Mission road - By Rick Riordan Page 0,48
Good money. I was the fourth or fifth PI the dad hired. Crazy damn family.”
Madeleine’s eyes narrowed. She was still holding the meat cleaver. “Who is this old man?”
I wondered if I should risk asking Sam more questions.
I’d learned never to assume he remembers anything, but also never to underestimate him. At times, he could tell me every fact about a case from thirty years ago. Other times, his memory was a house of cards. Put too much weight on it, and the whole thing collapsed.
“Sam, do you remember what you found out?”
He scowled at me over the rim of his teacup. “About what?”
“About Frankie White.”
“He died. It was the father’s fault.”
Silence.
Robert Johnson pushed the empty saucer around with his tongue.
I said, “Um, Sam—”
“The father was bad news. Other PIs were afraid to tell him the truth. I think he knew, deep down. I tried to tell him, but hell, he didn’t want to listen. He’d already decided it was some business rival did the hit. Nobody likes to hear, ‘It’s all your fault. You screwed up your own kids.’ ”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Sam.”
“Daughter and son.” Sam shook his head. “Both mental cases. Adolescent girl was institutionalized—manslaughter, I think.”
Madeleine stared at her leather pumps. She seemed to notice for the first time that she was standing in a puddle of blood.
“Madeleine,” I said. “Put the cleaver down, okay?”
She kicked over one of the kitchen chairs. The cat vaporized from the table.
“Madeleine,” I said again.
She threw the cleaver. It twirled past my head and impaled itself with a THWOCK in the corkboard by the oven.
The edge of the blade sank into the wall maybe two inches. The handle shuddered.
“I’ll be in the car,” she said gruffly.
The back door slammed behind her.
My heart started beating again.
“New girlfriend, Fred?” Sam asked cheerfully. “I liked the Chinese lady better.”
Mrs. Loomis studied me with concern.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “If I leave, will you two be all right?”
She glanced apprehensively at the meat cleaver in the corkboard. “Nothing I can’t clean up, dear. Just you be careful.”
She’d never called me “dear” before. I tried not to think of it as a bad sign—the sort of kindness you’d extend to the recently deceased.
I pointed a finger at Robert Johnson, who had reappeared on the table the instant the offending visitor departed. “You take better care of these people.”
The cat gave me a smug look. Translation: As long as the tea and milk keep coming, I’m good.
When I was at the door, Sam called: “Hey, Fred, be careful with that White family, okay? I’m pretty sure they got mafia connections.”
I promised I’d be careful. Then I went out to the backyard where the black limo was waiting.
• • •
“DON’T ASK,” MADELEINE SNARLED.
“I didn’t.”
She slumped in the back seat.
I’d expected her to ride up front now that Ralph was gone, but she’d climbed in back with me again. I guess she enjoyed torturing herself.
“I had a classmate in middle school.” She exhaled shakily. “She made some comments . . . a particular comment about my brother. I lost control.”
We drove past Alamo Plaza.
Shivering tourists were gathering for the evening ghost tour. Homeless men huddled like grubby gifts at the base of the forty-foot Christmas tree. Behind them, the old mission’s facade glowed white—a frozen chunk of 1836, melting and forlorn in the middle of downtown.
Madeleine turned toward me, her eyes hungry. “I wasn’t institutionalized. My dad’s lawyers had to pull strings to keep me out of juvenile detention. They got me into a residential therapy program. Stokes-McLean. Four years.”
Garlanded lampposts went by on Houston Street.
I knew something about Stokes-McLean. The facility was a former state sanitarium, a massive brick haunted-house-looking place not far from Mission San José. I’d seen what they did with problem kids—intense behavior modification sessions, usually six to nine weeks. I’d never known anybody who’d been sentenced to the program for four years.
“This was just before Frankie’s murder?” I asked.
She nodded.
“You were trying to defend him.”
She was silent through the next stoplight. “My dad promised me Frankie wasn’t doing anything wrong. Right up to the end . . . he told me to ignore anything I heard.”
“He also promised Frankie would stop hitting you.”
She looked down, scratched a fleck of blood off her knuckle. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Those bruises you sported in middle school weren’t from your classmates.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I shouldn’t even have tried.”
“What did Sam mean about your father being to blame?”
Before