Bowled Over mkm-6

by Kasey Michaels

  "Last night, and I've been running myself up and down the county ever since, doing that voodoo I do so well, which you'd know if you'd turn on your cell phone, sweetcakes, or talked to your dad once in a while, because I cleared it all with him first—and Sterling, of course. He introduced us. God, I love Sterling, he's such a sweetie. You buy him the beanie hat? With the earflaps? I'll bet you did, that thing has Little Mary Sunshine written all over it. Hated to leave all that warmth for all this damp and cold, but friendship called, and I'm such an old softie," J.P. told them as she wrapped her coat more tightly about herself.

  The coat was huge, bright red, cushioned more than just padded, and fell all the way to the tops of the lawyer's bright green high-top sneakers. J.P. was also huge, tall, the sort of overpowering figure that usually had the ability to intimidate the hell out of Maggie. And had, at least at first. Except that, for all her outward aggressiveness, J.P. had the proverbial heart of gold. And the worst clothes sense and choice in lovers of any woman in the history of the world.

  "So you've been here, talked to Dad, seen Sterling, and then gone to the cops?"

  "Not the cops. Never the cops, not after they've picked their man, put the collar on him. Had to go up the chain of command, all the way to the top. Never start at the bottom, it takes too long. Worked fast, because I like to work fast, and because I'm good, damn good. After all, how can I let my friend's daddy walk around with a murder charge over his head, huh? Which is gone, by the way, as of about fifteen minutes ago. You can thank me now. Even hug me. It might warm me up. Damn it's cold."

  Maggie didn't know what to think, what to say. She turned to Alex. "Are we happy about this?"

  J.P. dropped her arms, that she had opened so that Maggie could hug her, and looked from Maggie to Alex and back again.

  "Okay. Somebody want to tell me what's going on here? I cut my vacation short, rush home to winter, drag myself down here to the hinterlands, tell Ms. Spade-Whitaker to take a hike—never saw a woman so happy to lose a client—take myself up to the D.A.'s office, present myself as the new attorney of record, read the evidence they have to show me, do a little dance, make a little love, get down to—well, they didn't have anything. All circumstantial, except for the bowling ball. That was pretty substantial. And your daddy has an airtight alibi in his mistress, so—"

  "Carol's not his mistress, J.P.," Maggie explained nervously. "They're just very good friends."

  "Never interrupt me when I'm blowing my own horn, sugar. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I threatened to paper the D.A.'s office with motions to dismiss, Miranda violations—more paper than the man could handle if he had a staff of twenty in Manhattan rather than sitting here in the boonies of Jersey. And he caved. Such a pretty thing to see, a man caving that way. So the charges have all been dropped, at least until they get more evidence. Which they ain't getting, right, because Sterling told me you and English here are doing your ride-to-the-rescue thing, and finding the real murderer. So, English? Did you find him yet?"

  "Possibly, J.P.," Alex told her. "However, if one of our current hypotheses is correct, removing Evan as a suspect may have just put his life in danger."

  Maggie sagged against the side of the car. "Go upstairs, please, Alex, and get Dad and Sterling. I'd feel better if we took Dad to Mom's house, had everyone in one spot."

  "An excellent suggestion. We might arrive in time to wave fond farewells to Attorney Spade-Whitaker and her Realtor husband."

  "And Tate. I'll bet he's going to bail at any moment. We have to finish this, Alex, we have to finish it today."

  "Because you need to get back to the city and have me run the title search on that building Sterling told me you bought, and go over the sales contract that you're now going to tell me you didn't sign without letting me look at it, right?"

  "Uh, well ... oops?"

  "You signed a sales agreement without checking with me, your personal lawyer?"

  "You reneged on the free legal service for life, J.P.," Maggie reminded her weakly.

  "And a good thing I did, if you didn't have someone vet that sales contract, run a decent title search. You know, Sunshine, between tripping over murders and tripping over yourself the way you do, I could end up a very rich woman."

  He-e-e's ba-a-a-ck ...

  They let him go?

  How could they let him go!

  What did I do wrong? I didn't do anything wrong. I did it right.

  Didn't I?

  Now what?

  Now nothing, that's what. I do nothing. I just sit tight.

  I've got what I want now. Everything I want.

  Unless they try to screw me.

  Then they'll be sorry. Boy, will they be sorry.

  I took out one for sure. I can take out another one ...

  Well, isn't he a real fun guy? But who is he? What's his major problem, other than the fact that he's an eggroll short of a combination plate.

  All the clues are there, though. Promised, and delivered.

  So who killed Walter Bodkin?

  Better yet, if you think you're so smart, and you already know the "who" of it—why did this person kill him?

  Bet you don't know that (and, if you do, go write your own book; why are you reading this one?).

  Maggie and Saint Just sure don't know why Bodkin is dead. As a matter-of-fact, they aren't even close.

  Which, unhappily for our bad guy, never stopped them before when they uncovered a murderer for all the wrong reasons ...

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "What's he doing here? I didn't invite him here. Who invited him here? Margaret, is this your doing? Why would I want him here?" Alicia Kelly asked rapid-fire, pointing at her husband as the gang, one by one, emerged at the top of the staircase leading to the main floor of the condo.

  "Think I'll go get a bowl of puffed rice," Evan muttered, his chin on his chest as he scuttled past his wife on his way to the kitchen. "Sterling? You want a bowl of puffed rice?"

  Saint Just motioned with his head that Sterling should accompany Evan to the kitchen—and out of the line of fire.

  "I suppose so," Sterling said, hurrying after Evan. "How many calories do you think are in a bowl of puffed rice, Evan? Do you have any skim milk?"

  "Since when does Sterling worry about skim milk?" Maggie asked, but then just shook her head. "Never mind, it's not important. Mom, look, it's like this. We think maybe Dad's in danger."

  Alicia sat down all at once. Thankfully she had been standing directly in front of the couch. "Evan? Somebody is after Evan? Is that what you're saying? Why? Because of Walter?"

  "Alex?" Maggie said, looking at him for help.

  Which he gladly supplied. After all, he might not know exactly what was going on, but he knew his impeccable English accent often concealed that fact from his American listeners.

  "Yes, allow me, please. First, Alicia, I'd like to introduce to you J.P. Boxer, Maggie's and my very good friend and your husband's new attorney."

  Alicia smiled rather weakly as J.P. bounded across the room and stuck out her hand to the woman.

  "English over there will take an hour getting to the point, Mrs. Kelly," J.P. said, "so I'll just lay it out for you. The D.A. has dropped the charges against your husband for lack of evidence. My doing, because I'm very good at what I do. Which, for some reason, English and sunshine over there seem to think makes everything worse, not better. Alex, back to you."

  "Yes, thank you, J.P." Saint Just looked about the room, Tate's absence noticeable. "Your son, Mrs. Kelly?"

  "Upstairs, packing. Cynthia and Sean have already left."

  "Ah, shucks," Maggie said happily. "Did she take the Crock-Pot of meatballs with her? Nah, I guess not."

  "I have no idea, Margaret. They called themselves a cab and went sneaking off without so much as a 'thank you for having us.' And Tate and I ... well, we aren't speaking, so I have no idea what he's doing or where he's going. This entire family is falling apart."

  "Not that it had far to fall,
" Maggie said quietly before joining her mother on the couch. "Do you want me to talk to him?"

  "Would you, Margaret? I don't want him leaving in a huff. And I think," she added, attempting a whisper that failed badly, "I think he may have, you know, money problems? And I thought he was doing so well with his new business venture."

  "A three-state tanning bed franchise might not have been the way to go right now, Mom, what with all the skin cancer scares. He should just stick to mechanical engineering—that he supposedly knows how to do. What did you two argue about anyway?"

  "This place," Alicia said, spreading her arms to encompass the entirety of the condo. "He wants to sell it, and I said, no, I can't do that. Not without speaking to your father. And since I'm not speaking to him, I suppose the condo won't be going on the market anytime soon."

  "Logical," Maggie said, grinning up at Saint Just. "Kelly-logical, anyway."

  "Can't you ever be serious, Margaret? And now you say your father has been exonerated?"

  "The charges were dropped, Mrs. Kelly," J.P. said. "That doesn't mean they can't be brought again, if the police find new evidence. But, yes, for now, your husband is no longer a suspect."

  "But he's in danger? Didn't someone say he's in danger? You said it, didn't you, Margaret? In danger of what, for pity's sake?"

  "Danger? Who's in danger?" Tate Kelly asked, entering the living room, his suitcase in his hand. "Hello," he said to J.P., holding out his hand. "I'm Tate Kelly, and you would be ... ?"

  "Wondering what the hell I'm doing here," J.P. said, shaking his hand, her firm grip, Saint Just noticed with some amusement, causing Tate to flinch. "I hear you might need a good bankruptcy lawyer? I don't do bankruptcies as a rule, but I could make an exception for a friend of Sunshine's here."

  "Mom!" Tate exploded. "What did you do—rent a billboard, for crying out loud."

  "Don't you yell at Mom!"

  "Don't you tell me what to do!"

  "Stop that this minute, you're both an embarrassment! Margaret, sit down, and tell your brother to do the same! Don't you yell at each other. You weren't raised by wolves, you know!"

  "Alicia? Children? What's going on in here? Sterling and I could hear you all the way out in the kitchen."

  "What do you care, Evan? I raised these children, not you. Four children, and I raised them on my own. Not you, working all the time, bowling all the rest of the time, watching television all the rest of the time."

  "That's a lot of rest of the times, Mom," Maggie broke in, looking at Saint Just, her expression now more embarrassed than angry.

  "I'm sorry you feel that earning a living, keeping a roof over my family's head wasn't enough for you, Alicia," Evan said, showing a remarkable amount of backbone, Saint Just thought. It was probably a shame he hadn't shown it earlier, as in for the last forty or more years.

  "Hi, everybody, I saw Daddy's car outside and figured you were here, Maggie, and might have some news?" Maureen said from the head of the staircase, smiling as she walked into the room, her winter coat hanging open over a nondescript blue dress and her ever-present apron. "Daddy? You're here? What's going on?" Then she must have sensed the tension in the room. Her smile began to slip and she backed up a few paces even as she began digging in the pocket of her apron. "Ex ... er ... excuse me. I need to go get a drink of water."

  "And there she goes, off to swallow one of her little pink pills," Alicia said, collapsing onto the couch once more. "What have I done, Evan? What did I do wrong? Erin's as good as gone, Tate's trying to sell our house from under us, Maureen's a ... a pill-popper, and Margaret—" She stopped, blinked, and looked at Maggie. "I don't know anymore, Margaret. Sometimes you seem so normal."

  "If she's normal, I'm Donald Trump," Tate declared hotly.

  "Oh, I don't know, Tate," Maggie said sweetly. "You might not have his money, but you might want to consider trying his comb-over soon. And now that the subject's out in the open—how dare you try to sell Mom and Dad's house out from under them?"

  "Maggie," Evan said, "we'll handle this, your mother and I."

  "How are we going to do that, Evan? I'm not talking to you, you philandering old fart."

  "Me? I philandered? What about you, Alicia? If I philandered, it was only because you philandered first."

  "Mom had an affair, too? Why did I think it was just Dad?" Tate finally found his way to a chair and sat down. "Oh, I love this. I just love this."

  "You would," Maggie growled at him. "You'd love anything that gets them to split up so they let you sell the house."

  "They were already splitting up. Mom kicked him out, remember? And I can sell this house anytime I want to sell this house. It's my house!"

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "Oh, yeah!"

  "Over my dead body, sport!"

  "And speaking of dead bodies, Maggie ... ?" Saint Just wasn't easily discommoded, but the idea that a family war might be about to break out in front of him was decidedly discomforting. In case everyone else had forgotten, they had a murderer to unmask. "If we could just get back to the point ... ?"

  Maggie, who was pointing a finger within an inch of her brother's jutted-out jaw, dropped her arm to her side and sighed deeply. "Well, that was fun, wasn't it? Like a flashback, or something. You're right, Alex. Back to the problem at hand. This is an old problem, and we've embarrassed ourselves enough in front of you and J.P. Sorry, Alex, sorry, J.P."

  "Don't worry about it," J.P. said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "It's not really a family fight until somebody throws something. My mom's favorite was always the TV remote. She had a real hate for my dad's TV remote."

  Evan, intelligent enough to know that retreat was sometimes not only the best but the only option, crossed the room to stand beside Saint Just. "I think she's weakening, Alex," he said quietly as Maggie and her mother engaged in a low conversation on the couch. "Maybe if I bought her a gift or something? Jewelry? Jewelry would be nice, don't you think?"

  "Ah, no, not jewelry, Evan. Not in this case."

  "But Carol could probably get me her store discount on—oh. Right. Flowers?"

  "A good thought, yes."

  Maggie waved to him from the other side of the room. "Alex? Mom says she's ready to hear about Dad being in danger. Our theory on it, anyway."

  "Excuse me, Evan," Saint Just said before crossing the room to take up a chair only in time to rise politely from it again as Maureen reentered the room, carrying a bowl of puffed rice and followed by Sterling, whose ears were quite red, obviously a result of overhearing the Kelly Family At War.

  Saint Just was more than willing to explain his and Maggie's theory, even as he knew that theory had more than a few gaping holes in it that had to be filled in only by rather large leaps in logic.

  When he was done, Evan Kelly was shaking his head. "Barry Butts? But I barely even know him. Why would he want to frame me for Walter's murder?"

  "Because you were handy, Dad," Maggie explained. "You and Bodkin had that fight in the parking lot. Everyone saw it. You pretty much set yourself up to be a logical choice when Butts wanted to point the finger of suspicion—trite as that sounds—away from himself."

  By now, Maggie had joined Saint Just as he stood in front of the gas fireplace. Evan, wonder of wonders, had taken his place on the couch, beside his wife.

  "So this is all my fault," Alicia said, her spine straight, her chin raised. "It figures. One way or another, a woman always takes the blame."

  "Now, now, Alicia," Evan said, patting her hands as they lay clenched together in her lap. "I did a stupid thing. I ... I let my outrage get the better of me. And Walter was so ... so smug. So happy with himself about what he'd done."

  Maureen, sitting on the piano bench, lifted her apron to her face, hiding behind it.

  "No, Evan, it's my fault. I never should have told you what I'd done. What Walter did to me, to ... well, you know."

  Maureen's shoulders began to shake, and Maggie went to sit beside her, put her arm around her shoulders
. "It's okay, Reenie."

  "What's okay, Reenie?" Tate asked, and then smiled. Okay, leered. "Don't tell me Maureen—cripes, what is this, an outtake from Desperate Housewives?"

  "Tate, I believe you owe your mother and sister an apology," Saint Just said smoothly.

  "The hell I do. I'm not the one who was catting around. My God, my own mother?"

  "That's it, big mouth. We've heard enough from you. Come with me. And I mean now, buster!" Maggie said, using her walker to all but herd him toward the kitchen. Saint Just filed away the thought that he might want to point out to his beloved one day that she might have more of her mother in her than she would suppose. But he would probably point that out from a distance.

  This departure left Saint Just to answer J.P.'s next question. "Okay, I think I've got this now. Barry Butts—what a stupid name—wanted Walter Bodkin dead because his wife was having an affair with him, or pretending to have an affair with him. Because Maggie's mom and sister had also been ... victims of this guy. Evan and Bodkin were seen fighting, Butts figured the best way to keep suspicion off him would be to put it on Evan. How am I doing so far?"

  "Well enough," Saint Just said, smiling. "Now ask the question you're burning to ask."

  "I was just getting to that, English. I got the charges dropped against Evan. A good thing, or at least ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population would see it that way. But you and sunshine think I've just put the man in danger. Drumroll please, here's the question—why?"

  "We can't be completely sure, but it's possible that Mr. Butts believed that his wife had ... tender feelings for Evan."

  "For me?" Evan looked at his wife. "Alicia, I swear—"

  "Don't you talk to me, Evan. Don't you dare try to talk to me. Not ever again."

  "You were kind to the woman, Evan," Saint Just explained quickly, "when you frequented the Laundromat where she was employed. For a man like Barry Butts, being kind to a woman he denied any male companionship could be misconstrued. Especially if Lisa Butts told her husband the sort of thing she told us—that you're a very nice man."