I crossed my fingers and hoped CP and I would get in a few hours of sleep. I had a feeling tomorrow would be a long day—for both of us—before her mom and dad returned home.
#
Sure enough, Saturday was one of the longest days of my life. I calculated that I had almost four hours of sleep the night before. I don’t know how legions of moms kept up with years of working full-time jobs, taking care of their children, and managing a home, because I was exhausted after just one day playing primary caretaker. Still, CP and I managed to put in a couple of power naps during the day and were good to go for the big reunion.
That evening, CP was buckled into her pink beanbag chair on top of the kitchen table, munching on a teething ring, while I sautéed sausage for the meat sauce I intended to put over a bed of penne pasta. Okay, I’m not much of a cook, and it was a jar of Wegmans garlic-and-basil sauce that would top our meal, but at least Brenda wouldn’t have to fuss after a day away and a few hours on the road.
The sky was beginning to darken when Brenda burst in through the back door and into the butler’s pantry calling, “We’re home.” Like I hadn’t seen the Mercedes pull into the drive and then the garage a few moments before.
She was immediately drawn to CP and smothered her daughter with kisses as Richard brought up the rear, carrying their big suitcase and a couple of shopping bags which were no doubt filled with toys and new outfits for CP.
“How’s my girl?” Richard asked, and CP waved her arms and kicked her feet with joy at the sight of her parents. It made me—her dedicated caregiver for the previous twenty-four hours—feel a little like chopped liver, but … whatever.
Richard and Brenda shucked their coats, and then it was Richard’s turn to shower CP with kisses. Brenda took the chair in front of the baby and tugged on her little legs, making the baby giggle.
From Richard’s expression, I could see that finding his daughter alive and happy, and his house still intact, had lifted a huge burden from his shoulders. He looked around the kitchen before heading to the liquor cabinet. It was, after all, happy hour. “Where’s Maggie?”
Truth time. “She’s home.”
“Uh-oh. You two aren’t fighting, are you?” Brenda asked with concern.
“No, but I doubt I’ll be spending much time with her for a few days.”
“Why?” Richard asked, taking down the Scotch and bourbon bottles.
“Well, she’s got the flu.”
“Oh, no!” Brenda said, her eyes suddenly wild with apprehension, and she turned to look at her child. Influenza could be lethal to a baby.
“Don’t worry,” I said, turning the sausage once again. “Maggie never made it over here.”
“But you said she was—”
“Probably in the bathroom—which I assumed she was. Only at her house, not yours. I didn’t want you guys to worry about only me taking care of CP.”
Richard took some ice out from the freezer, plunked it into glasses, and poured us both a drink. “Looks like you guys survived,” he said casually, as if his paranoia the day before had never existed.
“Yeah. Maggs called about an hour ago. She’s feeling better but is still worried she might be contagious. If nothing else, I’ll drop by her place tomorrow with a care package—and then run away fast.”
Richard shook his head, smiling.
“What’s this?” Brenda asked, picking up one of the new teething rings I’d bought the night before.
“If you stick your finger in her mouth, you’ll see CP has a shiny new tooth.”
Brenda’s mouth drooped. “Oh, no! We missed one of Betsy’s first big milestones!”
“If you want to know the truth, it may be a milestone for her, but it wasn’t a joyride for me.”
Richard handed me a glass. “Oh?”
We’d finished our drinks by the time I’d recounted CP’s and my big adventure the night before. I left out all references to Sophie. I wasn’t sure they’d understand. By then, the pasta had come to a boil and minutes later was a perfect al dente.
CP and I had gone shopping earlier in the day and had bought a salad and a crusty loaf of Italian bread to go with the rest of the meal. “How did you know we didn’t get lunch?” Brenda asked.
“It was a lucky guess,” I said, shaking the ice in my glass to hint to Richard that I needed a refill.
Brenda moved CP’s beanbag chair to the floor, and then she set the table. Richard opened a bottle of wine and poured, and then the three of us settled down for a nice dinner. CP gummed her teething ring, much happier than she’d been some twenty-four hours before.
“I’m sorry Maggie’s sick,” Richard said, “but I guess I underestimated you by thinking you needed a backup. You figured out what Betsy needed and you took good care of her.” His face seemed to crumple and for a moment I thought he might cry, which I did not want to witness. No doubt his thoughts had harkened back to our troubled past when he’d been forced to play pseudo parent to me … and hadn’t done a very good job. But then, he’d been stretched in far too many directions; saddled with a kid brother he hardly knew, dealing with a stressful job, and trying to referee the disputes that arose between me and his cantankerous grandmother. In retrospect, I think I was far more forgiving of his transgressions than he’d ever be. Over the past twenty-three months we’d become closer than we had ever been during the years we’d lived in the same house. And now we had Brenda and CP, too.
Richard refilled our wineglasses and the three of us clinked them together. “To Betsy Ruth,” he proclaimed.
“To Betsy,” Brenda echoed.
I glanced down at the floor beside me where CP still gnawed on her teething ring, happily kicking her feet, and I smiled.
EYEWITNESS
It’s been two years since the mugging that nearly killed him, and Jeff Resnick is finally putting his life back together. But his sense of peace is shattered when the detective investigating his wife’s murder calls to update him on the cold case. Can Jeff's if his sixth sense can help him find the man who killed Shelley Resnick?
The phone rang. I’d known it was going to ring. I’d known who was calling. But that didn’t make me want to lift the receiver.
I’d received one of those calls every five or six months for the past four years. They were always the same. An apology. A promise to work harder; and reassurance that resolution would one day be at hand.
Yeah. And pigs fly.
I picked up the phone.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Resnick? It’s Detective Baldwin, NYPD.”
“Hi, detective.”
“I wanted to update you on your late wife’s case.”
My late wife. Four years before, Michelle Kathleen Malone Resnick, was shot in the back of the head, execution style, in a men’s bathroom in Grand Central Terminal after a drug deal gone wrong.
I waited for Baldwin’s usual apology.
“We’ve had a couple of leads,” he said instead.
My hand tightened around the receiver. “Oh, yeah?” I managed.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, but this may be what we’ve been waiting for.”
Yeah, and it might not, either. They’d had leads before that went nowhere. Leads about drug dealers who’d confessed and recanted. About DNA evidence that went nowhere. Fuzzy video that was useless for making an identification. I’d heard it all before.
“What kind of leads?” I asked anyway.
“Testimony in exchange for clemency.”
“Yeah? And how’s that going?”
“Look, I know you feel jaded by everything that’s gone on in the past, but this time it might be the real deal.”
I thought about what he said. Every lead they’d ever had had dried up. Every promising tidbit of information had turned out to be false. I was tired of it. I was tired of hearing it. I was tired of Shelley’s murder being thrown at me a couple of times a year. The longer it was from the time of her death, the more I should be settled, the less
it should affect me. Instead, it was like reopening a serious wound. But maybe there was a chance I could stop it all from erupting all over again. I just had to put my name and reputation on the line to do it.
“Have you ever thought of consulting a psychic to examine the evidence you’ve collected in the case?”
Baldwin gave a laugh of derision. “Not on your life.”
“Would you be open to a psychic talking with you, touching the evidence, and giving you an assessment of what they perceive?”
“Sure, why not?” Baldwin said, his tone flippant. “You got somebody in mind?”
“Yeah. Me.”
#
I didn’t want to talk about this in front of my sister-in-law, Brenda, or my girlfriend, Maggie, so I waited a couple of days until I was able to work up the courage to speak to my half-brother, Richard, about it. It was on a Friday afternoon that I found him alone in his study. The room had once belonged to his lawyer grandfather and was a shining example of early twentieth century masculinity. Dark wood and leather dominated, and the bookshelves were filled with tomes the old man had collected long before either Richard or I had been born.
“Hey, Rich, have you got a minute?”
He looked up from his computer screen. “Sure. Sit down.”
I plunked down on the leather wing chair in front of the big mahogany desk.
Richard swiveled to face me. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I hated asking him for anything. I went out of my way not to ask him for anything. It had been that way since I was a teenager, but this was different.
“I’m going to need to borrow some money,” I said, not daring to look him in the eye.
“You? Asking for money?” he asked, sounding shocked.
I nodded.
“Then I need a drink.”
I looked up just far enough to see him scrutinizing my face. I wouldn’t need the money right away; just when my VISA card came due the next month. I didn’t like to keep a balance. The interest rates are killer.
“What for?” he asked.
I swallowed. I’ve got what some might call a sixth sense. I don’t read minds; I feel things. I guess you might say I’m empathic and sometimes I know stuff that I couldn’t know by any other means. Still, I can’t read Richard—and vice versa. But he knows me well. Sometimes I think too well. He was still studying my face when it dawned on him.
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me you got another call from Detective Baldwin.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“I thought you said you put all that behind you,” he said, worry tinging his voice.
“Yeah, I thought so, too. But I guess I was wrong.”
“So, you want the money to go to New York? What for?”
“I….” This was really hard to say. “I sort of offered the detective my services.”
Richard’s blue eyes widened incredulously. “I wish I’d been a fly on the wall for that conversation. What did he say?”
“He hates having a cold case on his hands. He said…” I paused, remembering an old game-show host’s signature line, “to come on down.”
Richard stared at the surface of his tidy desk for a long—a very long—time before speaking. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“No. I’m not taking you away from Brenda and Betsy—” Richard’s wife and five-month old daughter, “—for some idiotic wild goose chase.”
“And I won’t let you go on your own. You need me.”
“Rich—” I began.
“No. Really. You need me. Sophie told me so.”
It was my turn to look surprised. “What could you possibly know about Sophie?” She was my psychic mentor. A woman who’d been dead for over twenty years.
“I met her.”
I shook my head. Sophie had told me on more than one occasion that she was here on this earth for only me. Still…. “When?”
“Last year. When Krista Marsh screwed with your head.”
I swallowed. Thinking about that time made me sick with shame and self-loathing.
“I went to see her at the bakery,” Richard continued.
“And she was there?”
“Just that one time.”
Had he gone there other times looking for her?
“What did she look like?” I asked.
“An old, gray-haired lady in a maroon sweater with a hanky stuffed up her sleeve. She’s got a cute Polish accent.”
That was Sophie all right.
“What did she say?”
“That we were meant to work together. That we’re Yin and Yang.”
“She said that?” I asked, doubtfully.
Richard shook his head and frowned. “No. She suggested we were more like Laurel and Hardy.”
I nodded. I could believe that.
“But the crux was that you need me. That we need each other,” Richard said.
Yeah, we do, which hadn’t always been true.
“When did you tell Baldwin you’d meet him?” Richard asked.
“Monday morning.”
“The last time you flew, you felt like shit afterwards. Why don’t we go up Sunday afternoon? That way you’ll have some time to recover—in case you need it.”
“That’s a good idea,” I admitted.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Richard said.
“I can do it,” I protested
Richard shook his head. “I like doing that kind of stuff.” He smiled. “You can change Betsy’s next messy diaper.”
I wrinkled my nose. “If you insist.”
“Then it’s a deal.”
#
My girlfriend, Maggie, and I had been together for almost two years. Sort of. I’d met her just about two years before, just after her ex-boss had been killed, and on our first real date we kind of discovered his wife, who had also been murdered and … well, it was all a bit of a mess. It had taken us another three months to figure out if we wanted to pursue a relationship. I knew I did. Maggie wasn’t quite as sure.
As a couple, we’d certainly had our ups and downs. Like ten months before when Maggie dumped me for her former fiancé—until he’d shown himself to be a heel for a second time. And then, her good friend and ex-mother-in-law had had a stroke, which had kept Maggie busy taking care of the old lady, who also happened to live in the bottom half of Maggie’s duplex.
Yeah. We’d had lots more downs than ups. So it was with apprehension that I dared mention my late wife’s name. The truth was, Shelley and I had called it quits six months before her murder, but part of me had never stopped hoping that she’d come back to me. That she’d find the strength to give up her drug habit and we could resume our lives together—that we’d buy that little house in New Jersey and raise a family. I’d been stupid to hope against hope.
Shelley had left me and taken most of our assets with her. I was broke when she was murdered. But I was her next of kin. I went into hock to pay for her funeral and I promised myself that that was the end of my commitment to Shelley.
I’d been wrong. I’d lied to myself. After four years, it got so I didn’t think of Shelley on a daily basis, but if I was honest with myself, she was never really all that far from my thoughts. I considered her my biggest failure because despite my best efforts, I couldn’t save her from herself.
I won’t say that Maggie was jealous of her predecessor, but Shelley had become a sore subject—one we rarely spoke of. There’d been that one—and only—time when Maggie and I were both a little drunk and were making love, and I’d whispered Shelley’s name into Maggie’s ear. She had never really forgotten that. And, in fact, that one event had set us on a path where we’d broken up for a while. Of course, relationships are built—and destroyed—on more than one incident. We’d been working hard to get past all that, but almost a year later, things were still a little strained.
So it was with trepidation that I brought up the subject the evening before Richard and I were to leave for New York. Maggie had come for dinner at
my place, and I hoped to stay the night. And yet, I also knew that wasn’t a given. Maggie hadn’t had to say a word for me to know that all was not right in her world, either.
“I need to tell you something, Maggs,” I said as I poured her a glass of wine. She sat on one of the stools in front of the breakfast bar in my apartment over the garage on Richard’s property.
“I knew something was up,” she said, sounding wary. “Give it to me straight.”
“Richard and I are going to New York tomorrow.”
“What for?” she asked sounding suspicious. She knew Richard wouldn’t leave his wife and baby for anything trivial.
“It seems there have been some developments in Shelley’s murder case.”
Maggie accepted the wineglass I handed her and took a hearty swig before speaking. “Like what?”
“Jailhouse testimony.”
“And how reliable is that?” she asked, an edge creeping into her voice.
“I don’t know. But it finally occurred to me that if I could examine the evidence—maybe talk to the guy, and anybody else who says they have knowledge about the circumstances of her death—that this whole thing could be cleared up and I would never have to think about it again.”
“Ya think?” she asked, sounding skeptical, maybe even a little bitter.
“Whether I like it or not, I seem to have this stinking psychic-empathic ability. The idea of confronting Shelley’s death—maybe actually experiencing it—isn’t something I’d normally seek out, but I’m fucking tired of it hanging over me. It hangs over us, Maggs. It’s got to stop, and there’s only one way I can think of to make that happen.”
Maggie’s lower lip trembled. “And so you and Richard are going to New York?”
I nodded.
She let out a pent-up breath. “I won’t pretend to be happy to hear about this. I’d like nothing better than to finally rid that bitch from both our lives, but are you sure that’s likely to happen?”
She had a lot of nerve asking that of me when, the previous year, she’d been content to once again take up with a guy who had humiliated her years before and, more recently, had been willing to sell her off when the going got tough.
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