Stay At Home Dead

by Jeffrey Allen

  I kept running my fingers over the lump on the back of my head, the throbbing inside my skull growing stronger by the second. I thought I remembered the phone call and then falling to the pavement, but it was hazy.

  Sirens screeched into the parking lot, and a loud murmur went up near the stairs. I looked over and realized that everyone that had come to see my fight with the WORMS was now staring at me on the sidewalk. Maybe I’d get the sympathy vote.

  Two people at the edge of the crowd caught my eye. They were whispering to one another, nodding.

  Shayna and Billy.

  Was she violating her own restraining order by being there? Was that even allowed?

  I tried to stand up, but waves of nausea crashed over me and my knee buckled before I could get to my feet. Dizziness swam around me, as if someone had wrapped me up in a big blanket and then spun me out of it.

  “Easy,” Julianne said, moving her hand to my shoulder, gently keeping me in a sitting position. “Paramedics are here. Just relax.”

  Darlene put her hand on my other shoulder. “I offered to give you CPR.” She frowned at Julianne, her make-up giving her the look of a pissed-off clown. “But Julianne claimed you were breathing.”

  “Since you’re awake now,” Sharon Ann said, glancing around, “maybe we can just hold the meeting out here. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “Sharon Ann,” Julianne said, standing up as the paramedics came to my side. “There will be no damn meeting tonight. And if you mention it again, you’ll be the one riding away in the ambulance.”

  Sharon Ann’s eyes narrowed, but she wisely took several steps away from us.

  The two male paramedics began peppering me with questions, and I did my best to answer.

  Yes, my head hurt like hell. No, I didn’t know what I was struck with. Yes, I knew my name. No, I didn’t have a history of head injuries. Yes, I felt like I wanted to vomit.

  “He probably smells Sharon Ann,” Julianne muttered, still shooting lasers out of her eyes at the woman.

  “We should take you in for observation,” the one paramedic said. “Think you’ve got a concussion.”

  I nodded slowly, my head feeling like a cement bowling ball. Normally, I would’ve resisted a trip to the hospital with every ounce of male ego I possessed. But my head hurt, and I knew I wasn’t right.

  “Can you stand?” he asked me.

  I took a deep breath, trying to get everything around me to settle. “Think so.”

  The paramedic helped me to my feet. The world tilted to the right, and I started to list in that direction. He kept a tight grip on my elbow and pulled me back toward him. The school and the crowd righted themselves as my equilibrium found itself.

  Shayna and Billy were walking away, toward the other side of the lot. Had they come just in hopes of seeing me get ousted? Or did one of them club me over the head?

  “You all right?” the paramedic asked. “We can wheel you over.”

  I’d already conceded a hospital visit. I wasn’t jumping on a gurney for a free ride. “I’m okay. Just hang on to me.”

  Julianne came up on my other side. “You want me to ride with you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. Just drive over and meet us there.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “All right. I’m going to set everyone straight before I go, though.”

  We reached the back of the ambulance. I rubbed my temples, hoping to force some of the radiating pain out. “How’s that?”

  She stared back at the crowd at the top of the stairs as the paramedic opened up the doors on the back of the ambulance.

  “Jules?” I said.

  Her lips puckered like she’d bitten into a lemon gone wrong as she tore her eyes from the crowd. “Don’t you worry about it.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  The paramedic helped me up the short set of stairs into the back of the ambulance, his hands steadying me as I wobbled my way up. I was bent at the waist so as not to smack my head against the roof. I shuffled my feet around to say one last good-bye to Julianne.

  But she was already walking across the lot like her shoes were on fire, closing the distance between her and Sharon Ann McCutcheon.

  32

  “I think your midget friend is out there,” Julianne said.

  We were in the exam room at the hospital. They’d already stuck me in the tube and run a CT scan, which showed that all the important parts were still working. The doctor ran a few more simple tests on me before diagnosing me with a minor concussion. He told me that I’d have a pretty good headache for a couple of days, but after a few days of taking it easy, I would be back to normal.

  Julianne had just arrived, and now she was talking about midgets.

  “What?” I asked, wondering if the concussion was worse than the doctor realized.

  She glanced over her shoulder again, toward the waiting room, her expression somewhere between amused and confused. “Didn’t you say that investigator guy was a midget?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Unless Rose Petal is offering some sort of relocation incentives to small people, I think your guy is out in the waiting room,” she said. She wrinkled her nose. “He really is little.”

  The throbbing began anew in my head asIfin-ished buttoning up my shirt. I had no idea what Victor Anthony Doolittle might be doing at the hospital, but I doubted it was a coincidence.

  I slid off the exam table and slung my tie and coat over my shoulder. “If he touches me, I swear to God, I’m going to hang him in a closet.”

  Julianne rolled her eyes and led the way out.

  Victor Doolittle was paging through a magazine when we walked into the waiting room. He was wearing the fedora again, paired with a Hawaiian shirt and slacks. He glanced up, tossed the magazine aside, and wiggled himself out of the chair.

  He pointed up at me with a stubby finger. “How’s the noggin?”

  “Fine,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  His eyes moved from me to Julianne. He removed his fedora and smiled. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to this beautiful woman?”

  “No.”

  He bowed in her direction. “Victor Anthony Doolittle, ma’am. It’s my pleasure.”

  She extended her hand, smiling. “Julianne Winters.”

  He took her hand and kissed it.

  The nausea rose up again from my stomach.

  He slowly released her hand. “Your husband is a lucky, lucky man.”

  “Why, thank you,” Julianne said, grinning at me.

  “If things should ever sour between you two—”

  “Hey,” I said, cutting him off. “Enough. What are you doing here?”

  He pried his eyes from Julianne, glaring at me. “Maybe I’m here for a physical.”

  “That shouldn’t take long.”

  Deep lines formed on his wide forehead. “They take a look at your man parts in there? Make sure everything’s still working?”

  “Let’s go,” I said, walking past him and nudging Julianne along. “See you never.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, following behind me like an annoying talking Chihuahua. “Take it easy, King Kong.”

  I ignored him and kept my hand at the small of Julianne’s back as she kept trying to look behind me to get another look at him.

  We pushed through the doors and stepped out into the thick, humid night air.

  “I was there, you moron,” Victor said.

  “Where?” I called over my shoulder. “Oz?”

  “Tonight,” he said. “I was there when somebody tried to knock your block off.”

  Against every instinct, I stopped in my tracks. Julianne stopped as well, and we both turned around.

  Victor shrugged his shoulders and held his little hands out, palms up. “But, hey, maybe you don’t care about that. Maybe you don’t care if I saw something.” He gave me a smug smile. “Maybe you got it all taken care of, big fella.”

  I cou
ldn’t tell if he was bluffing. But the fact that I knew he’d been following me for some time made me think he was telling the truth.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  He laughed, a volley of snorts followed by what sounded like a sob. “I saw you go down like a condemned building.”

  “You wanna feel what it’s like to be under that building?” I asked, stepping toward him.

  He jumped into his ridiculous karate stance again, chopping at the air. I was ready to give him a nice kung fu kick to the side of his fat head.

  Julianne stepped between us, placing a hand on my chest and giving me a stern look, telling me to knock it off.

  She turned to Victor. “Mr. Doolittle, it would be a great help to us if you would share what you saw.”

  He looked past her at me. “He comes at me, I’ll have to hurt him.”

  “He won’t come after you,” she assured him. “Right, Deuce?”

  “No,” I said. “His karate has frightened me. I am frozen in my tracks. Eek.”

  Doolittle missed my sarcasm, threw his shoulders back, and lifted his chin. “That’s more like it.”

  “What did you see?” Julianne repeated.

  “A truck,” he said. “I was parked at the far end of the lot, out near the street.”

  “You were following me again?” I asked.

  “Doing my job,” he said. “I watched you get out of the van, walk there to the front of the steps, speak to Ms. Andrews, then answer your cell phone.”

  He definitely wasn’t bluffing.

  “Did you see who was behind Deuce?” Julianne asked.

  “No,” Victor said. “I was observing from my car. You were closer than I was when you pulled into the lot.”

  “But you saw a truck?” Julianne said, pressing.

  He nodded. “Yep. It left the lot on the far side during all the commotion of everyone rushing to help your husband.”

  “You get a license plate?” I asked. “A description of the truck?”

  “Maybe.”

  My headache was threatening to blow my skull wide open, and my tiny little nemesis wasn’t helping.

  “Let’s go, Jules,” I said. “I don’t care what Mighty Mouse says he saw.”

  His face fired up again, and his hands closed into fists. “Mighty Mouse? I’ll stick my foot so far up your ...”

  Julianne reached out and touched him on the arm. “Please. Mr. Doolittle. Ignore him. He has a concussion. If you saw anything, we’d like to know.”

  He looked down at her hand on his arm, and his entire demeanor changed, like she was some sort of faith healer with a touch of the power. Her touch made him happy.

  It infuriated me.

  “I got a partial on the plate,” he told her. “But I don’t give information out for free. I’m an investigator, and I have to make a living.”

  “Jules, seriously,” I said, ready to blow my top. “Screw Dopey. Let’s go.”

  She held a rigid finger up in my direction.

  “Mr. Doolittle,” she said. “I’m sure that being an investigator, you’d hate to obstruct justice.”

  His smug expression weakened.

  “And if you have information that might be helpful in solving tonight’s assault, you would be guilty of just that,” she explained. She smiled at him. “But I know you know that. So, please.”

  He thought about that for a moment, his eyes shooting back and forth between me and Julianne. I wanted to poke his little beady eyes right out of his head.

  Finally, his gaze settled on Julianne. “Lemme work on it. I’ll come by your house tomorrow evening and tell you if I’ve got anything.”

  I started to object, but Julianne stopped me with her finger again.

  “That’ll be fine,” Julianne told him. “We’ll see you then.”

  “You bet you will, doll,” he said, adjusting his fedora and backpedaling toward the parking lot. “Good luck getting me out of your dreams tonight, baby. This pretty face is hard to forget.” He shot her with his forefinger. “Later.”

  Julianne hooked her arm with mine, and we started walking slowly toward the car.

  “Do we have to serve him dinner?” I asked.

  “That would be the polite thing to do.”

  “It’ll be a tough decision, then.”

  She took out her keys as we reached the car. “What’ll be a tough decision?”

  “On what to serve,” I said. “Short ribs or shrimp?”

  33

  When you have a concussion, even though the only thing you want to do is sleep, it is the last thing you are allowed to do. Some elected member of your family must wake you up every two hours in order to ensure that you haven’t died, that your eyes still work, and that you still can’t remember the date of your wedding anniversary.

  So it was a long night.

  I woke up for good around seven, as Julianne was dressing for work. My head felt as if someone had taken a large hammer and repeatedly struck me in the back of the head with it. The knot on my skull had grown from a small egg to a larger one.

  I pushed myself to a sitting position. The nausea I’d experienced before was gone. My mouth was dry and my neck was sore and the headache was front and center, but I was okay.

  Julianne emerged from the bathroom, working an earring into her lobe. “How are you?”

  “Awesome.”

  “I already talked to your mother,” she said, smoothing the cream-colored skirt and jacket she had on. “She’ll take care of Carly today.”

  Rather than bringing her home amid all the chaos, we’d let her spend the night with my parents.

  I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. My balance was back. I pulled on a T-shirt and followed Julianne out to the kitchen.

  “You never told me what happened after I left in the ambulance,” I said.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Nothing as in nothing, or nothing as in you punched Sharon Ann?”

  She smiled. “Trust me. If I’d socked Sharon Ann, I’d be telling you.”

  “So what happened?”

  She rifled through a stack of papers on the kitchen table. “I just told her to back off. And that if she insisted on going ahead with her little emergency meeting, she could expect a fight.” She set the papers in a neat stack. “I may have called her a name or two, as well.”

  “Even with this headache, I’ve never found you more attractive,” I said.

  “I love it when a man with a brain injury flirts with me.”

  I went to the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice. “There was something I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday.”

  Julianne’s face wrinkled up with irritation. “Deuce, I swear, if you tell me you went and bought her a dog ...”

  Carly had been hounding us for months about wanting a dog. I was okay with it; Julianne was not. She believed animals were meant to roam free. In Africa. Far away from her.

  “Relax,” I said, holding my hand up. “I don’t have that kind of a death wish.”

  She watched me, not entirely sure I was telling the truth. I made a mental note to call the pet store and get my deposit back.

  “I got some information on swimming lessons,” I said.

  Her features softened. “Oh. Good. Where?”

  I stared into my glass of juice. “Tough Tykes.”

  I took a sip from the juice. At first, there was no initial furor, and I thought maybe I’d get away with it.

  But I should’ve known better.

  She bit the tip of her tongue for a moment before lashing me with it. “I know that you don’t mean the same Tough Tykes that Benny supposedly went to before he died. Because if that was that specific Tough Tykes that you meant, you’d know how much I would disapprove and how my disapproval would lead to a stomach punch for you.”

  “I didn’t say a word about Benny,” I said, setting the juice down on the counter in case I had to block her punches. “I went in for swimming lesson info. That
was it.”

  “Do I look stupid to you?”

  “No. You look hot. Really hot. Like always.”

  “Deuce,” she said, taking a deep breath, unswayed by my blatant sucking up. “You said you’d stay out of Benny’s death.”

  “How does getting swim lesson information for our daughter have anything to do with Benny?” I pleaded. “Where else should I have gone?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that.

  “The swimming pool looked great, and so do the lesson programs,” I continued so she couldn’t cut me off. “And Carly loved the place. I swear to you that I did not say one word to anyone about Benny. No questions, no comments, no nothing.”

  She studied me like a beautiful human polygraph machine, trying to decipher my blather. If I’d been lying, I would’ve wilted. But since, technically, I was telling the truth, I stood strong.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “But that’s not why I brought it up,” I said.

  “You are just killing me this morning, husband.”

  “I know. Sorry. But the guy that owns the place offered me a job.”

  Confusion spread across her face. “A job? What? Cleaning the pool?”

  “Funny. No. Coaching football at their summer camps.”

  She grabbed the stack of papers off the table and slid them into her leather briefcase. “How exactly would that work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She zipped the bag shut and looked at me. “Why are you telling me this?”

  I shuffled my feet and bit the inside of my cheek. “Because I think I want to do it.”

  Actually, I knew I wanted to do it. I knew it the second he offered me the position. It wasn’t that I didn’t love being home with Carly. I did, and there was no doubt that she was still my first priority. But when he said he’d work with me on scheduling and let me call the shots, I was already thinking what the first day would be like.

  “What about Carly?” Julianne asked, slipping the bag onto her shoulder. “What do we do with her? The whole reason you left the school was so that we wouldn’t have to put her in day care or hire a babysitter.”

  “This wouldn’t be like a full-time job, Jules,” I said, frustrated that she wasn’t immediately agreeing with me. “Couple of weeks during the summer. I can set the schedule any way I want so it works best for me. Shoot, I might be able to bring her with me.”