by Jo Goodman
“Wow. Real Top Chef material.”
“Hey. The cheese is Gruyère.” She removed the phone from her ear as Briony belly laughed. “We good now?”
“In a moment. Just one more thing. I took a detour past your house on my way home, you know, just to see if you were there and maybe give you quick looking over. Your house was dark except for your porchlight so I figured you weren’t in, but there was this guy on your porch, turning away from your front door as I was passing by. I didn’t recognize him, and he wasn’t delivering anything. No UPS or FedEx. Were you expecting someone? I gotta tell you, he looked fine.”
Ramsey was sitting straight up in the tub now. “Describe him.”
“What? Oh. Tall, I guess. Dark hair, combed back. He looked trim, but that might have been because he wore a long black coat. Wool probably. Pretty classic looking, like something a businessman would wear. Management. Lawyers. No briefcase, though. I would have noticed that. You know who it was?”
“I might.” She was surprised at how casual her voice sounded. “If it’s who I think it is, he said he might stop by. I thought he’d call first. Must have been a whim.”
“So, who is he? You’ve been kinda cagey lately. Are you seeing him?”
“For God’s sakes, Bri, he’s my insurance guy. I have some papers for him and he offered to pick them up.”
“My insurance guy doesn’t do that. I bet he’s hot for you.”
“Rolling my eyes, Briony, and hanging up…now.” Ramsey ended the call while Briony was still sputtering nonsense. There was no point in adding more hot water to the tub now. She was too hot all on her own for it to be effective. Placing the phone on the floor beside the tub, Ramsey stood, removed the towel draped over the shower rod, and began to dry off. She wrapped the towel around her, picked up the phone, and stepped into her bedroom. She pulled up contacts and tapped Sullivan’s number. He didn’t answer, so she left a short message, and went to her closet. She stepped into a pair of boy shorts and then pulled on black yoga pants. She slipped an over-sized shaker knit sweater in complimentary heather gray over her head and pushed the sleeves up to her elbows. Sitting on the bed, she pulled on thick socks and then added the black and gold Fendi bracelet watch lying on the nightstand to her wrist.
The motions of drying and dressing and dealing with her hair were all part of a calming ritual, and she went from one task to the next without thinking. Later, when she was standing at the stove preparing to turn her grilled cheese, she realized her hand was shaking.
“Damn you, Jay Carpenter. You will not do this to me. I won’t let you.”
She plated the grilled cheese and poured tomato bisque, hot from the microwave, into a soup mug and carried both to the kitchen table. She splashed the back of her hand with the soup when she set down the mug. Swearing softly, she ran cold water over her hand and then shook it off. One soup spoon and a paper towel later, she was tucking a leg under her as she sat at the table when her phone rang. It was par for the course, she thought getting up, that she’d left the phone on the counter beside the stove. Her heart lightened a little when she saw it was Sullivan.
“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
“I’m outside in your driveway. You want to let me in?”
She headed toward the front door. “Are you in a police car?”
“No. My own.”
Ramsey wondered if her sigh of relief was audible. “Is he around?”
“I’m assuming you’re asking about Jay. No, not that I can see. His car’s not on the street or around the block.”
If what Jay had told her about his finances was true, the Audi had probably been a rental. It wouldn’t surprise her if he was driving something else. “Turning off the alarm now. C’mon in.” She unlocked the door, opened it, and waited for him to cross the porch before she moved aside. She held out her hand for his coat as he was removing it and accepted it as well as a warm hello kiss.
Sullivan toed off his loafers and followed her into the kitchen when she crooked her finger.
“Grilled cheese?” she asked. “You take that and the soup. It’s still warm. I just finished making it when you called. I’ll make another for myself.”
“I’m too hungry to argue. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to mind now. Go on. Have a seat.”
He did, picked up half the grilled cheese and bit in. “What kind of cheese is this?”
“Gruyère. You like it?”
“Yeah. It’s a little sweet. Kind of nutty.”
“What do you use?”
“Velveeta.”
“Philistine.”
“Hey, you don’t get to call me names unless you let me look in your fridge. I bet you have some in there.”
Ramsey had her back to him as she attended to her sandwich, but she looked over her shoulder and gave him the warning glance. “You stay out of my refrigerator.”
He cheeked the bite he had in his mouth. “Uh-huh. Thought so.” The initial edge off his hunger, Sullivan sat back until Ramsey joined him. When she did, she set a beer in front of him before she sat. He thanked her, took a swallow, and waited for her to spoon some soup into her mouth. “Your message was short on details. How do know Jay was here?”
“Briony called.” She gave him the gist of her conversation with her friend.
“So you don’t know for sure that it was Jay.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but I know.”
“All right. I spoke to the chief before I left work. It was crazy busy today, but he managed to find some time to look into Jay. Your ex is staying at the Courtyard. He registered under his name and used the Audi Quattro for the vehicle information. Bailey learned it was a rental from Enterprise in Baltimore and that Jay had already turned it in across the river. He didn’t rent another car so the chief thinks he probably bought a cheap ride to use locally.”
“A cheap ride? Jay?” Ramsey shook her head.
“Well, if he doesn’t have much cash or his credit’s bad, that’d make sense.”
“I thought about him renting another car. Cheap didn’t occur to me. Appearances mean so much to him.”
“You’re not convinced that he’s broke.”
Ramsey swallowed a bite of her sandwich and chased it back with some beer. “I don’t know what to think. I really don’t. He could be scamming me. How do we find that out?”
“Need some time for that. A couple of days at least.”
She nodded. “I want to talk to him again but not here, and I don’t want him to realize that I know where he’s staying. I was half expecting him to show up at the Ridge, but I really don’t know if he’s aware that I work there. He’ll figure it out, though.” She took a spoonful of soup. “You know, it’d sure be something if it turned out that Jay bought a car from Fred Mayhew today. It would explain how Mr. Mayhew ended up in the pharmacy on a bike shouting about retail terrorism. Jay could do that to a person.”
She sounded so sincere, he had to laugh. “Maybe. So what do you think about me asking for a patrol car to make a couple of extra drive-bys in the neighborhood? Does that work for you?”
“Would you? I don’t know what I think he’ll try to do. I’m probably making too much of him coming around, but I would feel better. I really don’t want to shoot him.”
“You know, the solution to that is for you to give me your gun.”
She stared at him as she bit off a piece of grilled cheese. “You’re not serious.”
“I thought I was.”
“I was being ironic.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not giving you my gun.”
“I didn’t think you would, but I needed to say it.”
“So that was cop talk.”
“It was friend talk too. I’m fluent in both.”
“I’m not going to let him hurt me again. You don’t know what that was like. I was helpless. There were signs he was escalating, but I didn’t know them then. He str
uck so fast. He cracked ribs. I had two spectacular black eyes and bruises everywhere he kicked me. I was probably concussed. I can’t say for sure because I didn’t seek medical attention. I sought an attorney instead.”
“Keep the gun,” he said after a moment.
“Thank you.”
“And your phone.”
“Right here,” she said, tapping it. “Briony called me while I was soaking in the tub and I had it handy.”
Sullivan’s eyebrows lifted. “You were soaking in the tub?”
“Don’t distract yourself. Finish your soup and tell me about Caribbean Coast. Have you talked to the chief about your suspicions?”
“I have. He thinks it’s interesting but isn’t convinced. I’m reviewing older reports of fentanyl overdoses to look for some mention of painting activity. There are a few, but not as many as I’d like. It’s not something the EMTs or the officers thought was worth recording, which is understandable. Probably never occurred to them, even as an afterthought.”
“How many mentions do you need before you send in the sniffer dogs?”
“That’s up to the chief and the drug task force. He has questions as to whether our dogs can pick up the scent when the drugs are packed in paint. He wants to test it. We have some fentanyl in the evidence locker and I told you I already bought a can that was nothing but Caribbean Coast. We’ll do an experiment and see what happens. Have to be careful, though. Fentanyl is as deadly to dogs as it is to humans.”
“Do you have to turn this over to the task force?”
“Yes and no. The chief promised if this looks like a go, then he’s assigning me to the task force for this case. Maybe others in the future.”
“That sounds like a good thing. Is it?”
“I think so. You realize that finding the drugs is only a first step. We have to trace them to their origin.”
“Easy. China. Doesn’t most of the fentanyl come from China?”
“Starts there and comes across entry points in the southern border, but what I’m thinking about is a little closer to home.”
“Oh, you mean like someone here at the Ridge is in on the distribution.”
“That’s a start. It might be possible to get someone higher up the food chain.”
“Will the lot numbers help?”
“I don’t like admitting it, but yes, they will. We can use them to trace them back to the warehouse. It remains for us to discover when and where the fentanyl was added to the cans…if it was.”
“It was,” she said certainly. “You only need to get a good look at the customers congregating in home improvement to see the full spectrum of addiction.”
Sullivan was immediately suspicious. “Were you hanging out there again today?”
“No.” She crossed her heart. “Swear. I made only one pass in that section and that’s because the knucklehead I was following went that way.” She recounted the activity on her shift. “Mr. Mayhew on the motorcycle was a lot of sound and fury, but those two kids from this morning are what will stick.”
“I might be able to find something out about what happened to them.”
“Would you? That would ease my mind.” Ramsey stacked their empty plates and bowls and carried them to the dishwasher. “You want another beer?”
“No, thanks. Do you need me to hang longer? I will if you’d like.”
“No. I’m good now. Did I interrupt something you had going on tonight?”
“Uncle Mark asked me to come out to the house and help him with the transmission to his ’72 Mustang. I already called him and told him I’d be later than I first thought, so it’s all good.”
“You’re sure?” she asked. “I hate to think that I’ve caused you trouble.”
“No trouble. I would have been unhappy if you hadn’t called. Remember that. Anyway, it’s Uncle Mark, not my aunt. He’s so easy going that I’m tempted to check his breathing from time to time. Besides, what can you do? Write an excuse for me?”
“Ha. Ha.” She waved him away from the table. “Be gone. Go have your way with a ’72 Mustang. I’ll be fine.”
Sullivan stood and headed for the front door. He laid a loud, smacking kiss on her lips that made her laugh. “Set the alarm,” he said, and then he was out.
36
Ramsey didn’t notice Sullivan left his jacket behind until she returned to the kitchen to wipe off the table and saw it hanging over the back of a chair. It was a couple of minutes later that she heard a knock at the door. Smiling to herself, she picked up the jacket and headed to the front of the house. She disarmed security and opened the door, holding his jacket out at the end of her fingertips.
“Forget something?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized they were all wrong. It wasn’t Sullivan standing on her porch. It was Jay. She blinked, withdrew her hand, and started to push the door closed. He was prepared as she was not and had a foothold in the doorway that stopped her. She pushed harder, heard him curse. There was no moment to take pleasure in causing him pain because it motivated him to shove his shoulder into the opening and push back. The runner under her feet began to slide. She scrambled to kick it away but she was wearing thick socks that offered no friction on the hardwood floor.
“Get out, Jay!” She uttered the words from between clenched teeth. “I’m calling the police.” But she wasn’t. Her phone, the phone she promised she always had with her, was sitting on the kitchen counter where she placed it while she was wiping down the table.
“Get over yourself, Liz.” He squeezed through the opening and burst across the threshold when she gave way. Stumbling forward, he managed to avoid mowing her down. He straightened, brushed himself off, and elbowed the door closed. “What do you think I’m going to do? I’m here to talk. That’s all. Talk. Our breakfast meeting ended abruptly and unsatisfactorily.”
“I take a different view.” She watched Jay’s mouth pull to one side in an all too familiar smirk.
“Now, why does that not surprise me?” His eyes grazed her head to toe before they returned to her remote and chilly stare.
“Don’t,” she said as he began to remove his coat. “You’re not staying.”
“I am, so I may as well be comfortable.” He hung the coat on the tree to the right of the door. “You too. Why don’t we sit down?”
Ramsey realized that arguing every point with him was going to get her exactly nowhere. “The kitchen. Not the living room.”
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He pointed to the jacket she was hugging to herself. “I assume that belongs to your recent guest. Who is he?”
Ramsey ignored the question, turned, and headed for the back of the house. She placed Sullivan’s jacket over the back of the chair where she intended to sit, but first she took a casual detour to the kitchen counter. Her phone vibrated before she got there and drew Jay’s immediate attention. He elbowed her out of the way and got the phone as she was reaching for it.
She made a stab at trying to get it from him, but her better judgment kicked in and she pulled back before she made contact. “Give that to me, Jay.”
He didn’t, of course. He looked at the phone. “It’s a text,” he said. “From someone named Dudley. He says he left his jacket and he’ll get it tomorrow.” Jay turned off the phone and slipped it into a pants pocket. “Don’t worry. I’ll give it back to you. Eventually. Go on. Have a seat. Do you have anything to drink?”
Ramsey sat without answering his question. She knew him well enough to know he’d explore on his own until he found something to his liking. As the selection was limited to grocery store bottled water, orange and cranberry juice, and Yuengling, he chose the beer.
“You want one?” he asked, raising the bottle.
She shook her head.
He shrugged, removed the cap, and carried it to the table. After using the toe of his shoe to nudge out a chair, he finally sat and stretched his legs. “From what I’ve seen, you have a nice place. I know you could afford better. It’s curious that you
haven’t chosen something bigger, one of the McMansions that I saw closer to the airport, for instance. This is what they call a Craftsman home, isn’t it?”
Ramsey nodded but didn’t speak.
Jay clicked his tongue, expressing disappointment. “Is this how we’re going to do it, Liz? You pretend I’m not here? That I’m not speaking to you?”
“I’ve asked you to leave, Jay, and you ignored me. I don’t want to carry on a conversation. I was trying to be clear in a way I thought you’d understand.”
“Oh, I understand. I don’t like it. In your place, I would have questions. Do you?”
Ramsey’s nostrils flared as she breathed in and then exhaled heavily. “How much?”
He chuckled low in the back of his throat, clearly enjoying himself. “There you go. Straight to the point. That’s a quality that came to you late in our marriage. I didn’t fully appreciate it then, but I see the plus side now.”
“How much?” she repeated.
“Rounding up a bit, half a mil.”
Ramsey wished she could have remained expressionless, but what she heard made her eyes widen and her lips part on a silent intake of air. She stared at him. “The exact figure,” she said, and felt a measure of pride in her calm.
“Four hundred seventy-three thousand.”
“How did this happen?”
“I don’t think that’s important. The debt is the point, not how I got there.”
“You’re right, but I’m curious.”
Jay took a swallow of his beer. “Private game with a big buy in.”
She nodded. “Playing beyond your means. Vegas?”
“Atlantic City.”
“I’m surprised you were allowed to leave the table owing that kind of money.”
“I didn’t owe it when I left the table. I paid what I owed.”
Ramsey frowned. “I don’t understand. If you covered your bet, then…”
Jay lifted the bottle again, tilted it, and drank deeply. When he set the beer down, he merely shrugged.
“Jay?” Ramsey leaned in. “What did you do? Where did you get that kind of money to play and stay in the game?”
