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“I certainly wouldn’t repeat it as if you’d said it. But I can’t deny saying it a few times myself already. Frank seemed to use fairly decent subcontractors. Both the electrical and plumbing guys seemed to be on top of things, but Frank and Darnell weren’t anything to write home about.”

Fernandez stood and I felt that the interview was over. It wasn’t something I was going to argue with; I was anxious to get out of here and take Ben with me. We stopped by the front room and he cautioned Ben not to leave town without telling the police, and promised to be in touch soon. Ben looked like he’d calmed down a little, but not a whole lot.

I waited until we were about halfway back to the dorm before I said what was on my mind. “Before we went into the station, you said that nothing that happened Monday would have given the police any reason to suspect you. And the detective asked me about any arguments you might have had with Frank Collins. When I put those two things together, it makes me think there might be some reason that
somebody
would think you two didn’t get along so well.”

“We didn’t.” There was more anger in that short sentence than I’d expected.

“Okay, tell me more. It can’t have been too serious or Detective Fernandez would have kept you a lot longer. But it means something, Ben.”

He fiddled with the radio knobs and hunched his shoulders before he answered. “It’s embarrassing. Are you sure you need to know?”

“I’d certainly like to know. It would help me understand what’s going on here.”

He still didn’t look at me. “Okay, well…it was about you, Mom.”

“About me?” This was even more confusing.

“Yeah. The last time I came home before Thanksgiving there was no vent in the wall where it should be in the bathroom. When I went to put it back in, I found a little hole in the wall that led to the back of my closet. And there was a stepladder in there. I think he was spying on you in the bathroom.”

“Eewww.” Just the thought, even if it wasn’t true, gave me the shivers. “Ben, did you actually say something to him about it?”

“Yeah, I did. I caught him outside his truck on the driveway that day, and I told him what I thought about it. He laughed and said I had things all wrong. But he wouldn’t look me in the eye, either. I guess I was yelling. And I guess Mr. Morgan saw us, too.”

That would explain a lot. If I hadn’t been driving I would have leaned over and hugged my son. I’d never been prouder of him for doing something dumb, if that made sense. At least the argument had been for a good cause and I expected he’d told Fernandez about it.

“Ben, I think you’re going to be all right,” I said, instead of trying to hug him and drive at the same time. And I prayed that what I was telling him was really true.

B
y the time I dropped Ben off at the dorm he had calmed down enough to promise that he would spend the evening getting something to eat and then studying. And he assured me that some of his suite-mates would be around, even if Ted wouldn’t be. Once I was sure he wasn’t alone or too upset, I let him go and waved him off. Hard thing to do, but he was trying to be as adult as possible and I was trying to let him.

Time had gotten away from me, and Christian Friends had already started over at the Conejo Community Chapel. I decided that even if I only caught the last half of the meeting, I needed to go anyway.

If nothing else, I needed to get Linnette and Dot up to date on what happened with our trip to the station, and what Ben had told me. The church building looked homey and welcoming when I pulled up into the parking lot. In the nine months or so that I’d been attending services here it had become a true church home to me. The long brick building with its sanctuary and classrooms reminded me somewhat of my grandmother’s church in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The folks in Missouri’s boot heel would never have considered landscaping with palm trees, of course.

“Great, you made it!” Linnette cheered when I opened the door to the classroom where Christian Friends gathered around in chairs. It felt so good to be wanted I almost burst into tears. Being this emotional all the time hadn’t happened in a while, not since the worst of the mess after Dennis’s death last winter.

“I made it,” I said, trying not to sound as shaky as I felt. “Let me get coffee and something to eat and I’ll come join you.” The coffeepot still held about four cups of coffee and beside it was half of a really nice looking loaf of some kind of nut bread. “It’s pumpkin,” Lexy Adams called out when she saw me looking at it. “My mother-in-law baked it and it’s really good.”

I cut myself a generous slice to go with my coffee, slathered the pumpkin bread with cream cheese and found an empty chair. Maybe this wouldn’t be the most balanced dinner I’d have this week, but at least I was among friends. That counted for a lot.

“Dot tells us that you were at the sheriff’s department with Ben,” Linnette said. “That’s all she would say, so if you want us to know more, you’ll have to fill us in.”

“I said a little more than that,” Dot piped up. “I told them how rotten I felt about maybe causing your trip.”

“You didn’t cause our trip,” I said between bites of the pumpkin bread. Lexy had been right; it tasted delicious. Surely all the raisins and walnuts in it made it nutritious, right? “You simply told the truth to Detective Fernandez about seeing somebody talking with Frank Collins. The fact that he assumed it was Ben is his problem.” I looked at Dot, wondering how much more to ask her here. Finishing the last of my snack, I decided to plow ahead.

“Have you and Buck talked about all this?”

“Quite a bit,” she said, still looking more solemn than I normally expect to see Dot.

“Did he tell you that he saw Ben arguing with Frank one day before Thanksgiving?”

Dot nodded, looking tearful. I explained everything that Ben had told me to her, and to the group in general, and after that Dot looked much more comfortable. “I knew there had to be some good explanation. Ben is just too nice a young man to be involved in anything like this.”

“Meanwhile it sounds like Frank wasn’t all that nice to anybody,” Lexy said.

“I think you’re right.” Dot’s lips thinned to a slender line. “I gave him the job because he was family, and because I thought that surely he couldn’t mess it up. I really thought that he’d changed with age like his mother said he had, and he was a responsible human being now.” She shook her head, implying that nothing like that had happened. It also made me wonder how much worse he could have been as a young man. Maybe I didn’t want to know.

Dot had caught the rest of the Christian Friends up on as much as she knew about Frank’s death. Once we’d discussed everything about Ben and his involvement, or rather lack of involvement that Fernandez had kind of blown out of proportion, they had me tell my version of finding Frank last Monday.

It wasn’t a particularly pleasant story, and by the end of it Heather was shuddering. “I’m glad I didn’t bring Corinna tonight,” she said. “I know she doesn’t hear or understand everything yet, but I don’t want to take chances. She’s babbling more every day and some of it sounds like words.”

“Is your mom watching her?” Sandy had warmed to being a grandmother in the ten months since Corinna’s birth, which was a comfort to all of us. She’d been quite angry about her daughter being pregnant outside of marriage, especially when all the commotion had begun over the baby’s father. Heather and I had both been taken in by the same con man, and sometimes I wondered who’d suffered more.

I’d actually been married to Dennis for several years, and he’d managed to weasel more money out of me. Possibly, though, he’d done more damage in Heather’s life. At 32, she’s now a single mom who’s lost her trust in men, starting over with a new job in order to be near family, and she had tossed close to ten thousand dollars after Dennis that was never going to come back.

“Mom’s watching her, of course,” Heather said with a smile, leaning her head back with her hand to her forehead in a dramatic gesture. “Nobody else could
possibly
be good enough for her precious granddaughter. Especially when I am cruel enough to leave her in the community college day care so many hours every week.”

I didn’t bother to argue with her, because I could see the twinkle in her eye that told me she was just parroting her mother’s comments. I’d seen the day care facility Heather was talking about, and it was one of the best ones in the county. Not only did it serve the faculty and staff of the community college, but students training in early childhood education worked a number of hours there and most of them were fabulous with their young charges. They were carefully supervised, and I felt sure that Corinna was getting the best care possible.

At the same time her grandmother was probably worried and maybe even feeling a little guilty that she couldn’t take care of Corinna herself. And I’m sure she harbored some lingering resentment against Dennis for going off and deserting her daughter. That part I couldn’t blame her for; I felt a lot of lingering resentment against Dennis myself. He’d left me high and dry with no place to live and little money. The resentment had faded as time went on, because it did absolutely no good to keep it. Hanging around with the Christian Friends and listening to Pastor George on Sundays were helping with the resentment quite a bit. Getting more deeply acquainted with Scripture helped, too.

Unfortunately, the last week had just given me a new target or targets for resentment. I wasn’t sure whether I was more upset about Frank Collins getting killed in the driveway when Ben was around, or angry at Ray Fernandez. Surely he couldn’t really think that Ben had anything to do with this? I know that his job meant he had to suspect everybody until he knew something different, but it was difficult to be on this end of the suspicion.

I’d been there myself for a brief while during the investigation into Dennis’s death, and it was an unpleasant place to be. Heather had been under even more scrutiny and I’d seen how uncomfortable she felt. To have Ben in that spot, even peripherally, was even more unpleasant. And I guess if I could be totally unbiased about the facts as Ray Fernandez saw them, instead of being Ben’s mom, I had to admit that there were reasons to suspect him at first.

Ben had spent the night in my apartment not to far from where Frank was killed. Someone who matched his description was seen talking to Frank in an animated fashion sometime in the hour or two before his death. And at least one person had seen and heard Ben having an argument with Frank on a prior occasion. Adding up all those things as cold hard facts made the situation look bad for Ben. Granted, each fact had a good explanation, but lumped together the best circumstances looked a little shady.

During the last murder investigation I’d been a part of, Ray Fernandez had been aggravating but fair for the most part. I didn’t agree with all of his ideas last winter, especially when he suspected Heather of killing Dennis. Then again, though, I didn’t have anything to back up my arguments that I could take to the police as proof. From the beginning I’d had the feeling that no matter what Dennis had put Heather through, she wasn’t the kind of person to kill him over the grief she’d suffered. I had been right, but it had taken solid proof in another direction to get the sheriff’s department to see that point of view.

Things were awfully similar now. I knew it would take proof of the actual killer to get Fernandez to suspect someone other than Ben. I prayed that we didn’t have to get involved in the investigation this time. And when it came time to voice my concerns of the evening in group prayer with the Christian Friends, that’s exactly what I asked for out loud. I knew that these women would be the first ones to help me if we needed to get involved, but it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Holding hands in prayer, Lexy’s warm, soft fingers laced into mine on one side and Dot’s slightly cooler, dry hand on the other side, I felt more at peace than I had in days. Now if Fernandez could just find the right information I’d be even happier. A pang of guilt hit me while I was praying as a thought struck me. Whoever killed Frank Collins had a mother who would be just as grief-stricken at the thought of his or her involvement as I felt about Ben. And Frank Collins had a mother himself.

Whatever action took the pain away from my heart was going to lay it even more heavily on at least two more mothers. It put the whole investigation in a different light for me, one I thought about long into the night on Wednesday when I couldn’t sleep. Maybe I needed to borrow a dog from Dot and Buck. Company in the form of a dog while I fell asleep sounded like a good thing.

The thoughts about Frank’s mother stayed with me through Thursday morning as I went to classes and then finally worked a shift at the Coffee Corner. Maria still seemed surprised to see me, but I needed to be out among people. Three hours in the late afternoon and early evening passed quickly with lots of students and faculty members wanting coffee drinks and hot chocolate to get them through their late-in-the-day slumps.

When my shift was almost over, Ben came up to the counter. I made him a mint hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles. “I might have wanted something different, you know,” he said with a wry grin as he looked down at the mug in front of him.

“Yes, you might have. Did you?”

He gave me a real smile. “No, this is fine. Just wanted to keep you guessing for a minute, Mom.”

Teenagers. But then, keeping me guessing had been his job for years, and it was nice to see him trying to do it in a positive way after the last few days. I smiled back at him. “How was your day? Better than yesterday, I’m sure.”

“No more calls from the sheriff’s department, at least. That made it better. You have any phone calls from them?”

“No, and I’m just as happy that it stayed that way,” I told him. “Now go drink that while it’s still hot.”
And don’t get whipped cream in your goatee
I wanted to tell him, but kept quiet.

“The rush is about over,” Maria said, coming up behind me. “Why don’t I make you something to drink and you can sit with him?”

“All right. But don’t put mint in mine.” It was one of those flavors Ben loved and I wasn’t nearly as fond of. Just don’t want anything else vying for attention with my chocolate, I guess.

In a few moments I was settled at a table with a warm mug of cocoa and my son, who definitely looked less shaky than yesterday. “You’ll be proud of me,” he said, wiping away a whipped cream moustache. “I studied for an hour this afternoon, and ate a balanced lunch. I had a salad with my pizza and everything.”

“That’s good. It helps to stay on top of your studies this late in the semester. And it will keep you grounded in other things instead of worrying about what went on yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. Detective Fernandez was really just doing his job, Mom. I mean, Mr. Morgan heard me yelling at Frank one day, and then they both see somebody that looked like me, at least to them, another day talking with him again on the driveway. With that going on, he had to question me first.”

That was an extremely mature observation coming from my eighteen-year-old son, and I told him so. We sat and quietly sipped our drinks for a while. “I still don’t like that he had to question you first. Surely there are other guys involved in this somehow that would fit the same general description as you.”

“I imagine there are. But none of them have a bedroom fifty feet from where that guy was killed. The good news is that one of them talked to Frank on Monday morning,” Ben said. “Maybe whoever he is, he’ll actually admit that to the police when they question him. If so, it would go a lot easier on me.”

“At least we don’t own a gun. That helps already.” I took another sip of my cocoa while it was still at just the right temperature. Another few minutes and it would be too cold for me.

Ben looked down at the tabletop while the silence stretched for a minute. I could tell he wanted to talk more, but was weighing his words. “Yeah, well, judging from something he said, I think maybe Frank might have been shot with his own gun.”

“How do you figure that?” Ben wasn’t meeting my eye.

“I told the detective this already, but I didn’t want to tell you about it, because I knew you’d freak out,” he said. Then he sighed. “And see, you’re already freaking out. Your eyebrows are all raised and you’ve got that look.”

I didn’t bother to argue with him, or even ask what look, because he was right. “Go on and tell me. It can’t bother me much more now.”

“Well, see, when we were arguing, Frank kind of threatened me a little.”

I was glad he waited until I didn’t have a mouthful of cocoa. “
A little?
How can you threaten somebody a little?”

Ben shrugged. “He just used words. He didn’t push me around or anything, just got a little nasty with what he said. Frank said he kept a gun in the cab of his truck to run off troublemakers. I just backed off and told him I didn’t want to make trouble, I just wanted to make sure my mom wasn’t bothered. We left it at that and I walked away.”