SPOILERS!!!
Kinsey’s cover is blown when Peter Shackleton, Mickey’s best friend, tells his son, Scottie, that Mickey has been shot and Kinsey is a private investigator. Kinsey finds them together that night in the pub. Thea is angry with her for not telling her about Mickey, and when she is forced to have a drink with Scottie and Peter, she can see that there is something weird going on. Scottie is tense and nervous, and I wonder why. Could these men have something to do with the shooting?
After she leaves the pub, she sees Carlin Duffy, and when she offers to give him a lift, he agrees. They buy some beer and go to the shed in the nursery where Duffy is staying. Kinsey doesn’t beat about the bush and asks him about his relationship with Mickey. Duffy tells her about his brother Benny and how he looked up to him. After his parents died, he came to California, intending to kill Mickey for his involvement in Benny’s death. Yet, when Duffy talked to him, Mickey made him see that he had nothing to do with his brother’s death and had been framed instead. Mickey explained to him that he had been with Dixie, but he hadn’t said a word to protect Dixie, who was married. Duffy also explains that in his brother’s room, he found a lock-box with some photographs and metal plates belonging to Duncan Oaks. Mickey kept the box, and Kinsey makes a mental note she needs to find the box. Duffy doesn’t know what happened in Louisville when Mickey went. As I predicted, this crime is related to the Vietnam war. I have no idea what part Duncan Oaks plays in all this. Kinsey knows that when Scottie, Tim, and Eric were sent to Vietnam was later than when Benny was, so she has no idea what the connection is. I am as clueless as her. Yet, my bet is that Eric. What I don’t know is why Mickey was shot now if the conflict started fifteen years ago with Benny Quintero.
My Reading Journal 