“Truth? I was enjoying the evening. A nice dinner, nice wine, especially nice company. I didn’t want the nice part to end when I brought up the unpleasant stuff.”
Now it was her turn to blush. “I’ve had a nice night too. As you might have guessed from Lola’s reaction to you, I haven’t had a lot of male company in recent years.”
He laughed. “What about Junior?”
“Oh, Lola adores Junior, because he always arrives with a pocketful of doggie treats.”
“I’ll have to remember that for the next time.”
Would there be a next time? Traci was surprised to realize she hoped there would be.
He took a deep breath. “Okay. You asked about family. I have some cousins on my dad’s side, but we’re not close. They’re scattered all over the country, and I’ve led sort of a nomadic life myself. And then there’s my stepfather.”
His lips tightened. Traci gathered they were about to wade into the not-so-nice portion of the evening. She took another gulp of wine and waited.
Whelan gazed out at the backyard. A barred owl hooted from the darkness, and another hooted back. The thrum of cicadas nearly drowned out both.
“Your stepfather?” Traci prompted.
“Guess I should back up a little.”
He told her about his follow-up phone call to Mike Sullivan.
“Sullivan told me that after my visit, he reached out to his older sister and brother, who’d also been at the Saint back then. The sister was fourteen, and she remembered the flashy car, but didn’t know what kind it was. But the brother remembered. It was a very specific, very expensive Corvette.”
Traci’s mouth went dry. “A red Corvette?”
“Yeah. And then I tracked down another teenaged girl who hung out at the beach at the Saint that summer. And she remembered the Corvette’s owner.”
“Ric,” Traci said, her hand shaking a little as she took another gulp of wine. “Ric Eddings. Hoke thought the ’Vette was a metaphor for his brother’s obsession with the size of his dick. He called it Ric’s little red dick.”
Whelan rolled his eyes.
“I hadn’t seen Brad, my stepfather, since the day of Hudson’s funeral. So I looked him up online. He’s living in Myrtle Beach, where he runs a program to help homeless veterans.”
“Sounds like a very noble way to spend your retirement.”
“Brad certainly thinks so. He’s found Jesus. Refers to himself as ‘Brother Brad.’”
“Did he tell you anything you didn’t already know?”
“Yeah. After Hudson died, he was thinking of suing the Saint for negligence.”
Traci’s face went pale thinking back to that day. “Shannon and I, we did CPR, we did everything we were trained to do, but he was already—”
“It turns out there was nothing else you could have done, unless you had an EpiPen.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“The county medical examiner attributed Hudson’s death to drowning, but Brad was suspicious. He hired a private investigator, and then he had his own autopsy performed. The pathologist he hired discovered that Hudson died of anaphylactic shock.”
“Like, from a bee sting? There were always yellow jackets around, because all the kids left Coke cans sitting around. We had to spray the pool area down with bug spray twice a day.”
“It wasn’t a bee sting. Hudson had an undiagnosed peanut allergy. And not long before he went to the pool that day, someone gave him a big bag of candy, most likely peanut M&M’s, which he gorged on.”
“The stranger in the red car, who handed Hudson a paper sack? You’re saying that was Ric? Why? Why would he do that? And do you think he did it intentionally?”
“According to Brad, his investigator discovered that Kasey—my mom—was having an affair with a younger man who was around a lot that summer. They surmised that Hudson had probably seen something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he let the boyfriend know what he’d seen, and maybe the boyfriend gave him the candy as a bribe—to keep his mouth shut.”
