Random Road

by Thomas Kies

  “Hi.” Even though we had seen each other naked only nine hours before, I reached up and gave him a huge hug. “I’ve got the wine in my bag,” I whispered into his ear, sounding like a spy trying to hand over some microfilm.

  “Well, let’s open it,” he said cheerfully, completely without artifice.

  I reached into my bag, grabbed the bottle, and handed it to Kevin. He gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “C’mon in.” And then he noticed. “What did you do to your head?”

  I touched the bandage the emergency medical crew had placed on my forehead. “I’ll tell you over dinner.”

  Caroline was sitting on a couch in the living room, looking much more animated than she had sounded earlier that day. “Hi, Genie.” She was wearing a pair of denim shorts, a Sheffield High School shirt, and a pair of beat-up sneakers.

  “Hi, honey.”

  Caroline’s smile faltered when she saw her father walk through the living room with a bottle of wine.

  I was a little surprised when I spotted another woman sitting on the sofa on the other side of the room. She stood up. “Hi, I’m Ruth Spence, Caroline’s aunt.”

  “Geneva Chase.” I introduced myself.

  “I have a standing invitation.” Ruth’s eyes were studying my face.

  “Aunt Ruth comes over for dinner a lot,” Caroline announced.

  Aunt Ruth?

  Growing up with Kevin, I knew that he was an only child. That had to mean Ruth was Joanna’s sister.

  Her brown hair, accented professionally by expensive highlights, was cut stylishly short, framing her face. The lack of worry lines around her eyes and forehead indicated Botox injections and her dentist had obviously whitened her teeth. She was attractive in a stern, dominatrix sort of way. Her posture and attitude made her seem taller than me, even though she and I were about the same height.

  “Was that a bottle of wine I saw Kevin carrying?” She clenched her teeth.

  I nodded, “Yup.”

  “How nice. We haven’t had alcohol in this house for quite some time.” She barely concealed her disapproval.

  I glanced at her left hand. No wedding band.

  Was Ruth trying to make time with Kevin?

  I turned to Caroline. “So your dad tells me he’s quite a chef.”

  She nodded. “Mom used to do most of the cooking.”

  Ruth interjected, “After Joanna passed away, poor Kevin couldn’t boil water. I was over here all the time helping him find his way around the kitchen.”

  I’ll bet you were.

  “It’s nice that Kevin has a sister-in-law who’s so helpful.” I sounded less than convinced.

  Before anyone could say anything else, Kevin came through the door with a wineglass in each hand. “Here you go,” he announced, handing one to me and the other to Aunt Ruth. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

  Seconds later, he was back with two more glasses, one of them less full than the other. He handed that one to Caroline. Then he held his own glass in the air and toasted, “To my favorite women.”

  Caroline immediately touched her glass against her dad’s. Ruth and I did so more slowly.

  “I’ve got to run out to the grill and check the salmon,” Kevin said. “Lucky it’s just about done. Looks like it’s going to start raining again. The salad’s on the counter in the kitchen. Why don’t you guys go start your plates? I’ll bring the fish into the dining room.”

  After he left, Ruth turned to Caroline and said in a low voice, “I don’t think your father should be giving you wine, dear.”

  Caroline answered by defiantly draining the glass.

  ***

  Like the kitchen, the dining room was a project in disarray. The light fixture over the table was a hole in the ceiling with a knot of exposed wires tucked inside. Around the room the wallpaper had been stripped, leaving the naked sheetrock to glare blankly at us as we ate our grilled salmon.

  Caroline had compensated with candles on the table.

  “Kevin tells me you’re a reporter for the Post.” Ruth popped a tiny forkful of romaine lettuce into her mouth.

  I nodded and sipped at my wine. “Recording the first draft of local history.” I hoped that I sounded witty.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m paraphrasing a famous quote.”

  She stared at me without saying anything.

  Sometimes when I get nervous, I start talking, often with nasty consequences. I felt one of those moments coming on. “For example, today I witnessed the arrest of somebody suspected in a string of big-time burglaries.”

  Caroline piped up, “You saw somebody get busted today?”

  “This guy even tried to make a run for it.”

  “No kidding?” Caroline nodded her head in approval.

  “What happened?” Kevin asked.

  I slowly sipped at my wine, wondering if this was the only booze Kevin had in the house. “I was sitting in the car belonging to the deputy chief of police and he was outside pointing his gun at the bad guy. And the bad guy tried to make a run for it in one of those massive HumVees.”

  “And?” Kevin cut into his salmon.

  “I discovered what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.” I touched the bandage on my forehead again.

  Caroline asked, “What happens?”

  I laughed. “The airbags go off. The bad guy kept ramming the car I was in so he could get away.”

  Kevin leaned forward and put his hand on mine. “Oh, my God! Are you okay?” He was studying the bandage on my forehead.

  I loved the concerned look on his face. I wanted to lean over and kiss him. Instead, I said, “Never better. I got some great photos. Wait ’til you read the story. Front page, tomorrow’s paper.”

  Caroline slowly shook her head in admiration. “Cool.”

  “So how do the two of you know each other?” Ruth was apparently bored with my story about the arrest.

  “Genie and I went to high school together,” Kevin explained.

  “Really? Were you high school sweethearts?”

  I shook my head and grinned at Caroline. “Hardly. More like high school buddies. We used to hang out together.”

  “Never dated?”

  Kevin smiled. “Never dated. But because we’d spent so much time together, a lot of our friends just assumed we’d eventually get married.”

  “Were you ever married?” Ruth looked straight at me with a bemused smile.

  “Well, not to Kevin.”

  “But you were married.”

  “Yes,” I decided not to elaborate.

  “Are you married now?”

  “No, ma’am.” I felt my annoyance grow. “I’m a big believer that, if it doesn’t work out, you either leave ’em or kill ’em.”

  Caroline snorted out a laugh and Kevin quickly stifled a grin by sipping some wine.

  “In our family,” Ruth purred, “we take marriage a little more seriously.”

  “Have you ever been married?” I responded.

  Aunt Ruth slowly, but clearly, turned a bright shade of crimson. Her superior smile was quickly replaced by a tight-lipped expression that I can only compare to the look of someone who has just bitten into a fresh lemon. I’d apparently poked at a raw nerve.

  A film of tears glistened in her eyes. Haltingly, she whispered, “It’s a subject of a deeply personal nature that I’m going to decline to discuss.”

  ***

  After dinner, I helped Kevin carry the dirty dishes into the kitchen. “I hope I wasn’t out of line asking Ruth if she’d ever been married. She brought it up first.”

  “Yeah, she started it.” Kevin rinsed the plates off and handed them to me to put into the dishwasher. “Ruth married well,” he said in a stage whisper. “And while it was a painful process, she divorced eve
n better.”

  I looked at him quizzically.

  “She was married to Harry Spence, an investment banker working out of Manhattan,” he explained in a low murmur. “He was obscenely successful even after the economy soured. They seemed happy. He made money, Ruth spent it and it looked like a relationship that worked pretty well. Then Harry started spending more and more time away from home, working late in his office in New York, traveling a lot on business. When Ruth discovered a number on his cell phone that Harry was calling repeatedly at all hours, she hired a private investigator.”

  No surprise there.

  “His cell phone?” I asked.

  “He always recharged it at night from an outlet in the kitchen. Ruth took a look while he was asleep.”

  I tried hard not to pass judgment. I’ve done much worse.

  “As it turns out, Harry was living the cliché. He’d been having an affair with his administrative assistant for about two years. I’ve seen some of the photos that the private investigator took: Harry and her leaving the office together, Harry and her in a restaurant together, Harry and her going to her apartment, Harry and her having sex.”

  “Having sex? They have photos of them having sex?”

  “That private investigator was very expensive and wasn’t above breaking, entering, and hiding a camera.”

  “Ah, did you see any of those pictures?”

  He raised his eyebrows and whispered, “Not the X-rated ones.”

  “Ruth filed for divorce?”

  He shook his head. “Actually, no. She confronted Harry and hammered him with an ultimatum. Either he stops seeing the ‘whore,’ as Ruth refers to her, or Ruth takes Harry for half of everything he owns.” Kevin paused for a moment and then explained, “She really didn’t want the marriage to end. In her family, divorce equals failure and, in her way, I think she still loved him.”

  I was confused. “So Ruth didn’t file for divorce?”

  “You want another drink?” Kevin changed the subject.

  I snuggled up close and whispered, “You got some more wine?”

  He kissed my forehead and answered in a low voice, “I’ve got some Absolut. Want some?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Kevin squatted down and rummaged around in an open cupboard. Like everything else in his kitchen, the door had been removed. After rearranging a few boxes of Special K and Cheerios, he brought out two hidden bottles, vodka and scotch. He stood back up, glanced around to make certain that no one was watching, and poured a glass for each of us, neat.

  “Cheers,” he whispered.

  “Cheers.” I tapped my glass against his. Then I kissed him, long and hard. Sighing with pleasure and touching his chest with the flat of my hand, I sipped my vodka and then asked, “Ruth and Harry?”

  “Ah, yes. It was Harry who filed for the divorce. He’d had quite enough of Ruth, and even if it cost him half of everything, he was going to leave her.”

  “And?”

  “He did,” Kevin said. He took a swallow of his own drink and contentedly closed his eyes. Without looking at me he continued. “The proceedings took almost two years. Harry wasn’t stupid. He tried his best to hide his assets from her. But she was patient and vindictive. She ended up with a settlement that left her with more than six million dollars, not counting the house, which is worth another million or so.”

  I puffed out my cheeks and exhaled. “Wow. Ever thought about hooking up with Ruth? It sounds like you’d be set for life.”

  He smiled enigmatically. “I’m inclined to believe that Ruth has thought about it more than I have.”

  I got up close to Kevin and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I watched her tonight. She’s attracted to you.”

  He slowly shook his head. “I don’t think she and I would be a good match.”

  I agree.

  “Why not?” I didn’t care what his answer might be. I was just happy we were thinking the same way.

  He sighed. “Joanna and Ruth might have been sisters, but they’re very different. Ruth is efficient, organized…” He hesitated, looking for the right adjective.

  “Cold-blooded?” I offered. “Tight-assed?”

  “Exacting. I think Ruth is exacting. She knows precisely what she wants.”

  “And Joanna?”

  His face warmed to the task and he beamed. “Joanna was gentle, forgiving, understanding. She had an incredible sense of humor. She had to have a sense of humor to put up with me.” Kevin rolled his eyes. “I put her through an awful lot.”

  “Ruth doesn’t have a sense of humor?” I already knew the answer.

  Kevin looked down at his loafers and took a drink of his scotch. He shook his head. “No.” A small smile played across his mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh. As a matter of fact, I think she only smiles when somebody else is in pain.”

  She is so like a dominatrix.

  We finished putting the dishes away and sipped at our drinks, like an old married couple. It was nice. I almost laughed at myself when I asked, “So, honey, how was your day?”

  He grinned and held his glass up in the air. “I got both jobs.”

  I put my glass down and clapped.

  “Judge Rath doesn’t want me to start the guest room addition until the end of the month, but tomorrow I’m ordering the materials for the kitchen job out on Connor’s Landing.”

  As soon as he mentioned Connor’s Landing, I remembered the mystery caller and looked at my watch. I wanted to be back at my office at nine. It was a little after eight. “Nice house?”

  “Beautiful place. Right on the water, five bedrooms, four baths, three fireplaces, a swimming pool. They want me to knock out a wall for a breakfast nook.”

  “And they want the fossil backsplash from Montana.”

  “Wyoming.”

  “Same thing.” I was feeling a little buzz coming on. “Are they nice people?”

  He nodded. His eyes were getting glassy from the scotch. “Yeah, Pete Elroy wasn’t there so I was working mostly with his wife, Becky. She’s nice enough. Wants a kitchen she can show off to her friends, even though she has a cook and can barely find the refrigerator on her own. I thought her sons were a little odd, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “Can’t remember their names. Becky introduced them to me as they paraded out the door to get to the pool. One’s a freshman at Yale, the other one’s a junior at some expensive prep school in Greenwich.”

  “The pool? It was raining most of the day.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought was so odd. At one point, I looked out the window and saw them both huddled under the cabana drinking beer and playing video games.”

  I checked my watch again. “The idle rich. Hey, I have to go into the office for a little bit.”

  He looked disappointed.

  I put both my hands on his chest. “I won’t be long. Want to meet me for a drink when I’m done?”

  He brightened again. “Sure, where?”

  “My place.”

  He was flustered until I added, “I’ll come back here and pick you up, Mr. Restrictions.”

  Chapter Ten

  At nine o’clock that night, the newsroom of The Sheffield Post was busier than usual. A half-dozen reporters were in the office knocking out their stories, the pre-press guys were burning plates and hustling them out to the pressroom, and the editors, including Casper Wells, were staring at their computer screens as they frantically read and edited tomorrow’s newspaper.

  The one thing everyone has in common is the clock. It’s your king, your master, your archnemesis. With every sweep of the second hand, you have sixty seconds less to complete your assignment. The press starts promptly at midnight and God help you if it’s late. Every minute the press isn’t running means union overtime, advertising inserts waiting to be s
tuffed, drivers parked idle in the lot, newspapers late on readers’ doorsteps, and worse—a possible loss in an ever-dwindling pool of circulation numbers.

  Circulation is an apt term for a newspaper. If you don’t have it, it’s like losing blood. Lose too much and you die.

  And like every other newspaper in America, the Post was slowly dying. The paper was over a hundred years old and had won dozens of awards. But the terminal combination of the economy and the Internet was slowly squeezing the Post of both advertisers and readers. The Sheffield Post had a website, but couldn’t sell enough advertising to make up for the steady losses in the print version of the paper.

  The clock on the wall wasn’t just the nemesis of the reporters and editors; it was counting down time for the paper itself.

  ***

  “Good job on the arrest this afternoon.”

  I turned and looked up into my editor’s face. Heavy eyebrows peeked over black horn-rimmed glasses; a smile revealed yellowing teeth that probably hadn’t seen a dentist in years. “Thanks, Casper.”

  “So what are you doing back here in the office? I’m not paying overtime.”

  “Tying up a few loose ends.”

  “What did you do to your head?” He touched his forehead in reference to the bandage on my own.

  I couldn’t tell him about being in Mike’s Jeep. “Oh, I dropped something under my kitchen table and when I stood back up I just nicked the corner.”

  “You okay?”

  “Hell yeah, no problem.”

  “Nothing a martini couldn’t fix?”

  I could have sworn his nose was twitching, trying to catch a whiff of booze. Had Ostrowski told him about the night she had to cover for me? It didn’t matter. He knew about the incident at the Z Bar. Everyone at the newspaper knew.

  I turned back around to face my computer screen. “Wouldn’t know, boss,” I said, angrily. Privately, I was happy that I’d popped a couple of Altoids before coming into the office. Even though I was off the clock, I didn’t need to enhance my reputation as a boozer.

  Without a word, Casper turned around and walked back to his desk.

  I glanced up at the wall clock. It read six minutes after nine.