Alex pulled her back down onto the bench and then sat down beside her. "Neither you nor your brother should ever consider playing at cards for money, my dear. I can read both your faces quite easily. Tate doesn't have fifty-thousand dollars he can readily convert to cash—and you know it. But remember, Maggie, this is not about sibling rivalry. It's about Evan."
"I do know that. I'm trying not to think about Daddy back there somewhere behind that door, half swallowed up by some horrible orange jumpsuit and sharing a cell with a bunch of Christmas Eve drunks. I'll let Tate off the hook in a moment, post the bail. But would you look at Mom? She's beginning to get a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look. Not that it isn't about time she went a little crazy. She can't believe Daddy's been tossed in jail for parking tickets or littering. Not with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bail."
Her mother was looking around the room, as if applying for some sort of assistance but not knowing whom to ask. And then, much to Maggie's surprise, Mrs. Kelly walked back across the room to sit down beside Maggie.
She covered her mother's hand with her own. "Mom? You okay?"
Mrs. Kelly shook her head slowly. "Fifty-thousand dollars? What did the man do? The officer who called me didn't say. But I assumed ... that is ... I thought it was something minor ... something typically stupid ..."
Maggie looked up at Alex, who nodded to her, and then squeezed her mother's hand. "It isn't something minor, Mom. They say ... um ... they say Daddy killed somebody."
Mrs. Kelly pushed Maggie's hand away and shot to her feet. "That's ridiculous! Evan may be an idiot, but he wouldn't step on a bug. Tate! Someone's made a mistake. Get your father out here this minute."
But Tate was standing with his friends, gesturing nervously, probably explaining that his funds weren't "liquid," or some such drivel.
"Mom, they aren't kidding. They say he killed someone." Maggie got to her feet, put her arm around her mother, then stood with her arm still outstretched as Mrs. Kelly shrugged off the offer of comfort. "Alex? What's the man's name?"
Alex took a pristine white linen handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Maureen, who was now comforting her mother.
Maggie noticed that Maureen was allowed to do that. How silly she'd been, to try to step out from her typecasting. But, with a new clarity that had come from somewhere, Maggie wondered if that was her problem—or her mother's. And, if it was her mother's, then the woman had to be going nuts knowing that her husband, safely in his assigned "role" all these years, had suddenly stepped out of character.
"The victim's name?" Alex said, frowning. "I don't know that I have that, actually. Give me a moment to confer with Sterling."
He was back in a less than a minute, smiling slightly. "Sterling is now a junior detective, Maggie. He showed me his badge."
Even with her mother beginning to fall apart—a phenomenon Maggie could not remember ever witnessing—she had to smile as she glanced toward Sterling, who was proudly holding up a plastic badge. "Isn't that cute? I'm guessing they give them to all the kids," she said, waving and nodding at the lovable Sterling Balder. "So? The name?"
"Yes, of course. The deceased is one Walter Bodkin."
"Bodkin? There's a name for you," Maggie said, and turned back to her mother. "Mom? Do you recognize the—hey now, how about we sit you back down, okay? You're looking a little pale. Alex?"
Alex immediately guided Mrs. Kelly back down onto the bench, even as Maureen subsided beside her, also looking faintly sick.
"Mom?" Maggie asked again. "You knew this Bodkin person?"
Maureen giggled inanely, then burst into sobs.
Mrs. Kelly blinked, then blinked again. "My God, he did it. He killed him. And it's all my fault." She reached up blindly, grabbing for Alex's hand, clutching it tightly. "You're always involved in something scandalous, aren't you? You and Maggie? You and Maggie have to do something. You have to fix this. You have to help Evan. He killed him, and it's all my fault."
"Jeez Louise, Mom, why don't you say that a little louder—I'm not sure the cop at the desk heard you."
"But he did it, Margaret. Evan killed Walter. He did it for me."
It was like bad soap-opera dialogue. Maggie half expected the scene to freeze in front of her and then fade to black as the network went to commercial.
"Maureen," Maggie commanded, grabbing her wrist and giving it a shake. "Fall apart later, okay? Help me get Mom out of here before some cop hears her and wants to take a statement. Alex? Talk to the blonde and find out how I bail Dad out of this place. Mom? Come on, Mom, up an' at 'em. That's the girl. Let's walk you outside and let Maureen get you home ..."
Chapter Eight
Saint Just perched at his leisure beside Maggie on the arm of the chair in Alicia Kelly's large and rather floral living room, observing.
It had been more than two hours since he'd last seen Mrs. Kelly, and the woman seemed to be back under control. Which probably had gone far in reassuring Maggie that the entirety of her world hadn't turned upside down at the moment of her father's arrest for murder.
Just ninety-nine percent of it.
They'd seen Mrs. Kelly off with Maureen, and then rejoined the others in the police station, Saint Just more than willing to take charge of the situation. After all, that was why he was here in the first place, on this plane of existence. To be a supporting prop to his beloved Maggie.
Who, as it turned out, hadn't seemed to need him at all.
He smiled now as he remembered how she'd employed her walker to cut Cynthia Spade-Whitaker effectively from the herd, asking pertinent questions and then efficiently handling the phone call to the bail bondsman. She'd not so much as blinked when the attorney then named her exorbitant fee for services, promising to have funds transferred to the woman's firm the day after Christmas.
No, she hadn't even blinked. Maggie, parting with huge sums of money without an obvious show of pain. Truly an amazing sight to behold. One he should probably treasure, as he doubted it was something he'd see again any time soon.
But she'd gone beyond that, daring to push at the sergeant behind the main desk, badgering him until she was allowed to write a note to her father, inform him that he would soon be released.
She'd told Tate to go back to the house because their mother would probably want to see him, and then ordered him to stop somewhere and find some donuts and coffee for everyone, as they'd probably be awake the rest of the night.
She'd called their mutual friend, Manhattan police lieutenant Steve Wendell, and told him to take off his skis and get himself to Ocean City, because she needed him to get some of the Ocean City cops to talk off the record about the details of the alleged crime.
Her cell phone stuck to her ear seemingly forever, Maggie had also called Bernie, to warn her that Evan's arrest was bound to hit the newspapers within a few days' time, and that they could unfortunately count on Channel 5's Holly Spivak to make the connection between Evan Kelly and Maggie Kelly. And oh, yes, by the way, she'd also seemed to have won three million dollars, and that would probably make the newspapers, too.
A second warning call went to Tabitha Leighton, Maggie's literary agent. That one took longer, as Tabby and Maureen seemed to share a similar affection for tearful hysterics. Tabby had cried for "poor Evan." Then cried again at Maggie's jackpot win. The woman was an equal opportunity crier. Although, as she was first and foremost an agent, she had rallied enough to begin tossing out plans to somehow capitalize on the jackpot win—perhaps with an appearance on Letterman?
Maggie had called Socks, their friend and doorman, telling him they'd be extending their stay in Ocean City indefinitely, so could he please make sure to feed the cats as well as Sterling's mouse, Henry, and watch out for the package from Tabitha. Tabby always sent fresh fruit, always mailed it too late to arrive for Christmas, and she didn't want the box put in a warm room so that the condo smelled of overripe grapefruit when she got home.
Her attention to detail fairly boggled the mind. But
she was, as the saying went, running hard on all cylinders, and he had never been quite so proud of her.
General Kelly, commanding her troops. She didn't ask anyone. She told them. She had been short, none too sweet, and to the point.
In precisely sixty-eight minutes, Evan Kelly was walking toward them via a doorway at the back of the small police station, blinking at the bright overhead lights and looking small, older than the last time Saint Just had seen him, and infinitely bemused.
He wore baggy mud-brown slacks that looked as if he regularly slept in them, and a gray sweater with patches on the elbows, buttoned up over the collar of a garish yellow shirt. His left shoe was untied. His left sock was blue. His right sock was black. His mostly gray brown hair stood up straight on the back of his head, as though he'd been sleeping. He carried an unfortunate-looking wool tweed coat over his arm.
If this was what two hours of incarceration had done to the man, clearly he could not be allowed to be returned to prison. Although that was still no excuse for the man's inexorable taste in clothing. "Batching it," as the man had been doing for the past nearly two months, since his separation from his wife, clearly had taken its toll. Perhaps Alicia Kelly had formerly laid out his clothing for him each morning.
Maggie had seen him, closed her cell phone on the conversation she'd been having with Lieutenant Wendell, to whom she'd been giving directions to Ocean City, and crossed the room to embrace her father.
She'd cried as she'd hugged him, audibly sobbed, but then quickly stepped back, wiped at her eyes, took a steadying breath, and got back down to business.
They were shed of the discomforts of the hoosegow in less time than it took for Maggie to swipe a chocolate-covered glazed donut from the sergeant's desk.
Sterling was now ensconced in her father's bachelor apartment, watching over the man as they both dug into large bowls of puffed rice cereal, and Maggie and Saint Just had just begun reporting what they knew to the rest of the family at the Kelly residence.
Unfortunately, what they knew wasn't much, as Evan Kelly had been less than cooperative.
Yes, he'd gone to the dentist's office to have his new crown put on his front right bicuspid. He'd pulled back his lip to show them all, and it was indeed an impressive tooth, although unfortunately whiter than the abutting teeth. However, as evidence, it was at least noticeable.
Yes, he'd then come home, ascertained that Maggie had not yet arrived to share the evening with him. Which was fine, because there had been a message on his telephone answering machine: Any members of the Majesties—Evan's bowling team—who had time to kill on Christmas Eve were welcome to free lanes from six to eight, when the alley would close for the holiday.
Evan had donned his Majesties shirt and headed for the lanes—thus explaining the bright yellow shirt collar Saint Just had winced at, but did not, to Saint Just's mind, explain the two thick black stripes running down the front of said shirt, the black short sleeves, or the black velvet letters spelling out Majesties on the back of said shirt. There was nothing within the wide scope of Saint Just's sartorical knowledge that could possibly justify such an abomination.
In fact, if Saint Just had been forced to name one good thing about said shirt, it would have to be that the material seemed impervious to wrinkles. Of course, he would then be forced to add that the polyester fabric might also be impervious to soap, water, and, possibly, atomic fallout.
At any rate—hideous shirt to one side (please, God)—Evan had gone off to the bowling alley, to see two other members of the Majesties there, the only other single members of the team, also obviously with little to do on Christmas Eve. They'd bowled three games before he and the other members—yes, one had been Walter Bodkin—had exchanged wishes for a happy holiday and parted ways in the parking lot outside the bowling alley. No, Evan couldn't remember if anyone had seen either of them get into separate cars and drive out of the parking lot.
After that? Well, after that, no matter how Maggie badgered the man—and she did badger him—Evan Kelly refused to comment as to how he'd spent his time before returning to his apartment only minutes before the Ocean City police were banging on his door.
Now, having given their report, Saint Just believed it might be time he and Maggie asked some questions.
Beginning with why Alicia Kelly had blurted out that Evan had murdered Walter Bodkin for her.
Saint Just was collecting his thoughts, planning precisely how he might broach the subject, when Sean Whitaker, who had taken himself upstairs to watch CNN, bounded down the stairs and raced across the living room to switch on the television set.
"You've got to see this," he said, looking to the set, turning to grin at Maggie and Saint Just. "Oh, damn, they've already gone to commercial. Tate—what channel shows MSNBC around here? They'll probably have it, too. Come on, come on—talk to me, Tate."
Maggie reached up and pinched Saint Just's arm. "You know what he just saw, don't you? With all that's happened, I actually forgot about, you know, the money? But it looks like we made freaking CNN, if that idiot's stupid grin means anything. This is not going to be pretty."
"It certainly wasn't, the first time I saw it," Saint Just supplied, turning toward the television screen even as Maureen returned to the living room, carrying a small tray of cookies.
"Oh, no," she said, subsiding into a chair. "Daddy's on TV?"
"No, not Dad," Maggie began, inching closer to Saint Just. "Sean? Can you please not bother channel-surfing and turn that thing off? Mom? Everyone? Something happened today ..."
"Omigod, it's Maggie! Look, everybody—it's Maggie!"
"Never mind," Maggie said weakly as Maureen's high-pitched outburst had every head in the room whipping eyes-front to the television set.
"Courage, my dear," Saint Just whispered as he lifted her hand to place a kiss in her palm. "And please try to remember—winning over three million dollars, for most people, is considered to be a good thing."
"Yeah? Watch. I have a feeling that your most people doesn't include many of the people in this room."
Having already seen the footage that had appeared on the local station, Saint Just listened to the commentator and kept his gaze roaming the Kelly living room, doing his best to interpret the varying expressions of the faces of the other occupants.
"... definitely will be a Merry Christmas this year for the lucky winner of the Big-Wheels-o'-Bucks jackpot in Atlantic City earlier today ..."
Maureen had put down the tray of cookies on the couch beside her and now had both hands clamped to her mouth, her eyes going the size of saucers.
"... until Scrooge arrived in the form of a fat but not quite jolly gentlemen. Watch closely, folks. Ouch! That had to hurt ..."
Tate, sat down. On the tray of cookies. "Damn it!"
"... The lady with the great right cross declined to give her name, but sources in Manhattan have verified that she is none other than Cleo Dooley, bestselling author of something called the Viscount Saint Just Mysteries. A nearly constant name on the New York Times bestseller list, Ms. Dooley is in fact one Margaret Kelly. The man you see carrying her off-screen remains unidentified, but we do know the name of our Scrooge with the bloody nose."
Alicia Kelly's expression was unreadable. Saint Just considered this to be a blessing that wouldn't last.
"... pushed herself in front of me and grabbed my machine. That was my machine! Margaret Kelly, huh? Kelly, you hear me! This isn't over! That's my jackpot!"
Now Saint Just did turn his attention to the screen, as the man he knew as Henry Novack seemed to have a new song to sing. A threat, actually. And there he was, live, on a split-screen with the reporter, shaking his fist in the air, his face nearly purple, spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth.
The reporter seemed to agree with Saint Just's assessment: "Is that a threat, Mr. Novack?"
Henry Novack pushed his face closer to the camera. "It's whatever you want it to be! I know who you are now, Margaret Kelly. You've got
my three million bucks, cupcake! I'm gonna sue. You hear me? I'm gonna sue your miserable ass—"
Henry Novack's face disappeared, and the reporter was fullscreen once more.
"Yes, Merry Christmas, Margaret Kelly, Cleo Dooley—cupcake. And now onto the real news. I've just gotten word that Santa Claus has been sighted over Newfoundland. His ETA in your town tonight, with skies remaining fair over the Northeast, is—"
"Turn that off."
"Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Kelly," Sean Whitaker said, aiming the remote at the screen.
"Margaret?"
"Yes, ma'am," Maggie said, sounding like Sean's echo. "It wasn't my fault, Mom. My leg hurt, and that guy was being a real pain, and I just sat down, and Alex put this damn hundred dollar bill in the—"
"Why do you do that?" Alicia Kelly asked her, interrupting Maggie not a moment too soon, to Saint Just's mind. "Why do you always assume I have nothing good to say about anything you do?"
Maggie shot Saint Just a quick, astonished look. "Uh ... because you don't?"
"That's cruel, Margaret, and untrue," Mrs. Kelly said.
Now Saint Just shot an astonished (for him) look at Maggie's mother.
"I'm sor—no. No, I'm not sorry, Mom. You hate my books. You complain that I don't come home enough. Okay, okay, you have a point there. You tell me I'm fat, you tell me I cause you embarrassment. You ... you never hung up my Perfect Attendance plaque I got in the fourth grade."
"That last might have been dispensed with, my dear," Saint Just whispered to her.
"Right," Maggie agreed, shifting on the seat of the chair, her posture belligerent. "You never read one of my books. Never. None of you. You just condemned them because they were romances. Filth, you called them—and you never read them."
Maureen raised her hand. "I did. I mean, I do. I read all of them. I get them from the library."
"Well, there's a mixed blessing, sweetings," Saint Just whispered, close by Maggie's ear. "She reads them, but she doesn't buy them."
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