by Kelly Rey
Good grief.
My attention lingered on that last photo for a moment. The girls were clearly sisters, probably the daughters of the small-featured man, but they'd escaped with a favorable face-to-head ratio. One wore a frilly white dress with a pink belt. Sparkling pink combs corralled her curls. She stood hand on hip, left foot angled prettily in front of the right. The other stood flat-footed and almost grim-faced in denim shorts and a baggy Speed Racer T-shirt, her hair scraped back in a high ponytail. It reminded me of my sister Sherri and me and how different two sisters could be.
The office lacked the visual impact of Parker Dennis, but it also lacked Howard and Wally, so it had that going for it. The overall effect was eminently forgettable, except for one feature. A giant stuffed brown bear towered on his hind legs in the corner, mouth frozen open in an eternal growl. Under a gray fedora.
Maizy took it in first with an expression of horror then one of deep disgust. "What'd he ever do to you?" she demanded.
Archie's tiny features reflected surprise. "I'm sorry?"
"You said it, not me." Maizy crossed her arms, her fingers drumming furiously on her forearms. "Give him a gun. Then we'll see what's what," she muttered.
I could already see this might not end well. Imagine my surprise.
"He came with the office," Archie said. His eyes seemed shiny. Was he crying?
"Like I haven't heard that before," Maizy fumed.
Archie Ritz perched on the edge of the desk, flicking a teary and uncertain glance my way.
"Pregnancy hormones," I said. "My daughter's usually very sweet."
Maizy bared her teeth at him.
"Yes. Well." He dabbed at his eyes while letting his gaze flick down to Maizy's belly and up again. "Please sit down, ladies."
I sat down. Maizy performed a parallel bars routine, grabbing the arms of the chair, simultaneously lowering herself and leaning backwards to accommodate her Hitchcockian girth while her legs went straight out in front of her, so that for a few impressive seconds she was suspended in midair, supported on her locked arms. I think they call it pike position.
When she'd stuck the landing, Archie tucked away his hanky and cleared his throat. "When you phoned, you mentioned that Mr. DiBenedetto…um…"
"Knocked me up," Maizy said. "You can say it. She knows."
His funhouse face swiveled my way.
"I know what you're thinking," I told him. "How could I possibly have a teenaged daughter when I'm only twenty-five myself."
Maizy snorted. "You forgot about ten years."
"I certainly did not," I said, indignant.
She rubbed her fake belly serenely. "So you had me at eight?"
The phone rang while I was sliding her a skin-melting glance.
He picked it up with a frown. "Doug speaking."
I looked beyond Maizy to the diplomas on the wall. Archibald Dougal Ritz had attended all the best schools. University of Podunk for undergrad. Hicksville Law School. Another shining star of the New Jersey Bar.
Maizy pounced as soon as he ended his call. "We're a very litigious family. Suing people is practically our family business. And we're going to sue the pants off you." She stared at his pants. "Well, maybe not off you, exactly. Your client."
"He can't seem to keep them on anyway," I said.
Maizy grinned at me. "Good one."
That was more like it.
Archie sniffled and reached for his hanky again. "Not another one."
"Another one?" I repeated. "You mean he's done this before?"
"I really can't discuss this." He blew his nose. "It would violate attorney/client confidentiality."
"But he's dead," Maizy said.
Archie sniffled and shook his head. "I'm sorry, but the confidentiality survives his death."
Just our luck. A lawyer with ethics. And possibly a summer cold.
"I'm sorry, too," Maizy said. "Let me tell you something." She tried to leverage herself out of the chair, but like Winnie the Pooh and the honey jar, it was easier getting in than out. The pad was wider than she was, and she wound up suspended on it four inches above the seat. Unfortunately, that hoisted everything upward so that she now appeared to have an esophageal pregnancy.
Archie had temporarily run dry. "Are you alright?"
"Why do you ask?" Maizy flattened both hands over her ribs and slid the pad down an inch or two. She rested her chin on top.
Archie glanced at me. I stared at my knees.
"But your belly," he said. "It moved."
Maizy blinked. "Did it? I hadn't noticed."
"Can we get back to the suing?" I said. "My daughter is a minor, Mr. Ritz. I'm sure you understand the ramifications of that. It would be a messy story if the newspapers got ahold of it."
Something flashed across Archie's tiny placid features. "Just a minute now."
"She's right," Maizy said. "This story's got legs. After all, I'm practically an orphan. I mean, sure, my mom is here now, but that's only because she smells money. Where was she when I was a ten-year-old sophomore, when I could have used her support?"
Hey, wait a minute.
Archie's eyes were damp again. "Ten-year-old sophomore?"
"When I could have used her support," Maizy repeated.
His wet gaze shifted to me.
"She was in AP kindergarten," I told him. "Very gifted."
"She should have been helping me prepare for my SATs," Maizy said, "but no, she was busy dancing on tables for lonely men near the airport."
Heat flooded my face. I'd just known something like this would happen. I practically had tire marks on my back, the bus had run over me so many times. When would I learn?
Archie's gaze flickered back to me. "Surely not."
This was doing magical things for my self-esteem.
"Would I lie to you?" Maizy asked. "But that was just nights. During the day, she chased the tour."
"Golf?" The clouds parted, and Archie's mini-face brightened at the mention of golf. "What's your handicap?"
I couldn't help it. I jacked my thumb in Maizy's direction. "Her."
Maizy pounced immediately. "See what I mean? Is it any wonder I turned out the way I did?"
I wondered every day.
"You poor child." Tears glittered in his eyes. He dabbed the hanky on his lashes and snuffled. By now that thing was wet enough to wash dishes. "What a tragic upbringing."
Oh, for Pete's sake.
"Don't pity me," Maizy said. "Help me. What do you know about Nicky D's death?"
Archie folded his hanky, tucked it away, crossed his legs, and clasped his knee with both gnarled hands. "It's not quite clear."
What was unclear about being gonged in the head with an amplifier?
Maizy's eyes got huge and wet and her lower lip trembled. How did she do that? More importantly, could she teach me? That could be a useful skill. "Were you there when it happened? Like maybe standing at the bar talking to Mike Crescenzo between sets?"
He frowned. "Not at all. I'd left long before the first set ended."
"Are you sure?" I asked him. "He seemed positive about it."
"Did he?" Archie drummed on his knee, thinking. "It's possible," he said finally. "When you get to be my age, you tend to become forgetful."
"Did you have to wait for him?" I asked. "Or did he go to the bar right from the stage?"
"I may have had to wait a minute or two," Archie said. "I'm sure he shook some hands along the way."
"Did he change his shirt along the way, too?" Maizy asked.
Archie blinked. "Why on earth would he do that?"
"Because of the bloodstains," Maizy said. "Duh."
Subtle.
"He might have removed his blazer," Archie said. "It was quite warm in there. But I'm certain I would have noticed bloodstains."
"Not if they were on the blazer," Maizy said.
Archie studied her for a moment before tipping his head in acknowledgment. He hesitated. "Forgive me, but it's not healthy for a woman
in your condition to concern yourself with such a morbid subject."
"What condition is that?" Maizy asked.
Archie waggled his fingers gently in the direction of her belly.
She rolled her eyes. "Join the twenty-first century, Grandpa. We've got electricity and everything now."
A tear rolled down his cheek. Great. Now she'd gone and hurt his feelings.
"That morbid subject was the father of her child," I said gently. "It's only natural to wonder what happened to him."
He sniffled. "Of course. Well, I really wasn't there for long. I'd spent the day in meetings preparing for a church function, and I had to catch up on some paperwork the next morning. I'm a busy man with a thriving practice."
Sure. You could tell by the desk that was as empty as my skill set.
"Have you got indoor plumbing?" Maizy asked suddenly. "It's kind of an emergency."
Archie practically leaped off the desk to throw open the door. "Through the outer office, down the hall to your left."
Maizy wriggled and squirmed. Her ginormous pregnancy pad did not. It was cemented between the arms of the chair.
"What are you doing?" I whispered.
"Little help here?" she whispered back. "I'm stuck."
Oh, boy. I stood and grabbed her arms. It took a few tries and some rocking back and forth and a vow never to do this again before I hauled her to her feet and she tottered off to the bathroom.
Archie closed the door behind her, circled his desk, and sat down. I sat down. We looked at each other for a moment.
"I'm sorry for your predicament," he said finally.
"Thank you." I smiled. "It's not the best job in the world, but it pays the bills. Well, some of them, anyway. I mean, I don't have a car built in the last couple of decades, and I stole my cat, but no one's life is perfect, right?"
He stared at me. "With your daughter."
Oh.
We looked at each other some more. I wasn't great at small talk, but I'd never felt comfortable with silence. Still, probably the less said, the better, but I couldn't help myself.
"I met your predecessor recently," I said. "Gilbert Gleason."
Archie nodded. "Interesting fellow."
Interesting. That was one word. Unhinged would be another.
"Were you aware of his firing?" Gleason had played the I-quit card, but I didn't buy that for a second. It had "saving face" written all over it, especially after I'd seen him in action.
"I knew he'd been disbarred for having relations with his client." He shook his head. "I wish I could say his lack of discipline surprised me."
It had sure surprised me. "What do you mean?"
"I'm sure you've heard the term loose cannon." His eyes flicked to the door and, presumably, beyond it, through the front office and down the hall to Maizy. I felt a bristle of annoyance at the implication. "You could say I profited from the man's misfortune, so it might be hitting him when he's down…" He paused.
"But?" I prompted him.
"It was for the best. Mr. Gleason was ill equipped to deal with the group's internal machinations."
"You mean like Nicky D's shameless promiscuity?" Where had that come from? You'd think he really had impregnated my daughter.
A tear of sympathy moistened his eyes. "That, among other things."
"Let's stick with that." I glanced at my watch. Where was Maizy? "What did the rest of the band think of him?"
"There was consensus," he said. "They recognized that Nicholas was an opportunist and treated him as such. If only those poor young women had done the same." Another tear dropped onto his thigh, leaving a little round wet mark.
"Someone did more than recognize it," I said, thinking aloud.
His lower lip trembled. "It's terrible to say so, but he reaped what he sowed."
Spoken like a geezer, but I took his point. Archie seemed like an old-fashioned, overly emotional gentleman who'd had a front row seat to Nicky D's bad behavior. Despite his goofy wardrobe and Picasso features and inconvenient ethics, I kind of liked Archie Ritz. He reminded me of Ken Parker, without the sleeping disorder.
Someone yelled, "Mom!" from a close distance.
I reflected on reaping and sowing.
"Let's go, Mom!"
"Isn't that your daughter?" Archie asked.
Oh. Right. My daughter.
"I forgot she has a Lamaze class today." I scrambled out of the chair.
"You'll be late for your Botox injections!" Maizy yelled.
Archie and I looked at each other while I felt a surge of embarrassment heating my cheeks. "I don't actually… I mean, I don't have any… I'm much too young for—"
His eyes glistened. "I understand," he said. "Go tend to your child."
I went.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Did you have to say that?" I demanded. "I was just getting him to open up!"
"If he'd opened up any more, I wouldn't need a shower tonight," Maizy said. "That man cries more than my Grammy Agnes. And let me tell you, that woman can cry."
"You don't have a Grammy Agnes," I said.
"Not anymore," she agreed. "You've heard that expression 'Cry me a river,' right? Well, she did, and off she went."
I rolled my eyes. "Don't be so dismissive. There's nothing wrong with a man who cries."
"Nothing right with it, either," she muttered. She was quiet, navigating the giant Caddy onto Route 206. "Check out the front pocket of my backpack," she said after a moment.
I shielded my eyes and felt around the back seat until my hand closed on the strap. I hauled it into my lap, unzipped the pocket, and pulled out a sheet of paper. "What is this?"
"You're kidding, right?" she asked.
It was the first page of a Complaint. Thomas John Pope, plaintiff, v. Nicholas Owen DiBenedetto, defendant.
I looked up. "TJ and Nicky D?"
She nodded. "I read the whole thing while you were schmoozing the Weeper. TJ was suing him for theft of intellectual property. So that thing he said about just writing more songs? Not so much."
"How'd you get this?" I asked. "Were you going through his files?"
"Of course," she said. "I knew you weren't going to do it. You didn't think I really had to use the bathroom, did you? By the way, I could hear everything you guys said. He's a pretty good guy, for a geezer. What'd you think of him?"
"I agree," I said. "And he has ethics."
"He dresses weird," Maizy said, "but he kind of reminds me of my Pa-Pa, you know? A waterlogged version. Anyway, I saw this commercial once with all these old guys who were taking some kind of miracle pill? In, like, two days they were old heads on Dwayne Johnson bodies. Freaky."
"I'd like to see that," I muttered. The Dwayne Johnson part, not the old head part. Dwayne Johnson had it going on.
"Not me." Maizy shuddered. "Too Frankenstein's monster for me. Hey, let me know if you see a bathroom. I need to lose this belly. I'm over it."
We drove on looking for a bathroom. Maizy occasionally shifted to scratch her belly. And her shoulder. And her belly again. "God," she said after a while. "How do women do this?"
"Do you think the band lied to us about their alibis?" I asked.
She thought about it. "You mean 'cause Archie says he didn't talk to Mike the night Nicky D was killed."
"I mean all of them."
"That's easy," she said. "Yes."
"They couldn't all have killed him," I said.
"You don't know that," she said. "But I see your point. All we can do is isolate them from the herd one by one and question them."
That wasn't much of a plan. Bones didn't talk. Plop couldn't talk. TJ wouldn't talk. And Mike…the jury was out on Mike.
"What else have we got?" Maizy asked.
The answer was absolutely nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I should've eaten more Hershey's Kisses.
On Tuesday night I stood barefoot in my bathroom, despairing over my less than voluptuous reflection in the black si
lk nightie. I should've known better. What made me think a week of snarfing Hershey's Kisses would make me a lingerie model? I'd been eating Butterscotch Krimpets by the box my whole life, and I didn't even have hips to show for it. And that was only my dribs. My drabs were another story altogether. I angled sideways to take in the profile, thinking about Maizy and her silicone cutlets suggestion. I could never pull it off. Could I? Maybe not in the nightie, but a nightie wasn't my only option. There were others. I could buy a bra made from something other than cotton, in a color other than white, in a size other than Prepubescent, to accommodate a couple of chicken patties.
I let my eyes drop, wondering if there were chicken patties for the gluteally challenged. No, I didn't want to go there. Things could get out of hand fast if I started cataloguing all the areas that needed reinforcement.
He'd gotten home late. I knew because I'd sat at the window, watching and waiting. The sun was just a radiant memory on the horizon, stretching water-colored orange and pink fingers into the twilight sky. Sultry breaths of warm breeze slid through my screens. It was a perfect night for a grand seduction. I'd already heard Curt's shower running, and I made sure to give him an hour or so to get dinner out of the way. I could picture him on the sofa, legs stretched out onto the coffee table, remote in hand. He'd be watching baseball, maybe the news. Hopefully shirtless.
It was time to shock him.
I slid into my new bathrobe, which was too warm for the season and too concealing for seduction, but I didn't plan to have it on for long. I'd knock, he'd answer, I'd let the robe drop to the ground without a word. Mission accomplished.
I left the lamp on for Ashley, in case she planned to do some light reading before bedtime, and opened my door.
Maizy was standing on the landing. "Hey, Jamie, I—" Her eyes got wide. "Are you on your way to the hospital? Is it food poisoning? Did you try to cook again?" She clapped a palm against my forehead. "You don't have a fever. Is it your duodenum?"
I slapped her hand away. "It's not my duodenum. It's your Uncle Curt."
"Where?" She looked down at the bathrobe. "Is he hiding under there?"
"Not tonight, Maizy. I've got plans." I stepped around her.
