The Witch Of Agnesi Part 28

As soon as the waitress left, Bonnie said, "I think it's time we all laid our cards on the table, so to speak."

She turned to Jesse. "You implied Edmund was the one who put you wise to Peyton's insults Thursday morning."

Jesse reddened. "That's right."

Ali was shaking her head. She looked suspiciously at Jesse. "This is about the fight? I can't believe Ed-mund would do that. He and Peyton were friends."

From the expression on Jesse's face, Ali may as well have driven her fork into his sternum. The boy knotted his napkin in a meaty fist.

"I'm not lying," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

Ali inhaled deeply then let it loose. Her features softened as she regarded Jesse. "You're not, are you?"

She inched a hand toward Jesse's but stopped just short. "Why would Edmund do such a thing?"

"Why, indeed?" Bonnie laced her fingers beneath her chin. "I think, at the very least, we can all agree there was more to Edmund than we knew."

Ali nodded. "He stole my necklace."

Jolted by Ali's statement, Bonnie's mind raced to retrieve a recent memory. "Do you recall the exchange you had with Edmund at the Academy, when you called him Samurai?"

Pursing her lips, Ali was silent for a moment then her eyes went wide. "He teased me about something."

"He said you were hiding your true feelings, that you really loved him."

Rhiannon looked up sharply.

"Relax, Mother." Ali returned her attention to Bonnie. "Edmund was always saying things like that. I remember. I came back with, 'In your dreams, Samurai'."

"Did you call him that often?"

"Samurai? Sure, all the time. He'd call me witch girl."

The same thing Molly called you. "This is impor- tant. Do you know if anyone else called him by that nickname?" "This is impor- tant. Do you know if anyone else called him by that nickname?"

Ali shrugged. "Not that I know of. Why is that important?"

"Because that's the pet name Wicked Little Witch used in the e-mail."

Ali's hand came to her lips. "I didn't write Edmund any e-mail on Thursday evening."

Bonnie wished she could reach across the wide table and grasp the girl's hands in hers. "But someone did. Someone who either called him by that name, or knew that you did."

"They're trying to make my baby look guilty." Rhi-annon almost growled out the words.

Bonnie ignored Rhiannon. "Did you know Ed-mund had Samurai printed across the bottom of his sneakers?" she asked Ali.

"His new white Sketchers? It wasn't there Thurs-day night."

"How can you be so sure?"

Ali jabbed a fingertip down at the table. "I saw the bottoms of both his shoes when we were sitting on the van's b.u.mper. Edmund is . . . was always . . . cross-ing and uncrossing his legs. Besides, he wouldn't write Samurai on his shoes. That's a Junior High thing to do." She wrinkled her nose.

Bonnie considered the statement. "Then there are only three possibilities." She held up her index finger. "One, you're mistaken about what you saw."

"I'm not."

Bonnie waved away the denial and lifted a second finger. "Two, Edmund wrote the word on his shoe in the interim between Thursday night and Sat.u.r.day." Although she didn't say it, "the night of his murder" hung heavy in the air.

"Keep in mind that Edmund has been acting out of character lately, even his mother thinks so. There's that whole business of breaking into your house and stealing your necklace. Would you a week ago have suspected him of doing such a thing?"

Ali shook her head.

"Neither would I, but all the evidence points to his doing precisely just that." Bonnie ticked off a third fin-ger. "Then there's only one possibility remaining."

"Someone else wrote the word on the shoe," Rhian-non offered.

Bonnie slowly nodded. "If they did, and Ali is cor-rect about what she saw, then they wrote it between Thursday and Sat.u.r.day. And since Samurai shows up in the e-mail it seems likely the person who wrote the e-mail also wrote on the shoe."

"The Wicked Little Witch," Ali said.

"A very Wicked Witch, I would imagine."

CHAPTER 17.

WITH A GRUNT, BONNIE SHOVED OPEN HER front door. "I'm going to nail my feet to the carpet and not budge from this house until morning."

Staring up like an ebony Egyptian G.o.d, Euclid sat motionless as Bonnie, Armen, and Jesse filed past him. The cat growled and sniffed suspiciously at Jesse.

Jesse reached out a hand, and Euclid pulled away. "I don't think your kitty likes me."

Bonnie frowned at the small Burmese. "Most days, I'm not sure if he likes me."

Arching his back, the cat permitted her to stroke him once before he sauntered off. For the second time that day he presented all a.s.sembled with a view of a raised tail and a puckered rear end.

"I've got to get a cat that doesn't do that." Bonnie pointed with her chin toward the back of the house. "Come with me, youngster."

Leading him right, away from the kitchen and to-ward the back hall, Bonnie could hear the trio of dogs whining to be let in.

"In a minute, ladies," she shouted.

Instead of turning left to the laundry room/dog kennel, she turned right again, advancing on the two guest bedrooms adjacent to her garage. The first, where Armen had slept, looked as neat as if maid service had straightened the room. I think I'm in love. Callahan, your mother should be alive and give lessons on how to train a son. I think I'm in love. Callahan, your mother should be alive and give lessons on how to train a son.

Using her crutch, Bonnie pushed open the second door. A compact little room with a twin bed and a student desk came into view. Posters of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippin adorned two of the walls.

"I'm a.s.suming since you've been on your own for the past month, you can make a bed."

"I can make a bed."

"Good. Because, between the two of us, you're in better shape for housework." She nodded for him to slide open the closet door. "Grab a set of sheets and do the manly thing. There's also a comforter at the back of the closet."

She stepped out of the way. "Well, I'll leave you to it."

As he reached up to retrieve the sheets, he whis-pered, almost too faint to be heard, "Thank you, Missus Pinkwater."

Something in the way he spoke told Bonnie he'd had precious little to be thankful for in the past few months.

"You're welcome, Jesse."

She studied the bald head and wide shoulders of the teenage enigma, thinking just how much their relation-s.h.i.+p had changed since Thursday morning.

h.e.l.l, four days ago, I was sure he meant to punch my lights out.

When he turned around, he caught her staring. Their eyes locked for a long moment. "I'm not com-plaining or anything, but how long you think I'll be staying here?"

She shrugged, trying to make light of the question. "A couple of days, until things settle down."

Truth be told, it could be a lot longer. If the killer struck again, and suspicion fell on Jesse, it might be a considerable time before he would be safe going back to his trailer.

Jesse nodded, and Bonnie saw understanding writ-ten in his rugged face.

He dropped the sheets on the small bed. "Then I have another favor to ask you."

"Fire away."

He drew a deep breath and released a sigh that went on for a week and a half. "It's my mom."

Of course, you've got a funeral to plan. "Do you want some help with the arrangements?" She cringed, thinking of Ben's funeral just eighteen months previ-ous. That day seemed a lifetime ago. "Do you want some help with the arrangements?" She cringed, thinking of Ben's funeral just eighteen months previ-ous. That day seemed a lifetime ago.

Jesse shook his head. "I got most of it worked out, the service and all. Mama wanted to be cremated. The funeral home was going to pick up . . ." He swallowed, wiping a beefy hand across one eye. ". . . her body today. Except now, with my truck impounded, I got no wheels to get to the funeral."

Bonnie leaned heavily on her crutches. She remem-bered her own mother's death. There'd been a ton of decisions to make, and she had Ben to help her make them. This boy was alone in the world.

"Would it be all right if I went to the funeral with you?"

Jesse's blinked back tears. "You don't really need to go. You could just drop me off."

"Don't be silly, Jesse. I would be honored to attend your mother's funeral. I wish fate had permitted me to know her. I'm sure she was a great lady."

Jesse sniffed, a shy smile brightening his face. "You should have seen her before she got sick, before my dad died. The two of them were terrific together, always laughing, getting me to laugh."

But I never knew them, or you then. The Jesse Poole I came to know was the bald-headed Nean-derthal who whupped up on thirteen-year olds. She dispelled the errant thought, allocating it to that sector of her brain she'd lately come to call the I-don't-know-s.h.i.+t- about-Jesse-Poole-region. She dispelled the errant thought, allocating it to that sector of her brain she'd lately come to call the I-don't-know-s.h.i.+t- about-Jesse-Poole-region.

"You've had a rough time of it this last year."

Jesse shrugged an I'm-no-different-from-anybody-else shrug. "Mom was already real sick when Dad died, and me, I didn't help things. I went a little nuts, drug-ging, and getting in stupid trouble, fights at school, you name it."

He rubbed his bald pate, like his scalp was a sort of an exclamation point on the choices he had made. "Changed the way I look about then."

She sat down heavily on the bed and indicated for him to do the same. "I didn't want to say anything, but I was wondering what makes a guy with hair shave his head."

Jesse sat down heavily atop of the pile of sheets then hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He turned and offered her a shy smile. "You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that, but I'm thinking your mother must not have liked it much."

"Not much." He licked his fingertips like he was planning to deal out a hand of cards. "We made a bar-gain. I got to keep the shaved head, but I had to quit the other stuff."

"And did you?"

Jesse nodded slowly. The folds of his face bunched into the palm of his hand. "Gave up drugging, drink-ing. Hadn't been in a fight since Christmas."

"Yet, you always seemed so angry in the halls, like you were getting ready for a fight, getting ready to punch someone."

Jesse broke eye contact with her, staring down at the floor. "I was mostly p.i.s.sed off at the kind of folks you hung out with . . . that Newlin and that Stephanie Templeton chick." He reddened, obviously aware he was speaking ill of the dead.

He sat up, his face hard as if he needed to say more or explode. "You know what made me mad the most?"

She shook her head and kept silent, knowing she wasn't really being asked for an answer.

"They'd walk right by me like they didn't see me at all, like I wasn't really there."

"Peyton and Stephanie?" She asked the question and held her breath, dreading what he might say next.

"Not just them," he whispered.

I was guilty as any of them. A long quiet moment pa.s.sed, Bonnie remembering last Thursday evening. She'd reveled in the company of her Knowledge Bowl team, enjoying their wit and their intelligence. Had she subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, discounted children like Jesse as not worth her time, not worth knowing? A long quiet moment pa.s.sed, Bonnie remembering last Thursday evening. She'd reveled in the company of her Knowledge Bowl team, enjoying their wit and their intelligence. Had she subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, discounted children like Jesse as not worth her time, not worth knowing?

"I'm sorry, Jesse."

His eyes wide, Jesse waved away the apology. "No, no, you don't understand. You got nothin' to be sorry about. You came and got me at the cop shop. Look at me here in your house, sittin' on your bed."

He bounced ever so slightly, as if acknowledging it was now his bed if only for a little while. "It's like I was angry all that time, so we never got to know one another. Maybe I didn't need to be mad at Stephanie either."

"And Peyton?"

"Peyton Newlin was a little p.i.s.s ant." He reddened again. "Every beating I gave that creep, he deserved."

She locked eyes with Jesse. "Maybe not the last one. There's a good chance Peyton never said the things Edmund accused him of."

Jesse waved his hands beside his head, the same gesture he'd used Thursday morning, as if clearing the air of a swarm of bees. "Isn't that just a screwy bunch of c.r.a.p? Why would Edmund do that?"