The Big Hit

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The Big Hit Page 13

by Jamie Bennett


  “What? Embezzlement?”

  She hugged me again. “We have so much to do. Hurry and get dressed.”

  I looked at her over the rim of my coffee mug. “What are you up to?”

  “Go! Put on something cute. Actually, I’ll pick for you while you’re in the shower.” I let her push me in the direction of the bathroom and I could hear her talking to herself about my clothes while I waited for the water to warm up. “Oh shit, this would be better for a nun! Or someone who never, never wants to get laid…yeah, like a nun, or men who put their hair in buns. Hm, that’s not too bad. I wish I was seven feet tall too and could carry it off. I’d look like a baby wombat if I had it on. Maybe I could get a wombat online.”

  “Don’t buy a wombat online,” I called through the door, and the talking lowered to muttering as I got into the shower.

  Tatum helped me with my hair, blowing it carefully dry until it was silky and smooth. “Lucky, lucky,” she clucked as she did it. Then I helped her with her hair, making a crown of braids on the top of her head. I thought she looked a little too Amish, but she told me to leave it as it was. “I want the height. I brought special shoes in the car, too, but I couldn’t drive in them.”

  “Where are we going? What’s the occasion?” I asked for the tenth time as she now pushed me out through my front door. “Just a minute! Let me lock it.”

  “We’re going to see a friend,” she told me again, and nothing I said made her clarify any more than that. I let her propel me to her dad’s red car. “Who’s the ZZ Top guy?” She angled her head toward Shelby’s house. Jerry had emerged now that the rain had stopped.

  “That’s my neighbor. He’s really nice.”

  “Those are the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen on a man but he has great legs,” she commented, and then we were in her car, and she whooshed off down the street. “Ok, I really need your support, Daisy. I’m so glad you were home and not incarcerated or something.”

  “Knowing me, did that really seem likely? What do you need my support for?”

  “We’re going to see my ex,” she explained seriously.

  I thought back through the comments she’d made in the text chain. “Which one? Wait, your old boyfriend from Michigan State?”

  “Of course not! I don’t even know that guy’s name.”

  “What? Tatum—”

  “It’s Nico Williams, of course! We’re going to see Nico, so I have to look my best. And tallest.” She reached into the back seat, swerving as she did, and grabbed a shoe with a sole that had to have been six inches thick. “Aren’t these amazing? I’ve always heard it said, if you want tall shoes, go to Madrid.”

  “Really? People say that?” I asked skeptically. And she counted the Woodsmen star as her ex?

  Tatum was nodding. “They say that about tall shoes all the time! And boy, they were right.”

  I pulled myself back to the bigger issue. “Are we seriously going to see Nico? How did you manage that?” I froze. “Hold on. You don’t mean—”

  “Fan Day!” she chortled. “Most of the team will be at the stadium. So if it doesn’t work out with me and Nico getting back together, then I’ll have my pick from the rest of the roster.”

  “No!” I pushed my feet on the floor of the moving car, as if that would somehow stop us. “No, no, no! I’m not going to the stadium and I’m certainly not waiting in line to meet the players!” Fan Day was a huge deal around here and of course I had been reading about it, too. Almost everything, businesses and restaurants and even the movie theater, closed down for the occasion. Kids got to go out onto the field and run around and people even toured the locker room. Most of the players were there and signed autographs and took pictures with everyone. Most of them, but not all.

  Tatum looked over at me and nodded in sympathy. “Knox won’t be there. I checked the list of the guys who will do autographs.”

  Of course, I had also looked at that list. “I don’t know what you mean,” I told her, very unconvincingly.

  “You know exactly what I mean! I saw the look on your face last spring, when I was sitting with him in the library. You could have gouged out my eyes and then gone down on your knees to suck—”

  “I’m absolutely sure that I didn’t look like that!” I protested. “Knox and I only went out to dinner.” Twice. “And we ate at his house, and I helped him with his paper, that was it.” And we had kissed, my first one besides a peck from a family member, but I didn’t tell her that. It was personal. Too special to bat around like all the conquests that I read about on my phone.

  “Anyway, he’s not going to be there. And it’s for the best!”

  I turned to stare at her because she had sounded so vehement. The braids on the top of her head quivered with the force of her statement. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “If you knew what I know…”

  “What do you know, Tatum?” I demanded.

  “Did I tell you I got a piercing? But it got infected, so I had to take it out,” she answered. “It was right in my—”

  “Keep that to yourself! Tell me about Knox.” I waited a beat. “How do you know this secret information?”

  “My dad’s password to everything is HotDaddy, just one word with the H and the D capitalized,” she said.

  “Yuck.” But I got what she was saying. “You broke into your dad’s computer and read stuff on there again, right? You read about Knox?” Tatum opened her mouth but I stopped her. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me. That’s private and you shouldn’t have looked at that.”

  “I won’t tell you anything, except that you should be really careful with him, because he has a violent temper,” she said. “And probably because of that, he had those run-ins with the law, but that’s all I’m saying. I’m not going to tell you everything I read about his family, and all their terrible issues.”

  “Tatum!”

  “That’s all I’m saying! But I had to let you know, because I want you to be safe. And if you know anything about Nico that wouldn’t have been included in all the personal information in his Woodsmen file, I expect you to tell me too, because that’s what friends are for. But I already know his social security number and how much is in his bank account, his mother’s maiden name, his grades in elementary school, et cetera.”

  I was quiet, thinking about what she had said. “Run-ins with the law?” I finally asked.

  “Only one arrest, as far as I could tell, but it was when he was a juvenile so it’s sealed in Oklahoma. But yes, a lot of issues with the police. And his family…it was all bad news.” She glanced over at me. “I thought you should know. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  I thought of how he had reacted to the police when we’d been pulled over, how strange he had been. “Thank you, but I don’t think we need to worry about me being with Knox. Anyway, that was all over a long time ago. He hasn’t been in any trouble since college, because it would have been reported…I don’t know why I’m discussing this with you! I don’t want to know any more about Knox or any of the Woodsmen, because it’s their private information, and you should stop looking at your dad’s stuff.”

  “Oh, I will,” Tatum told me. “I’ll only look again if I meet a new guy today and want to know more about him. Come with me, Daisy! It will be so fun! We’ll go on the field and maybe we can bury this in the end zone.” She reached in the back again and pulled a small skull out of her purse.

  “Is that real? A dead thing’s skull? Why would we bury it in the end zone?” I demanded.

  Tatum started talking about how important calcium was for bones, and I never got a straight answer. Anyway, the field was synthetic, so she’d never be able to do it.

  The sun came out a little once we got to the spectator parking lot, and it was full of people who would have been there rain or shine. Adults and kids avoided the puddles, smiling, laughing, and hurrying towards the stadium. It felt festive and the excitement was kind of contagious. Tatum maneuvered into a parking spot and
turned to me, hopeful.

  “I’m not going in,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Knox won’t be there…”

  “It’s not just that. I don’t think I can deal with the stadium. It’s really big,” I said, and paused to slow my breathing. “It’s really big, and there’s a big crowd. I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Oh, ok.” She started the car and shifted into reverse.

  “No, no. You can go! I’m fine to wait here,” I insisted. “Go and check out Nico.”

  She turned off the car again and bit her lip. “I don’t want to do it alone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, and then got so angry at myself I actually felt heat in my chest.

  “No, don’t be sorry. I should have told you what I was planning. I can do this!” She reached in the back for the tall shoes, and also picked up a clipboard and stethoscope from the seat. “My story is that I’m a student nurse named Fenella MacDonald-Campbell. I need to take the players’ vitals for a health project I’m doing for school,” she explained, as she struggled with the shoes. “That way I’ll be able to get up close and personal. Can you help me stand up?”

  I walked around to the driver’s side and assisted in pulling her out of the car and staying steady on her feet in the high shoes. “Can you walk?” I asked doubtfully. She couldn’t even stand.

  “Pretty much. Look, my braids come up to your eyes! I’m so tall! Ok, keep your phone ready because I’m going to try to get some pictures during the medical exams and I’ll send them to you. I won’t be that long and then we should go to lunch after I change out of these jeans. I can’t fit any food in me while I wear them.” Tatum took a few steps and fell to the side, into a parked car. “Daisy, can you grab my other shoes?” she asked, hanging on to the trunk. “This may not work. I don’t want to fall on my bahookie.” Her accent was weird—it sounded like she had said “ma bahookie,” which I assumed meant her butt. She changed quickly and rehung the stethoscope around her neck. Now she was shorter, but also ambulatory. She flung the big shoes back into her car and took off, calling, “A’m guid. See ye efter.”

  She was definitely trying for Scottish. “Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t…” I started to call, then petered out. That was a forlorn hope. I could only trust that the Woodsmen players had enough sense not to submit to her “medical research” and that Lyle from security would recognize her as Tatum and not a Scottish student nurse before she did something that got her in trouble for sexual harassment. I sat in the car with the door ajar to let the fresh, damp air wash in, cooling it down, cooling down my anger at myself. I closed my eyes. I could have gone with Tatum, strutted around in the cute outfit she had picked out for me. But instead, because I was who I was, I had to sit in the parking lot.

  I was still feeling off from the night before, from the drinking that I rarely did, and with my eyes closed, maybe I drifted off. Until someone knocked on the top of the car, and the door jerked open all the way.

  “Daisy. Daisy!”

  And there he was, Knox Lynch, straight out of the dream I had been having and staring down at me in the passenger seat.

  Chapter 9

  I screamed. Loudly. It was pretty much the shock of seeing the face behind your eyelids become the face in front of your eyes—like somehow Knox had escaped from my mind.

  “Daisy! Are you all right?” He sounded so worried. “What’s the matter with you?” He bent over me, which felt a little like a mountain descending on top of me. But whatever Tatum had said about his past problems with the law, I didn’t feel afraid. I felt flooded with ridiculous, overwhelming happiness.

  “Hi! Hi, hi,” I said, sitting up, wiping my mouth where maybe I’d been drooling in my sleep, wiping under my eyes because maybe I had also been crying a little before. “I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.” I smiled up at him, and his face lost the worried, angry scowl. “I’m really good.”

  “I thought someone had hurt you. The car door was open and you were all slumped over.”

  That was why my neck hurt now. “I fell asleep. I drank a few Shelby Specials last night—that’s my neighbor, and it was all kinds of liquor—I guess I didn’t sleep very well, the storm,” I explained.

  Not surprisingly, Knox seemed not to understand what I was saying. He squatted down next to the car and looked in at me. “You sure you’re ok?”

  “Totally. Just sleeping and waiting for Tatum.” With Knox’s body out of the way, I could see the scene in the parking lot. A small crowd had gathered in front of the car and it was growing quickly. Phones were held high to take pictures of Knox but I would be in the shots, too. I put up my hands, like I could hide from them.

  He turned his head to follow my gaze and stood again, blocking everyone out. “They followed me out of the stadium. I saw Tatum there, leading locker room tours.”

  “She’s doing what?”

  “She said you were in the car and that you couldn’t come in and I thought…when I saw you, I thought something was wrong. Let’s go.” He held out his hand and I put mine in his, and he helped me out of the car. “Just ignore all of them.” He let go but walked very close to me, his body angled so that I was mostly hidden behind his back.

  But I heard a few little voices, kids’ voices, asking if he would sign something, a shirt or a hat. “You could stop,” I said. “Maybe you might want to talk to the kids.”

  Knox looked down at me. “Yeah. I should do that. It’s Fan Day, right?” He handed me his car keys and pulled a badge out of his pocket with his picture on it, like the kind Tatum had taken from her father, except Knox’s said “PLAYER” in bright orange. “Meet me at my truck. They’ll let you into the players’ lot with that.”

  “Won’t you need it to get in?”

  He smiled, a tiny smile that just quirked the sides of his mouth. “I think they’ll recognize me.”

  I walked away, hanging pretty close to the rows of cars because it felt like I was more hidden there. Like the grey cat went around the edge of my yard, skirting close to the viburnum and red chokeberry, rather than running straight across to get at his food bowl. I understood his feelings a lot more as I made my way over to the guard at the entrance to the players’ lot. Her eyebrows shot straight up when she saw the pass.

  “Knox will be coming in a minute. He’s just signing some autographs,” I explained.

  I didn’t think it was possible, but her eyebrows went up more, practically moving off the top of her head. “Ok,” she said, drawing out the word into at least three long syllables. She made me give her my driver’s license to copy down the information on it and I also had to sign some kind of log book before she would let me pass. I threw myself into Knox’s old truck and huddled down in the seat to hide, but then I almost passed out from the lack of oxygen in the humid air, and sat up to roll down the windows. Knox was already jogging up the row between the players’ fancy, shiny cars.

  “I’m here,” he announced. “I’m here.” He slid into the driver’s seat. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I repeated, for probably the fifth time since he’d woken me up. “I mean, hello.” Which was the same thing.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you before.”

  “You didn’t scare me,” I said. “You startled me. Like when we were in the library—I was startled, not scared.”

  “I’d hate to hear you scream when you’re scared, then. I think this one almost took out my eardrums.” He looked at me sideways, out of the corner of his eye.

  I grinned at him happily. “How have you been? How was your summer? Did you enjoy Arizona?”

  “It was all right.” Knox started the car and the engine rumbled. “I was plenty busy.” He sighed suddenly, deeply. “I kept myself busy.”

  “Me, too. I’ve been so busy,” I declared. “Like I didn’t even have a minute to think. So busy.”

  Knox drove out through the gate, past the security guard. She looked into the truck, but this time a large pair of mirrored sunglasses hid her
expression. “Are you still looking for the painting?” he asked me.

  Now I sighed, too. “Yep. We haven’t found it yet, but not from lack of trying.” I filed him in on our efforts, on the possible lawsuit against Domenico and the college by the ancestors of the guy in the portrait. “That Enrico Visconti, he really, really wants it, and he wants his own art experts to get it for him. But it doesn’t belong to him! I’ve been doing research, and it doesn’t make sense, what their papers say about who had it for all this time. Visconti is trying to claim that it’s theirs, but—anyway, Domenico and I have been sweating like we’re in a sauna and working like dogs, and it’s been so terrible that I would almost want to turn over the whole collection to the Viscontis so that their people could find the painting themselves. But there’s no way that the professor is giving up. He’s even more determined, to the point that I’m afraid it’s making him sick.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a fun summer.”

  Oh, I should have been making it sound fun, of course! Not at all like I’d been miserable and sad for three months. “No, I’ve had a great time,” I protested, but that sounded like the lame lie that it was.

  “I haven’t had much fun. I hurt my shoulder right when I got to Arizona and I’ve been working on it to get ready. The first game is next week.”

  “I know,” I said. “I guess I heard that somewhere.” It wasn’t that I had memorized the schedule. “Is your shoulder ok?”

  “Nothing feels too great, which is not how I wanted to come into the preseason physically,” Knox answered grimly. “But here we are. Nothing I can do about it.”

  It didn’t sound like the way he should come into the preseason mentally, either. I looked around at the road passing by us. “I need to tell Tatum that I left with you. Where are we going?”

  “I’ve been wanting to show you something. If that’s ok.”

 

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