The Shadow of Seth Read online

  After five minutes of sucking wind on the sidewalk, I gathered Nikki’s brewing equipment from Mom’s Jeep and headed back inside my apartment. My cell phone rang. Caller ID said it was the Tacoma Police Department. I wasn’t much in the mood, but I answered. Detective Carlyle’s voice came on, letting me know he was outside. I asked him to come in. In case he wanted to start punching me, I’d rather it happened inside ChooChoo’s building.

  Carlyle came in the apartment and sat on our old couch, looking surprisingly at home. His eyes were mostly closed and his clothes were wrinkled. I’d guess Carlyle was five-eight and probably weighed two-ten. He had a square head and a square body, with a torso about as deep as it was wide. His half-closed eyes made him look both sad and sleepy.

  “You called me with some questions. And I’ve got some news. You want me to go first?”

  “I guess.” I pulled a chair from the kitchen table and straddled it backwards, the chair back like a shield between Carlyle and me.

  “Final autopsy report is not in yet.” Carlyle rubbed his palms into his eyes. “But there were signs of death by a toxic substance.”

  “Toxic? You mean poison?”

  Carlyle stared at me. “Something like that.”

  “So, like suicide?”

  Carlyle shrugged. “Could be accidental, suicide, or I suppose even homicide.”

  “Homicide? Like murder homicide?”

  “Means we’ll have to hold on to your mom’s body for a few more days.”

  “And then what? You give it back to me?”

  “For funeral purposes. Yes.”

  “A funeral? I’m probably supposed to figure that out somehow, huh?”

  “Probably. Find someone to help you, Seth. You must have people in your life you can turn to. Family.”

  “Yeah. I must have.”

  Carlyle asked me some questions about Mom’s cleaning customers. I told him about the church, Shotgun Shack, Nadel, and the driving school. He said he’d start with those people, but asked if there was anyone else she might have seen on her last day alive. The only other people I could think of were ChooChoo and me. I told him so.

  I didn’t tell him about Mom’s final conversation with me—how she’d got in a shouting match with Miss Irene and how it upset her enough for her to buy me an expensive pair of shoes. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to think Miss Irene was anything other than innocent.

  Seven

  That night, I lay on Mom’s daybed and texted Azura. She responded immediately, asking how my day was. Interesting, I texted.

  Interesting how?

  Police told me Mom might have been murdered.

  Serious?

  Serious. Poisoned.

  By who?

  They don’t know. Maybe it was suicide, but I don’t think so.

  I did something you might not like.

  What? I texted.

  I told one of the school counselors about your mom.

  Which one.

  Ms. Edelson. She said she’d call you.

  Why’d you tell her?

  Because I think you needed me to. Are you mad?

  Not about that.

  About what?

  A group of your friends visited me.

  Friends? Who?

  Erik, Big Red, and the twins.

  Oh. replied Azura.

  Yes. Oh.

  What’d they do?

  Told me to stay away from you, then beat me with a baseball bat.

  You’re kidding.

  Wish I was.

  I’m gonna call Erik.

  Not necessary.

  I’m gonna anyway. Then I’m coming over.

  Maybe that’s not a good idea. Don’t think my stomach could stand another beating.

  There was a long pause before Azura texted back. You want me to stay away?

  I replied immediately. I want you to come over.

  She knocked on my door fifteen minutes later. I still didn’t invite her in. We stood on the walkway outside my door as she checked me for bruises and broken bones. It wasn’t unpleasant. When the exam ended, I asked where she wanted to go. She suggested coffee. I suggested Guinevere’s.

  The coffee shop was busy—the little tables overcrowded with the tattooed, the pierced, and the voluntarily outcast. The stereo was playing some clickity-clack song by the Books just loud enough to blend in with the crowd noise. A man with a shaved head, nose ring, and hugely gauged earlobes grinned widely at us from a table near the counter. Azura grabbed my arm tightly, right on the same spot the twins had bruised me earlier.

  Nikki appeared from behind the steaming espresso machine. I introduced her to Azura and Nikki said hi with raised eyebrows, looking at me sideways as she said it.

  “What?” I said, but Nikki just asked what we wanted. I ordered two cappuccinos and a black currant scone. Azura tried to pay, but I pushed her money away. “I got it.”

  “I can pay for myself, you know.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “I can order for myself, too. I’m a big girl. How do you know what I want?”

  “Trust me,” I said. “This is the best cappuccino in town.”

  We found a table in the corner. Nikki brought our coffee and scones to us, instead of calling from the counter.

  “You have table service now?” I asked.

  “Just for you, studly.” She sat down next to me, pushing me half off my wooden chair. “Mind if I take my break here for a few minutes?” Azura smiled, but only with her mouth. Nikki said, “You go to Heath, right?”

  “I do,” said Azura.

  “Thought I’d seen you before. How’d you two meet? At school?”

  “At my house, actually.”

  “Really? Seth makes house calls?”

  “About as often as you wait on tables,” I said quietly.

  Nikki nodded to Azura. “You haven’t tried your coffee.”

  Azura took a sip of her cappuccino. She grimaced.

  “You don’t like it?” Nikki asked.

  “I usually get something more, umm, syrupy.”

  “I bet you do,” said Nikki.

  “Be nice, Nikki,” I said.

  She turned on me. “I’m being nice. This is what me being nice looks like. But I’m confused. Your mom just died. And yet, you’re feeling good enough to take this girl out on a date?”

  I wanted to explain to Nikki that it wasn’t a date. Not really. But I didn’t want to say the words out loud. I said nothing. Nikki sat in the silence for a few seconds, then left without a word.

  “Nice girl,” said Azura.

  “She is a nice girl.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.”

  “Tell that to your friend. The nice girl. The pit bull.”

  “Pit bull? That’s the dog of my people. You have a dog?”

  “I do.”

  “What kind? Wait. Don’t tell me. Something mixed with a poodle.”

  Azura glared at me, then took a big gulp of her cappuccino. Her lips smiled while her eyes continued to glare. “You think my life is all lovely?”

  “Not all lovely, but—”

  “But what? You think I have it so much better than you. You’ve met my dad. I guarantee he’s the one who sent those boys after you. It doesn’t even surprise me.”

  “Okay, so maybe we’ve both got it rough. You’ve got a dad who beats up boys who like you and I’ve got a murdered mom.”

  Azura reached across the table and touched the back of my hand with the tips of her fingers. Her hand stayed there. So did mine. “Is that what it is?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out what I like about you.”

  “G
ee, thanks.”

  “Shut up. You’re good-looking, in your own rough way. You know it. But there’s—something. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe I’m just not a phony like all your other friends.”

  “Maybe.” She dipped her finger in her cappuccino foam, then looked at it. “You’d think at least the foamy part would be sweet. So what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. It freaks me out, thinking of Mom being murdered, but it kind of relieves me, in a weird sort of way. If she was poisoned, that means she didn’t OD. It means she wasn’t to blame this time. She was a victim. That means I can be mad at someone else.”

  Azura took another sip of her cappuccino. No grimace. “Once you know it’s going to be bitter, it’s not so bad. Do the police have any leads?”

  “Not that they told me.” I broke off a piece of scone and held it up to Azura. Her lips stayed closed. “You’ll like this.”

  “That’s what you said about the coffee.”

  “And you like it. I know you do. Or you will.” I offered the scone again. Her lips parted and I placed the bit of bread into her mouth. Azura chewed and smiled at the same time.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said, after she swallowed. “Is this a date?”

  “It could be. Could it be?”

  “It could be. After all, you said you like me.”

  “Uhh…”

  “You said my dad beats up boys who like me. You got beat up. So…”

  “I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying.”

  Azura’s eyes grew wide. She smiled, then picked up the scone and bit off a big piece. She chewed, then took another sip of coffee.

  “I called Erik before I came over.”

  “Yeah? What’d he have to say?”

  “I told him your mom died yesterday. I think it kind of freaked him out.”

  “Like that should matter. He’s a jerk.”

  “He’s not that bad.”

  “They travel in packs—guys like him who aren’t that bad.”

  She sipped her coffee, then stood up from the table.

  “Where you going?” I asked.

  “I need some sugar.”

  We sat and talked and sat without talking for two more hours. I told Azura she needed to get home before her dad sent out another country-club search party. I said good-bye to Nikki, but she just glared at me. Azura and I drove back to the gym and parked. I walked her to her car. It was a beautiful car. She was a beautiful girl. Both looked out of place in my neighborhood. Strike that. My neighborhood had beautiful girls, too. But they had the grit to stick it out. I doubted the same would be true of Azura. She would be gone soon. She was too fragile to stay around.

  Instead of opening the car door, she leaned against it, then turned toward me. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. You’re thinking that I’m beautiful.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yup. And you’re wondering if you should kiss me.”

  “You think everyone wants to kiss you all the time?”

  “Don’t know about everyone. But I think you want to. And you’re wondering if I’d let you. I would. And you’re wondering if it would be a good idea. It would. And you’re wondering—”

  “I’m wondering when you’re gonna shut up.” I kissed her.

  The street in front of the gym was empty and dark in a way that only a city street can be dark. Headlights, sign lights and stoplights were still blazing. The wet black streets in front of the gym picked up all that glare and all that color and bounced it up and into Azura’s eyes.

  “What am I thinking now?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, kissing me back. “Not one little thing.”

  Eight

  My alarm clock woke me up the next morning in time to get ready for school. I decided not to go. But I was still downstairs thirty minutes before ChooChoo usually arrived at the gym. I boiled water, ground beans, and brewed enough French-press coffee to fill the big thermos pot right to the top. I went back upstairs to shower and dress, planning to head over to Shotgun Shack and see Miss Irene.

  When I went back downstairs, ChooChoo, Manny, and two other trainers were gathered around the coffee pot, swapping stories and refilling cups. “Hey, kid,” yelled Manny. “You might of done Chooch a disservice, making coffee this good. No one’s gonna want to get in the ring if it means leaving this pot.”

  They all laughed. ChooChoo said, “Ya done fine. Prob’ly get mo’ coffee cust’mers than boxing cust’mers. You goin’ t’ school t’day?” I shook my head no. ChooChoo nodded.

  I joined them for a cup. I needed their kind words—even if they were just about my brewing skills. And props to Nikki and me: it was damn good coffee.

  I drove Mom’s jeep over to Shotgun Shack and went inside, but Miss Irene wasn’t there. Checker Cab was doing the cooking and the table waiting and he wasn’t happy about it. I asked after Miss Irene and Checker snapped at me, “I don’t know where that old woman is. Phone rang yesterday afternoon and after she hung up, she just cleared out without saying a thing. So I closed the place down last night all by myself, then still had to clean up, ’cause of your mom not being around anymore. Sorry about that, by the way. Then I opened again this morning because I couldn’t get ahold of Miss Irene. She’s disappeared.”

  Checker Cab glared at the dishes stacked up on tables all around the dining room. “Looks like I’ll be closing again tonight. That means overtime. That means getting paid. But who’s gonna sign my check?”

  Checker begged me to stick around and help out with the lunch rush. He said he’d pay me right out of the till for my time and he’d split his tips with me. I knew Checker would rip me off somehow, but I agreed and moved into my old spot in the kitchen. For the next three hours, I was elbow-deep in catfish, hush puppies, and collard greens. I’d never run the kitchen by myself and it showed. I was behind all through lunch and the diners were barking at Checker, which made him bark at me. But the rush finally ended and I hadn’t thought about my mom the whole time. Checker gave me thirty bucks for my three hours, then fudged around in the cash register, finally giving me another twenty dollars, which he claimed was half his share of tips. I knew he undercut me by at least another twenty, but I expected it from Checker. I didn’t like him any less for it. I didn’t like him much to begin with.

  I headed back home, wondering where Miss Eye had disappeared to and wondering how her disappearance connected to Mom’s death. Hopefully not at all. Right when I was thinking about it, my cell phone rang. It was Carlyle, asking if I had a few minutes to come down to the station.

  I didn’t like cops. In my neighborhood, cops only came to bring bad news or bad times. Carlyle seemed like a decent guy, but I didn’t much want to go down to a whole station full of police.

  But I went. I parked out front, made sure I put enough change in the meter to avoid a ticket, and walked inside. As I was going through the front doors, Dix and Chambers, the cops who’d rescued Erik Jorgenson and his friends from me, were walking out.

  “Here comes trouble,” Dix said, elbowing Chambers and nodding at me. I tried to walk by, but Dix grabbed me by the wrist. “Slow down there, cowboy. You just can’t get enough of Tacoma’s Finest these days, can you?”

  “I’m here to see Carlyle.”

  “Ahh. About your mommy. Sad story.” His tone dropped in volume, to a level he probably thought was fatherly. “Look kid, you caught a tough break. No doubt. You should forget about it and move on. Because that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna forget about it. No one here has time to try to find the killer of a woman like your mom. She doesn’t register high on the priority list, if you understand.”

  “I understand you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Hey, nothing personal, kid. Just t
he way things are.”

  I yanked my arm free and walked inside. I could hear my heart beating in my head. I tried to sound calm when I gave my name to a policewoman at a desk. But I wasn’t calm. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to break my hand on a wall of sheetrock.

  Carlyle came out to meet me within a minute. He studied my face for a second and said, “Something happen I need to know about?”

  “Just a couple of your jackass buddies.”

  “Dix and Chambers?”

  “You must be so proud to work with them.”

  “Yeah, they mentioned that they ran into you yesterday. They’re jerks. Try to ignore them and c’mon back to my desk for a minute. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks. I’m a bit of a coffee snob.”

  “Then stay away from this stuff.” He led me to a cubicle in a sea of cubicles, all in matching gray fabric. I sat in a stained, gray chair next to his pressboard desk. It sure didn’t look like the cop shows on TV. Here the cops mostly just looked tired—almost as tired as the furniture. Everything in the building seemed underfunded and overworked.

  “We’ve got some more information about your mom. I’m not sure if you’ll think it’s good news or not. She tested positive for cyanide. She was poisoned, all right.”

  “So she was murdered?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  “What can you tell?”

  Carlyle sighed. He opened a folder on his desk and pulled out a blue piece of paper. He read:

  ‘“Samples, such as peripheral blood, stomach contents, bile fluid, urine, and mouth swabs, were prepared using visible spectrophotometric method. The cyanide contents in samples, included stomach content—two hundred and sixty parts per million bile fluid—two hundred seventy-two parts per million, blood—two hundred fifty-six parts per million, and mouth swab—two hundred sixty-five parts per million. Conclusion: The cause of death was acute myocardial infarction following acute poisoning from ingestion of cyanide.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means just what I said. She was poisoned. We can’t rule out suicide yet, but I’m telling you that homicide seems likely. Based on time of death, my guess is that she was poisoned, then driven back to the gym by her killer who moved her into the driver’s seat.” He watched my face for a reaction. I tried not to have one. “Seth, we’ve followed up with the businesses your mom did cleaning for. And we found something interesting. One of her clients has run away. Disappeared. Irene Dunlop. She owns a restaurant called Shotgun Shack.”