Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin Read Free Book Online Page B

ignored—or was ignored by—the other misfits.
    Dr. Walpole liked him, however. More than liked, I soon realized: valued. “What do you think so far, Mr. Delgado?” she asked him at the end of a class in the sixth week of school, just after the bell rang. It was a quirk of hers to address all her students formally.
    Most of the other kids had bolted for the door. But Frank had only just completed the process of standing up. He always moved with concentration, as if an unplanned motion might inadvertently disconnect an arm or foot.
    I began idly rearranging the contents of my backpack. I was not going to miss this. I hadn’t yetheard the skinhead utter a complete sentence. He never volunteered an answer, never participated in discussion. And Dr. Walpole did not prompt him, or try to draw him in. This despite the fact that she didn’t permit anyone else in class to disengage.
    He didn’t seem to be mentally handicapped. I had wondered about that at first, until I saw the books he toted around and pulled out whenever he had a spare moment. He had a way of hunching over a book so that you usually couldn’t tell what it was, but a couple of times I had caught sight of titles.
The Book of Mormon
. Poems of Paul Celan.
Vathek
. Perhaps most bizarrely:
Diana: Her True Story
.
    I couldn’t help wondering why Dr. Walpole did leave him so thoroughly alone in class. The class was too small for it not to be noticed. And nobody liked Frank for it. How had Dr. Walpole missed that? She wasn’t doing the guy any favors.
    â€œWell, are you bored yet, Mr. Delgado? Please, don’t hold back on my account.” Dr. Walpole’s voice was dry and slightly amused.
    Instead of speaking, Frank glanced at me. Dr. Walpole followed his eyes. There was a little silence, and I felt my jaw tighten. What was the big deal? It wasn’t as if Dr. Walpole had asked him for the password to the Fort Knox computers. “Yeah,” I said to Frank Delgado. “I’d like to know too. You bored, buddy?”
    â€œNo,” said Frank Delgado. His watery eyes focused on me; I felt like a bacterium beneath an electron microscope. “I’m not bored. You are.”
    It was as if Dr. Walpole weren’t there. I was the firstto blink. And when I did the skinhead added, just as expressionlessly, “And scared.”
    If he wanted to get me to leave, he couldn’t have chosen his words better. I picked up my backpack and walked out of the room. And as I left I heard him shout, unexpectedly, after me.
    â€œHey, Yaffe! What are you going to do about it? Anything?”
    Oddly, the tone wasn’t challenging. It was merely … curious.

CHAPTER 10
    â€œ I t’s all settled for Thanksgiving,” my mother said the following Sunday. But she gave no details of her conversation with Vic, instead concentrating on how big a turkey she planned to buy and how she would transport it from Baltimore in a cooler. “Uh-huh,” I said, and found myself hoping the humming shadow would keep herself quiet while my parents were there. If I were to hear and see her in their presence—and they didn’t … I couldn’t bear the thought.
    I spent the rest of the morning running my daily loop around North Cambridge. Afterward, I bought a newspaper, and ate two donuts and drank three coffees at Verna’s Coffee Shop.
    I was finishing up a satisfying mental list of the peculiarities of Frank Delgado when I came to and found myself staring, pen in hand, at the Sunday crossword. Igot up from my table and left Verna’s, heading to the Shaughnessy house.
    Lily was raking leaves in the tiny front yard. Her head was down, and I watched her plod to the sidewalk, place her rattan rake on the edge of the grass and then turn away, grasping the rake handle with both hands behind her. She paused for a moment as if gathering her strength, and then walked the twelve-foot width of the yard with the