"Oh, God, Alex," Maggie moaned. "Can't I just pay him?"
"Hush, sweetings." He stepped closer to the street even as he sheathed his sword, sliding it back inside the cane. "As you have told us you know about Miss Kelly's other problems, and as tomorrow—today—is Christmas, I believe we would like very much to postpone our conversation until Boxing Day, if that's agreeable to you."
"Boxing Day? When the hell is that? There's no fights scheduled at Caesar's until January, I know that much. Is there one at the old Convention Hall? Who's on the fight card? Any heavyweights?"
Maggie eased back against the steps, giggling. Sometimes, she thought almost hysterically, you just had to roll with the punches.
"December the twenty-sixth, Mr. Novack," Alex explained. "Somewhere discreet."
"Oh, okay. Why didn't you just say so? Boxing Day? That's some English thing, right? And I'm not a monster, ya know," Henry Novack said, his go-cart beeping as he backed away from the curb. "I got feelings, too, ya know. I just want what's mine. Okay, okay. Day after Christmas, right here in Ocean City, up on the Boardwalk. We'll meet in front of the Music Pier, off Eighth Street. Nobody's going to be there at night. Too cold, right? Midnight good for you? It's good for me."
"Oh, for crying out loud, Alex. The guy thinks he's freaking Deep Throat on a go-cart, or something. And not on the twenty-sixth. That's the day of my appointment to get this foot X-rayed, get into a walking cast, remember? I have to drive back to the city. Make it the twenty-seventh. At eight o'clock. Otherwise Dad would want to know why we're going out so late."
Novack put the go-cart in drive, bumped at the curb. "Now you're putting me off, aren't you? Hoping I'll go away. Not happening, cupcake. You go to the city, sure, but you'd better come back, because I know where you live. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I'm going to be watching you. I'm your worst nightmare."
Okay, fun was fun, and all that, but fun time was now over. Maggie grabbed the walker and stood up. "Buddy, you don't even come close to being my worst nightmare, so just take a number and get in line, okay. I said we'd be there, and we'll be there. The twenty-seventh, eight o'clock, at the Music Pier. Pin a red midsize Buick to your lapel, so I recognize you. Now go away."
Alex watched until the go-cart had turned the corner before walking back over to Maggie and allowing her to steady herself against his shoulder while he folded the walker, slid it up and over his shoulder, then lifted her into his arms.
"A midsize Buick?" he asked her, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.
"I know. That was pretty good, wasn't it? But he made me so mad."
"You're not meeting with that lunatic, you know," he told her as he carried her up the stairs. "I'm meeting with him."
Maggie snuggled her face into his neck. "Are we going to fight about this? Because I'm going. I know I don't owe the man. Not really, not legally. But I do feel sorry for him. I never would have sat down at that machine if he hadn't been such a jerk."
"You can't give him money, Maggie. He'll keep coming back for more, over and over again. He's gone beyond a rather pathetic man with bad luck, and graduated into stalking and a strange form of blackmail. That cannot be countenanced. Reach down and open the door, if you will, please."
Maggie did as he asked, then held on tight as Alex climbed the first half flight, turned on the landing, and mounted the second half flight leading to her father's door. Bless the man, he wasn't even breathing hard when they reached the second floor. That did a lot for her female ego. "So why did you suggest we meet with him? Are you planning to scare him off somehow? Threaten him?"
He put her down, opened the walker for her. "I've not as yet formed a strategy. Are you planning to adopt him?"
"No, of course not," Maggie said angrily, grabbing the walker. "I'm ... I don't know what I'm planning. Cynthia says I can't pay him. You say I can't pay him. I don't know what to do with him. I just know I don't want him following me around everywhere in that stupid go-cart like some motorized Lassie until we figure out some sort of solution that makes him go away. Did you take the key with you when we went to Mom's?"
Alex shook his head. "It's probably open," he said, reaching past her to turn the handle, which turned easily. "Ah, what a trusting man your father is, Maggie."
"And not a killer," she said, hopping into the dark living room. "Anybody with half a brain could figure that out in a millisecond. Hit the lights, will you? No, wait. Look, over there—the message light is still glowing on Dad's answering machine. Not blinking, like with a new message, but just glowing, because Dad didn't erase the messages he has stored on it. The cops should have taken that, shouldn't they? You know, for the message Dad said was on the machine? The one telling him about the free bowling?"
"Very true," Alex agreed, snapping on the large overhead lights that were a part of an equally large ceiling fan shaped like palm fronds. "The message is the reason Evan gave for going to the bowling alley last evening."
"Yes, and he said he and Bodkin and someone else were the only three to show up. How many people are on a bowling team, anyway? So maybe the real killer set up the meet, then took it from there. We may have the real killer's voice, right here, on the answering machine. God, this is going to be easier than I thought. I adore stupid criminals." Maggie hopped as fast as she could, eager to get to the machine, and pressed the Message button:
"You have one old message. Message One: Hi, Evan. Free bowling for all Majesties 'til eight tonight. Tournament's next week, so we need the practice. Be there! Message received December twenty-four, at four-fifty-three p.m. End of messages."
The call was short, the voice was male, with considerable background noise placing the origin of the call as most probably being the bowling alley. But someone might recognize it. Maybe.
Maggie collapsed into the chair beside the table holding the answering machine. "Well, there it is. Time stamped and dated. The police were sloppy, not taking the machine. Dad was lured. Right, Alex? He was lured, and if we can voice-print whoever called him with that message, we have our killer. He followed Dad, copped his bowling ball somehow, and used it to bash in the other guy's head. Walter Bodkin's head. Right? Right?"
"It seems plausible. Especially if we're fortunate enough to find a similar message on Bodkin's machine—if the man didn't answer his own phone. But, not to rain on your parade, my dear, it would seem, as another member of the team also was there for this free bowling exercise, that the entire call would be dismissed by the police as irrelevant. And one more thing—wouldn't your father have noticed if his bowling ball went missing?"
"Yeah, you're right. He'd notice. He loves that bowling ball. I gave it to him, you know, on his last birthday. He had to have taken it with him to the bowling alley. And a person notices if he's carrying a bowling ball bag with a bowling ball in it or a bowling ball bag with no bowling ball in it. Dad uses a twelve-pound ball, as I remember it. Twelve less pounds in your bag as you're heading for the parking lot? You'd notice."
Maggie felt tears stinging at her eyes again, when she'd thought she'd gotten them out of her system. She needed to be all business, concentrate on the facts. Even as she had to believe in her father's innocence.
"He didn't do it, Alex. I know he didn't. We have to make him tell us where he went after he left the bowling alley. We have to make Mom tell us why she thinks Dad killed Bodkin for her. We have to ..."
"We have to go to bed," Alex said, shifting the walker to one side and holding out his hands to her.
She took them, and pulled up to balance on her right foot, then gasped as Alex lifted her high against his chest. "I can walk to the bedroom," she told him even as she curled her arms around his neck.
"Just as I can find my way to the chamber I'm sharing with Sterling before the sun rises in a few hours. In the meantime," he said, stepping inside the door to Maggie's assigned bedroom and toeing shut the door, "where was I when we were so rudely interrupted? Ah, yes, I believe I was about to describe the remarkable beauty of your mout
h ..."
Chapter Ten
Ocean City, New Jersey, is accessible by main bridges at Ninth and Thirty-fourth Street and smaller bridges that dot the scenic highway that runs along the coast both north and south.
The island is long rather than wide, and the north-south blocks are about as long as city blocks in Manhattan, with the east-west blocks running short.
The numbered streets run east-west, from the bay to the ocean.
With land at a premium, the building lots are for the most part narrow and long, the houses built on them fitting from the street to the alleys that run parallel to the north-south streets.
Is this important? Well, yeah. Maybe.
If your house is on First Street, you are one heck of a long haul from, say, Fifty-fifth Street. But if someone lives on Wesley near Thirty-eighth (as did Maggie's mother), and you reside on Thirty-seventh (as did Maggie's father), chances are you could gaze out your back window, look down the alley, and wave to your neighbor a full city block away on Wesley.
As Saint Just was finding out to his surprise and amazement at eight o'clock on Christmas morning.
"Interesting," Saint Just remarked as he stood in the kitchen alcove, nursing his morning cup of coffee, squinting at the sunlight glinting off what he was fairly certain was the lens of a pair of binoculars.
He heard the clump-clump of Maggie's walker on the tile floor behind him. "Maggie, good morning, my dear. Would you care to hobble over here, perhaps see something interesting?"
"Only if it's yellow, and scrambled, comes with toast and bacon, and I didn't have to cook any of it," Maggie grumbled as she stumbled into the kitchen, stopped, scratched at her—well, Saint Just would delicately call the general area of her scratching her derriere.
His Maggie was a true lady, she really was. But probably not before her morning coffee and toilette.
"I think it's possible that someone is observing us," he told her as she made her way over to him, taking her by the shoulders and placing her in front of him, turning her body so that she had a clear sight down the length of the alleyway. "There you go. Your mother's condo is light green in color, correct? With the kitchen to the rear of what you Americans call the second floor? Look for the flash of sun off glass, if you please."
Maggie leaned her head forward and squinted, as if pushing that particular appendage two inches forward would give her a better view. "Okay. I see it. What am I seeing?"
"That flash of light, I believe, is caused by the sun hitting the lens of a pair of binoculars trained in our direction. Held, one could suppose, by your mother. Would you care to wave?"
"Holy cripes!" Maggie ducked out from beneath Saint Just's hands and, scuttling like a five-legged crab on her walker, all but plastered her back against the refrigerator door on the far side of the room. "She's watching? She's been watching him—spying on Daddy? She could see us just now, too, if she's been watching? She saw us seeing her? Are you sure? You can't be sure, you're only guessing. How do you know the sun's hitting binoculars?"
"So many questions, all of them meaning much the same thing. As for my conclusion, it is an educated guess, actually," Saint Just told her, putting down his coffee cup. "Earlier, on a hunt for spoons, I opened a few drawers, and found this." He opened the bread drawer and pulled out ... a pair of binoculars.
"And now that's just sick. He's watching her, too? While she's watching him? No wonder I'm a borderline nutcase. It's in my genes. What is the matter with these people?"
"I've been considering that very question. I would imagine your mother has been monitoring your father in hopes—or dread—of seeing him with a guest present. Carol is her name, yes? The paramour who is employed, as I believe your mother said, at the best jewelry store in Ocean City"
"I stand by my first impression. That is sick. So what's my dad been looking for?"
Saint Just picked up his cup of coffee once more. "Similar evidence of marital infidelity?"
"No, that can't be it. That makes them both voyeurs. I can't live with that, so I'm not going to believe it. They're just nosy. And don't correct me. I write fiction. I like fantasy, happy endings. Anything else is too real, especially this early in the morning. Lower the blinds, will you? I don't like being on display. Or would that be too obvious?"
"Too obvious by half, yes."
"Damn, I think so, too. Well, then let's just behave normally, like we don't know she's out there. And, boy, is she out there. Oh, good," she added, raising her voice, "there's more coffee. You made the coffee, Alex? Thank you so much. I believe I'll have some coffee now."
"Yes, I did indeed prepare the coffee. There's really no end to my talents, once I apply myself. But, as you playact, sweetings, remember that we are only, in a way of speaking, on video, and not audio."
"You'd hope so, wouldn't you. I don't know how good Mom is. They sell a lot of weird things at Radio Shack these days. Do you think Mom can read lips from that distance?"
Saint Just smiled at her pained grimace. "Sterling, by the way, has gone in search of donuts, as your brother failed so miserably to do so last night. Your father went with him. I've asked that they procure copies of all the morning newspapers, as I'm convinced you'll wish to read them."
"I guess I have to. As long as a picture of my dad doing the perp walk in leg shackles isn't above the fold. Anyway," she said, balancing on one foot as she spooned three sugars into her coffee as Saint Just manfully suppressed a wince, "Dad can't be watching to see if Mom is up to any hanky-panky. Walt Hagenbush died three years ago."
He took her coffee cup and placed it on the table for her. "I beg your pardon? Who?"
"Thank you." Maggie slid onto the slick, curved plastic cushion of the built-in bench and table that fit below a rather lovely bow window. The garishly flowered plastic, however, seemed an unfortunate choice. "Mom's lover, Alex, remember? That's what started all of this in the first place."
"Ah, yes, I believe I can recall that now," Saint Just said, sitting down across from her as she scooted farther onto the bench and rested her casted leg on a display of unnaturally large begonias. "Vaguely."
Maggie slid her forearms forward on the tabletop, the mug with the words "Lefties Do It Better" grasped between her palms. "On the occasion of their fortieth wedding anniversary this past summer, Mom decided to make a clean breast of things and tell Dad about an affair she had with Walt Hagenbush ten years earlier. That's when everything started to go off the rails. Coming clearer now?"
"Yes, it is. I had attempted to banish such intimate knowledge of your family's domestic travails from my memory, I'm afraid. Your father, worried over the admission of your mother's foray into infidelity, decided that the only way he could ever find it in his heart to forgive her would be if he had an affair of his own. Enter Carol, the jewelry shop clerk."
"The little chippie, as Mom calls her, yes. And exit Dad, to this place, when Mom found out about it," Maggie said, lifting the coffee cup to her lips. She took a sip, frowned, and asked Saint Just to please bring the sugar bowl and the spoon over to the table for her.
This time, as Maggie added another heaping teaspoonful of sugar to the cup, Saint Just did wince. But he did politely refrain from pointing out that it might be easier if the dear woman simply poured coffee into the sugar bowl, rather than the other way round.
"So your father couldn't have been watching your family home to ascertain whether or not your mother had taken up a romantic association with the late Walt Hagenbush once more. Leaving us to assume that he may have been watching the condo and saw her—"
"Playing house with Walter Bodkin," Maggie finished for him, subsiding against the back cushion of the banquette. "What is it with men named Walter, anyway? Does my mother have some kind of a name fetish? No, don't answer that. And I mean that sincerely. A daughter should never say the words mother and fetish in the same sentence, not if the daughter hopes ever to be able to look that mother in the face again."
"We have to look at this thing logical
ly, Maggie."
"I know that. But it's not easy for a daughter to think sordid and Mommy and Daddy at the same time. Hell, I think I was twenty-one before I'd finally given up the fantasy that my parents had four kids, which meant they'd had sex four times. God, Alex, I'm going to be seeing Doctor Bob every week for the rest of my unnatural life, I swear it."
"But you are thinking about the situation now, correct? I'd forgotten the late and unlamented Mr. Hagenbush, but this might come down to your mother having an affair, your father having a revenge affair, and your mother then launching a double-revenge affair. You know, Maggie, this scenario has all the earmarks of a two-part Doctor Phil special."
"Bite your tongue! So what you're saying—what you think the cops could say—is that Dad saw Mom and Bodkin—we'll just call him Bodkin, because Walter is too confusing—and offed him?"
"They might think that, yes. Shall we dispose of the binoculars? Or, at the very least, relocate them?"
"Tampering with evidence. We can't do that," Maggie muttered, her brow creased, as she appeared to be deep in thought. "Besides, this is a pretty small town, especially in the winter, with the tourists gone and half the condos empty. If Mom was ... with Bodkin, someone would have seen them, and someone would most probably have told Dad. Mom said Dad did it for her—killed Bodkin for her, that is. Not because of her, because she was having an affair, but for her. That doesn't quite fit, does it?"
She looked toward the doorway. "He's got to talk to us this morning. Be honest with us. He looks guilty, refusing to tell anyone where he was last night. And Cynthia is just going to tell him not to say anything to anybody, so we have to get to him first. How long ago did he and Sterling leave?"
Saint Just glanced up at the wall clock. "No more than forty-five minutes ago, I'd say. I wasn't particularly paying attention. That was lax of me. Perhaps I was still quietly rhapsodizing about the woman I'd just left and the pleasant memory of a most remarkable interlude."
"We had sex, Alex. And this damn cast didn't make it easy, either," Maggie said, rolling her eyes as she struggled to stand up. "So enough with the romantic interlude business, and definitely enough with sitting here, pretending we don't know Mom is playing secret agent with us in her sights. Take my coffee cup into the living room for me, will you, please? My leg will be more comfortable on the couch. I can hop, but I still can't juggle worth a darn."
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