“Ivy,” Mateo says gently, and I recoil as if he yelled at me. No. I absolutely cannot accept any tenderness from Mateo right now. That way lies a breakdown.
“How do you know?” My voice is thick, pushing past the lump in my throat, and I have to swallow a few times until it sounds normal. “How do you know he died?”
“We saw…” Mateo gestures over my head and I turn. For the first time I notice the television in the corner, and I do a double take at the sight of a familiar face paused on-screen.
“Why is Dale Hawkins on?” I ask.
Mateo ducks under the bar and heads toward the table where Cal is sitting. “Is that who that is?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, following him. “My parents know him. And I do, sort of. We’ve been to some of the same fundraisers.” Dale used to be a reporter for one of the Boston networks, but after a contract dispute he left for a local cable station and started his own news program—although as far as my dad is concerned, Dale uses the term “news” very loosely. “More like sensationalized infotainment,” Dad always says.
He might not be entirely objective. Dale has done a few unflattering features about Dad’s work, always taking the angle of Corporate bigwigs steamroll local business. “There’s never any nuance,” Dad complains. “He goes for cheap sentiment every time, the hypocrite.” It irritates Dad to no end that Dale Hawkins, who lives in Carlton, too, tore down an old bungalow to build his giant McMansion.
The shot on-screen looks familiar; I’ve seen Dale stand in front of a run-down building with that deeply concerned look on his face every time he reports on Shepard Properties. But the graffiti over his right shoulder, coupled with the green door behind him, stops me cold. He’s in front of the building we just left.
My nerves start snapping even before Mateo confirms, “He’s reporting on what happened at the studio.” He picks up a remote and aims it at the television. “Hold on. I need to rewind.” After a couple of seconds Dale Hawkins springs to life, his expression grave as he reports, “We’re now live in a quiet industrial area north of Faneuil Hall, which this morning became the scene of a troubling and mysterious tragedy.”
Mateo, Cal, and I watch the segment in silence, until we get to the part where Dale says, The public is being asked to call with any information related to a blond woman, described as attractive and possibly in her early twenties, who may have been in the area during this time. Then Mateo hits pause again, saying, “That’s as far as we got before you woke up.”
“Okay,” I say, wondering if I’m imagining the way his eyes seem to be resting on my hair. “Keep going.”
There’s not much left, though—just Dale Hawkins reciting phone numbers before signing off with the annoyingly intense, lingering gaze into the camera that he’s known for. Then we’re all quiet for a few beats, until Mateo decides to state the obvious.
“So,” he says. “Blond woman.”
I twist my ponytail over my shoulder, running its ends through my fingers. Both of the boys are quiet, waiting for me to speak. “He can’t mean…he couldn’t have been talking about me, right?” I finally say.
Neither of them respond. “I’m not in my twenties,” I argue, glancing between Cal’s troubled face and Mateo’s impassive one. I hate how impossible Mateo is to read; right now, he could be agreeing that I fit the description, or thinking that attractive is a stretch. Which is so far off the point that I give myself a mental slap.
Mateo shrugs. “A lot of people suck at guessing ages.”
“Yeah, but…” Dale’s words keep circling in a loop through my brain. “Even if someone saw me in the doorway, they couldn’t have thought I was injecting Boney. I never got anywhere near him.” I’m suddenly, belatedly, and overwhelmingly grateful to Mateo and Cal for getting me out of there before the police arrived. I don’t remember anything useful, and if I’d been found in the room after a tip like that—well, the horrible irony of me being questioned about a drug-related death right before my mother’s award ceremony wouldn’t have been lost on anyone.
“Maybe they saw you going upstairs and got confused,” Mateo says.
“Do you think…is there any way Boney could’ve done that to himself? Like an overdose?” Cal rubs his temple and glances my way. “I mean, we were just talking about this, right? Drugs are everywhere, even in Carlton.”