After 30 minutes of waiting, Bertie ordered a double mud pie with extra whipped cream. She knew it was rich enough to make her sick on an empty stomach, but her nerves needed a shot of chocolate.
Her mouth was full of pie when she heard a soft, “Hello, Bertie.”
John Gardener. She hadn’t seen him come in. He pulled out a white wrought-iron chair and sat while Bertie wiped chocolate dribble from the corners of her mouth. He had a nasty bruise on his chin where she’d decked him with her purse. It was starting to swell and turn reddish-purple.
“Why are you stalking me?” she asked him.
“I wasn’t stalking you. I wanted to talk to you, and I didn’t know how to meet you again .. I guess I did it all wrong, didn’t I?” He looked down, abashed, but Bertie saw him sneaking a look at her through his dark lashes. It was a calculating look, gauging how much of his ingenuous explanation she was buying.
“That was you outside my apartment in the middle of the night, wasn’t it? You don’t call that stalking”
“I only came over once or twice when I was in that part of town,” he answered. “Honest, that’s it.” The high-profile police patrols on her street would’ve kept him away after that, Bertie thought.
“So why were you lurking there tonight? You scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m so sorry, Bertie. It’s just that you remind me of my mother, and I don’t know any nice girls. Please, can’t we just talk for a little bit?”
She was suspicious, but curious enough to want to find out what he wanted to say. “`OK, how are you doing?” she asked.
“Things are going OK considering I’m the prime suspect in old man Bellingham’s murder. But the police aren’t hassling me anymore, and as long as my alibi holds up, I’m safe.”
“Alibi, as in Delia Bellingham?”
“Yes,” he answered. Bitterness layered his voice. “She went back to that fat fuck R2, but at least she’s sticking to the truth about where she was and what she doing, which gets me off the hook. She said she really loves R2 and that she was just seeing me to steal back everything I’d taken from the old man. How stupid am I? I couldn’t figure out how things I took from the house kept going missing. Now I know, don’t I?” Again, he looked down at the table.
A waitress finally appeared and he ordered a root beer float. “My mom used to take me to places like this when I was a kid,” he said. “I love it here.”
A small baby at the next table started to wail, but he didn’t seem to hear it, lost in his reverie of simpler times when his father was really his father and his mother still the good woman he thought she was. Bertie could feel her sympathies slowly igniting again. She cursed herself for falling for his little-boy-lost routine again.
“It must have hurt to hear Delia say that.”
“Yeah, but it took a lot of balls for her to tell me to my face. And I really do believe that she loves R2, weird as it sounds. Don’t get me wrong, she had a good time with me, and how many women get the go-ahead from their father-in-law to have an affair with the gardener? But I hope she’s happy.” He sounded wistful. Bertie was sure the relationship had been more than lust for him.
“Are you any further along in proving that Bellingham is your father?”
“Oh, Lester’s still plugging away, but I don’t see him getting anywhere. He could just be running up his bill in case we win.”
“If you feel that way, why don’t you get another lawyer?”
“Lester’s OK. He’s enough of a crook to get me what’s mine. I don’t want any of those guys who play by the rules. The Bellinghams play rough.” His jaw was clenched so hard that Bertie could see bone under the taut skin.
The waitress bopped back to the table and delivered Gardener’s root beer float. She smiled at him as she put it in front of him, and he smiled back. A big smile back. The pink embroidery on her blouse proclaimed that her name was Patsy.
“Thanks, Patsy,” he said. She walked away, but sneaked a peek at him over her shoulder. Cheeze, where did these kids learn to act like bad B-movie actresses?
Bertie forged on. “Where are you living now? You’re not still in the cottage on the estate, are you?”
“And be their servant? No way! I’m working for my uncle and he’s letting me live with him in his big estate up in the Hills. He’s training me to take over when he kicks. He’s a nice guy.”
“What does he do?”
“It’s hard to explain. He was named trustee of a nonprofit foundation when the old lady who started it died. He’s continuing her good works, is what he says. Get this: He gets all her money to keep ducks out of parks and places like that. I don’t get it but...”
Bertie almost spit out the chocolate and whipped cream she’d just crammed into her mouth.
“WHAT?”
“Yeah, I know, weird.”
Dear batty old Aunt Bertha. Bertie could feel her stomach curling around the rich dessert.
“Yeah, weird,” she managed to choke out.
“But Bertie, the reason why I wanted to talk to you... I was wondering...I was hoping...”
“What?” she asked, impatiently. She hoped he wasn’t going to hit her up for a loan. Ha! Talk about barking up the wrong moneyless, duck-free tree.
“Would you go out with me? I mean on a real date, not like this.” A second shock ran through Bertie, too soon after the first one about his uncle. She swallowed hard; her mind raced while she tried to think up an excuse that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.
“Wow! Umm, I had no idea, I’m really flattered,” she said.
“So that means you’ll go?”
The truth sounded like a good way to go, but Bertie wasn’t accustomed to the truth in situations like this.
“I’d love to, John” (OK, not the whole truth) “but it would be unethical for me to date someone involved in a story that the paper has written about, and will probably write about again.”
His face turned into stone. A cold silence stretched out between them.
“What you really mean is that you wouldn’t date a gardener, right? A gardener who might’ve killed someone, right?” His voice was raised and the baby, who’d quieted down, let out another wail.
So much for the truth.
“No, that’s not why. I told you why. Reporters aren’t like other people.”
“Don’t patronize me,” he said in a snarl. “I know what reporters are like, especially bitches like you.” His face, contorted in a mask of rage, was turning red. “Lester was right about you.”
Bertie was suddenly very, very frightened. He was capable of killing Robert Bellingham and he’d been stalking her. She pulled the shoe out of her bag, and stood. She held it up, spike heel toward his face. He started to laugh.
She was going to tell him to get out of her life or she was calling the police, but the stress of the past few weeks added to this crazy encounter was too much.
She opened her mouth to speak and instead vomited all over the table, his black T-shirt and jeans. And his coat, she noticed.
He jumped up, strings of chocolate vomit hanging off his body.
The place went quiet, with waitresses standing frozen in place like statues as Bill Haley continued wailing about that damn clock. Bertie stood there, horrified. She hadn’t thrown up in public since the day in kindergarten she’d eaten three red crayons. Or was that in college?
The smell was horrendous. He reached for a glass of water and threw it down his front. Then he started retching. He grabbed his coat and ran out. The last she saw of him, he was pounding down the street as fast as he could go.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“You puked on him?” Bertie could hear the laughter in Kate’s voice.
After barfing on Gardener, she’d tipped the waitress and the bus boy $20 each to clean up the mess and fled, leaving her shoe behind. It had been a real Cinderella evening all ’round.
She’d come home to three messages from Katie, the last one almost frantic. She checked the c
ell phone in her purse and discovered the evening’s jostling had inadvertently shut it off. Big fat help it was; she’d have to get a cover for it or risk accidentally calling Japan.
“It was horribly embarrassing,” Bertie said.
“But so effective. I would’ve loved to have been there, although it was a horrible waste of chocolate.” Katie started laughing out loud and Bertie joined in.
“You should’ve seen his face,” Bertie got out between gulps of laughter. “Not to mention his clothes.”
“We’ve got to remember vomit the next time we want to get rid of a guy,” Kate said. It set them off laughing again.
“Bertie, seriously, you’ve got to stop taking chances like this,” Katie said.
“I wasn’t really taking a chance; I met him in a well-lighted restaurant with lots of people around. Lots of people, all of whom saw me throw up on him. And he wasn’t really stalking me. Rich women have been throwing themselves at him for years, but I don’t think he’s ever actually dated anyone. He doesn’t know how to ask a woman out.”
“You’re being awfully nice about the whole thing. You were scared, right?”
“Yeah, but he’d already been rejected by Delia Bellingham, then me. Two women in a row must’ve been too much for him.”
“You hope that’s all it was. If she turns up dead, we’ll know that he’s not the puppy of a person you think he is.”
“Dead?” Bertie asked.
“Dead.”
Bertie lay in her bed later that night, the street light outside her bedroom window casting a golden steeple across the carpet. A car horn made a muted bleat. She was tired; more than tired, exhausted. The fear/boredom cycle had left her thinking, “When I least expect it, that’s when I should expect it.” “It” remained undefined.
Her thoughts kept churning. She hoped she wasn’t wrong about John Gardener. Kate’s remark about Delia Bellingham had shaken her perception of him as a muscle lollipop: A sweet sucker with no bite to him.
“But I just can’t see him killing someone,” she said out loud. She really had to get a cat, anything that would listen to her when she started talking to herself. Did goldfish have ears? They’d be less trouble.
“Stop it!” she said sternly, forcing herself into silence.
Delia Bellingham would be a target for Gardener if Bertie wasn’t so convinced that he was in love with her. R2, now there was a real walking bull’s-eye. Get rid of R2 and he could have Delia and a better chance of inheriting some money.
Inheriting money! Bertie sat up in bed. She’d forgotten all about Gardener’s uncle and Aunt Bertha’s money. She wished she’d remember to share the information with Kate, who for all her sweetness-and-light facade, preferred to see the worst in people. “I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking and doesn’t have the balls to say,” Kate was wont to say. She also had quite a potty mouth.
“If this was a book, no one would ever believe that I’d run into the nephew of the man who stole the family’s inheritance, in a city of umpty-ump millions,” Bertie thought, lying back down again.
She decided to check up on Gardener’s uncle tomorrow, if she could find him. All that money could attract the worst kind of people, just look at the Bellinghams, and she hated to see Aunt Bertha’s dough frittered away on something less important than duck segregation.
And she wanted to ask Unc’s help in keeping his nephew away from her. The thought of reinforcements finally lulled her to sleep.
Bertie scoured the phone book the next morning looking for a number that sounded like a match to her aunt’s vision of a duckless society. She got sidetracked by a listing for “Down—With Ducks,” which turned out to be a pillow factory, but hit pay dirt with Sitting Ducks.
“Hello, I’m looking for the, um, proprietor,” Bertie said.
“Who is calling?” The voice reminded Bertie of the butlers in old movies, very Victorian and correct.
“This is Bertie Mallowan.”
“Bertie Mallowan?” Shock was evident in the man’s voice.
“I’m looking for John Gardener’s uncle. May I please speak with him?”
“This is he. I’m Bernard Gardener. Did you say your name is Bertie Mallowan?”
“Yes, Mr. Gardener. I realize this is a strange phone call, but, I don’t know how to say this, but I’m having a problem with your nephew.”
“I’m so terribly sorry,” he said. “What has he done?”
Bertie gave him an abbreviated version, casting herself in the best light possible.
“I will make sure he doesn’t bother you anymore, my dear. Again, I’m so sorry. My sister spoiled him so thoroughly that sometimes I wonder if there is any hope for him. You know of his, uh, current circumstances?”
“That he’s a suspect in the murder of Robert Bellingham? Yes, sir, I do.”
“If you saw him last night, then that explains why he took my car. The police have placed a GPS locator on his truck, and he didn’t want them to know where he was going.”
“He’s still that much of a suspect?”
“Oh yes, I do believe that he’s still the main suspect. We’ve had the police here several times, and they’ve even searched the place. I have no problem with that, I have nothing to hide and if John does, it’s better that it comes out now. But they found nothing.
“John is working here as the maintenance man and gardener on the estate. I think I’ll double his duties. If he wants to stay here—and he does—he’ll be too tired for mischief. He’s really a good boy and responds well to a firm hand.”
“But, if it’s not intruding, I’d like to ask you about your name. Are you related to Bertha Mallowan, the benefactress of our foundation?”
Bertie explained the connection to Gardener’s delight. “My dear,” he said, “you must stop by and see the work we’re doing.”
Bertie didn’t really want to see the suppression of ducks in person, and tried to think of an excuse not to go.
“We’ve gone in a whole new direction from the foundation’s original purpose,” he said in his spindly voice. “Before she died, your aunt decided that rather than keeping ducks out of places, it might be best to work toward keeping them in the wild, where they belong. We work very closely with the Audubon Society now. Once I’m gone, the foundation and its assets will go to the society. Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “That means you’re out of the money once again.”
“No, I accepted that a long time ago. I’m glad that Aunt Bertha got over the whole duck thing. Sort of.”
“Please stop by any time,” he said. “I’d love to show you around. And don’t you worry at all about my nephew. I’ll see to him.”
There was a hint of steel in his voice, and Bertie didn’t think it boded well for John Gardener, the gardener.
Shawn called Saturday and asked, humbly, if he could come over that night. Bertie hesitated. Her relationship, if that was the right word, with Madison was going nowhere. They were always going to bump heads and personalities. She hadn’t heard from him since that night in the bar and didn’t expect to. The fireworks had fizzled.
Shawn, on the other hand, was here. She’d never have serious feelings for him, but he was a friend and he brought his own condoms.
She invited him over for a late dinner.
Bertie fixed pasta with garlic and oil and bought a premade salad and some garlic bread. She wondered if he’d like Moon Pie a la mode for dessert.
He arrived with a bottle of wine and a smile. They talked about the state of journalism (bad, very bad), Nan Shepherd’s breasts (he gave them a thumbs up, she gave him the finger), and what they’d do if they lost their jobs (undecided, since it was unthinkable).
Dinner was leisurely; the sex wasn’t. It was hot, sloppy and satisfying. Silence reigned for five minutes before Bertie, trying to be casual but lacking a good segue, asked, “So, what’s new with the Bellingham case?”
She’d startled him out of his post-sex zombie imitation. “Bellingham? Nothing
as far as I know. Why do you keep asking about it, Bertie? Move on. You got a page one story out of it, but as far as I know, the story is as dead as the old man.”
“What about the famous Fuchs sources? Doesn’t anyone know something that’s off the official record?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Um, I haven’t even talked to a lot of them lately. There doesn’t seem to be much point. The case is going nowhere.”
He rolled over and stood up, reaching for his jeans. “Hey, thanks for dinner, Bertie. And...you know.”
Bertie lay awake for a half hour or so after he left. She was physically sated, but mentally and emotionally she was still hungry. She’d have to make a decision about Shawn soon.
Sigh.
The persistent ringing of the phone woke her. She peeped an eye open and looked at her new clock: 3:21 a.m. What on Earth? It couldn’t be good news at this hour.
She didn’t get a chance to say hello. Kate screeched into the phone: “Bertie, the kennel was robbed again. Gene is chasing the guy in his car, and I’m following in mine. Get up! Take your cell phone. Gene is giving me directions on his cell phone, and I’ll pass them on to you. We’re heading north on Dufresne Boulevard.”
“Katie, don’t do this, call the police. This is dangerous.”
“No, it’s OK; the guy doesn’t even know Gene is following him. You’re right near the boulevard, you can catch up with us. C’mon, Bertie, go.”
Bertie heard tires squealing and then nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Bertie sprinted out of the apartment, pulling a sweatshirt over her head, the legs of her plaid pajama bottoms flapping. The cars in the parking lot looked like rows of coffins to her as she headed toward her parking spot. The beep of the car alarm echoed through the lot, adding to the middle-of-the-night eeriness.
She slammed the key into the ignition and gunned the engine, then realized she didn’t know where to go. She sat there, not sure what to do next.
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