Caught in a Bind

by Gayle Roper

  I sighed. “Then I guess I’ll have to.”

  He looked shocked, but he did nothing. He probably didn’t believe I’d breach that male bastion. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

  Squeezing my eyes shut against I didn’t know what, I burst into the room. “Mr. Bond! I need to speak with you. You can’t hide from me using this old ploy.”

  “Well, well,” said a voice appreciatively. “What have we here?”

  “Pretty little thing, isn’t she? Obviously lost.”

  My eyes snapped open, and I stared at two mechanics who stared back, goofy smiles on their faces. Unfortunately Mr. Bond wasn’t anywhere in the room. I know because the door to the single stall was hanging drunkenly open, and every other facility was right out in the open. I backed out quickly, my face scarlet, immensely grateful that the two were merely washing their hands.

  I turned to flee back to the showroom and ran into the solid chest of Joey. I know it was Joey because the name was written on his blue Dickies workshirt.

  “Can I help you?”

  I looked up at him and wondered how he could say something so innocuous and sound so threatening.

  “I’m looking for Bill Bond.” I was pleased to hear myself sounding firm and rational in spite the fact that Joey made me very nervous.

  “Who?” Joey growled.

  “Bill Bond. The sales manager.”

  “Don’t know him,” Joey said. “Never heard of him.” Right.

  “Is there another Joey here?” I asked, hearing Bill Bond’s if she gives you trouble, go get Joey.

  “Not hardly.” He puffed out his already impressive chest. “One Joey’s all this place can handle.”

  I could tell he expected me to be impressed, but I didn’t play along. His face darkened. “You need to leave, lady.” He pointed toward the showroom. “It’s dangerous out here. Lots of possibilities for accidents.”

  Again what should have been just a statement of the obvious sounded like a threat. Knowing I had no choice, I turned and left, aware of Joey’s smirk and resenting it mightily. When we were back in the showroom, I spun to Howard.

  “Tell me about Tom Whatley,” I said, hoping my abrupt change of subject would take him off guard. It worked.

  “Nice guy,” Howard said. “I couldn’t believe it when they said he stole all that money.”

  “Why do you think he stole the money?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe his wife’s sick or something. He loves his wife. Always talks about her.”

  “I don’t mean why, for what purpose. I mean why do you think he’s the guilty one? Especially since you said he was so nice.”

  Howard looked at me like anyone could figure that out. “The money’s missing and so’s he and so’s a car he signed out.”

  “Howard, if you were going to ruin your life, would you actually sign out the car you were stealing?”

  “No, but if he didn’t do it, then where is he? And where’s the car?”

  I stuck out my hand and shook his like I was congratulating him. “You’re a genius, Howard. If we answer those questions, we solve the mystery, don’t we? Will you call me if you think of anything that might help Tom? Or hurt him, for that matter.” I handed him my card.

  He stared at it a minute, stuck it in his shirt pocket and nodded. “I liked Tom.”

  “You should still like him,” I said. “He’s a nice man. Even his stepson says so.”

  Howard snorted. “Not hardly.”

  “Hey, Randy,” I called.

  He looked up reluctantly from his inspection of the motor in a black car.

  “Do you like Tom?”

  He nodded. “Nice guy.” He abandoned the motor and climbed in the black car.

  “That’s Randy, the monster stepson?” Howard stared in amazement.

  “He’s recently had a change of heart.” I waved my hand in the boy’s direction. “Come on, Randy, we’re leaving.”

  He climbed reluctantly out of the black car which had so many bells and whistles that its name was emblazoned on the trunk in gold letters. While he schlepped across the floor to me, I turned to Howard.

  “One last question. What’s Joey’s last name?”

  “Alberghetti. Joey Alberghetti.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Be careful.” He walked away as Randy reached me.

  “Come on, son. Time to leave.”

  He grinned. “Right, Mom.”

  To get out of the congested lot, I had to back up across the entrance to the service bays. I looked over my shoulder just before I drove off and there against the far back wall was Joey Alberghetti talking to a man in a green twill shirt. The man’s back was to me, but I was willing to bet it was Bill Bond. He was sticking his finger in Joey’s chest and gesticulating wildly with his other hand.

  Bill Bond, if that’s who it was, was upset with Joey Alberghetti.

  TWELVE

  As Randy climbed out of the car, he looked young and scared in spite of his height and the breadth of his shoulders. He gave a toss of the head that was supposed to appear casual but was more like a nervous jerk.

  One part of me wanted to comfort him because he was still young. It was easy to forget how young because of his size and mature good looks. Another part of me thought that the nervousness, guilt and regret might be a good thing. Sweating out the consequences of his actions had to be a strengthening experience. Certainly anything that painful must produce character.

  When we arrived at Edie’s room, she was dressed and waiting, resting on her bed with a book she wasn’t reading. To look at her, you wouldn’t know there had been any physical injury, but her eyes were full of pain. I hugged her, willing my chin not to wobble.

  Randy hung back at the door and peeked in. I don’t know what he expected, but all he saw was his mom looking much like she did every day, just a bit more worn.

  He walked awkwardly, hesitantly to the bed. “Are you okay, Mom? Does your head hurt a lot?” Then his eyes filled with tears. He stared at the floor, trying to control himself.

  I watched Edie watch him. Her face was a study in love and trepidation. She understood, even if he didn’t, that he was teetering on the edge of good and evil. He would fall one way or the other, setting a pattern that would govern his life for years. Since neither of them thought much in terms of the place of Christ in their lives, I wondered where she got her hope. Maybe from her mother’s heart that couldn’t believe her kid would go bad.

  When Randy finally lifted his head, his face was full of anguish. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I—” He couldn’t continue.

  Edie stood and wrapped her arms about her son’s waist. He threw his arms around her, and his shoulders began to shake.

  “I don’t want to be like Dad.”

  “You won’t be, Randy,” she promised. “You won’t be.” I left the room and waited in the hall, sniffing a fair amount myself.

  It was ten more minutes before a nurse arrived with a wheelchair. She went blithely into the room, unaware of the emotional breakthrough inside, and emerged in a couple of minutes with Edie in the chair and Randy, red-eyed but obviously lighter in spirit, walking beside her, carrying her tote bag.

  When we were in my car, Edie gave a great sigh. “I hated being in the hospital.”

  “Most people hate the hospital,” I said. “I’d worry about you if you liked it.”

  Edie nodded. “But I hated it more because Tom didn’t know I was there. What if he tried to call me?”

  But he hadn’t called. At least if he had, he’d left no message. I watched her shoulders sag and the hope in her eyes dim as she checked her answering machine.

  “He’ll show up, Mom. He loves you too much not to.”

  Edie looked at Randy in surprise. I smiled. Apparently he meant some of the things he’d said last night in the darkness.

  Together he and I set Edie up on the blue leather couch with everything we could think of that she might need. Finally she held up her hands.<
br />
  “Enough, you two! I’m not dying here. I can get anything I need all by myself. Or Randy can get it for me.”

  Randy and I looked at each other.

  “What?” Edie said, an edge to her voice.

  “I have to stay with Merry.” Randy looked apologetic. “Sergeant Poole gave me the choice of staying with her or going to juvenile hall.”

  “And he chose me.” I tried to sound bright and positive.

  Edie glanced from me to her son. “Well, at least you made the better choice. I don’t mind telling people my son is staying with a friend.”

  “A female friend,” Randy said, wagging his eyebrows.

  “Hey, now,” I groused. “It’s bad enough that Howard thought you were my son.”

  “Your son?” Edie laughed out loud. “Howard, whoever he is, needs glasses.”

  Randy picked up his laptop and became very businesslike. “I’ve got stuff to tell you two before Merry and I leave.” He had settled in the big chair I’d sat in the other night, and I noticed the chair fit him a lot better than it fit me.

  “I’ve been online most of the morning looking for information about Tom,” he said.

  Edie gasped. “Randy!”

  “Look, Mom, I figured we needed to find out all we could about what happened ten years ago so we could better defend Tom today.”

  “Better defend him?” Edie stared at her son.

  “Yeah,” he said, head buried in his laptop. “Somebody’s got to speak for him since he isn’t here to speak for himself.”

  “I thought you didn’t like Tom.”

  “I didn’t.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Not at first. Then I couldn’t admit I’d been wrong.” He glanced at his mom. “It’s dumb, but it’s a teen thing, you know?”

  Edie nodded weakly.

  “But I’ve learned a lot these past couple of days, most of it about me and how stupid I’ve been.” He fell silent as he continued to work over his computer.

  Edie sat, poleaxed. I had to smile at her expression. Of course, she didn’t have the benefit of hearing last night’s musings as I had.

  “Edie, I’ve got a couple of questions for you while we wait for Randy.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Was Randolph an abuser? Is that what Randy’s referring to when he says he’s afraid he’ll be like his father?”

  Edie nodded, brushing at the wrinkles in her slacks. “You’d think I’d have known better, being raised by an abusive father, but I stepped right into my marriage without seeing it coming.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want to write the article on abuse? It was too painful?”

  “But to my surprise that’s proven not to be true. I’ve found the writing has been cathartic.”

  “The other night,” I said, “you referred to thinking your days in the paper were over. What did you mean?”

  She shuddered. “We ended up in the police report in the paper a couple of times when I had to call for help. What an embarrassment! I hated it. But let’s not talk about Randolph anymore, okay? He gives me the chills even now.”

  I cleared my throat. “Edie, I’ve got one more question. It’s presumptuous, but I’ve got to ask it as a reporter and as someone who wants to find the truth.”

  Edie swallowed. “Go ahead.”

  “Your furniture in here.” I waved my hand at the living room, dining room and entry hall. “It’s gorgeous.”

  “And expensive, right?” Edie looked relieved. Obviously this was a question she could answer.

  “It’s from my father,” Randy said without looking up from whatever he was doing. “When Mom left, Dad sold the house and got an apartment. He wanted all new furniture because he was starting over again. He was going to give all the stuff we had to the Salvation Army.”

  “He was going to give away all this beautiful stuff?”

  Randy nodded. “He has money coming out his ears.”

  I thought of Randy’s silver sports car, wherever it was at the moment. I guessed Randolph did at that.

  “I talked him into letting me have whatever I wanted. I took the stuff you noticed and my bedroom stuff.” He glanced at his mother, embarrassed, a kid about to make a confession. “I was mad at Mom then because I blamed her for the divorce, so I refused to get her anything.”

  “Oh, Randy,” Edie said, shaking her head. “Don’t worry about that. The last thing I wanted was the bedroom suite I shared with him.” She fluttered her hands rapidly like she was trying to shake something sticky and unpleasant off. “Some days even the living room is a bit much.”

  Randy looked at the beautiful furnishings. “You can get rid of this stuff if you want. I don’t care. I don’t need it anymore.” He spoke like it was a revelation to him, this not needing the furniture. “Just keep the pictures.” He looked at the watercolors hanging on the walls. “I really like them.”

  “Me too,” Edie said. “And I don’t think we’ll get rid of anything at all. It’s a given that Tom and I will never be able to afford anything this nice.” She ran her hand over the soft arm of the sofa. “I’m glad you asked about the furniture, Merry, what with all this talk about missing money. Our furnishings are definitely beyond our income level, at least in this part of the house.”

  I thought of the plain beige carpet upstairs and the Kmart glasses in the kitchen. There was no question but that the rest of the house was ordinary. Nice enough but ordinary. I was relieved to my toes to know the prosaic origin of the spectacular furniture, though I couldn’t help but wonder what William Poole thought of the opulence when he visited on Friday.

  “Okay,” Randy said, “here we go.” He cleared his throat. “Tom worked for the Audubon PD for ten years. He was a sergeant at the time of the drug bust. The Audubon PD cooperated with the Camden PD and the Drug Enforcement Agency to break up a ring that was using the mall on Black Horse Pike in Audubon and the park down the street from the high school like they owned them. Of course they were also working Camden like crazy. They had a DEA guy and woman go undercover, he with the gang, she in the high school. They set up the bust at a drop in an old warehouse in Camden.”

  He hit some more keys, and Edie watched him in total fascination.

  “The cops surrounded the building and did their usual ‘Freeze—it’s the police’ thing. But one of the drug guys panicked and started shooting. Gunfire was exchanged and when the dust settled, Tom Whatley was fatally wounded and one other guy, named Felix Estevez, was dead.”

  He looked at us. “That’s all available in the newspapers and is general knowledge. I got it from the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News sites. Now comes the interesting part.” He went back to his screen. “Tom—our Tom—”

  Edie turned to me and mouthed, “Our Tom?” and patted her heart like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Oblivious, Randy continued. “Our Tom rushed in with the rest of the force, and when he saw Tom Whatley, he went sort of crazy. He fell on his knees beside the wounded Tom and kept saying, ‘You aren’t supposed to be here! You aren’t supposed to be here!’ His superiors thought that was an incriminating comment given the men’s history, so they had Tom’s involvement with Tom Whatley and the drug bust investigated. But before they could come to any conclusions, Tom resigned from the force and disappeared.” Randy snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Nobody had any idea where he was?” I asked.

  Randy shook his head. “He was just gone.”

  He went back to his story. “The Audubon PD found no evidence to indicate Tom had anything to do with trying to taint the bust. He was cleared in absentia. But the kicker is that the lab tests showed that the bullet that killed Tom Whatley came from our Tom’s gun. It was one of many shots fired, but it was the one that struck. The police kept that bit of information quiet for several months before it was leaked to an Inquirer reporter. No one ever admitted letting the report get out, and the reporter refused to talk, protecting his source. But there’s no ques
tion. Our Tom accidentally killed the other Tom.”

  Randy looked at Edie and blinked. Whatever he had expected her reaction to be to this news, he hadn’t expected a smile. Neither had I. But her face was alight with joy.

  “You’ve known this all along, haven’t you?” I accused. “You’ve always known that Tom Whatley was Tom Willis.”

  She turned her smile on me. “Do you really think Tom would deceive me?”

  Given what I and everyone else said about the depth of their affection, the answer was obvious. But he had deceived the rest of us, including Randy. And so had Edie.

  Randy stared at his mother, confusion all over his face. “You knew all this? I did all this work for nothing? I even hacked my way into the Audubon PD system!”

  Here was Randy’s great gift offered in love—for the first time in who knew how many years—and it wasn’t wanted or needed, and he was hurt. And ticked.

  Oh, Lord, don’t let this revelation undo all the good of the past day or so!

  “Honey, you have done me one of the biggest favors of my life.” Edie walked over to him and kissed him noisily on the cheek. “I thank you, I thank you. You have helped me more than you’ll ever know.”

  Though still confused, Randy seemed somewhat mollified by her appreciation. Thank you, Lord.

  “So when did you find out?” I asked.

  “Tom told me all about Tom and the shootout before we were married, but he swore me to secrecy. It didn’t really matter until Thursday when he didn’t come home. I didn’t know what to do. What if the truth would sort things out? Though I couldn’t imagine how. I decided I’d just keep quiet until I had to tell. But it was killing me inside. Now, thanks to this wonderful kid who uncovered all our secrets—” and she glowed at Randy “—I can talk about everything with a clear conscience.”

  “Would you have kept quiet indefinitely?” I asked, still somewhat peeved that she hadn’t shared what she knew.

  “I don’t know. It would have depended on what happened. But it’s a moot point now.” She smiled at Randy. “I’m free.”

  He didn’t smile back. “Why did you go along with it at all?” Much of his pique was passed, but there was still a touch of starch in his question.