“Way to stick your landing,” she remarked, having witnessed his gymnastics across the cab. “Do I have to give back the shoes?”
Crawford let out a laugh. “I think so.”
She reached up and pinched Crawford’s cheek, leaving her hand there. “You so cute, Crawford,” she said in a Puerto Rican accent that she affected for his benefit. She had a master’s degree from John Jay and was on the sergeant’s list. “When we gonna hook up, papi?”
“When your four kids go to college and your deputy inspector husband is on a respirator,” he said, pulling the perp up from the sidewalk by his handcuffs.
She walked off, her backside packed into a black skirt, tottering on her high heels. “I’ll see you later,” she said.
Crawford dragged the perp across the street to the Crown Victoria, parked in front of the Avenue Steak House.
“Don’t tell me you never thought about it,” Fred said, thrusting his head in Carmen’s direction while opening the back door of the Vic.
Crawford shook his head. If only it were that easy.
Chapter 5
Another weekend came and I was still rattled by Ray’s death, and, truth be told, by my encounter with Gianna. Nothing says creepy like being in the sights of a Mob wife. Even though she was a seemingly innocuous Staten Island housewife there had been something cold and somewhat calculating about her and in the way she conveyed Peter’s message to me. Was that a hint of jealousy that I had discerned or nothing at all? Whatever it was, I was unnerved, and being as I’m slightly nervous about everything to begin with, this new state wasn’t a welcome addition to my psyche.
I awoke, at seven-thirty, to the sound of a chain saw, in clear violation of the town’s noise ordinance. No chainsawing, no lawn mowing, no noisemaking until eight o’clock. I looked out my bedroom window and saw my neighbor, Jackson, sawing a stump on his front lawn. Given the recent developments and my thought that a person with a chain saw had killed my ex-husband, I decided to forgo giving Jackson a hard time about it and let him saw away.
The phone began to ring. The last person I expected to hear from was Max. But indeed, she was up and at it, probably still awake from the night before.
“I’ve got two tickets to some Shakespeare shit up by you for tonight,” she said, yawning while talking. “My mother gave them to me in the hope of culture-fying me. You want to go with?”
I took a breath and tried to compose myself. “Shakespeare shit,” I said. “Sounds lovely.” I pushed my hair off my forehead. “Do you think you could be more specific?”
“Hold on,” she said. “I have to find the tickets.” I could hear her rooting around near the phone. “It’s at Boscobel,” she said, referencing an estate near Cold Spring that overlooked the Hudson River and West Point, “and they’re performing The Merry Wives of Windsor. I don’t know what the hell that is. Is that even Shakespeare? It sounds like porn.”
“Yes, it’s Shakespeare.” I really didn’t feel like seeing this particular Shakespeare play, but since I didn’t have anything to do, I was inclined to accept. “Where’s Fred?”
“Working.” She waited a second for my reaction to her invitation. “Do you want to go? I figured you could tell me what’s going on during the play. It’s supposed to rain, but not until after dark.”
“Sure,” I said, and lay back on the bed. I loved Boscobel and hadn’t been there in a few years; Ray and I had gone every year to the summer Shakespeare performances, but since our divorce, I hadn’t renewed my subscription. “We can bring a picnic and have dinner there. How does that sound?”
“Good. What time do you want me to pick you up? The show starts at seven.”
It would take about forty-five minutes to get to Boscobel, and factoring in picnic time, I figured we should leave my house a little before five. I told her that I would buy dinner and prepare it.
“Of course you will. If you leave it up to me, we’ll be eating stale Wheat Thins and drinking flat Diet Coke.” She hung up without saying good-bye; that’s her trademark. No beginnings and no endings.
I took a shower and got dressed. There was a gourmet shop in Tarrytown that would provide all of the food we would need to enjoy our evening. I went into the kitchen and grabbed my car keys from the counter. I peered out of the window over the kitchen sink and looked into the back of Terri and Jackson’s yard; the coast seemed to be clear. I had been trying to avoid the two of them ever since I had found out the little tidbit about Terri sleeping with my ex-husband. To me, Terri’s one-dimensional; she’s a slut and nothing else. I had no use for Terri, and while I felt a little sympathy for her husband, Jackson, he was a pompous jerk who was constantly looking at me with pity. I wanted to remind him that he had been cuckolded, too; we were kind of even on that score. I headed to the back door.
With my hand on the knob, I was almost free and clear, until I heard a persistent knocking at the front door. I threw the keys back on the counter and headed down the front hall. I opened the door to find the last person who should have been at the door: Terri.
I tried to remain impassive, but the sight of her made my blood boil; I felt my cheeks go hot. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of any courtesy; I stood in silence, slouched against the door but with my hand gripping the knob, staring at her.
She gave me an awkward smile and straightened to her full five feet two inches. “Alison. Hello.”
I stared back at her.
“Can I come in?” she asked, opening the screen door and not waiting for my consent.
I stepped back and let her pass. She walked down the hallway to the kitchen and took a seat at the table. She looked back at me expectantly, her blue eyes pooling with tears. I reluctantly started back to the kitchen and stood at the counter, my arms crossed.
She started talking as if we were in the midst of the conversation already. “I feel terrible about Ray.”
As would anyone with a modicum of human feeling, I thought. I continued to stare at her. Although I’m not scary in any way, shape, or form, the fact that I towered over her by a good eight inches obviously intimidated her somewhat. I stared down at her and she averted her eyes.
She started crying, a hiccuping serenade complete with runny nose and leaky eyes. “I’m actually devastated by his death,” she said. She got up and leaned into me, expecting a hug, I presumed, but my arms hung at my sides. “You found him, right?”
“Yes, Terri. I found him.”
“Oh, my God! That must have been awful!” she cried.
More than you’ll ever know, I thought. I stood there while she wept into my shirt, waiting for her to stop and tell me her reason for coming by. I didn’t think she had come by to wail about Ray, but I had been wrong before. Maybe she had.
After a few minutes, she composed herself and pulled back. She saw that I wasn’t going to engage in a conversation about Ray, so she took another tack. “It wasn’t always like this, you know.”
“Like what, Terri?” I was beyond exasperation and waited for her to get to the point.
“Like it is now.” She didn’t do anything to stop the tears and they fell freely onto the front of her T-shirt and my kitchen table. “We used to be happy. I thought we had a good marriage.”
“Well, I guess your cheating put an end to that.” We had moved very quickly from her devastation over Ray’s death to a conversation about her marriage; I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
She looked at me, resigned. “You’ve got every right to be angry. You must hate me.”
“First of all, I don’t need your permission to be angry, and second, hate doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about you.”
She pursed her lips. “Ray loved you. He just didn’t know how to be in a committed relationship.”
My anger boiled to the surface and I used every ounce of self-control that I had not to throttle her. I kept my voice even and measured. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Terri, and ask that you never come back here or speak t
o me again.” After a second, I added, “Please.”
She gave a rueful laugh. She wiped her hands across her eyes, smearing her mascara across her forehead. “I had this realization this morning,” she started. “Besides you, and of course, Ray, may God rest his soul,” she said dramatically, “I really don’t know anyone in this neighborhood.” She paused. “And I need a friend, Alison.” She let out a choked sob.
We were only a few feet apart and her fear was palpable.
“What would you say if I told you that you didn’t really know Jackson?”
I sighed. “I would have to agree, Terri.”
She pushed her hair back with both of her hands. “I’m in a bit of a bind, Alison.”
My head was spinning. I didn’t know why she was here, I didn’t want to know, and I wanted her to leave. Immediately. I didn’t want to hear this story and I didn’t want to be involved in her life in any way. She wasn’t responsible for my divorce in any direct way or in Ray’s death, I assumed, so we really didn’t have anything to talk about. Ray had cheated on me before and after her, but I was suspicious of women who had affairs with men who were clearly attached, never mind married. I could never hurt another woman in that way and tried to stay clear of women who could. Even Max, for all of her liberal views on sexual recreation, drew the line at married men.
I finally pulled a chair out and sat down. I don’t know if it was compassion or stupidity, but I felt sorry for her. I looked at her. My expression said “tell me your story.” And she did.
Crawford did the paperwork on the hump who had attacked Carmen and got him through the system before logging out. It was close to six at night and he had been at work since a little before six in the morning. He was bone tired and more than a little cranky. He wanted a shower, a beer, and his bed. Nothing more.
He lived on the top floor of a brownstone on West Ninety-seventh Street, with his mother’s sister-in-law, Bea McDonald, below him in the small, one-bedroom unit. Bea and her husband, Bobby, had owned the house since the late ’50s and had raised their six kids in the upstairs unit where he now lived. When Bobby died after a long battle with lung cancer some twenty years earlier, Bea had offered Crawford (“little Bobby” to her despite the fact that he was almost a foot and a half taller than the five-foot-tall Bea) the apartment for him and his growing family. He moved in and never left. Which is more than he could say for the rest of his family.
He tried to let himself into the ground floor of the house as quietly as possible. Bea was a great housemate, but sometimes, especially late on a Saturday night, she liked to visit with him. He had barely planted his size-fourteen feet on the long staircase up to his apartment when he heard stirring in the first-floor apartment. The door opened and Bea’s round face peered out. “Bobby?” she called.
He stopped, midstep. “Hiya, Bea.”
“How was work?” she asked, opening the door all the way. She got up on her tiptoes and tried to kiss him; he bent at the waist and met her halfway.
There was no polite answer to that question, so he went with a grunt and a shoulder shrug.
“That good, huh?” she responded. “I’ve got some leftover pot roast in the kitchen. Some dinner?”
He thought back to his last meal: some peanuts and a cold cup of coffee in the Crown Vic. He could muster up a little conversation for Bea; her pot roast was the best. He didn’t know too many people who prepared pot roast on a hot September night, but he was glad she had. He nodded and told her he would be back after “washing up,” which euphemistically meant “putting my guns where nobody will find them.” He didn’t enjoy eating with a Glock on his hip or the smaller gun on his ankle.
“I’ve got a few bottles of that Canadian beer that you like, too,” she said.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, returning to her apartment within five minutes of her invitation. He walked through her living room and into her kitchen, where she had set a place for him. The apartment was cool, thanks to a large wall unit in the living room that cooled the living room and kitchen. An ice-cold bottle of Labatt’s sat on a place mat alongside a fork, knife, spoon, and napkin. He took a seat at the table and a long drink from the Labatt’s bottle, finishing half of it. “Thanks, Bea. This is nice.”
She stood at the stove piling oven-browned potatoes, carrots, peas, and pot roast onto his plate. “You look tired. I heard you leave a little after five this morning.”
He stretched his long legs out under the maple table. “Fred and I had to ghost a decoy on Riverdale Avenue. Mugger. Beats and robs wealthy women in the neighborhood.” Bobby McDonald had been a beat cop in the Four-six Precinct, so Bea was well acquainted with all of the cop lingo.
She set the plate down in front of him. The pot roast smelled so good that he almost started crying. “Did you get the bastard?” she asked, her language at odds with her sweet, round face. She took a seat across from him.
“Got him,” he said, and forked a piece of meat into his mouth.
“Good job!” she said, and offered the palm of her hand for a high five.
He reciprocated with a hand slap. “Got the whole sob story,” he said, taking another swig of beer, almost finishing it. Bea got up and took another bottle from the refrigerator; Crawford spied a freshly baked apple pie on the counter next to the refrigerator. “But he’s a junkie. And he left a seventy-year-old woman with a black eye and a broken nose. I don’t want to hear the backstory.”
She smiled. “My Bobby used to say the same thing.”
Crawford chuckled. “That’s probably where I got the expression.”
Bea jumped up suddenly. “Oh, I have rolls, too.” She opened the toaster oven and pulled out a couple of hot rolls. She didn’t ask if he’d like one; she was sure that he would. She put them on a plate and brought them to the table.
Crawford tore one open and slathered butter on it from the butter dish that was perpetually on the table, regardless of the season. He didn’t want to think about the bacteria that resided in a butter dish that sat out in the heat and ate his half of the roll, parasites be damned. “Thanks, Bea. This is great.”
She folded her hands on the table. “I’ll feed you any night of the week, Bobby. You just have to show up.”
He finished his first beer and opened the second.
“I’m a little worried about you,” she said, after a few minutes of watching him eat in silence.
He looked up from his potatoes. “I’m okay.”
She leaned in. “Are you sure?”
He nodded and studied the remaining food on his plate.
“What’s going on with that woman you met?” Bea searched her memory. “Alison?” Crawford’s personal life was of great interest to his mother—a woman in whom he confided nothing lest the entire Eastern seaboard get an update—so Bea was their go-between. Marie (née McDonald) Crawford wanted nothing more than for her son, estranged from his wife for six years, to get on with his life, and have it move beyond the police department.
CIA interrogators had nothing on Bea. A little pot roast, a couple of beers, an apple pie—he’d give it all up for those few comforts. But he tried to keep his mouth shut. There was nothing—and everything—to tell.
Crawford tensed. “Nothing’s going on. We’re trying to work things out.”
“Is she nice?”
His nerves were frayed and he was exhausted, so his overreaction was understandable, if not justified. Crawford dropped his fork onto his plate, making a racket. “Of course she’s nice,” he barked. “Would I be going ahead with my divorce and that goddamned annulment unless she was nice?” It was out of his mouth before he could think and he looked at Bea. He pointed a finger in her direction. “That is between you and me.”
Bea smiled; her job here was done. “Of course it is.”
Chapter 6
I had finally managed to get rid of Terri an hour and a box of tissues after she had arrived, hearing all of the sordid details of her five-year marriage to Jackson, recovering
drug addict and alcoholic. To me, he seemed like an affable, rather innocuous, suburban guy, albeit with the pompous-jerk side. To hear Terri tell it, I was living next door to Sid Vicious.
When she finally blurted out everything, it became clear to me that she had one thing on her mind and one thing only: she thought that Jackson was responsible for Ray’s death. She told me that they were in counseling and that Jackson had been diagnosed with “anger management” issues. Who doesn’t have anger management issues? I certainly did, but I attributed them to my husband and his roving penis.
I wasn’t sure how seriously to take her concerns—she was a bit of a drama queen—but I counseled her to go to the Dobbs Ferry police, who would know what to do with this information. She claimed that on the night Ray had been murdered, Jackson hadn’t been home. And that when he came home, he was in a bad mood. Those two things together didn’t a murderer make, but Terri didn’t appear to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, so I went along with her line of reasoning, just for argument’s sake. I often came home late and in a bad mood, and I didn’t murder anyone. I didn’t think her theory would hold up in a court of law if it didn’t hold up in my kitchen.
Jackson didn’t strike me as a murderer at all, but who knows? Maybe he had gotten sick and tired of being cheated on and wanted to do something about it. Could he have been that angry about Terri’s cheating that he could murder Ray in cold blood? Why hadn’t he just murdered Terri, my preferred victim? I didn’t have the energy to murder Ray; I was hoping for a more supernatural solution to the problem and had hoped that he would just disappear into thin air.
I didn’t know what she was going to do, but it seemed like the shit was going to hit the fan next door and I didn’t want any part of it.
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