“They aren’t strangers,” Jason protested. “This is Irene Kelly, from the newspaper.”
“And what did he tell you about talking to reporters?” she asked. “Get out of that Jeep this instant! When your daddy gets home, you are going to get your smart little behind whipped!”
He reached toward his rear pocket, not to shield it, but to remove a slim black object. He flicked his wrist, and I saw that the object was a cell phone. A thirteen-year-old kid with a cell phone — in the Sayres’ upscale neighborhood, I supposed every kid who was old enough to read a keypad had one.
“We’ll see what my dad says,” Jason said, and pushed a button.
“Yes, we will!” his stepmother said, sure of her ground.
“Hi, it’s Jason,” he said into the phone. “May I please speak to my dad?”
“More manners when you’re talking to his secretary, I see,” Mrs. Sayre complained.
“You should know,” he sneered, causing her to turn red. In a more pleasant tone he said into the phone, “Hi, Dad, it’s Jason. Ms. Kelly came over to talk to me and You-Know-Who is causing problems.”
He looked toward me as he listened, his expression apprehensive, and then he smiled. He extended the phone toward his stepmother, who snatched it out of his hand.
“Giles, if you are going to undermine my authority with the boy every time I turn around—” She fell silent, and watched me. “And how on earth was I to know that? I see two strangers luring your son into a car, one of them looking like a Hell’s Angel—”
She listened again, her expression darkening. She held the phone away from her ear while Giles was still talking, and pushed the off button. She snapped the phone shut, tossed it none too carefully to Jason, who made a fumbling catch.
“Mrs. Sayre—” I said, the name sounding strange to me, but she had already pivoted on her heel and marched back toward the porch.
At the door, she turned and called out, “If you do plan to kidnap him, please don’t bother to send a ransom note.” She slammed the door shut.
“Now can we go?” Jason said.
“Jack Fremont, meet my impatient friend, Jason Sayre.”
“Hi — can we go?”
“Just where is it you’re so anxious to get to?” Jack asked.
“Anywhere! Just get me away from her,” he said.
Jack smiled at me and said, “Better get in, Irene. Buckle up, Jason.”
Jason leaned back with a sigh when we finally pulled away from the curb.
“The park okay?” Jack asked.
“Sure,” I said, then turned to Jason. “Is that all right with you?”
“Finally,” he said dramatically, “someone asks me what I want!”
“Well?”
“Yeah, I like the park.”
“When did your dad get married?” I asked.
“To Susan?”
“Is that your stepmother’s name?”
He nodded. “She wants everybody to call her Dixie, but that’s a crock — she isn’t even from the South. She’s lived with us since Gilly moved out. My dad was at her place before that.”
“So she’s not your father’s wife?”
“She is now. They got married just after you found my mother.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking away from me, down at his hands. “The day you came and told him about that killer, he called Susan up and told her it looked like they could finally get married.”
Dumbstruck, I looked over at Jack. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, not at traffic, but at Jason.
“As long as they couldn’t find my mother, he had to wait seven years,” Jason went on, kicking out his feet as if straightening his legs, but the look on his face said he wished his Timberlands were connecting with someone.
“Oh,” I said, understanding dawning. “Because legally, your mother had not been declared dead?”
“Right. Susan thought my dad could have made the courts hurry it up, but Dad said it would be really bad for his business because people would be mad at him — because you had written all those stories and everything. So he had to wait to get his little hottie. Wait to get married to her, anyway. She wanted him to marry her the day after they said the body was my mom’s. He made her wait a week.”
“She used to be his secretary?” I asked, remembering the comment that had made her blush.
“Yeah.”
We stopped at a corner market and bought some fresh fruit and a soda for Jason, bottled water for Jack and me. We drove to the large park that forms part of the eastern border of the city, found a shady spot, and began an impromptu picnic. Jason’s cell phone rang; he spoke briefly to a friend and hung up.
“I guess it beats two tin cans and a wire,” Jack said.
I laughed, but Jason asked what we were talking about, so we explained a little something about the olden days.
“And that really works?” he asked.
“We’ll set up a demonstration a little later,” Jack said.
He picked at the grass, then without looking up, said, “Did you find out something more about my mom?”
“Oh — no, I’m sorry. That’s not why I stopped by to see you.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Oh.”
When he didn’t say anything more, I added, “I also wanted to apologize for not coming by sooner.”
He shrugged, frowned down at the piece of grass he was pulling on. “Why should you? You never even knew her.”
“But I know your family.”
He leveled a flat, cynical gaze at me. “Do you?”
I thought of today’s revelations. “Not very well, perhaps — but enough to know that what happened to your mom has been hard on everyone in the family.”
He laughed. “Hard on everyone? No way. I’m the only one who really loved her.”
“I don’t think that’s true—”
“Who then? My dad? Oh, pul-eeeze. He was getting it on with old Suze. He probably thinks my mom’s murder was the best thing that could have happened.”
“Jason, I’ve seen—”
“His tears? He’s a phony. And you know who’s a bigger phony? Gilly. Learned it from him — only she’s even better at it than he is. She even fooled you. She hated my mom. Hated her.” He shook his head. “They hated each other.”
“When she first met me, Gillian admitted that she had trouble with your mom, that there were arguments.”
“Trouble? Arguments?” he said angrily. “You think it was all some teenage thing?”
It had seemed exactly that way to me, and to everyone I had talked to at the time Julia Sayre disappeared.
“So why did Gillian hate her?” Jack asked.
“How should I know?” he said, but with less hostility than he had shown me. “She’s cold. She doesn’t care about anybody or anything.”
“For four years,” I said, “Gillian has been the one to call me, to ask if there has been any news of your mother. In that time, other people have gone missing, but no one took the trouble your sister took to find the person she loved.”
“Don’t say ‘loved,’ ” he snapped. “She didn’t love my mother. She hated her. She was mean to me. She’s mean to everyone. She’s a user. She even used you, and now you’re talking to me like that was something good. She just wanted attention. You gave it to her.”
“When’s the last time you talked to her?” I asked.
“Years ago. She moved out a long time ago.”
“Do you miss her?”
“No.”
“She hasn’t been back to visit you since she moved out?”
“No. It doesn’t matter. She’s still weird. I see her every now and then — I mean, you know, see her when she’s hanging out in different places. I saw her here once,” he said, vaguely pointing toward another part of the park. “Didn’t even say hello to me. Which is fine,” he added quickly. “I don’t want her to come anywhere near me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t realize . . . I didn’t realize that you were so angry with her. Or with me.”