“Yeah, well, you already know how I feel about the whole bar thing,” Robert continued. The tapping grew more insistent, and I swatted backwards, waving the tapper off. “You’re not getting hit on, are you?”
More tapping. Giving up, I swung around abruptly. Marshall held a bowling ball, pointing at me, then him, then the ball. Trying not to giggle, I shook my head and turned my attention to the phone again.
“Letty? Hello?”
“I’m here, Robert. I just got distracted.” Marshall grabbed my foot, and I slapped at his back. “Stop it!” I hissed.
“Stop what?”
“Nothing, Robert. Things are getting a little goofy here.” Marshall stuck his tongue out at me, which I ignored, turning my back on him. Seconds later, something tugged at my foot again, sliding my shoe off. I decided I was dealing with a shoe fetishist—not something one normally learns about one’s boss. Or ever wants to.
I tried to pick up the trail of Robert’s conversation, but I’d missed a chunk. He was talking about a new guy who’d had his First Step meeting earlier that night. Apparently, Robert had asked him out with the gang for coffee, which explained why he didn’t make a fuss at my no-show. Robert liked meeting newcomers and showing them the ropes. My foot was getting cold and I needed to track down the shoe-napper, so I didn’t mind when Robert signaled he was ready to go.
After hobbling up and down the lobby area, I finally located Marshall at the shoe counter. He’d convinced the clerk to hide my shoe, and he triumphantly held up a pair of petite bi-colored rentals.
“You can’t just steal my shoes and expect me to join you bowling.”
“I only stole one shoe. So you can play one game.”
I didn’t need a degree in Alcohol to know it was useless to argue. Sighing, I took the shoes and shuffled over to the chairs.
Bowling can be fun. Bowling with a crowd of inebriated therapists—not so much. Nobody paid the least bit of attention to when their turn came up, leaving huge blocks of time open for important stuff like doing shots and falling off the molded plastic chairs. Hannah, a brilliant social worker who wore granny skirts and spoke in whispers, kept insisting that we should play strip bowling, which lent a whole new meaning to gutter ball. Mary Kate kept getting on her hands and knees, crawling to the line, and rolling her ball by shoving it two-handed from the prone position. Apparently, the lane was being “wiggly.”
Being the only sober one in the batch, I should have been able to wipe the floor with all of them. However, Marshall was just drunk enough to be relaxed and not drunk enough to see double. He kicked butt. He also shook butt—his own—every time he got a strike. Absolutely made losing worth it.
When he finally let me pour him into his car, it was nearly midnight. Thankfully, Carol’s husband, Steve, showed up to chauffeur the more “relaxed” co-workers to their various homes. He’d come prepared, shoving empty plastic ice cream tubs in everyone’s laps as they giggled and crawled over each other and wrestled with seat belts. Some, I suspected, were not quite as drunk as they portrayed, but were simply reveling in the freedom from their normally staid professional lives. Mary Kate, on the other hand, sat in the front passenger seat with her nose smooshed flat against the window, gazing blearily out the window. I waved. She blinked, which I interpreted as “good-bye.” Close enough.
I got in the car and started the heater. Marshall sat with his head canted back on the seat, eyes closed, a slight smile on his face. Soft jazz played on the radio, but I turned it off, preferring the silence. Carol’s husband tapped on the window while I struggled to adjust the seat forward.
When I lowered the window, he asked, “You sure you’re okay to drive?”
I smiled. “I haven’t had a single drink all night, but thanks for checking.”
“Letty’s a good girl,” Marshall murmured. “A very, very good girl.”
“I got an extra bucket,” Steve said, waving it at me. I looked over at Marshall.
“Are you going to need a bucket?”
“No way. I’m smooth.”
“Smooth?”
“Smooooth,” he said. “Like velvet.”
I looked at Steve. “He says he’s smooth.”
“Take the bucket.” Steve shoved it through the window, and I placed it on the floor between Marshall’s feet. I expected an argument, but the only sound of life from the passenger seat was soft, rhythmic breathing. Well, great. Velvet Boy was asleep.
Luckily, Marshall’s fancy car was equipped with a user-friendly navigation system. I hit “Favorites” and “Home” and let a robotic female direct me through the dark night.
I hadn’t been out driving this late in a long time. Toward the end of my drinking days, I had taken to drinking at home, alone. Such a cliché, but at the time I thought I was cleverly avoiding all the drunks out there on the roads. Silly me. The only drunk I had to fear was locked up in my apartment with a bottle of booze.
Outside of town, the darkness became more than just the absence of light. The black night had texture, a thickness that pressed impatiently against the bright swath the headlights cut into the inkiness. Marshall’s quiet exhalations and the vulnerability induced by sleeping in another’s company created a cocoon of intimacy.
Marshall lived on the outskirts of town where the land reverted to farms. The car sped by quiet barnyards and empty fields, the frozen stubs of corn stalks waiting out the long spring.
After a few miles of deserted country, the GPS chick steered me up a long, dark, twisting road. Gravel crunched under the tires, and I almost woke Marshall to make sure I hadn’t taken a wrong turn when we came around a bend. The drive opened to a clearing with a small house perched near the ice-edged river. Frost gilded the wild grasses and trees, outlining the scenery in pale silver.
“Wow,” I said.
Marshall came awake, rubbing his eyes like a toddler. He peered sleepily out of the window.
“Hi, honey. I’m home.”
“You live in an enchanted cottage?” I asked.
“Wanna come find out?” He tried to waggle his eyebrows, but ended up blinking and twitching his nose like a manic bunny.
“Out,” I ordered, pointing at the house.
“You can’t kick me out. This is my car.”
“Nope. You made me designated driver, so it’s my car tonight. And it’s beddy-bye time for you. Out you go.”
“Aren’t you going to walk me home? What if I can’t make it?”
“It’s fifty feet.”
“I could fall. There’s bear out here, you know. I’ve seen them.”
“Have you really?” I looked around the clearing.
“Well, no, but I have lots of squirrels. Big ones.” I looked at him blankly. “Great, big, mutant, hairy squirrels. They scare me.”
“Get out.”
He started wrestling with his seat belt. After five minutes, I reached over and sprung the catch, releasing him.
“I could make coffee,” he offered.
“No, thanks.”
“Wanna see my etchings?” He smiled wickedly.
I reached over him, opening his door. “Don’t make me push you.”
“How come gorgeous women are so cold-hearted?” He scrambled from the car, losing his footing twice. Righting himself, he began a slow, meandering walk up to the front porch. Halfway up the porch stairs, he paused, digging in his pockets. Turning back to the car, he spread his arms wide.
I rolled the window down and leaned my head out. “What now?”
“Neemkees.”
“What?”
“I NEED MY KEYS!”
Sighing, I turned the car off, pulling the keys from the ignition. Wary of a ploy, I checked the key ring. Sure enough, along with the car keys and a silver master key to the office dangled two brass keys that probably opened the house. I got out and trudged up the path.
“Don’t you try anything!” I warned as I climbed the stairs beside him. In an act of surrender, he laced his hands behind his head
and nearly lurched off the porch into the bushes. I grabbed the front of his shirt, slipped on the frosty wood deck, and we both went down.
Luckily, I landed on top.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I lay full length on top of him, heart thumping wildly, my hands splayed across his chest. And a very firm chest it was, I might add.
“Help. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” he said, smiling up into my eyes.
“You can’t get up because you’re grabbing my butt.”
“I thought it might be cold. I have very warm hands.”
It’s true. He did. And my butt was kind of cold. Shaking naughty thoughts from my head and warm hands from my butt, I scrambled up, leaving him stretched out on the cold planks. He groaned, then rolled to his feet.
“Oh, great! Where’re the keys?” I asked. “I must have dropped them when you fell.”
“I didn’t fall. You pulled me down and jumped on me. I thought it was my present.”
“I rescued you from falling off the porch,” I clarified.
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“Well, you’re drunk.” I searched the ground for glints of metal, but even with the moon, it was too dark.
“I am not drunk,” he said with great dignity. “I am relaxed. Besides, I’m not the one who lost the keys.”
Then he walked over to the front door and opened it. Reaching around the door jamb, he flicked the exterior lights on, shut the door and began weaving around, searching for his car keys.
“Your door was unlocked the whole time?”
“Of course it was. This is northern Wisconsin. Who locks doors?”
I slapped a hand over my mouth in an effort not to scream. Didn’t want to scare all those freakishly hairy squirrels. On the other hand, with luck, one might attack Marshall and bite him on his cute ass. Stomping past him, I pushed into his house.
I flicked the lights on, illuminating the open space of a living room to the left and kitchen to the right. It must have been converted from a three-season cabin. Realtors would use words like “cozy” and “rustic” and “charming,” and all of them would fit. There wasn’t any entryway to speak of, just a tiled rectangle where you could pull your shoes off and hang a coat on the wooden pegs jutting from the wall. An insulated, red flannel jacket with bits of wood shavings caught in the worn fabric drooped from one peg. Against the far wall of the living area, a half-log staircase rose to a loft, which spanned the back half of the tiny house. Windows ran the length of the wall facing the river, the leather couch angled to catch the view. Everything was done in rich browns and dark greens with bits of cobalt blue glassware accents scattered throughout.
I found it easy to picture Marshall living here. However, as much as I wanted to poke around, this wasn’t what I’d come inside for. I slipped out of my shoes, padded to the kitchen, and began opening cabinet drawers. Behind me, the door opened and closed.
“Did you find the keys?” I asked without turning.
“Nope. Looks like you might be staying.” He rummaged through the refrigerator. “You should have kept the panties. I need something sweet.”
I kept my back to him so he wouldn’t see me blush. Or smile. Instead, I continued pulling drawers open, eventually finding the one I was looking for. I pawed through it.
“Looking for something?” Marshall asked.
“Found it.” I held up a set of keys, jangling them. A piece of cardboard attached to the ring by a thin twisted wire identified them as belonging to a 2007 Saab.
“How did you find those?”
“This is northern Wisconsin. Everybody keeps their extra set of keys in their kitchen junk drawer. Good-night.”
Scooting by him and out into the night, I heard him laughing, presumably at himself, since the keys worked and I was soon tooling down the road. I grinned all the way home, more relaxed and happy than I could remember in a long, long time. Part of me knew I should examine what was going on, but I really didn’t want to. Most of the time I was good at fretting myself out of contentedness, but tonight I just wanted to feel it.
Walking up the sidewalk in front of my apartment, a pale patch of moonbeam flitted under the shadow of the bushes.
“Siggy? Here, kitty, kitty.” I didn’t expect much. He’d avoided direct contact ever since Robert had hauled him out of the bushes, but I hadn’t given up. I’d even stocked up on kitty supplies, just in case. “Bet you’re hungry, huh, little guy?”
To my amazement, he left the shadows and twined figure eights around my feet, purring and rubbing against my slacks. “Siggy?” I reached down slowly and ran my hand across his silky back. He arched and circled back for more. I picked him up and smiled when he tucked his head under my chin. His whiskers tickled my neck and I could feel the mini-vibrations of his purring.
“Want to come inside?” I made my way up to the entrance, ready to let him go if he showed signs of tensing, but he lay limp and warm in my arms, letting me carry him through to my apartment.
Delighted with Siggy’s company, I didn’t realize anything was wrong until I flicked the lights on. Or tried to. At the sudden return of tension, Siggy leapt down and scampered off into the dark. I don’t usually leave lights on, but I had that morning knowing it would be late before I got in. Even if I hadn’t specifically left some on, there should still have been some illumination from the stove or microwave clocks. The apartment was too dark, too cold.
Arms out in front of me a la Frankenstein’s monster, I shuffled across the tile to the cupboard where I kept my flashlight. Finding it, I fumbled with the switch, shaking, suddenly convinced that I wasn’t alone. I grabbed up a steak knife and made my way to the phone. It was dead. What the hell was going on?
I fled back to the front door, grabbing my purse on the fly, and plunged out into the brightly lit hallway. Obviously, the power outage only affected my apartment. I didn’t want to wake my neighbors, and there was no way I was about to explore my apartment in the pitch dark with only a flashlight and a cheap knife.
Ma would kill me, but it was time to call in the good guys.
Forty-five minutes later, two patrolmen walked me through my apartment in a very non-CSI manner. No drawn guns, no crouches, no ducking around doors—very unimpressive. As far as I could tell, nothing had been disturbed. We discovered Siggy lounging in the center of my bed, eyes glowing like flat green disks as the flashlight swept over him. Moments later when we reconvened in the hallway, the younger cop held Siggy, purring, against his chest. The little traitor.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in there. Did you pay your bill?”
“Yes, I paid my bill,” I said, affronted. “And it’s not just the electricity. The heat and the phone are out, too.”
They exchanged a glance. “Well, we can’t see that anything has been bothered and nothing’s been cut on the outside. So it must be a glitch in the system.”
“How can it be a glitch if it’s several utilities?”
“Look, Ms. Whittaker. It’s not a break-in. You’ll have to call the power company tomorrow and figure it out.”
Handing Siggy over, they clomped down the stairs and out the door. Although the dark apartment wasn’t very appealing, I couldn’t sit out in the hallway all night. I slammed the door, immediately wishing I hadn’t. Siggy kamikaze-dove from my arms, fleeing into the blackness. With a sigh, I went about setting up the cat box and put out food and water. It was surprisingly awkward trying to pour litter with the flashlight clamped under my armpit. It dropped twice; at least it landed in the clean litter each time. Once I had Siggy settled in, I groped my way through the living room to the couch.
I had choices. I just needed to figure out what they were.
Despite their lack of excitement—or maybe because of it—I didn’t believe the cops were wrong about whether anyone had broken in. I’d watched them checking window latches and I knew for myself that the door had been locked. But I didn’t agree that some glitch had coincidentally shut o
ff the electricity, the heat, and the phone—I knew that I’d paid my bills. That was something I could verify, however.
Flashlight back on, I detoured into the kitchen for matches, extra batteries, and every candle I owned. Tonight they would offer something other than romance. I also grabbed my checkbook on the swing through. My coffee table ended up looking like an altar with flickering bits of fire and perfumed scents mingling in a heady aroma like incense. A quick search through the check register told me that although the gas bill wasn’t due, I was about eight days past due on the power and twelve on the phone. Not long enough for either to have been shut off, but very unlike my usual habits of paying on time. Back to the desk for my little stack of to-be-paid bills. Flipping through the pile took mere moments and didn’t uncover either bill. I sat back, thinking.
If nobody had physically cut the power, then the services were turned off at the source. If the utility companies didn’t do it of their own accord, and if I certainly didn’t, then who did? I knew the answer, of course. How was more difficult, and worth investigating.
Gathering a small screwdriver, an expired Sears credit card, and a jumbo paperclip, I tramped down the stairs back to the lobby and stood in front of my mailbox. Tiny scratches marred the brass, but it was impossible to tell when they had occurred or if they were the result of daily wear-and-tear. A cursory look at my neighbors’ showed similar markings. I tried the credit card first, mainly because that’s how they did it in movies, but I couldn’t pop the lock. One look told me the screwdriver would probably work, but it would leave more damage than could now be seen. The paper clip, however, worked just fine, popping the mail box door open with ridiculous ease. Shutting it took longer, but it could be done, too. All of which explained how that rat bastard Wayne had gotten hold of my mail and tampered with my utilities.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I pretended it was frustration, not fear, that kept me awake all night. Wayne had cleverly chosen late Friday to play his prank, thus ensuring I’d be without power and phone until Monday at the earliest. To make matters worse, my cell phone died and my car charger was nestled in my glove box of my car. My car, of course, had been parked at the clinic all night and probably sported four freshly flat tires.
The Enemy We Know (Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery) Page 9
