“Oh, damn,” he said. He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall.
“Are they going to find bloodstains on it?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. And if those are bloodstains, I don’t know whose blood. Could be Doleson’s. I helped Rob put Spike in his crate after he bit Doleson, remember? I figured maybe he had some blood on his muzzle and it rubbed off on my shirt. I can’t think of any other way I could have gotten blood on it. But do you really think the chief’s going to believe that? Especially if—”
“Aunt Meg?”
I jumped, even though I recognized the voice. Jorge jumped too. My nephew, Eric, was standing in the doorway.
“Sorry,” Eric said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s okay,” Jorge said. “I was just going. Look,” he added, to me, “we need to talk later. Think about it.”
About what? Whether I’d seen Jorge helping out with the shed and with Spike? The bloodstained sweatshirt? Or the fact that Jorge had just become a really serious suspect?
“I hear you,” I said.
Jorge gave me one more pleading look, then nodded and left.
“Sorry,” Eric said again. “I didn’t mean to chase him off.”
“He really was about to leave,” I said. I didn’t think Eric needed to hear about my suspicions of Jorge, or how overjoyed I was that my conversation with Jorge was interrupted by a twelve-year-old who, in spite of his recent growth spurt, was still not nearly big enough to be the murderer.
Eric looked anxious. He seemed so young and vulnerable.
Not just vulnerable—upset.
“Did you get through to your parents?” My sister, Pam, her Australian-born husband, and Eric’s five siblings were spending the holiday in Melbourne, with the other side of their family. Eric, thanks to severe and persistent airsickness, was staying with my parents, as he usually did when the rest of the McReady clan made one of their frequent trips down under.
He nodded.
“They’re fine,” he said. “They all send their love.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“Why do grownups always assume there’s something wrong?” he said. He tried to assume a look of bored exasperation that he’d copied from his older siblings during the worst of their teen years, but he hadn’t quite mastered it yet, thank goodness.
“Why do teenagers always lump grownups together in that stereotypical us and them way?” I countered. “You’re starting it a few months early.”
He grinned at that, and looked about six again. But the grin vanished too quickly.
“Besides,” I went on. “After everything else that’s gone wrong in the last day or so, I’ve gotten out of the habit of expecting anything but bad news. If you’ve got good news, my apologies, and bring it on.”
He nodded, but didn’t blurt out any glad tidings.
“Kind of a weird Christmas,” he said.
Okay, we’d go the indirect route.
“Weird, yeah,” I said. “Which makes it normal for our family, right? Remember the Christmas when your grandfather fell off the roof?”
He grinned at that.
“How about the Christmas when Natasha gave everyone live goldfish?” he said.
“The Christmas your uncle Rob set the house on fire?”
“How about—” he began. Then he took a deep breath. “How about the Christmas when I thought we’d all really blown it? When Santa didn’t bring anybody anything?”
“I remember,” I said. Eric had been six or seven, and absolutely obsessed with some toy he’d asked Santa for. So obsessed, in fact, that when he woke up at four A.M., he’d crept down to the living room to see if Santa had come through. Our family tradition was to put all the wrapped presents between family members under the tree in the days leading up to Christmas, while Santa deposited his bounty, unwrapped, after we’d gone to bed on Christmas Eve. And we maintained a strict rule that no one was allowed to go into the living room until the whole family was up. Then Dad would fling open the French doors and everyone would exclaim with delight and surprise at all the wonderful things Santa had brought.
“No one could figure out what was wrong that Christmas morning,” I said. “Here you were, the youngest—the only one we were absolutely sure still believed in Santa—and no one could find you.”
“When I saw that there was nothing under the tree, I knew I must have blown it, big time,” he said. “And not just me but all of us. I figured whatever it was, Mom and Dad hadn’t guessed, but Santa knew. And as soon as Mom and Dad saw the empty stockings and all, they’d start asking some pretty tough questions, till they found out whatever it was we did.”