by Gayle Roper
“Eeyew!” I pushed him away and climbed groggily to my feet. I looked out my window at the wall of the house next door, then angled my head to peer at the strip of beach I could see between the houses. No bright sun warmed the sand today. I looked up and saw a gray sky but thankfully no rain.
James and I went to get Gray at ten o’clock. When the nurse made him ride to the exit in a wheelchair, he was less than pleased
“With your turban and all,” I said, “just make believe you’re a potentate with servants to fulfill your every whim, including transportation.”
The look he gave me showed he didn’t think much of my idea. He was barely through the front hospital door before he jumped to his feet and strode to James’s car.
Male pride.
We made it home in time for Lucy, Meg and me to leave for church. Gray decided that with his great swathe of white wrapped about his head, he’d be more distracting than was good for a worship service, and James decided that Gray shouldn’t be left alone, so the guys stayed home.
I love church. I love the worship songs and the old hymns. I love to hear Scripture read. I love a good sermon, whether it teaches me something new or reminds me of a truth I had forgotten. I always leave in a mellow mood.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” Lucy said, “if we went home to a nice lunch the guys had fixed for us?”
Meg and I just looked at her.
“Yeah, you’re right. I forgot I was talking about my brother here. He may be pretty much perfect, but even he has limits.”
It was a good thing we hadn’t counted on the men coming through. When we got back to James’s, they were glued to the television and an Eagles pre-season game. They ate the lunch Lucy fixed while staring at the tube. We girls ate on the deck in spite of the overcast sky and the steady wind off the water. We read and talked and napped in lounge chairs until the guys joined us, elated that the Eagles had won with a field goal in the last thirty seconds.
“I’ve got to go to Atlantic City to drop some clothes off at the mission over there,” James announced as he stretched away the kinks of sitting on his leather couch for almost three hours. “Anyone want to ride along?”
Since he seemed to be asking everyone, and since the wind was driving the sand so that it stung like tiny BBs, we all said yes. We climbed back into his car, guys in the front, girls in the back, and drove over the Causeway, through Somer’s Point, Longport, Ventnor and into Atlantic City.
“I’ll drop you guys at the Boardwalk and be back for you in about an hour if that’s okay with you,” James said.
There being no objections, we waved to James as he drove away, turned, and walked up the ramp to join the folks walking the boards or hurrying from casino to casino. It soon became obvious that Gray wasn’t yet up to strength.
“This is ridiculous,” he said with all the intolerance for weakness of someone who is rarely if ever ill.
“You were shot, remember?” I pointed out helpfully. “There are consequences when that happens.”
He looked down at me with one eyebrow raised. “Thank you for telling me, Anna. I didn’t remember.”
“Mock all you want, but I’m right. There’s a bench. Let’s sit.”
We did while Luce and Meg continued walking and window-shopping.
An old lady with wispy white hair, black penciled eyebrows and red, red lipstick strolled past, followed by a trio of young teen boys in cammie pants, boots and olive-drab T-shirts. A couple in golf-bright slacks and tops argued their way down the boards while several high-school girls in bikini tops and board shorts giggled at them.
“I love watching the people,” I said. “They’re just wonderful! Take those girls. Are they laughing at the couple for arguing or for their clothes?”
“The clothes, definitely.” Gray looked very Pirates of the Caribbean in his turban with one of James’s baseball hats, the back loosened as far as it would go, sitting backwards on top of the bandage. “I didn’t grow up with four sisters not to recognize the don’t-they-look-ridiculous giggle.”
I looked thoughtfully at him. “I wonder what those girls would say about you with your turban?”
“Handsome dude,” he said smugly.
“Confidence is good, guy. Conceit is deplorable.”
He grinned, but I saw the little lines of pain around his eyes and in the creases of his forehead.
“Headache?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve got some Tylenol if you want a couple.”
“Thanks, but it’ll go away.”
I rolled my eyes. “Eventually. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with easing your discomfort. After all, you were shot last night.”
“It’s not that bad. People who get headaches a lot would probably say it was only a two on the one-to-ten scale.”
“Where do you put it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a headache before.”
“What?” Surely he was joking.
“I’m never sick.”
“Really? Or don’t you allow yourself to admit it?”
“Why would I be that foolish?”
“It’s some guy thing to prove you’re Mr. Self-Sufficient.”
He looked provoked. “What’s so bad about being self-sufficient?”
Good going, Anna. You’ve put your foot in it again. “Nothing, I guess, except maybe you work too hard trying to prove you are.”
If anything he looked more provoked. “I do not.”
“Sure, you do. Your mother told me so.”
“My mother also told me my expression would freeze in an ugly snarl if I kept making faces at my sisters, so we’ll leave her out of this discussion.”
I laughed. “Okay, she’s out. How about if I say so.”
“Anna, you’ve known me how long?”
“And I’ve never seen you without your laptop, cell and PDA.”
“I happen to enjoy my work. Is there something wrong with that?”
I shook my head. “It’s a blessing. I don’t mind teaching, but I’m only doing it to make a living.” A lot of people hated what they did. At least I didn’t hate teaching, and that was good. “You’re really very fortunate. All I’m saying is give yourself time to enjoy life too.”
“Look, if Edwards, Inc., is going to be a success, and it is if I have anything to say about it, I have to work hard. I have to be self-sufficient. Nobody’s going to hand me an established reputation. I’ve got to earn it.”
I nodded. “You do, but my point is that there’s more to life than work, even work you love. When was the last time you took a weekend off? Or a week off? Besides, being too self-sufficient can make us forget that we need God.”
He studied me. “Am I getting this morning’s sermon secondhand? Or are you accusing me of a lack of spiritual depth?”
“No, no. I’m not quite that presumptuous.” Help me articulate my thoughts, Lord. “I just know it’s been my lacks that drive me to the Lord for strength and courage and guidance, not my self-confidence. It’s our holes that God uses to develop us into the people He wants us to be.”
The corners of his mouth quirked up, and he slipped his arm along the back of the bench. “Then you don’t have to worry, sugar. I may appear self-confident and try to be self-sufficient, but I’m all too aware of the many holes in me and my need for the Lord to fill them. I know that without Him I’m lost.”
More than satisfied with his comment, I leaned comfortably back, letting my fatigue from last night make me slightly foggy, my pleasure that Gray was beside me make me much more than slightly happy. Many of the people passing in front of us carried cardboard tubs of coins as they wandered from casino to casino, hoping the slots in the next gave better returns than those in the last, never quite accepting that the house always won.
Hope springs eternal, I thought as Gray’s arm moved from the bench to my shoulders. I jerked up straight. I blinked and stared. No doubt my mouth fell open.
&nbs
p; “Gray, look!”
He straightened, his arm falling to my waist, pulling me closer. “Not the man in black again!”
I shook my head. “Stranger than that.” I pointed.
Stunned, we watched as Ken Ryder stopped under the casino marquee directly across from our bench. He was smiling broadly at a glamorous blonde in a slinky black jumpsuit. Huge gold earrings the size of Hula Hoops dangled from her ears, and if her heels had been any higher, she’d have been standing on tiptoe. She leaned into him and kissed him. He kissed her right back.
SEVENTEEN
For a few moments I was too surprised to move. When I finally turned to Gray, he looked as shell-shocked as I felt.
“Do you know who she is?” Not that I expected that he did. It was just that he’d known Ken and Dorothy, and I hadn’t.
“Never saw her before in my life.” He scowled ferociously at Ken who was happily oblivious.
I grabbed my little digital camera from my purse, aimed and shot. I got them kissing. I got Ken smiling at her, and I got her glancing at him coyly. I could practically feel the breeze from her fluttering eyelashes all the way over where we were.
We watched as Ken walked down the Boardwalk, his arm around the blonde’s waist, hers about his. I took that shot too. I clicked on the photos I’d just taken, holding them out so Gray could see too. “Well, she’s very pretty.”
He shrugged. “If you like blowsy blond bombshells. I don’t.”
Interesting. I thought all guys did, at least to look at. My brothers sure did. I studied the picture of them walking away. “Maybe it’s not Ken.”
“Anna.”
So I’m a wishful thinker. So sue me. “Maybe he’s got a twin brother.”
“I wish, but I doubt it.”
“But he just buried Dorothy yesterday!”
Gray nodded. “In all my times with them, I never once got a whiff of something being wrong between them.”
“Maybe he just picked the blonde up today. Maybe she’s a convenience to help him cope with his grief.”
“They looked pretty chummy to me.”
“Yeah. To me too. There’s an ease between people who have been together for a while, and they had it.” Gray and I didn’t, at least not yet, but we had a remarkable affinity and were more at ease all the time. I had great hope.
He sighed. “People can be so disappointing.”
True words. I found myself irate at Ken for being unfaithful to Dorothy, and I didn’t even know Dorothy. Sisterhood, I guessed. Girls sticking together.
“Makes me wonder if Dorothy had a large insurance policy naming Ken as beneficiary,” Gray said grimly.
My breath caught in my throat. “Oh, Gray!” I looked at the facades of the casinos lining the Boardwalk. “Maybe he needed the money fast because he’s in debt to some people who aren’t good at extending credit when payment is due.”
“He’s got a thing about thumbscrews and torture.”
“He fears being knee-capped.” I jumped to my feet. “We should follow them.”
But we didn’t. Gray wasn’t up to it, and I didn’t know what good following them would do anyway. It just seemed we should do something if for no other reason than to let him know we knew.
I sighed as I sat back down. “He seemed so distraught!” Never had someone proven to be so completely different from my first impression of him.
“Well, no matter what we think of him morally, we do know that Ken couldn’t have been the man who killed Dorothy,” Gray said. “There’s no physical resemblance there. Ken’s taller, leaner. The shooter is stockier, more powerfully built.”
I agreed. “And the man in black is limping from Rocky’s bite.” My mind was racing. “So did Ken hire the man in black to do the deed? How would a car salesman know a hit man? Or even know how to contact someone like that? What did he do? Google Killers for Hire?”
“Hit men have to buy cars somewhere, just like the rest of us,” Gray said.
“We have a paid assassin living in Amhearst?” Talk about a disconcerting idea.
Gray shrugged. “Maybe he lives down here somewhere. Maybe Ken made contact through his gambling connections, assuming that’s what he’s doing at the casinos.”
“There’s a logical assumption if I ever heard one.”
“And the killer was in Seaside on the Boardwalk because he lives down here. In Atlantic City? In Seaside?”
We sat in silence, overwhelmed by what we’d just learned and by what we suspected.
“Poor Dorothy.” I hugged myself in sympathy. “At least she didn’t know she was killed by a paid assassin hired by her own cheating husband.”
“Maybe hired by her own cheating husband.”
“Maybe?”
“It’s all speculation on our part, Anna. Just because he has a girlfriend doesn’t mean he had his wife killed.”
Gray was right, of course. Countless spouses, both men and women, were unfaithful, but they didn’t kill off their mates. Still I found it a hard idea to dislodge once it had taken up residence. “We need to tell Sergeant Poole what we saw and what we suspect. We need to show him these pictures so he can find out who the woman is.”
“We do. And here come Lucy and Meg, right on time. James should be waiting at the foot of the ramp.”
The rest of the afternoon and evening, all I could think about was poor Dorothy Ryder, buying a wonderful new house with her louse of a husband, and all the while he was fooling around on her, maybe planning to get rid of her.
“I just can’t believe it!”
“So you’ve said.” Lucy turned around and looked at me as we worked our way through the crush of traffic waiting to pay the toll after crossing the Commodore Barry Bridge from New Jersey over the Delaware River to Pennsylvania.
“These people need to buy EzPass,” Meg muttered as we drove slowly through the toll station without stopping. “It’d save them a lot of time.”
We were on our way home, and it was almost nine o’clock, a good five hours after Gray and I had seen Ken Ryder and that woman kissing. Since Gray’s truck was being held by the Seaside police, Meg was driving us all home.
“You should have seen him when Dorothy’s body was brought out of the house the other night, or standing beside her casket at the viewing. He looked shattered.” I elbowed Gray. “Didn’t he?”
He nodded agreeably. “He did.”
“An Oscar to Ken Ryder for his dual role as the devoted husband and the philandering spouse,” Meg intoned.
Traffic eased somewhat as we hit I95 south, then 322, 202 and 30 west. It was good to be home. After we unpacked, we went to bed early, worn out from the weekend. Gray spent the night on our sofa again, though none of us expected the man in black to show. Still, a man in the house made me feel safer somehow.
“Not that I’ll be much good if he comes,” Gray said as he watched me shake out a sheet and tuck it around the sofa cushions.
“Head hurting?”
“A bit. I’ll take a Tylenol, Anna, if you’re still willing to share.”
I was. I was also glad to see the superhero had left the building. We all spent an uneventful night sleeping off the effects of the sun and sea and various degrees of nervous prostration. When I got to the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, Gray was showered, dressed and ready to leave for work, cell and PDA clipped to his belt, laptop open on the table. He’d taken off his turban and the non-stick pads that had covered his wound. I could see the shorn area and the crusting over of the injury. I couldn’t help shuddering at what might have been.
Thank You, Lord. Thank You, thank You.
“Do you have a doctor to go to?” I asked, thinking about how new he was to Amhearst.
“Nope.” He took the glass of orange juice I offered. “Just give me another painkiller, and I’ll be fine. I promise to buy my own bottle today.”
I looked at him in exasperation. “You sound just like my brothers. What is it with guys and the macho complex?”
&nbs
p; He didn’t bother to answer. He just put down his empty juice glass and picked up James’s Phillies cap, adjusting the back closure to fit his head sans turban. The red in the cap clashed terribly with his orange T-shirt.
“What time is Natalie Shumann coming to take up bodyguard duties?” he asked. “I’m already late for work.”
I glanced at the clock. Seven. “In about a half hour. You go on. I’ll be fine until she gets here.”
“She will.” Lucy assured him as she put two slices of bread in the toaster and pushed down the tab.
Gray left, using my van, just as Natalie arrived to escort me to school. He pulled back into the driveway and followed her in.
“What was that about the killer being arrested?” he asked none too graciously, but I guess getting shot could be blamed for making him a bit snippy. “Anna nearly got shot Saturday night.”
“And he hit Gray.” The might-have-beens still made me weak-kneed.
Natalie paled. “I heard.”
We waited, Lucy and Meg as interested as Gray and I.
“Apparently the killer, a man now identified as a professional hit man with more aliases than a redhead has freckles, exchanged license plates with another black Taurus. The arresting officer saw the license number we had a BOLO for, and brought the driver in. I heard that news just before the wedding rehearsal.”
“That’s when you called me,” I said.
She nodded. “I had the weekend off, so I didn’t know they had the wrong man until I signed in this morning, and no one at the precinct knew I had called you.” She looked miserable. “I didn’t mean to put you in danger.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I assured her. “We never thought you did.”
The others offered their assurances, Gray included. “We just wondered how the mix-up happened.”
As color returned to Natalie’s cheeks, Gray headed for the door. “See you all tonight.”
“Dinner’s at six-thirty,” Lucy called. “Chicken parm.”
As we gathered our supplies and purses, I asked Natalie, “Are you planning to stay with me all day?”
