“I don’t know. The mother did major prison time for the crime, so I can’t understand why she’s trying to accuse Boom-Boom now. Did Boom-Boom talk about the murder when it happened?”
“This I am trying to remember since last night, when I am first seeing the news. He was very shocked, of course, because she was a girl from his childhood, and I am thinking there was a brother, is that right, that they were friends. I am not remembering much, but, Victoria, if he had said to me, Pierre, I have murdered this girl, that I would not have forgotten.”
“Likely not,” I agreed dryly. “The mother, Stella, is claiming she found a diary that her daughter kept, and that Annie was writing about how jealous Boom-Boom was, and how she was afraid of him.”
Pierre laughed. “That is impossible to picture. If you are imagining Boom-Boom as Bluebeard, no, you know him better than that. Yes, if you were against him in a game, then you should defend yourself against attacks from all sides, but Boom-Boom and women—there were so many, and they all had a good time with him, no one ever walked away from Boom-Boom weeping because he had frightened her, surely you don’t need me to tell you that. As for a girl and a diary, how can I know about that? But if she wrote it, it came out of her own imaginations. This mother, this salope, she has maybe made her daughter to be afraid of every man in the world.”
That was a shrewd insight, plausible, given Stella’s obsession with sex, but not something I had any way to prove. I led the conversation around to Bernie, how well she was doing, how much I enjoyed her company.
“Yes, she’s loving Chicago,” Pierre agreed. “When she comes back to us next month, you must come with her. A week in the Laurentians, that will put all this tracasserie out of your mind.”
When we hung up, I felt better than I had since Murray’s text came in yesterday afternoon. I took an espresso out to the back porch. I had promised Freeman not to go near Stella or her house or her current lawyer. But what about her old lawyer, the useless baby who didn’t bring up Boom-Boom’s relationship with Annie at Stella’s trial?
When I’d looked up Stella’s trial last week, they hadn’t given the baby’s name. For that I would have to go to the County building, to the more complete records that had been kept on microform.
I was heading to the bathroom to shower and change when my doorbell rang. Bernie was sleeping deeply. I walked behind the couch to peer out at the street. I swore under my breath: three TV vans were double-parked on Racine. The early birds waiting for their prey: vultures are birds, too.
I shook Bernie awake, no easy task. When I’d finally roused her, I explained we were under siege. “If you go out, use the back door. Otherwise the wolves from cable-land are going to jump you, okay?”
Her eyes lit up: at last, a chance to take action against Boom-Boom’s enemies. “This will be fun.”
“No, Bernie. It won’t be. They’ll make mincemeat out of you. Please believe I know what I’m talking about, or if you won’t believe me, please at least promise me that you will stay away from them. Okay?”
She gave a reluctant agreement, but she still tried to rehash last night’s argument: we needed to act, not bury ourselves in libraries, doing research.
“Bernie, if I discover that someone planted that diary, I’m not going to tell you, unless I can trust you not to run headfirst into trouble.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll do it your way for two days. If you don’t find out anything and start acting on it—”
“You will return to Canada so that you don’t get arrested and deported.” It took an effort not to shout at her. For the first time I began to see how hard it had been on my mother when Boom-Boom and I went roaring off without a thought of the consequences. “What would you do if I showed up at one of your games and started telling you how to play?”
“You don’t know enough about hockey to tell me anything.”
“Exactly. And you don’t know enough about the law, and evidence, and how to uncover secrets to tell me what to do.”
Her small vivid face bunched up into a gargoyle grimace, but she finally gave a reluctant nod, a reluctant promise to do as I’d asked.
I ran down the back stairs. Mr. Contreras’s kitchen light was on. I owed it to him to explain what was going on, even though conversations with him are never short. He’d seen the story, of course, and was appropriately indignant.
“Bernie is up in arms, and thinks we ought to be out shooting or at least whacking people. I don’t want her going to South Chicago. It’s gang territory and she has no street smarts, only ice smarts. Can you waylay her, get her involved with the dogs, the garden, keep her from doing something that will get her hurt?”
“I never been able to keep you from getting hurt, doll,” the old man said, truculent, “no matter what I say or do. Talking to my tomatoes gets me better results.”
I felt my cheeks flame, but meekly said he was right. “But she’s seventeen, she’s been left in my care.”