okay. She’s been needing some, whaddya call it, stability in her life. I never raised any kids, and sometimes, I kind of think of her like a daughter.”
“She seems to get on pretty good with you,” I said.
“She fucking wraps me around her finger,” he said, and grinned. “She’s mentioned you. I didn’t make the connection when you told me who you were. But it’s Mr. Archer this, Mr. Archer that.”
“Really,” I said.
“She says you’ve encouraged her,” Vince said. “About her writing.”
“She’s pretty good.”
Vince pointed to the jammed bookshelves. “I read a lot. I’m not what you’d call a very educated kind of guy, but I like to read books. I especially like history, biography. Some adventure books. I’m kind of amazed by people who can do that, who can sit down and write a whole book. So when Jane said you thought she could be a writer, I thought that was kind of interesting.”
“She has her own voice,” I said.
“Huh?”
“You know how, when you read some writers, you’d know it was them even if their name wasn’t on the cover?”
“Sure.”
“That’s voice. I think Jane has that.”
Vince nodded. “Listen,” he said. “About what happened…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, working up some spit in my mouth so I could swallow.
“People start asking questions about you, trying to find you, that can be a bit worrying for someone like me,” he said.
“What does that mean, someone like you?” I asked, running my fingers through my hair, trying to get it looking normal again.
“Well, let me put it this way,” Vince said. “I’m not a creative writing teacher. I don’t imagine, in your line of work, that you might have to do some of the things that I have to do in mine.”
“Like sending out guys in SUVs to grab people off the street,” I said.
“Exactly,” Vince said. “That kind of thing.” He paused. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’d be good.”
He walked over to the counter, poured me a cup from the coffeemaker, and came back to the table.
“I’m still concerned that you and that detective and that cop have been asking around for me,” Vince said.
“May I be frank without having my hair pulled out or a knife stabbed into the table between my fingers?”
Slowly, Vince nodded, not taking his eyes off me.
“You were with Cynthia that night. Her father found the two of you and dragged her home. Less than twelve hours later, Cynthia wakes up and she’s the only one left in her family. You are, presumably, one of the last people to see a member of her family, other than Cynthia herself, alive. And I’m not sure whether you had a fight with her father, Clayton Bigge, but at the very least it must have been an awkward situation, her father finding you, taking her home with him.” I paused. “But I’m sure the police went over all this with you at the time.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I didn’t tell them anything. That was one thing I learned from my old man, God rest his soul. You never answer questions from the cops. Even if you’re one hundred percent innocent. Nobody’s situation ever improved after talking to the cops.”
“But you might have been able to help them figure out what happened.”
“Wasn’t my concern.”
“But didn’t that make the police suspect you had something to do with it? Refusing to talk?”
“Maybe. But they can’t convict you on suspicion. They need evidence. And they didn’t have any of that. If they’d had any evidence, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here having a nice chat with you right now.”
I took a sip of my coffee. “Whoa,” I said. “This is excellent.” It was.
“Thank you,” Vince said. “Now, may I be frank with you without you pulling
“I don’t think you have much to worry about there,” I said.
“I felt bad about it. About not being able to help Cynthia. Because she was…I don’t wish to offend you here at all, being her husband.”
“It’s okay.”
“She was a very, very nice girl. A bit fucked up like all kids that age, but nothing compared to me. I’d already been in shit with the cops. I guess she went through a period of being attracted to the bad boy. Before she met you.” He said it like I was a bit of a comedown for her. “No offense intended.”
“None taken.”
“She was a sweet kid, and I felt terrible about what happened to her. Jesus, imagine, you wake up one day, your fucking family’s gone. And I wished I could do something for her, you know? But my dad said to me, he said walk away from a chick like that. You don’t need those kinds of problems. Cops are going to be looking at you enough already, with your background, with an old man like me involved in the shit I’m involved in, that’s all we need, you messed up with a girl whose entire family probably got murdered.”
“I guess I can understand that.” I chose my words carefully. “Your father, he did okay, am I right?”
“Money?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. He did all right for himself. While he could. Before he got killed.”
“I heard a bit about that,” I said.
“What else did you hear?”
“I heard that the people who most likely did it got paid back.”
Vince smiled darkly. “That they did.” He came back to the present and asked, “So what’s your point, about money?”
“Do you think your father, do you think he would have had any sympathy for Cynthia, the situation she found herself in? To the point that he would have helped pay for her education, to go to college?”
“Huh?”
“I’m just asking. Do you think he might have thought you were responsible somehow, that maybe you had something to do with her family going missing, and that he gave money to Cynthia’s aunt, Tess Berman, anonymously, to help cover the costs of her schooling?”
Vince looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “You say you’re a teacher? They let people teach in the public schools with minds this fucked up?”
“You could just say no.”
“No.”
“Because,” I said, and I was debating with myself whether I should be sharing this information, but sometimes you just go with your gut, “someone did that.”
“No shit?” Vince asked. “Someone was giving her aunt money for school?”
“That’s right.”
“And no one ever knew who?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s weird,” he said. “And this aunt, you say she’s dead?”
“That’s right.”
Vince Fleming leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling a moment, came back forward and put his elbows on the table. He let out a long sigh.
“Well, I’ll tell you something,” he said, “but not if you’re going to tell the cops, because if you do, I’ll tell them I never said any of this, because they might find a way to use it against me, the fuckers.”
“Okay.”
