Dead Ball

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by Judith Arnold


  Chapter Eleven

  WHEN LAINIE GOT home from soccer practice, the message signal on her answering machine was flashing like a red strobe light. She dumped the tepid water out of her sports bottle, filled a glass with fresh water from the tap, splashed some on her sweaty face, and then took a long, refreshing drink. The air at Minuteman Field had been heavy with spring warmth that evening, and she’d run her drills as if prize money had been at stake. Now she was exhausted.

  After refilling her glass with water, she pressed the button on the console to retrieve her messages. The first was from Karen, announcing that she and Brad were going out that night and Lainie shouldn’t wait up.

  The second message was from Lainie’s mother, calling to see how Lainie and Karen were doing with that vicious killer running loose in their town. She was also curious about whether Karen had ever contacted her neighbor’s friend’s cousin’s whatever who knew of a possible job opening at Citicorp. She ended her message by asking Lainie not to call her back, because she and Lainie’s father had bridge that night. They had decided, in their retirement, to become life masters at bridge, and this required them to play in duplicate tournaments as often as they could. “It’s not the same as soccer,” her mother often said. “But mental exercise keeps a person young and healthy, too.” Lainie wouldn’t argue the point.

  The third message was from Peter. “Lainie, sweetheart, how are you? Here’s a name for you: Jackson Bray. Not gray, like the color. Bray, like what a donkey does. He’s a private investigator with an office in Back Bay, and he’s the guy Lucinda Whippletine hired to get the goods on Tom. Don’t ask how many people I had to sleep with to get this information. Anyway, I can’t tell you he’s the guy your murder victim’s wife hired, but he’s definitely the one who dug up all kinds of interesting trash about Tom Whippletine. I assume you’re okay—no news is good news—but call me if anything comes up. And don’t talk to the cops without me. And stay away from—” His message timed out before he could complete the sentence.

  The fourth message was from the person whose name Lainie assumed Peter would have said if her answering machine hadn’t cut him off. “Lainie? It’s Bill Stavik.” Unlike Peter, he spoke slowly, his voice deep and relaxed. “I was hoping maybe we could get together for dinner some evening this week. No pressure, no expectations. Just dinner. Give me a call if you’re interested.” He recited his phone number, then disconnected.

  She was interested. She was hot, tired, hungry, and in desperate need of a shower—and damn it, she was interested. Even though she shouldn’t be. Even though Peter would give her hell.

  Of course, in his phone message, all he’d said was “stay away from . . .” No name. Maybe Lainie could pretend she hadn’t known what he would have said if his message hadn’t timed out.

  And while she was at it, she’d have to pretend he hadn’t warned her to stay away from Stavik a few days ago. How much pretending was she good for?

  She’d been celibate long enough—not that she was going to sleep with Stavik, but even to contemplate the possibility was more erotic than anything she’d done since Roger’s death. She was a healthy woman. She wasn’t even fifty years old. Close, perhaps, but not there yet. Her daughter had a lover. And she was sure her son was keeping half the nation’s latex manufacturers in business down in Princeton. Yet for the past two and a half years, Lainie hadn’t given a thought to meeting men, socializing with them, having sex with them.

  She was giving the subject a lot of thought now.

  It didn’t have to be Stavik, she reminded herself as she unraveled her braid and headed up the stairs. He’d noticed her; surely some other man would notice her, too. She wasn’t movie-star gorgeous, but for a middle-aged schoolteacher, she wasn’t bad. If she was smart—and she was—she’d forget about the hunky construction foreman with the big shoulders and the beautiful blue eyes who might be under investigation for murder, and instead find some nice, safe gentleman.

  But she didn’t want a nice, safe gentleman. Her life was already out of kilter. Behaving herself for the past forty-seven years offered no protection against what might happen tomorrow.

  And if worse came to worst, and she and Stavik wound up arrested, shouldn’t they do something before the poop hit the fan? Shouldn’t they enjoy themselves? Shouldn’t they live like free people for as long as they were free?

  Amazing what she could talk herself into, when it was something she truly wanted.

  NANCY VAN DOERR found Lainie at the coffee machine in the faculty lounge the next day. “Can you believe it?” she asked.

  “Believe what?” Lainie responded warily. Nancy was like a walking tabloid headline, but her reports generally bore out. Just as Lainie couldn’t tear her gaze from the magazine racks full of scandal sheets, the covers of which blared about movie stars suffering from bulimia or engaging in lesbian affairs or being victimized by plastic surgery, she couldn’t tune out Nancy.

  “Poor Patty Cavanagh. Hasn’t that woman gone through enough? Her car—well, I’m not sure a Range Rover is actually a car. That thing is the Mercedes of SUVs. Except I guess Mercedes makes its own SUV, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Lainie filled her mug with the steaming sludge in the pot—it had obviously been evaporating over the past few hours, and was now the consistency of gravy—and wished Nancy’s revelations were no more relevant to her life than some TV starlet’s uneven cheek implants. But Patty Cavanagh was relevant to Lainie, and she forced herself to listen.

  “So, yesterday she drives over to the subdivision her husband was building. Emerson Village Estates.”

  Lainie nodded.

  “And those crackpot protesters are there, and they start throwing rocks at her car. And this red stuff that they claimed was the blood of a deer.” Nancy wrinkled her pert little nose and shuddered.

  “Was Patty hurt?”

  “No. Those Range Rovers are like tanks, Lainie. And she wasn’t alone. She had her lawyer with her, or someone like that, some advisor. I think she wants to get the development built in her husband’s memory.”

  More likely she wanted to get it built because her husband’s company had a ton of money invested in it. “Who did you hear this from?”

  “Sherry Mickelson.”

  Lainie nodded again. The chain of gossip seemed pretty reliable. Sherry’s son Tucker was Sean’s buddy. Sherry’s youngest was in third grade at Hopwell and Sherry was a class mother. She was in and out of the school all the time.

  “So Patty and this advisor, or whoever was with her, locked themselves inside her Range Rover and phoned the police on her cell. By the time the cops showed up, the protesters were rocking the Range Rover, trying to overturn it. As if they could budge the thing. You know how much a Range Rover weighs?”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t.” Lainie glanced casually at the wall clock, not wanting to appear rude. She had only fifteen minutes before her kids would be done with music and heading back to the classroom.

  “Several of the protesters got arrested. And Patty’s Range Rover is in the body shop, getting the dings and the blood taken care of. The windshield had to be replaced.”

  “That must have been horrible.” Lainie tried to imagine being seated in a car—even if it was a big-mama SUV—while fanatics threw stones and red liquid at the vehicle and tried to overturn it. She tried to imagine undergoing such a nerve-wracking ordeal barely a week after one’s husband had been murdered. Sipping the thick, burned coffee, she fought off a shiver.

  “I bet one of those crackpots did it,” Nancy said. “Killed her husband, I mean. They’re nuts.”

  “I guess they don’t want those houses to get built,” Lainie murmured. In truth, she sympathized. Rockford already had plenty of overblown, overpriced houses. But even if the protesters stopped the development from proceeding, the trees were already gone. The land had been
spoiled.

  And Patty didn’t deserve to be the target of their wrath. Arthur, not Patty, had torn down the trees.

  “So, the police arrested the protesters?” she asked.

  “Some of them,” Nancy confirmed. “Maybe all. I mean, I love furry little creatures as much as the next person, but please. Those people are deranged.” She poured herself some coffee, stirred in powdered creamer, and took a sip. If her smile was any measure, she was satisfied with the taste.

  Lainie forced down some more coffee. In her case, the beverage was purely medicinal. She’d spent last night as restless as the night before, only instead of being haunted by worries about her possible arrest, she’d been besieged by thoughts about Bill Stavik. Should she call him back? He’d said no expectations, no pressure. Just dinner.

  Why should she deny herself such a trivial pleasure? If she was going to feel guilty anyway, why not do something to feel guilty about? Not that she’d do anything with Stavik that would make her feel guilty.

  If she did call Stavik back, Peter would be furious. He was an experienced attorney. His advice was solid, and she ought to listen to him.

  But damn it, just as Patty didn’t deserve to have her car attacked by maniacal environmentalists, Lainie didn’t deserve to spend the rest of her life like a nun, with a demented cop taking aim at her. Maybe she ought to wait until the whole thing blew over, but who knew how long that might take? A week? A year? More than a year?

  If Nancy’s information was accurate, the environmentalists had been arrested. They’d already proven their violent tendencies in their assault on Patty’s vehicle. Perhaps one of them would confess to Arthur’s murder. Perhaps one of them already had, which meant there was no reason Lainie couldn’t have dinner with Bill Stavik.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, forcing the last of her coffee into her mouth and trying not to chew it before she swallowed. “My kids are finishing music.”

  “This new music teacher, she’s no Adrienne DeRizzo,” Nancy declared as Lainie smiled a goodbye and departed from the lounge. She didn’t care if the new music teacher was as good as the teacher she’d replaced. She didn’t even care that Patty’s SUV was in the shop; surely Patty had access to other vehicles, including Arthur’s Jaguar. What she cared about was that the People for the Preservation of the Planet had been arrested, and Knapp was going to solve his case, and Lainie . . .

  Lainie was going to return Bill Stavik’s call. Just to let him know she was interested, but they’d have to wait a while. Hopefully not a year. Hopefully a crazed environmentalist was right this minute being read his rights, and then she and Stavik could enjoy dinner together. Or more than dinner.

  SEAN SHOWED UP at Lainie’s house after school a few more times that week. She hadn’t had time to buy more chocolate chips and brown sugar, let alone to bake, but he seemed happy to eat whatever edible substance she produced—a banana and a bowl of pretzels one afternoon, a toasted raisin bagel with a schmear of cream cheese another. Either snacks were enough to cure him of angst, or her talk with him on Monday had reassured him, because he’d been cheerful and loquacious, chattering about his classes and his impending graduation from middle school and his Babe Ruth League team.

  His visits left her wondering why he was coming to see her. Maybe he was fond of her, but she doubted his reason was as simple as that. More likely he chose to hang out at her house because his own house wasn’t a happy place at the moment. In her modest expanded Cape, with nary a bridal staircase nor a tray ceiling, nor a mother dealing with her own emotional upheaval, he could relax.

  He told her about the incident with his mother’s SUV. “Turned out it wasn’t really deer blood,” he reported. “It was this mixture of red food coloring and corn syrup. It was really sticky, and it attracted a ton of bugs. But it washed off okay. And insurance paid for the windshield.”

  “I guess your mother was lucky.”

  “I bet it was kind of exciting, all those buttheads trying to push over a Range Rover. Like, did they think they could actually do that? Get real.”

  Lainie didn’t mind Sean’s visits. She wasn’t interested in raising any more children—especially teenage children—but if Sean needed her kitchen and her attention to get himself through a rough patch, she could certainly give him that much. Considering the quantities Big Brad ate, she hardly noticed Sean’s impact on her food supply.

  One afternoon when Sean wasn’t lurking in her driveway as she arrived home from Hopwell, she spent a little time on the computer checking out Jackson Bray. His agency had a nice enough website—a bluish-gray background, with blurry silhouettes of people who could represent either detectives or culprits, or just plain people photographed from a distance on a foggy day. Contact information and a list of investigative services were provided. Nothing about fees, but Lainie supposed that given his address and the upper-crust status of his clientele, his rates would be high.

  Had his investigation for Patty led him to the People for the Preservation of the Planet? Had he found the missing BlackBerry? Had he, like Lainie, phoned the Rockford Middle School to see if students in the technology class used nail guns? According to the curriculum specialist she spoke to there, they didn’t.

  On Friday, Rockford’s local weekly newspaper had a brief mention of the incident with Patty’s SUV at Emerson Village Estates. According to the article, three of the protesters were arrested and charged with vandalism and disorderly conduct, and police were considering adding assault charges. Apparently, not enough evidence existed to charge the other protesters. No mention was made of Arthur’s murder itself, but Lainie had seen a few cop shows on TV. She knew the police often arrested people on lesser charges and then held them while investigating the bigger charges. That was probably what the Rockford Police were doing now.

  Assuming they were competent.

  It was an assumption Lainie was willing to make. They hadn’t arrested her, after all. She took that to mean they had come to their senses.

  “YOU NEED A new outfit,” Karen told Lainie Friday evening over a large three-cheese pizza she and Big Brad had brought to the house for dinner. “You’re going out on a date tomorrow. You need to dress for it.”

  “No,” Lainie said, wishing she and Karen weren’t having this discussion in front of Brad. Not that he seemed particularly interested. He ate with a focus and determination that awed Lainie, downing slice after slice. Fortunately, a single slice was enough for her. Karen ate two, leaving five for Brad.

  While he chewed, Lainie and Karen talked. “I’m just saying, Mom, you can’t wear the same clothes on a Saturday night date that you wear when you’re teaching. You’re not dressing for a fourth-grader.”

  “I’m not dressing, period,” Lainie said. “I didn’t want to go out with him on Saturday.” She truly didn’t. Saturday night implied more than, say, Thursday night would. But with her soccer practices and Bill’s daughter’s softball games, they’d been unable to find a weeknight they were both free, so Lainie had relented and agreed to a Saturday evening dinner. “It’s not really a date. We’re just having dinner. He said we’d go someplace casual,” she told Karen.

  “Casual. Fine. Buy a new casual outfit. I’d let you borrow something of mine, but it wouldn’t fit.” Karen was a couple of inches taller than Lainie. Her taste wouldn’t fit, either. Lainie might not be fifty, but she wasn’t twenty-two, either.

  “I was figuring I’d wear my khakis and a nice top—”

  “No,” Karen said. “Absolutely not.”

  Lainie wasn’t sure what Karen had in mind—but it clearly couldn’t be something already hanging in her closet. Margaret seemed to think she needed a new outfit for Henry’s birthday party, too. Given the consensus among the women in her life, Lainie conceded they might have a point. The last time she’d bought a new outfit was . . . she couldn’t remember when.

  “A
ll right,” she promised. “I’ve got a game tomorrow morning. After the game, I’ll shop.” She remembered to add, “It’s not a date.”

  SATURDAY’S GAME resulted in another win for the Colonielles. Lainie wasn’t quite the star she’d been at the Burlington game, but she had two assists, which made her feel young. Odd how an impending dinner with a good-looking man could motivate her to play like a pro the same way a murder investigation could.

  Patty played well, too. Lainie tried to think of a way to broach the subject of Sean’s after-school visits to her, but couldn’t come up with anything. How did you tell a woman that her son was confiding in you instead of her? How did you tell her he’d confided about details of her marriage that she probably didn’t want you to know?

  Instead, Lainie decided to broach a different subject. During a break that found her and Patty sipping water together, Lainie raised the subject of the arrests over at Emerson Village. “I can’t believe those people would attack your car that way,” she said.

  “It’s no wonder they relate so well to animals,” Patty muttered. “They’re animals, too.”

  “Have the police been able to connect them to Arthur’s murder?”

  Patty rolled her eyes, reminding Lainie of Sean. In fact, Patty almost looked like a teenager when she did it. A well-groomed teenager with a fancy ring and an uncanny ability to play soccer without sweating. “God knows what the police have done,” she said.

  “If I were you . . .” Lainie took a sip of water to slow herself down. “I’d think about hiring a private detective to help Rockford’s finest.”

  Patty eyed her coolly. “A private detective? You think so?”

  Okay. She hadn’t admitted that she’d hired Jackson Bray. Maybe she hadn’t hired him. Margaret’s information could be wrong. A group of ritzy Brahmins guzzling martinis at the club—who was to say that Margaret hadn’t misunderstood what Lucinda Whippletine had told her? Or perhaps Lucinda Whippletine had misunderstood what the forensic accountant had told her. It could be like a game of “telephone,” with the message growing more and more garbled with each retelling.

 

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