Bowled Over mkm-6

by Kasey Michaels

  "Pete named us and she's ... well, she's sometimes crude, although she's a lovely person, really."

  With an unfortunate growth of hair on her upper lip, Saint Just remembered, and then quickly discarded the thought.

  "Allow me, please, Maggie. After spending much of the early afternoon with Joe and Sam—I'd rather not identify them beyond that—I fear I am now a veritable font of information. Pete," Saint Just interjected, "is one Mae Petersen. She bowls as a member of the Majesties."

  "I need another meatball," Maggie said, pushing her plate at Saint Just. "And maybe the better part of a fifth of Scotch. A woman named Pete bowls with my dad and boinked Bodkin. My sister and my mother boinked Bodkin. Enough women in this burg boinked Bodkin to form a club. At least it isn't the Triple B, or some such idiocy. You know—Bopped By Bodkin? Do you gals feel less like victims saying it your way? Is that it? And what in hell does a W.B.B. club do? And skip the reading scripture business, okay?"

  Maureen sat down again, sipping at the glass of ice water. "Well, like I said, we meet once a month, except in the summer. Too many of us going on vacations, you know? We play Hearts, we have a covered-dish supper twice a year. We ... we counsel new members. We're, basically, I guess you could say, a mutual support group. A recovery group?"

  "Hold the meatballs," Maggie ordered, shaking her head. "I think I'm feeling a little sick. How many members are in W.B.B., Maureen?"

  Maureen looked up to the ceiling, as though mentally taking roll at the last meeting of the W.B.B. "At last count? Fifteen? Susan Powers moved to Cincinnati this past October, and Hilda Klein died, poor thing. So fourteen. Maybe fifteen. Is that important?"

  Maggie leaned forward on her elbows. "Hilda died? She's dead? When? How old was she?"

  "Maggie, I don't think we're looking at a serial killer here," Saint Just told her.

  "Hilda was seventy-eight. Her son said her heart just gave out," Maureen said. "We W.B.B.s collected for a lovely flower arrangement."

  "Seventy-eight? Bodkin was what—Alex?"

  "Sixty-something. Sixty-three? Clearly a man of eclectic tastes."

  "Clearly an immoral son of a—Maureen, how could you have done this? I saw the photograph of Bodkin in the newspaper. He wasn't exactly George Clooney. More like George Burns. I don't get it. What was the big attraction?"

  Maureen was now wringing her hands together, clearly agitated. Saint Just knew he wouldn't have asked that particular question of the poor woman, had he been in charge of the ... the inquisition? But, clearly, this last inquiry of Maggie's had been purely a female reaction.

  "He ... he was kind," Maureen said at last. "He understood women. He opened car doors. He knew no woman should live without a dishwasher or an adequately-sized hot water heater. He ... um ... he complimented us. And he ... and he ... in bed, you understand? He knew just how to ... well, John? John seems to think I should, but that he should never have to—you know, like on his birthday? Must I do this, Maggie?"

  Maggie looked at the meatball she'd speared, and then put it down on her plate again. "No, you don't have to say anything else, Reenie. Really, I think I've—we've—heard enough." She looked at Saint Just, her expression pained. "More than enough. Alex?"

  "Are you handing the questions over to me, Maggie?" Saint Just asked her, watching as she pulled out her nicotine inhaler, had the cylinder nearly to her lips, and then quickly stuck it back in her pocket, blushing.

  Ah, the modern American woman. What a delight they all were.

  "No, never mind, I can do this. Reenie—we need a list of names. All the members of your little club."

  "Why? I can't do that. Nobody knows about the club."

  Maggie pulled a face. "We've already been through this part. They know, Reenie. They talk about it at Mack and Manco's over a pepperoni slice. We need suspects. Women scorned are great suspects. So give us the names."

  "But my name would be on that list! You'd turn me in to the cops, Maggie? Your own sister?"

  Maggie looked at Saint Just, who decided—cravenly, he knew—that he really wasn't a part of this decision.

  "And nobody from W.B.B. would have killed Walter. We loved him."

  "O-kay," Maggie said, motioning for Saint Just to move so that she could slide out of her seat. She grabbed at her walker and pulled herself to her feet. "They loved him? I'm outta here, Alex. She's all yours. There are just some things sisters don't need to know, you know? I think that last asinine statement just about tops the list."

  Saint Just waited until Maggie's clomp-clomps with the walker could no longer be heard, and then crossed to the refrigerator to take out the bottle of wine he'd opened earlier for dinner.

  He retrieved two glasses from the dishwasher (his increasing domesticity amazed even him), and poured himself and Maureen each a generous measure of the zinfandel. He placed one in front of her before sitting down with his own glass.

  "Thank you," she said, grabbing the glass and downing half its contents. "I've shocked her, haven't I? I'm her baby sister. I'm supposed to still be playing with dolls, or something."

  "Maggie will be fine, don't worry about her," Saint Just said reassuringly. "But I will admit to being confused. I thought you said, earlier, that your small organization is in the way of support for each other. Mr. Bodkin hurt all of you, correct? And you joined together, companions in your misery?"

  "I did sort of say that, didn't I?" Maureen's smile was unexpectedly wicked, her eyes shone, and Saint Just at last saw the physical resemblance between Maggie and her sister. "That was a big fib. Maggie wouldn't understand. We liked Walter. All of us. He made us feel special, and important. And pretty. Oh, we all knew that Walter was using us—he thought he was using us—but we really didn't mind, not all that much. Because we were using him, too."

  "Amazing. Utterly amazing," Saint Just said quietly, thinking about his varied and quite substantial romantic exploits in his Saint Just Mysteries. All the women he had bedded. And left. Perhaps Maggie would understand. But he doubted that. Maggie wrote fiction ... she didn't want to live a fiction.

  If he, today, tomorrow, in twenty years, had so much as the glimmer of a notion of behaving with other women as he did in their books, he felt one hundred percent certain his now evolving, mortal remains would be found somewhere, with Maggie's hands still clutched convulsively about his neck.

  "Alex? What's wrong? You're looking at me funny. You think I'm crazy, don't you? You think we're all crazy. Not hating Walter for what he did to us? And maybe we are, but we're all better for it, you know? Well, except for me, once I found out that Mom—you know."

  Saint Just took another sip of wine, for his throat had gone slightly dry. "Your mother, Maureen. How did she feel about Mr. Bodkin? Was she as forgiving, as ... grateful to him?"

  "Mom? She never said. I mean, not about what it was like when Walter was paying attention to her. I don't think she was proud of what happened. When ... the day she came to me, warned me away from Walter, and then found out that I'd already—you know? She was pretty upset that day. Said how dared he go from mother to daughter. What a bastard he was. Like that, you know? Said she'd kill—oh! She didn't mean that," Maureen went on quickly. "She said it. But she didn't really mean it."

  "No, no, of course not," Saint Just assured her. "Maggie and I have already eliminated your mother from our list of suspects."

  "But not me? Not the other girls? I didn't kill Walter. I couldn't!"

  Saint Just heard the clump-clump of the walker as Maggie returned, and suppressed a relieved sigh. He'd faced down angry men intent on killing him. Stood toe-to-toe with deadly weapons unsheathed, without a blink. But this conversation? Clearly there were some things gentlemen, at least those of his particular, Regency Era sensibilities were better off not knowing.

  "I heard that," Maggie said, clomping to the table to stand looking down at her sister. "You're something else, you know that, Reenie? You go out and have yourself an affair, and then go all wacky-wacko when you find out
your own mother got there first. You start popping pills, you let yourself go, you turn into this timid little mouse who belongs to a club filled with other idiots like yourself—you have covered-dish suppers, for the love of heaven. But, no, we know you didn't kill Bodkin."

  Maureen sagged against the cushions in relief. "Thank you, sis. So you don't still want the list?"

  Maggie rolled her eyes as she sat down beside Saint Just. "Yes, I do still want the list. You may say everyone else felt like you do, not really angry with Bodkin. But what if you're wrong, Reenie? What if one of them was just faking it? We won't give the list to the police, I promise. But Alex and I have to talk to these women. You see that, don't you? The police may not have all that much on Dad, but they might have enough. Juries are weird. The only way we can be sure to clear him, keep this business about you and Mom and Bodkin out of it, is to find the real killer. Fast."

  "Well, put, Maggie," Saint Just said approvingly. "Although I believe we'd probably be better served to look to the husbands, if there are any. Swinging a bowling ball with enough force to crush a man's skull like that is probably beyond the strength of many women."

  "Not Pete. She's a plumber, she's strong as an ox," Maureen said idly, and then blanched. "Do you guys think—"

  Saint Just shook his head. "It's early days yet, Maureen. We're merely gathering clues at this time. But we most certainly will be speaking to Miss Petersen, won't we, Maggie?"

  "Yeah. You can be charming, and I'll grill her. That should work. And not a word, Reenie, not to anybody. Reenie? Are you listening to me?"

  Maureen looked at her sister, her complexion deathly pale. "You're going to look at the husbands? That's what you said, Alex, didn't you? You're going to look at the husbands? Oh, God, what have I done!"

  Maggie opened her mouth to say something, but Saint Just touched her arm, shook his head. "Maureen, my dear," he asked gently, "does John know about your indiscretion with Mr. Bodkin? We'd wondered, but we couldn't be sure."

  Maureen nodded her head furiously, and then buried her face in her apron. "I ... I wanted him to go to therapy with me. We were all going to go, Mom said, before Mom threw Dad out. If Dad knew, then John should ... you know. Know? I told him a couple of months ago."

  "Oh, cripes," Maggie said, grabbing Saint Just's wineglass. "What is it with this family? First Mom, and now you? Confession is good for the soul? Is that what you thought? What a bunch of bunk! Alex, if I tried passing off this plot in a novel, nobody would believe it."

  " ' 'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.' "

  "Don't quote Byron at me, Alex. Not now."

  "Ah, you recognize the quote, and know the source. And here you insist on saying you write, but you do not retain. You're so self-deprecating at times, my dear. You might want to work on that with Doctor Bob in your therapy sessions."

  "Bite me," Maggie growled at him, and then reached over to her walker as she punctuated her suggestion. Oooga-oooga.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "Alex?"

  He made a low, purring sound and continued to stroke her hair as she rested her head against his bare shoulder. Wasn't he sweet? She felt a little like purring, herself.

  But they really had to talk.

  "You really should get married."

  Alex sat up, dislodging Maggie from her comfortable spot. "I beg your pardon? Is this a proposal?"

  "No, not exactly, sport. Let me try that one again, okay?" Maggie scooted backward against the headboard, pulling the sheet with her, pushing her hair out of her eyes. "Not to me. Not here. Not yet. In our books, Alex. That's what I'm talking about. You should be married. Think of all the hearts you'd break. One a book. I'm writing book eight now. That's eight broken hearts. That's terrible. And I'm—cripes, I'm your enabler."

  "I don't know that this is a problem. The dear ladies all seemed happy enough as I gave them their congé—gifting them with diamonds and the like. Bracketed to one woman, I might be boring. Think of our readership, sweetings. There's nothing more lethal than a boring hero."

  "Right. That's why I decided you needed to be sarcastic sometimes. And with a little touch of larceny in your soul. Man, both of those have come back to bite me a time or two, haven't they?"

  "So we're finished with this subject?" he asked, settling back against the pillows.

  "I don't know. I don't think so. I've thought about this before, you know. A couple of weeks or so ago? That maybe it's time you evolved in our books. You're always talking about evolving here, with me. Growing, changing, all of that stuff? Not that it's worked so far. Maybe, after eight books, it's time Saint Just also grew, evolved. Got married, set up his nursery. If you evolve in the books, it stands to reason you might begin to evolve here, too, yes? Be less inclined maybe to poof one day?"

  "One advancement at a time, please. I see no crushing need for a nursery in the near future."

  "True. One thing at a time. And it's not like you'd have to get married all at once. I could ... I could introduce a new character. A woman. You could, I don't know, you could strike sparks off each other. Liking each other sometimes, not so crazy about each other at other times. Build the relationship over the course of a few books, and then, bam, you get married."

  "And live happily ever after? How boring. Are you planning on abandoning the Saint Just Mysteries?"

  Maggie wished this conversation didn't sound so much like she was talking about Alex and herself. Except that she was. Sort of. He had to know it. "Being married doesn't mean their adventures would be over. I can think of a bunch of series where being married worked. The Nick and Nora Charles movies and books, for one. Hart to Hart, on television—that's an oldie, not as much of an oldie as the Nick and Nora Charles things—but they both worked. Oh, and Nora Roberts has a great series going now with a man and his cop wife. You and ... you and your bride could solve the mysteries together. There'd still be plenty of sex," she added, feeling her cheeks going hot, darn it. "The mysteries, the sensual interludes, the perfect hero being a perfect hero to his own woman now as well as in general? I think I like it."

  "Maggie. Dearest. Are you by any chance feeling even a tad jealous of my heroines?"

  "Don't be ridiculous! They're fiction. Why would I be jealous of your fictional bed partners?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps because that particular fictional character is sitting beside you in this bed, talking to you? If moving onto this plane of existence was possible for me, for Sterling, could it one day be possible for one or two of your other characters?"

  "Yeah, right. And with my luck, it would be one of the villains."

  "An unhappy thought," Alex agreed, slipping his arm around her shoulders. "But never fear, I would dispatch him immediately—and then kiss my lady wife and take her to bed."

  "Very funny."

  "I doubt that any of this is amusing to you, sweetings," he said quietly. "I do not doubt that much of what we're discussing has to do with your sister and Mr. Bodkin. Am I correct?"

  "Well, yeah. Maybe. Sort of ..."

  "You're comparing me, the Viscount Saint Just, to Walter Bodkin? I may go into a sad decline."

  "There aren't that many differences. Not when it comes to how you treat women. How your character treats women, that is. You know—love 'em and leave 'em?"

  "More than merely taking to my bed in despair, I fear. If you'll excuse me now," Alex said, a chuckle in his voice, "I do believe I will locate my sword cane, find a deep woods somewhere, and walk inside, fall on my sword. It's all you've left me, Maggie."

  "Oh, shut up! You're not anything like Bodkin, and you know it. But, man, Alex, that ditzy sister of mine? The guy seduces her—and half the county—and they're not mad at him. If Bodkin isn't going to come off as the bad guy, then what does that make my sister, and all those other women? Dopes, that's what it makes them. Willing to be used, discarded. I never looked at the heroines in the Saint Just Mysteries that way before, but that's what they are, too. Every
one knows Saint Just is a—well, not exactly a womanizer ..."

  "Thank the good Lord for small favors," Alex grumbled, adjusting the sheets over them. "Next you'll be calling me a cad."

  "No, you were—are—a man of your time. Rich, titled, wickedly handsome, faintly bored, on the lookout for adventure. Very appealing to the ladies. Irresistible."

  "I can think of one who resists me with unsettling regularity."

  "We're not talking about us, Alex."

  "Yes, sweetings, I'm very much afraid that we are."

  "All right, okay. Yes. We are talking about us. At least a little bit. Do you know how hard it is to write your love scenes, now that you're here? That last manuscript? It was bad, Alex. Toss in the circular file bad, which is where it went. Now I've started again, and this one is going to be terrible, too, I can just feel it. I need to give you a heroine. One heroine. Listening to Maureen tonight proved it to me. What you do now is a fantasy, okay for fiction, but at some point you become a farce, a man out only for his own pleasure. And that's not a perfect hero, Alex, not to today's woman, today's intelligent reader. Saint Just has at least to begin to evolve."

  Alex put a hand to his ear. "Hark! I believe I begin to hear an echo."

  Maggie pushed at his hand. "You said here, Alex. You said you had to evolve here, with me, in this world. You never said you had to evolve in your—our—books. I should have seen that for myself, you know, just as a writer, I should have seen that. There may be people out there who don't mind reading the same book over and over again, but I give my readers more credit than that. Saint Just has to evolve."

  "I'm so grateful we've had this discussion of what you've already decided," Alex said, his grin wicked. "So Lady Prestwick is to be introduced as my love interest in our next book? Blond, buxomy? Seems workable."

  Maggie looked at him levelly. "Kiki the Kudzu Queen is not going to be your love interest, so just forget it. Not happening, trust me."