Hide & Seek - James Patterson [84]
“I understand,” I said to Jennie. “I respect your wishes.”
“Good, that’s a neat start. Now, I think you have to ask me questions, because you have certain ideas in your head, but I’m not sure what they are. So we’ll employ the Socratic method.”
I smiled. “I’m not even going to ask you about your grades.”
“Tops in my class. Stay on track. Stay with me here.”
This was the hardest yet, the worst thing I’d been through. Yes, I had certain ideas in my head. No, I wasn’t ready to talk about them. Maybe I would never be ready.
“I guess we could start with the night of the … of Will’s death,” I said.
“That’s a very good place to begin—at the end.”
“I saw Will up in your room. What was he doing there, Jennie?”
“He came to say good night.”
There was an innocence in Jennie’s words that made me stare. “That’s all? Jennie, you can’t lie, either to protect Will, or even my feelings. Are we agreed about that?”
“Sure. Those are the game rules. We’re agreed. Now, let’s play.”
“You tell me the truth, and I’ll do the same. Anything you want to know. About Will’s death.”
Jennie’s eyes stayed on mine. “I do have questions.”
“First me, then you, okay?”
She nodded. “Yep. That’s fine with me.”
I didn’t know exactly where to go next with my questions. I picked an obvious place.
“Did Will come to your room to say good night often?”
“He did sometimes. He’d bring me warm milk. He said that his aunt used to bring him tea, when he was a boy in England.”
The mention of Will’s aunt startled me, though Jennie couldn’t have known why. I took a deep breath. I didn’t know if I could go on with this. Prison wasn’t the place I wanted to have this kind of talk with Jennie.
She reached for my hand. “Can I try to make this easier … for both of us?”
“If you think you can,” I whispered. I didn’t have much of a voice left. I felt hollowed out, empty. Out of it. Unreal.
“Will was very complicated. You already know that. I think he, I think part of him, actually wanted to be a good father. He would come up to my room and talk sometimes, just talk. I think he wanted to prove he could be there and just talk. He told me a lot about when he was growing up. He was a good listener. Sometimes.”
“Yes, he could be,” I remembered.
“I had a wicked crush on him, Mom. I thought he was so beautiful, like a god, like Ralph Fiennes or Mel Gibson on steroids. I used to think about him all the time.”
“But nothing ever happened?”
“I know he told you that he did, that we did—I was there, I heard it—but nothing ever happened, Mom. You don’t have to protect me. Please believe me, nothing happened.”
I put both my hands up to Jennie’s face. I wanted to be even closer, but that was the best we could do in this horrifying place.
“Let me be your witness, Mom. Please, please, let me do that for you? I need to help you, just this once. I think I can. Nothing happened between Will and me. You don’t have to protect me.”
CHAPTER 102
NORMA BREEN WAS in one of her usual bitching, grousing moods when she arrived at the Lake Club. The missing goddamn pieces to the puzzle! They’re around here somewhere, she kept telling herself, hoping that it might come true if she said it enough.
She had come to the club, specifically, to see J. C. Frazier. J.C. was in his late forties, his face weathered by the outdoors, his body trim and well muscled.
Well, he’s a looker, Norma Breen thought as she sat with him on the porch of the main building at the Lake Club. Now, let’s hope he’s a goddamn talker.
Norma eased into things, convincing J.C. to verify what she already knew: that there were late-night “parties” at the club; and that Will Shepherd had been an invited guest on several occasions.
“Would there be a list of names anywhere?” she asked. “Of the party boys?”
The groundskeeper shrugged his broad shoulders. “If there is, I’ve never seen one. I sure doubt it.”
“Then tell me some of the names. People you’ve seen here after hours. C’mon, J.C.”
J.C. shook his head. “Couldn’t do that. If anyone found out I had told,