Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) by Steve Ulfelder

herself.
    What we hadn’t known when Sophie signed on was that these days, cheerleading is a sport unto its own damn self. Hell, it’s a whole lifestyle if you let it be. When Pop Warner football ended, the cheerleading competitions kept rolling along. And wouldn’t you know it: the Colonials were damn good this year, which meant at least one road trip a month to Boston, Hartford, Kittery, Albany. I didn’t mind, but the cheer fests, with the makeup and the primping and the stomping and the hugging and the crying (win or lose), were quietly driving Charlene nuts. She wasn’t wired for that kind of thing.
    We made small talk, everybody keeping a sneaky eye on Jessie. She hid behind her hair and mostly looked at her plate. But she gave us reason to hope, too. She’d agreed with Sophie that the waiter was cute, with his blue eye and his brown eye. And while the rest of us pretended not to look, she scooped a few spinach leaves and olives onto her salad plate and even tore off a quarter of a roll. Whenever she took a bite I held my breath, felt Charlene doing likewise.
    More than anything else recently, that hitch in my breath when Jessie lifted a roll made me understand parenthood.
    Jessie. The older one, the one Charlene had always butted heads with. Her face as I remembered it was frank, strong, dominated by powerful eyebrows and nose. It was more handsome than pretty, maybe a tough face for a girl to grow up with, but a damn fine face for a woman once she knew what she was about. But you had to wonder if Jessie would get that far: now the face was slack and pale and formless, collapsing into itself behind a wall of dyed black hair. She’d been a jock until sophomore year in high school, when the usual combo—the addict’s gene, the things she’d been through—had shunted her to self-puking, pills, and parties she was too young for. She’d put Charlene through hell.
    Which Charlene said she deserved, and then some.
    When the Department of Social Services took the girls away, Jessie was eight and virtual mom to Sophie, who was a toddler.
    Eight years old. Imagine the weight.
    â€œPhew,” Charlene said to the waiter when our food finally came. “We thought you’d fled the country.”
    Sophie rolled her eyes. She tried to make a joke of it with her sister, but Jessie hid behind her hair.
    I ate chicken parmigiana. Sophie talked about Balboa. Charlene talked about the great gal managing her new office in Augusta, Maine.
    â€œHow were things at the shop?” she finally said, looking down at her veal something or other, trying for casual and almost making it. But I knew her too well to buy it: Charlene and Floriano had been chattering. They did every day. I wished they didn’t, but there wasn’t much I could say about it: she holds the paper on the garage.
    I looked at Sophie while I answered. “You know the junker F-350 we use to plow the lot?”
    She nodded.
    I felt Charlene’s stare but kept my eyes on Sophie’s. “Things were great,” I said, “until Floriano totaled it.”
    â€œWhat?” Sophie’s eyes went big.
    â€œOn purpose.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œTo take out a pair of gangsters who were tailing me.”
    â€œHoly shit,” Sophie said.
    â€œNo shit,” I said.
    Charlene threw her napkin on the table, rose, walked out. Never looked back.
    â€œCrap,” I said.
    Behind her hair, Jessie smiled for the first time since she’d come home.
    *   *   *
    The four of us headed back to Charlene’s place. It was a quiet ride, though I tried.
    â€œWe talked this through,” I said.
    Charlene said nothing. Left her arms folded.
    â€œMe, I’ve got my Barnburner thing,” I said. “You, you’re no Martha Stewart. And you don’t want to be. Remember?”
    Charlene said nothing.
    Which was too bad. I would’ve liked to talk with her—with