Whose Number Is Up, Anyway? Page 3

  “Could have been looking up,” he hedges. “Who knows?”

  Why is he backtracking? I can’t help but wonder. Only it doesn’t seem like a line I can pursue, so I go back to how odd it was to see him at the alley. With the dead guy.

  “I mean seeing you there out of context,” I say. “At first I didn’t even recognize you.”

  “You think this is my whole life?” he asks, fanning his hands out to encompass his domain. The counters are full of twenty kinds of turkey, every manner of pastrami, salami, bologna and corned beef. There’s herring salad, white-fish salad, crab salad…He slaps his hand on the top of the counter. “God, no. I got a life outside of here.”

  “I know,” I say with a big smile, like bowling once a week is a whole life—and don’t I know it? “I saw last night.”

  He shakes his head.

  “I got a lot more in mind than bowling once a week with those losers,” he says. “A new car, a boat. Maybe even a house on some island. Hawaii, maybe. You think the houses are cheaper in Hawaii or Florida?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him, putting a bag of onion rolls in my cart so that the women around me know I’m shopping and not just shooting the breeze. “But I do know you can live pretty cheaply in the Bahamas. I’ve got a brother who’s lived down there ever since college.” I don’t go into how the trip was a graduation present from my parents and David simply decided not to come back, even though my father’s store, Bayer Furniture (the home of headache-free buying and hassle-free finance), was waiting for him.

  Max asks if maybe I could give him David’s name and he might get in touch one day.

  Okay, by now, people around me are getting testy. I tell Max just a half pound of the potato salad and maybe a pound of coleslaw. He nods, but he doesn’t make a move to fill my order.

  “He like it in the Bahamas? Your brother?” he asks me.

  I nod and smile and gesture toward the potato salad without trying to appear rude. There are sounds of disgruntlement growing behind me.

  Bernie, another counter guy, comes over from the cheese portion of the counter and clicks the Turn-O-Matic, calls out the number after mine, and helps the woman beside me.

  “Finally,” someone says.

  “He have a Web site?” Max asks.

  I picture my brother in cutoffs, no shoes, chasing after a naked little boy named Cody while Izzy, his pregnant wife, laughs at him. “I don’t think so.”

  “E-mail?” Max asks. “I got a new computer last week. First one. Gotta keep up, you know?”

  “I do.” I look at my watch and gesture toward the wrapped package of corned beef that is still on his side of the glass. “You know what? I think I’ll just take the corned beef,” I say.

  “No, no. I’ll get your salads.” He waves his hand like filling my order isn’t important, like it’s not why he’s here, never mind why I’m here. “So are you working over there? At the alley, I mean?”

  I explain how I’ve taken over the job of decorating the place while a woman pushes me out of the way on the pretense of reaching for a package of rugelach.

  “Remind me nevah to go thayh,” the woman behind me says in a loud gravelly voice thick with Long Island.

  I tell Max that I’m in kind of a rush and that maybe I’ll see him next week at the bowling alley.

  “Isn’t it next week already?” the same woman asks in an even louder voice.

  “You don’t like my service?” Max asks her. He squints his eyes at her like he could burn her with them. “Go to King Kullen.”

  I want to warn her that King Kullen’s a bad idea, but she’s off looking for a manager.

  “I won’t miss her,” Max says, handing me my corned beef, my potato salad, my coleslaw and a loose piece of halvah. “You, I’m gonna miss.”

  “When you buy your island?” I ask, happy to feed the fantasy now that I’m backing away from the counter.

  “Exactly,” he says as he listens to someone else’s order and nods. “A pound of pastrami. Got it. You want it should be lean? Sliced thin?”

  “MO-OM!” Dana whines in response to my innocently mentioning at dinner in Pastaeria (the local pizza joint no one is sure how to pronounce), that Max was acting strangely and that I think I should tell Drew about his pie-in-the-sky plans. “You don’t know what kind of money he has stashed away. He could be a millionaire. He could be Donald Trump’s long-lost father and—”

  I remind her that Max is around my age, which makes him way too young to be The Donald’s father. Dana seems skeptical, like maybe I don’t know just how old I really am. Remember when everyone who’d graduated from high school more than two years before you did was old? That’s what my kids think.

  They may be right.

  Jesse thinks it’s a great idea and I should pull out my cell phone and call Drew immediately. This, of course, has nothing to do with his fondness for Drew and his fervent wish that I marry the handsome detective.

  Dana, picking all the cheese off her pizza and giving me a look which implies I should be doing the same, tells Jesse that he—and I—are just using Max as an excuse to call Drew. But, unlike her usual carping tone that implies I’m leading Drew on and ruining her life, she sounds like she’s actually teasing me. Could she be growing up? Adjusting to the fact that her father and I will not get back together in this lifetime?

  “If it was murder, then maybe you and he would, you know, get together again,” she says. “At least, you hope.”

  Unfortunately, she may have me dead to rights.

  In the meantime, little Alyssa ate so many garlic knots before the pizza showed up that she can’t even pretend to eat her slice. That doesn’t mean she isn’t interested in dessert and she asks whether Max sent her anything.

  I avoid answering because then I’d have to admit that on my way home I ate the Jell Rings meant for her.

  I’ve got to go back to work if I’ve any hope of getting done before the grand opening, so I beg them to pass on dessert, remind everyone there is ice cream in the freezer, prevail and head for home. I arrive in my driveway at the same time my father pulls up at the curb. He’s there to watch the Mets game with Jesse, who doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s gone over to the dark side. He’s now a Yankees fan.

  “Once a week I can root for the Mets for Grandpa,” he tells me, reminding me why it is I still like the kid. “Sometimes you have to bend the truth a little for someone you love.”

  It’s taken me years to learn what he already knows at eleven.

  I kiss the kids and Dad goodbye and I’m back at the alley, knee-deep in lighting wires when Drew and his partner, Hal Nelson, saunter in.

  Saying that Hal and I don’t care for each other is like saying there may be a little traffic on the Long Island Expressway at rush hour. I don’t know what I ever did to him—except maybe show up the police department once or twice.

  And I didn’t really do that, even.

  Newsday just made it sound that way.

  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.