"Yes. The wheels, as I've heard you say, are coming off his world. He wanted to know where your father is but, lacking Evan as a target, I believe Lisa will be the one to receive the brunt of his anger."
"Then I'm coming with you," Maggie said, unbuckling her own seat belt, just as the front door of the Buttses' house burst open and Barry came running out, heading down the street the short distance to the Boardwalk, and the building containing the Butts Bicycle Rental Shop.
"He's running! We can't let him get away!" Maggie said—shouted in the closed car. "And there's Lisa, standing at the door. Ah, man, look at her, Alex. She's holding a knife! Good for you, Lisa!"
But Alex was already gone, trotting after Barry, and Maggie turned the key in the ignition, not willing to be left behind. She wanted to be in on the kill, er, that is, the capture.
One hundred yards later, she slammed on the brakes, threw the gear shift into Park, and stumbled out of the car, already reaching for the backdoor and her walker, one eye on Alex, who was banging on the doors, calling Barry's name, doing both even as he was looking for a way to get inside the bicycle shop.
"Wait for me!" she yelled, hopping toward Alex, reaching him just as one side of the wide double doors flew open and Barry Butts raced by them on one of the rental bikes. Up the ramp he went, onto the Boardwalk, turning south.
"I told you to stay here."
"And I didn't listen," Maggie said, looking inside the bicycle shop. "Quick, Alex, one of those surreys. See that red one? It's a two-seater."
"And what do you propose I do with it?" he asked, even as he pulled the contraption forward.
"Simple. You pedal with both feet, I pedal with one foot, and we catch up to the bastard, take him down. Or do you know how to ride a bike? I never had you ride a bike in any of our books."
"Point taken," Alex said, lifting her onto the seat, and trotting around to climb into the other side. "Show me."
Maggie did a quick tutorial on how to work the pedals, and they were off, climbing the ramp onto the Boardwalk and heading after Barry Butts in the dark.
"How long is this Boardwalk, Maggie?"
"I don't know. Twenty-six, twenty-eight long blocks? But he'll go down one of the ramps and back onto the street at some point, don't you think?"
"Yes, I do. Keep pedaling."
There was no one else on the Boardwalk and the streetlights on the ocean side of the thing were the only illumination. But Barry wasn't that far ahead of them.
"He should be out of sight by now," Maggie said, holding onto Alex's cane as he steered the surrey and they both pedaled for all they were worth.
"He's bleeding, Maggie," Alex told her. "I saw blood on his shirt when he burst past us."
"Lisa! That took guts, didn't it? Or maybe she'd just plain had enough. Pedal faster, Alex!"
"You'll never catch him, you know."
Maggie sliced her eyes to the right, to see Henry Novack and his go-cart riding neck-and-neck with them. "Stop following us, Henry!"
He ignored her. "I can take him, you know. You've never seen me put the pedal to the metal. My pal Gabe souped it up for me. Extra battery power, or something. How much?"
"How much what?" Maggie called out in the cold wind that was slamming at them from the ocean. "How fast can you go, you mean?"
"No, Maggie," Henry shouted back. "How much is it worth to you for me to catch him for you?"
"He's a murderer, Henry. He's already killed one man, and he tried to run you down, remember?"
"I remember. Still not going to do it for free! How much!"
"Five hundred dollars, Henry," Alex said, still pedaling, even though Maggie had sort of forgotten to keep up her end.
"Oh, hell," Maggie said, leaning against the back of the seat. "Go get him, Henry. We'll catch up."
"Right," Henry said, and then surprised Maggie by pulling the sword cane out of her hands. He waved it once, above his head, pointed it out straight in front of him, yelled, "Charge!" and was gone, pulling away from the surrey as if it was standing still.
"Go, Henry, go!" Maggie shouted, leaning forward now, pedaling for all she was worth with her one good foot.
She saw Henry pulling closer to Barry, who seemed to be running out of gas—well, figuratively.
Closer.
Closer.
"Sic him, Henry!"
Closer.
Henry drew abreast of the bike and lowered the cane, sticking it between the spokes of the back wheel of the bicycle.
There was a noise. Not a nice noise. Sort of a twanging noise, probably caused by the metal inside the cane colliding with the metal spokes.
"My cane!" Alex shouted, and then added more quietly. "My beautiful cane."
But, as brakes went, you didn't really get much better than sticking a sword through bicycle spokes.
Barry Butts flew over the handlebars, doing a remarkable somersault, and landed, well, on his butt. That way he didn't have too far to fall when he fainted.
Alex slowed and then stopped the surrey and hopped out of it in time to see Henry holding the cane, bent into nearly a ninety degree angle, over Barry, daring him to try to get up.
"Got him!" Henry crowed.
"But my cane ..."
"Oh, get over it, Alex," Maggie told him as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed 9-1-1.
"My cane ..." Alex said again, and Maggie began to giggle. She'd never seen Alex so flustered. "Was that entirely necessary, Henry?"
"Seemed so to me," he said, handing the cane to Alex. "And I did it, didn't I? I'm a hero now. A five-hundred-dollars-richer hero, that is."
"Yes, you are," Alex said dully, still looking at his cherished, bent possession. "But my cane ..."
Once upon a time ...
... there was a girl named Margaret Kelly, who longed to grow up, leave her New Jersey home, and become a Famous Author in New York.
That all pretty much worked out for her.
But, as Maggie found out, some things go with you wherever you go, even as they are also waiting for you when you get back.
Like, you know, a twofer?
Or, as Maggie's Irish great-grandmother had been heard to comment from time to time: "Ain't that a pisser?"
Did her perfect hero creation actually favor a quizzing glass because Maggie was once impressed with Frankie Kelso's class ring hanging around her classmate Brenda's neck?
Had she actually patterned the lovable Sterling Balder after her father?
And—returning to her parents' condo to tell them Barry Butts had not only been captured but had confessed, to find her parents getting more than chummy in front of the living room fireplace—would she ever get out of therapy?
Not that Maggie felt much like lingering in Ocean City, attempting to find answers for all these questions.
No, she wanted to get back to the city, longed to get back to the city.
She said her good-byes to Lisa Butts, who was almost giddy now that she could go to the grocery store without her husband as escort, not to mention ecstatic that she'd finally mustered the courage to strike back at the man (the police were terming the shallow but bloody knife wound an act of self-defense and weren't going to prosecute). In fact, Lisa now believed the whole world was opening up to her and her delayed dreams, and was only disappointed that she was now too old to be eligible to audition for American Idol.
When the full story had come out, Maggie learned that Barry Butts had been the one who had phoned Walter Bodkin about the free Christmas Eve bowling, and told Bodkin to call the rest of the team members. It had been Barry who had scratched the lock on Evan Kelly's car door before he'd realized that Evan hadn't locked the car at all, and then, removed the bowling ball. It had been Barry who had twisted his wife's arm (literally) until she'd phoned Bodkin and asked him to meet her on the beach at midnight.
Barry Butts, who was going to go away for a long, long time, "to be somebody's bitch," as Alicia Kelly kept saying with depressing regularity as well as
considerable glee.
And then there was Henry. Henry Novack, the larger-than-life hero (again, literally), interviewed by nearly every media person in New Jersey, and chauffeured to Manhattan for five full minutes of airtime with Holly Spivak.
Now, though, Henry was starving in the fat farm Doctor Bob had recommended to Maggie, at Maggie's expense (but she wasn't adopting the man, damn it, no matter how much Alex teased her). Henry had bought a computer with his "earnings," and now e-mailed Sterling once a day to tell him of his progress. Henry had a goal: To lose two hundred pounds, say good-bye to his go-cart, and set himself up as a private detective.
Maggie worried about that. Mostly she worried that Henry would show up at her new house and Alex would take him on as an associate. Because Alex still felt a tad guilty about his mini-collapse at the sight of his bent sword cane.
There was so much a woman could read into the idea of a supposedly unflappable man coming apart over a bent sword ...
They were back in Manhattan now, and had just completed their "final walk-through" of the new house, with closing on the property scheduled for the next day.
Maggie had chosen the room she would make her office, the first time she would ever have a dedicated office, and Alex had paced off the footage in what was to become his Samaritan headquarters even as Socks and Jay-Jayne had been locked in discussion as to where to place the pizza ovens on their side of the ground floor.
Yes, the New Year promised to be interesting, at the least. Along with writing her next Saint Just mystery, Maggie had already decided to try her hand at researching the history of her new home. Maybe just to prove J.P. wrong when the lawyer had said that performing more than was necessary in a title search often dragged out skeletons best left buried.
Sterling appeared flustered, anxious about packing up his and Alex's belongings, but Maggie was more relaxed. As she'd told Sterling, packing to go somewhere was hard. You had to figure out what to take. But packing to leave was easy. You just took everything.
So while Sterling was wrapping his favorite pans and worrying that his pet mouse might be traumatized by the move, Maggie was more than comfortable in her bed, Alex as her cushion.
"There's going to be an echo in the house for a while, Alex, until we buy a lot more furniture," she told him, at last pushing herself up against the pillows, so that he could use her as a pillow for a while, as she stroked his thick black hair. "I never thought I'd say so, but that ought to be a lot of fun."
"You've become domestic, sweetings," Alex told her. "It may be the female in you, desiring a nest."
"Yeah, right. I'm living with my own imaginary hero, and I'm looking for a nest? I don't think so. I mean, I try, I really do, but you weren't here one day, Alex, and then the next you were. How can any of us know where you'll be tomorrow?"
"I, Sterling and I, are doing our best to evolve, you'll remember. Become more our own persons, rather than your ... well, your characters."
"So you can stay. I know, I remember. But what if it doesn't work, Alex? What if I wake up one morning in that big house and you and Sterling are—Alex?"
"Hmm?"
Maggie pushed him off her and reached for the bedside lamp. "No, don't sit up. Stay there," she ordered, and then pulled his head onto her lap as she ruffled his hair with both hands. "I think I ... I really think I—I did! Alex, you have a gray hair! I didn't write you with gray hair! You're ... you're evolving!"
The Viscount Saint Just, ruffled hair and all, sat up, took a shaking Maggie in his arms, breathed against her ear: "Yes, sweetings, I know. And as you always say, don't you love it when a plan comes together ... ?
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Bowled Over mkm-6 Page 29