Page 130 of Old Money
Not in front of you.His best friend.
“I thought it was just local talk or whatever,” Jamie continues. “Theo was this hometown hero, and I thought it was just the village trying to take him down a peg.”
Jamie looks at the table.
“But I guess—no, I did. I did sometimes wonder, just for a second. I’d see how he’d get laser-focused sometimes—like when something didn’t go his way with a case. Or, one time, Isaac had a teacher who put him in a time-out—I don’t remember why, but this was like a kindergarten thing. And Theo was fuckinglivid. It was all he could talk about for a week—this shitty teacher who had no business being anywhere near children. The school should fire him. The school should be shut down. Eventually, I was like, ‘Yeah, but Isaac seems okay, right?’ And I was at the house that night—Isaac wasfine. He was goofing off, singing some song from school. But then I said that thing to Theo, and Theo bangs his hand on the table and goes, ‘That’s not the point!’ ”
Jamie’s face tenses at the memory.
“And I kind of—” Jamie sits back with a jolt. “Isaac too. He looked all scared, then he just started wailing.”
Jamie opens his hands and sighs.
“But I don’t have kids, right? So, what do I know? And it wasn’t like he did that every day.”
I have the thought again, but this time Jamie says it:
“Or maybe he did.” Jamie blinks slowly, shaking his head. “I wasn’t there a lot.”
“Me neither,” I add quietly.
We look at each other for a long moment, the awful, unknown possibilities hanging in the air. Then he continues:
“So yeah, I’d seen him snap a few times, but I never connected it to Caitlin. I never even thought about it—not until Jessie.”
“Did she know who you were when you started dating?” I murmur. “Theo’s friend, I mean.”
“No,”Jamie says. “Not until a couple months in. Meeting friends and all that.”
He hedges for a moment, glancing up at me.
“It’s a little weird, talking about my ex-girlfriend,” he says with sudden sharpness. “After the thing with us—whatever. I don’t even know—the thing where we were having sex for, like, three weeks and you’d sneak out every morning? And refused to talk about it?”
His sideways glance becomes a glare—the wary, scornful look you’d give a nosy stranger or an uninvited guest. Someone you don’t need to be nice to.
“Just saying, next time, maybe have the awkward conversation. Maybe get on the same page with the guy you’re sleeping with before you suspect him of murder.”
I bend my head, acknowledging the hit.
“Okay. Maybe tell the girl whatyouknow about the murder,” I say in an even tone. “Yeah?”
Jamie launches into a response, but I shake my head. We’ll get to that part, but we need to finish this part first.
“Go on.” I nod. “You were dating Jessie.”
“Anyway,” Jamie says in a calmer voice, his fingers drumming the table. “Jessie knew I had some old Wheaton friends, but I guess I’d never mentioned Theo by name. Then I did, and—boom.”
“What?” I prod him—no need to be gentle now. “You had a fight?”
“At first, yeah,” Jamie answers. “She accused me of keeping it secret from her—the fact that I knew Theo. I was like, ‘Why the hell would I do that?’ And she just said it: ‘Because he killed a girl.’ ”
I knew it was coming, but I still flinch.
“Sorry,” Jamie mumbles, rubbing at his hairline.
“It’s fine, he did,” I answer sharply, waving him on.
“That was the first time I’d ever heard someone just lay it out like that—plain and simple, no hesitation. She kind ofyelled it, actually. And I did the whole knee-jerk ‘What are you talking about?’ thing. But it wasn’t even a fight, really. As soon as she said it—” He shakes his head. “It was like she hit the light switch. And now...”
