The Word of a Child (15 page)

Hugh was making horrible faces as he chewed. "It's just
not the same."

"I'll bet they'd be really good if we froze them,"
Evan said enthusiastically. "Uncle Connor! You're back. These are really
good."

"I'd better eat my sandwich first."

"So," his brother said, "who was it you went
charging after?"

"Yeah." Evan cackled. "Was she pretty? That's
what Uncle Hugh wants to know!"

"Sure she's pretty." Connor made a production out
of grabbing his sandwich and a can of pop. "But it was just somebody I
wanted to have a word with."

"I know the girl you were talking to," Maddie said
unexpectedly. "My class reads to little kids and helps them with their
reading. She's in Mrs. Kinnard's class. Her name's funny." She frowned.
"Like … like Sophie." Her face cleared and she said in triumph,
"Zofie! Isn't that a weird name?"

"Well, her last name is Stavig, which I think is
Slavic, so maybe Zofie is a common name where they came from. Like if your last
name is Moreno, you might pick Elena instead of Hortense for a first
name."

"Hortense!" Evan thought that was hilarious.

But Maddie nodded seriously.

Creases deepening on his forehead made Hugh look older. His
tone, too, was grave. "So that was Mariah Stavig."

Connor grunted his assent.

"Is she divorced?"

"Yeah."

Hugh still wasn't happy. "She's not holding a
grudge?"

"I think maybe she's getting over it."

"Was she mad at you?" their niece asked. "How
come?"

"Back when she was married, I investigated her husband
for something." Both of the kids knew what their dad and uncles did, and
how people were funny about police officers, liking them a lot when they needed
help, but being afraid of them, or even resentful, the rest of the time.

"Oh," Maddie said.

Hugh waited until Connor reluctantly met his eyes. "Is
this smart?" he asked.

Connor thought about lying:
I
really did have a question for her. Lighten up.

But the McLean brothers had never lied to each other.

"I don't know," he said finally. "But it
seems to matter."

Hugh thought about it and nodded. "There's more than
one way to get wounded in the line of duty."

 "I know."

Hugh was right: mixing business and pleasure was rarely a
good idea.

Oh, yeah. There were plenty of reasons why Connor should
leave Mariah Stavig alone.

But he was already planning what to say the next time he saw
her.

Mariah still couldn't
believe
she'd practically landed on her butt right in front of him. He always made her
self-conscious. Wouldn't you think being self-conscious would make you
more
careful
where you placed your feet, how you moved? Not her. He'd had to perform heroics
to save her from a humiliating if not painful splat on the wet, cold ground,
and
he'd had
the grace not to laugh at her.

"Is something wrong, Mommy?"

Mariah turned her head to smile at a now clean Zofie
buckling herself into the car. "Not a thing. Did you decide for sure where
we're going for lunch?"

"I think I want pizza. Can we have pizza?"

"We can have whatever you want," she agreed
recklessly.

"Then pizza." Her daughter gave a decisive nod.
"Rizzotti's."

"My favorite." Mariah gave her a hug before
backing out of the driveway.

"I know," Zofie said smugly. She gave a small
bounce on the booster seat she still, reluctantly, used. "That was a nice
man at the soccer field. The policeman."

"Detective McLean?" She congratulated herself on
sounding vague and surprised, as if she had to dredge his identity from her
memory, so little had it meant to her to run into him there.

"Yeah. Him."

"He does seem nice."

Her daughter turned a puzzled face on her. "You said he
was a friend."

"Oh, he's just the kind of friend you chat to when you
meet. Not the kind you do things with."

"He wanted to do something with us. Eat cold
s'mores."

"So he did." She managed a credible laugh.
"Imagine how hard the chocolate bars would be."

Zofie frowned ahead. "It might have been fun."

"Yeah. It might have been. I just didn't want to
intrude."

Even at six, Zofie knew that being polite included not
"intruding." "You mean, he might have asked and not really meant
it?" she questioned seriously.

"Well…" Mariah temporized. "I think
he
meant
it. But we don't know his brother or niece and nephew, who were also there.
They might not have wanted strangers joining them for lunch."

"Oh." Zofie nodded. "Maybe he'll ask us to do
something when they're not there."

Mariah hoped she had conveyed without words that she did
not
wish to
be asked again. She just wished she didn't have this tangle of mixed feelings:
wistfulness and distracting physical awareness and a sort of throat-stopping
knowledge that under other circumstances…

But this wasn't other circumstances, she reminded herself
harshly, swallowing the lump in her throat. Detective Connor McLean was the man
who three years ago walked into her living room and said a few quiet words that
tore her family to shreds.

Anyway, she knew perfectly well she had no business
remarrying. She'd promised to love Simon. Perhaps he had a hotter temper than
she'd realized when she married him. Perhaps he was sometimes impatient,
sometimes dismissed her as if her wants were insignificant next to his, but he
was also a kind father, faithful to his wife, a good bread-earner, a steady family
man. He hadn't deserved her lack of faith. She had let a stranger's accusations
have more weight in her heart than did her years with Simon.

What did that say about her?

Marriage was for better or worse. She had always despised the
celebrities with their magnificent, romantic fourth weddings. Love was true and
patient and stubborn and quite different from the wild excitement of romance.

She had promised the stubborn kind of love, and not
delivered. How could she ever, in good conscience, walk down the aisle again
and make a promise she hadn't kept the first time?

Casual dates, maybe. The anguish of love, no.

And somehow, Connor McLean didn't strike her as a casual
man.

"You know, I may not even see him for ages," she
said out loud to Zofie. "Besides, it's not his company I want for
lunch."

"Whose do you want?" Zofie asked, half knowing,
half liking reassurance.

"Yours, silly!"

Zofie giggled happily, forgetting the policeman. Mariah
wished he'd let her do the same.

Chapter
7

«
^
»

S
unday afternoon Connor
took Maddie and Evan home and found John and Natalie already
there.

"We missed the kids," big brother John said sheepishly,
letting his wife take his place hugging them. "We caught an earlier
ferry."

"You should have grabbed every minute," Connor
said, as they all walked into the house. "When's the next time you'll have
that kind of privacy?"

John gave an evil grin. "The kids know better than to
surprise us in our bedroom."

"Ah. They've already had the visual aid part of Sex Ed
101, family style?"

"Nah. Just seen a few rustling sheets and heard Daddy
snap, 'Whaddaya want?'"

"Good thing," Connor said, meaning it.

One of his most vivid memories, probably because the sight
had been so disturbing, was walking in on his parents making love. He still had
a snapshot tucked in his memory. He'd retreated silently, terrified by the
seeming violence of the act and his mother's cries. It was years before he
could put what he'd seen in context.

His cell phone rang.

"Damn," he muttered.

The caller's number didn't look familiar. "McLean," he said.

A short silence was followed by a girl's hesitant voice.
"Is this, um, the police officer?"

His hunter's instincts sharpened. "Yes, this is
Detective McLean. Who is this?"

"Amy Weinstein. You came and talked to me about Tracy."

"Right." He waved John on, staying outside on the
arbor-covered brick patio by himself. "Did you think of something you
forgot to tell me?"

"Well… It's something I didn't want to say in front of
my parents," she said earnestly.

"Got you."

"The thing is, that high school guy we were talking
about? He did come to the dance. I saw him."

Feeling an intense burst of satisfaction, Connor said,
"Ah. I thought you might know who he is."

"Will he get in trouble?"

"Not if he didn't do anything that earns it."

"Oh." She was silent for a moment. "'Cause
he's kind of nice. Funny and everything. You know? He doesn't look right
through us just because we're middle-schoolers."

"I guess not, if he's interested in Tracy."

"She actually ignored him at the dance. I even heard
her say, 'Why did
you
come?'—like it was really stupid of him or something."

Thus ticking the kid off, thought Connor. What she was
telling him fit his imagined scenario as if he'd scripted it himself.

"So I don't see how he could have anything to do with …
um, what you were asking about, but I thought I should tell you."

"Calling me was a responsible, smart decision, Amy. My
job would be easier if people didn't keep secrets that often have nothing to do
with the crime I'm investigating, not realizing how much time I waste trying to
find out something that was irrelevant all along." He paused a beat before
saying gently, "I will need his name."

"I know," she said in a small voice.

He waited.

"Chad. Chad Glazer."

"Do you know where I could find this Chad?"

"Tracy says his parents have a really cool house in Old Town. That's all I know."

"Amy, thank you."

"Do you have to tell anybody I'm the one who told
you?" she asked in a rush.

"Nope," he assured her. "My lips are
sealed."

She gave a gusty sigh. "Okay. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Amy," but she was already gone.

Chad
Glazer. Sunday evening would be a perfect time to catch
even a teenage boy at home.

A quick look at John's phone book located Connor's target.
Only three Glazers lived in Port Dare. A Robert A. had an address not ten
blocks from John's place.

Connor stayed for dinner, a delivered pizza, with his
brother's family, mainly out of reluctance to go to his empty apartment or grab
a fast-food meal on his own. Afterward, he drove the ten blocks.

Tracy
was
right: the turn-of-the-century Queen Anne style house on a corner lot with a
terraced yard and glassed-in conservatory was a beauty. On the way up the front
walk, a distant bell rang in his memory. Didn't a Dr. Glazer sit on the
hospital board and head Internal Medicine? Or was it Cardiac Care?

With night having settled, Connor was unseen on the dark
porch looking in a leaded-glass window at a dining room, where a slight man of
perhaps forty was seated at the long mahogany table, pencil in hand and a
newspaper spread in front of him. A crossword puzzle addict? He said something;
somewhere, a woman laughed.