Too Much Blood

by Jane Bennett Munro

  Hal groaned. “Christ. I’ve been such a jerk. I’m so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “I already have,” I said. “Now let me ask you something. Here you are, all day long, all week long, surrounded by young, nubile, gorgeous college girls, some of whom have crushes on you because you’re so goddamn handsome. Have I ever complained about that? What if I made you choose between me and your job? Huh? How about that?”

  Hal looked at me for a long moment before he spoke. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know what got into me. You’re absolutely right. It’s been hard, this week. I’m not sure how to handle all this.” He reached out and pulled me into his lap.

  I looked around and noticed that Mum had discreetly disappeared. “You mean discovering that you had a nineteen-year old daughter and that your wife might be having an affair with a cop? Hell, what kind of a man couldn’t handle that?”

  He pulled me close. “One who loves you very much.”

  The kitchen door slammed, and Bambi rushed into the living room, face flushed and hair flying. She stopped short at the sight of us, hooking long strands of it out of her eyes with her thumbs. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

  Hal released me, and I resumed my seat on the arm of the chair. “Not at all. What’s going on?” I asked.

  “You’ll never guess what just happened!”

  Chapter 21

  A chiel’s amang ye takin’ notes,

  And faith, he’ll prent it.

  —Robert Burns

  Mum came quietly down the stairs and resumed her seat on the couch.

  “The cops arrested Ruthie,” Hal said.

  Disappointed, Bambi flopped into my recliner. “How did you know?”

  “He didn’t, not really,” I said. “But we thought they might.”

  “But why?” Bambi asked. “What’s she supposed to have done?”

  “Murdered her husband,” I said, “and tried to murder Kathleen Burke and the children.”

  “Dear me,” Mum said. “Are you sure, kitten?”

  “I don’t believe it,” Bambi said. “Who says so?”

  “Me, I’m afraid,” I told her. “We’ve got lab tests that prove it.”

  “But Ruthie wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Bambi protested. “How could you do that to her, Toni?”

  “It’s her job,” Hal said. “If she has reason to suspect foul play, she has to tell the police. Otherwise, she could go to prison for obstructing justice or suppressing evidence. They could even consider her an accessory to the crime.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” I said.

  “But Ruthie just doesn’t look like a murderer,” she said. “She’s so … cuddly.”

  “No,” I agreed. “Murderers look like anybody else. You can’t tell by looking at them.”

  “Do you know for sure that Ruthie did it?” Mum asked.

  “No, not for sure. What I do know is that Ruthie’s husband and Kathleen and the kids were given an overdose of certain drugs and that Ruthie has those drugs in her possession and had the opportunity to use them.”

  “Blimey,” Mum remarked.

  “Means, motive, and opportunity,” Bambi chanted. “They always say that in murder mysteries. But what was her motive?”

  “Money, I suspect,” Hal said. “There’s a shitload of it involved in this case.”

  “Do you like murder mysteries, Bambi?” I asked.

  “I love ’em,” she said. “I’m always reading them, and I love crime shows. I wish I could do some of those things they do on CSI and NCIS. I’d like to be Abby!”

  “Why can’t you?” Hal asked. “You’re in college. No time like the present.”

  “I’m not smart enough,” she said, eyes downcast.

  “Who the hell told you that?” Hal roared.

  Bambi cringed. “Nobody. But my grades suck. So I’m not smart.”

  “Were you smart in high school?” I asked.

  “Not really,” Bambi said, with a slightly sheepish grin. “My grades sucked there too, but I partied a lot, so I guess I deserved them.”

  “What are you studying now?” I asked.

  “I’m a math major,” she said.

  Math? Shit, no wonder, I thought. “Why math?”

  “I got better grades in that than anything else in high school,” she said, “so I figured I’d do okay. But I’m not. Professor Sanders says I need to pick another major, because I don’t have what it takes.”

  “Professor Sanders? Gary Sanders?” Hal bellowed. He snapped his recliner into the upright position and leaped to his feet. “That jerk? That overbearing, pompous excuse for a human being? The man is a blithering idiot! How dare he talk to you like that! Why, he can’t even—”

  “Hal,” I said, anxious to prevent further diatribe. I felt pretty sure the next words would be hold his liquor, and Bambi didn’t need to know that about one of her professors. “We get the point.”

  Hal paced the living room, fuming, while Bambi dug herself even further into the soft cushions of my recliner. “She’s smart, goddamnit! Didn’t I tell you she was smart? I interviewed six candidates who wanted to be my lab assistant, and she was smarter than all of them put together. Who the fuck does that dickhead Sanders think he is?”

  “Hal, darling, do calm down,” my mother urged. “You’ll give yourself a stroke.”

  “Hal doesn’t like Dr. Sanders very much,” I said.

  “Yes, dear,” Mum said. “I can tell. Do you know why?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” I told her. “He said some rather uncomplimentary things about Hal and me at the faculty Christmas party.”

  Bambi had come out of the cushions and looked at Hal and me with new respect. “Did Hal punch his lights out?”

  “Not quite,” I began, but Hal interrupted me.

  “The man was drunk,” he said. So much for discretion. “So I took him outside, and he got sick, and then his wife took him home.”

  “Eeuuww,” Bambi said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t take what he says so seriously, then.”

  “I should say not,” Mum said.

  Hal sat down in his recliner and cranked it all the way back. “You’re right, Fiona, I do need to calm down. Bambi, if it’s your desire to work in forensics, there are courses at the college. If you don’t want to do math anymore, that’s something you can try. I can even introduce you to someone on the police force who can help you with that.”

  “Bet it won’t be Bernie Kincaid,” I remarked to nobody in particular.

  “Definitely not him,” Hal said.

  “Which one is he,” Bambi asked, “the short dark one or the tall blond one?”

  “The short dark one,” I said.

  “Oh good,” Bambi said, “because the tall blond one is sooo cute! But he didn’t even notice me.”

  Spoken with the righteous pique of one who always gets noticed by guys. I attempted to soothe her ruffled feathers. “Well, I suppose there was a lot going on, and they were preoccupied with Ruthie.”

  The doorbell rang again, and Mum opened the door to admit Jodi, who made a beeline for the bar. “I need a drink,” she announced. Hal started to get up, but she waved him back. “I can get it; I know where everything is.”

  She fixed herself a scotch and soda and joined Mum on the couch. “Jesus. What a zoo. I had to get out of there for a while.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “Bambi says the police arrested Ruthie.”

  “Not exactly,” Jodi said. “They wanted her to come to the station and make a statement.”

  “Did she go quietly?” I asked.

  “Not hardly,” Jodi replied. “She cried and screamed and carried on and ended up punching Lieutenant Kincaid in the nose.”

  �
��Oh, no!” I said.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Hal remarked.

  “Oh, it was messy,” Jodi said. “It bled all over the place. Well, then, of course, they did have to arrest her for assaulting an officer. They took her out of there in handcuffs.”

  “I hope they don’t forget why they wanted her to come to the station in the first place,” I said.

  Jodi took a healthy swig of her drink and leaned back among the cushions. She kicked off her shoes. “Ah, yes, the statement. And I suppose you know what that’s all about?”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” I said and told her about the results of the lab tests.

  She nearly choked on her scotch. “Oh, my God. You’ve got to be kidding. She poisoned Kathleen and the kids? She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have. Would she? Why would she want to do something like that?”

  “She poisoned Lance too,” I said.

  “No,” Jodi protested.

  “Love or money,” Hal said. “It’s usually one or the other.”

  “I’d guess money, in this case,” I said. “This case is absolutely swimming in it. Those wills, for example.”

  “Surely,” Mum said, “they’ve figured out which one is the legal one by now.”

  “They have,” I said. “Jay’s second will. But surely Lance has a will, and Kathleen, and Ruthie. Maybe we need to find out what’s in those wills … and speaking of that, I still don’t know about the safes or file cabinets in Jay and Lance’s office. Bernie was going to ask Roy Cobb about that and get back to me, and he never did. Maybe I should call him—”

  Then I got a look at Hal’s face. “Later,” I finished.

  “Wise choice, darling,” Mum said.

  Jodi drained her drink. “Well, I’d better get back over there,” she said. “Elliott will be needing a break from all the rug rats.”

  “Hey,” I said, struck by a sudden thought, “did you ever get one of those ladders?”

  “You mean the ones for getting out of your house if there’s a fire?”

  “Yes. Did you?”

  “No, not yet. Why? Do you think I need one?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “You’ve got the Burkes in your house now, and every house they’ve been in since Jay died has been burned down.”

  “Oh, jeez. You’re right.”

  “Home Depot’s open till six.”

  “I’ll send Elliott down there right now.”

  The evening passed quietly. Bambi went back over to Jodi and Elliott’s, and Mum and Hal and I watched TV. I couldn’t have said what the programs were; I was completely immersed in my own thoughts.

  I came out of my reverie when Hal turned off the TV and suggested that we all go to bed, since it had been a hell of a long day and we could all use the sleep.

  Hal and I settled into bed and snuggled together as comfortably as if nothing had happened. He put his arms around me and held me tight. I assumed that we’d just go right to sleep, but Hal started talking.

  “Toni. Can you ever forgive me for what I’ve put you through?”

  I pulled away and sat up, plumping my pillows behind me. “I already have, I told you. But I’m wondering if there’s something I’ve done to you.”

  Hal sat up too. “Done to me? What do you mean?”

  “Was there something missing in our marriage? Is there something I could have fixed? Or were you just having a midlife crisis?”

  Did men really have midlife crises, or was that just a convenient sociological excuse for them to wander? In other words, was this something common to males that had nothing whatever to do with the adequacy of their wives in bed?

  Hal looked confused. “Missing? Midlife crisis? Do you still think Bambi and I were having an affair? I thought you believed me when I said we weren’t.”

  “I did. I do. But you said you did think about it. And you were cold and distant with me, and we hardly ever had sex anymore. Was that all because everybody was teasing you at work, or were you really missing something at home?”

  Hal slid down in bed and rolled over on his side, propping his head on his hand. “I was distracted by what was going on at work, like I told you; and I didn’t want to talk about it. But you kept asking what was wrong, and I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “So that’s why you got pissed off at me so much?”

  “Well, honey, I’m not the only one who got pissed off, you know. You’ve been snapping at me a lot more than you used to too. What was bothering you? What were you missing that you thought about having an affair with Bernie Kincaid?”

  “Sex,” I said. “I was missing sex. You never wanted it. I was terminally horny.”

  Hal looked thunderstruck. “That’s it? Sex?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “How could you not know? I was practically waving it in your face. I did everything but parade around naked wrapped in Saran Wrap. You completely ignored me.” My voice quavered. Tears threatened.

  Hal reached for me and pulled me close. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own problems that I never noticed yours. I’m so sorry, honey. The fact is that sex was the last thing I wanted to think about with all that was going on at work.”

  “Including sex with Bambi.”

  “Including that.”

  “Then our marriage has been safe all along. I didn’t need to worry.”

  Hal held me tight. “You didn’t, and you never will, if I have anything to say about it.”

  I hugged him back, and he kissed me.

  “I really want to make love to you now, honey, but I’m exhausted.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  “In the morning,” he suggested.

  “It’s a date,” I murmured.

  A frantic pounding on the bedroom door unceremoniously jerked Hal and me from a sound sleep.

  Hal had enough presence of mind to turn on a light, but before he could even put a foot to the floor, the door opened and a distraught Bambi burst in and leaped onto the bed, displacing animals in all directions.

  “Hal! Toni! There’s a fire!”

  So much for morning sex.

  Chapter 22

  There’s husbandry in heaven;

  Their candles are all out.

  —Shakespeare, Macbeth

  Mum, in her green bathrobe, followed at a much more sedate pace and was nearly knocked ass-over-teakettle by Killer in a mad dash for the stairs, with Geraldine and Spook right behind him.

  “My stars and garters!” she exclaimed, clutching the doorjamb to steady herself. “Sorry to disturb you, my dears, but the house next door is on fire, don’t you know.”

  Jesus. I squinted at my bedside clock radio. Three-thirty in the morning. A childhood rhyme danced through my mind: everywhere the Burkes went, fire was sure to go. In the hallway behind Mum, orange light flickered from the guestrooms that faced the Maynards’ house, the rooms Mum and Bambi occupied.

  Hal called 9-1-1 from the phone in the hall. “They’re on the way,” he told us as he hung up, but he needn’t have, because I could already hear sirens. I got out of bed and pulled my black sweats on over my pajamas, but not before the doorbell rang. Here we go again, I thought. Hell of a vacation this turned out to be.

  It was déjà vu all over again. By the time Hal, Mum, and I got down the stairs, Bambi had opened the door to admit all the Burkes, Tiffany and Emily, and all the Maynards in pajamas, bathrobes, and snow boots, everyone shivering and pinch-faced from cold. Each child carried an armful of clothing and stuffed animals. Emily and Angela were both crying, and Megan and Julie looked like they wanted to. Killer went up to Angela and licked her face, and she put her arms around him and buried her face in his soft fur. The older kids had their school
backpacks, the women carried armloads of clothing and bedding, and Elliott, I was glad to see, carried sleeping bags for the children, including the ones they’d borrowed from us. The fire department had arrived, and firefighters were already swarming over the hook-and-ladder truck, carrying hoses and ladders toward the house.

  “That chain ladder worked great,” Jodi said, dumping her load on the living room floor. “We even had time to throw bedding and clothes out the window before we got out. There’s still some more out there where we threw it.”

  “I’ll get it,” Bambi said, and sprinted out the door.

  “That child is barefooted,” Mum observed. “And there’s snow on the ground. Shouldn’t we …”

  “She’ll be okay,” Hal reassured her. “She’ll be back before she has a chance to freeze a toe,” and by the time he finished the sentence, Bambi was back with an armload and barely out of breath. “That’s all of it,” she told Jodi and added it to the pile by the door.

  “Hey, Shapiro, we need a fire here,” Elliott said, unmindful of the irony. “These kids are freezing.”

  Together they went out to the garage and brought back armloads of firewood. Within minutes a cheery fire crackled in the fireplace, while I prepared coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for the kids. With everybody helping, the kids—with bellies full of hot chocolate—were soon snugly ensconced in their sleeping bags by the hearth with their own pillows and stuffed animals. Jodi and Elliott took the couch and recliner, while Bambi moved her things into Mum’s room, and Kathleen and Tiffany shared Bambi’s bed.

  We had bedded down a total of eighteen people in this old house and had used up every bit of bedding we had, plus everything the Maynards had.

  By now it was after five, and I was just sinking into a nice, warm, soft place somewhere between drowsiness and coma, when an unwelcome thought jerked me awake.

  What if the firebug targeted this house next?

  Shit. Why hadn’t I asked Jodi to get a ladder for us too?

  So much for going back to sleep.

  Sunday, December 21