May the Best Man Die

by Deborah Donnelly

  “Then why didn't she kill us? And why follow us in here in the first place?”

  “I don't know, but I bet it was her.”

  “And I bet it wasn't.”

  Silence. Chilly silence.

  “OK,” said Aaron at last. “I agree, it's too much of a coincidence that Ivy had a burglar and then Joe did, too. Whoever locked the door on us is involved in the murders somehow. So let's be ready in case they come back. There must be something in here I could use. . . . Ah, champagne, just the ticket!”

  Straining to see didn't help; the lack of light was absolute. So I strained my ears instead, and heard Aaron's hand closing around the foil-wrapped neck of a bottle.

  “I'll set it here at the base of the door. If I have to swing it, stand back. I don't want to clobber you.”

  I heard the clink of glass on cement. We waited. And waited some more.

  “Might as well get comfortable, Stretch.” The shelving at my shoulder vibrated as he leaned a hand against it. “I'm going to sit down and—ow!”

  “What happened?”

  “Damn!”

  A confusion of sounds, and a muted thud as something hit—first Aaron, then the floor. Then a pause, while he apparently retrieved it. The soft whump of a plastic lid coming unsealed. The sound of munching, and a familiar savory aroma.

  “Some kind of cheese things,” Aaron said. “Want one?”

  “They're parmesan sticks with black sesame seeds, and no, I don't. How can you eat at a time like this?”

  “I think better when I eat.” More munching. “Seems to me, you don't lock people in a cooler if you're going to kill them. You do it so you have time to get away.”

  “So you think we're not in danger?”

  “Only of catching cold. Whether that was Madison or not, looks like we're going to be here a while. As I was saying, I'm going to sit.” His next words came from floor level. “Care to join me?”

  “Well . . .”

  The air was chill but not painful, not yet. I could always run in place to get my blood going, but right now I was very tired. Too tired to theorize about Madison, and too tired to spend the next several hours on my feet. I settled gingerly down next to him, with my back against some kind of crate, and tucked my hair into my upturned collar like a scarf.

  Minutes passed. Aaron ate another parmesan stick. I closed my eyes and opened them again. No difference.

  “You warm enough, Stretch?”

  “I'm OK.”

  His hip and shoulder bumped against mine. “Snuggle up, we'll both be warmer. Come on, I'll behave.”

  He did, too. He just pulled me to him so he could wrap his arms around my shoulders, and slid his knees under mine, to keep my legs off the cold floor.

  “So what do you do at Christmastime, Stretch?”

  “Usually I visit my mother.” It felt very odd, making small talk in the dark. “This year she's in Cannon Beach with friends, so I'll be at Lily's. How about you? I'm sorry, that's a dumb question.”

  He chuckled. “Actually, I have my very own Christmas tradition. I fly to Miami and visit my grandfather. Most of his nursing-home cronies go home for the holidays, so I drive him around and play chess with him.”

  “I didn't know you played chess.”

  “Like I said the other day, there's a lot you don't know about me.”

  Silence again, but companionable silence. My head felt heavy, and I dropped it to Aaron's shoulder. More time passed. Half an hour? Hard to tell, but long enough for me to do some serious thinking. Sometimes things get clearer in the dark.

  “Aaron?” I said into the thick soft wool of his coat.

  “Right here.”

  “Would you please tell me about your marriage?”

  The arms around me tightened, just for a moment, and he sighed softly.

  “It was like this . . .”

  Aaron's story was not an unusual one, not the first part. A college romance, an early wedding. A certain distance creeping in as Aaron worked long hours at his newspaper job, while Barbara—that was her name, Barbara—began to travel for her own employer, a major credit card firm.

  “In college we talked about having kids, but then somehow we never talked about it again. We were always so busy. We bought this condo in Charlestown, but we were hardly ever there. Then after a while, she didn't like that I made less money than she did. Kept offering to find me something at her company. I didn't want a corporate job. And I didn't want to travel with her, just tagging along as the spouse. Maybe that was my mistake.”

  “Oh?” My neck was cricking, and I sat up.

  “She called me one night from London. She'd met someone, they couldn't help themselves, same old same old.”

  Aaron leaned away from me suddenly. Then came a sequence of small sounds that I recognized from countless weddings: the crackling of foil, the tiny rattle of wire, the thin repeated squeak of a cork turning in glass. Then a hollow pop and a hissing fizz, and a spattering like raindrops.

  “Ladies first?”

  “Why not.”

  I pulled off a glove and stretched out my hand, feeling smooth cold glass pressed into my palm. Even swigged from the bottle, the champagne was damn good. Joe's best stuff, I bet. I felt down Aaron's arm to his hand and gave it back. A long gulping, and another sigh. He clinked the bottle down and picked up something else.

  “Sure you don't want a cheese thing?”

  “I'm sure. Aaron, if you don't want to say any more—”

  “Oh, we're just getting to the good part now. You don't want to miss this.” More munching, and another gulp. “See, she came back home and said she was sorry, she didn't mean it to happen, let's start over. So we did. I did, anyway. Tried to be home more and all that. But she kept taking more trips, and it turned out they weren't all for business. The London guy actually worked in her department. I'll spare you the details. Bottom line, after a few months I got the paperwork to file for divorce, but Barb beat me to it. She hired a lawyer, a real shark, and when things got nasty, he got her a 209A.”

  “A what?”

  “A restraining order, because she feared for her safety.”

  “But you didn't—?”

  “No, I didn't. I never touched her. But I yelled at her, and the neighbors corroborated that, and once she got the order, the name Aaron Gold went on a registry of batterers and stayed there. See, the 209A's an important legal tool, to protect women from domestic violence. I understand that. But a few women started using it as a weapon in the divorce wars, and my darling wife was one of them. I was barred from entering my own goddamn home until I could make my case at a hearing. But that was going to take time, and meanwhile, I had to get back in, to get some notes for a story I was writing.”

  His voice was unsteady. He gulped more champagne, and took a series of deliberate breaths.

  “I thought she was out of town. But she was there, with her new man, and while he and I were shouting at each other like a couple of adolescents, Barb went into the bedroom and called the police. They handcuffed me, Stretch. I went to jail.”

  “Oh, Aaron. That must have been horrible!”

  I felt him shrug.

  “Just for the weekend. Could have been worse. But you don't forget it. I made things worse, actually, after that. I was drinking a lot by then, and I screwed up at work, more than once. The Globe offered me medical leave and counseling, but I was too self-righteous to take it. Too humiliated. So I lost the divorce wars, and I lost my job. I came to Seattle to hole up and lick my wounds, and smoke too much instead of drinking too much. And then I met you.”

  His hand found mine and held it.

  “Tell me, Carnegie, did you really want to hear all this on our first date?”

  “No, of course not. But . . .” It felt cruel to probe, after such a confession, yet I had to ask. I had to know. “You went back to Boston at Thanksgiving. Why?”

  A huge, cathartic sigh this time, but when he spoke again he sounded almost matter-of-fact.


  “Barb found a lump in her breast, and she was scared about the biopsy. Terrified. And her new man was no longer around. So yeah, I went back. Turned out it wasn't cancer, but she really appreciated my being there. We had a couple of drinks and a long painful talk, and that was that.”

  His arm came around my shoulders again, and shook me gently.

  “So that's my sordid story, Stretch. I know I should have told you sooner, but . . . I didn't. I was wrong, you were right. So you can go on being right, or you can get over it and give us another chance. What's the verdict?”

  The verdict was rendered silently, to the satisfaction of both parties, and probably set a world record for longest kiss in a refrigerated space.

  “Aaron,” I gasped, when we broke for air. “I hate to be unromantic, but I can't feel my feet. I've got to get up.”

  “Good idea. But wouldn't you rather get out?”

  He withdrew one hand, and I heard a click and a small scraping sound. Then a flame blossomed in the darkness, painfully bright to my dilated eyes, and threw a globe of light around us. The crowded shelves of the cooler sprang into view, and with them, Aaron's cocky grin.

  “You had your lighter all along?”

  “Well, I forgot about it at first.” He scrambled to his feet and helped me up, as our shadows jumped and wavered around the tiny golden flare. Then he began to paw through the shelves, one-handed at first. “Hold the light for me, Stretch? Thanks. Here we go . . .”

  He'd found a stack of plate-sized paper doilies, and began rolling one into a loose twist. To burn for smoke?

  “Aaron, there's no smoke alarm in here.”

  His eyes flashed as he glanced at me. “You're quick, aren't you? Took me twenty minutes to think of this. There's a crack along the bottom of the door, where the gasket's worn away. I felt it when I put the bottle down. If we can snake some paper through and light it, I bet there's a smoke alarm out there.”

  “I'm sure there is. We can crumple all the paper in here and shove it— Wait a minute!” A thought struck me, so hard that my hand jerked and flipped the lighter closed, plunging us back into darkness. “Twenty minutes? We've been here a lot longer than that. Did you keep me here in the dark when you had a way to get us out? You rat!”

  Aaron's voice was jubilant. “All in a good cause, Stretch. Besides, it was tougher on me.”

  “How so?”

  I flicked the lighter into flame, and dissolved the darkness once again. His grin grew wider.

  “I'm a Jew of Eastern European descent. You know how hard it is not to talk with my hands?”

  I was not amused. Well, maybe a little.

  But the firemen were definitely not amused. They came charging into Joe's building looking for flames, but discovered instead a minor smoke cloud, a mess of scorched doilies, and an illegal cooler containing a man, a woman, and an empty champagne bottle. It all looked like a lark gone wrong, and the mildest comment we heard, from one of the big guys in their bulky black coats, was “Don't you people have a bed?”

  Mike Graham wasn't too charmed, either, when I rousted him out of his bed with a phone call at five in the morning. Aaron wanted to wait—he thought the bed suggestion had a lot of merit—but I insisted; for the sake of my conscience, I had to tell all. Groggy at first, Mike woke up fast as I stumbled through my story.

  “Jason Kraye was a blackmailer? Is there evidence?”

  “Not as such,” I admitted. “There was a message on a CD, but it kind of erased itself. Aaron and I both read it, though.”

  “And Gold's with you now?”

  “We're at the houseboat.”

  “Stay put, I'll be right over.”

  I spent the time leaving phone messages: a bon voyage for Bonnie and Brian, a few details for the Arctic Club, and a regretful and rather complicated explanation for Joe, who was in for a serious fine about that safety latch. Meanwhile Aaron ran over to the Lakeshore to fetch the CD from his apartment.

  When Aaron returned and Mike appeared, I had Jason's ski jacket and a pot of coffee waiting. My time in the cooler left me craving warmth, inside and out.

  By the time the pot was empty, the detective was furious.

  “Do you realize what you've done?” Mike sat facing me at the kitchen table, in jeans and rain parka, more visibly upset than I'd ever seen him. “You've delayed the investigation, you've interfered with the chain of evidence, you've . . . Dammit, I should charge you both!”

  “Never mind us,” I protested, wincing under the onslaught. “What are you going to do about Madison Jaffee?”

  Aaron, leaning against the counter with his arms folded, gave a skeptical snort. “What can he do?”

  “Exactly,” said Mike. No, not Mike anymore. Detective Lieutenant Michael Graham, official and stern. “We were interested in Jaffee from the beginning, of course, because you saw her coming out of the corridor just before Schulman's body was found. And then again, because the person in the Santa Claus clothes at the Hot Spot could have been a woman. But perfume? Please.”

  “What about the blackmail, then? What about the spy camera?”

  “That's not evidence, Carnegie. That's hearsay about a perfectly legal piece of electronics. Which you found, I might add, during an unauthorized search of a private home.”

  I faltered, then rallied. “You can't ignore all this.”

  “I don't intend to. It's not my case now, but I'll turn it all over to Bates.” Mike rose, closing his notebook and letting slip a trace of a smile. “I don't envy him, interviewing Ivy Tyler about her domestic arrangements. But he'll do it.”

  Then he leaned his fists on the table, to glare fiercely at me, and turned his head to glare at Aaron.

  “Bates will do everything that needs to be done, and you two amateurs will do nothing further. No interviewing, no searching, no thinking. Is that understood?”

  We nodded meekly.

  “All right, then. Get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

  As the saying goes, alone at last. I closed the kitchen door and flipped the dead bolt. Aaron, right behind me, slipped his hands around my waist.

  “You need sleep, Stretch?” he murmured into the back of my neck. His warm breath stirred along my skin, and sent a tingle right down to my toes. All of them.

  “Not really,” I said. His hands began to roam. “In fact, I'm wide a-ah! Aaron, stop that . . . No, don't stop that . . .”

  My bedroom is twenty, maybe twenty-five feet away from the kitchen.

  We made it to the couch.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I'LL NEVER LOOK AT MY LIVING ROOM COUCH THE SAME WAY again. Aaron had a teasing, tender way about him that made me think about taking up permanent residence there. And judging from his final groan and his blissed-out stare at the ceiling, he was pretty pleased with my own ways, too.

  “Move over,” I whispered, as I pulled a woolen throw from the back of the couch to spread across us.

  “I'm already over.”

  “We could move to the bedroom.”

  “Too far,” he said drowsily.

  “You're right . . .”

  We laid there, dozing and waking and dozing again, for a delightful hour or two, but eventually we migrated to my bed and made love again, slowly this time, lingering as long as we could. Then we fell fully asleep at last beneath my down comforter, slick with sweat and pretzeled together, in a much cozier darkness than the one in Joe's tasting room.

  The bedside phone, when it rang, was shockingly loud, and the cloudy winter light outside seemed unpleasantly bright.

  “Don't answer.”

  “I wasn't planning to.”

  Just to make sure, Aaron propped himself on one elbow and pinned me to the bed with a kiss. The kissing went on for a while, but so did the ringing, until I snaked a hand out from under the covers.

  “I really should get this. Poor Joe.”

  But it wasn't Joe. It was Bridezilla, bawling her eyes out.

  “Carnegie, you have to talk to Fran
k! We had it all settled about New Year's Eve, and now he says”—Sally paused for a hiccupping sob—“now he says maybe we should reconsider!”

  “Shhh, don't cry.” I smiled ruefully at Aaron. His hair was sticking up in all directions, and he badly needed a shave. Then he rolled to the other side of the bed and stood up; he looked really fine from the back, too.

  I turned away to try and focus, glancing at the clock as I did so. Noon? Good Lord.

  “Um, does Frank want to reconsider the date, or”—I hated to say it—“or the wedding?”

  “I don't know! What am I going to do?”

  “First of all, take a deep breath. One more . . . there you go. Now, where are you calling from?”

  “S-Snohomish. We came up here for Christmas Eve, and to talk about the details of the wedding, but, but—”

  As if a dead best man was a detail. Exasperated, I said, “Isn't your mother there?”

  “She's no help!” Sally wailed. “She's just being mean. Frank went out for a walk, but he didn't want me to come, and I don't know what to do. I need you here.”

  I try to go above and beyond for my brides, but right now I didn't care to go beyond the reach of Aaron Gold's hands. “Sally, I can't drive all the way up to Snohomish just to— Hold on.”

  Aaron, having retrieved his trousers from somewhere down the hall, was back in the bedroom and signaling to me. I covered the phone with my hand.

  “What is it?”

  “Go ahead with your day, Slim. I've got a plane to catch.”

  “A plane?”

  “Miami, remember? Though I suppose I could cancel . . .”

  We looked yearningly at each other, sharing a vision of the glorious horizontal days before us. Then we sighed, and even laughed a little. We both knew he wouldn't cancel. Romeo and Juliet would have killed themselves, I suppose, at the prospect of spending this week apart. But Aaron and I were adults, and we recognized the needs of other people—especially grandfathers—in our newly established Republic of Two.

  I blew him a kiss and got back on the phone. I had no other plans for today, and I needed to nail down this decision ASAP. Calling off a wedding on short notice, besides being traumatic for the principals, is hard on the vendors. Made in Heaven would get most of the payment for Tyler/Sanjek anyway, but we really needed all of it—and my reputation didn't need the loss of a big holiday event.