The Innocent
“Hi.”
The girl cupped her hands over her eyes and blinked. She was pretty enough, with blonde highlights that you can only find in youth or a bottle. “Hi.”
Loren didn’t waste time with preamble. “Does Matt Hunter come over a lot?”
“Matt? Sure.”
The girl had answered without hesitation. Loren muffled a smile. Ah, youth.
“How often?”
Kyra—that was definitely the name—shifted now, slightly more wary, but she was still young. As long as Loren remained the authority figure, she’d talk. “I don’t know. Few times a week, I guess.”
“Good guy?”
“What?”
“Matt Hunter. Is he a good guy?”
Kyra gave a huge smile. “He’s great.”
“Good with the kids?”
“The best.”
Loren nodded, feigning disinterest. “Was he here last night?” she asked as casually as she could.
But now Kyra cocked her head to the side. “Didn’t you ask Mrs. Hunter these questions?”
“I’m just reconfirming. He was here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“All night?”
“I was in the city with some friends. I don’t know.”
“There were sheets on the couch. Who stayed on it?”
She gave a shrug. “I guess it was Matt.”
Loren risked a glance behind her. Marsha Hunter disappeared from the window. She’d be moving toward the back door now. The girl would not remember June 2. Loren had enough for now, though she didn’t have a clue what it meant.
“Do you know where Matt lives?”
“In Irvington, I think.”
The back door opened. Enough, Loren thought. Finding Matt Hunter shouldn’t be a problem. She smiled and started away then, trying not to give Marsha a reason to call and warn her brother-in-law. She tried to walk away as casually as possible. She waved a good-bye at Marsha. Marsha’s return wave was slow.
Loren hit the driveway and headed toward her car, but another face from her distant past—wow, this case was turning into a bad episode of Loren Muse, This Is Your Life—stood by her car. He leaned against the hood, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Hey, Loren.”
“As I live and breathe,” she said. “Detective Lance Banner.”
“In the flesh.” He tossed the cigarette onto the ground and stomped on it.
She pointed to the stub. “I may write you up for that.”
“I thought you were county homicide.”
“Cigarettes kill. Don’t you read the carton?”
Lance Banner gave her a crooked smile. His car, an obvious unmarked police vehicle, was parked across the street. “Been a long time.”
“That firearm safety convention in Trenton,” Loren said. “What, six, seven years ago?”
“Something like that.” He folded his arms, kept leaning against her hood. “You here on official business?”
“I am.”
“It involve a former school chum of ours?”
“It might.”
“Wanna tell me about it?”
“Wanna tell me why you’re here?”
“I live near here.”
“So?”
“So I spotted a county vehicle. Figured I might be able to be of some assistance.”
“How’s that?”
“Matt Hunter wants to move back to town,” Lance said. “He’s closing on a house not far from here.”
Loren said nothing.
“Does that work into your case?”
“I don’t see how.”
Lance smiled and opened the car door. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Maybe we can figure out how together.”
Chapter 16
“HEY, GUESS WHAT I’m doing to your wife right now?”
Matt held the phone to his ear.
The man whispered, “Matt? You still there?”
Matt said nothing.
“Yo, Matt, did you tattle on me? I mean, did you tell the wife about me sending you those pictures?”
He couldn’t move.
“Because Olivia is being much more protective with her phone. Oh, she won’t stop doing me. That ain’t gonna happen. She’s addicted, you know what I’m saying?”
Matt’s eyes closed.
“But all of a sudden she says she wants to be more careful. So I’m wondering, you know, guy to guy here, did you say something? Let her in on our little secret?”
Matt’s hand clamped down so hard he thought the phone might crack in his hand. He tried to take in deep breaths, but his chest kept hitching up. He found his voice and said, “When I find you, Charles Talley, I’m going to rip off your head and crap down your neck.”
Silence.
“You still there, Charles?”
The voice on the phone was a whisper. “Gotta run. She’s coming back.”
And then he was gone.
Matt told Rolanda to cancel his afternoon appointments.
“You don’t have any appointments,” she said.
“Don’t be a wiseass.”
“You want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Later.”
He started home. The camera phone was still in his hand. He waited until he pulled up to their place off Main Street in Irvington. The already-sparse grass had pretty much died in the recent drought—there had been no rainfall on the East Coast for three weeks. In suburbs like Livingston, the lushness of one’s lawn is taken seriously. Banning it, sitting by idly as one’s green deadened to brown, was worthy of a good neighborly teeth-gnashing over the new Weber Genesis Gold B backyard grill. Here, in Irvington, nobody cared.
Lawns were a rich man’s game.
Matt and Olivia lived in a declining two-family held together by aluminum siding. They had the right side of the dwelling; the Owens, an African-American family of five, had the left. Both sides had two bedrooms and one and a half baths.
He took the stoop two steps at a time. When he got inside he hit the speed-dial-one spot for Olivia. It went into her voice mail again. He wasn’t surprised. He waited for the beep.
“I know you’re not at the Ritz,” Matt said. “I know it was you in the blonde wig. I know it wasn’t a big joke. I even know about Charles Talley. So call me and explain.”
He hung up and looked out the window. There was a Shell gas station on the corner. He watched it. His breaths were coming in shallow gulps. He tried to slow them down. He grabbed a suitcase from the closet, threw it on the bed, started stuffing his clothes into it.