Just Between Us

by Rebecca Drake

  “Okay, I think I found it.” Sean came back on the line. “The missing number makes it harder, a bunch of registrations popped up, but this one’s tied to a motorcycle. You got a pen?”

  “Yes, shoot.” I held the envelope against the car, pen poised, while keeping an eye on the kids and the cars.

  “That bike’s registered to a Raymond Fortini.” He rattled off the spelling of the name and then an address.

  “Great. Thank you so much.”

  “Yeah, okay. Just remember—this is a one-time thing and you don’t mention it to anybody.”

  “Got it. Thank you. Oh, and Sean, don’t tell Michael, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”

  Matthew noticed the yoga bag in the back as the kids climbed into the car. When he asked what was in it, my tongue froze despite my having lied smoothly and successfully for weeks, and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  He clambered over the seat before I could stop him and unzipped it. “Were you playing baseball with your friends?” he asked in the sweetest way.

  That melted the irritation I felt, and I smiled as I helped him climb back over and into his booster seat. “No, Julie thought she needed to borrow a bat for Owen—”

  “Owen?” Lucy said incredulously. “Owen doesn’t play baseball.”

  “Maybe it was for Aubrey then.”

  “She doesn’t play either. They don’t like baseball—they only like soccer.” Lucy spoke with her usual authority.

  “I think their mother thought they might,” I said. “But it turns out they had a bat, so they didn’t need ours after all.”

  “Dad would be upset if you gave away the bat,” Lucy said. “He loves baseball.”

  “Loves, loves, loves,” Matthew repeated.

  “Stop copying me, Matthew,” Lucy said with more resignation than annoyance. “Mrs. Hammond says that people should try to be original.”

  Their bickering receded into background noise as I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d heard Raymond Fortini’s name before. Once we were home and I’d settled the kids in front of the TV with a snack, I grabbed my laptop and began searching for him.

  Fortini didn’t show up in the elementary school directory—no one with that last name did. While it was a relief, in one way, to realize that someone we knew wasn’t blackmailing us, in another way it just made things harder. Who was this guy? He was surprisingly difficult to find; he didn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account or any other social-media profile that I could locate, nor was he mentioned on anyone else’s. There were plenty of other Raymond Fortini profiles, but I eliminated them one by one.

  Odd to fly so under the radar in the digital age, which prompted another type of searching, although knowing my brother, if the man had a criminal record Sean would have shared that information with me. Eventually, I found an article from four years earlier about a bartending contest held at a Pittsburgh nightclub, and lo and behold if a Ray Fortini, bartender at The Crooked Halo in Bellevue, wasn’t listed as one of the winners. They even had a picture of him—a white, thirtysomething man who was handsome in a scruffy sort of way, dark hair and eyes, a wicked grin, and one of those semi-beards that might not be a beard at all, but just a day or two without shaving. I’d only caught a quick glimpse of his face at the house and he certainly hadn’t been smiling, but otherwise the man in the photo seemed to match my memory.

  I was burying the bat back in the sports bin when my phone chimed. It was a shock, but a good one, to finally see a reply to my text: 10 a.m. tomorrow. Cemetery. Last chance.

  I hurried to call Julie and Sarah.

  * * *

  “A girls’ night out on a Tuesday?” Michael said, surprised. “I thought you hated doing that on weekdays because you couldn’t sleep in the next morning.”

  “It’s a special case—Julie’s celebrating a house sale.”

  “Oh, really? What house?” He was searching the fridge for a beer and didn’t see my expression, which was fortunate because I was stumped.

  “I don’t know. Apparently it’s some property that she’s been trying to unload for months.”

  “That’s nice.” He had his beer, but now he was searching the kitchen, opening drawers.

  “Here,” I said, opening a drawer on the opposite side and finding the bottle opener. I passed it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said, popping off the cap. “I could have sworn we kept it in this drawer.” We didn’t—it had been in the same drawer for the entire eight years we’d lived in this house—but I just smiled. He took a swig of beer. “So, did you have any plans for dinner?” he said in the hesitant voice of a spouse who’s really hoping no one’s counting on him to cook something.

  “There’s some pasta,” I said, opening the fridge. “There’s chicken. You’re great at improvising—I’m sure the kids will like whatever you feel like making.”

  “Sure, okay,” he said with forced enthusiasm. “We’ll be fine—you have a good time.”

  “Thanks.” I gave him a quick kiss and headed out of the kitchen to get changed.

  “Ali?” He called me back. His voice sounded funny—had he seen something? I walked back into the kitchen and froze for a moment when I saw that I’d left my laptop open on the kitchen table. Had he seen the search I had open on the screen?

  “Yes?” Trying to sound as casual as I could. What would I say if he asked about it?

  But he was busy unloading things from the fridge, not looking at the table at all, and he only said, “Where are you going to eat?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, relieved and ridiculously pleased at not having to lie about at least one thing. “I think Julie’s picking the place.” I snapped my laptop closed and carried it out of the kitchen.

  * * *

  “If we steal his computer and phone he can report the theft, and while he’s doing that he might decide to tell the police about the photos,” I said to Julie and Sarah on the drive to Bellevue. “It would be better if I erase all his files. Just clear his electronics.”

  “He could still report that to the police, couldn’t he?” Julie said. She kept glancing at her phone, expecting to hear from Heather, whom none of us had been able to reach.

  “Where the hell are you?” Sarah growled into Heather’s voice mail. “This is so typical of you—leaving us to do all the dirty work.”

  It made me cringe. By that point, I was completely paranoid about any phone conversations and tried to keep things short and cryptic. I didn’t know if the police were tapping our cell phones, but if they were, that blatant a message would be hard to explain away.

  “Fortini might still go to the police,” I told Julie, “but what evidence would he have? We’re going to wear gloves and we can be in and out in about an hour.”

  “You do realize that’s a felony, right?” Sarah had said when I proposed the plan. “Breaking and entering—you could get three to five before any other charges are added.”

  “And we could get twenty-five to life if we don’t get those photos,” I’d retorted. “Which sentence do you want to shoot for?”

  She wasn’t risking arrest anyway, or at least not for breaking and entering. We were dropping her off at The Crooked Halo, waiting outside long enough to get the thumbs-up text that meant Ray Fortini was working behind the bar, before Julie and I proceeded to his house.

  We’d met at Julie’s beforehand because Brian was out of town again. He was always out of town. Did she ever question what he was doing, I wondered as we headed into her garage. The latest temp nanny was feeding Julie’s kids dinner just on the other side of the interior wall and we spoke in hushed whispers as we got ready to go. Off went my tapered slacks and kitten heels, the silky blouse and fine jewelry that I’d put on for our ostensible girls’ night out. On went workout wear—black running tights and sneakers, a dark T-shirt and a thick gray jacket with a hood. Julie was dressed similarly; she’d told the babysitter that we were going to a yoga class and then maybe out for a
meal after. Sarah wore skinny jeans and a trendy top, but I was still concerned she might look too mom-ish for The Crooked Halo.

  “He’ll recognize me,” she protested when I suggested she be the one to sit in Fortini’s bar.

  “Not if you’re wearing one of these.” Julie pulled two wigs out of a bag, one a short brown pageboy, the other long, sleek, and jet-black.

  “What the hell are those?”

  “Brian and I went to a costume party last year—do you want Sonny or Cher?”

  “Are you kidding me? I don’t want either.”

  “If you wear one of these he’ll never recognize you,” I said.

  “If you really don’t want to be recognized, I’ve got Sonny’s mustache as well,” Julie said, giggling.

  “No thank you,” Sarah said, grabbing the Cher wig. It took a lot of tucking and a bunch of bobby pins to make sure her curls were completely hidden.

  As we pulled up in front of The Crooked Halo, Sarah nervously adjusted the wig again.

  “Don’t touch it,” Julie said. “You look good.”

  “Don’t drink so much that you forget to text us if he leaves,” I said, and she rewarded us by slamming the car door. “She doesn’t exactly blend into the crowd,” I commented as we watched her walk into the bar, that long black mane sashaying behind her.

  chapter thirty-seven

  SARAH

  The Crooked Halo had been around so long that its disco-era vibe was cool again. The bar was black onyx and over fifteen feet long, with a gold-framed, smoked mirror behind it that doubled the numbers of bottles and glasses. There were scattered round tables and curved booths with crushed velvet seating, and there was even a dance floor, one of those giant white plastic squares made up of smaller squares that lit up in different colors when someone stepped on them. Half the bulbs had burned out and no one had bothered replacing them, and the only reason I knew that was because of the odd couple swaying on the dance floor when I arrived.

  I took a table in the corner nearby and waited for a waitress to come for my drink order so I could avoid getting too close to Ray Fortini. I was convinced he’d recognize me, even with that ridiculous wig. He hadn’t looked in my direction yet, or if he had, it must have only been a passing glance. The bar was fairly crowded, a lot of people gathered to watch the Penguins game playing on various hanging flat-screen TVs. They were the only modern touch in the place.

  An emaciated-looking man who might have been thirty or sixty and his equally emaciated-looking girlfriend shifted around the disco floor, moving their bodies in slow-motion calisthenics. Completely disconnected from each other and reality, dancing to the music in their heads, not the hard rock playing over the bar speaker system. When the woman extended a bony arm near me, I saw needle tracks and realized they were probably addicts.

  No one else was dancing and no one bothered with them, although once, when the man bounced against another patron, Fortini yelled, “Hey, watch it, junkie!” Neither of them acknowledged this warning.

  The waitstaff was small, just two women and a man wearing standard-issue black pants and T-shirts that had the name of the bar emblazoned across the front so that it rippled across the women’s chests. Despite the short staff, my gin and tonic came quickly enough, slapped down on a little cocktail napkin, splashing slightly. “Get you anything else?” the waitress said, balancing a tray with three other drinks. The bright cherries in a whiskey sour bobbed in and out of view. I shook my head.

  There were enough people between me and the bar that I was free to watch Fortini, sipping my gin and tonic and noticing that in between pouring drinks, he’d check a cell phone he pulled from beneath the bar. Was this the one with the photos? Only one way to find out. I took out my phone and called him.

  The number rang and rang, but he calmly poured a draft for someone and made no move toward the phone. Remembering the previous time I’d tried this, I hung up and dialed again. I could hear it ringing, but could he? I couldn’t tell over the din and he calmly mixed a drink for another patron. I tried a third time, but there was still no attempt to answer. Discouraged, I hung up after the tenth ring, but just then he wiped his hands on a towel and reached under the bar for the phone. I saw him frown at the screen, then furiously type something. Seconds later, my screen lit up: Stop calling!

  Bingo. I smiled and took another sip of my drink, thinking about how I was going to get that phone.

  “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” A man had materialized at my side without me noticing. My long “hair” obscured my peripheral vision—it was like wearing blinders. I tried to tuck it behind my ears and surveyed him. Medium height and build, receding hairline and a small paunch, holding a beer glass—your average, reasonably friendly-looking thirtysomething white guy whom I might possibly have accepted a drink from if I was single and not trying to spy on the bartender.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got one,” I said, raising my glass so he could see that I was still nursing my gin.

  “You’re not going to stop at one, are you?” he said in mock surprise, leaning a little on the vacant chair so that I knew he’d accept the seat if I offered it. I didn’t.

  “I’m the designated driver,” I said, before taking a large sip.

  “Oh, you’re here with someone?” he said, swinging his head from side to side like a Labrador, searching the crowd for my companion. I didn’t answer; it seemed safer to let him think so. He gave up and brought his gaze back to me, lurching a little against the chair. He was clearly on beer six or seven. “I’ve never seen you here before. You live nearby?”

  “Oh, not too far away.”

  He smiled at this as if I’d given him my address. “You remind me of someone—can you guess who?”

  I shook my head, cringing as I anticipated what was coming.

  “Amy Winehouse.”

  Incorrectly interpreting the surprise on my face, he added, “Hey, that’s a compliment. She was a good-looking chick, when she wasn’t, you know—”

  “Shit-faced?” I said dryly.

  “Yeah, ’zactly.” He swallowed the last of his beer, tilting the glass back to suck every bit of foam out. “Do you need another?”

  I shook my head and he nodded again, raising his glass in a salute before letting go of the chair and listing in the direction of the bar.

  Ray Fortini set the phone down as he refilled shots for a couple. Then he pulled a draft for a man, the phone still out on the counter. It was just sitting there and his back was turned. If I could just reach it in time. As I rose from my chair, a group of women stepped in front of me and I couldn’t see the bar. I craned my neck, trying to see around them. Was it too late? A crowd clustered in front of the wall-mounted flat-screen in the opposite corner cheered as the Penguins scored. I pushed past the women and wiggled through the crowd to the bar. I looked up and down the long sleek surface, but it was too late. The phone was gone.

  Ray Fortini turned at that moment to look at me. “Get you something?” My pulse jumped, but he only stared at me inquiringly, yet disinterested, no recognition in his dark eyes.

  “Gin and tonic,” I said, adding, “Hendrick’s, please.”

  “You got it.” He turned away and I checked the mirror behind the bar, hoping it would reflect what was under the counter, but it sat too high and there were too many liquor bottles in the way.

  “Oh my God, I love it!” I heard someone say behind me, and then there was humming before someone started singing, “‘If I could turn back time…’”

  “Here you go.” Ray Fortini slid my drink across the counter, plopping a stirrer in it.

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” A quick flash of a grin, easy charm, and he was already turning away to get someone else’s order. Phone nowhere in sight.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around, expecting to see the guy who’d hit on me earlier, but instead there were two twentysomething men grinning at me, one black, one white, both with shaved heads, wearing coordinated
checked shirts, one blue, one green. A matched set. “Oh my God, you’re so cute!” the white guy squealed.

  “Ditto,” I said, enjoying a sip of my drink.

  “We love Cher,” the black guy said. “Are these extensions?” He reached out a hand to touch the wig and I leaned back so he only brushed the ends.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to smile.

  “It’s like you’re Librarian Cher—I love it,” the white guy said.

  “Super fresh,” the other guy added.

  “Thanks.” I forced another smile as I inched backward, before turning and bolting through the crowd for the corner, my drink held high.

  My table had been taken over, so I leaned against the wall, sweating a little and wishing I weren’t here alone. Julie would have known how to handle that conversation.

  I pulled out my phone, but there were no updates from Julie and Alison or messages from Heather. The bar was getting progressively more crowded. It was only Tuesday night, and not that late, but the Pens game was a big draw. Lots of yinzers wearing team jerseys jostled in front of the wall-mounted screens, bellowing happily every time we scored. I sipped my drink and kept an eye on Ray Fortini, waiting and hoping he’d pull out his phone again. I’d move faster next time, just swipe it off the bar. I played through the scenario multiple times in my head, mapping various routes to the bar and out the door and onto the street, but he was too busy serving drinks and the phone never reappeared.

  Just as I was starting to wonder if this was going to fail totally, I saw a striking-looking woman walk behind the bar, tying a small apron around her waist. She had magenta hair with black tips and wore a black T-shirt cut to flatter her figure. She put a hand on his arm and leaned in to say something to him, clearly struggling to be heard over the competing din of hockey game, rock music, and loud conversation. He nodded at whatever she said and then, gripping the back of her neck, pulled her in for a lingering kiss. Someone seated at the bar applauded and she pulled away first, laughing. He grinned at her, swiping some things from under the counter, and walked toward the back, slapping her on the ass as he passed.