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Quinn said, “Those do sound really cute. It might be better, though, to find your own style thatyoulove. That way you don’t look like you’re copying Angel, and you won’t feel like you’re competing with her, either. You’ll look like you’re being yourself, because you will be. And like you have a dad who can buy you cute boots, of course. That’s lucky. It’s sure not something everybody has around here.”
“Oh.” Janey considered that. “You mean poor kids. There are some kids like that in our class. Some girls who never …” She stopped. “Maybe I—”
“What are you thinking?” Quinn asked. “Because this sounds like an excellent thought.”
“Bam was showing us this Christmas tree at the store,” Janey said. “It doesn’t have regular ornaments on it. It has paper stars, but every star has something like, ‘Boy, 9,’ or ‘Girl, 13,’ and on the back, there are things about them, like their size and what their Christmas wish is. She says they do it every year. It’s for kids whose parents can’t afford to buy them presents. You can take a star and get them something, so they’ll have a present to open.”
“They’ve been doing that since I was little,” Quinn said. “I’ll tell you a secret. The kids whose stars don’t get picked? Bam and my dad make sure they all get presents, too, and that comes out of their own pockets. My dad says no kid should be left out at Christmas. He grew up poor, and he remembers what it feels like. And Bam—well, she’s Bam. When I was a kid, my brother and I helped them pick out the gifts. And if I wanted to, I could—” She stopped, too.
Janey said, “Is it what I’m thinking? Did you maybe help?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Out of my allowance. It always gave me a good feeling, Christmas morning, to know I’d made it special for some other kid, too. I’m pretty proud to have the parents I do, to tell you the truth. Not that they can’t be annoying, but they’re all right, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Janey said slowly, “I could only buy one pair of shoes and one pair of boots. And find ones that are cute but don’t cost as much. Then I could— Couldn’t I, Dad? Could I use some of the money and pick a star?”
He had to clear his throat. He’d worried about his kids losing Abby’s influence, her kindness, especially since Janey had got so preoccupied with fitting in. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll give you the spending limit, but what you do with it is up to you. But you probably do need two pairs of shoes.” He gave her a cuddle. “That’s a kind thought. I’m proud of you.”
Quinn said, “We need to go, but I just want to say, Janey—good for you. A kind heart is a beautiful thing. And that’s got nothing at all to do with Angel or anybody else. That comes from you, and it’s yours.”
When he and Quinn were in the car again, though, headed to the airport at last, she said, “Do not make that spending limit higher than you would have otherwise. If it doesn’t hurt a little, it doesn’t count.” She looked out the window a while at the mountains, their rocky peaks lost in the clouds, then said, “Bam’s pretty amazing. I don’t know how she has that much influence without saying anything outright. I wish I could do that.”
“You don’t think you do that?”
“Are you kidding? The best reaction I normally get is ‘sullen acceptance.’ Frank hostility is more common. And you bet I spell it out. The word ‘lecture’ has been used. Frequently.”
“In court, maybe,” he said, “because I’d say your whole life is an influence.”
“Yeah?” She looked, for a once, a little shy.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d say so.”
“OK,” she said, bouncing back as always. “Realize that I’m going to hold you to that when I’m butting in and telling you what to do in Australia.”
48
A PLAN OF SORTS
It was Thursday morning now, because they’d lost a day in the air. Quinn was wrapping her mind around that, but it was still honestly a little hazy. She’d never traveled outside the U.S. except for swimming, which hadn’t been exactly “relaxing in tourist paradise.” Neither was this, especially with her head spinning with jet lag and other-side-of-the-world disorientation. They’d got in only a couple of hours earlier, and in Montana time, it was now something like three in the morning. Theyhadflown first class, because Beckett had insisted, but a lie-flat bed didn’t solve everything, and Beckett didn’t look like he’d slept much at all.
He'd also paid for her ticket, which she’d objected to strenuously. For once, she hadn’t won. She generally won, but not with him. That was disorienting, too.
A couple of hours ago, they’d been in the Brisbane Airport, walking past artificial Christmas trees brimming with bright decorations, surrounded by the incessantly cheerful or annoyingly heartfelt earworms that were Christmas songs, but let’s just say that it was seriously disconcerting to leave an extremely air-conditioned terminal in which Santa Claus was speeding along with his reindeer and his big red suit and mittens across the snow-covered rooftops, and be out on the sidewalk and instantly enveloped by the kind of heat and humidity that activated every sweat gland in your body. Also, the Brisbane Central Police Station didn’t have a fake Christmas tree or any fake garlands, nobody was playing Christmas music, there were absolutely no decorations in this bare-bones interview room, and Detective Inspector Burnside was not imbued with the Christmas spirit, because he wasn’t budging. Or bending. Not to Beckett, not to Megan, the lawyer, and especially not to Quinn.
Right now, Beckett was saying, “Look, I’ve answered all your questions. I’ve answered them four times over, because you’ve asked the same things four different ways to try to trip me up. I need to know who else you’re asking questions of and what you’re asking them. I didn’t have to come—it wasn’t easy to leave work, and it cost a bloody fortune to fly all this way at the last minute—and I’ve come anyway. If somebody killed my wife, I need you to find out, and I need to know.”
“We’ll continue to pursue our enquiries,” Burnside said. He was a stiff martinet of a man with a brush of silver hair and an extremely erect posture. Not exactly putting the subject at ease. “We won’t be sharing that information with you even if it results in charges. There’s still a right of privacy.”
Beckett said, “I could help you sort out the questions, at least. Maybe even answer some of them. Why Abby was at the party that night, and how she was feeling. What she’d said about her sister’s friends. What I don’t have a clue about is who could’ve been in the car with her. Somebody she gave a lift to, and since there were no calls or texts to or from anybody on her phone, it has to have happened at the party.”
“We’re pursuing all angles,” Burnside said.
“Wouldthe person have had to get into the car at the party, though?” Quinn asked. “From everything you’ve said, Abby was a generous person.”
“She was,” Beckett said.
“If she saw somebody walking in the rain,” Quinn said, “or—or waiting at a bus stop, might she stop and offer them a ride?”
“I’ll thank you to leave the speculation to us, miss,” Burnside said. “I said you could be here today. That was a concession. I also said that you weren’t a witness, and you aren’t Mr. Hughes’s solicitor or any kind of expert, so I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”
