“Apparently we do.”
“There you go throwing that logic at me. Don’t do that.”
“It’s just for the night until we can figure out what to do next. And it’s not
“You’re right. It’s far worse. But hey, at least we get a free newspaper.” She lifted it off the bed as if it were a dead fish, then carefully laid the pages across the bedspread. “Which doubles as a bed condom, don’t you know…very handy.” She sat.
I sat next to her. The paper crunched under my ass. She looked at me, and for the first time in a long time, started to laugh.
I gave her a look. “What?’
Still laughing. “This.”
“You think it’s funny?”
“No, I think it’s horribly pathetic, but if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry. And I don’t want you to see me curled up on the floor in a fetal position, twirling my hair. Not pretty.” She was laughing harder now.
Then I began to laugh too.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I woke up to the sound of knocking. It took me a few seconds to realize it was coming from the partition between my room and CJ’s. I rolled out of bed, stepped into a pair of sweatpants, and pulled them up on my way to the door.
CJ stood on the other side, wide awake, fully dressed, and holding the morning paper.
“It’s four a.m.,” I said.
“I actually never went to sleep.”
“I
“Sorry; it’s this place.”
“That ought to help your concussion heal well. Just what the doctor ordered.” I returned to my bed, sat on the edge, rubbed my eyes. She followed me in.
“I was thinking,” she said.
“About how sleep is something you should try to get every day?”
“Very funny. No.” She was busy spreading sheets of newspaper across the bed.
“That sleep is something
She sat on the newspaper and began ticking points off on her fingers. “Samuels kills Jean. And we think he may have killed Nathan too. And framed Lucas. What’s the connection?”
I thought for a moment and then, “You’ve been here for a long time, talked to lots of people about this case. Is there anything we’ve missed? Someone you’ve spoken to at any point that was somehow connected to Jean, maybe?”
She chewed her lip for a long moment, then answered, “There’s one woman, but I honestly didn’t see a connection then, and I don’t see it now.”
“Who?”
“Her name is Ruth Johns. She called me several years ago and claimed her son-in-law was somehow involved in the Kingsley case. I never could make it fit.”
“Why did she think he was involved?”
“Well, she didn’t like the guy much, then her daughter fell off a boat on Chambray Lake and drowned. It was ruled an accident, but Ruth thought he killed her. Only she had nothing to prove it.”
“So what made her think he did it?”
“They’d been having marital problems for years, and the daughter—Madison Johns was her name—was scared of him. Guy was into all kinds of shady stuff.”
“And the connection to Kingsley?”
“I’m getting to that. The couple lived with Ruth for a short time. After the daughter died, Ruth started digging through all these notes he’d left behind—you know, hoping to come up with something to implicate him in Madison’s death.”
“You read them?”
“I skimmed them. Most of it was just scribble, unintelligible, really. Couldn’t make heads or tails. But Jean Kingsley’s name did pop up a few times. There were also other vague references to a boy. Ruth insisted to me it was about Nathan. I didn’t see it.”
“But Jean’s name
“Unusual, yes,” she shrugged, “but this was all a long time after everything happened. Jean was dead. Lucas had been tried and convicted. In terms of the case, it seemed incidental, at best.”
“Think it may be worth talking to her again?”
She threw her hands up, shook her head. “I don’t know. I think it’s a long shot.”
“She still in town?”
“Yeah, over in Wentworth Hills. South side of Corvine. That’s big bucks territory around there.”
“Think she still has the papers?”
“I could call her and find out.”
“We’ve got nothing else at this point,” I said. “Might as well have a look, right?”
She nodded.
“And the son-in-law? What was his name?”
“It was Bill. Bill Williams.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mother’s little helper came in the form of a small, white pill. Only mother wasn’t the one taking them.
The pattern was always the same. I came home from school, did my homework. Then we had dinner, and that was the last thing I remembered. The next morning I’d wake up with few or no memories of ever going to bed. At first, it only happened occasionally, but through the years, with more regularity.
“That’s how it is when you’re young,” she would tell me, in a tone that belittled my concerns. “It’s perfectly normal.”
I believed her.
But the symptoms I began having weren’t normal at all. I’d wake up feeling dehydrated with stomach problems and headaches. In the beginning, they weren’t too bad, but over time they got much worse. The stomachaches sometimes turned to nausea, and I’d sweat a lot.
She continued to explain it all away, saying my food allergies were the cause, or that I wasn’t drinking enough water. But she never seemed to know what I was allergic to, nor did she make any effort to find out. Instead, she’d ply me with Gatorade, bottles and bottles of it. Our refrigerator was always full of them, and I got so tired of drinking the stuff that just the sight of the label was enough to make me ill all over again.
Through the years, the symptoms came and went, as did the strange sleeping patterns. I had periods when everything was fine, until it wasn’t again.
By the time I turned twelve, the sleep issues were more pronounced, as were the symptoms of my so-called allergies. Then I started having problems with slurred speech—so much that one of my teachers called my mother to express concern.
“Yes,” my mother said affirmatively, “I know about it, and of course I’m very concerned, too. I took him to see the doctor, but he can’t seem to find anything wrong. He thinks it may be somehow associated with the Von Willebrand. But thanks so much for letting me know. I’ll keep an eye on it, and please do call me if you notice it’s
