Harlan Coben - Fool Me Once

Maya nodded toward the photograph. “I can see that.”

“You can, right?” Her smile faded away. “Anyway, Javier did a lot of work for the families on the Main Line, including the Lockwood family.”

“As in the headmaster?”

“His cousin, actually. Super rich financial guy. He mostly lived in New York, but he kept an estate out here too. Snootiest-looking man you ever met with his blond hair and jutted jaw and all that, but he was kind too. He liked Javier. The men started talking a lot. One day, Javier told him about Theo.” The pain came back to her face all at once. “He was such a special boy, my Theo. So smart. Great athlete. Really had it all, as they say. Like all parents, we wanted a better life for him. Javier, he wanted to get Theo into a better school. Turns out Franklin Biddle Academy was looking to get a few scholarship kids in, you know, financial aid so they could say that the school was” — she made quote marks with her hands — “‘diverse.’ So this Lockwood guy wanted to help. He talked to his cousin the headmaster, and next thing you know... Have you been to the school?”

“Yes.”

“Ridiculous, right?”

“I guess.”

“But Javier was so happy when Theo got in. Me, I was worried for Theo. How do you fit in at a place like that when you come from a place like this? It’s almost like, I don’t know, what do they call it when scuba divers come up too fast? The bends. It felt like that to me. I didn’t say anything though. I’m not stupid. I could see what an opportunity this could be for Theo. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So one morning, Javier goes off to work.” Raisa Mora clasped her hands as though in desperate prayer, and Maya figured that they were getting close. “Me, I got the late shift at work. So I was home. The doorbell rings.” Her gaze traveled in that direction. “They don’t call. They ring the doorbell, you know, like Theo was in the army or something. It’s Headmaster Lockwood and some other school official, I don’t remember his name. They’re just standing there and I see their faces and you’d think I would know, right? You’d think I would see them standing there with their eyes down and looking all sad and that I’d get it right away and then I’d collapse onto the ground screaming, ‘No, no!’ But it wasn’t that way at all. I smiled at them. Said, ‘Well, this is a nice surprise.’ Showed them in. Asked them if I could get them some coffee and then...” She almost smiled. “You want to hear something awful?”

Maya thought that she already had — what could be more awful? — but she nodded.

“I found out later that they actually taped everything they said to me. Lawyer’s advice or something. They actually had a tape recorder going the whole time they’re telling me how my boy’s body was found by some custodian in the basement. I didn’t get it. ‘Custodian?’ I said. They said his name, like that would matter. Theo had too much to drink, they told me. Like an overdose with alcohol. I said, ‘Theo doesn’t drink,’ and they nodded like that made perfect sense, that it’s always the boys who don’t know what they’re doing who end up drinking too much and dying. They said normally a kid can be saved when this happens, but Theo stumbled around and ended up in a corner of the basement. No one saw him until the next day. By then, it was too late.”

Same thing, almost word for word, that Neville Lockwood had told her.

It was starting to sound practiced, rehearsed.

“Was an autopsy done?” Maya asked.

“Yes. Javier and me, we met with the coroner ourselves. Nice woman. We sat in her office, and she told us it was alcohol poisoning. I guess a lot of boys got drunk that night. Some kind of party that got out of control. But Javier, he didn’t believe it.”

“What did he think happened?”

“He didn’t know. He thought maybe someone pressured Theo, you know. New kid in school, poor kid, so the rich kids pressured him and he drank too much. He wanted to make a big stink about it.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t see the point,” she said with an exhausted shrug. “Even if that was true, it wouldn’t bring Theo back, would it? And that’s what happens everywhere, doesn’t it? Kids in this neighborhood get pressured too. So what was the point? And then... I know it’s wrong, but then there’s the money to consider.”

Maya got what she meant. “The school made a financial offer?”

“You see these other two boys in the picture?” She wiped the tears from her eyes and stuck out her chest. “That’s Melvin. He’s now a professor at Stanford. A professor and he’s barely thirty years old. And Johnny is in medical school at Johns Hopkins. The academy made sure that our boys never had to pay for their education. Gave Javier and me some money too. But we just put it in accounts for the children.”

“Mrs. Mora, do you remember Theo’s roommate at Franklin Biddle?”

“You mean Andrew Burkett?”

“Yes.”

“He would have been, what, your brother-in-law. The poor boy.”

“You remember him then?”

“Of course. They all came to Theo’s funeral. All these handsome, rich-looking boys with their blue blazers and school ties and wavy hair. All dressed exactly the same, all lining up to say ‘My condolences’ like rich-boy robots. But Andrew, he was different.”

“How so?”

“He was sad. Really, really sad. He wasn’t just, I don’t know, going through the motions.”

“Were they close? Andrew and Theo?”

“I think so, yes. Theo said Andrew was his best friend. When Andrew fell off that boat not long after, I mean, I read it was an accident. But that didn’t make sense to me. The poor boy loses his best friend — and then he falls off a boat?” She looked up at Maya with an arched eyebrow. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Maya said, “I don’t think so, no.”

“Javier suspected that. We went to Andrew’s funeral, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I remembered saying to Javier, ‘Andrew seemed so sad about Theo.’ I wondered if grief killed him, you know what I mean? Like he was so sad that he ended up maybe jumping off that boat?”

Maya nodded.

“But Javier didn’t believe that.”

“What did he believe?”

Raisa looked down at her clasped hands. “Javier said to me, ‘Grief don’t do that to a man. Guilt does.’”

There was silence.

“See, Javier, he couldn’t handle what happened. The settlement, he said it was blood money. I didn’t see that. Like I said, maybe those rich boys had pushed Theo a bit, but in the end, I mean, I’d always thought the reason Javier went so crazy was because he blamed himself. He was the one who pushed Theo to go to a school where he didn’t belong. And, God help me, I blamed him too. I tried to hide it, but I think Javier could always see it on my face. Even when he got sick. Even when I nursed him. Even when he lay in his bed and held my hand and died. Javier saw that look on my face — maybe it was even the last thing he ever saw.”

She lifted her head, wiped a tear with her index finger.

“So maybe Javier was right. Maybe it wasn’t grief that killed Andrew Burkett. Maybe it was guilt.”

They sat there for a few moments. Maya reached out and took Raisa’s hand. It wasn’t like her. It wasn’t a gesture Maya often made. But it felt right.

After some time had passed, Raisa said, “Your husband was murdered a few weeks ago.”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re here.”

Maya nodded.

“That’s not a coincidence, is it?”

“No,” Maya said, “it’s not.”

“Who killed my boy, Mrs. Burkett? Who murdered my Theo?”

Maya told Raisa Mora that she didn’t know the answer.