by R M Wild
Ugghh. I turned to put the key in the deadbolt, but the door pushed open.
“What the—”
The fire was going. And sitting in my antique armchair was a massive, dark figure.
18
The figure was pointing something right at me. I reached for the umbrella pail and grabbed the wooden handle of an umbrella that one of my guests had left behind and wielded it as if I were about to throw a javelin at the figure’s heart—not that I would be able to throw it past the foyer before it unfurled in a web of crooked spokes and dust—but it was a better weapon than my puny fists.
The figure’s shoulders were so wide, they touched both sides of the armchair. It stood, pointed the object at me, and then whipped it with a sideways chuck into the fire. I caught a fleeting glimpse of exploding rose petals before the bouquet landed in the flames and hissed and popped.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
It was Matt Mettle.
I lowered the umbrella. “You scared me half to death! This is my house! What are you doing in here?”
“I came to surprise you,” he said. He pointed with his thumb toward the kitchen where two candles were lit at the table. Next to each candle, was a paper plate. “It’s nothin too fancy, but I thought we might have a romantic dinner. There’s a frozen chicken thawing in the oven.”
I didn’t let the gesture soften my ire. “You didn’t answer my question, Matt. How did you get in here?”
“I’m a cop. It’s my job to get into things.”
“You broke in? Breaking and entering is your job now?”
“I’m not a cop, remember? I’m suspended. So technically, I haven’t violated the constitution.”
“Yes you have! You broke into my house. Whatever happened to Mr. Plays by the Rules?”
“He got burned one too many times.”
“So one suspension and you’re ready to throw all your principles out the window?”
“I wanted to see you,” Mettle said. “Nothing more. I hope that’s not a crime. Sorry for caring about you.”
I balled my fists and wanted to punch the sarcasm from his lips. “If you wanted to see me, then why didn’t you just call me?”
“I did call. I called you a couple of times, but you never answered. I figured either you were ignoring me or something bad had happened. Either way, I came to see you. I jimmied the lock because I was worried about you. I still am.”
I remembered my missing phone. “I didn’t answer because I lost my phone. But that doesn’t give you the right to break in here.”
“What right do you have to kiss that guy?”
I steamed.
“That’s right,” he said. “I saw you two on the porch.”
“I have the right to kiss whomever I want, whenever I want.”
“You promised me a date. You kept saying you were too busy. But it was all a lie. You’ve got plenty of time for that Ken Doll.”
“His name is Kendall. KENDALL. Remember? We knew him in high school. You used to torture him in the locker room.
Mettle snickered. “Oh yeah. The old hot dog hammock,” he said. He rubbed his head, his fingers touching the widow’s peak at the beginning of a receding hairline. “I don’t care what his real name is. He looks like a plastic doll. And like a Ken Doll, I bet he’s got a nice plastic nub where his junk is supposed to be. Have fun with that.”
“You are soooo mature.”
“And you’re dating a mannequin. How is that supposed to make me feel?”
“I’m not dating him,” I said.
“BS. You were sucking face. I saw you. And you’re made up like a Barbie.”
“We went to the school reunion together. I had to go with him. I made a promise.”
“Oh please. You made me a promise too. You didn’t have to go. You didn’t see me there, did you?”
I put my hands on my hips. “And why not? I thought you’d jump at the chance to wallow in your former iron-grill glory.”
“It’s called the gridiron.”
“Whatever.”
Mettle plopped onto the couch as if sustaining the argument had sucked the energy out of him. “I didn’t go to the reunion because while you were down in New York pretending to be too good for Dark Haven, I was still here, hauling this town’s elephant poo down to the slammer. I’ve either arrested or cited half of those corn logs. Imagine every time you pull someone over, you recognize them from high school. After a while, that takes a toll. There was no need to go and stir up bad feelings and ruin everyone’s night.”
“If you must know, I went as a favor,” I said.
“A favor to who? Kendall?”
“You mean whom. And yes, it was Kendall.”
“Why? Did he forget one of his Barbie accessories?”
“That’s my business.”
“Fine, if you want to play it like that, maybe the next time I risk my job to pass you the dirt on an ongoing investigation, I keep my lips sealed.”
“Oh, grow up,” I said.
“You grow up.”
The pyramid of kindling he had assembled to get the fire going collapsed and a puff of embers and flaming rose petals blew onto the hearth and changed the room from orange to purple. He might’ve been good at getting the fire started, but he wasn’t very good at keeping it going.
“Here’s the truth: I agreed to go with Kendall because he saved your butt from the assault charges.”
Mettle’s face fell. “He did what?”
“You heard me. The chief didn’t just let you off the hook.”
“Kendall talked to Herrick?”
“Yes.”
On the table, the candles had also lost their reason to keep burning and the flames plunged suicidally into the pool of liquid wax surrounding the wicks.
“Great, now I feel like an idiot,” Mettle said quietly.
“Good,” I said. “You should. That’s how idiots feel.”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “You didn’t have to kiss him, though, did you? You didn’t have to get all made up like that.”
“I didn’t kiss him. He kissed me.”
“But you didn’t punch him afterward. That’s how I know you liked it. You might as well have frenched him.”
“Is that what you do whenever a boy kisses you? You punch him in the face?”
“Yes, er—no fair, you know what I mean.”
I danced a jig in front of him. “Are you jealous, Mr. Mettle boy?”
“Shut up. No.”
I kept dancing. “You’re jealous. I can see your arms twitching. You’ve been flexing this whole time.”
“I’m about to slap you, Casket.”
“Go ahead. Hashtag Double Standard. How do you think you made me feel when you were making out with Bella?”
Mettle touched his lips as if remembering what she tasted like. “I’m sorry, okay? Let’s drop it now. I’m big enough to admit defeat.”
“You’re what?”
“I said I’m sorry. What else do you want?”
I reached into my purse for my phone. “I want this confession on the record,” I said. I dug deeper and then remembered my phone had gone missing. “Right. My phone is missing. I had it last when I submitted my information to the state’s website. Then, when I was getting dressed…”
“Maybe it’s somewhere in the house,” he said and took out his phone and called my number.
Sure enough, from somewhere upstairs, there came a faint ring.
“Bingo,” he said. He got off the couch and headed for the stairs.
“Wait, wait,” I said heading after him. I couldn’t remember if I had left any sensitive articles of clothing in plain view. “I’ll go up first.”
“Nonsense,” he said.
I slipped out of my heels and ran up after him, the stairs protesting under both of our weights at once.
The phone kept ringing. At the top of the stairs, Mettle made an immediate left and went straight into my room.
“Matt, hol
d on.”
He flipped on the light, but stopped inside the door frame. On the bed, I had laid out ten different pairs of underwear, all in order of diminishing fabric, from granny briefs near my pillow, down to a teeny-tiny g-string at the foot of the bed.
He pointed at the g-string. “I didn’t think that was your style.”
My face flushed as bright as an exit sign. “It’s not. An old boyfriend bought it for me. I’ve never worn it.”
He examined the lineup as if they were suspects at the police station. “So which of these did you choose for a night with the Ken Doll?”
“Obviously, there’s a gap in the middle.”
“I’ll say,” he said.
I pointed to the bed. “No, the middle of the bed. You happy?”
Mettle shrugged. “Personally, I would have gone with the last one. That way, if you get something stuck in your teeth, you’ve got some backup floss.”
By now the phone had stopped ringing. “Call it again, will you?”
He called the number and the granny shorts lit up in blue. In my haste, I must have accidentally left the phone behind.
“There you go,” he said. He went to pick up my underwear.
“Put them down, what are you doing?”
“Relax, Casket. Obviously, you can choose the right undies for your date with Mr. Plastic, but you’re too frazzled to take the proper safety precautions, so I’m going to load a tracking app on here so this never happens again. Capeesh?”
“I guess.”
He handed me the phone so I could enter my password. “Mark my words, you’ll thank me one day.”
19
After the thumb-stressed exhaustion of installing the tracking app on my phone, Mettle said he didn’t have the energy to drive right back to his “bunghole” of an apartment south of Bangor, so he relit the faintly glowing wicks at the kitchen table and took the cold chicken breast out of the oven and carved it into grossly uneven slices.
“I need the extra protein,” he said.
Then he poured two glasses of cheap wine.
I eyed the red liquid.
“I shouldn’t.”
“This bottle cost me seven bucks, Casket.”
“You saw what happened to me last time.”
“I don’t drink alone,” he said as a matter of fact.
But before I had a chance to apologize, he poured both glasses down the drain. “I get it. My dad had a drinking problem. Every time the game was on, a case of Coors would disappear. He never left any for me.” Then he turned around, smiled, and raised an empty glass to the cobwebs in the cabinets. “To Herrick’s chin.”
“Indeed.”
He delivered the plates of chicken to the table.
“No sides?” I asked.
“Sides are all carbs,” he said. He had to pull the chair three feet away from the table to fit his massive body anywhere remotely close to the edge. He stuffed his mouth and said, “So read any good things lately?”
I ate slowly, a holdover from past dates where I didn’t want to look like a pig. I got the feeling in Mettle’s presence I would always be a skimpy eater. “Things?”
“You know, those things with pages.”
“Books?”
“I guess.”
“No. You?”
Already finished eating, he pushed his plate aside. “Since I’m suspended, I thought I’d read that Russian Dolls-Toy this afternoon.”
“Tolstoy?”
“It’s pretty good.”
My students would often pull something similar. Amused, I said, “Oh yeah? Which part did you like the most?”
His face scrunched. “The part when Anna tries to get on the train.”
“You mean Anna Karenina?
“Yes, that was her name.”
“And what was the name of the book?”
“I read so many books I can’t remember.”
“I see,” I said. Obviously, he had spent two minutes looking up a summary to impress me, but I decided not to embarrass him. There was always a delicate line between teaching and humiliating. “That’s one of my favorites too.”
He grinned and got up and took both our plates to the sink. “We’ve got an early morning tomorrow. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sleep on the couch tonight.”
I didn’t bother telling him that ever since the spread in Marie Claire, the couch had become a public couch. He might as well have slept in a bus station. In fact, some mornings when I was vacuuming, I’d find a whole evidence locker of curly hairs between the cushions.
“Suit yourself,” I said.
He headed into the living room and plopped onto the couch and sprawled out. “Goodnight, Casket. Don’t let the red bugs bite.”
“Very funny,” I said. I went upstairs and locked myself in the safety of my bedroom. I listened hard for a few minutes. I could have sworn I heard him breathing, but it must have been my imagination.
I was so tired I couldn’t remember falling asleep.
The next morning, when I came back downstairs, Mettle had already vacated the couch. I made myself a mug of tea and went to the window and watched as he did some kind of caveman routine in the backyard.
With a log over his shoulders like a giant yoke, he did lunges and other exercises guaranteed to make sitting on the toilet the next day really painful. If I were him, I would have just waited until my suspension was up and done my sweating in the comfort of the great indoors.
But one had to hand it to Matt Mettle; he was dedicated to his workouts. That was one of the things that always bugged me about the heroes in the movies; no one got a body like his without putting in the hours.
On the other hand, if only he’d spend half as much time dedicated to police work, we might have a few more leads in my sister’s case.
When he came back inside, he was sweating despite the morning cold. His legs were wobbly, his thighs pulsing, and he had to hold onto the wall for support.
Tucked under his free arm was a bundle of clothing. I eyed the change of clothes as suspiciously as if he had come for the night armed with a toothbrush.
“You mind if I take a shower?” he said.
I felt like I was trapped in a scenario for a bad porno. “It’s upstairs.”
Mettle waddled past the living room and grabbed the stair railing for support.
“You going to make it?”
“I’ll be okay. I gave the quads Vietnam this morning. You gotta show your body who’s boss.”
I watched him labor to pull himself up the stairs. It looked like he was making a summit attempt after three days of mountain climbing.
“Those quads better follow orders later today,” I said. “We don’t want Dimitri to think you’re quaking in your booties.”
At Thomaston, God seemed surprised to see me roll up to his booth in a police cruiser.
“I hope you left the matches at home, Miss Casket,” he said. He turned to Mettle. “Be careful with this one, man. She’s a real firebrand.”
Mettle giggled, the stripes on his uniform bouncing with his shifting muscles. “Careful, man, or the smoke’s on you.”
God laughed so hard he coughed up donut powder and had to brush it off his massive boobs. “What’s the plan today? A hex? A burst of lightning?”
“Very funny,” I said. “Can we go inside or not?”
God checked his computer and then said, “Yeah, yeah,” and waved us through.
We parked in the same lot.
Mettle left his Leatherman and phone in the cruiser and I left my handbag. As we headed for the entrance, I tried to walk casually by his side. We were just two friends about to pay another friend a visit. I had visited the prison enough times now to feel like an old pro, but I could see Mettle’s hand shaking as he pulled open the door for me.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered.
He made a fist. “Nothing. I worked the biceps a little too hard this morning, that’s all.”
“I thought it was a leg day.�
��
“Push and pull,” he said.
I bit my tongue. Out of respect, I didn’t push my suspicions. His shaky hand couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the fact that we were visiting the same scumbag who had made out with his girlfriend and sponsored the trip that had gotten her killed, now could it?
At the first checkpoint, the corrections officer told us to empty our pockets and leave our keys in the locker.
“No keys,” Mettle said.
“No keys?”
“Nope. It’s one of those fancy, app-controlled ignitions,” Mettle lied.
“In a cruiser?”
“Yup,” Mettle said.
“And yet they couldn’t manage to give me a raise, could they?” the guard said.
“You and me both, brother,” Mettle said.
After passing security, we entered the visitation room, the same room I had visited before. The guards seemed a little spooked by my presence, for they had us sit in the station directly in the middle of the room instead of at the end.
I tried not to look toward the booth where I had sat before, worried I might see Phyllis’s ashy remains. There were no other visitors, nor inmates, and except for the two guards in the corner and the security cameras, we had the room completely to ourselves.
I closed my eyes before sitting on the metal stool and tried to push the image of Phyllis Martins’ flailing, flaming arms out of mind.
The guard brought another stool for Mettle.
“If these were urinals, I would not have chosen this booth,” Mettle whispered.
“Me neither,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you know urinal etiquette?”
“Maybe I’ve been tucking.”
His head snapped to look at me. “You’ve what?”
“You heard me.”
“You better not be tucking,” he whispered harshly.
“Why not? Would that be a deal breaker for you?”
“Of course!”