All Good People Here(67)

Beside her, Pete shot a glance toward the disastrous kitchen. “So.” He clapped his hands. “You guys doing some cleaning? You need a hand?”

For the next two hours, Margot, Pete, and Luke put the kitchen back together. Most of it fell to Margot, though, as she was the only one who knew or could remember where anything was supposed to go. Throughout the afternoon, the three of them held steady, idle conversation, most of which was Pete telling them long, meandering stories of office minutiae. Margot knew he was doing it for her benefit, keeping her uncle preoccupied while she cleaned. During it all, she couldn’t tell if she was more embarrassed or grateful—embarrassed that she’d been so preoccupied with the case she hadn’t known her uncle was spinning out of control just outside her door; grateful for the kindness of this almost-stranger.

By the time they were done, it was a little after five and they were all hungry, so Margot ordered a pizza. Though she set the table for three, when Luke saw this, he said, “Why don’t you two catch up? I’ll watch TV while I eat.” But Margot could tell as he took his two slices into the living room that really, he just needed a break. He looked tired to his bones. These episodes, she was learning, did that.

Margot watched her uncle as he sank onto the couch, turned on the TV, and took a bite of pizza, his eyes peeled to the screen. When she turned her attention back to the kitchen again, she saw Pete grabbing two beers from the refrigerator.

“Beer?” he said.

“Absolutely. The bottle opener’s in that drawer there.”

Pete popped the tops off, handed her a bottle, then slumped into the chair opposite her.

She took a long sip. “He’s getting worse.”

Pete’s eyes flicked over her face, landing on her swollen cheek. “He do that?”

Margot had washed the cut and put a Band-Aid on earlier, but it still throbbed. She shook her head. “It was an accident.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She gave him a look. “Really? After everything you’ve done this afternoon?”

“I told you. I’ve been through this. It’s…tough.”

She studied his face a moment. “Actually. There is something.” She hesitated. “Could you track down an Elliott Wallace for me?”

“Who’s that?”

So Margot told him everything and Pete listened, a look of disbelief frozen on his face.

“Holy shit,” he said when she finished. He dropped his eyes to the tabletop, where they roved, unseeing, eventually landing on the half-eaten slice of pizza in his hand. He frowned at it as if he was surprised to see it there, then dropped it onto his paper plate and brushed his hands against each other.

“I know,” Margot said. “This is something. I can feel it.”

“Yeah…Yeah, I think you’re right. Jesus Christ.”

“So, do you think you could help me track him down? Elliott Wallace? I remember he was living in Dayton when we met, but I can’t remember where and I have no idea if he’s still there.” She knew the location of his old neighborhood was probably buried somewhere deep in her mind, but his house had been in a cookie cutter suburb, in a city she’d never been to before. Plus, it had been three years. He could’ve moved.

Pete scratched his jaw. “It can be a long process tracking someone down like that. It can take weeks just to hear back from the places I’d need to reach out to. That is, if I do it aboveboard.”

Margot hesitated. “And if you do it not aboveboard?”

Pete let out a breath of laughter. “Yeah, that wouldn’t take as long, but I guess I’m wondering…well, are you sure this is what you want to be doing right now?”

Margot cocked her head. “What d’you mean?”

“I just mean with—” He jutted his chin toward the living room behind her, where Luke was watching TV with the volume on loud. “You have a lot going on.”

“Well…sure. But I still have to do my job.” She hadn’t told Pete she’d gotten fired and she wasn’t about to now. While he may have been willing to bend the rules for a journalist with a solid lead, he probably wouldn’t if he knew she had no publication to back her up. Not to mention the mortification she’d feel if she told him. And she didn’t need that. Not on top of everything else.

“I know,” he said. “But couldn’t you work on a different story or something? One that doesn’t have you chasing people all over the Midwest.”

“I’m doing the best I can with him, Pete.” Margot had tried to keep her voice neutral, but it still came out hard.

“I know. I do. But leaving him overnight when he’s like this can be dangerous.”

Heat flared over her chest like a rash. “Are you kidding me?”

“Hey, listen. I’m not trying to tell you how to take care of your family, but—”

“No, I get it,” she snapped, standing so quickly her chair almost fell over behind her. “You think I should be in the home, rather than out in the workforce.”

“I…” Pete held up his hands. “Whoa. Margot, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

From the table next to her, her phone chimed with an incoming notification. Instinctively, she grabbed it from the tabletop and glanced at the screen. “Fuck!” It was a Venmo request from her old landlord, Hank, for the amount of twelve hundred dollars, July’s rent. Margot had called her subletter multiple times over the past few days, but it seemed he’d disappeared. Now she had no choice but to pay.