The Shadow of Seth Page 6

  “I know who she is, and she—”

  “Hold on. According to an employee, she’s been having a number of heated arguments with your mom. And just yesterday, I talked to Irene on the phone, but only for about thirty seconds. She cut the conversation short. She definitely did not want to talk to me. According to her employee, she left the restaurant right after that and no one’s seen her since.”

  Carlyle thought I’d be happy that he had a suspect. But I told him he was crazy. Sure, Miss Irene and Mom argued, but I explained how there was no way that she would ever hurt my mother.

  “Then why did she run away?”

  “How would I know? Are you checking out anybody else?”

  “Like I said, we checked everybody. We don’t have any other leads. And we don’t have a lot of resources to spare on a case like this, Seth.”

  “A case like this. Yeah, that’s what Dix told me.”

  Carlyle sighed. “Look. I’ll do what I can, but it’s not gonna be much. Especially when this Dunlop woman looks like such a clear suspect.”

  “It wasn’t her,” I said. “It can’t be. I’ll prove it to you if I have to.”

  “How?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You need to keep out of it.”

  “I need to know what really happened.”

  Carlyle shook his head as he looked at me through his half-opened eyes. “Seth, if someone truly murdered your mom, that someone is obviously dangerous. A smart kid like you will leave the matter to the police. You are a smart kid, aren’t you?”

  Nine

  I went back home. It was almost five o’clock, which was usually a busy time for ChooChoo, but the gym was nearly empty. He was pushing a broom in his graceful way, weaving it around a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling. That big man couldn’t take a step without looking like an athlete. He smiled up at me with watery eyes.

  “Thinkin’ ’bout y’ mom jus’ now.”

  “Me, too.” I told him what Carlyle had said. While he listened, his hands clenched the broom handle so tight I thought he’d snap it in two. He asked me what I was going to do. I said that I wanted to help figure out who might have killed Mom, but I had no idea where to start.

  ChooChoo set down the broom and threw me a set of gloves and a sparring helmet. “I got no idea, either. But climb into th’ ring wimmee. Little sparring might knock sump’n loose ’n y’ brain.”

  I never liked sparring with ChooChoo, because he didn’t know how to go easy. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds and he pulled his punches, but they still hurt in a way that felt like permanent damage. It cleared my head like nothing else could. In the ring with ChooChoo, all my focus went toward hitting and not getting hit. When ChooChoo was swinging, I couldn’t worry about girls, money, or Mom. If I lost my focus for a second, my head would be ringing and I’d be blinking at the ceiling.

  Like always, I tried to use my speed as a defense. Like always, ChooChoo was faster than I expected. He kept up with me and cut off my angles until he had me against the ropes. I’d try to duck under his jabs and get into open space, but he’d dance to the side and be in front of me again.

  Our bout ended like it always ended, with ChooChoo helping me to my feet after knocking me down.

  “Ya think of anything?” he asked. He still had his mouth guard in, but sounded the same as when it was out.

  “Yeah, I think you might have dislocated my jaw.”

  He laughed. It was good to hear.

  “Chooch, I don’t know where I’d even start on something like this.”

  “Then ya start wit’ the easy stuff. Ya start wit’ whachoo know an’ ya take it from there.”

  My cell phone rang while I was walking up the stairs to the apartment. It was the high school computer voice again, reminding me that Seth Anomundy had missed another day of school. “Thanks for caring,” I said, as I hung up.

  I was tired. I took a quick shower and went around the corner to the Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Bac, and brought back a couple of Styrofoam to-go containers of their noodle soup. ChooChoo and I crushed fresh basil and slices of lime into the broth. We ate in silence. Afterwards, I went upstairs and went to sleep.

  I woke up the next morning, decided to avoid school again, did my coffee duty, and headed back to Shotgun Shack to see what more I could learn about Miss Irene’s disappearance. After that, my plan was to start retracing Mom’s steps of her last night, keeping in mind ChooChoo’s direction to focus on the easy stuff. If there was any.

  It was ten a.m. when I parked in front of the restaurant. Not a single customer was inside—not even Stanley Chang. I wondered if he’d stopped coming around once Miss Irene disappeared. Checker Cab was wiping down tables after the breakfast crowd and getting the kitchen ready for lunch. He wasn’t interested in talking to me.

  “What is it you want, exactly?” he said, while he did a quick and crummy job sweeping beneath the tables.

  “I’m trying to figure out who might have killed my mom.”

  “Killed? Is that what you think happened?”

  “The police say she was murdered. She was poisoned. With cyanide. Then her body was probably driven home and parked in front of the gym.”

  Checker Cab stopped sweeping for a minute and leaned his big belly against the broom. “Murdered. Hard to believe.” He paused. “Is there a reward?”

  “Reward? For what?”

  “You know, for information leading to the whereabouts and all that?”

  “I don’t think the cops are offering anything.”

  “How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, any reward from your end?”

  “You’re kind of a jerk, you know that?”

  “I’m a businessman. That’s all.”

  “Okay, Checker. If you got some information that leads to the case getting solved, I’ll pay you.”

  “How much?”

  I had no idea what a lot of money was for someone like Checker Cab. “A hundred dollars?”

  “Seth, I won’t get out of bed for less than two hundred.”

  “Okay. Two hundred dollars.”

  “For two hundred, I’ll keep an eye peeled. For three hundred, I’ll keep both eyes peeled, washed, and ready for the pot.”

  I thought about the small amount of cash in the Gold’n Soft tub. Three hundred dollars would hurt, but I was willing to pay if it helped me find Mom’s killer. “Okay. Three hundred. But the way they say it on TV is that you only get paid if your info actually helps solve the case. Same deal here.”

  “Same deal is fine by me.” He walked the broom toward the kitchen, leaving half the dining room unswept.

  I asked Checker if he could tell me anything more about where Miss Irene might have gone. He yelled that if he knew where she was, he would have dragged her back to the restaurant. I asked if he was here when Miss Irene and Mom fought on that last night.

  “I was here. But I probably would have heard them even if I was home. Them women can turn up the volume. Good lord. Hey, you wanna work the lunch shift again today? I can’t keep doing this on my own.”

  “Can’t today, Checker. I got some investigating to do.”

  I left, thinking about Miss Irene. She ran away the day after Mom died. There had to be a connection. But I still couldn’t imagine that Miss Irene could have poisoned Mom.

  If Miss Irene wasn’t guilty, why did she leave? And where did she go?

  I decided to work my way through Mom’s customers. I left the Jeep in front of Shotgun Shack and walked across Sixth Avenue to Trinity Presbyterian Church.

  Sixth Avenue was the northern border of The Hilltop, one of the roughest neighborhoods of Tacoma. My neighborhood. Shotgun Shack sat right on that border. Then came a triangular block called The Wedge, which, like the name said, was wedged between Sixth Av
enue and Division Street. On the northern side of The Wedge, across Division, was The North End, the wealthy part of town where families like the Lears lived.

  The Wedge was a transition neighborhood—a zone of truce between rich and poor, black and white. Trinity Church formed the very tip of The Wedge, right between The Hilltop and The North End. The people who attended Trinity either lived in The North End, where houses were overpriced, or lived on the edge of The Hilltop, where beautiful old homes were cheap and dreams of upward mobility survived, despite the empty forty-ouncer bottles strewn along the sidewalks.

  Trinity was a small church—the sanctuary could hold about two hundred people, but the few times I’d been there it had no more than one hundred twenty, including children. It was usually a pretty busy place all week long, though, with afterschool programs, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, a soup kitchen, a clothing bank, and a once-a-week medical clinic where I’d always gotten my shots for measles and mumps.

  The sanctuary had seen better days. It looked at least a century old, with stained-glass windows, ornate masonry work, and a ceiling that must have been thirty feet high. But the masonry was crumbling, the ceiling leaked, and the stained glass had holes from the BB guns of the neighborhood.

  The sanctuary was dark now. I tried the door handle, but it was locked. A keyhole looked at me from below the handle. That’s when I realized I had Mom’s key ring. As a cleaning woman, she had keys to all of the businesses she worked for. That meant that I could open any of those locks, whenever I wanted.

  Instead of using one of Mom’s keys, I walked to the church office, which sat in a little house next door. I could see a woman inside, so I knocked and went in. The woman sat at a desk behind a nameplate that read Diane Niebauer. Diane was pretty and plump, her straight blond hair cut short and neat. I guessed that she was forty years old. She wore a too-tight tan business suit. I bet Diane had bought the suit on sale, with plans of losing weight, then just said screw it.

  “Can I help you?” asked Diane as she smiled.

  “I was hoping to talk to Pastor Vandegrift.”

  “Oh, honey, he’s not here. He’s visiting Mrs. Prentice in the hospital. But I could take a message for him.”

  “Umm. Okay. Could you tell him that Seth Anomundy came by?”

  Diane’s smile fell away. “Oh, my dear, you must be Eve’s son. Oh, my dear.” She stepped up from her chair and came around the front of her desk and pulled me into a squishy hug. “Oh, honey.” She stepped back. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but she dabbed them away with a Kleenex before they ran down her perfect makeup. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be sure to tell Pastor V you stopped by. He’ll want to talk to you.”

  “That would be great, because I’m investigating who might have murdered my mom.”

  Diane suddenly looked like she’d drunk bad communion wine. “You want to talk to the pastor about murder?”

  “Yes. My mom’s.”

  She walked back behind her desk and sat down in her chair. “I don’t know what you might hope to learn from our pastor. He’s a good man.”

  “I’m sure he is. I just want to talk to him.”

  “Why don’t you just talk to me and leave him out of it?”

  I stood there silently and smiled as politely as I could stand to.

  “You’re upset,” Diane said. “I suppose I can pass your number on to him.” I told her the number to my cell phone. She wrote it down slowly on a sticky note. “Anything else?”

  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t see any more smiles from Diane, so I said no. Diane’s response didn’t bug me. She loved her boss and was looking out for him. And for all I knew, he probably was a good man. Diane was protecting her own. I wished I had someone like her in my life, looking out for me.

  I started to leave when Diane stopped me. “Oh, Seth, I actually have a question for you. Would you be interested in cleaning the church like your mom did? We’re a bit desperate. And we’d pay you the same as we paid your mom.”

  I thought about it for a few seconds. Should I feel complimented because she trusted me enough to work alone in the sanctuary, after I’d just asked about a murder? Or should I be pissed off because she thought of my family as nothing more than cleaning people? Either way, I didn’t want the job. I said no thanks. There had to be a better way to make a living than cleaning up after church kids.

  Ten

  While I was walking back to the Jeep, my phone rang. It was Ms. Edelson, my high school counselor. She apologized for taking so long to get in touch with me, but she’d thought I might need a few days to sort stuff out. “You and I need to talk, Seth. We need to come up with a plan.”

  “I’d like to have a plan,” I said. I agreed to come and see her the next day, Friday, at two o’clock.

  I’d had enough investigating for a while, so I left the church and went to another spiritual place—King’s Books, a sprawling used bookstore on St. Helens Avenue—to hang out with Sweet Pea, the red-haired man who seemed to work at the store twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Sweet Pea had taken the store over from its original owners and turned it into a dog-eared Mecca for booklovers.

  King’s was a maze of pinewood bookshelves with handwritten section labels—history, mystery, literature, self-help. Miko, the bookstore cat, was a twenty-pound gray tabby who could rub hard enough against a pant leg to remove the cords from corduroy. Other than the shelves, the store was furnished with mismatched antique tables and slightly uncomfortable chairs. “You don’t want them too comfortable,” Sweet Pea had told me once, “or some customers might never leave.”

  Sweet Pea was a tall, skinny, Irish-American with a tendency to wear his tomato-soup-red hair in pigtails and to dress in vintage rodeo shirts. He balanced his outrageous style with a black belt in Kung Fu, an astonishing knowledge of literature, and a hand-picked selection of graphic novels—my personal favorite section of the store. When I went in this time, Sweet Pea’s shirt looked like a bright-red version of a Civil War uniform. He had a short line of buyers at his counter.

  “Mr. Pea,” I said in greeting.

  “Mr. Anomundy.”

  “Got any graphic novels I should shamelessly read without buying?”

  “Maybe. Did you like that Jacques Tardi I showed you last time you were in here? We just got another one in. It’s on the featured table. I’ll be over there in a minute.”

  Tardi is a French guy who made most of his graphic novels in the 1970s. I read one by him called West Coast Blues about this average family man who is sucked into a circle of war criminals and assassins. Tardi’s drawings look like black-and-white versions of TinTin comics, but in Tardi’s books, people get shot, bleed, and die.

  The one I saw now was called It Was the War of the Trenches. It looked like something about World War Two or some other ancient conflict. I thumbed through its pages of hand-drawn violence until Sweet Pea ambled over.

  “Tardi is a master, isn’t he?”

  “I liked that last one you sold me,” I said, “but this one looks a bit too much like a history lesson.”

  “World War One. The bloodiest of them all. You need to learn to embrace a little history, Anomundy. The goriest gore happens in real life.”

  “Never really took you for a history buff, Mr. Pea.”

  “Oh, hell yeah. You think all I read is the made-up stuff? Not that half of history isn’t made up, too, but like they say at the beginning of movies, it’s based on a true story.”

  I bought the Tardi and took it home. I lay on Mom’s daybed until dinnertime, reading the book all the way through and then halfway through again, interrupted only by the school computer, calling to tell me I missed school again.

  A couple of hundred people died on those pages. I was strangely comforted by the thought of other people dying. Death wasn’t just something that happened to my family. Death transformed normal kids like me into orph
ans all over the world.

  It reminded me of a song by the Flaming Lips. I found it and played it on my crappy old iPod. The Lips sang soft, sad, and slow and I played the song over and over.

  Do you realize

  that you have the most beautiful face?

  Do you realize

  we’re floating in space?

  Do you realize

  that happiness makes you cry?

  Do you realize

  that everyone you know someday will die?

  At six o’clock, I headed back to Shotgun Shack. I stared through the restaurant windows for a glimpse of Miss Eye. She wasn’t there. King George’s black BMX bike was propped against the wall.

  I walked inside. Stanley Chang was missing again. In the corner, King George leaned over his table, sawing through a big rib-eye steak with a butter knife. Facing him, with his back to me, was a small man I didn’t recognize at first. Then the man tilted his head in a familiar way. It was Nadel. I’d never seen him in Shotgun Shack before. Why would he come here? Nadel was as meticulous about his food as he was about everything else. He was a health nut. He ate vegetarian, and Shotgun Shack was all about pig fat and catfish.

  The old man and the young man were deep in conversation, so I studied them without their noticing. Even from the back, Nadel was precise. He had only coffee and toast before him, but I could see him dissect his toast carefully with the side of his fork. He was a small, old man in every way—thin wrists, thin neck, and narrow head covered in thinning hair.

  Facing him, King George was his opposite. His teenaged muscles bulged, his voice was loud, and either of his hands looked like they could crush Nadel with a twitch of thick fingers.

  There were no vacant tables, so I went back into the kitchen, where Checker was cooking and cursing. He asked if I wanted to grab an order pad and start waiting on customers. I said no, but I’d cook. Checker nodded, gave me his apron, and went out into the dining room to calm down the impatient diners.