Friends Like These(34)

“And you ran the fingerprints?” Maeve asks. She looks over meaningfully at Jonathan and Stephanie. “I mean, if it’s Derrick . . .”

“But we don’t know if that was even true,” Jonathan says.

“Somebody care to fill me in?” I say.

Maeve clasps her small, pale hands together. “Derrick apparently assaulted somebody back in Arkansas. When he was a kid. Or that’s what Finch said. We never knew about it before this weekend. It sounded like Derrick was arrested.”

“But Finch is an asshole, like we said,” Jonathan says. “He could have been making that up.”

“Except Derrick didn’t deny it,” Maeve says.

Jonathan looks up at me. “That’s true. Derrick didn’t deny it.”

“Okay,” I say, letting myself sound as annoyed as I feel. “Derrick having a juvenile criminal history in another state would have been helpful for me to know about earlier.”

“Criminal history sounds so . . .” Jonathan doesn’t finish.

“Accurate?” I ask. “Listen, I’m trying to stay patient here. I get that you’re upset. But I need to know everything. And I mean all of it, right now. Let me decide what’s relevant. Maeve, you mentioned earlier something about the contractors?”

Jonathan shoots Maeve a look. So much for full transparency.

“I wasn’t trying to— they did come here asking to be paid, and they weren’t happy,” she says to Jonathan, defensive. “I thought we wanted her to know everything that might be relevant.”

“Maeve is right,” Stephanie says smoothly. “It could be relevant, in theory. But Jonathan was making sure they got paid.”

The response is practiced, lawyerly. Stephanie has stepped in to cover something up. Maybe Jonathan doesn’t have as much money as he’s pretending to?

“The contractors showed up Friday night and demanded money. I wanted to pay them whatever they were owed. I know that a lot of people think the weekenders are rich, entitled assholes, but . . .” He avoids my eyes, shrugs like it’s no big thing. Except tension is written all over his face. “First, I needed to at least be sure there hadn’t been some sort of misunderstanding. Or a bank error. Also, you can’t just take eleven thousand dollars out of an ATM.”

“And so what happened?” I ask.

“They agreed I could pay them later, and then they left.”

“And did you?”

Jonathan blinks at me like a stunned deer. “Did I what?”

“Pay them later?”

Jonathan rubs his hands on his thighs. “Yes, yes,” he says. “I gave them money.”

“Keith’s also an addict,” Maeve blurts out. Jonathan winces, while Stephanie stares stonily straight ahead. Maeve’s gone off script again. “I mean, it’s a problem. Derrick would have been trying to get Keith to come home, trying to keep him safe. But if Keith was really determined to buy drugs . . .”

“What are you saying, Maeve?” Stephanie demands. “Now you think Keith did something to Derrick? Because that’s insane.”

“It is the most logical explanation under the circumstances. Victims and perpetrators are rarely strangers,” I say. “And, as you’ve pointed out, you weren’t in the car, so you don’t actually know.”

“Okay, fine.” Stephanie glares at me. “Finch, maybe. But not Derrick or Keith. I just refuse to believe that. You don’t understand, they’re like brothers.”

“Keith was out of control, Stephanie,” Jonathan says gently. “And if they were buying drugs, it could have been somebody they, I don’t know, picked up or something . . .”

Stephanie looks for a moment like she’s going to argue, but then her mouth quivers. When she looks down, Jonathan wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“Do you know what Keith was using?” I ask. “What kind of drugs?”

“He hid it mostly,” Jonathan says. “But for sure it wasn’t just weed or something. Some kind of pills.”

I stand. “I’d like to take a look at his things.”

“Oh, sure, of course,” Jonathan says. “They’re upstairs.”

The stairs creak softly as we head up. Just the right amount to make the house seem lived in, but not enough to make it feel run-down. I follow Jonathan, with Maeve and Stephanie close behind. The upstairs of the house is as nice as the downstairs. Standing in that pretty hall, with all those lovely guest bedrooms in every direction, I wonder about the choices I’ve made— to live in Kaaterskill, to be a cop. Things that’ll never get me a home anywhere near as nice as Jonathan’s. Jane would have wanted a different life for me.

But then, she’d always had grander plans. She was going to attend Vassar, double major in studio art and French, and be a fashion designer, living in Paris and drinking espressos on the Champs-Elysées. She had a poster of the Eiffel Tower hanging on the wall across from her bed, and another one— Coco Chanel draped in pearls— over her desk. She’d been talented, too— sewing, knitting, designing. I still have the dozen or so things she made me, all sized for a little girl except for the matching pair of sweaters she knitted us that last Christmas: grass green and cropped, with a cable-knit pattern and a dramatic cowl-neck. Mine was too big for me back then, but Jane wore hers all the time. She was wearing it the day she died, though she was found only in her bra.