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Troy said, “That’s a—” then didn’t go on. Instead, he looked up at his dad, then at Quinn. Yep. Atmosphere.
“A swear,” Beckett said. “You’re right.”
Quinn said, “You meant, ‘Please don’t go. Come in and let’s discuss this.’”
He grinned, and it was so unexpected, it almost made her laugh. “Yeah, Your Honor. That’s what I meant. Come in and let’s discuss this. Fair warning—I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“Well,” she said, “neither do I, so we’ll blunder around together, how’s that?”
She stepped inside, and Beckett said, a little gruffly, “Let’s get you in the bath, Troy. Nearly bedtime.”
Troy said, “But I wanted—” and shut his mouth again. This was the Land of Unfinished Sentences, apparently.
“You wanted Quinn to sit by the bath,” Beckett said, back to “under control” again. “I’ll sit there a minute instead. No story tonight, though. I need to talk to Quinn.”
“OK,” Troy said. His little face, though …
Quinn said, “Janey’s right that I’m not a mum, but maybe I could be a friend. I’d like to sit by the tub with you, and I’d like to read you a story. It’ll give your dad a chance to talk to Janey.” She shot a look at him.You’d better be talking to Janey,she did her best to tell him with that look,because there’s something going on there.Was she a mom? No, she was not. That didn’t mean she didn’t know kids.
He said, “Interesting that you think you need to tell me that.”
“Well,” she said, “I wasn’t sure, so I thought I’d go ahead. Let’s go, Troy. Does Bacon come too?”
“Yes,” Troy said, looking happier. “He doesn’t like togeta bath, but he likes to watch them.”
“Then let’s go,” she said again. “The bath awaits, because you are practically wearing the beach. Of course, so am I, but we’ll overlook that.”
* * *
Beckett triedto think of what to say during the very short walk to his bedroom. He didn’t come up with much, so he’d just have to give it a go. That was why he was sitting on the bed when Janey came out of his bath in her pajamas.
When she saw him, her face settled into mutinous lines. No surprises there. He said, “Come sit by me.”
She hesitated, and then she did it. He waited, and after a minute, she said, as if the words were being dragged out of her, “I know I was rude.”
“Yeah.” He put an arm around her. That seemed like a good start. “You were. You must’ve been feeling that hard, because you’re not normally rude.”
“And Quinn helped me,” she said. “With volleyball. I know it. It’s just—” She stopped.
“That you think I don’t love your mum anymore,” he said. “Why?”
She looked down at her hands. “Alexis says …” More stoppage. Ah.
He said, “Alexis has some opinions. You’ve got opinions too, though, surely. Least you always have before. Let’s hear them.”
“Did you kill Mum?” she asked, all in a rush, then hauled in a breath and started to shake.
“What thehell?”He knew that wasn’t the right answer. He just didn’t have anything else. He was copping this from Janey, too? “No. Why?”
“Alexis says maybe that’s why,” she said. “That you have a guilty conscience, so you wanted to get as far away as possible. The cops asked me all those questions, and she says they must have known something. That maybe you had life insurance or something, or you were having sex with somebody else and she found out, or …” She trailed off, possibly because of the look on his face. Or possibly because his arm had tightened too much around her.
He relaxed his arm with an effort, did his best to relax his face, didn’t succeed, and said, “What is Alexis reading, I’d like to know.”
“She likes murder mysteries,” Janey said. “She’s an excellent reader. She gets her books from the adult section at the library, not the kids’. I didn’tthinkyou did, but I wasn’t sure. And then when you kissed Quinn, and she came back tonight, I …” More trailing off.
“First,” he said, “if you have any questions like that, you ask me. Not Alexis. I’m the one with the answers.”
“She says the suspect never tells,” Janey said. “Not until the very end, when they’re trapped by the detective. Then they confess, but they try to kill the detective. I told her I didn’t think you’d kill anybody, though,” she added. “Even though Mum said, ‘Temper again,’ sometimes, about work.”
