Golden Girl(69)

“Might be,” the Greek says. The Greek is Black as well—his mother is Cape Verdean. “Still, you can’t discount the kid because you like him, Ed.”

“I’m stuck,” the Chief says. “And I’m late for dinner.”

“Hit-and-run homicides are hard to solve.”

“We live on an island, Nicky. Nobody can get away, that’s the thing.”

“You checked with the body shops?” the Greek asks.

Yes, that was Dixon’s job, but he’d come up empty. All front-fender bodywork repairs since Vivian Howe was killed have corresponding accident reports. It’s entirely possible that someone is just driving around with a dented fender. It’s also possible that hitting Vivian Howe didn’t even leave a dent. “We did, yes.”

“You spoke to the son?”

“I’ve been saving that for last,” the Chief says. “The kid lost his mother.”

“Well,” the Greek says. “Sounds to me like the time for that conversation has come.”





Leo




When Leo finally bumps into Cruz, it’s in the place he least expects: on the docks.

Leo is working at the Nantucket Boat Basin, where he’s a glorified trash collector and errand boy. He has a golf cart and a walkie-talkie and he zips around from slip to slip, bringing ice and taking people’s trash. Leo likes his job, though some of the boat owners try his patience. Still, he knows he’s lucky; the boats are gorgeous, the people are friendly and grateful (most of the time), and he’s not only outside, he’s on the water. Lots of people would kill for this job.

He has just loaded four bags of trash and one bag of recycling (glass, mostly champagne bottles) into the back of his golf cart when he sees Cruz stepping off a seventy-foot flybridge yacht called Queen Bee.

What?

Cruz has textbooks under his arm. He must have been tutoring a kid on that yacht. Leo thinks about throwing his cart into reverse, but that would look cowardly. Leo feels like he’s being controlled by some outside force as he rolls the cart forward and stops in front of Cruz. He’s not sure what to say.

Leo swallows. “Hey.”

Cruz stares at Leo a second, his face unreadable. “Hey.”

“Were you the one who hit my mom?” Leo asks. “Because if you were, you need to admit it, man.”

“I didn’t,” Cruz says. “I found her on the ground. You can ask me a thousand times, and my answer isn’t going to change, because that’s the truth. If I’d been the one to hit Vivi, I would have told you. There’s no way I could live with myself if I killed Vivi and then pretended I didn’t. I have integrity.”

Integrity might as well be Cruz’s middle name, Leo knows. Adults always use that word when describing him because he’s “an achiever,” because he looks people in the eye, because he was nice to the kids at school that nobody liked, because he never swears and doesn’t complain, because he thinks of other people before himself. And hasn’t some of this rubbed off on Leo? Hasn’t he tried to be a person of integrity too?

“I couldn’t even keep quiet when we stole the street sign from Hulbert Avenue,” Cruz says.

Leo bites his tongue; he won’t give Cruz the satisfaction of smiling. The summer between seventh and eighth grade, Leo and Cruz used to sneak out in the middle of the night on their bikes. They once lit a campfire in the bamboo forest between Vivi’s house and the Madaket Road and roasted hot dogs. The only reason they hadn’t burned the forest down was that Cruz had thought to bring water. They skinny-dipped in the pool of some house on Cliff Road. They stole the street sign from Hulbert, home to the most expensive real estate on the island. They’d watched the sunrise a lot that summer, then went home and slept until two in the afternoon.

“I heard you ran a stop sign and were seen speeding before you got to my house,” Leo says. “I think you were so upset about the photo from Bridgeman that you weren’t paying attention to the road and you hit my mom. And now I think you’re trading on your so-called integrity, and that’s why you haven’t been arrested.”

“Man, f—” Cruz stops himself.

“Say it.”

“Of course I was upset by the photo. I was driving over to talk to you about it.”

“I want you to just admit you hit her, man. She’s gone, nothing can bring her back, I get that, but you need to confess. It was an accident, obviously you didn’t intend to kill my mother—but you were the one who hit her. The police saw you driving recklessly, Cruz.”

Cruz steps up, gets right in Leo’s face. Leo can see the sweat on Cruz’s upper lip, smell the laundry detergent that Joe uses. Cruz is his best friend in the world. His buddy since forever. Vivi had a million things she used to call them: Frick and Frack, Mutt and Jeff, Felix and Oscar, Abbott and Costello, Ben and Jerry, Beans and Rice. Vivi loved Cruz. She took care of him like he was another son. When Vivi cooked, Cruz always got a bigger portion than Leo. She bought special things that he liked: mangoes, cookie dough ice cream, pistachios. She lent him her books. They both read the New York Times and they texted each other about the articles. Cruz and Vivi were “connected intellectually” in a way that Leo and Vivi weren’t. Leo could have been jealous about this, but he wasn’t. He was happy they got along so well. Vivi used to say that Cruz balanced out the family—she had two girls and two boys. With an extra person, there was extra love.