The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  Mia turned off the TV, then swung Brooke up on her hip. “Hey, baby girl, where’re your brother and Eldon?”

  “Gabe took the bus to the mall . . . but he wouldn’t take me with him. Eldon”—she screwed up her face, remembering—“Eldon is at Danny’s house.”

  With a snort, Kali woke up. When she saw Charlie her expression changed to one of embarrassment. “Oh, uh, hello.”

  “Hey.” Charlie nodded, suddenly wondering what he was doing here in a room filled with females and pink plastic toys.

  “I guess I’d better go officially lie down.” Kali levered herself off the couch. She was still a big woman, but she had lost a lot of weight. She gave them a nod and left the room.

  Brooke pushed Mia’s nose and made a beeping sound, then laughed, delighted with herself.

  Mia set her down. “Brooke, honey, could you go upstairs to your room for a little while so I can talk to Mr. Carlson?”

  She tilted her head. “Can’t I stay down here with you?”

  “It’s grown-up talk.”

  Charlie braced himself for an argument, but instead Brooke just said, “Okay.”

  He sat on the couch and something jabbed his thigh. A naked Barbie was stuck between the cushions. A shoestring was tied around her middle. Maybe he had been in his line of work too long, because looking at the doll made him think of a crime scene.

  “I think Brooke’s been twirling her Barbie around, pretending she can fly,” Mia said by way of explanation.

  “Naked?”

  “Maybe it’s more aerodynamic.” Mia shrugged, then went to a desk in the corner and started digging through it. “I know you don’t need to make notes, but I do.” She took out a pen and then kept digging. Every piece of paper she pulled out had already been enthusiastically scribbled on with crayon. “We’ve got to have some paper in this house,” she said in an exasperated tone, straightening up and scanning the room. She walked over to a backpack that had been shrugged off next to the TV.

  She opened it up. “Why does Gabe have a Dopp kit?” she said to herself. She took out the small brown leather bag and pulled the zipper. And then went so silent, so still, that Charlie knew she had found something terrible.

  He got up and looked over her shoulder. Inside the bag were a bottle of pills and three small glass vials. And two needles.

  “It’s heroin, isn’t it?” She grabbed Charlie’s arm so tightly that her fingernails were poking holes in his skin.

  Charlie picked it up. The label read Decagen. “It’s not heroin, Mia. It’s steroids.”

  He watched as the emotions washed across her face. First she went pale with relief. Then red with anger.

  A voice from behind them made them both jump. “What are you doing in my stuff?”

  For a long beat, Mia was quiet. “I don’t think that’s the real question, Gabe.” She turned around. In one hand was the Dopp kit and in the other, one of the needles.

  The last time Charlie had seen Gabe, a month or two earlier, he’d still looked like a kid. Scrawny, gangly. Now his shirt strained across his thick arms and wide chest. Football season was over, but if Gabe was going to suit up today for a game, he would probably need a new, bigger uniform.

  “It’s like a supplement—” he started, but Mia cut him off.

  “It’s not a supplement, Gabe. It’s steroids. That’s an illegal drug.”

  “But it’s not like cocaine or anything like that. It’s not like heroin.” Gabe glared at them. “I’m not an idiot. I researched it pretty good before I started.” He looked from Mia’s face to Charlie’s. “Two months ago, I could still wear T-shirts I’ve had since sixth grade. I was doing everything they say to do. I lifted weights all the time. I tried all those stupid shakes, the protein shakes, the weight-gainer shakes. I ate eggs and peanut butter. I tried. You saw how I tried. But I still didn’t have any more muscles than Brooke. I still looked like a little kid, not a man. There’s something biologically wrong with me.” He nodded at the vials. “And that fixes it.”

  Kids these days were expected to look like models and play like all-stars. There were certain areas in Seattle, awash in Boeing and Microsoft and Amazon money, that were hypercompetitive. Snobbish. Charlie was pretty certain this was one of them. Areas where both parents and kids tried to one-up each other with their expensive houses, cars, and clothes. And now, he guessed, their chiseled physiques.

  Charlie had always been only an observer of that world. On a homicide detective’s pay, there was no way he could compete. So he drove a car with stains on the seats and his shoes were down at the heels and he needed a haircut—and he didn’t care.

  And maybe Gabe’s family had once been part of that world, but then Scott had died and the house of cards, or rather credit cards, had tumbled down. The expensive Suburban had turned out to be leased. And from what Mia had told him, she was just barely hanging on to the house.

  So if Gabe couldn’t compete by boasting about going helicopter skiing in Canada or snorkeling off Kauii’s North Coast, then he had to have something. And Charlie guessed that something was his body.

  “What about Eldon?” Mia asked. “Does he use steroids too?”

  “No, he’s big because he’s Samoan.” Gabe’s voice was bitter. “You guys really don’t understand. It’s not like bad kids take this stuff. It’s for kids who want to do better. Kids who want to improve themselves. It’s for the good kids. And older guys on the team told me I needed to get bigger, faster, stronger.”

  Mia shook her head. “You are way more than what you look like on the outside.”

  The kid rolled his eyes. Charlie tried to repress his irritation at his insolence.

  “People can’t see my insides,” Gabe said. “They can only see what’s outside.” He flicked a hand from his biceps to his flat belly. “And judge me on that.”

  “If that’s all people judge on,” Charlie said, “then you don’t need them as friends. You think just because you work out with weights and now thanks to steroids you’ve got big muscles, that makes you a man? That you’re an adult now? You know what makes you a man?” He tapped his thick index finger right between his own eyebrows. “It’s what’s up here. It’s how you think. How you act. What you decide is important.”

  “You’re not my dad!” Gabe shouted. He turned to Mia. “He’s not my dad! Why is he even here?”

  “Can I talk to Gabe alone for a minute, Mia?” Charlie asked in a reasonable tone of voice.

  “Why?” mother and son asked at the same time.

  “Because part of what I want to say to him is a conversation that should really be between guys.”

  She looked from Gabe to Charlie. “Okay.”

  “But, Mom—” Gabe started.

  She leaned forward until she was only an inch or two from his face. “Don’t start with me, young man. You are on thin ice right now.” Her face was a mask of anger, but Charlie guessed that inside she was close to crumbling.

  “So you decided to take a shortcut,” Charlie said mildly after Mia had left the room.

  The kid puffed out his chest. “It’s not a shortcut. I was doing everything right but I wasn’t getting any bigger.”

  “That’s because you’re only fifteen. It takes awhile for guys to reach their full height and weight. And you don’t want to mess around with Mother Nature.”

  Gabe shrugged, still glowering.

  How could Charlie get through to this kid? It might be twenty-five years ago, but he still remembered what had worried him as a teen. He had wanted to be accepted. He had wanted to look his best. Had wanted to get the girls. He had wanted the other guys to admire him.

  “Gabe,” he started, but then stopped, uncertain of what direction to go. Kids’ desires hadn’t changed since Charlie was fifteen. Only everyone wanted things right now. Charlie was no better than anyone else, impatiently waiting for the microwave to bing because three minutes was too long to wait.

  The difference was that in today’s instant gratification w
orld, kids had access to drugs that could make things happen now. Steroids could build your self-esteem at the same time as they built your muscles. The problem was, all that growth came at a price.

  After a long silence, Gabe said, “What.” Not making it a question. Still, Charlie chalked it up as progress.

  “Steroids aren’t like taking baby aspirin. These are freakin’ hormones. And at some point your body will start thinking it has plenty of testosterone and it doesn’t need to bother making it anymore. So that makes your”—Charlie had to pause for a minute before he came up with the polite word—“your testicles shrink. Maybe makes them decide to stop working all together. It does other stuff too. Do you really not want to be any taller than you are now? Do you really want to end up with breasts? To go bald? You could be damaging your liver. Screwing up your blood pressure.”

  Gabe didn’t answer. His expression was blank.

  Charlie could imagine what was going through the kid’s mind. In his eyes, any problems were a long way away. When you were fifteen, all that mattered was now. And right now, Gabe had the muscles he had always dreamed of.

  “Look, man, I understand. Who doesn’t want to be big? But these drugs can affect your mind, not just your muscles. They can make you depressed. There’re guys your age who have killed themselves after they started taking steroids. Sometimes they hurt other people. Just snap for no real reason.” He thought of what Mia had told him in the car last night about how Gabe had been acting lately. “It’s call ’roid rage. I’ll bet there’ve been times lately when you’ve gotten really angry at something and then later you couldn’t even think of why.”

  “I can control my temper.”

  “You don’t even know how pure this stuff is. It could be cut with just about anything. This kind of thing gets made in someone’s bathtub or in a Chinese factory someplace, and they don’t care what they put in it. All they care about is making money. It could not even have any anabolic steroid in it. It could have poison. Your dealer doesn’t care if you get muscles. They don’t even care if you die. Not when there are other customers lining up right behind you.”

  “I don’t have a dealer!” Gabe spit out the word like he was swearing. “It’s just some guy. When I first called him, he was in an SAT prep class. We meet at a restaurant.”

  “Well, you’re not going to be meeting anymore. Because as of right now, you’re done. Your mom’s going to be watching you like a hawk and so am I.”

  Gabe kicked the coffee table so hard it skidded forward two feet. “Great. Everything sucks. I’m going to shrink down to nothing again. My dad’s dead, and now you seem to think you get to take his place. I don’t even have my own room anymore.”

  Everything the kid said was true. So what was Charlie supposed to say?

  In the end, he just said nothing.

  CHAPTER 31

  As he stood half dressed in front of the bathroom mirror, Warren generously sprayed Axe cologne over his chest. But what if he put his arm around Song tonight? She was so petite that her nose would be right next to his armpit. Just to be safe, he sprayed his pits as well. Then fanned his hands in front of his chest to make sure it was completely dry before he put on his shirt. He had last worn it to a wedding, and for the past six months it had hung in his closet, white and pristine and shrouded in plastic.

  Now maybe he would have the kind of life where he wore dry-cleaned cotton shirts every day. Instead of a polyester blue shirt with his name embroidered over the breast pocket.

  Thinking about the money made him a little anxious. He had been warned not to put it in a bank, that the IRS kept track of deposits over ten thousand dollars. He had split it up and hidden it in various places in his apartment: inside a DVD case, in a plastic bag in the freezer, in a water bottle in the toilet tank, in an envelope taped to the bottom of a drawer, and inside an old sock in his sock drawer. Now he was afraid he would forget where it all was.

  Still, he was beyond lucky. He had more money than he had ever seen in his life and tonight he would have a beautiful woman by his side. And it wasn’t like Song had come onto him because she knew about the money. No, it was because she had genuinely been attracted to him. For a second he imagined how he would tell their kids someday, “Yeah, your mom and I met when she literally ran into me!”

  Tonight they were going to go out dancing. He wasn’t even sure how that had happened. They had been talking at the coffee shop, and she had asked him what he liked to do in his free time. He had started to stutter, trying to think of something besides “play video games,” and then he had remembered that tonight there was going to be a band in the bar down the block. And then somehow Song was agreeing to meet him there without his being exactly sure how it had happened.

  Always he had watched and wondered how other guys did it. How did they get dates? How did they get girlfriends? And lately, how did other guys get wives? Everyone else had gotten the girl, gone to college, taken exciting jobs.

  Even though she didn’t know about the money, Song must have picked up on the confidence it had given him. His life was finally beginning to change.

  And tonight it wouldn’t be like the other times he went to bars. Always standing on the edge with a beer, bobbing his head in time to the music, trying to look like he was having fun. Going home by himself at the end of the night. The only time he didn’t feel totally alone was when he went outside for a cig break. At least when you had a cigarette you could nod companionably to your fellow smokers. You could ask for a light. You could complain about the jerks who glared at you. You could let people who claimed they were quitting bum a smoke.

  Sometimes a local band was playing at one of the neighborhood bars, usually with guys his own age, only they actually knew how to play a guitar. They probably knew how to read music, even. Warren could read a blueprint, but music had always been beyond him. In sixth grade he had struggled through weekly lessons, trying to learn how to play the guitar his mom had bought at Sears, until finally he gave up, both he and the teacher relieved when it was over.

  Song would never know that he had failed even at that.

  There was one thing that bothered Warren. That made him feel a little guilty when he thought about Song. It was that she looked a little like the dead girl. Like Dandan. Could they have known each other?

  But Song had said she had come over here when she was a baby, and Dandan had only been in the US for a few weeks before she was killed.

  His last day at work—which he hadn’t known was going to be his last day at work—had been like any other. He had gone to the main office. Drunk coffee with the guys. Finished up paperwork from the day before. Got in the service van to go out on calls. Spent his day installing outlets, switches, and garbage disposals. He had solved one customer’s problem in ten minutes. But because Stirling Electric billed by the hour, she had insisted on getting her money’s worth. She had actually handed him a broom and made him sweep the dining room and kitchen before she let him leave. And he had done it!

  The last call was for some people who wanted a light fixture moved from one side of the front door to the other. It was already a complicated job, but this home was made of brick, a rarity in Seattle. He spent a big chunk of the afternoon figuring out which bit of Romex wire went to the front-door light fixture, then finding the breaker and disconnecting the wire, cutting the wire in the attic, jumpering to new wiring inside a junction box, securing it to the rafters, then running the new wire for the new fixture down. Hammer drilling and then chiseling out the bricks and then installing the new metal box. Figuring out there was a bit of dead space, scooping away insulation, and fishing down his new Romex cable.

  Being happy with how everything had gone until it turned out that the owner expected Warren to not only have on hand some mortar and bricks, but also to have bricks that exactly matched the ones used in the house, like he was a brick mason as well as an electrician. The owner had ended up cursing Warren out in the driveway.

  The next day it h
ad been a relief to go to jury duty, even though he knew it was just trading one kind of hassle for another.

  After he had been picked for a jury, he had gone out to lunch. He had been sitting at a table by himself in the corner, looking at his phone, when this guy appeared at his table. Just materialized, like a ghost or something.

  “Warren?”

  He jumped, then tried to cover it. “Yeah?”

  If he was a ghost, he was a very solid-looking ghost. No more than five foot nine, but two hundred twenty pounds. Easy. A shaved head, a round face, a big neck, heavily muscled shoulders.

  There was no one else around, but even so, the guy sat down and leaned close, pitched his voice low, just for Warren’s ears. “Warren Paczkowski? The electrician who is twenty-eight years old? Who lives at 4927 Terrace Drive, apartment 15?”

  Warren’s eyes had widened at that.

  “Yes?”

  “We have a deal we want to talk to you about.”

  “I don’t work off the books.” Well, he did, occasionally, but not for some guy who just came up to him in a restaurant.

  “It’s not about your electrical skills.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s about your jury duty.”

  “What about it?” Warren was suddenly aware of how close the guy was. Too close.

  “We want to make you a deal. We want you to vote not guilty.”

  “But the case hasn’t even started yet. And you want me to vote that the guy is innocent?”

  “I didn’t say that.” The man’s voice was calm, but with a flick of menace. “I said not guilty.”

  “Why should I do that?” Warren wasn’t fishing. He genuinely wanted to know.

  “Because we can make it worth your while.” A pause. A smile. “Very much worth your while.”