Sticky Fingers

by Nancy Martin

  “All because your soup is so delicious?”

  “Crazy, right? So I came over here, left my truck a few blocks away, and sneaked in for a few hours of sleep.” He looked at me at last, and his attention sharpened. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said automatically. Then, shakier, “Everything.”

  “Sage?” He sat up straight in the bed.

  “No, no, she’s fine. As far as I know, that is. No, it’s—”

  He swung his long legs over the side of the bed. He was still wearing his boxers, thank God. He reached for me. “Jesus, Roxy, sit down before you fall down.”

  I was shaking like a leaf in a tornado. In my own bedroom, I suddenly saw Mitch hanging on to life by a thread. That, and the guys in the bar who’d wanted me like I was a hooker.

  Flynn took my hand and pulled me to sit on the edge of the bed. “What’s going on?”

  After a couple of false starts, I told him about Mitchell. About getting shot at myself. I skipped the part about the bar. He didn’t need to know what I’d almost done.

  He had a gentle arm around my shoulders by the time I finished the whole story.

  Flynn swore softly. “You okay now? Not hurt, right? Just shaken up?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, surprised to hear my voice tremble.

  He hugged me to him, side by side. “What are you doing, anyway, poking around in that murder?”

  “I don’t know. I hated Clarice back in the day. But—her kids.” I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I know it’s nuts. For me to care about her kids.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “They don’t deserve what’s happened.”

  “You’re right.”

  “It’s unfair they’re going to have to pay the price.”

  “It is,” Flynn agreed softly. “You know all about that, don’t you?”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “It isn’t?”

  I pulled away from him.

  Flynn stayed quiet and let me get to my feet.

  I was soon pacing the room. “Of course it isn’t. They’re innocent, caught in a mess they didn’t make. I got over what happened to me a long time ago.”

  “If you say so.” Flynn climbed back into the bed. He stuffed two pillows behind his head and leaned against them. “It was pretty bad for you, though. I remember you talked about it a few times.”

  “Hey, I’m over it. I’m not going through life wishing my mommy dearest was still alive.”

  “Is that the issue? I think it’s more about what kind of a mother you are. Isn’t that what bugs you?”

  “I’m not like her.”

  “I know that.”

  “Her whole life was about my dad. She was madly in love with him, and he…”

  “And he beat the shit out of her on a regular basis, right?”

  “He never hit me, though.”

  Flynn narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean? He didn’t hit you, so he’s a hero?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That’s not what I— No.”

  “But you cared about him?”

  “Except when they fought.” I used to hide from them when the screaming started. I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory. It was like a storm, the two of them crashing from one room to another, throwing things, hitting each other.

  “Rox,” Flynn said.

  “I don’t want to talk about this. Not tonight.”

  “Okay, okay. Not tonight.”

  “Not ever.”

  “Come to bed,” he said.

  I opened my eyes and gave him a glare. “I’m not getting into bed with you,” I said. “So forget it.”

  “I just want to sleep, that’s all.”

  “I might believe you if you weren’t staring at my tits.”

  Flynn smiled at last, his gaze warm. “I can’t help myself. You’ve always had beautiful—”

  “Get out of my bed,” I said wearily. “Go home to your pretty girlfriend, Flynn.”

  “I won’t touch you, I promise.”

  Looking at him there, propped up and relaxed in my bedroom, I realized something with a funny twist in my gut. “Know what? Since we were together, for me, it’s been easier to have sex with strangers. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s more than I can think about right now.” He yawned again. “I gotta get up early, so let’s just go to sleep, okay? No funny business, I promise.”

  He looked comfy there in the bed, and I felt myself weakening. “Why do you have to get up so early?”

  “To go to the market. And,” he added, “I take Marla to the clinic every morning at nine.”

  “For her methadone.”

  Flynn didn’t answer, but I knew the truth. He was helping his girlfriend stay off heroin, making sure she got her methadone every day instead. It was his way of staying off drugs himself. Helping her seemed to keep him clean, too.

  He said, “I don’t want to fight with you about Marla.”

  “You’re really into her, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You love her?”

  His gaze darkened. “Why the twenty questions?”

  “I don’t know. It’s nothing.”

  Outside, the city made no sound. The room was very still, except for the pounding of my heart.

  “Rox?”

  “Adasha wants me to start going to therapy,” I blurted out. “Group therapy.”

  “For what?”

  “You know,” I said.

  He leaned forward, intent. “You gotta say it, Roxy. Admit it to yourself. Say it. Own it.”

  “What’s that?” I laughed. “One of the twelve steps?”

  “Why are you going to therapy?”

  “I didn’t say I was going!”

  “But you’re considering it. So say it. Why do you need therapy?”

  I realized I’d been hugging myself, but I couldn’t let go. Quietly, I said, “Maybe I need to get a handle on what I’ve been doing.”

  “Which is?”

  I closed my eyes. “I like sex. Maybe in a way that’s kinda twisted.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  With a shake of my head, I said, “Once in a while, it’s nice to—you know, be with somebody. Most of the time, I don’t want to know his name. I don’t want to know anything about him. I want to hold on to somebody, get it? I’m not hurting anybody, but…”

  “But?”

  Almost too soft for him to hear, I whispered, “I don’t want Sage to find out.”

  After a moment, he nodded his head. “I like heroin. I like it a lot. But I know it’s wrong, makes me stupid. I was doing hurtful things to get more of it, and I finally realized it wasn’t just ruining my life, but a lot of lives. So I had to quit. To get to know myself without heroin.”

  “How’s that going?” I asked.

  “It’s lousy sometimes.” He grinned a little. “Other times, it’s pretty good. I’m glad I can be with my daughter now. Without influencing her in a bad way.”

  “You think that’s what I’m doing? Influencing her with my behavior?”

  “She’s a great kid, Rox. We did something really terrific when we made her. I don’t want to screw that up now.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “So,” he said. “You going to get some therapy?”

  I couldn’t answer. I climbed into the bed with Flynn, wrapped my arms around his neck, and let his body heat soak into mine. He felt strong and familiar and delicious. Against his chest, I murmured, “How about enabling me a little first?”

  “Roxy,” he said.

  “C’mon. For old time’s sake?”

  He disengaged my arms and rolled out of the other side of the bed. “That would be a very bad idea.”

  “You must be the only man on the planet who’d turn me down.”

  He was already grabbing his jeans from the floor and climbing into them. “It might surprise you to know that a lot of men would turn you down
. You’re not as irresistible as you think you are. In fact, you’re kind of…” He stopped himself.

  “What am I?”

  “Mixed up,” Flynn said finally.

  I threw myself out of the bed. “Thanks a lot. Is that why you left, all those years ago?”

  “You mean, when you got pregnant?”

  “When we got pregnant, jerkwad. Only you couldn’t handle it and took off.”

  “You’re right, I couldn’t handle it.” He stood his ground, zipping his jeans. “To begin with, I was scared of where we were going, and then adding a baby—”

  “Where were we going?”

  “Face it, Rox, we were off the rails. Doing crazy stuff, stealing cars, getting into trouble. And then the sex started to get really wild. Remember? Eventually, one of us was going to get hurt.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, but I heard the doubt in my own voice.

  “No?” he asked. “You weren’t afraid I’d hurt you? Or you might lose your head completely? That we’d end up like your parents?”

  Maybe I remembered things differently than he did. My memory was full of laughs and good times. Maybe things got out of hand now and then, sure, but I liked it that way—on the edge, heart pounding, brain going blank while the body took over.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly.

  “One of us was going to get hurt bad,” Flynn said. “And with a baby coming, I didn’t know—I was scared of what might happen. And then—well, Loretta.”

  “Loretta?” I stopped pacing. “What about her?”

  Flynn met my gaze. “You knew what she did, right? She told you, didn’t she?”

  “Tell me now,” I commanded.

  Flynn sat back down on the bed and searched my face with narrowed eyes, looking for clues to what I knew. Slowly, he said, “She came to see me at my dad’s house. Told me that either we needed to get married, or I should get my act together some other way. Go into the military—that was her idea. She said I’d grow up, and boy, she knew what she was talking about. But—”

  “She had no right to do that.”

  “You were in the hospital, remember? You were bleeding or something, and so you—”

  “That was nothing. It went away. Sage was fine. I was fine.”

  “Yeah, but it scared Loretta. I don’t know what she thought. Maybe that I’d done something to bring it on. So she had to protect you. She came to the house, sat me down with my parents, and we talked it out.” He shrugged. “And I joined the marines.”

  “Because you thought we’d hurt each other.”

  “We had a lot pent-up frustration going on, Roxy. I started thinking it was all about your parents. We were acting it out, you and me. Their fighting, her death.”

  I started getting that room-spinning feeling again. Like everything I knew about myself was whirling around me.

  “You okay?” he asked. “Rox?”

  “Yeah, great.” I snatched a blanket off the bed, in a sudden rush to be alone. I hated feeling this way—confused and uncertain. It made me think I was going to blunder into a big mistake. “You’re right, this is a bad idea. I’m going downstairs and sleep in a chair.”

  He caught my arm. “Hey.”

  I shook him off. “Don’t. Just leave me alone.”

  I had to think. I didn’t want to talk anymore. He must have seen that in my face, because he released my arm as if I were suddenly too hot to handle.

  “Okay,” he said. “Good night.”

  I pushed past him. “I doubt it.”

  I stomped down the stairs and threw myself into a chair. Bundling up in the blanket, I tried to sleep. I thought I heard Flynn walking around upstairs, maybe pacing. I thought I heard him start down the stairs once. Or maybe not.

  20

  In the early hours of the morning, he stopped beside my chair long enough to ruffle my hair.

  “Screw you,” I muttered.

  “You wish,” he said, and kissed the top of my head.

  The next thing that woke me was my cell phone.

  In my ear, Adasha said, “I’m outside. Let me in.”

  I groaned. “I can’t go running this morning.”

  “Me neither. It’s pouring down rain. Let me inside, will you? And hurry up. There are two thugs out here, and they’re looking for trouble.”

  I staggered out into the hallway and unlocked the front door.

  In the act of snapping her phone shut, Adasha pushed her way inside, still wearing her scrubs under a rain slicker that sluiced water onto my floor. She had a brown paper bag clamped under one armpit and juggled a cardboard coffee carrier laden with two tall cups that smelled like heaven. “God,” she said. “I can’t even walk in my own neighborhood without getting menaced. See those kids? Where are their parents?”

  From behind the door, I pulled an aluminum baseball bat. I hefted it easily and went out onto the porch.

  Sure enough, a couple of young gangbangers had followed Adasha from the coffeeshop, and they hung around under the shelter of the tree outside my place, clearly trying to stay dry while planning their next move. They hunched their shoulders against the cold sleet, but their baggy pants had soaked up so much water that they were both hanging on to the insides of their pockets. Their hoodies were pulled tightly over their faces. But I could see their eyes.

  “Go home,” I said to them, taking a batter’s stance.

  They shoved off without a word, heading toward the river.

  I went back inside and kicked the door shut.

  “I tried talking with them,” Adasha said. “But you look especially scary this morning. What’s wrong with your lip?”

  “No big deal.”

  “Scary, though.”

  I felt scary, too. Sleeping in an armchair had given me stiff muscles where I didn’t even know I had muscles. And my neck felt as though somebody had clobbered me. I rubbed it with one hand. “I slept in a chair.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “Because—never mind.”

  “I saw Flynn.” She handed over the paper bag. “So don’t bother lying. He left just as I rolled in from the hospital. You gonna tell me what happened?”

  “Nothing happened. He needed a place to stay, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Adasha kept her mouth serious.

  I lightened her load by taking one of the cups of coffee, then led the way to the kitchen. Over my shoulder, I said, “I tried seducing him and failed. I’m losing my touch.”

  Adasha followed me, shrugging out of her rain slicker. “Or else he’s a nice guy in a committed relationship.”

  “I don’t care. He can have whatever relationships he wants as long as he doesn’t screw things up with Sage.”

  “That’s really how you feel?”

  “Am I supposed to feel something else?”

  I didn’t want to talk about Flynn. Or my stupid feelings. I’d had enough of that last night and didn’t care to revisit my past.

  I flipped on the overhead light. Nooch and I had laid most of the hardwood kitchen floor a couple of weeks back, so at least the room was usable. I’d bought an old refrigerator that sounded like a lawn mower from time to time, and a used microwave, too. No stove, just an empty hole, but I wasn’t doing any cooking. The sink functioned, but the countertops consisted of some old planks laid across the lower cabinets. For a kitchen table, I used a rusted patio set with only three chairs. The table was littered with empty takeout containers. I pushed them to one corner and opened Adasha’s paper bag.

  “What’s in here?” I stuck my nose in the bag and inhaled deeply, hoping to catch the fragrance of freshly made doughnuts.

  “Granola,” Adasha said. “My own recipe. I’m using dried cherries and apricots with the nuts and oats. Lots of antioxidants, low on the glycemic index. It’ll give you quick energy, plus the long-lasting effects of protein. Eat this for breakfast for a week, and you’ll be running like a top.”

  “After a week eating this, I’d have a hole in my co
lon. What do you have against blueberry scones? Or maybe a bear claw?”

  Adasha sat on one of the patio chairs and pried the lid off her coffee cup. If she’d had a difficult night saving citizens in the hospital emergency department, she didn’t show it. She had taken the time to scrub off her makeup and tuck her hair into the checked Aunt Jemima kerchief she sometimes affected, but otherwise, she looked fresh and lively. “I won’t dignify that with an answer. Tell me what happened last night.”

  “Like I said, Flynn only needed—”

  “I’m not asking about Flynn. I heard on the news that Clarice Crabtree’s husband got shot. One of her husbands, that is. You hear about that?”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “For the moment. I hear he’s pretty bad off.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “In fact, I was there when he was shot.”

  Adasha stared. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll admit, I was shaky. But I’m okay now.”

  My friend sipped her coffee, and then she shook her head in wonder. “Crazy, huh? Old Clarice being married to two guys?”

  “And one of them was kinda hot.” I sipped coffee and let the heat slide down my throat. “Mitchell isn’t the sort of guy either one of us would expect Clarice to end up with.”

  Adasha’s face was worried. “So who shot him? The other husband?”

  “That would be my first guess.” I got a handful of Slim Jims out of a drawer and ate one while telling Adasha about my evening at Mitchell’s house. She listened, aghast. Or maybe she was horrified watching me eat my usual breakfast.

  “Holy shit,” she said when I was finished talking. “You could have been killed.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.” I sat down at the table. “The worst part? I had just about decided Mitchell was the one who shot Clarice.”

  “Why would he have killed her?”

  “He might have been upset that she was cutting off the money to finance their kid’s Olympic dreams.”

  Adasha’s brows rose. “The kid has Olympic dreams?”

  “Ice-skating. Mitchell was really invested in the kid’s skating. If Clarice decided to stop paying for it all, maybe he got upset and killed her. Sounds stupid when I say it out loud. But frankly, there was no other likely suspect. Until last night’s shooting, I didn’t think the other husband, Eckelstine, had the stones. And unless there’s some nutcase working at the museum—somebody who hated Clarice or had a fight with her—I just don’t see anybody else who could have killed her.”