Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

by Stevi Mittman

  “Too many hormones at one table,” I tell him, taking in the tears welling in Kristen’s eyes as she faces her little plate of food, the set of Kimmie’s jaw as she glares at Dana’s empty seat, the strumming of Bobbie’s fingernails against her glass and my desire to just get up and move to another table.

  Preferably one in Hong Kong.

  Sammy puts the spareribs in front of Lys, who he knows will eat only them, despite what else she insisted we order. He ceremoniously takes the lid off the dim sum and places it between Jesse and me. The green, vegetarian dumplings he puts between Kimmie and the empty seat once occupied by Dana, who we trust will be lured back into the restaurant by the incredible smells. Kristen and Bobbie share a bowl of wonton soup.

  I don’t want to ask, I really don’t, but I drew the Mom card and the rules of the game require it. “Anyone know what’s bothering Dana this time?” I ask.

  Kristen, straight as an arrow, starts to open her mouth, but Kimmie coughs loudly and she closes it. I don’t know what Kimmie is holding over Kristen’s head, but something is stopping her from telling me what Dana is up to.

  How did this get to be my life? I can’t help wondering. Sometimes I wish I had a scorecard to know just who’s playing on whose team, especially when Jesse starts humming—a sure sign that he knows.

  Lys, my usually reliable source (though interpreting just what she knows is always a challenge) shouts, “Ow!” and adds that she wasn’t going to tell.

  “Tell what?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from sounding shrill and only half succeeding.

  “She’s just pissed at Dad,” Jesse offers and gets death threats from all the eyes around the table except Bobbie’s.

  “Because?” I ask.

  “Because nothing,” Dana says, coming back and glaring at Lys while she takes her seat. Through gritted teeth she says that, “No one’s telling because there’s nothing to tell.”

  Shoot me now, I think. Just shoot me now.

  I make nice, soothing noises, implying that something must be bothering her and pretending that I’m a good listener.

  “Can’t I just be mad at Daddy? I’d think that would make you happy. You’re always mad at him, aren’t you?”

  I try to discern why she’s mad at him, but get nowhere. Except that now I’m the heavy, unwilling to drop the subject.

  There is only one thing worse than being a thirteen-year-old girl—being the mother of a thirteen-year-old girl.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she says with finality.

  She may be right.

  Usually, I remember to turn my cell phone off when we are dining out because it’s incredibly rude to take a call during dinner. Okay, this is what I tell the kids and if I insist Dana’s new phone be off, then do I have a choice?

  Only I’ve forgotten and the theme from NYPD Blue is emanating from my handbag.

  “I thought we couldn’t take calls at the table,” Dana says in that voice that makes a parent want to send a child to boarding school until she’s thirty. “Or does that only apply to me?”

  “Take it, Mom,” Jesse says, like Bono is calling and if I don’t answer in three rings he’ll hang up. “It’s Drew.”

  “I had it on to get an important call from Aunt Diane,” I lie, though it would be nice if my rookie cop had even the slightest bit of information for me. That is, beyond the fact that so far two of The Slices have bought nothing unusual—blowing my lottery theory right out of the water.

  People in the restaurant are giving me dirty looks as I fish frantically for the phone in my purse, the theme getting louder and more insistent.

  I tell the kids I’ll be right back and run from the restaurant clutching my handbag and apologizing to people along the way.

  When I finally get to answer it, Drew is gone.

  Now, I could just turn the phone off, go back into the restaurant, call him back later. But since Jews don’t get to become saints in this day and age, I don’t see much point to this. I call him back.

  “Too much crap in your purse to find your phone?” he asks.

  A hello would have done.

  “I’m out to dinner with the kids and Bobbie,” I say. “I’m not allowed to take calls.”

  Drew has two laughs. One is cynical and annoying, the other is genuine. I expect the cynical laugh, but the one I get is genuine. And one little piece of my heart melts just a little.

  “Who’s not allowing you?” he asks. “Alyssa?”

  I explain how I made a rule when Dana got her new phone from Rio. And how it’s supposed to apply to all of us.

  “Do you think you might be allowed to go out after dinner? I mean, if your homework is all done?”

  I’m smiling. Two people coming into the restaurant smile back at me in the vestibule. Their children don’t and I hear the older one saying, “She can be on the phone,” as they make their way into the place.

  “I could check out the security system,” Drew says, and his voice holds the promise of more…a lot more.

  I tell him to meet me at L.I. Lanes at eleven.

  And I scoot back to the table and announce that the call was business.

  Monkey business, my mother would say.

  CHAPTER 9

  Back in the day, lots of furniture was made of metal. There were medicine cabinets, kitchen tables and chairs, Hoosier cabinets. Most of the finishes on them, especially the ones you can find at salvage places and flea markets, haven’t fared well. To the rescue—car paint! Just take that bargain to an auto shop and have them paint it better than new. Maybe you can’t afford the Jaguar…British racing green, anyone?

  —TipsFromTeddi.com

  Drew’s car is parked in front of the alley and when I pull up he gets out and walks over to mine.

  “It’s eleven o’clock,” he says in an announcer’s sotto voce. “Do your children know where you are?”

  “Very funny,” I say, alighting from my car and heading with him toward the alley. Leaving the house wasn’t easy, with Dana still so tied up in knots. But with Lys already asleep, Jesse nearly so and Dana getting the solace she needs over the phone, there didn’t seem much point in my hanging around. The last thing I heard her tell whoever it was she was talking to was that I’d just take her father’s side.

  Now there’s a hard scenario to imagine.

  Anyway, Steve is just closing up and I tell him that Drew is a cop and that he and I will lock up after he checks out the security system for me.

  “What’s the matter with the system? Your ex have some kind of problem with it?” he asks, eyeing Drew suspiciously.

  “I’m just making sure it’s working perfectly,” I say. He doesn’t seem convinced, so I add, “And that it’s legal.”

  “Legal?” Steve says, his voice a couple of octaves higher than normal. “It cost me three grand. It better be legal.”

  Drew explains that what I meant was that what it captured would be admissible in court, “Should you ever need to go that route.”

  Steve wants to know what it will cost him.

  Drew says a few games on that new table I told him about ought to cover it. Suddenly Steve is thrilled to have Drew’s expertise. And he pulls out three beers from behind the bar like we’re all going to stay and do the work together.

  “This is tedious work,” Drew says. “So I’m real glad you can stay. No more than four hours. Five, tops. We’ve got to trace the wires, go over the connections—”

  Steve’s eyes glaze over.

  “Tricky business,” Drew says. “Gotta see that the light is right, do some testing—”

  At which point Steve conveniently remembers that he has an appointment in Hicksville. He glances at his watch and says he’s late already.

  “Help yourself to beers, try out the new cappuccino maker, whatever,” he says as he shrugs into his jacket and hurries out the door.

  We stand there awkwardly for a minute or two. I offer to make us some coffee, saying that the machine is supposed to make it imp
ossible for even me to mess up a good cup. Drew shrugs and agrees to try it out.

  For several minutes the only sounds come from the machine. When our cappuccinos are ready we sit at the bar and sip, adding murmurs of appreciation to the whooshing of the machine.

  Finally Drew puts his hand over mine. He’s got that serious look on his face that sends chills down my spine. “Teddi, I—” he starts.

  “Did I tell you that my mother got me a new client?” I ask, pulling my hand back and using it to put a lock of hair behind my ear. He waits patiently while I drone on about Rita Kroll and paying bills and the intricacies of working for a friend of my mother’s. Eventually, I run out of chitchat.

  “Done?” he asks me, not even pretending that what I had to say interested him in the least. He’s playing with the empty third finger on my right hand, circling it over and over with his fingers. “Because—”

  I jump up and go behind the counter for some sugar, though Steve had thrown some packets on the table already. “How’s the case going?” I ask. “Dr. Doris?”

  I can see his mood shift as he accepts the fact that I am still not ready to talk about us.

  “You find your killer yet?”

  He takes a deep breath and then dives in. “No. It’s been one blind alley after another. I might as well be in some maze or something.”

  I tell him that doesn’t sound like him.

  He says it’s the story of his life. He’s tracing my fingers with his. “I think I know just where I’m headed, but the facts seem to say otherwise.”

  “Sometimes it just takes time,” I tell him, reaching across the bar to refill our cups.

  “Sometimes time’s the real enemy,” he says. “Suspects slip away, evidence gets mislaid, people forget the really important details.”

  I don’t answer him.

  “Found a coincidence that might amuse you,” he says, lightening. “Our Dr. Doris, as the papers are fond of calling her, operated on your friend Joey Ingraham a few months back.”

  I nearly fall off my seat. He steadies me against him.

  “My dead doc and your dead guy. It must be kismet, huh?” he says. He’s breathing in my hair and raising goose bumps down my arms.

  “And you think it’s just a coincidence?” I ask him. My voice says NOT in capital letters.

  “Well, it’d be hard for Joey to have killed Doris after he was already dead. Even you have to agree with that, right?” he asks. He’s grown an extra hand and he’s playing with my belt, unhooking my bra and brushing the hair away from my eyes all at the same time.

  “Maybe Doris killed Joey,” I say, only that doesn’t make any sense. It’s hard to make sense when there are so many hands distracting you. “Or maybe the same person killed them both.”

  That’s a theory. I like it.

  Drew doesn’t. “Motive? You got a motive to tie these murders together, Teddi?”

  “Not yet,” I admit. Of course, I have a couple of theories, though they may be a little far-fetched. Life insurance? But if she was the beneficiary and she killed him, who killed her? And why? Back to the lottery? Joey went in with the bowling boys—what could Dr. Doris have to do with that?

  The fact that none of my theories make sense doesn’t stop me from proposing them as motives. I don’t mention the fact that he’s referred to both cases as murders.

  To his credit, Drew doesn’t laugh at me. He says he admires my tenacity. “You don’t give up easy, do you?”

  Okay, there are things that I am more than willing to give up without a fight. And what I’m thinking he has in mind right now is one of them. I’m sure I could be easily persuaded….

  Is he willing to test Rio’s security system? After all, that’s what I asked him here for.

  “What’s the camera trained on?” he asks, throwing an eye toward the first of the new pool tables across the alley from us.

  I explain that there are several cameras. One is on the area outside the back door, one is behind the counter, one is on the bar, and one sweeps the pool tables.

  “Bingo,” he says, pulling me with him toward the table. We look up as a red light begins to flash below the ceiling cam. “The best way to test these things is to do something to document the time and then, after some space of time, to check the tapes.”

  “So, like wave?” I ask coyly, wiggling my fingers at the camera.

  Without a word he picks me up and sets me on the pool table.

  “It always this bright in here?” he asks me. I tell him where the light switches are and he makes some excuses about testing the camera in low lights.

  I stay where I am while he turns down the lights.

  “Kiss me,” he says when he comes back and stands between my dangling legs.

  I do.

  “No. Kiss me like there’s nothing else on your mind.”

  I try again. He shakes his head.

  “Kiss me like I’ve just told you that I’ve been investigating the other Slices in my spare time—such as it is.”

  I wrap my legs around him and kiss him like, well, like he’s just told me he’s been investigating the other Spare Slices.

  He leans me back on the pool table and lifts my sweater. “You really are gorgeous,” he says, like maybe he’d remembered wrong.

  “What did you find out?” I ask, unbuttoning his shirt so hurriedly I pop one of the buttons clear off it.

  “Whole team, all six of ’em, went in on the lottery tickets,” he says, like I haven’t already gotten that information myself. He looks at the camera and then goes around to the other side of the table, trying to take me with him as he goes. “Swing around this way,” he says.

  “And?” I ask.

  “And get your jeans off,” he says, pulling his shirt off and yanking his T-shirt over his head.

  “No,” I say, though I’m working on my zipper. “The Spare Slices. They all went in on the tickets and…?”

  He’s pulling my cowboy boots off, but they are fighting him every inch of the way. “And nothing,” he says.

  I stop struggling with my jeans.

  “Every one of them swears they saw the losing tickets,” he says, succeeding with one boot and starting in on the other. He turns and takes my foot between his legs. “Put your other foot on my ass and push,” he tells me.

  I do as I’m told. I think he’s surprised because he goes flying with the boot in his hand.

  “Lean back,” he says. I lie down on the table, my legs dangling over the rail.

  He positions himself between them and leans over me. After enough kissing for us both to forget where we are—okay, for me to overlook where we are, anyway—he manages to rid me of my jeans.

  “So gorgeous,” he says again and holds my hands above my head when I try to cover myself.

  “But not blond,” I tell him.

  He looks at my hair and he looks at my sweet spot and says he can see that.

  I shiver slightly from the cool air on my naked skin and he presses himself against me, offering to warm me up.

  And warm me he does, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head and back again.

  “Teddi Bayer in the corner pocket,” he says, positioning me on the edge of the table while saying something about sliding his cue stick into my pocket.

  Let’s just say the man has very good aim.

  And every now and then he turns his head to check on the blinking red light below the camera.

  In another minute, we’re loving on a brand-new pool table in a deserted billiard parlor on a school night. And it’s every bit as exciting as it would have been twenty years ago.

  “What if Steve comes back?” I ask when we’re catching our breath.

  “He’ll have to get his own girl,” Drew says, and, having caught his breath, he goes about catching mine.

  Finally, when it’s over, when we’re done and done in and I’ve been done over, he hoists himself up on the table next to me.

  The camera is blinking down on both our bodies
.

  “You know this is every man’s fantasy,” he says. “A beautiful woman, a pool table and a camera catching it all. I don’t suppose you’d make a copy…”

  “As soon as I make sure it worked, I am erasing everything,” I assure him.

  He says it’s a damn shame. And then he shifts uncomfortably. “Man this thing is hard as a rock.”

  “Well, it’s slate,” I say, grateful when he helps me down off the table and I’m feeling every vertebra, every muscle. Even the cellulite on my butt hurts. You’d think with all the padding I’ve got there…

  We’re still kind of dazed when we hear the keys jangling in the door.

  “Oh my God!” I say, grabbing up my clothes and running for the darkest corner of the alley while Drew calmly pulls on his jeans and unhurriedly buttons his shirt.

  “What are you doing here?” an all-too-familiar voice says. I’m relieved it isn’t Steve, but only my mother or my kids would be worse than my ex.

  “Checking out your security system,” Drew says. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing as you,” Rio says, but something in his voice seems to imply otherwise.

  Drew asks what he’s “got there,” while I stay hidden in the shadows because I can’t find several articles of clothing, and besides, I’m a coward who abhors confrontation and even if Rio is my ex and has no say regarding how I conduct myself, there are still things I don’t want him to know.

  Though seeing him eat his heart out to know I did it on a pool table is very tempting.

  Rio says it’s “just a tape.”

  The lights snap on, and from Drew’s tone, I’m figuring he’s responsible. “You planning on replacing a tape in the machine with one of your own, Mr. Gallo?”

  Rio says “huh?” but I know where Drew’s going.

  “You got a tape there that shows no one here? Is that it? You come in here, empty the cash register and then put your tape in the machine so no one knows you were here?”

  Rio repeats how he came to check the system.

  “At two a.m.?” Drew asks.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” I reach out and pull my belt back toward me with my foot.