Over Her Head

by Shelley Bates

  Which led to a discussion of home renovations, which led to today’s project, which led to him opening his mouth before his brain could stop him and inviting her over for a cup of coffee.

  And then it was too late to unsay the words. He had no business getting social with the relative of a homicide victim. Granted, she wasn’t a suspect, but at the same time he knew that contact any deeper than the business level was unethical until the case was officially closed.

  He knew that. He knew it, and still he found himself helping her up the bank and through his two neighbors’ laurel hedges and into his own backyard.

  “Oh, how beautiful,” she breathed. “Is all this really yours?”

  From here, you couldn’t see the road. You could almost pretend you were way out in the country, when in fact there were tract homes just across the street and then the backs of the downtown Glendale shops just beyond that.

  “All point-nine-eight acres of it.”

  “You are so lucky,” she said on a sigh. “The closest I get to having green things around me is tomato plants in pots on the balcony. And most of the time they die because I’m always at work.”

  “You’re doing better than I am. I figured I’d go with what was already here and growing without my help.”

  “Black thumb?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried to grow anything, even as a kid.”

  They were almost to the back door. “Try a little pot of herbs for your kitchen window, to start,” she suggested. “Something you use in cooking, like basil or parsley.”

  “Something you might use in cooking.” He held the door for her, and she stepped into the kitchen. “I don’t think ketchup and mustard grow in pots.” He’d make a pot of coffee, since he’d suggested it, and then he’d hustle her out of here and back to her own life, where they’d communicate with each other over a barrier of paperwork and protocol.

  “Mustard does. But then you have the problem of grinding up the seeds and all that before you can put it on your burger.”

  He had to smile at the image. “Are you up for the twenty-five-cent tour?” When she nodded, he went on, “Through here is the living room, and the bathroom where the vanity will go is off the front hall.”

  “I want to see it all. I love other people’s houses. They say so much about them.”

  Now, there was a scary thought. “What does this house say? That I need improving from top to bottom?”

  She paused in the doorway of his bathroom and gazed at him over her shoulder. Her eyes weren’t blue, as he’d thought before. They were the clear green of jade or of a lake at the foot of a glacier.

  “There isn’t a thing about you that needs improving, Deputy.”

  The woman had a knack for saying the most flirtatious things in the most serious way. It could really confuse a man who wasn’t operating as a professional.

  “If you’re standing in my bathroom, the least you can do is call me by my name. Remember? Nick.”

  Everyone called him that, even the drunks he rolled into the tank. Protocol would not be broken if he asked her to do what all the folks in Glendale did, would it?

  “I’ll try to remember.” She turned to look into the tiny room, and he noticed that the tips of her ears had turned red. “So, tell me what you plan to do. Is everything in here staying where it is, or are you going to switch it around?”

  With room logistics, he could be both polite and safe. As they stood in the hall sipping their coffee, he pointed out the changes he planned to make, and then he let slip that the sink and vanity were still out in the truck.

  “Can I see?” But when he took her outside, there was nothing to see other than a cardboard container and plastic wrap. “You’re going to need a hand getting them into the house,” she pointed out. “Why not do it now?”

  “Not a chance,” he told her. “Come back inside where it’s warmer. One of my brothers said he’d come over and give me a hand later.”

  “I’m stronger than I look.” She tugged on the box containing the sink, and it slid down the tailgate. Catching it on one thigh, she hefted it and staggered toward the front door.

  “Hey!” Where had all his resolutions gone? Why wasn’t he putting his foot down? “Tanya, seriously. You don’t need to do this.”

  But her face looked set and determined, and her gaze fixed on the box as she put it down in the hall as if it were the most important thing she had to get right today.

  Maybe it was.

  She looked up. “Let me help you. You’ve been so nice to me and I want to. I—I need to do just one useful, active thing.”

  He couldn’t let her. Not because he was afraid she’d sue him if she dropped his bathroom fixtures on her foot, but because the only people who had ever been in his house were friends and relatives. If she stayed for more than a cup of coffee, he might start feeling as though she were a friend. And he couldn’t afford that right now.

  “You did that,” he told her gently. “Thanks for bringing in the sink.”

  “Let’s go get the vanity.”

  She wove around him and marched back out to the truck, where, strong as she might be physically, the vanity defeated her.

  “Tanya, no.”

  “Don’t argue. Here, get that end and I’ll push.”

  He jumped for it before it tilted off the tailgate onto the ground, and after that he didn’t have much choice but to lug it into the house with her.

  “There.” She dusted off her hands. “What color did you pick?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Look, this has to stop.”

  “What does?”

  “You and me being here. Being social.”

  She stared at him. “Why did you invite me in if you didn’t want to be social?”

  Now it felt as though the tips of his own ears were burning. Why indeed? “I shouldn’t have,” he said slowly, searching for words that wouldn’t wound. “I should have thought before I spoke. Technically, it’s not ethical for me to socialize with a family member directly involved in a case I’m investigating.”

  “You’re not investigating me, are you? I don’t see the problem.”

  How was he going to explain this? “But it could affect how I handle the case. For instance, I might miss something because I was trying too hard to get things wrapped up so I could give you a better report.”

  “Is that very likely? It seems to me you’d be trying hard regardless, wouldn’t you?”

  “I know, but—”

  She stopped him with a raised hand. “I don’t care about ethics. Do you want to know the truth? Just for one day . . . one measly day . . . I wanted to get out of that apartment so I didn’t have to listen to the silence, okay? For one day I wanted to think about something other than the fact that I couldn’t sleep again last night, and I had to get up to her not being there, and the whole reason I don’t have her anymore is because I was a lousy mother and fell asleep. Can you understand that?”

  The torrent of her despair and rage threatened to bowl him over, and he had no lifeline to throw. “Tanya, your falling asleep had nothing to do with this crime. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it.”

  “You say that. But I know different. I know I could have done something.”

  “Listen. Listen to me.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and felt their fragility, the tension in every muscle. “By the time you cashed out and got home, it was already over. Do you hear me? Over. You did not contribute to her death. Someone else is responsible. You can’t keep beating yourself up about it.”

  Under his fingers, her shoulders slumped as the fire went out of her, and he released her.

  “I could have done something,” she whispered. “I could have changed it.”

  “So could I,” he said roughly. “I could have driven a different route that night. I could have started patrol on the east side of town instead of the west. But thinking like that doesn’t buy us anything. It doesn’t change what happened. All we can do with
what we’re dealt is our best.”

  So what if he contravened the professional standards of conduct. Right now he cared about putting some life back into those eyes, even if it was short-lived. A man could do only what he could do.

  “Come on. Help me get the plastic off this vanity.”

  “What about socializing with family members?” Her tone was dull.

  “If you don’t tell, I won’t.”

  He found a knife and a pair of scissors, and she ripped into the plastic wrap and paper around the vanity as though she had a personal grudge against them. They built up a head of steam destroying all the packaging, and then lit into the old vanity, breaking it into pieces with a hammer and a crowbar so they could get it out the door. Then they started on the flooring and consequently discovered what shape the plumbing was in.

  “Write me a list of all the fittings you need, and I’ll go to Susquanny Home Supply,” she panted. “I have a fifteen percent employee discount.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you won’t. If people see you shopping with me, it’ll be all over town by dinnertime that we’re dating, and that won’t reflect well on your ethics. I’ll go alone.”

  By four o’clock that afternoon he’d somehow managed to spend an entire day with her without guilt, and they’d installed the new sink and vanity together.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said as he turned on the sparkling new faucet and watched water come out of it as pretty as you please, “you are one handy woman.”

  She snorted with that complete lack of self-consciousness that he was beginning to understand sprang from a refreshing lack of concern about what anybody thought of her. “You forget that I’ve been on my own for more than twelve years, living in apartments in various stages of disrepair from bad to worse. After Randi’s dad left, I swore I wasn’t going to depend on anybody. I got a book from the library that told me how to stop the toilet from running, and it felt so good to actually do something real that I just kept on learning.” She opened the vanity door and looked at the new plumbing underneath the counter. “I don’t have any real power tools, though. That thing with the faucet kit would’ve stumped me. For a while.”

  “All I have to do now is replace the flooring.”

  “Please don’t pick some horrible linoleum with black checkerboard squares on it. People buy it because it looks retro, but I hate the stuff. We had it in our house growing up.”

  From her tone, bad memories were connected to it all the way around. After their rocky start, they’d had such a good day that he didn’t want to spoil it by getting nosy and asking for details.

  “How about this, then. You pick the lino, and that will guarantee I don’t make a hash of it.”

  She got to her feet and brushed off the thighs of her jeans. “Serious?”

  “Cop’s honor. That way, I get fifteen percent off.”

  Her smile was still elusive, but at least the slump of defeat had gone from her shoulders, and she was moving briskly and with a sense of purpose.

  “I like an honest man. Well, you take the measurements, and I’ll get it tomorrow when I go to work. You can pay me back when I bring it over.”

  “Why not have them deliver it? Save yourself the trouble.”

  She flushed, and the satisfaction faded out of her face. What? What had he said?

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking around for something as if it were vitally important. “It would only be a little piece. I thought it would fit in my car. Of course I—”

  Five seconds too late, he got it. “Tanya, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, no, that’s okay. I’ve used up way too much of your time. Now, where is my—”

  “Used up? Whoa. Hold it right there.” He realized she was trying to find her jacket, which in his experience meant she was about to take off on him, hurt feelings and all, if he didn’t do something fast. “What I meant was, you’ve done so much for me, with your discount card and everything. I didn’t want to put you out any more than I have.”

  “It wouldn’t be putting me out,” she mumbled, but at least she’d stopped eyeballing the entryway, where they’d tossed their jackets over the stair railing.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “It’s after four. Can I interest you in a can of beans?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t—”

  “You’re right, I couldn’t either. How about pizza? In a real restaurant?”

  Her face changed, turned bleak. “Randi loved pizza. We had it so often that I’m probably never going to eat it again. Now that she’s . . . Now.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “It’s not easy. Especially mornings. I’m not scaring up homework, lunch, clean clothes, forms that need signing, all the chaos we were used to. And the funny part is that I miss it. That’s why the quiet around the apartment makes me cry.”

  It was always quiet around his place, too. Sometimes it bugged him; sometimes he liked it. But the quiet here wasn’t the result of a tragedy. It was because he chose to keep it that way.

  “I bet it does.”

  “I mean, I know she’s with God, but I’m never going to get over missing her. And then I wonder if maybe God doesn’t like that. Like I’m criticizing his will.”

  Oh, boy. How did they get here from pizza? And how could they get back—in a hurry?

  “I’m sure that if there is a God, he understands grief, Tanya.”

  “If there is a God? You don’t believe there is?” Those green eyes were wide and concerned, and for the first time he regretted that she was a truthful woman who probably wouldn’t be put off by the smoke screen he usually set off for his cousins.

  He began to pick up the tools on the bathroom floor. “I’ve seen too much of what people do to each other to believe that any all-powerful God is in charge.”

  “What people do is different from what God does.” She moved in the direction of the kitchen, talking over her shoulder. “You forget that people can choose their own actions. God gives them that gift.”

  “I wouldn’t call child abuse a gift.” A handful of screws in his palm, he followed her down the hall.

  “It isn’t, of course, and you know that’s not what I meant. He gives us the ability to choose our course. Some people choose . . . poorly.” Did she know she was quoting from a movie that happened to be one of his favorites? One that, oddly enough, was all about faith—and the quest for truth and family instead of fortune and glory.

  She stood in front of the open refrigerator, looking over his meager stock.

  “Okay, so mostly I eat at the Split Rail,” he said in his own defense. Food—or even the lack of it—was a good subject to talk about. He wanted to get away from the topic of God as fast as possible.

  “A very eclectic selection here,” she said. “I take it you’re not serving Thanksgiving dinner next week?”

  “Uh, no. There are a dozen women in my family, and every one of them invites me for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

  “Lucky you.” Her voice sounded so wistful that something inside him twisted.

  “No family around here?”

  She shook her head. “It would have been Randi and me. If we still lived in Ohio, we might have gone to Daryl’s—to Randi’s father’s people on their farm. But we haven’t lived there for a long time. And I couldn’t afford the gas to get there right now, anyway.”

  He couldn’t imagine not living in Glendale and tripping over relatives every time he turned around. Sometimes they drove him nuts with their matchmaking and sly grins around the dinner table as yet another unexpected female dinner guest dropped over—one who was Christian and conveniently single. But under the bickering and teasing and crowded family events was a bedrock of love so deep he depended on it without even thinking about it.

  Leaving Tanya grieving and alone on Thanksgiving seemed like a crime. But what else could he do? He’d been ignoring protocol all day while he pretended that he was helping her escape her dismal present. In
stead, all he was doing was enjoying himself and closing his eyes to reality.

  A memory flashed through his mind of his brothers, ages thirteen and fifteen, taking the train into Pittsburgh without permission one Saturday night so they could see Pearl Jam. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” they’d told him when they swore him to secrecy. They’d caught big, big trouble when they snuck in at one in the morning, and so had he for not coming clean about it. But while they were all grounded together, his brothers had been jubilant. They’d seen the concert, and that had been worth it.

  When it came to women, he knew his fellow officers would turn a blind eye. His lieutenant might not, but the worst he could do was put a memo in Nick’s file. Big deal.

  A memo . . . stacked against a holiday that might keep the ghosts of regret and grief at bay for an hour. It seemed to him to be a pretty even trade.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” he asked before he could change his mind.

  “Where?” She paused in the middle of pulling a block of cheddar out of the plastic bin on the fridge’s second shelf.

  “To dinner on Thanksgiving, wherever I wind up. Probably Laurie’s. She always makes sure she gets her dibs in by the first of the month.”

  Tanya added two potatoes and a package of bacon to the cheese, and stepped around him to put it all on the counter. “I couldn’t barge in on a family dinner.”

  “You wouldn’t be barging in. Everyone’s welcome there—usually we have twelve or thirteen people. The kids invite a friend, and there’s always a stray somewhere that Colin brings home from the store.”

  One corner of her mouth lifted in wry acknowledgment. “That would be me. The stray of the week.”

  “Tanya.”