"We've had our moments, yes."
"Yeah, right," Cynthia said, pointing a finger at Saint Just, coming within inches of his nose with her index finger. "Here's the deal as I see it. Maggie's the daughter. You're the concerned friend. And that's it. Don't go poking around like amateur detectives. Not in this case, not with me on board as attorney of record. Because I don't work with amateurs. Have I made myself clear? Are we clear on this, Alex?"
"As crystal, madam," Saint Just said, bowing to her. "Everyone, enjoy your evening."
Cynthia and Sean swept through the doorway, leaving Tate behind, looking at Saint Just.
"Um ... about what you heard ..."
"Heard? Did I hear anything?"
"I don't know. Did you?"
"I heard Attorney Spade-Whitaker—as I've heard it said on numerous crime programs on the television—warn Maggie and me off the case. Was there anything else?"
"Uh, no, no, not if you—you heard, didn't you? I can see it in your eyes. About selling the condo?"
"Of course I did. You have lovely friends, Tate," Saint Just told him, turning the screw, just a tad. "A lawyer and a Realtor. A redoubtable pair, although you might have added one other profession to the mix."
Tate swallowed down hard, glared at Saint Just. "Oh yeah? Which profession?"
"Why a physician, of course," Saint Just purred, taking his quizzing glass from his pocket and holding it up to his left eye, the black grosgrain ribbon dangling.
He then took a single step forward, looked Tate up and down, as if inspecting the man for flaws—and finding them. "Because, if you somehow manage to force Maggie's mother out of this house before she is ready to go, I will personally find you, corner you, and cane you to within an inch of your selfish, pathetic little life—a caning, Tate, as you are too low and loathsome, for a gentleman such as myself to even think of directly soiling my hands on you. And as I inflict this beating, I will enjoy your every squeal and whimper to the top of my bent. So," he ended, smiling, "as your attorney friend asked me just a moment ago—are we clear on that, Tate?"
Tate opened his mouth to say something—Saint Just was fairly sure it would have been something astoundingly stupid, such as "Oh, yeah?"—but then shut it again and bolted out of the house.
That had gone well. And employing snippets of dialogue Maggie had fed his imaginary self for one of their books into his little monologue had bordered on the delicious, actually.
"Remarkable," Saint Just said to himself as he lightly rubbed the quizzing glass against his sweater, polishing it. "Although an idiot, Tate Evans is tall, young, and exceedingly fit. He could probably give, or at least think he could, as good as he got. Yet, knowing that, I was, and am, more than willing to take him on. Even eager. Once an unremarkable reaction, but not now, having so recently discovered my own vulnerabilities. By God, I'm still a hero."
Satisfied, and not a little elated, Saint Just walked through the living room, eager to find Maggie, steal her away somewhere for a moment, and kiss her quite soundly. She was such an intelligent puss. Not only had she gifted him with looks and brains. She'd gifted him with a strong backbone, one that did not bend, even as he grew more mortal.
Chapter Thirteen
Maggie looked across the kitchen table at her baby sister, who was sitting with her head lowered, her eyes cast down, playing the victim better than any French aristocrat riding the tumbrel on the way through the streets of Paris to the guillotine.
Maureen used to be fun. She really did. Well, fun in the I-lead-she-always-follows way of older sisters who talk younger sisters into stealing the cigarettes out of their mother's purse, and who will also then sneak a slice of cake upstairs when her older sister is grounded and sent to her room for talking the younger sister into copping Mom's Parliaments.
Maureen had let Maggie dye her hair orange for Halloween—with permanent dye. Maureen had helped her sneak into Tate's room one night and try out the experiment of submerging his hand in a glass of water so that he'd—and he did, too! Maureen dug in her heels and had eloped with John even when her mother told her she was making a big mistake in wanting to marry a garbage man.
Maggie's dad had helped then, stepped in, actually shut up Alicia Kelly by saying that when the rest of the world thought it was too good to collect somebody else's trash, the last garbage man in America would be a very wealthy man. Then he'd aimed the clicker at the TV and gone back to watching a documentary on prairie dogs, not to be heard from again for the next decade, Maggie was pretty sure.
Maureen used to have a spine, damn it!
What had happened to that Maureen? The silly, always ready for adventure Maureen? Where had she gone? Why did she go?
Now she was a mouse, a frightened, gray mouse. Walking quietly, on her toes, so that no one would be disturbed by her footsteps.
Now she wore an apron all the time, maybe to cover her swollen shape—when she'd always been slim, athletic.
Now she carried those damn little pink pills with her everywhere she went.
"Maureen? Reenie? It's me, only me, remember? And it wasn't a hard question," Maggie said now. "Who was Walter Bodkin?"
Maureen lifted a hand to twist at her hair, her hand shielding her face as she held it in profile. "But I don't know. He was a man, that's all. He ... he owned a lot of houses."
"And that's it? That's all you've got?"
Her sister finally looked at her. "He was a Majestic?"
Maggie looked to Alex, who had been standing quietly, his back to the kitchen counter, sipping a glass of wine. He'd found a bottle in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator and deemed it passable, and a clear cut above the boxed wine Maureen had made such inroads on during dinner.
"Help?" Maggie mouthed silently.
Alex approached the table and bowed his head slightly, wordlessly asking for permission to join them. Maggie rolled her eyes at him, still amazed at the man's dogged adherence to Regency Era manners. When they suited him, that is.
"Maureen, my good lady," he said once he'd sat down. "I am not, by and large, a particularly observant person—"
Maggie choked on her sip of diet soda.
He looked at her owlishly. "But I do believe I noticed your rather unusual reaction last night at the police station. Let me see if I can recollect the exact moment, shall we? Oh, yes. Maggie inquired of her mother if she was acquainted with Walter Bodkin, and you ... well, you giggled. You giggled, and then you burst into sobs. Do you recall that, my dear?"
Maureen looked at her sister, then down at her hands, which were twisting in her lap. "No, Alex. I don't remember that. I giggled? I didn't giggle, did I, Maggie? You're wrong. Really, you're wrong. I'm sure of it."
"Indeed. My apologies. So you never really knew Walter Bodkin, or of any association he might have had with, say, your mother?"
Maureen giggled ... and then quickly clapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide as she looked to Maggie. For help?
"You really have to stop taking those pills, Maureen," Maggie told her, reaching across the table to touch her sister's arm. "And something else. You have to stop lying to us. Dad's in big trouble, sis. If you know anything, you have to tell us. Good or bad."
"I can't, Maggie. I can't tell you. I'd rather die than tell you."
"Oh, for God's sake, Maureen, stop whining."
Maggie and Alex looked up to see that her mother had come into the room. She'd changed out of her clothing and into a deep sapphire blue caftan that didn't do a heck of a lot for her. But she looked comfortable. At sixty-three, maybe comfortable was enough? Maggie hoped not.
"Mom?" Maggie asked as Alicia Kelly held out her hand for the glass Alex was holding, and then downed the remaining contents in one long gulp.
"Ah, that's better. Wine in a box. Sometimes Tate can be so cheap. A limo for his friends, wine in a box for his family. Don't think I don't notice. Maureen, scoot over to the next chair and let me sit down. It's time we talked."
"But, Mom, you can't,"
Maureen all but whimpered. "John's in the living room."
"And snoring fair to beat the band," Mrs. Kelly said, shaking her head in disgust. "It's the tryptophan. In the turkey, you know? I read about that somewhere—it makes you sleepy. Considering he ate half the damn bird, he should be unconscious until New Year's."
Maggie shot a look toward Alex, who only shrugged. Big whacking help he was being. Didn't he know how she hated family conversations? Still, at least tonight her mom was being sort of an equal opportunity sniper, already taking shots a Maureen, Tate, and John. Could a swipe at Maggie be far behind?
Yeah, well. If she was going to be the new Maggie, the one who didn't buckle under every time things got a little sticky with her mother, now was the time to prove it, right?
"Why can't John hear what we're saying, Mom? What's somebody going to say? I don't get it."
"Nobody expects you to, Margaret, not without an explanation. Alex," she said, turning to spear him with her eyes. "I wouldn't do this, would never do anything so embarrassing, except that you and Margaret have had some success in solving crimes. Four of them, as I recall."
"Five," Maggie interjected. "Bernie's ex—well, both her exes—the murders at the WAR conference, and over in England, and the rat killer. More than five, if we just count bodies. Let's see, there was—"
Alicia Kelly sighed. An exasperated sigh, Maggie was pretty sure.
"But who's counting, right, Mom? Sorry for the interruption. You were saying?"
"I had an affair with Walter Bodkin," Alicia said, just throwing it all out there, with no preamble, so that Maggie sucked in her breath until she realized she was feeling a little light-headed.
"Oh, Mom ..." Maureen said, lowering her head onto her crossed arms.
Maggie recovered her breath enough to say, "You had two affairs? Walt Hagenbush and Walter Bodkin?" She shot a look at Alex. "Maybe I was right. You know, about the Walter fetish?"
"Shh, Maggie. I don't think your mother's quite finished. Please, Alicia, go on."
"I never had an affair with Walt Hagenbush, Margaret," her mother told her, her chin still high, her eyes defiant. "My God, the man had halitosis that could stop a Mack truck."
Had to say this for her, Maggie thought—the woman had brass ones. And was that something to be proud of, in a mother? Hmm ... ?
"When ... when I felt it necessary to confess my indiscretion of a decade ago to your father—"
"Yeah, while we're on the subject, Mom," Maggie interrupted. "Why in God's name would you do something like that?"
Maureen let out a choked cry—rather like a chicken in the midst of a neck-wringing—and ran out of the room.
Alica Kelly shook her head. "Never had half your spunk, did she, Margaret? I told your father because I was leading up to telling him something else."
"Something else?" Maggie looked to the doorway. "Let me guess. Something about Maureen?"
"I wanted, still want, to pay for Maureen to go to some sort of therapy. John's insurance doesn't cover more than three visits, and, well, we all know three visits isn't even going to scratch the surface, don't we?"
Thinking of her own visits to Doctor Bob that were well into their fifth or sixth year now, Maggie only nodded her head.
"Your father didn't think therapy was necessary."
"You needed his permission? Wow."
"I need your father's permission for nothing, Margaret. I wanted his agreement. And, perhaps, I needed him to understand. Because ... because I wanted to go into therapy myself. I wanted us to go into therapy as a family. And maybe even the garbage truck jockey, too," she added, shrugging.
"You wanted to go into therapy?" Maggie was fairly certain her eyes were popping halfway out of her head, and was sure they were when Alex cleared his throat delicately as he kicked her, ever so slightly, beneath the table. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I just had this flash. You know, this throwback, to a late-night rerun of that old show, The Odd Couple? Remember that one, Mom? With Felix Unger and Oscar Madison? Well, those were the names of the characters."
She turned to explain to Alex. "Felix was a fussbudget, a neat freak. He and Oscar were roommates. Oscar was a slob, and Felix was always picking up after him, always nagging him, driving him crazy. So Oscar got a stomach ulcer, and Felix—he was a hypochondriac, too—worried that he was going to get a stomach ulcer as well. But the doctor told him, that in the world of stomach ulcers, Felix was what one called a carrier. Get it, Alex? Felix wouldn't get an ulcer—he gave ulcers."
"Very amusing, Maggie," Alex told her. "And you'll now explain the relevance?"
Maggie opened her mouth to do just that, but then realized that she was going to say that her mother didn't go to therapy—she sent others running there. "Nevermind. I guess it was funnier in the episode where Felix Unger kept writing Oscar notes and signing them with his initials, and Oscar couldn't figure out if it was Felix's initials, or an insult. You know—Felix Unger? F for Felix, U for—go on, Mom. Sorry for the interruption."
"I've been watching Dr. Phil," Alicia Kelly said as Maggie did what she was pretty sure was a good Maureen impersonation—lowering her head, looking at her entwined fingers. "Some of it is pure drivel. But not all of it. I'm not blind, Margaret. I know there are problems here, in our family."
"Let me count the ways ..." Maggie muttered under her breath.
"Tate is—well, Tate is becoming a disappointment, after all my high hopes for him. I don't know if Erin is a disappointment, as I haven't seen her in nearly a year. I expect her husband will come down with bubonic plague just in time for her to back out of Easter dinner. Maureen? God, we all see Maureen. In fact, Margaret, you're the only one who seems to be ... normal."
"Me? Surely you jest—and don't call me Shirley," Maggie blurted, and then wished she could kick herself.
"Your mother keeps a scrapbook, Maggie, concerning our exploits," Alex told her, an overload of information, considering all her mother had just said.
Maggie's head was reeling. "A scrapbook. Of me? Wow. That's ... that's so normal."
"You're not perfect, Margaret, so you can stop grinning like an idiot over there. You embarrass us on a depressingly regular basis with your shenanigans. And, of course, those dirty books of yours."
"You've never read any of my books."
"And I never will. A mother must retain some illusions. Maureen, however, destroyed many of them."
"And we're back to Maureen," Maggie said, grateful for the shift. "What happened to her anyway, Mom? The past three or four years she's been—weird. Spacey. Jumpy, too."
Alicia Kelly looked to Alex. "Where was I? Margaret will insist on going off on tangents. She was always like that, if only hoping to prolong the inevitable. But not this time. The inevitable must be said, if you two are to make sure Evan doesn't end up doing hard time as somebody's bitch."
"As somebody's—o-o-o-kay," Maggie said, reaching for her nicotine inhaler. "So tell us, Mom. What do we need to know?"
"I had an affair with Walter Bodkin."
"You really don't have to keep saying that, Mom, we got it," Maggie said, then inhaled deeply on her plastic pacifier, hoping like hell there was still some nicotine joy juice in the cylinder.
"But I told your father I'd had an affair with Walt Hagenbush."
She turned to Alex, a plea in her expression. "I started to say Bodkin, but Evan looked so crushed, and yet so angry, that I couldn't do it, I couldn't say it. So I said Walt Hagenbush instead. Walt was dead. Evan couldn't go beat him up if he was dead, right? And the problem was still the problem. What difference was there in a name?"
"Oh, brother," Maggie said. "Mom, it makes all the difference in the world. Doesn't it, Alex?"
"I don't know, Maggie, as we've yet to be told the details of this problem, remember?"
"It was a quick thing, a stupid thing. Ten years ago. We'd been looking to buy a new condo, and your father was never home to go look at them with me, so I went by myself—with Walter as our Realtor. We w
ere together a lot, had lunch a few times. He was ... he was very smooth. And all those condos. All those bedrooms. It ... it just happened."
Maggie looked quickly from left to right, her knuckles white on the edge of the table as she tried to hold onto her sanity. "Anybody got a barf bag around here anywhere?"
"Maggie, hush."
"But it was over and done, and I tried to forget about it." Alicia Kelly looked to Alex again, and he took her outstretched hand in his, gave it a reassuring squeeze. "And then ... and then, about three years ago, Maureen and John decided they wanted to buy a condo."
"Sweet Jesus in a cherry tree—Maureen? Maureen hopped between the sheets with Walter Bodkin?"
Alicia bit her lips together between her teeth, nodded. "I think she was regretting the garbage man, not that I hadn't warned her. I noticed the change in her during those weeks—the giddiness, the sudden, unexplained smiles—and I was fairly certain I knew why she was giving me excuses not to ask me to come along when she went looking at condos. So I finally confronted her, told her of my affair with Walter, hoping to warn her off before she did something stupid ..."
"But she'd already done something stupid," Maggie said, sighing. "It's like you said, Mom. All those condos. All those bedrooms. Reenie had an affair with her mother's former lover. Two generations of Kellys, in the same sack with the same man. Oh, yuck. Oh, double yuck. No wonder she's popping all those pills. That's sick."
"Perhaps, Maggie, you should leave the room, just until you can compose yourself," Alex suggested quietly.
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, tried to block the images that seemed determined to lodge forever in her brain. "I'm sorry. You're telling us important stuff, Mom, and I'm being a jerk. So, um, so you fudged this summer, when you went to Dad with your big confession. You told Dad, but you told him Hagenbush, not Bodkin. That wasn't so bad, really, and the problem was still the problem—that you and Maureen had both been—at separate times, separated by whole years, right?—both been seduced by Walt Bodkin."
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