Locust Lane(58)
Once alone, Danielle checked the news. They continued to hold Christopher Mahoun, but only as a witness. She considered calling Gates to see what the delay was, but they’d already spoken briefly when Danielle checked in this morning, and the detective still wouldn’t even confirm that it was Mahoun. Just that they were holding an unnamed youth as a material witness while they were conducting further investigations.
There was, however, one major new development online. Two additional names had appeared. Jack Parrish and Hannah Holt. Both, like Mahoun, seniors at Emerson High. Danielle checked them out. The boy looked like somebody the heroine of an eighties movie would date until she figured out the nerdy star was really the one for her. He had a snide, superior smile and a lean, muscular body. In one photo he posed by a late-model GTI; in another he was whacking a tennis ball like he was trying to teach it a lesson. Hannah Holt had suspicious eyes and a hesitant smile. Danielle dragged their photos onto her desktop, as well as the one of Mahoun making the rounds. She arrayed them side by side and stared at them for a long time, trying to figure out what the hell Eden had been doing with this crew.
She thought about Patrick Noone, wondering how he fit into it all. Lost on the streets of his own town at three in the morning. Drunk, probably; maybe even crazy in a way Danielle didn’t yet understand. His story about the dog would have been difficult to believe if she herself hadn’t seen the thing limping. She should be taking everything this man told her with a boulder-sized grain of salt, but for some reason she trusted him. And yet there was something he still couldn’t bring himself to say. For the thousandth time since their improbable late-night meeting outside the Bondurants’, she could hear that unfinished sentence. There was …
The card he’d handed her was in her purse. It was black and white, yet somehow radiant. The letters were raised a little—it made her want to run her thumb over them, like she was blind. It suggested the world she’d never inhabited—the place where things were easy. To her surprise, she was put right through. To her even greater surprise, he agreed to meet her. But it was no surprise at all that he suggested a bar out on Route 9.
The Royal Lounge looked like it had been in business continuously since they invented liquor. She arrived first. Finding a booth wasn’t a challenge. The REO Speedwagon song playing softly over the cheap speakers sounded like someone was vacuuming the back room. A fat drinker at the bar turned laboriously to check her out. She narrowed her eyes and he kept turning laboriously until he was facing the bar again, a surprisingly graceful pirouette of rejection.
Patrick Noone arrived, wearing an expensive suit and sunglasses that the boys she’d grown up with would have risked prison time to steal. Whatever else he might have been, the man certainly was attractive. He had the good grace not to smile at her as he slid into the booth. When he took off his glasses the whites of his eyes were as clear as his business card and he didn’t smell of alcohol, at least not more than the booth’s ruptured Naugahyde seats.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Functioning.”
“Functioning is good. Better than the opposite, anyway.”
“Is it?” she asked.
He asked her what she wanted to drink. She said Chardonnay because she wanted a drink but didn’t want that much of a drink. He went to get their refreshments. The bartender, a short woman in her sixties who looked like she’d rather be working just about anywhere else on God’s green earth than the Royal Lounge, greeted Patrick Noone familiarly. He stared at the bar as he waited for the drinks. Danielle took the opportunity to study him. To say he didn’t belong in this place was an understatement. He looked like he belonged in one of those downtown clubs whose heavy doors were guarded by men dressed like they were protecting the queen of England.
“This could be colder,” he said apologetically as he placed the glass in front of her.
She shrugged. She hadn’t come for the Chardonnay. He was drinking something clear with a slice of lime. There was an interval of silence that would have normally been filled with small talk. He seemed comfortable inhabiting it with her.
“So I’m wondering why they haven’t arrested this Mahoun kid,” she said finally.
“What have the police told you about that?”
“Nothing. What do you know about him?”
“I know his father. He has a restaurant in town.” He paused. “People are surprised.”
“Are you?” she asked.
“I’m not really surprised by much these days. But yeah. I am. It just doesn’t fit. I’m sorry if that’s uncomfortable for you to hear, but there it is.”
He took a drink like he needed it. Not gulping it down, exactly. But savoring it.
“You said something last night,” she said. “Well, you started to say something.”
He watched her. Not unfriendly. Just guarded.
“You said there was. But then you stopped yourself.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. Like you saw something other than the dog when you stopped your car.”
He looked into his glass as he swirled the ice and lime. This man had something to say to her and she had no idea how to get him to say it except give him time.
“I lost a daughter,” he said. “Two years ago.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry to hear that.”