Amanda's Blue Marine

by Doreen Owens Malek

  Mandy noticed that Bren-dunn was turning red and enjoyed his discomfiture.

  "This is Miss Redfield, Mama," Kelly said. "I thought you were going to be in Yardley this week, at your daughter's."

  Clearly Kelly had assumed they would escape this interrogation because Mama would not be around to conduct it.

  Mama made a disgusted gesture and said, "Ah, my Paula, she don't know what she wants. She tells me, come next Sunday, I got too many obligations." She shrugged. "Obligations more important than her son's grandmother?" she asked rhetorically.

  Mandy was trying not to laugh at Kelly's pained expression, but her smile was roguish. It was fun to see his take charge, on top of everything personality sublimated to this oversized maternal dynamo.

  Mama's attention returned to Mandy. "So what will you have, young lady? We got a very nice osso bucco today, very tender. You should eat something, you're too skinny. I say to Bren-dunn, what are you doing with all these skinny girls? Don't you want children?"

  She removed a capacious handkerchief from her apron pocket and swabbed her face with it.

  Kelly was now obviously flushed, his light skin growing ruddy beneath his tan.

  "I'll have a Cobb salad and an iced tea," Mandy said, reading from the menu framed on the wall behind Kelly's head.

  Mama made a face. "Cobb salad? I'm going to drop dead in the kitchen making the gnocchi and the lasagna and she wants lettuce." She looked at Kelly. "Can't you bring me somebody who eats?"

  It was obvious by this time that Kelly wished he had taken Mandy to a vending machine rather than to Mama's, but he said valiantly, "I'll have the usual. And bring the coffee now, please."

  They waited while Mama ambled back to the kitchen and then Mandy said, "What are you doing now, Bren-dunn?"

  He laughed sheepishly as he fished around in his back pocket. "I'm going to ask you if I can smoke, Amanda." He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and held it up for her to see.

  She nodded, wondering if Mama's unexpected performance had brought on the nicotine fit.

  Kelly lit up and took a deep drag, surveying Mandy lazily through the drifting smoke.

  "Does your fondness for Mama's cuisine have anything to do with the fact that she lets you smoke back here in this cubbyhole, in violation of several state laws? As an officer of the court I thought I should mention this to an enforcer of the same legal system which sustains us both," Mandy said.

  He sighed. "We're sitting next to a window for a reason. I'll open it." He leaned over, lifted the sash on Mama's ancient window, and blew a long stream of smoke out into the balmy summer air.

  "Don't worry. I'm not going to report you. I don't want to see Mama taken away in chains."

  He loosened his tie and sat back in his chair. "My sister Kate, who is a nurse but fantasizes that she is the Surgeon General, tells me every time I see her that I should quit. I tell her I have quit. Frequently. I've quit several times this year already."

  "What do you do when you're trying to quit?"

  "Oh, I smoke half the pack and throw out the other half, which just wastes money and gets me no closer to quitting than the second thing I do, which is to smoke half the butt and stub out the rest each time." He shrugged.

  Mama returned with their drinks and deposited them without comment. They looked at each other, both grateful for the silence.

  "How did you start?" Mandy asked.

  "The service," he said. "Before that I was always in sports so I never got into it."

  "You were in Iraq?" she asked. "The Marines?"

  He nodded, his closed expression indicating clearly that he wasn't going to talk about it.

  Mandy looked at him, thinking that he was a mystery that intrigued her but which she was never going to solve. On the surface he was calm and capable and rational. He was polite to a fault, opening doors and pulling out chairs and saying, "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am," like a well brought up Eagle Scout on his way to a Jamboree. But she sensed that he had a sharp edge to him just under the top layer of his well mannered deference and detachment. He was like a coiled spring which required the mere touch of a button to launch him into furious and dangerous action.

  "So where did you get the ‘Brendan?’" she asked, pointedly changing the subject.

  "Oh. My grandfather's name, my mother's father." He tapped ash into his hand and then into a glass tray which he snatched from a nearby table. "It’s popular in Ireland, not so much here. It means 'strength' in Gaelic."

  "They gave you the right name," Mandy said quietly.

  He looked up to meet her gaze and their eyes were still locked when Mama bustled over with their lunch.

  "Rare cheeseburger," she said, plunking Kelly's plate down before him on the table. "And the bunny special for the lady." She sniffed as she set Mandy's salad bowl on the table.

  "Thanks, Mama," Kelly said.

  "And you, stop with the cigarettes," she said to Kelly. "He's killing himself, he's going to die like my father with the emphysema. It was terrible." This was an aside to Mandy as she walked away.

  "You see what I mean?" Kelly said, crushing his cigarette in the ash tray. "I'm getting double teamed everywhere."

  "They just care about you and want you to be healthy." She selected her fork from the silverware and fiddled with an olive, noting that he had waited for her to start eating before he picked up his burger.

  "You have very nice manners," she said suddenly, and then wished that she could take it back. It was too personal a remark to make.

  He looked up at her. "For a cop?" he said archly.

  Now he was annoyed. Oh, why did she have to say everything she thought?

  "For anyone," she answered honestly. She didn't add that in such a macho, overwhelmingly masculine guy it was disarmingly attractive.

  "Thanks. My grandmother, Brendan's wife, lived with us when I was young and she drummed all of that stuff into us kids. She was a servant in the ‘big house’ in Galway when she was a teenager and she noticed how all the gentry behaved. In those days, the 1920's, the regional landowners had manor houses where they kept their horses and spent the summers. She worked there in the kitchen and picked up the code. It's second nature to me now, I guess, because I don't even think about it." He took a drink of the water Mama had provided. "It's like crossing myself when I go into a church. I do that too, by rote, and everybody thinks I'm nuts." He made a dismissive gesture.

  "I don't," she said quietly, and then was alarmed to feel the sting of tears behind her eyes. Why did that mental picture touch her so deeply? Oh dear, she had to get hold of herself before he noticed her reaction.

  Too late. "Something wrong?" he said.

  "You mean, other than James Cameron on the loose?" she said lightly.

  "Yeah. You looked like something right here was bothering you."

  She shook her head. "I just don't want to go back to the station, that's all. And I know that's next. I don’t want to think about Cameron and where he is and what he might be planning. I wish we could stay here."

  “We can stay a little longer. Tell me about your life, your family.”

  Mandy smiled. “I don’t think we have quite that much time.”

  He smiled slightly too. “They can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh, they’re not, I don’t mean to give you that impression.”

  “Your mother does seem like a piece of work,” he observed cautiously, his smile widening.

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “And you haven’t met my brother, the prodigal son, who spends all of his time tossing my father’s money into an incinerator with his failing businesses. We’re a colorful group.”

  “What kind of businesses?” he asked, looking at her inquiringly and putting his chin in his hand.

  Mandy proceeded to tell him about her wastrel brother, her convent school education, her contentious relationship with her mother, her experiences on the law review, and the dog she’d had in preschool. She realized as the lunch crowd dissipated a long time later th
at she had told him practically her whole life story and he had given up nothing. Well, almost nothing- a couple of tidbits about his grandparents in Galway, distant enough to be conversational without revealing anything about him in the present day.

  This guy had found the right calling. He could certainly get people to talk.

  Mandy looked around as she paused for breath and heard the silence in the room beyond them, even in the kitchen. “Shouldn’t we get back?” she asked nervously.

  “It’s all right. Mama won’t throw us out.”

  “I was thinking about you.”

  “I’m given a lot of room for Jonathan Redfield’s daughter.”

  “Who will soon be unemployed herself, at this rate.”

  "You could ask Mama for a job as a waitress," he suggested.

  "She would say I was too skinny," Mandy responded, and he smiled.

  "Did you have a good time here?" he asked. "Aside from the lectures from Mama, I mean. And the worry about Cameron and what he might do.”

  Mandy nodded.

  "I did too," he said quietly, as if he were testing the waters to see if it were safe to swim. “I always have a good time with you.”

  "You didn’t like me at the beginning, did you? When we first met, I mean. You were so…reserved.”

  He looked at her but didn’t answer.

  “You had a job to do that was important to you. So you were pleasant and courteous but you thought I was a spoiled rich brat. Only Grandma's training kept you from letting me see it."

  "But you did see it," he said. His voice, normally low, was now so husky she could barely hear him. "You knew. How did you know?”

  Mandy couldn't even frame a response. She didn't know why she was so acutely sensitive to his moods and the nuances of his behavior. She only knew that she could read him easily and had been able to do so from the start.

  Mama approached with the bill and dropped it on the table in front of Kelly. "Finish that burger," she said to him as she walked away.

  Kelly looked exasperated and Mandy bit back a smile.

  "Why do I come here?" he asked rhetorically.

  "Because she is really fond of you and you know it," Mandy said. "And I do thank you for bringing me here. It helped to forget all this stalker business for a little while."

  "It will be over soon.”

  Mandy didn’t answer. It already seemed like an eternity since it started. Yet the time she spent with Kelly shot past like lightning. How was that possible?

  “I just remembered,” Kelly said, putting the bill in his pocket and then leaving cash on the table. “Sam Rhinegold’s office called and asked for you to stop by this afternoon.”

  Mandy nodded. This is was going to be the “maybe you should think about resigning” discussion. The next step in the process of showing her the door. Sending in her research wasn’t the same thing as appearing in the office, and the difference was becoming apparent. When Sam finally cut her loose she would be just another preppie living on a trust fund and filling up her schedule with hairdressing and facial and gym appointments.

  Exactly what she didn’t want.

  Mandy sighed and got up, following Kelly back through the crowd.

  * * * * *

  Mandy spent the next couple of days bargaining with the DA’s office about her job situation. Not surprisingly, a similar case had never come up before and Rhinegold wasn’t sure how to deal with it. He didn’t want to penalize Mandy for acquiring a stalker, but at the same time the hole she had left in his staff was widening and had to be filled. They compromised with an indefinite leave while she continued to do her work at home, which seemed to satisfy Sam but left Mandy with a whole lot of time to think about James Cameron. Dwelling on it wasn’t helping her, so she decided one night to clean, seeking mindless work to keep her busy. She had spent a couple of hours in her bedroom shifting handbags and shoes when she found the small beaded purse she had taken to the MD fundraiser. She hadn’t looked at it since that night, as it contained only cosmetics and a handkerchief. As she opened it to retrieve a lipstick she saw inside the bag, along with its other contents, the minuscule, mummified corpse of a mouse. A folded piece of paper was attached to its tiny neck with a frayed shoelace.

  Amanda dropped the purse and closed her eyes as her heart began to race. It was several long moments before she could bring herself to look into the bag again.

  She put aside the mouse gingerly and unfolded another note from Cameron, done on the same legal paper as the previous ones. She hadn’t known it was in there because she hadn’t even looked in the bag since that night.

  “The cops can’t protect you,” she read. “I’m coming for you soon, and when I do you’ll be as dead as this mouse.”

  A little longer and a little more to the point than his previous efforts. She let it fall to her bed next to the mouse corpse and fumbled for her cell phone.

  Kelly answered on the second ring.

  “Amanda. What is it?” His voice was on red alert. He knew she didn’t call him just to shoot the breeze.

  “I got another note. Along with a dead mouse. Mummified, totally dried out, so it didn’t smell.”

  He was silent for two seconds, then said tersely, “Tell me.”

  “They were both in the evening bag I had with me at the MD fundraiser. He isn’t dropping notes off at work any more. He had to be right there that night to do this. He probably thought I would go through the bag much sooner than I did. He must be thinking that I know he’s getting closer. And he knows the police are involved.”

  She knew she was talking too fast and she knew she sounded rattled, but she couldn’t seem to slow down.

  “Slow down,” he said calmly, and even in her agitated state she had to marvel at his ability to read her and stabilize her at the same time. Just hearing his voice produced an instant positive response. Her breathing quieted and she nodded, as if he were there to see it.

  "He had to be close enough to me to put those items in my bag, Kelly,” she said.

  “I understand that. He could have used any pretext to get in there, kitchen worker, delivery man, busboy. I’ll get the foot soldiers on it right away but you stay right where you are, at home. Just leave the…evidence… alone until I get there. I'll secure it. I'm going to send the cops from the squad car up to your place now," Kelly replied.

  "No! Please don't do that. I can't take a couple of strangers arriving here and snooping around like bloodhounds. Please just come by yourself. I'll wait for you."

  There was a long pause and then he said, "All right. Lock up and stay right there. I'll be at your place as soon as I can get there."

  "Please hurry," she said. "And don't hang up. Keep talking to me, okay?" She didn't add that the sound of his voice grounded her and made her feel secure.

  He did exactly as she asked, telling her where he was as he went to his car and drove the distance to her condo, describing his stops at the gate and at the squad car in the parking lot, then noting another pause flashing his badge to the security guard in the lobby. He told her that he was coming up in the elevator and walking down the hall. He halted outside her door and as she opened it he put his cell phone in his pocket. She stepped forward as he pushed the door aside and he took her in his arms.

  "You're all right," he said, as he yanked the door closed behind them. "I'm here."

  She clung to him but he put her off to look down into her face.

  "Okay?" he said.

  She nodded. She had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.

  He was wearing a heavy cream knit sweater with worn jeans and leather boat shoes. Even in the casual clothes he was ramrod steady and on the job, and she was grateful.

  He allowed her to put her head on his shoulder for a moment more and then said, "Let me see what you found."

  Mandy led him to her bed. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and snapped them on smartly. Then picked up the little corpse carefully, holding it with two fingers. He
dropped it into a glassine evidence bag he had brought with him.

  “We can track down where he got that piece of crap,” Kelly said disgustedly. “Taxidermists, research labs. And the origin of the shoelace, no matter how old it is.”

  Mandy nodded silently, amazed at how calm she felt now that he was with her.

  Kelly then read the note slowly several times and dropped it into another evidence bag. He folded both bags and put them in his pocket. He stripped off the gloves and dropped them in her trash basket.

  "He was close enough to slip that into my purse," Mandy said shakily. "How did he get that close and why didn't I see him?"

  "He could have done it anywhere," Kelly said. "A public gathering with a lot of people coming and going is a good choice. Much easier than getting to you at home. There's too much security in these expensive digs and he would know that. You must have been near him some time that night when he could put that stuff in your bag unobserved. He's getting bolder, to do this. He's not getting the reaction he wants yet so he's trying harder to provoke it."

  Mandy shivered and Kelly realized he was telling her too much.

  "The forensics team will go over evidence," Kelly said conversationally, "but you have to tell me where you've been recently. I want all the details."

  They talked about her movements and Kelly was making a time line in his little notebook when his cell phone rang and he pulled it out quickly. When he saw who was calling he got up and walked into the entry hall.

  "I'm sorry, Janet," Mandy heard him say. "I meant to get back to you but I had to take care of something right away."

  There was a pause and then he said, "I can't do it tonight but I'll call you tomorrow. I'm sorry but you know how these things go. Right. Talk to you then."