Of course she had her gun. She always had her gun. But it hadn’t registered until now that she might need it.
The doorbell rang again, and Candace nodded in the direction of the door and whispered, “Go ahead. I’m right beside you.”
I checked the peephole and saw Evan VanKleet standing on the porch. “It’s okay,” I whispered before I opened the door.
The evening air, rich with the promise of more rain, washed over me when I greeted Evan and invited him in.
The sarcastic attitude he’d worn like a flak jacket earlier today seemed to be gone. He looked troubled and then surprised when he saw that Candace was with me.
“Um, I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said to Candace.
“You never know where I might show up,” she answered.
“Come on in.” I started walking toward the living room, and Candace made sure to fall in behind Evan. “Can I get you something to drink? A Coke? Tea?”
“Nah, I’m good,” he said. He looked around the room for a few seconds. His jeans weren’t the baggy kind he’d worn earlier, and his pale green shirt brought out the color in his eyes. But I noticed that those eyes were wide and that he seemed almost scared.
I took John’s chair, and Evan finally sat down on the couch. Candace chose the overstuffed chair right across from him.
“I-I didn’t come here to talk to the cops-I mean police,” Evan said. He looked at me. “I thought that since you volunteer at the station and you seemed so… I don’t know… nice… that I could explain some things to you.”
“Things you didn’t want to tell us directly?” Candace said.
“Yeah. I guess I thought Jillian could pass it along,” he said.
“I would have told you to tell Candace yourself, so now you get two for one.” I tried to sound light and reassuring. I could tell this was definitely difficult for the kid.
“Okay. I get that. Anyway, Brandt’s the law student. He kept saying over and over before we got to the police station that none of us should say anything, that the family members are always suspects. But I’ve got to talk about this. It’s the right thing to do. My father was murdered, and I want to help you catch whoever did it.” Evan ran his hands through his mop of hair. “I haven’t always done the right thing, but… but-”
“Go for it,” Candace said.
Before he could say another word, Syrah jumped on the back of the sofa right behind Evan.
“Whoa,” he said as he turned. “He’s not a regular tiger cat, is he?” He reached out his hand to let Syrah have a sniff, and my boy rubbed his head against Evan’s fingers.
“He’s an Abyssinian,” I said. “His name is Syrah.”
“Abyssinian. That means he’s descended from ancient Egypt, huh?” Evan said. “His big ears look like those cats in the Egyptian drawings in my old world history book.”
“That’s exactly right,” I said with a smile.
Syrah does like to be admired, and he climbed in Evan’s lap.
Merlot, who had been in the corner of the foyer when Evan arrived, had followed us into the living room and now came from behind Candace’s chair to claim his share of appreciation.
Evan looked so much younger tonight. Maybe he was only eighteen or nineteen rather than in his twenties.
He said, “How much does that one weigh?”
“Merlot weighs twenty pounds,” I said. “But getting back to why you came. You want the police to know certain things, right?”
“I was being a punk earlier. I came to apologize to you, Jillian. To explain. I’m not like Brandt or my mother or Doug. My family is a freak show. The biggest freak is dead, or at least that’s what people will say. But though it didn’t come across that way today, I loved my dad. He was just screwed up.”
“Chief Baca said you acted pretty belligerent. That you didn’t seem to care that your father’s been murdered,” Candace said.
“I was pretending not to care. But I do,” Evan said. “I want the police to find out who killed him. I didn’t do right by him while he was alive, so I can at least be on his side now.”
“How did you ‘not do right’ by your dad?” I said gently.
Evan stroked Syrah and didn’t answer for several seconds. “I ratted him out.” He looked at Candace. “No one but Brandt knows what I did.”
“And Brandt, not quite a lawyer, by the way, decided information should be withheld from the police?” Candace’s tone was hard.
That tone worried me. I was sure that getting angry with Evan wouldn’t help. Hoping to maintain the connection between Evan and me, I said, “Brandt seems to have a lot of power in your family. That must be difficult to deal with.”
Evan took a deep breath and blew out through his lips like he was inflating a balloon. “No kidding. He kept hammering into all of us that the relatives are always suspects and that we didn’t have to tell you anything.”
“You ‘ratted out’ your father,” Candace said. “What does that have to do with his murder?”
“I’m not sure, except that’s what led to him moving to that farm. See, I went to visit Dad in his lab about a year ago. The door was locked, but he’d given me the code, so I went in to surprise him. First thing I saw were these animal carriers, about five of them… and there were cats inside. My father was supposed to be doing research with ferrets and their immune system. But he had all these cats.”
“So you asked him what he was doing,” Candace said.
“Right,” he said. “But what I didn’t tell you today is that my dad was bipolar. He took medicine for it most of his life. He’d go off his meds every now and then, and I could tell that day in the lab that he was definitely off. It was his eyes, you know?”
Like the look he had in his eyes the day I met him at Robin’s farm? That’s what was wrong with him, I thought. “What about those cats?” I said. “Do you think he was researching their immune systems rather than working on the ferrets?”
Evan said, “I didn’t know what was up, but I got a bad feeling because the cats looked thin. Not really sick, just thin. Since my father was a cat lover, that seemed odd. And when I asked him about them, he told me to forget what I’d seen and keep my mouth shut. Said he had a plan that was better than winning the lottery.”
“Did you ask him what he meant by that?” Candace asked.
“He kept rambling on about amino acids and millions of dollars. He was obviously using the lab for something he shouldn’t, and he needed to get back on his medicine. That’s all I could think about.”
“What did you do, Evan?” Candace said.
“I told my brother. He said I had information about improper use of a research lab and that what my dad was doing was a crime. He said I had to tell the department head. God, I didn’t want to do that.”
Candace said, “Brandt tells you to ‘rat out’ your father and then tells you to not talk when the police ask about his murder. That’s messed-up thinking, Evan.”
“I know,” he said, his anger finally flaring. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Did you tell the department head about the cats?” I asked.
He took a deep breath, seemed to be trying hard to keep his emotions in check. “Brandt said I could do it anonymously. And rather than the department head, I sent a letter straight to the college president, thinking he’d know about my dad’s illness, help him get back on his meds and send him back to work.” His eyes grew moist, and his lips trembled with emotion. Syrah leaned his head back and looked up at Evan. He knew the kid was upset. “But that’s not what happened. They fired him. And all because of me.”
Syrah wasn’t the only one who could tell this was tearing Evan up inside. I saw it, too. Evan knew his father had been doing something wrong, but he still loved him.
“You felt guilty, huh?” I said.
“Oh yeah. So I decided to leave the dorm and move in with him, make sure he stayed on his meds. Mom always made sure he took them, but see, she’d left him, and Brandt had been away for years. He didn’t care if Dad took his pills or got in trouble or got fired. He hated him.”