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There are only about a half-dozen patrons left in the place, only a couple still bowling. The others are taking off their shoes, packing up their bags, reliving a frame or two and sharing a joke. I see Drew take note of each and every one as he makes his way over to where I’m waiting for the glue to cure on a section of wall.
“You wanted to tell me something?” Drew asks. I stare at him blankly for a minute, unable to believe he’d bring Hal with him to talk about us. I guess he sees my confusion, because he offers a hint. “About the guy in the cooler? You called the precinct?”
“Oh, right,” I say, looking like the dolt Hal has me pegged for. Maybe I can blame it on the glue fumes. “I just wanted to tell you about a conversation I had with Max. He’s one of The Spare Slices—”
“Oh hell,” Hal says, blowing a balloon of air out toward his thinning hairline and addressing Drew. “She’s not suggesting this was a murder or that we need her help, is she? That’s not why we came all the way over here, is it, Scoones?”
It’s his way of daring me to say I think I’m smarter than the police. I tell him that first of all, he can talk to me directly. He doesn’t have to do it through Drew, who’s leaning back against the wall looking thoroughly amused.
In fact, he appears so amused that I decide not to tell him about the adhesive for the brushed steel sheets.
The police don’t screw up investigations, Hal tells me, snicker, snicker, snicker. “At least, I don’t.”
I’m hoping he leans up against the same wall Drew is going to find himself stuck to.
“Not that I’m implying Detective Scoones over here screws up, either,” he says, gesturing at Drew with his thumb and adding a few more gratuitous snickers. “He just screws. Right, honey?” He looks at me to drive the point home. When Drew says nothing, any guilt I was harboring about his ruined jacket dissolves.
So, fine. I get to the point. “One of the other Spare Slices is talking about buying an island,” I say. “Could be wishful thinking, could be a pipe dream. On the other hand, it could mean something.”
“An island?” Hal says. Actually, he sneers. Hal always sneers. In my presence, anyway. Drew maintains he’s really a nice guy. I’ve seen no evidence. Not that the police seem to rely on little things like evidence all that much, in my experience. “What was he smoking at the time?”
“Salmon,” I say.
Drew licks his pointer finger and draws an imaginary one in my air column.
“Been determined to be an accident,” Hal says, and he leans right up against the wall beside Drew. “Familiar territory for you.”
I run the scenario, perhaps a tad contemptuously. “So he goes into the cooler, for whatever reason, and he brings in a pitcher of water, because, hey, he might get thirsty in there, right? And he pours it all over himself because—I don’t know—he was warm? No accounting for someone’s body temperature, I suppose. And then he feels the pain of a heart attack in his chest, but he doesn’t reach for the emergency button or anything and—”
“Light was out,” Hal says. “Burned out bulb, probably.”
“And you’re not investigating any further?” I ask.
“Oh, we’re investigating,” he says, his face contorted with an even more intense sneer than usual. “You’re not. It was an accident, we’ll tie up a couple of loose ends and that will be that. Got it?”
He goes to look at his watch, only he has trouble raising his hand. He tries to jerk it away from the wall, but it’s not going anywhere. “What the—?” he says, trying to pull away from the wall.
Drew pushes himself off the wall easily. Behind him are two squares of brushed steel which I pretend I knew were there all along.
“You wanna get some coffee?” he asks me, ignoring Hal, who is fighting with his jacket and cursing a blue streak, causing every head left in the place to look our way. Drew ignores the stares. “Maybe a little something to eat?”
I tell him I’ve got to stay. Otherwise, someone might accidentally touch the wall—though the fact that Hal’s jacket is now hanging there and he’s swearing down the house and turning red in the face would probably provide a strong enough deterrent. Besides, it seems pretty clear that in a minute or two there will be no one left around.
“Right,” he says, only it sounds more like he gets my unintended message and he won’t ask twice.
“I’ll be out of here in about an hour,” I say. It might actually take a little longer now that I’ve got to scrape off Hal’s jacket and reapply the adhesive. “Maybe we could—”
“Fuck!” Hal says, ripping most of his jacket from the wall, leaving a good portion of the back panel there.
Drew says something to the effect that that wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, but hey, if I’m game…
It gives me pause, because Drew and I have made love a number of times. We’ve fooled around, we’ve brought each other satisfaction, we’ve even screwed, but we have never done the F word. Not as far as I’m concerned, because for me, if the F word has any emotion attached to it, it’s anger.
And I’ve been there and done that and banished the anger from my bed and my heart and it’s not coming back.
Not ever.
“You!” Hal shouts at me, pointing his finger and being struck dumb for words.
“It’s going to turn out to be a murder,” I tell him.
He sputters something about murder all right—he’d be happy to kill me on the spot.
And I’m thinking that I’d so love to prove it was murder and shove a warrant right up his…uniform.
CHAPTER 4
Accommodating everyone’s needs can be a challenge in the family room. Essentials include a good reading light beside a comfortable chair; a stain-resistant couch facing the TV with a coffee table in front of it for the sports fan and the kids; music for the rare moment the TV is not on; carpeting or a rug to absorb the noise; and a healthy dose of good cheer. A large bottle of Prozac is not a bad idea, as well.
—TipsFromTeddi.com
I spend all day working with Bobbie on the walls in the “billiard parlor” at L.I. Lanes. And I totally get why Percy Michaels, who originally had this job, gets the big bucks. This place is coming out unbelievably gorgeous. I bet even the high-roller executive types from Woodbury would come down here for a few racks and a cup of cappuccino.
Did I mention I convinced Steve to put in an espresso bar? He’s so sure I won’t get finished in time that he’s spending my forfeited fee in advance.
At any rate, I posted new TipsFromTeddi on my Web site and the kids and I have had dinner at home—Dana is on her vegetarian kick again, so she had cheese quesadillas with no cheese and Jesse had a hot dog and I had some leftover chicken. Alyssa picked at some French toast. Just a typical dinner at the Bayers, all of us sitting down to a nice meal together—except for Dana who was in her bedroom doing a chat with the school drama club. And Alyssa who wanted to see the end of SpongeBob. Oh, and Jesse, who was reading the new Harry Potter.
So Maggie May, the bichon frise I stole from my first client after she was murdered, kept me company while I ate.
Now I could take the night off, but it’s clear the kids don’t need me, don’t want me, wouldn’t miss me if I were gone. If I pay Dana her usual babysitting fee—five downloads from iTunes—I can go back to the bowling alley and get a jump on tomorrow’s work.
I’m not even sure they’ll notice I’m gone.
And it is league night at the Lanes, so I yell to the children that I’m off to work and out I go, hoping to run into The Spare Slices again.
Which I do.
I find them huddled together just outside the door as I am walking in, and I go up to them to offer my condolences.
You know how in old movies there’ll be a bunch of guys shooting craps and when the police show up they all jump about six feet? Well, I come up to the group and that’s just what they do.
Maybe it’s the money that several of them are holding that brings that image to mind. They stare at me until Max introduces me as a customer from the store who’s redecorating the alley.
Then they look at me expectantly, waiting for me to go on into L.I. Lanes, and frankly, there really is nothing stopping me.
“I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about your friend,” I say, flashing them all a tentative smile and not mentioning how I was there when they found Joey.
They mumble a bit and act contrite, making noises about how bad they feel about bowling just a week after their teammate was found dead.
“He’d have wanted you to carry on the game,” I say, like they are being brave despite their heartbreak, and a couple of them nod. One, Milt according to the embroidery on his shirt pocket, says that he told them all they shouldn’t play.
“Outta respect for the dead,” he says.
“Is that what you’re doing?” I ask, gesturing toward the money in his teammate’s hand. “Collecting for flowers or something, because I’d like to—”
“We should do that,” Dave says.
Note to myself—never let my kids wear their names on anything. It’s too easy to pretend familiarity.
“Well, Dave,” I start to say, but Max jumps in before I can finish.
“We’re gonna,” Max says like he’s reminding Dave, who I take it might be a little dim-witted. “If we win, we’re gonna use Joey’s share for a big headstone or something, remember?”
“No, we gotta give his share to his kids,” Dave says. “If he’s got some, I mean.” He looks confused, but on him it looks like a familiar state.
“Win?” I ask.
“The lottery,” Max explains, while Milt says, “Ya gotta be in it to win it,” in a sing-songy voice. “We’ve been going in on twenty tickets every week for years. We never win, but we figure we’re due. Right, guys?”
They all agree and I do, too, saying that you always hear about winners who’ve been playing as a group for years. There were those workers who changed the lightbulbs in Rockefeller Center, I think…
“And this week ain’t any different than any other,” Milt says.
“Except for Joey’s being dead,” Dave adds. “Maybe he could bring us luck.” He shrugs like hey, you never know.
Russ—I know from his shirt pocket—scoffs. “Yeah, Joey was real lucky, wasn’t he?” He sighs a heavy sigh and adds, “Poor dumb jerk.”
WHEN I GET HOME, Drew’s car is in the circular driveway in front of my split-level and every light in the house is on. I rush up the front steps and Dana lets me in. Maggie does her best to tell me what’s happened, circling my legs and woofing.
At least someone is trying to tell me.
“I told him to call Daddy,” Dana says over her shoulder as she heads down the freshly wallpapered hallway toward my beautiful salmon-colored kitchen which looks alternately like an early sunrise or a deep sunset depending on where the real sun is at the moment. Of course, there is no sun now. “But no, your son had to call Drew.” She says his name like it’s covered in bird droppings.
“Call for what?” I ask, hurrying into the living room where I find Drew and Jesse playing cards and Alyssa in her pajamas all but asleep in Drew’s lap. My living room is a beautiful deep hunter-green. Drew looks like he belongs there. And he looks good with my little girl in his lap, too. Damn good.
“Turned out to be nothing,” Jesse says, while Drew points at Alyssa and smiles apologetically to indicate that if he moves Alyssa will wake up. She’s got her thumb in her mouth and her face is tear-stained.
“What turned out to be nothing?” I ask while Jesse picks a card from the deck like I’m not even there.
“Your idiot son thought someone was shooting at us,” Dana says. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest, where I know her sleep shirt says Bite Me.
“Shooting—” I start to say, but Drew interrupts me.
“Everything is fine,” he says in a voice that insists don’t lose it now, while he casts a warning glance at Dana. “Jesse had the presence of mind to call me, I happened to be in the neighborhood. There were no gunshots.”
“And no one called me because…?” I ask.
“Because I thought someone was shooting at us. When there are gunshots, you call the police,” Jesse says.
Alyssa stirs in Drew’s arms and I take her and head for the stairway, carrying her up to bed while Dana reminds Jesse he didn’t call the police. He called Drew.
“I thought you were never coming home,” Lys says against my neck.
I want to tell her that she could have called me. That my cell phone is on the kitchen phone’s automatic dial, which she certainly knows how to use—heck, she does it often enough—but I figure we can have that talk tomorrow. This is just the animated feature and I’ve got the best-picture-of-the-year award waiting downstairs. So I just kiss her forehead, slip her under the covers and go back to the living room.
“From the beginning,” I order Jesse. He discards a seven of clubs before I take his cards away. “Now.”
“I heard a series of cracks,” Jesse says. Dana says she heard nothing and he’s crazy.
“Well, not entirely crazy,” Drew says, and I feel my heart skip a beat—and not the romantic, he-walks-in-the-room-and-you-see-him-for-the-first-time kind of beat-skipping. More like the-masked-men-arrive-at-your-door-and-it’s not-Halloween kind of beat-skipping.
Two years ago my ex-husband, Rio, tried to drive me crazy—literally. He moved things, made me think I’d done things I hadn’t and hadn’t done things I had. And all because he wanted to start his own business and I wouldn’t let him put up the house as collateral.
At any rate, he didn’t quite succeed. But I’m well acquainted with mind games and what I call the Chinese insanity torture, and tonight I realize that if Rio had had the help of the three people lounging in my living room, I’d be a permanent resident of my mother’s home-away-from-home, the South Winds Psychiatric Center.
“Tell me what happened,” I order from between gritted teeth.
“I’m trying to,” Jesse says. “So I heard a noise and then the window in Dana’s room broke.”
Before I can say, “It what?” Dana corrects him and says it’s just a little cracked.
“And there’s a little hole in it,” Jesse says. He leaves off the so there, but we all hear it just the same. “So I thought it was a bullet hole and I called Drew.”
“And not me,” I say, just making sure I’m clear on this.
“I told him to call Daddy,” Dana says again. “But no, he had to make a federal case out of it.”
“And nobody, not you, not your brother and not you,” I say, looking pointedly at Drew, “thought you should call me.”
“We knew you’d have to come home eventually,” Drew says. Maggie jumps up on the couch she’s forbidden to sit on, makes two circles and then snuggles down next to Drew. “And I think I’m better equipped to handle this sort of thing, don’t you?”
I ignore the dig. “What broke the window?” I ask, snapping my fingers for Maggie to get down. She ignores me and closes her eyes.
“It was a tiny pebble,” Dana says. I could swear she’s almost proud of it. “Probably got kicked up by a car, you know, like when our windshield got broken? He found it by my bed.”
It’s a long way from the street to her window on the second floor, not to mention that her bedroom is on the side of the house.
Drew says that it could have happened the way Dana surmises.
“Right,” I say—like on the other hand it could have been a small asteroid from the planet Moron. “So really, someone threw a rock at Dana’s window.”
“That’s possible, too,” he says, hiding a smile.
I ask him if he thinks we should sleep at my mother’s, thinking that my children’s safety has to come before my own desires, which include never, ever, throwing myself on my mother’s mercy. But he tells me he doesn’t think it’s necessary.
As a precaution, he offers to hang around for a while.
The idea doesn’t sound half bad to me, so I try sending the kids to bed. After the protests that it’s too early, that they are too shaken to sleep (this from Jesse, the card shark), that Dana shouldn’t have to go to bed as early as Jesse since she’s older, and blah, blah, blah, they finally go upstairs.
