodded, “Somewhat,” she said, hoping they wouldn’t ask for further details.

“Well, we think he might have actually seen what happened the night of the murders.”

“And if he did?” Olivia snorted, “What then? You’d have him relive that horrible experience? You’d ask the child to suffer through it all over again?”

“Our intent is nothing like that—”

“Regardless of your intent, I refuse to allow you to badger the boy!” she said, cutting Mahoney off in the middle of his sentence. “There’s no justification—”

“You’ve got no say in it!” Cobb, although he had been forewarned to hold back on his temper, stormed. “We can do whatever we—”

“The devil you can!” Olivia snapped. She defiantly squared herself in the doorway to block any thought they might have of getting inside. “I’m Ethan Allen’s grandmother and I’m telling you right here and now—if the child doesn’t want to talk to you, he doesn’t have to!”