The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(83)

Evi Burke sat up a little straighter. Her expression went carefully blank. She felt ambushed. She was thinking Nikki and her partner had weaseled their way into her home under false pretenses, and now she was trapped.

“I can’t be of much help with that, I’m afraid. I wasn’t there when it happened.”

“You were at a school function that night?”

“A basketball game. I didn’t get home until nine thirty or ten.”

“Were you with Jeremy Nilsen?” Nikki asked.

“No,” she said, looking confused. “Why would you think that?”

“Jeremy was supposedly at the game, too.”

“I saw him there. I wasn’t with him. He was a grade ahead of me.”

“Were you friends?”

“Not really. Just to say hi, you know: small talk at the bus stop.”

“But you remember seeing him at the basketball game?”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember because I had a crush on a guy he hung out with.”

Nikki paused in her scribbling and glanced up at her. “What was his name?”

“Oh my God, you’re kidding, right? It was twenty-five years ago. I can’t even remember what he looked like.”

“What was it like, living with the Duffy family?” Seley asked.

She gave the little half shrug. “It was okay. Better than a lot of places in the system.”

She fussed with her teaspoon. Her hand was trembling when she picked it up, and it clanked against her mug. She put it down. “I don’t like to talk about that time in my life,” she admitted. “It’s my past, and that’s where I want to leave it. I live in the present now.”

“Yet you work with girls who have been in that same dark place,” Seley said. “That’s commendable.”

Burke seemed uncomfortable with the praise. She didn’t know quite where to look. She made another small nervous gesture with her hand. “I’m only doing what I wish someone would have done for me—what Chrysalis did do for me in the end.”

“You went by Angie back then,” Nikki said.

“‘Evangeline’ seemed incredibly uncool at the time, so I became Angie.”

And when she hadn’t wanted to be Angie—the foster child, the orphan, the homeless kid with a pile of horrible memories—she had become Evi, Nikki surmised.

“I spoke with Jennifer Duffy this afternoon,” Nikki said. “She has some fond memories of your time with the family. She said you used to read to her. She’s a librarian now.”

“That’s good. I’m glad for her. She was a sweet girl.”

“She had a rough time after you left. She had a rough time over her dad’s murder. I think it haunts her that it happened right under her window. Not that she could have done anything about it, but she was right there. Kids think the world revolves around them. Something bad happens, they think it must somehow be their fault.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“What was your impression of the family? Did they seem happy? Was there any tension between Ted and Barbie?”

She sighed, uncomfortable again.

“Mrs. Duffy was . . . very demanding,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Penny and I were supposed to do all the housework and babysit the kids when she was at work or wanted to go out. Mr. Duffy was hardly ever there.”

“Go out where?” Seley asked.

“I don’t know. In the summer she was gone a lot. Shopping. Lunch with her friends, I guess. She worked nights, slept until noon, and then would be gone a lot in the afternoon.”

“So, you and Penny Williams were basically servants.”

“Pretty much. Yes.”

“What was Mr. Duffy like?” Nikki asked. “Did you get along with him?”

She looked down into her tea as if she might see the memory playing there like a movie on a screen. A sad movie. “He was always tired and angry, and he drank too much. When he was home he didn’t want to be bothered with the kids. He spent most of his time in his office with the door shut or in the basement. He had a workbench down there.”

“How did Mr. and Mrs. get along?”

“They fought a lot. Not big fights, just constant sniping. She nagged him all the time. He called her Barbie the Ball Buster. It was sad, really.”

Sad for Angie Jeager, too, Nikki thought. The one thing a foster child needed most was a sense of safety within a family. Safe was the last thing kids felt when the adults in their lives didn’t get along.

“Did they argue about anything in particular?” Seley asked.

“Money. How he wasn’t home enough, didn’t take care of things around the house. That kind of thing.”

“Did Mr. Duffy’s brother come around a lot?”

“Sometimes it seemed like he was there more than Mr. Duffy. He came over and fixed things around the house when Mr. Duffy didn’t get to it quickly enough for Mrs. Duffy’s liking.” She shook her head a little. “I’m surprised I remember that much. That was two lifetimes ago.”

“Did you ever think there might be something going on between him and Mrs. Duffy?” Nikki asked.

“I never thought about it. I never saw them kissing or touching or anything. Although, I did think it was kind of mean the way she would use one brother against the other that way,” she said. “Like Ted wasn’t a good enough husband, so she called in his twin. She wasn’t a very nice person, but, on the other hand, she gave a home to two foster kids.”