by Diane Kelly
I raised a brow when Nick cut his eyes my way. “Don’t sell me down the river,” he whispered.
Mrs. Pratt glanced back. “What’d you say, baby?”
“Nothing,” Nick replied.
Dozens of framed photographs of Nick hung in the hallway, chronicling his life, beginning with him as a chubby infant lying bare assed on a fluffy white rug, to photos of him in his high school football uniform, to him in a cap and gown at college graduation.
“Only child?” I asked him.
“Yep.”
That fact must have made it all the harder for his mother when he was stuck in Mexico.
We stepped into the kitchen. Although she lived in the city now, it was clear Bonnie Pratt hadn’t left the country behind. The room was decorated in old-fashioned blue and white gingham. The cookie jar was shaped like a red barn, the salt and pepper shakers like black-and-white Holstein cows. The place settings included white china with blue forget-me-nots around the rim.
Nick pulled out a chair for me at the table and I took a seat. He sat down next to me.
Nick’s mother opened the refrigerator and removed a glass pitcher filled with a dark red liquid. Orange and lemon slices floated on top. “How about a glass of homemade sangria?”
“That sounds wonderful.”
Bonnie poured two tall glasses, setting one in front of me and the other on the table across from me. She took a bottle of beer from the fridge and plunked that down in front of Nick.
I took a sip of the sangria. Sweet, fruity, refreshing. “Mmm. Good stuff.”
She set a basket of dinner rolls on the table, as well as a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes and a gravy boat filled to the brim with cream gravy. The pièce de résistance was a platter of chicken-fried steaks covered in a thick, light-brown batter.
Once his mother had taken a seat, Nick handed me the serving fork. “Help yourself.”
I chose one of the smaller steaks, then scooped up a large spoonful of potatoes, smothering both of them with gravy. Nick and his mother served their plates, then seemed to watch me with anticipation.
“Try it,” Bonnie said, an expectant look on her face. “I can’t wait to see what you think.”
I picked up my steak knife and sawed off a bite-sized chunk of meat. I speared it with my fork and put it in my mouth.
I thought I’d never taste a chicken-fried steak better than my mother’s. But I’d been wrong. I savored the bite, closing my eyes and chewing slowly. Finally, I opened them. “This is fantastic.”
She smiled. “It was my grandmother’s recipe.”
“What’s in it?”
She wagged a finger in the air. “Nuh-uh-uh. Family recipes are top secret.”
“But I brought your baby back to you, remember?”
She crinkled up her nose. “Truth be told, he’s a pain in the ass.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
Nick stood. “I don’t have to put up with this.”
His mother gestured for him to sit back down. “Yeah, you do. Sit your butt down.”
I liked this woman. She was down-to-earth with a sense of humor.
I ate another bite of steak. “I’m guessing there’s some chili powder in your batter.”
Bonnie pointed her steak knife at me, but her good-natured grin told me she was all bark and no bite. “You best stop that guessing right now if you know what’s good for you.”
Nick’s mother and I chatted casually and comfortably during dinner. We discovered that we shared a love of gardening, though I grew flowers and she grew vegetables. I learned that she was the one who’d taught Nick how to dance, just in time for the high school prom. While she’d been jovial throughout our conversation, her face and voice grew somber when she talked about the years Nick was in Mexico.
“He’d call me every few days, but we had to be careful what we said. We never knew if our conversations were being monitored.” Her eyes grew misty but her jaw was firm. “I had to play along, pretend to believe that he’d taken a bribe and fled the country. As if my baby would do something like that. I didn’t raise any thieves!” Her voice rose in pitch. “I was worried sick the entire time. I feared that one day he’d just up and disappear and I’d never know what happened to him.” A short, involuntary sob broke from her chest.
Nick put a hand on his mother’s shoulder. “It’s okay now, Mom.”
I moved to sit beside her, taking her left hand in both of mine. She gave my hand a squeeze.
“I’m sorry. I still get myself worked up now and then.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, then closed them for a moment as if to refocus herself. When she opened them again, she smiled. “Who’s ready for dessert?”
I smiled back. “I am.”
Dessert featured strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream. “I grew the strawberries myself,” Bonnie said.
“It’s delicious.” I scooped up another oversized bite.
After dinner, she took me out back to show me her vegetable garden. The space took up half of the backyard. In addition to the strawberries, she’d grown corn, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, okra, and tomatoes. Many of the plants appeared to be struggling after the hot summer we’d experienced.
Lording over the garden was a tall, broad scarecrow wearing a lopsided straw cowboy hat. The scarecrow had hay for hair and a stuffed feed sack for a face. He was dressed in a pair of long-legged jeans and a blue and white-striped long-sleeved shirt. Given that three birds were pecking at the ground in the garden, the scarecrow appeared to be ineffective, more for show than substance.
“Nick’s clothes?” I asked, fingering the shirt.
“His dad’s,” Bonnie said softly.
“Nick must take after him,” I said.
She glanced back at Nick, who was wrestling a tennis ball out of Nutty’s mouth across the yard. “The two of them were practically identical,” she said. “Same height, same broad shoulders, same eyes.”
So she’d once been taken in by those eyes, too.
“Nick’s dad was a hardheaded son of a bitch,” she said, looking up wistfully at the scarecrow. “Lord, I miss him.”
She looked at me now. “Life wasn’t easy with Nick’s father,” she said, “but it was never boring, neither.”
She’d filled my stomach with chicken-fried steak and strawberry shortcake, and now she’d given me food for thought.
When the night was done, Nick’s mother sent me out the door with two steaks wrapped in foil, a plastic bag full of her homegrown strawberries, and her sangria recipe.
Nick walked me to my car. “Thanks for coming.”
“I had a nice time.”
We stood in awkward silence for a moment. If we’d been dating, this would be the point at which we’d give each other a good-night kiss. If we were mere coworkers, this would be the point we’d say “see ya” and turn away from each other. Given that we were less than lovers but more than business associates, I wasn’t sure what to do. Nick didn’t seem to have a clue, either.
“Guess I’ll see you in the morning,” I said finally.
He merely nodded and stepped back a couple feet. He stood in the driveway, a lonesome expression in his eyes as he watched me back up and drive away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Smiting a Sinner
When I arrived at work Monday morning, I faxed a copy of Judge Trumbull’s order to both the county clerk’s office and the mortgage company. I received a call from the loan officer not ten minutes later.
“Your loan’s good to go now,” she said. “Of course, interest rates went up a quarter point over the weekend.”
Damn. Would this run of bad luck never end?
Josh and Nick appeared in my doorway. Josh held up a jump drive. “Ready to go to the library?”
“Oh, yeah.” I’d been screwed over by everyone and their dog lately. I was looking forward to screwing back.
Viola eyed us as we waited at the elevators. “You look like three cats that swall
owed three canaries.”
Eddie looked up from Lu’s desk behind Vi. “You guys aren’t getting yourselves in trouble, are you?”
“Of course not,” I said.
The elevator doors opened and we climbed on. I stuck my head out and hollered to Eddie. “You only get in trouble if you get caught!”
We walked the five blocks to the central library and stepped inside. I led the way to the bank of computers. We grabbed chairs and pulled up to a computer at the end of the row.
Josh inserted the flash drive into the tower, then logged in to Google Mail. “We’ll need to set up an account. What e-mail address do you want to use?”
“How about Jesus H Christ?” I suggested. It might be smart-assed and sacrilegious, but if we were going to go to all this trouble to give Noah Fischer some hell, we might as well take it all the way, right?
“Jesus’ middle initial is F,” Nick said.
“Shhh!” A woman three seats away frowned at us.
“No it’s not,” I insisted in a whisper.
“It doesn’t matter,” Josh whispered, clicking keys on the keyboard. “Both of those are taken anyway.”
“What about just ‘God’?” Nick asked.
Josh typed again. “Not available.”
“Shhh!” said the woman again.
We ran through a litany of choices. Jehovah. King of Kings. Abba. The Man Upstairs. All were taken. We finally settled on [email protected].
“What do you want the e-mail to say?” Josh asked.
Nick and I exchanged glances.
What would God say if he could speak directly to Fischer? “How about this?” I suggested. “‘You’ve been a naughty boy, my son. Repent now or I’ll cover your pecker with boils.’”
“Works for me,” Nick said.
Josh typed up the e-mail and attached the photo and video files. He logged on to the Ark’s Web site, located Fischer’s e-mail address on the contact page, and dragged the mouse across the pad to copy it. Returning to the e-mail screen, he pasted it into the address line.
Just one more step and the implosion would begin.
I put a hand out to stop Josh from sending the e-mail. “It was Nick’s idea to spy on Fischer Friday night. Let’s give him the honors.”
Josh waved a hand, palm up, over the keyboard, inviting Nick to press the key.
Nick rotated his shoulders dramatically, then interlaced his fingers and stretched them out in front of him, cracking his knuckles. He lifted his index finger high in the air, made a whistling sound like a bomb dropping, and lowered his finger to jab the enter button. “Kaboom!”
“Shhh!” the woman hissed one last time.
* * *
With Fischer now in self-destruct mode, I could turn my attention to my other cases. Unfortunately, none were nearly as a big or interesting. I had a nursing home administrator who’d failed to issue himself a W-2 or report his income for the past eight years, a lumber wholesaler who’d taken significant amounts of cash under the table, and a freelance photographer who’d claimed a sizable net loss several years in a row despite the fact that he’d actually turned a nice profit. The photographer tried to claim he’d simply made math errors on his return and hadn’t realized it. To the tune of two hundred grand? Not likely. Adding up deductions wasn’t exactly advanced math.
The end of the Ark case meant I also had spare time on my hands. I invited Alicia and Christina over for dinner on Tuesday. I desperately needed both girl time and advice.
Over delivery pizza and a pitcher of Bonnie Pratt’s homemade sangria, I told them everything. Well, almost everything. No need to tell them I’d thought about Nick during sex with Brett last Saturday.
“Be careful,” Christina warned. “Guys get really pissed when you cry out another man’s name during orgasm. It’s hard to come back from that.”
I choked on my wine. When I could finally breathe again, I asked, “Did I do the right thing staying with Brett?”
Christina fished another slice of pizza out of the open box on my kitchen table. “I think you should be honest with Brett. Tell him that you’re crazy about him but that you’ve got feelings for Nick, too, and that you owe it to both of you to explore that, to make sure you’re choosing the best match. If you don’t, and you end up with Brett for the long term, you’ll be wondering ‘what if’ for the rest of your life. That won’t be good for either one of you.”
Christina made sense.
I toyed with a piece of crust. “But what if I tell Brett I want to give Nick a shot and then things don’t work out with Nick? Brett might refuse to take me back.”
Brett wouldn’t like playing second fiddle, but I’d feel the same way if I were him. If things were reversed, and Brett were the one telling me he wanted to give Trish a try, I doubted I’d ever take him back. It would be too humiliating. Like being awarded an honorable mention or winning a consolation prize. I wouldn’t want to be someone’s lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni.
“There’s always the risk Brett could refuse to reconcile,” she agreed, taking a sip of her sangria. “But you need to trust fate. If you and Brett are meant to end up together, then you’ll end up together.”
I wasn’t sure I trusted fate. Fate had been awfully generous with Noah Fischer and he certainly didn’t deserve it.
“I disagree with Christina,” Alicia said. “Brett’s done what you asked. He agreed to avoid Trish. You owe it to him now to see things through.”
Two good friends. Two different opinions. Both equally valid.
I was right back where I’d started from. Confused. When I wasn’t sure about a tax question, I consulted the Internal Revenue Code for the answer. Too bad there wasn’t a Dating Code to consult.
I was leaning the same way as Alicia, though. It wouldn’t be fair that I’d demanded Brett stay away from Trish if I were going to change my mind now and keep my options open with Nick. Still, what had seemed resolved on Saturday night didn’t feel resolved now. As hard as I tried, my feelings for Nick refused to be completely pushed aside.
Christina swallowed another bite of the veggie supreme and eyed me. “You’re staying with Brett, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” I sighed.
“You need to give Nick a heads-up,” Alicia said. “It wouldn’t be right to keep him on the hook now that you’ve decided to stay with Brett.”
“She’s right,” Christina said.
They both agreed I had to tell Nick. Damn. That wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to.
* * *
Early Wednesday evening, Josh, Nick, and I parked once again between two cars in the Ark’s lot.
Josh had run by the library twice to see if we’d received a response to the e-mail, but so far Yahweh@yahoo’s in-box remained empty.
“Could our e-mail have ended up in Fischer’s spam folder?” I asked.
Josh shrugged. “There’s always that possibility. Or maybe he just hasn’t read it yet.”
That could be the case. As pastor of such a large church, he probably received a high volume of e-mails.
Fischer’s white limo pulled to the curb thirty yards away. The driver climbed out to open the back door for Noah and Marissa. The two stepped out, looking as much like a Hollywood celebrity couple as ever. She wore a shimmery satin dress in pale mauve with another pair of Jimmy Choos, these a metallic suede espadrille wedge. Four hundred and ninety-five bucks at Neiman’s. I should know. I’d coveted that pair also.
Fischer wore tan slacks with a short-sleeved white dress shirt, along with the gold bracelet and Cartier watch.
“Whose shoes are on Fischer’s feet?” I asked.
“His,” Josh replied. “Duh.”
“No, I mean which designer made them?”
Nick and Josh exchanged glances.
“We don’t know, Tara,” Josh said. “We’re not gay.”
“You’re a virgin,” I said. “That’s close enough.”
A pang of guilt stabbed my gut when Josh’s cheeks fla
med a bright red.
“I’m sorry, Josh,” I said. “That was a low blow.”
Nick cocked his head, eyeing Josh. “Maybe you should do something about that.”
“About what?”
“Your virginity,” Nick replied. “Virginity is curable, you know.”
Just after the couple had vacated the limo and turned to head up the ramp into the boat, Amber Hansen drove by in her silver SUV. Noah Fischer glanced back at her car, his gaze lingering just a fraction too long.
Nick sat up in his seat. “Did you see that?”
“Sure did.” I shouldn’t have doubted Nick’s instincts. Maybe there really was something going on between the two of them. Then again, maybe he just found her attractive. But my instincts were buzzing now, too.
Fischer turned his focus to his wife now, putting a hand on Marissa’s back and guiding her up the ramp and into the Ark. The doors swung shut behind them.
I’m not sure what we expected, but again it felt anticlimactic. We’d hoped to see Fischer quaking in his expensive shoes and all we’d gotten was him staring a little too long at a parishioner.
“Let’s call him,” Nick said. “Tell him to check his e-mail.”
Josh started his car and we motored out of the lot, making our way down the adjacent road. We stopped at three gas stations and two convenience stores before finding a pay phone. The things were as rare as white rhinos these days.
We decided Josh should make the call since Fischer might recognize my voice or Nick’s.
Josh held the receiver in one hand, two quarters in the other. I held up my smartphone so he could read the Ark’s phone number I’d pulled up on the screen.
Josh fed the quarters into the slot and they fell into the hopper. Cha-ching, cha-ching. He dialed the number, then followed prompts until he reached Fischer’s voice mail.
“Thisss is Yaaahweeeh,” Josh said, drawing out the words in a deep, quavering voice that was supposed to sound like the Almighty Creator but instead sounded more like someone telling a ghost story at a slumber party. All that was missing was a flashlight shining under Josh’s chin. “I sent yooou an impooortant eee-mail. If yooou don’t see it in yourrr iiin-box, cheeeck your spammm folderrr.”