“I had one beer!”
“Me too, but I weigh more. Higher tolerance.”
I doubted that. Not that he had a higher tolerance, but that he’d stopped at one. But I was in no mood to argue. I slid into the passenger side of my new/old Mazda. He lowered the windows, turned off the A/C, and headed for Main Street.
After a few blocks, he took the opposite turn from the one that would take us to my house. Why was I not surprised? “Okay, where are we going?” I asked.
“It’s early. You don’t really want to go home, do you?”
“It’s nearly midnight,” I said. “And yeah, I’m a boring old broad and I want to go home to my little dog and my ugly old bathrobe.”
“And Dom.”
“You think you know everything about me,” I said. “You think you know what makes me tick. You are so arrogant.” So much for not arguing.
“Your bathrobe isn’t ugly,” he said. “Well, yeah, it’s ugly, but in a sexy way.”
“Oh, here we go. How on earth could my ratty, worn-out— No, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know—”
“You’re incapable of thinking like a guy.” He stopped for a red light and looked at me. “Which is actually kind of charming.”
The light changed and we were off again. Had the big bad black sheep of Clan McAuliffe actually said that something about me was charming? I wouldn’t have thought he knew the word. The air turned crisp and briny as we headed north toward the water.
I couldn’t leave it alone. “So you like me in the ugly bathrobe more than the sexy lingerie from Ramrod News?”
“Why does it have to be one or the other?” He took the turnoff for the town beach. “Variety is good for the soul.”
Not to mention the libido. At this time of night, Martin had his pick of parking spots. He left the car at the edge of the beach and we wordlessly took off across the sand. The moon hung low on the horizon, half-full. Or half-empty, if you prefer. We saw few stars due to light pollution from this built-up area of Long Island, not to mention nearby New York City. The brisk breeze freed strands of hair from my French twist.
I’d left my shoes in the car, and the padre was barefoot too. The beach facing Crystal Harbor—the bay after which the town was named—was studded with rocks and pebbles, which felt cool and invigorating under my feet as we ambled toward the shoreline. North Shore beaches such as this, which are on Long Island Sound across from Connecticut, have little in common with the world-renowned South Shore ocean-facing beaches such as Jones Beach, with their vast stretches of pristine white sand.
Why’s that, you ask? During the last Ice Age, glaciers advanced partway down Long Island, in the process carving out assorted land forms, bays, and waterways on the North Shore and leaving the coastline full of rubble. The South Shore is flatter, with mile after mile of lovely Hamptons-worthy beaches. Maxine hadn’t asked about this during the geography portion of the trivia contest, but if she had, I would have been ready.
I wouldn’t admit it to Martin, but I was glad he’d brought me to the beach. The sights, the smells, the rough sand underfoot—they were simultaneously stimulating and soothing. I had a feeling I’d sleep well that night. “For the record,” I said, “I’m not still hung up on Dom.”
“You’re making progress, I’ll give you that,” he said. “You changed your computer password from your anniversary to Sexy Beast’s birthday.”
I gaped at him. “When are you going to stop messing with my stuff? We had an unspoken pact. I let you live in my house and you leave my things alone.”
“Okay, the thing about unspoken pacts?” he said. “The details can get a bit fuzzy. And for what it’s worth, a pet’s birthday is absolute amateur hour. I reset it with a stronger password this afternoon.”
I stopped walking. “You gave my computer a new password? When were you going to share this with me?”
He shrugged. I forced myself to focus on his face and not on the way the breeze molded his gray T-shirt to his torso. In moonlight no less. “I’m telling you now,” he said. “It’s ‘dollar sign ampersand I wear granny panties twelve twenty-nine.’”
“Not ‘I wear granny panties twenty-four seven’?”
That impish grin. “Do you?”
You’ll never find out. The words were perched on the tip of my tongue, ready to spring, but I restrained myself. After all, who knew? Instead I said, “That’s a stupid password.”
“The Y in ‘granny’ is capitalized, and the number is for December twenty-ninth, my birthday.”
“Right, your birthday.” I shook my head.
“It’s a lot stronger than your pet’s birthday. It’d be tough for a bad guy to guess.”
Good thing I had a bad guy living in my maid’s room to help me figure all this out.
“Dom wants to get married again,” I blurted, and resumed walking.
“I know.” The padre picked up a rock, weighed it in his palm, and hurled it far over the water. “He seems to think it’s a done deal.”
“Huh. Really?”
He shrugged. “It’s no secret you’ve spent the past twenty years waiting for your soul mate to come around.”
“Seventeen years,” I said. “Don’t make me older than I am. And I have not spent…” I sighed. “Okay, but that’s all over, like you said. I’ve moved on. New password, new home, new…”
I hesitated. And no, I wasn’t going to say, “new man.” Shows what you know.
“New, um, friends,” I finished.
“Plus,” he said, “I noticed you moved your Dom shrine to the attic.”
“My what?”
“Your wedding album and that box with all those pictures of him and his erotic love letters and all that. It’s like a little shrine to—”
“You’re not supposed to be upstairs!” I stopped and faced him, flapping my arms in frustration. “You’re definitely not supposed to be snooping in my stuff.”
Martin shoved his hands in his pockets, unfazed. “You’ve made progress, is my point. You used to keep that stuff in your bedroom closet.”
“Only because basements don’t have attics,” I said. The last time he’d gone through my stuff—or the last time I’d known about it—I was living in Mr. Franckowiak’s sad little one-room basement apartment in Sandy Cove. I didn’t waste my breath telling him to respect my privacy. It was a lost cause.
The tide was coming in and cold water surged over my bare feet, getting them moving again. “Does Dom really think it’s inevitable that we’ll get back together?” I asked as we strolled along the wet sand. “What did he say?”
“It’s less what he says and more his general attitude. He’s looking at your house like he’s trying to decide how much of his furniture will fit.”
“He knows I couldn’t move to his place. I can’t move out of my house while Sexy Beast is still alive,” I said, “according to the terms of Irene’s bequest.”
“I know,” the padre said. “Because the house belongs to the dog.”
If he was still bitter about that fact, he concealed it well. I wouldn’t blame him if he was, considering that Irene McAuliffe had broken up his grandparents’ marriage and ended up owning his beloved grandmother’s dream house—which she’d then left to a seven-pound poodle.
I said, “So Dom thinks he’s moving in? For real?”
Martin shrugged. “Yesterday I found him measuring the rooms.”
“Pretty darn confident,” I grumbled.
“A gung-ho business tycoon like him? Can’t expect him to sit around twiddling his thumbs while the woman he wants gets over him and moves on to a more appreciative guy.”
“More appreciative, huh?” Got anyone in mind? A small, round stone winked at me in the moonlight. I bent to pick it up, warmed its burnished perfection in my hand as we walked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Dom pulls out the stops and makes your basic grand gesture.” He illustrated this by making, well, a grand gesture. “Something that’ll knock your soc
ks off. Not to mention your granny panties.”
“That was one day,” I said. “My laundry had piled up.” Jeez, would I ever live those things down?
“So go commando,” he said. “It’s what I do.”
My gaze flicked to the back of his snug jeans.
Oh, please. Don’t tell me that if you heard a guy this hot utter the C-word—in this case, “commando”—you wouldn’t have yourself a little peek.
It was definitely time to change the subject. I said, “Detective Hernandez called Sophie at the bar tonight.”
“Yeah, she looked like someone spat in her beer,” he said. “What did Bonnie want?”
“To interview her again. Interrogate her, whatever. I have a feeling there’s been a new development. Sophie called her lawyer.”
“Smart woman.”
15
Window of Opportunity
I ambled downstairs the next morning and marched across Dom’s air mattress, accidentally kicking him in the head when he flopped into my foot.
Nothing. Not so much as an eye quiver. He was, as always, blissfully comatose. Sexy Beast paused, as always, to sniff his beloved Dom and make sure he was still breathing as I shambled into the kitchen. Martin was, as always, on his tenth or twelfth mug of high-test and working his way through most of a newly opened box of Fruity Pebbles.
He turned the Times crossword puzzle in my direction, as always, so I could admire the fact that every last one of the little boxes was filled in, and in ink, while I grunted something meant to sound encouraging and made tracks for the coffee carafe.
By now we had our routine down, like an old married couple whose special-needs but somehow high-achieving adult son would remain unconscious until precisely 7:38 a.m., when he’d suddenly bound out of bed, eerily alert and ready to tear another huge bite out of the natural, organic, and sustainably produced foodservice industry.
Dom had always been that way. Made no difference when he hit the hay or where he laid his head. It was one of those quirks I used to consider lovable.
I’d made it through one and a half mugs of black coffee and was lingering over the Times Style section ($179.99 isn’t too much for a designer salt-and-pepper set, is it?) when my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Jane, it’s Porter Vargas.” His voice sounded strained.
I checked the wall clock. Barely eight o’clock. Dom was getting ready for work, which is what I assumed my caller should be doing at this hour of the morning. “What’s up, Porter?”
“I want to hire you for an assignment.”
“Okay.” So. After having engaged me anonymously for the past two decades to deliver flowers to Tim Holbrook’s grave, he had something else for me to do. “What do you have in mind?”
“I need you to come here this morning to discuss it. I’m staying at my mother’s house here in town.” He told me where she lived.
“Sure thing.” I grabbed a pen from the junk drawer and scribbled the address on a napkin. “What time?”
“Please arrive promptly at nine,” he said.
I saluted the arrogant man. Sir, yes, sir! “Nine it is,” I said. “You working from home this morning?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
We said goodbye and I hung up. Martin asked about the call. “You’re not going there alone,” he said, when I told him about Porter’s request.
“Oh, please.” I was already heading out of the breakfast room.
“I’m serious, Jane.” Martin was out of his chair, catching up to me. “You’re responsible for Vargas being accused, arrested, and possibly spending the rest of his life in jail. He’s got to have it in for you.”
“He sounded civil enough on the phone.”
“How about the fact that the man is very likely a murderer?” he said.
“Nah, my money’s on Lacey.” When I realized he was following me up the stairs, I swung to face him. He bumped into me, which turned out to be more agreeable than it sounds.
“In which case Porter disposed of the body to cover his wife’s crime,” he said. “If you’re right, he’s still protecting her, pretending he killed Ernie in self-defense. You know how irrational he is when it comes to Lacey. He’s capable of anything. It’s blind, obsessive love.”
My tone was arid. “Yeah, that’s irrational, all right. I’m not having this discussion, Padre. And you’re not allowed upstairs,” I reminded him as I sprinted up the steps. For all the good it did me.
He trailed me into the master bedroom. “I’m going with you. No argument.”
I opened my underwear drawer. “Do you mind? I have to shower and dress.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stood his ground. I sighed. “I’ll be careful, I promise, but I have no intention of showing up at a client’s house with a bodyguard.” My gut told me I had nothing to fear from Porter.
“I’m not giving you a choice, Jane. I’m going with you.”
After a moment I tossed my hands in defeat. “All right, all right. Be ready to leave in forty-five minutes.”
The instant he left the room, I threw on yesterday’s clothes and hurried down the stairs, finger-combing my hair. When I entered the kitchen, I saw Dom standing over the stove, boiling water for his slow-cooking steel-cut oatmeal. A quick good-morning, a couple of scritches for SB, then I silently crept down the hallway, past the laundry room to the garage entrance opposite the maid’s room where Martin was bunking. I heard the shower running in his bathroom and smiled to myself.
In less than ten minutes I pulled up in front of Mama Vargas’s enormous, brick Tudor-style home with half-timbering and steep gable roofs. I was half an hour early, but if I waited to ring the bell, Martin would have time to figure out I’d given him the slip and come roaring up on his Harley before I got inside the door. Porter wanted prompt? Try thirty minutes early.
I made my way up the long brick walk and punched the doorbell. And waited. I rang it again. After a minute I tried the big brass door knocker. Porter could have been in the shower too, but then where was his mother? I couldn’t ignore my tingling nape. Was it my imagination or had he indeed sounded stressed on the phone?
I descended the front porch steps and ambled around the house, peering as casually as I could into the first-floor windows and hoping none of Mama Vargas’s neighbors decided to phone the local gendarmerie about a suspicious character casing the joint. There was nothing to see through the open drapes except traditional furnishings with an emphasis on genuine-looking antiques.
I rounded the back of the house and went straight for the multipaned bow window which projected into the backyard. Peering through the leaded-glass panes, I saw what appeared to be a great room, with a gigantic wood-and-stone fireplace mantel, Oriental rugs, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a steeply pitched, half-timbered ceiling with a couple of heavy timber cross pieces. A sturdy rope hung from the nearest timber, located some dozen feet from the widow, with a dainty Louis XVI armchair positioned directly under it. Or maybe it was Louis Quatorze. I’m pretty sure it was some Louis.
Porter Vargas stood on the chair with—you’re way ahead of me, I can tell—a noose around his neck.
He faced me, his expression clearly indicating that in fact he did not appreciate my early arrival. We locked eyes and I stood paralyzed for a long moment until he made his move, kicking the chair out from under his feet.
Acting on pure reflex, I spun around, not even knowing what I was looking for. I sprinted across the sprawling stone patio and lifted an ornate iron patio chair. In that instant, with my muscles marinating in adrenaline, that chair could have been made of Styrofoam. I got a running start and used my momentum and the aforementioned adrenaline rush to slam the chair through the bow window.
I followed the chair, leaping over the low sill through the shower of glass shards and lead fragments to reach Porter in about two seconds that felt like as many hours. Furiously he kicked out at me as I struggled to reposition the chair under him. His sneakered foot caught me in the temple
and I went down with a cry of pain. Immediately I sprang up, wrapping my arms around his flailing legs while trying to drag the chair with my foot.
“Porter, don’t do this,” I shouted. “It won’t solve anything.”
His face was purple, his body twitching as he clawed at the noose—a reflexive action, I knew, and not a change of heart, since he still twisted and kicked and fought my efforts to save him.
Suddenly another pair of arms materialized, effectively trapping Porter’s legs and lifting him several inches.
“Get the chair!” Martin barked.
I didn’t pause to wonder where he’d come from but shoved the chair into place. Before Porter could mount a counteroffensive, Martin stood on the chair, restraining the other man with one muscular arm while slipping something out of his own back jeans pocket.
Sunlight flashed on steel as the switchblade sprang open. Martin sliced through the rope in one swift motion and caught Porter as he sagged. Together we lowered him onto the carpet. I loosened the slipknot at the side of his neck and pulled the rope over his head.
Porter gulped air as tears slid from his closed eyes down his temples. “Damn you,” he rasped. “Damn you, Jane.”
I slumped onto my butt, my own chest heaving, my heart jackhammering my ribcage. I looked at the padre and breathlessly mouthed, Thank you.
He placed a hand on my back. Had anything ever felt so good? So reassuring?
“Where… how…?” I said.
“You thought I didn’t know what you were up to?” Martin wore a wry half smile. “‘Be ready to leave in forty-five minutes’? Seriously?”
“Thank God you’re sneakier than I am,” I said. “But how did you get into the house?”
“I heard you holler as soon as I pulled up. Front door was unlocked.” He glanced at the smashed bow window and gave me a once-over. “Hold still.” He took my hand in his, which seemed a surprisingly tender if not unwelcome gesture until he turned my forearm to pluck a good-size piece of glass out of it. He frowned as I pulled tissues from my pocket to try and soak up the blood. “You’re a mess,” he said.
Uprooting Ernie (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 2) Page 17