Free First Drop by Zoe Sharp Page B

policeman – and I could only assume he was a genuine cop – had followed Trey and me to the amusement park and tried to grab the kid. Something about the setup didn’t quite hang true. I kicked and pummelled at my lumpy thoughts, trying to break the sense out of them. Then my brain tilted, and in the light of what Brown had told me I began to look at things from a slightly different angle.
     
    Supposing Oakley man hadn’t followed us? Supposing he didn’t need to, because he already knew where we were going to be? After all, Keith knew exactly where his son was heading. Exactly.
     
    Just after he’d handed me that wedge of cash that morning he’d turned to the boy and said, “I suppose you’re gonna drag Charlie onto your favourite old woodie until one of you is sick, huh?”
     
    Oh yes, Keith had known precisely the area of the park where we could be located, and that’s just where Oakley man had picked up our trail. I saw again the gun in his hands, the people scattering. The woman he’d shot fell again before my eyes.
     
    But if the cop was there simply to snatch Trey, why had he fired at us?
     
    I let the curtain fall closed and turned away from the window, moving to sit on the empty bed.
     
    “Trey,” I said. “We need to talk.”
     
    He sighed and clicked off the TV. I got the feeling his reluctance was more to do with a desire to avoid the subject rather than fascination with a fuzzy game show.
     
    “OK,” he said. “Talk.”
     
    “Have you any idea where Keith might have gone, or why he’s disappeared?”
     
    He shrugged. “Sounds kinda like he’s run out on me, doesn’t it?”
     
    I might have known this would be all about Trey. “Why would he do that?”
     
    Another hunch of those skinny shoulders.
     
    I waited, and when that seemed to be as much of an answer as I was going to get I added carefully, “Is there any reason you can think of why your father might want to harm you?”
     
    His head snapped up at that, eyes unnaturally bright. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can think of plenty.”
     
    I sighed. God preserve us from teenage angst . “He’s your father, Trey, why would he want to do that?”
     
    “Why not?” the kid threw back at me, his voice oozing with bitterness. “He already murdered my mother.”
     

Five
     
    For a moment I sat very still, my face expressionless while my mind reeled. I skimmed back over every chance remark and casual word I’d overheard since I’d arrived in the Pelzner household and came up blank.
     
    No-one had mentioned Trey’s mother.
     
    From somewhere I’d formed a vague impression that it was a bit of a sticky subject as far as Keith was concerned, but I’d no idea what the official line was on her whereabouts.
     
    I glanced at the boy. He was worrying at one of the burn holes in the bedspread with the end of his finger, staring fixedly at the bed. His other hand was clamped onto his own wrist so tight the knuckles showed up as a row of whitened double indentations. I wavered over believing him or dismissing the whole thing as another of his fantasies.
     
    “What happened to her?” I said quietly.
     
    “When I was a kid we were living up in Daytona and she and my dad used to fight all the time,” he said, speaking so low I could hardly hear him. “One night they had this mega row, like total war, screaming at each other and throwing stuff. The next day, when I got home from school, Dad told me she’d gone.”
     
    “It happens,” I said, disappointed at the lack of concrete evidence – or just of fresh laid concrete in the back garden. I tried not to put anything into my voice, one way or another. “Marriages break up every day.”
     
    He speared me with a single vicious look. “She would never have left me,” he said, vehement. “Oh she talked about going, but she swore she’d take me with her. She swore . Every time after they’d been fighting she’d come into my room and sit on my bed and cry and tell me