Quick Study

by Maggie Barbieri

  I nodded. “I know that now. I was just angry, Crawford. I’m sorry.” I got up and went over to his chair, falling onto his lap. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him deeply. I buried my head in his neck. “Am I forgiven?” I whispered.

  He moaned a little bit. “You drive me crazy. And not in a good way.” He reached around me and drained a little more of his beer. “What happened to the sidelight? And the screen?”

  “The screen’s been broken since last summer and I tripped in the hallway and broke the sidelight,” I said, only some of that being true.

  “Did you hurt yourself? Do you want some ice? And a pair of shoes you can actually walk in? Because you are . . .”

  It was my turn to put my hand over his mouth to silence him. When it was clear that he was done talking, I kissed him some more, pulling away only when I heard the phone ring. I must have had other messages because the machine clicked on after two rings, well before I had a chance to grab the receiver. I heard Jimmy Crawford’s staccato tenor come through loud and clear, as well as the sound of a screaming child in the background. “Hey, Alison, Jimmy Crawford. Got your message and I’m calling you back. I’ll try your cell if I don’t hear from you. I’m in the office tomorrow. You’ve got that number, right? And where’s the fire, sister? Man, you sounded stressed. Brooke, shut up! I’m on the phone! I’ll get you juice in one minute! Anyway, Alison, whatever you need, I’m your man. And if you see Detective Humorless, tell him I’ve got his new will and testament and I’m really jacked that he’s decided to leave the Passat to me. Yes, thank you very much. Just what I need. A car that has four cylinders and smells like Drakkar Noir. Brooke, shut it! I’m on the phone! I’ll speak with you soon, Alison. Later.”

  I stared in horror at the phone and tried to avoid Crawford’s gaze, just millimeters from my face. Right on cue, my cell phone started ringing and I suspected that Jimmy would leave an identical message on it but that his daughter Brooke would have escalated to the point of hysteria by the time he was done.

  “I guess you’ll want to tell me why my brother is calling you at nine o’clock on a Friday night,” he said evenly.

  “Can we have the make-up sex first?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I took a deep breath, my old fallback time killer. “Don’t forget to pick up your new will.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Funny thing. I need a will, too. So I called Jimmy. He’s my lawyer, too, right?”

  Crawford nodded slowly and shifted his legs, his indication that I was to get off his lap. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait!” I said, smoothing down my skirt, which had ridden up during our little make-out session. “I have to tell you something.”

  “You have a lot of things to tell me.” He moved toward the back door and rested his hand on the doorknob, ready to leave. He was showing off his scare-the-perp face and wore it well.

  “I’ve got tickets to the Rangers’ season ender. Will you go with me? It’s next Thursday.”

  There are a lot of things Crawford and I do not have in common: his job, the kids, and the Irish thing; the cheese, my teaching, and the French Canadian thing. But one thing we do have in common is a love for the New York Rangers. I saw his crusty façade fade as he considered my offer. “Is that the game where they’re bringing back the ’94 team?”

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  “Next Thursday?”

  I nodded again. All this nodding was making the lump on my head throb.

  I saw him doing some mental math in his head. “I think I can make it. Are these from your friend Jack?”

  “They are,” I confirmed. “But he specifically said that the tickets were for me and you. He said ‘Bobby.’ He used your name,” I threw in for good measure.

  He fiddled with the doorknob. “I think I can go. We can talk about the details later.” He opened the door, letting in a blast of cold night air. “Tell my brother I said hi and ‘screw you.’ ” He gave me what I assumed he thought was a parting kiss—a quick one on the lips that turned into a longer one and then into the make-up sex that I was hoping for. A few hours later, I walked him to the front door. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. “I’m glad you came over.”

  “Me, too,” he whispered. He wrapped his arms around me. “So who are you going to leave the vast Bergeron fortune to?”

  “What?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “The will?”

  “What will?” I asked. Wow—I’ve heard of don’t drink and drive, but don’t fornicate and think? That was a new one. I searched my brain to recover the thread of the conversation.

  “Jimmy. My brother. The lawyer. The will,” he said slowly.

  “Oh, that!” I said. “Well, considering there is no vast Bergeron fortune, it should be pretty easy.” I thought I had made a great recovery. “You’ll get Trixie, obviously. And Max will get my shoes.”

  “Glad you’ve given it some thought,” he said jokingly. He gave me one last kiss and left.

  Trixie wandered down the hall, her tail hanging at half mast but wagging slightly. I let out a huge sigh of relief and studied her as I leaned against the back door. I was unsettled by the fact that I had lied outright to Crawford and she could sense it. She came over and licked my hand.

  “How are you at fixing screens?” I asked her.

  She gave me a little woof in response.

  “Thought so. How about replacing glass?”

  She remained silent.

  “What do you think about lying to your boyfriend?” Although I had justified the lying, the subterfuge, and the omissions of crucial information, I still felt a wee bit guilty.

  She started barking enthusiastically and jumped on me, her paws pinning me against the back door.

  “Trixie, my girl, you are sleeping with me tonight,” I said, and started up the stairs to my bedroom, my faithful friend, full of unconditional love for such a flawed master, right at my heels.

  Twenty-Eight

  “We have it on good authority, Ms. Bergeron, that there was a middle-aged Hispanic male in this neighborhood yesterday.”

  I looked at Agent Goldenberg through my sleep-encrusted eyes, the front screen door separating the two of us. It was seven thirty in the morning, on a Saturday, and I didn’t appreciate being woken up by two blue-suited federal agents, as delicious as Agent Abreu looked at this early hour.

  “And we have it on good authority that said Hispanic male was seen in your car yesterday evening.”

  I had no idea how he had gotten this information. I asked him who the “good authority” was.

  “That, I cannot say,” he said, rather dramatically and in such a way that I thought we were now in a production of Shakespeare in the Park.

  It was probably Cranky McCrankypants, I thought. “Maybe the Hispanic male lives in the neighborhood,” I said.

  Agent Abreu smirked a little bit and spoke for maybe the second time since I had met him. “How many Hispanics you got around here, Ms. Bergeron?”

  “Many,” I said definitively. “Many,” I repeated but not as forcefully as I intended. I crossed my arms over my chest.

  Goldenberg went into Starsky and Hutch mode again and pounded on the frame of the screen door. “Face it, Bergeron. You’re the closest thing to a Hispanic male this community has seen in a long time.”

  “Um, I think I resent that,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. It sure sounded like something I should be offended by but I wasn’t quite sure why.

  “If you are harboring a fugitive, Ms. Bergeron, you could be in serious trouble,” Goldenberg said.

  “I understand that, Agent Goldenberg,” I said, unlocking the screen door. “For all I know, the Hispanic male was Agent Abreu.” Check. Mate.

  Agent Abreu smirked. “I’m Portuguese.”

  Not to the naked eye, I thought. Any one of my neighbors would peg him for “Hispanic male #1” in a lineup. “You say to-may-to, I say to-m
ah-to,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Goldenberg asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s seven thirty in the morning. I don’t know where your Hispanic male is. I don’t even know who your Hispanic male is. Do you want to search my house?”

  Goldenberg chewed on the inside of his mouth, considering the offer. After some deep thought and a quick conference with Agent Abreu, he decided that it wasn’t necessary.

  “OK, then. I’m going back to bed,” I said, and slammed the door shut.

  “We’ll be back!” I heard Goldenberg’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.

  “I’ll be here!” I called back.

  “OK!”

  “Good!” I called and traipsed back up to my bedroom. When I was sure they were gone, I climbed back into bed, calling Trixie to join me. The two of us, entwined, drifted off to sleep, until Trixie’s bladder won out over canine-human connubial bliss and she licked my face until I awoke. I got out of bed for the second time that morning, shoved my feet into my fake Uggs, and wandered out into the bright morning sunshine, Trixie straining at her leash and pulling me along.

  I let out a huge yawn and surveyed my surroundings. Even in my semiconscious state it dawned on me that Agents Goldenberg and Abreu might be in the vicinity. That might make things sticky. Especially since I had promised Hernan a change of clothes. I would never be able to get back into the convent with a bag of clothes if the two of them were skulking around.

  Trixie did her business, looking back at me with a guilty expression as she unleashed a huge intestinal torrent close to, but not on, the McCrankypants’s lawn. I had a bag in my bathrobe pocket and I did the best I could in terms of cleanup, praying that it would rain later.

  “What the hell did you eat?” I asked, following her back up the block. I concocted a plan as we made our way up the street, one that would keep me in the house and under the watchful eyes of the FBI but that would also free Hernan from sleeping and living in one pair of dirty carpenter jeans and a soiled T-shirt.

  Before I reached my house, Jane bolted out her front door, looking gorgeous as usual, and ran up to me. Trixie gave Jane the patented Trixie once-over, proclaimed her not smelly enough to continue, and lay in the street, looking up at the both of us with a mixture of boredom and contentedness, her limpid brown eyes darting back and forth between the two of us.

  “I’ve called a couple of people about the names on that list and I’ve gotten nowhere.” Jane pushed a blond lock out of her eyes. “They’re not building inspectors, Alison.”

  That complicated things, but I wasn’t surprised. “I know that list has something to do with the case but I just can’t wrap my brain around what it is.”

  Jane stated what she thought might be an alternative. “Maybe it’s just a list of Jose’s poker buddies.”

  “Maybe.” I thought back to Crawford’s first guess: a bookie’s list.

  “It’s the only thing I can think of. Why else would there be dollar amounts next to each name?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  She started back towards the house, telling me that she had to take Frankie to basketball practice. “I’ll talk to you later,” she called back over her shoulder.

  I looked down at Trixie, trying to sort this all out, but not coming up with anything. When we were back inside the house, I called Kevin.

  “Hi,” I said. “I hope I’m not waking you.”

  “Ever heard of eight o’clock Mass?” he asked.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well, I say an eight o’clock Mass every morning, so of course I’m up.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, Father McCrankypants! Must be the distant relative of Señor Cranky down the street. But since I needed his help, I decided not to point out his mood and instead told him that I would make an effort to get to Mass more often. This was obviously going to take a while so I pulled out a kitchen chair and settled in.

  “Sister Alphonse said she saw a man on the fifth floor of the convent.”

  “Since when do you talk to the Fonz?” I asked. “Hasn’t she declared this the year of the silent cloister?”

  “Very funny. We don’t call her the Fonz, by the way. Does the man on the fifth floor have anything to do with you?” he asked. “This has you written all over it.”

  I made some noises of protest but then had to relent. He wasn’t stupid. If anyone was going to stow a man in the convent, it would be me. He wasn’t wrong about that. “As a matter of fact, that man is a friend of mine.”

  He was silent.

  “It’s Hernan.”

  He let out a gasp. “He’s alive?”

  “He’s alive and living in the convent. And I need you to help me,” I said. I outlined my plan and gave him strict instructions to make sure that Hernan was safe, that nobody besides the Fonz knew that he was there, and that he stayed hidden. I gave him some vague sizes for pants, a shirt, and some socks and told him to go to the Galleria in White Plains and that I would reimburse him later for whatever he spent. I also told him to make sure that he wasn’t being followed, knowing just the idea that he might be tailed would make his day.

  Kevin’s love of the caper won out over his anger that I hadn’t told him about the latest developments. Once he had his marching orders, we hung up and I proceeded to get my life in order. I had to work the Lord’s Bounty later that afternoon and had the usual Saturday errands to run to make sure that I was caught up for the week.

  I wasn’t sure when I would see Crawford again, but I had the hockey tickets in my possession and that was more of a lure than any make-up sex I could provide. I hoped I wasn’t getting on Crawford’s nerves, what with the sleuthing and general nosiness. When we had first met, I was a giant scaredy-cat who had gotten in over her head. Now that I was a woman with a mission and a plan, it seemed that he wasn’t too thrilled. Or maybe it was just my imagination.

  I was at a stage in my life where black was white and up was down. And the last thing I needed was some Max logic, but that’s exactly what I got. She showed up at three o’clock, just as I had instructed, but in a terrible mood, and announced that she was ready for her afternoon of “Christian charity.” I didn’t know what kind of Christians she expected to encounter, but I did know that the belly-revealing tank top, black leggings, and velvet ballet flats were not exactly Lord’s Bounty–wear.

  “Why are you dressed like that for a night at the soup kitchen?” I asked.

  “Watch this!” she said, and did a backbend in my hallway. She threw her feet over her head and executed a perfect back walk-over. “This outfit provides maximum flexibility.”

  Which you really don’t need to serve people food, but I decided not to tell her. “That’s great, Max,” I said. “Fred must be very proud.”

  “Don’t mention his name,” she said, and I now knew to whom to attribute the bad mood. “We’re not speaking.”

  I thought about whether I wanted to pursue it. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “Nope.”

  I reached into the closet and pulled out a sweater, a long, crocheted number with a belt that would cover her to her knees. I handed it to her.

  She held it in her hands as if it were one of Trixie’s doody bags.

  “It’s a sweater. Put it on. You look like a streetwalker.” I studied her. “Or one of those performers from Cirque du Soleil.”

  “A streetwalker? What is this, Victorian England?” She sniffed the cardigan. “And I love Cirque du Soleil,” she pouted.

  I pulled a St. Thomas sweatshirt from the closet and pulled it over my head. Trixie circled the two of us, getting the sense that she would be left alone for a period of time. “No. It’s not Victorian England. But it is serving hungry people in a church. And I don’t think they’ll appreciate seeing your midriff. I don’t even think it’s sanitary to serve food with all of that skin showing.” I bent down and gave Trixie a kiss. “And there’re ex-cons there, Max. They shouldn’t be seeing th
at,” I said, waving my hand in the vicinity of her belly button.

  “Oh, I bet those ex-cons will appreciate my midriff just fine,” she said. “Some of those guys haven’t seen a woman in ten to fifteen with time off for good behavior.”

  “Put on the cardigan.”

  “No,” she said.

  “I’m going to ask you nicely, darling, and then I’m going to get mad. Put on the cardigan,” I said, getting a window into what it would be like to have a petulant child in my midst.

  “This cardigan is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  She was right about that, but that was irrelevant. My Aunt Monique had left it two summers ago, and she’s a shortish crone who knows her way around milk fat and isn’t particularly into fashion. I raised my voice, something I rarely do in Max’s presence. “Put on the freaking cardigan, Max!” I was tired, I was hiding a middle-aged man in a convent, and I had two FBI agents on my tail. And we were going to be late. I wasn’t in the mood for Max’s antics.

  She looked at me for a few moments, assessing how mad I really was. Relenting, she put on the cardigan, the sleeves covering her hands. “It doesn’t fit,” she whined. “And it smells like cheese.”

  I glared at her and she rolled up the sleeves. “Wear the sweater. It’s cold outside.”

  We went out into the crisp air and got into my car. Frankie was waiting in front of his driveway and we stopped to let him get in. He folded himself into the backseat and attempted to melt into the upholstery. Max managed to twist herself within the confines of her seatbelt so that she was facing Frankie. She rested her chin on her hands, which gripped the headrest. “So, you’re cute. Do you have a girlfriend?”

  I changed the subject. “Is your mom home, Frankie? I need to talk to her about something.”

  “She’s at Kathy’s,” he said. It was the clearest sentence I had ever heard him utter.

  “So, a girlfriend? Have one?” Max asked.

  I hit her backside with the back of my hand. “Sit down, Max. I’m going to get pulled over if the cops see you sitting like that.”