pointed out.
Abby tried valiantly, and I even turned away at one point, relying on the inevitable closet mirror to watch her. She caught me looking at her in the mirror, and closed the script.
“Don’t stop,” I said.
She leaned over and put the script on her nightstand, then turned off the light and reached over to me. Abby pulled me close to her and kissed me with an impressive amount of passion for a woman who’d spent all day shepherding two children around our nation’s capital.
“C’mere,” she said.
“Two nights in a row? You’ll do anything to avoid reading that script with me in the room, won’t you?”
“Pretty much,” she said.
The next morning (ahem!), I got up early to meet Stephanie and her sons at Steph’s house, and left a note for Abby saying I’d meet her and the kids at the hotel before checkout time.
By the time I navigated the minivan into a parking space near Stephanie’s house, I was a wreck. If you have a car, Washington makes even less sense than most cities. They even have streets that are one-way at certain times of the day, and two-way the rest of the time. Now, that’s entertainment.
So I was a wee bit late when Steph opened the door. She had been kind enough to put out a basket of muffins and bagels on the table, along with a pot of coffee and, in my honor, a smaller pot of real hot chocolate. The woman had class, I’ll give her that.
Stephanie introduced me to her sons. The taller one, Lou Jr., looked me straight in the eye. He has dark, straight hair and no doubt is his grandmother’s favorite. You couldn’t find Semitic blood in this kid if you went in with a sewer snake.
He shook my hand like he was damn glad to know me, and even smiled—the same smile Legs had in all the newspaper clip photos. I tried not to dislike the kid too quickly on the basis of his accidental similarity to a noted asshole.
“How can we help you, Mr. Tucker?” My god, the private schools really had done a bang-up job on this one. He’d be President of the United States by the end of the week.
“Well, if your mother will be so kind as to leave us to our business. . .” Stephanie nodded unhappily, took a worried glance at Jason, which I noticed, and closed the door behind her. I looked back at Junior.
“You two have been away at school, is that right?” Always best to start off with something easy, unless you have only one question to ask.
“Well, I’ve been at college, but it’s just Georgetown,” Junior began. (“Just Georgetown.” That’s like saying, “I have a car, but it’s just a Porsche.”) “So I’m around here pretty frequently. I have an apartment near school, but that’s not far from here, either.”
I turned to Jason, who had been standing near the window, but unlike his grandmother, facing into the room. He was lighter in complexion and hair, and his eyes looked wary. Clearly, the better interview, because he wasn’t as sure of himself, and might say something he wasn’t supposed to.
“How about you, Jason?”
“Pringley. It’s in Annapolis.” It wasn’t a mumble, but it might just as well have been. Jason wanted out of this room, and now.
“Is it too far for you to visit often?” Now I sounded like my own mother.
“No, I come down once a month or so.”
“When did you see your father last?”
There was a bit of eye contact between the two before Junior decided to answer for both of them. “I saw him the night before it. . . happened. . . and Jason was here the week before that,” he said.
“Anything unusual? Did he seem tense, or distracted?”
There was no hesitation this time. “No.”
“Anything going on between him and your mother?”
“No.” Jason still hadn’t moved a muscle, nor was he attempting to answer for himself.
“What kind of relationship did you have with your father?”
Junior looked surprised. “He was my father,” he said, with a degree of “how-stupid-are-you” in it.
“Marvin Gaye’s father shot and killed him. What was your relationship like?”
“I respected him,” Junior said, his eyes burning death rays into my skull. “He had accomplished an enormous amount, and he was still a relatively young man.”
“How about you, Jason?”
I have no doubt that Jason was about to acquiesce to my brilliant line of questioning, but he never had the chance. The dining room door opened, and Lester Gibson walked