Free The Bluest Blood by Gillian Roberts Page B

huh?”
    “You have a great future as a reporter,” I said. “But is going public this way—your stepfather’s on the panel. Is that going to create—”
    “You think I care?” His features turned stony. He cared too much. It must be so hard being Jake, containing those cataclysmic emotions.
    “Sorry.” That was his family and his decision. “Could it be that before fame hits, you could use a ride to the TV station?”
    Jake’s lack of wheels was a topic he lamented, over and over. It was also another bond with Griffin Roederer who, of course, had his wreck of auto mobility parked across the street.
    “Well,” Jake said. “I guess I...”
    Griffin said, “See you there, man. Give you moral support. I have things to do first.” Sometimes his voice sounded as rusty as his car, as if he needed to oil it between sentences.
    But the obvious thing was that he’d been expecting to drive Jake.
    “I’d appreciate a lift,” Jake said to me.
    There was, then, still an untouched agenda. Something he needed to talk about en route.
    As soon as we were on our way, Jake opened and shut his mouth, but said only, “So.”
    “Something up?”
    “I’m, ah…I’m glad you gave me a ride. Because…see, I feel bad about stuff I said. Yesterday. At the meeting. Miss Leary, you, and my mom?”
    “I remember,” I murmured, intrigued by how emotion segmented his sentences. “Showing your honest feelings isn’t a reason to feel bad.”
    He shrugged. “She—my mom—said I didn’t love her and that’s why I want to leave. And he—Harvey—he’s berserk. Worse than ever. Bragging how he made Havermeyer ‘bow down’—I swear, that’s what he said. And then, talking about…more, about...”
    I waited. The sentences were lengthening, growing more complex. He was gaining control of whatever it was.
    “He hit her. I wasn’t there, but there were red marks on her face when I came into the kitchen.”
    “That’s a real problem. Does your mother talk about it? Has she done anything to protect herself?” Dear God. Yet another pathological stone added to what the kid already carried. “This can’t all be on your shoulders.”
    His eyebrows converged as he wrinkled his brow in obvious confusion.
    “The abuse,” I said. “Isn’t that what you’re getting at?”
    He shook his head. “I mean, sure, I try to stop him, but I can’t make her leave or do anything. It wasn’t only that, though. There was the thing he said. Remember?”
    “Remind me.”
    I heard him swallow. “Harvey had this guy he was going to blackmail. The one who was secretly gay?”
    Ah, yes. Harvey, the amoral moral enforcer, although I hadn’t known his victim’s so-called crime. But why was this relevant?
    “The thing is—I know who he was talking about. I knew yesterday, too.” He darted a glance at me, then looked away again. “I didn’t say anything, and I feel bad about it.”
    I kept quiet. Sometimes a speaker needs a soliloquy. My role seemed to be the skull that Hamlet held, a symbol toward which Jake could direct his to-be-or-not-to-be.
    “He’s always been nice to me, and now, nice to the school.”
    He. A nice-to-Jake he. That narrowed the field. Combined with nice-to-the-school, it could mean only Neddy Roederer.
    “So to know Harvey wants to blackmail him, or thinks he can, or whatever—I don’t know what to do.” I felt his gaze like a tug on the sleeve, asking for a response this time. I kept my eyes on the road ahead as long as I could, glad of the need to drive safely.
    “Help me out on this,” I said, when my comprehension refused to untangle. “How do you know your stepfather was talking about Mr. Roederer—if I’ve followed you correctly.”
    “He called him the Trashman. He said he finally knew why he’d recognized the Trashman at the party. Placed him. Remembered him from Canada. He said he met him at a New Year’s party and that he—Neddy—lived with another man back then. Harvey knew the other