"I don't know if I swallow that. Isn't that pushing things, Alex?" J.P. asked him. "I know the type. They're mean, irrational. But to see Evan over there as a threat to his marriage?"
"Not to his marriage, J.P., not at the bottom of it. But as a threat to his fanatical control over his wife? He'd already believed that she'd strayed with Mr. Bodkin. To have her now saying nice things about another man? Mr. Butts would have felt he was losing his position of absolute power. Mrs. Butts is convinced, or so she says, that Evan is innocent. I think she has reason to know that Evan is innocent. Innocent, but still another man Mr. Butts's wife turned to, in defiance to him. After all, Bodkin was about your age, Evan, so Lisa turning from one man of a certain age to another of a certain age wouldn't be so unusual. What do they call it on Dr. Phil —a father figure?"
"I'll say it once more, Evan. Don't you ever speak to me again! That girl is our Margaret's age. Young enough to be your daughter!"
Evan all but leapt to his feet, to look down at his wife. "Alicia ... shut ... up!"
Alicia opened and closed her mouth a few times, rather like a beached fish, and finally managed, "What?"
"I said, shut ... up. You talk too much, do you know that? Way too much. That's why I don't talk—I haven't been able to get a word in edgewise in about forty years. And you only ever hear yourself, only listen to yourself. Yes, we've got problems. Our kids have problems. We have problems with our kids. The whole world's got problems. The good thing is, we can fix ours, if we stop jumping off cliffs every time things don't go our way."
He turned to look at Saint Just. "Sterling told me that, told me some story about lemmings or something like that," he said, smiling weakly. "And you showed me I'm to keep my head up, be a warrior, not a victim. I like being a warrior." He sat down next to his wife once more, looking her straight in the eye. "This is my house. You are my wife. And that's the way it's going to be. You got that, Alicia? The kids? They're grown—let them do what they want. We started together, Ally, and we're going to finish together, the two of us. No more ultimatums, and no more cliffs."
Saint Just was tempted to close his eyes and block his ears before Alicia Kelly found her voice. He may be a hero, but any man of any sense is careful to stand very clear of marital discord.
But then he opened his eyes as Alicia said, "Oh, Evan. Where have you been all these years? I don't want to do it all by myself, I really don't."
"It sure looked like you did," Evan said, losing some of his bravado. "But that's all right. We'll work it out, won't we? We'll talk. We'll go to that counselor you want me to go to, all of us."
"Yes, Evan. We'll work it out. You can say anything you want, and I'll listen. I promise."
"And I'll listen to you, I promise." Evan smiled at his wife and then looked up at Saint Just. "I brought Lisa Butts a pizza from Mack and Manco's one Saturday, because she wasn't allowed to leave the Laundromat," Evan said as Alicia rubbed his back. "And I helped her fold some king-size sheets she washed for one of her customers. You know how big those are? I helped her fold them. I remember now ... Barry came in, and just stood there, looking at her. She sort of stood there, too, shaking a little, and then he turned and walked out. Didn't even say hi, you know? We'd been laughing, because I kept folding to the left when Lisa was folding to the right, and the sheet was getting all tangled and—he'd kill for that?"
"We don't know, Evan," Saint Just told him as Maggie and Tate reentered the room—Maggie looking satisfied, Tate looking like a man who'd moments earlier lost the family estate in a reckless game of faro. "But, for now, we'd like you to stay here with Sterling and Alicia. And you, Tate, if you will."
"Ah, that's too bad, but Tate has to leave," Maggie said brightly. "Don't you, Tate? But he'll be back next weekend, to help you fix that piece of siding that came off the side of the house in the last nor'easter that you've been worried about, okay, Dad? And he'll be back the week after that to do anything else you need done. Mom, you'll make a list?"
"I've had a list for two years," Alicia said, sighing. "And I'll believe this when I see it, Margaret."
"Oh, you'll see it, you'll believe it. Won't she, Tate?"
Twenty minutes later, after waving good-bye to J.P., who was more than ready to climb into her rented Mercedes and head back to the city, Maggie and Saint Just stood outside the Wesley Street condo and looked at each other. Smiled.
"I rent a Taurus, J.P. rents a Mercedes, and my spendthrift brother rents a freaking limo. It's transportation, right? Getting from point A to point B? One of these days I'm going to figure out if I'm an idiot or the rest of the world is nuts," Maggie said as the taillights disappeared in the early dusk. "Or maybe I'll just buy a Mercedes for myself, now that we've got a garage of our own. You know, more than the roof terrace, the enclosed garden, it's that garage. You know how unheard of garages are in Manhattan?"
"Maggie, you're avoiding the inevitable," Saint Just told her. "What happened with Tate?"
"You know what happened, Alex. I loaned him the money he needs. At no interest, unless he screws up. Like, if he doesn't visit Mom and Dad once a week, help them with anything they need help with, like that piece of missing siding, and the leak in the guest bathroom. Tate's really good with his hands, when he wants to be. Anyway he breaks the rules, bam, I start charging interest. And like I told him—there's bank rates, and then there's loan-shark rates." She grinned. "You can just call me Jaws. Now tell me what happened back there. I heard voices for a while, and then I didn't. And Mom's looking at Dad a little funny."
"Maggie, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," Saint Just said as he helped her into the driver's seat of her father's car. "For now, I believe it's time you and I reconnoitered this bowling establishment where Bodkin was last observed alive. We'll be obvious to anyone who remembers you from your childhood, but the time has come to do our own detecting. And then later this evening, as I've already discussed with Evan, he and Sterling will join us there."
"Daddy? Why? If he's in danger—"
"We'll protect him, Maggie. But Evan tells me that the Majesties will be practicing their bowling maneuvers every night this week, in preparation for something called the New Year's Tournament. As Barry Butts is now a Majestic, gathering everyone in one spot seems a workable solution."
"You mean you want to do a classic Saint Just Mysteries' we-gather-all-together denouement, right? But we don't have enough evidence for that, Alex."
"Which is why, my dear, I'm asking you to drive us to the bowling establishment, so that we might hopefully locate more clues."
Maggie put her father's car in gear. "All right, all right. As long as you stop calling it a bowling establishment. It's a bowling alley, or bowling lane. Got it?"
"And those two terms make sense to you?" Saint Just asked, facing front, as they headed up the street as dusk faded into yet another early winter darkness. "I don't think you Americans really listen to yourselves when you speak. A building can be neither an alley or a lane."
"Well, pardon us," Maggie said, clicking on her left turn signal. "Now tell me what happened with Mom and Dad while I was gone. The way they were looking at each other when we left? It sort of gave me the creeps ..."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"He called her Ally? Really? And she rubbed his back? Omigod, that's almost creepy."
"You have such a fascination with that word—creep. Creepy. I must say that I was myself at point-non-plus for a few moments, but signs of affection between a man and woman do not, to my mind, extend to creepy."
"That's only because they're not your parents," Maggie told him as she used the walker to clomp her way laboriously up the two-level handicap ramp that led to the front door of the bowling ally ... lane ... establishment. "Damn, they couldn't find an easier way to do this? There must be fifty feet of ramp here, and all the sections of cement pavement are at different heights. I can't imagine trying to push a wheelchair over those bumps, going uphill. You know, I have a whole new perspective on what so many people lau
ghingly call 'handicap access.' I say we make the jerks that design these things try to go up and down or in and out on walkers, on crutches, in wheelchairs. Because somebody's doing this all wrong."
"Yes, my dear, point taken, unless you wish for me to procure a soapbox for you to stand on as you continue your tirade," Alex said as he reached over to push the metal plate meant to open the glass doors to the bowling lane.
"See? I can't reach that thing from here, can I? They think I have nine-foot arms? By the time I press the plate, get myself back over to where I can go through the doors, the doors would be closing. Stupid! Yeah, well, I'm going to write somebody a real lollapalooza of a letter when this is over. Now tell me again what we're going to do here, while I tell you that we do none of it until we've sampled their snack bar. I'm thinking pizza."
"Which we will not consume using a knife and fork," Alex informed her as he held open the door for her (the push-plate didn't seem to be working), and she pushed her way into the noise and heat and disinfected-shoes smell of one of the least-favorite haunts of her youth. That was probably because the only bowling trophy she had ever won was as Most Improved Bowler. Which wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't improved from a score of thirty-one to finally, for one game of the whole season, breaking one hundred and fifty.
Erin was the bowler of the Kelly family. She'd copped more than a dozen trophies, twice as many ribbons, and their father's undivided time two nights a week and Saturdays.
Maggie figured she probably should forgive her sister for that. Forgive, and move on. Yes, definitely she had to write to Erin about what was happening on the home front, that it might even soon be safe to come home. Maybe even call her, and not just write to her. Eeeww, that thought hurt ...
"Maggie, did you hear me?"
"Hmm? Oh, right. Not with a knife and fork. I've only been telling you that for months. It tastes better when you just pick it up and shove it in your mouth. Now try it with some french fries rolled up inside. Trust me—pure gourmet. Snack bar's to our right."
"Perhaps we might try the bar, instead," Alex suggested, pointing to a flashing sign that blinked red and blue, not too inventively, The Eleventh Frame. "That's where Henry Novack encountered the members of the Majesties, remember?"
"Drinking beer before they get their practice games in? I don't think so. These are dedicated athletes, or whatever you call bowlers. We'd have a better chance of seeing one of them in the snack bar. Ah, smell that? Thank God garlic can overcome any smell, even that of rented bowling shoes."
They settled in at the counter, all the plastic booth seats already occupied, and Maggie quickly ordered two slices for herself and two more for Alex. And two fountain Cokes. She loved fountain Cokes, and since the snack bar hadn't seemed to have changed in fifteen years, she hoped the Cokes hadn't, either.
"Maggie Kelly, right?" the woman behind the counter asked as she put down the sodas and pulled a pair of straws from her apron pocket. "Heard about your dad. Cops let him go?"
Maggie smiled weakly at one of the many nemeses of her youth. "Hi, Mrs. McGert. Yeah, they figured out he didn't do it."
"Not the way I heard it. I heard they just didn't have enough to go to trial with, like that, you know? Probably pick him up again in a week or two, that's what my Jerome says. Is he going to show up here? I wouldn't, if I was him."
"Mrs. McGert, Dad's bowled here for as long as I can remember, and I never heard him say one bad word about you. You've worked behind this snack bar for as long as I can remember, and you've been bad-mouthing him to everyone who comes in this place ever since Christmas Eve, haven't you? Sure, you have. But that's okay, because I've learned something these past few days—forgive your past, and move on. So I'm going to forgive you, Mrs. McGert, and move on."
"Uh ... yeah ... you do that," the woman said and looked at Alex, shrugged. "She was always a weird kid," she told him and then turned her back to go get their pizza.
At which time Maggie quickly but carefully pulled off the paper at the top of her straw, eased the paper down the straw a good two-thirds of the way (she'd experimented, and two-thirds of the way gave her optimum control), put the exposed end of the straw to her mouth, took careful aim ... and blew the paper sleeve directly at Mrs. McGert's broad backside.
"I've still got it. Direct hit."
"Hardly a challenge, with apologies to Mrs. McGert's massive posterior. I thought I heard you say you were going to forgive your past and move on."
"Not without a parting shot, I wasn't," Maggie said, prudently losing her smile as Mrs. McGert slid paper plates in front of them. "You know, crazy as this is, what with Dad still not out of the woods, I'm really enjoying myself. Maybe I ought to come home more often? Nah, that'd be pushing it, huh?"
"As you seem to revert to near childhood on such occasions—and keeping in mind your own admission that you were not an easy child—yes, I would concur. Ah, and here comes my friend of the other day, Mr. Joseph Panelli, and look who is with him, sweetings—the footballing hero himself."
Maggie turned on her stool, her mouth still filled with the pizza she'd yet to bite through entirely. "Barry Butts," she said around the slice, and then bit down hard, the hot tomato sauce quickly burning the roof of her mouth. "Ow-ow-ow," she said, holding her mouth open as she swiveled toward the counter once more. "Coke. Ah need Coke," she said, grabbing her glass and sucking hard on the straw.
"Congratulations, sweetings. I do believe you've caught Mr. Panelli's attention." Alex stood up, extending his hand to the captain of the Majesties. "Joe, m'man, good to see you again!"
"M'man?" Maggie muttered. "Cripes, I have to get the man out of Jersey. Fast."
She turned around again in time to see Alex and a redheaded man about her dad's age shaking hands while Barry Butts looked on from a few feet away.
"Maggie? Maggie Kelly?" Barry said in that aw-shucks voice she remembered from high school. At the time, she'd thought he was the modest sports hero. Now she thought he was as fake as a three-dollar bill. "Lisa told me you'd been by to see her. And your friend, too, right?"
Ah. There may have been a little bit of an edge to his last statement, Maggie thought as she wiped her hands on a paper napkin and then shook hands with the one-time captain of the football team. The man had a grip like an iron vise. "Yeah, we did. God, it was good to see her. Sorry we missed you, but Lisa said you were at work?"
"Right. Not a lot of call for bikes in the wintertime, but I have to do repairs, stuff like that. You remember my dad's bike rental shop? Bikes, trikes, two– and four-seater surreys? Put your butt in a Butts? We do Rollerblades and skateboards now, too, and body boards. But the bikes are still the Number One rental."
"Do I remember? Like anyone could ever forget that fantastic slogan, huh? Still down at the north end of the Boardwalk, right, in the older part of town?" Maggie said, her cheeks starting to hurt because she had to fight to keep the smile on her face. After all, if Alex was right, Barry Butts had recently killed a man. And framed her father for the murder. And might want to kill her father. And was a bastard to her good friend, Lisa.
Well, she could think of Lisa as her good friend if she wanted to, damn it!
"Yeah, still in the same spot. Forty-two years now. Mom's been gone a long while, and Dad died a couple of years back, and it's mine now. The business, the house. I thought about moving away, years ago, after high school. But you know the saying—I'd rather be the big fish in a small pond, heh-heh. I have it good here."
In the back of her mind, Maggie was humming that Bruce Springsteen song, Glory Days. Barry and Lisa could have done walk-ons in the video ...
"You and Lisa have it good," Maggie corrected smoothly, pulling herself back to attention. "Your mom? Gosh, I remember your dad, but I don't think I remember your mom."
"Like I said, she left a long time ago," Barry said, a tic beginning to work in his cheek.
Maggie took the words, and the tic, as evidence that she and Alex were on the right track. Bar
ry's mom had run off, so Barry was extra-possessive of Lisa, making sure she didn't do to him what his mother had done to him. Wow. Maggie's parents may have screwed her up some, but Barry had her in that department, hands down.
But he was still a murderer, and would get no sympathy from her.
"Why don't you sit down a while, Barry," she said, patting the stool beside her invitingly just as Mr. Panelli sat down on the stool on the other side of Alex, the two of them still deep in conversation. "You're getting ready for the big New Year's tournament?"
"Yeah. It's going to be a tough one. You know, what with half the team only coming on board this week. Frankie Kelso's a good guy, but I don't know that he can plug the two-hole. I'll be ... well, I'll be bowling in the four-hole, taking your dad's place."
"It's the most important slot, isn't it?" Maggie asked, only an effort of will keeping her from batting her eyelashes at the man. But she couldn't play that dumb, not when she'd been listening to bowling stories for nearly half her life.
"It can be, if we go down to the wire. If the match is out of reach, then it means nothing, and everybody's already walked away to watch another match. But, to my mind, the two-hole is the big one, if you want to pull away, pull away fast, you know? Lead-off strong, follow in the two-hole strong, and you're already halfway there, you know? But like I said, Frankie's number two."
"Even so, the four, um, hole, is a big responsibility. But, then, maybe not for the captain of the football team the year we went to states, huh?"
"The year we won states," Barry said, grabbing Maggie's second slice of pizza and shoving half of it into his mouth. "I'm used to pressure. I do my best, under pressure. You should have tried me out, Maggie, back in high school."
"You didn't know who I was, back in high school," Maggie said, this time losing her smile. But she recovered quickly. "You and Lisa and the others—you were the in-crowd. I was the ... I don't know what I was. Maybe the square peg in the round hole?"
Bowled Over mkm-6 Page 27