This seems to come as some surprise to Drew.
“But if he didn’t tell you, how did you know to come?” I ask him.
He lifts one finger, putting me on pause while he calls in the report and directs them to send officers immediately. It takes him a while and I have to remind him of the question when he’s done.
“How did you know to come here?” I ask again.
“Your bodyguard,” he says. When I look at him blankly, he elaborates. “Vito called. I’m not sure if he wanted me to rescue you or him, but I figured you were in more imminent danger.”
“He was going to kill us,” I say, pointing with my thumb back at the X-ray room behind me. Drew’s eyes have been glued there while we talk. “Max and me. God, is Max all right?”
Drew tilts his head a little and assures me that he appears to be. “Not sure I can say the same for Jerry Kroll.”
I whirl around. “I didn’t kill him, did I?” I ask, but I can see him moving and hear him moaning as the doctor ministers to him.
“You know the whole story?” I ask Drew. “All about the lottery tickets and—”
He tells me he knows enough for now and asks one of the officers who shows up to take me home.
OF COURSE, I can’t go home. I have a grand opening in just a few hours and my chances of getting paid are still in the uncertain column, so I ask the officer to drop me at L.I. Lanes. He asks if I didn’t just almost get killed.
Not for the first time I think of Scarlett’s famous words. I’ll think about that tomorrow, when I’ll either be swilling cappuccino and celebrating or trying to figure out how to make two boxes of spaghetti feed five people indefinitely.
Carmine and my father are waiting for me at the entrance to the alley. They are like two elephant seals on an ice flow that won’t accommodate both of them.
“It’s done,” my dad says proudly. “Mark and I loaded his truck with the crap from the job and all the place needed was a good vacuuming.” He looks at Carmine with disgust.
“Someone owed me a favor,” Carmine says with a shrug as I open the doors and see a cleaning crew of at least six scurrying around the alley with sprays and rags and an industrial vacuum the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Steve is behind the counter. When he sees me, he reaches into the register and then thinks better of it.
“Tonight,” he says. “At the opening.”
CHAPTER 23
A room is never really finished. And for me, that’s intentional. I never want to stop collecting, changing, adding and subtracting, and I wouldn’t want my clients to. Who knows what they’ll want to bring back from their next adventure? Life, as they say, is cumulative.
—TipsFromTeddi.com
The Grand Opening Celebration is amazing. Everyone is walking around the alley like they’ve never seen the place before. The pool tables are all in use and people are jostling for position around them. The cappuccino maker is whooshing and whistling and they’re two deep at the bar where my mother is ordering precise proportions in her latte and demanding Sweet’n Low. My eye is on Steve, who is in his glory.
The minute he goes near the register, I’m there, flanked by Mark, my dad and Carmine.
“Pleased?” I ask.
Without answering he pops open the drawer of the register, reaches in and then stops, the hand with the check in midair. He seems to reconsider and then he whistles to get everyone’s attention.
“Folks? Folks! Hate to interrupt your good time, but it’s time to do a little business here.” He grabs a chair and stands on it so everyone can see him. “Nice place, huh?” he asks, and everyone cheers.
“Bring over another chair,” he tells Mark, who indicates he doesn’t need one and lifts me up until I’m perched on his shoulder like a five-year-old. Had I known they were going to do this I wouldn’t have let Bobbie and Dana dress me in a skirt so short that I have to use my hands to cover my thighs instead of holding on for dear life.
A glance at my mother says I will never, ever hear the end of this.
“Everyone,” he says, and there isn’t a man in the joint who isn’t enjoying the view while I argue with Mark to put me down. “Teddi! Pay attention! I hereby turn this check over to Ms. Teddi Bayer for services well rendered.”
I blush. I know because I can feel my cheeks get very, very hot. Mark has put his arm across my thighs to both balance me and give me a modicum of dignity to match my modicum of skirt.
“Think she’s a great decorator?” Steve shouts and everyone claps. “Think she’s earned her check?” he shouts, and again people clap. He looks directly at me and says sincerely, “Well, me, too.”
I’m flabbergasted as Mark twirls me around to applause. It’s great. That is, until I’m turned around and I can see that behind me, near the door, just coming in, is Drew Scoones.
And he has a blonde on his arm. Mark slides me down his body and sets me on the floor. I tug at my skirt while people lose interest and turn back to whatever they were doing.
“I told you I prefer my blondes live,” Drew says when I make my way over to him through hordes of—okay, a few—people who waylay me to congratulate me on a great job and ask if I do entertainment rooms, home theaters, media centers. I don’t know the difference, but I tell them I surely do.
“I’ll take a beer,” Drew tells Steve, who is doubling as the bartender tonight. I think the man was afraid that someone else would be too generous. “You want?” I don’t know if Drew’s asking the blonde or me.
She assumes it’s her, gives a little shake of her bleached head and gives him a peck on the cheek as she waves an emaciated arm (no Hadassah arms for her) at some guy across the alley. She scurries away on her four-inch mules while all the men watch, tongues hanging out. When she reaches someone I’m pretty sure is another officer, she drapes herself over him like a silk drop cloth.
And Drew stares at me. His eyes take in every inch of leg that’s showing, the camisole under my black see-through blouse with the ruffles. “Nice outfit,” he drawls.
“My daughter,” I say by way of explanation.
“Alyssa? Should have figured,” he says. I don’t correct him. “You look like Hooker Barbie.”
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically and turn to walk away.
He catches my arm and pulls me back toward him. I have to admit it feels good, feels right, when I am snug up against his body. Of course, the place is crowded and I’m snug up against the guy on my right, too.
“Just stopped by to tell you that your friend gave a full confession,” he says.
“Is that all?” I ask. I am so bad at coy, but I can’t help trying.
“I didn’t know about the fashion show,” he says.
I tug at my skirt and he stops my hand.
“You look good,” he says.
“She looks like a ho,” my mother says. And loudly, too. I think she watches too much TV. That’s what I’d say if one of my kids talked like that. And I’d wash their mouths out, but I don’t think that’s an option here.
“Nice to see you, Mrs. Bayer,” Drew says to her, throwing her a look that says drop dead.
“Not much skirt to sniff,” my mother says.
“Sometimes less is more,” Drew answers her.
In an effort to end the torture, I ask what Jerry told him that I might not already know.
You like how I got in that little dig about how I knew before the police?
“Well, you were right about Joey spilling the beans to the good doctor,” Drew says.
“Of course she was right,” my mother says in a rare display of maternal pride. “She’s my daughter. What did you expect?”
I warn him not to answer that.
“When she heard about Joey dying the way he did, she got suspicious and called Jerry for details. Seems Joey was supposed to be taking some kind of medication and they found none in his system when they did the autopsy and the doctor wanted to know who the other men who went in on the lottery tickets were because sh
e was going to the police with her concerns.”
“Jerry picked up Joey’s medicine for him. I remember Rita telling me that,” I say.
My mother tells me not to interrupt. “And then?” she asks Drew, who tries to move us away from her but has to settle for lowering his voice.
“Apparently he said he’d go with her and arranged to meet her at her office parking lot—”
“Where that SOB took a hammer to that poor woman’s head,” my mother finishes for him.
“I thought you said he was a marshmallow?” I tell my mother.
“I thought you said you were going to wear something appropriate,” my mother says in return and Drew laughs. “You look like one of those housewife hookers,” Mom says as Drew reaches for his pocket, a sure sign that his phone is vibrating.
“Scoones here,” he says, putting a finger in his other ear and heading for the door with me on his heels. Hey, this could be about my case. And I bet he won’t say I don’t have a case now!
“Calm down,” I hear him say as we stand outside in the cold night air. “Who’s dead?”
I snuggle up against him, pretending it’s just the cold and not the fact that I want to hear who’s on the phone and what they’re saying.
Drew looks disgusted. “Well, what the hell were you meeting Peaches Lipschitz for, anyway?”
“Who?” I whisper to Drew.
Dumb move. Until then he’d only been aware of me on an unconscious level. Now he gently pushes me away.
“Who’s Peaches?” I press.
He waves me away. “Okay, don’t touch anything, don’t move anything, and for God’s sake, Hal, put little Hal away and zip your pants.”
My jaw falls open.
“I gotta go,” he tells me. “Police emergency.”
“But who’s Peaches Lipschitz? And is she dead?” I ask as he puts up his collar and heads for his car, me a half-step behind him.
“I don’t know how you Bayers do it,” he says, talking over his shoulder as he opens his car door. “A housewife hooker. Isn’t that what your mother just said?”
I shrug. She might have said I looked like one, not that one was dead.
But now it seems like maybe one is.
“I’m coming with you,” I say, running around to the other side of the car. The door is locked. “Open it, Drew,” I say.
“Step away from the car, Teddi,” he says in his policeman’s voice. “Now. Step away from the car.”
I take one step back and he opens the window enough for me to hear him clearly.
“And go put on some damn clothes for Christ’s sake.” He puts the car in gear and then adds softly, “I don’t want you to be next.”
WHOSE NUMBER IS UP, ANYWAY?
copyright © 2007 by Stephanie Mittman
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0462-5
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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