Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  “Guardate!”

  We peer inside. There, nestled in a sea of kibble, sits a large size Ziplock bag stuffed with what I’m guessing are a helluva lot of hundred dollar bills.

  “I do not think is good, no?” she whispers.

  And here I thought our butts were in a sling with the rooster.

  I’m sitting at my kitchen table, looking up at Nick, who is wearing worn jeans, a formfitting navy-blue knit shirt, and a scowl.

  “Look,” I say, scowling back, “all I know is what we all already told you. Nonna upended the bag and there was the money. How it got there, I have no idea.” I look down, concentrating on stroking Geoff’s furry rump with my bare toes. The dog is lying at my feet, torn between protecting me from the grumpy, snarling man and guarding his food a few feet away, in which everybody and their cousin has suddenly developed a profound interest. Although he occasionally swings a furtive glance in the direction of my mother’s bedroom, just to make sure The Thing isn’t about to burst forth and flap him to death. In the living room, another officer is questioning my grandmother, while a third leans against the counter, listening to Nick questioning me.

  And my mother is standing in the doorway between the two rooms with a very smug expression on her face.

  Damn.

  The only reason I called my old precinct substation is because I thought this might have something to do with Brice’s murder, although I hardly expected Nick himself to show up. Except, as he pointed out—irritably—it’s his case.

  God, I hate the way he’s not looking at me. You know, wearing that tough-guys-don’t-sulk expression that just rips your heart out? Not that I blame him, but…crap. Now I can hate myself on top of everything else. I mean, yeah, I don’t have a problem with watching out for my own butt, but I don’t get off on steam-rolling over other people’s feelings, either.

  Especially not people like Nick. He deserves better than that.

  “So. Any of you handle the evidence?” he asks, all business.

  “No. Well, I know my mother and I didn’t. And Nonna says she just upended the bag and dumped everything into the bin. I guess I can’t swear that Curtiss or his partner didn’t, but why would they?”

  “For all you know, they might have put the money in there to begin with.”

  My eyes go wide. “Then bring me back the dog in order to hide it here? Why on earth would they do that?”

  “Because people sometimes do very strange things, Ginger,” he says, pinning me with that icy-blue gaze. “Crazy things. Illogical things.”

  Okay, okay…I get the point. Sheesh.

  Nick then hooks his thumbs in his front pockets, which isn’t the smartest move he could have made, considering how that stretches the denim right across an area smack at my eye level. Then he shrugs. “Besides, you said you don’t really know these people.”

  “Well, no, but…that just doesn’t make sense. The bag was getting pretty low. We would have found the money anyway in a couple of days, maybe a week at the most.”

  “But you did say this Curtiss James was an old lover of Fanning’s.”

  “Yeah, maybe three years ago—”

  My grandmother is hustling the young cop who questioned her—a dark-haired, black-eyed looker from the old neighborhood—back to the kitchen. I think she’s trying to push freshly made tortellini off on him. I look back at Nick, who immediately lowers his eyes to his notebook. The second officer drifts away, sucked in by my grandmother’s tortellini-pushing. Sì, sì, she has plenty. Sì, it reheats in microwave, two minutes, no problem…

  “Hey,” I say in a low voice, “the bag came from Brice’s apartment originally. Well, not originally, but you know what I mean. And hey, again, he’s the one who’s dead. And we know he was pilfering funds from the accounts.”

  Nick’s eyes dart to mine. “You know that?”

  “Yeah, the accountant told me. That’s why I haven’t been paid. And won’t,” I add, just because, “until you guys release the building so it can be sold.”

  Nick ignores that. “So…you’re saying at least five people that you know of have come in contact with this bag since Fanning’s death?”

  “Six. Counting you.”

  His gaze snaps to mine, horror blooming in his eyes just as the old bell goes ding in my brain. Okay, so if this can be construed as Nick having removed evidence from a possible crime scene…

  Oops.

  Behind us, one of the cops laughs at something my mother says; the radio attached to Nick’s belt spits out garbled noises; Geoff lifts his head, growling low in his throat, his snout pointed directly toward my mother’s room. Nick opens his mouth to say something, only to swerve his head in the same direction as Geoff’s.

  “What was that?”

  My mother and I exchange a split-second glance.

  “Damn dog growls at everything,” I say. “Probably just the people upstairs…”

  “No, listen…there!” Nick looks at me. “Did you hear that? Sounds just like…crowing?”

  Naturally, Geoff gets up and trots over to the door between the kitchen and my mother’s room, where he sniffs at the crack in the door, then looks back at me as if to say, “Remember the mouse?”

  And naturally, the rooster answers. The sound is muffled, to be sure, but to the trained ear, there’s no mistaking it for, say, a hamster wheel.

  You know, right now I’m thinking chicken stew sounds very good. I mean, for crying out loud—the stupid thing is in my mother’s room, in a cage with a blanket over it, and it’s nearly nine o’clock at night. Why the hell is he crowing?

  “Must be something outside,” my mother says, but Nick is already at the door. Geoff gives Nick an if-you-open-this-door-I’ll-be-your-best-friend grin, except, naturally, the minute Nick does, Geoff hightails it for parts south.

  And Rocky outdoes himself, boy. They should’ve named this bird Pavarotti.

  Nick turns to me. I cannot accurately describe his expression right now, but for the moment, let’s just go with stunned.

  I point to my mother. I may have wilted the man’s…ego, I may be an inadvertent accessory to a crime, but no way am I taking the rap for this one.

  Nick looks at my mother, who obviously can’t decide whether to look cute and sheepish—which isn’t working, anyway—or defiant. “Mrs. Petrocelli,” he says wearily, “I’m sure you know it’s against the law to keep a rooster in a Manhattan apartment.”

  “Told ya,” I mutter.

  “It’s just for a couple of days,” Nedra says, hands on hips. Going for defiant, looks like. “Until the owners find some place to live out of the city. It’s a pet.”

  Nick looks at my mother, his expression almost sympathetic. “I doubt that,” he says quietly. “More likely, it’s being raised to fight. Which means it’s probably going to die a very nasty, cruel death.”

  My mother gasps—well, I do, too, just not as loudly—only to quickly recover. “No. I don’t believe that. The Ortizes have children, one of them even named the rooster, they’d never do anything like that….”

  I turn to the still-scowling Nick, fully intending to explain that they’re the family who burned me out of my apartment, only this is the moment the dog decides to assert the cojones he hasn’t had for some time. Apparently realizing the rooster cannot get to him, Geoff rushes into the room and right up to the cage, barking his fool head off. The doggy equivalent of “Nyah-nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah.” Understandably, this pisses Rocky off, who in turn launches himself at the wire barrier and squawks his fool head off. And over the barking/squawking melee, Nonna—who’s supposed to be the deaf one in the group—yells, “Doorbell!”

  Well, jeez, with all this noise, it’s no wonder, I muse as I tromp down the hall. Probably one of the neighbors. Hell, probably all of the neighbors, standing out in the hall with bats and brooms and iron pipes, ready to rid 4-C of its demon inhabitants.

  I fluff my hair, throw back my shoulders, and swing open the door to the avenging hordes.
<
br />   Only it’s not the avenging hordes.

  It’s Greg.

  Thirteen

  “Ginger! What on earth are you doing here?”

  My brain has just dissolved into a million bits of insentient fluff. Which means, when I open my mouth, nothing comes out of it except a tiny, airless squeak. Oh, enough of the fluff coalesces for a moment or two to take in his slightly longer hair, the snappy collarless shirt tucked into a pair of equally snappy gray pleated trousers. That he smells just as good as I remember. That, behind snappy black wire-rimmed glasses, shock and anxiety shimmer in equal measure in his hazel eyes. Then I hear footsteps on the floorboards behind me.

  Many, many footsteps. A vertible deluge of footsteps.

  I turn, jerkily, like a just-wound doll. Nedra and Nonna have both dropped their jaws. Nick has taken scowling to new heights. The other two officers, who of course don’t have a clue, are expressionless. I have no idea what the etiquette is in situations like this, so I paste a bright smile to my bloodless face and mumble, “Greg Munson, Nick Wojowodski.”

  No, I don’t bother with explanations. Are you kidding? Besides, I was doing well to get that much out.

  Oh, God. Can you feel it? Man, there’s enough testosterone in here to fuel the NFL for an entire season. Have you ever noticed how a man can sense when another man is, has been, or might someday be, competition? I swear to God, I expect them to sprout antler racks and engage in a duel to the death, right here in my mother’s hallway.

  It occurs to me that there are far too many swaggering cocks in this apartment right now.

  Nonna steps in with, “Maybe you nice boys would like some tortellini? It’sa fresh, just made it today.”

  I shoot my grandmother a look. She shrugs. Nick mumbles something I don’t quite catch, orders the other cops to bring the dog food bag as well as the, um, stuff—although, I notice with some regret, not the rooster—then brushes past me and out of the apartment.

  Regret slices through me. I like this guy, I realize. As a person, you know? I would have liked being friends with him. But could I leave it at that? Nooooo. I had to go and let sex mess everything up.

  Would somebody, anybody, please explain to me why I dropped my knickers without so much as by-your-leave with Nick—twice, no less—when I didn’t go to bed with Greg until we’d been dating for months?

  Oh, right. Greg.

  Who’s standing three feet away with his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking lost.

  I sigh.

  My mother and grandmother have retreated to their rooms. Would that I could have done the same.

  We’ve gone into my mother’s travesty of a living room, but neither of us has sat down. My stomach is churning, my brain is still fluff, and I’m thinking a long, dreamless nap would be good right about now.

  Greg is in the process of forking one hand through his hair, his face contorted as though he’s about to lose his cookies, when the rooster does his thing on the other side of the double doors. The man tries a smile, but it’s not really his best effort.

  “Was that…a rooster?”

  I nod, my arms folded across my stomach in a vain attempt to staunch the trembling. “Mmm-hmm. My mother’s latest rescue mission.”

  “And…do I dare ask why three policemen just left?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  He has to think about this for a second. “No.” There goes another almost smile. “The crazy Petrocellis are at it again, huh?”

  Which pretty much says it all, so I don’t bother.

  “And who’s this?” he says, squatting down to call Geoff to him. The dog studies him for a minute, then apparently decides it might be worth the effort to investigate, just in case this new person has a hamburger in his pocket or something. However, once he discovers that all Greg’s offering is a scratch behind the ears, Geoff’s expression changes from wary eagerness to polite boredom.

  “I had no idea you were here, Ginger,” he says softly, almost more to the dog than me, “or I wouldn’t have just shown up like this.” He looks up, and I see in his eyes what I can only describe as stark terror. “I swear. Look, I can tell, this has really thrown you…do you want me to leave?”

  I force myself not to look away. To respond, at least on some basic level. Damn, I’d forgotten how incredibly handsome he is. Okay, so maybe not exactly forgotten, but not exactly remembered, either. Neither do I remember those lines etched around his mouth, that deep groove between his sandy brows. Sympathy socks me like a hard right to the solar plexus.

  “No, you can stay,” I say. Which is not the same as my saying I don’t want him to leave. And he’s too smart not to catch the difference. “For a little while, anyway.”

  Look, I’m conflicted about this whole situation. It was only a few weeks ago that I was ready to spend the rest of my life with him, a few days ago that I finally decided there was no chance of our ever getting back together, which is the only reason I let myself get carried away with Nick—oh, dear God!—last night, and here Greg is, thoroughly scrambling my brains. I don’t know what I’m thinking. Hell, I don’t know what to think. So give me a minute, okay?

  Which is what I give Greg, too.

  “So why are you here?” I ask.

  “I tried to call your old number, but it’s no longer in service. So I went over to your place, discovered you didn’t live there anymore. So I thought…hey, I had no idea if your mother would even talk to me, let alone tell me where you were, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

  Please note, my arms are tightly crossed over my ribs. “You could have called. You have my cell number.”

  “No, I don’t. Remember? You went with a new service right before…at the end of May. I never got the new number.”

  Oh, right. Everything was so chaotic right before the wedding, I forgot. Of course, that’s nothing compared with how chaotic things got after the wedding.

  Not to mention how chaotic they are at the moment.

  “I’m sorry I took so long to pay all the bills,” he says. “But I finally got them taken care of last week. Did you know?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I do. Thanks.”

  Silence whines between us for several seconds.

  “Mother said you and Nedra came out to get your things?”

  I nod. My eyes start to burn, making me blink.

  “If I tried to touch you right now,” Greg says, “you’d probably slug me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Good call. Dammit, Greg—why did it take you so long to come looking for me?”

  “Because I’m an idiot? Will that do?”

  “Maybe. For starters, anyway.”

  His smile kinda flickers, then fades. “I wish I had a better answer, because God knows you deserve one. But I don’t. Not really. Not unless you count thinking, well, hell, I blew that one to kingdom come. What possible chance did I have of patching things up? Oh, Ginger…honey, you will never know how sorry I am for what I did, for what I must have put you through. I swear…I don’t know what came over me. I mean, you know me… I just don’t do things like that.”

  Do you hear this? He’s groveling. How ironic, that three, even two weeks ago, I would have killed to see Greg Munson grovel. Now I just feel…embarrassed.

  But not that embarrassed.

  My arms are still crossed. Half a room and more than a month of non-communication still separates us. “What are you saying, Greg?”

  There’s despair in them thar eyes. “Not saying. Asking.”

  He takes a step toward me. Geoff growls at him. He glances at the dog, stops. But doesn’t retreat, either.

  “Geoff, it’s okay,” I say, and the dog waddles a few feet away, only to lie down in a position where he can watch every move the intruder makes. One false move and those designer-socked ankles are history, boy. Then I look at Greg, arms still crossed. “Go on.”

  “We were good together, Ginge. Really, really good. And I can’t believe I threw that away. Or…nearly threw that away.
”

  I feel one brow arch. Wow, I didn’t know I could do that. Cool. “No, I think your first assessment is correct, Greg. You humiliated me.”

  “I know I did.”

  “Well, that hurt. It still does. Especially because I didn’t expect that of you. A few words aren’t going to make it all better, just like that. How can I trust you now? How will I ever be able to believe what you say?”

  He nods, rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s kind of what I’d figured. So let me ask you…what can I do to make it better?”

  “I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know if I want you to try.” And you have no idea how hard it was for me to say those words. “I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t see any way of this getting off the ground again. I won’t be made a fool of twice.”

  This time, when he moves to close the space between us and the dog growls, Greg looks down at Geoff and says, very quietly, “Enough.” And, basically because he’s got the courage of a gnat, Geoff whimpers and lays his head between his paws.

  I glower at the miserable beast. Some guard dog you are. But the thought no sooner forms when I feel Greg’s fingers on my chin, gently turning me to face him. Dammit—why does he have to look so stricken? Why can’t he just act like it was all my fault, like any other man would do?

  “You loved me once,” he says. “A love I admittedly didn’t deserve. Or appreciate, until it was too late. I don’t deserve it now. But as God is my witness, I’ll do whatever it takes to win back that love. And your trust. If you’ll give me that chance.” He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet—only Greg Munson would have the arrogance to defy the pickpockets like that—and takes out a card. “The Scarsdale house is on the market. I’m living in town now. There’s the new number if you decide I’m worth taking that second chance on. Or you can reach me on my cell, anytime. I’m leaving word at the office to put you through, whenever you call, no matter what I’m doing.”

  He bends over, kisses me gently on the forehead, then walks down the hall and lets himself out.