Derrick’s expression darkened. “I’ve seen those videos. I’ll be fine. They’re miraculous.”
Devon’s lips quirked. “I’m sorry, but did you just say that with a straight face? I’m pretty sure that the last video you saw had you disappearing to the bathroom for thirty minutes.”
He protested. “I had to go.”
“Uh-huh.” She shook her head and focused on me. “You should know that an investigator from the state police has been visiting all of the reporters who were at the county building the day Ludington was shot. A Logan Jacobs or something. He’s been asking about our feelings regarding your relationship with Ludington.”
I wasn’t exactly surprised. “And what did you say?”
“The truth. I told him Ludington was a schemer, a social climber, and he wasn’t altogether ethical. I also said that you got off torturing him, which is your way, but you were harmless. He didn’t believe me. He was already armed with background information on me, including the fact that Derrick and I are getting married and having a baby.”
That was hardly surprising. Jacobs struck me as the type to research his prey. “Yeah. He’s got a file the size of my head on me, too,” I admitted. “He ambushed us outside Leona Garvey’s office and recited several of the things Tad has accused me of over the years.”
“That was my favorite part of the day,” Eliot supplied. “I especially liked the boat stunt. How did you manage to strand him on a buoy?”
“It wasn’t nearly as difficult as you might think.”
“What about the part where she played the Jaws theme on her phone and screamed ‘smile you son of a bitch?’” Derrick challenged.
Eliot practically choked on his water as Derrick mimicked me to perfection. “I particularly liked that part.”
“You would.” Derrick’s forehead puckered with concentration and annoyance. “This is going to be bad for all of us. You know that, right? This investigator is digging through all of our files because we have ties to you.”
He almost sounded nervous, which I found interesting. “I’m sorry that upsets you.”
“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” he snapped. “Of course it upsets me. Do you know anything about this guy? Obviously not. He’s got a perfect success rate on closing cases. That’s why they tapped him for this one. It’s high-profile, and he moves quickly.”
“That’s probably because he fixates on the first suspect he finds,” Eliot noted. “He doesn’t care whether the person is really guilty.”
“He doesn’t,” Derrick agreed. “He’s already decided Avery is guilty. That means he’s going to get her no matter what to keep his record intact. You guys should be cowering in your house and hiding from him rather than taking him on.”
Yeah, that sounded nothing like me. “If I’m going out, I’m going out fighting,” I argued. “I’m not going to sit back and wait for him to upend our lives.”
“He’s not going to upend our lives,” Eliot reassured me. He looked pained. “I don’t want you to worry about this.” He shot Derrick a dirty look. “Will you please not get her riled up? It drives me nuts when she goes off the rails, and if it happens tonight I’m going to blame you.”
“Oh, well, that seems fair,” Derrick drawled. “Blame me instead of the guy who put the prison decorations up.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going to have a talk with Mario, too.”
As if on cue, my roly-poly cousin picked that moment to arrive. He had a heaping plate from the salad bar and looked excited to see me. “Oh, man! I missed your big entrance. That totally blows.”
“It does totally blow,” I agreed, plucking a set of the plastic handcuffs from the center of the table. “I’m so glad you publicly poked fun at my prison fear. That’s not inappropriate or anything.”
“I figured it’s like anything else. If you face it, you won’t be afraid.”
Honestly, that was probably true. “I am looking forward to taking these home and playing with them,” I said, waving the handcuffs. “They were an inspired choice.”
“Thank you.” Mario beamed. “I didn’t even have to buy them. I had ten pairs in my closet. I’m still not sure how I acquired so many.”
Ugh. That was a frightening thought. Still, I was trying to look on the bright side. “I’m going to handcuff Eliot later and do things to him.” The words were barely out of my mouth before I heard an indignant squeak. When I looked up, I found my mother standing at the other end of the table — my grandfather directly behind her — and she was glaring.
This was where the fun would truly begin.
“Hello, Mother,” I drawled. “What’s new in your life?”
My mother has one of those faces that can curdle milk, especially when she’s decided I’ve disappointed her. That was on full display now.
“Do you think you’re funny?” Her tone was grave.
“I have my moments.”
Eliot’s hand moved to the back of my neck and he left it there. Whether to comfort me or keep a firm hold should I throw myself across three tables to wrap my fingers around my mother’s throat, I couldn’t say. He was used to scenes at family dinner. He was even used to me being at the center of them. That didn’t mean he would sit back and say nothing. For now, though, he seemed content to let me handle my own issues.
“What’s up, kid?” Grandpa seemed amused. He held a heaping plate of food and edged around Mom so he could sit in his usual spot. He didn’t seem upset about the fact that I was a suspect in the shooting of a local politician. “I hear you’ve been ... well ... you.”
That was such a Grandpa thing to say. “I think I’ve been more me than usual.”
“Probably.” His grin was wide. “Do you think you’ll go to jail? If so, which one of those chicks on Orange is the New Black do you think you’ll be? I vote for the Russian cook. She has pizazz.”
“Do you think that’s funny?” Mom’s eyes flashed with rage. “She’s a suspect in a murder.”
“Technically I’m a suspect in an attempted murder,” I corrected.
She swiveled so fast I was surprised her head didn’t roll off her shoulders. “Well, that’s much better, isn’t it?” Her eyes were piercing when they landed on Eliot. “Don’t you have something to say about this mess? You’re supposed to be the one keeping her out of trouble.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Eliot replied calmly. “To be fair, I’m a suspect in this too.”
“You are?” Mom was officially scandalized. “How is that even possible?”
“Well, she’s a suspect because of what went down at the county building the night he was shot.”
“Yes, as a mother, I’ve never been prouder,” she drawled, her look so cold I snuggled closer to Eliot for warmth.
“What you didn’t see on television was the part when I swooped in at the end, grabbed him by the throat, and threatened him.”
Mom blinked several times in rapid succession. “Oh.”
“So, yes, we’re suspects together.” Eliot flashed a smile. “I’m thinking of it as a bonding exercise. How many couples can say they’ve been suspected of shooting a politician?”
“That is not funny!” Mom jabbed a finger. She was obviously about to go on a diatribe. I wanted to escape before she lost control of her faculties, but I feared it was already too late. “Do you have any idea how this looks for me?”
Oh, well, that made sense. It wasn’t about Eliot and me possibly going to prison. It was about what her friends thought about the situation.
“I don’t really care.” Eliot was blasé. “I’m more interested in keeping us out of prison than worrying about your reputation.”
I had to give him credit, it was a ballsy thing to say. Mom looked as if she was about to chew off his head. “You should start running now,” I whispered. “Save yourself and don’t look back.”
“Knock it off,” he admonished. “You feed into this insanity. Just leave her alone. It’s not as if she hasn’t had a rough enough fe
w days.” He pinned Mom with a no-nonsense look. “Most mothers would be worried about their children in this situation. Apparently you’re not most mothers.”
“Of course I’m not,” she shot back, not missing a beat. “I raised her. I’m used to this ... nonsense. Chaos excites her. She’s always been that way. Now it’s going to bite her because all she had to do was leave that poor man alone. She couldn’t do it, and now all anybody is talking about is the fact that she shot him twice and she’s probably going to prison.”
“I just love it when you have faith in me,” I muttered. Part of me thought I should be angry, but I simply didn’t have the energy. Between Tad’s shooting, the gun being found in my car, and now Ingalls being wiped from the face of the Earth, Mom’s annoyance with my refusal to kowtow to Miss Manners ranked low on my list of worries.
“What faith?” Mom shouted. “You were on television harassing the man. Worst of all, last night they ran a highlight reel of you torturing him. Do you know how many times the local news has shown you going after him?”
Hmm. That was an interesting question. “No. What channel had the highlight reel? I’m sorry I missed it. Maybe someone can get me a digital copy.”
Devon, smoother than I’d ever known her to be, whipped out a disc and shoved it in my direction. “It was us.”
I studied the case containing the DVD for a moment and then broke into a wide grin. “How long is the clip?”
“Five whole minutes.” She flashed a smile. “We devoted the entire second section of our broadcast to it. You should’ve seen the comments online. People love you.”
Oh, well, now I was going to have to venture online when Eliot and I got home. “Thanks.” I picked up the case and grinned. “I know what we’re watching when we get home.”
“Knock it off!” Mom’s voice was ragged and harsh as she reclaimed my attention. “Do you know the sort of things they showed last night?”
No, but now I was curious. “Did they show the time at the zoo when I made the sign about him signing autographs in the gorilla enclosure when we were there for the animal charity?”
Grandpa nodded. “Yes. That one was pretty funny, but my favorite was the news conference for the new children’s hospital. They were giving demonstrations of the free flu vaccines they were doling out, and you convinced the nurse to inject him in the middle of his speech. He didn’t even see it coming. Then he passed out when the needle went in, and by the time he regained consciousness everything was over.”
Ah, that was also a good one.
“I liked the time she got him to blame the county Republicans for gang violence, and then turned around and had him pointing the finger at the Democrats for the missing money in the technology fund,” Derrick volunteered. “The county commissioners fought for three straight weeks over that one. They still haven’t figured out what happened to those funds.”
Huh. I’d forgotten all about that. “I need to get back on that story when I go back to work,” I mused. “I mean ... if I go back.” The reality was there was a chance I was already done. I didn’t like thinking about it, but I had almost zero control over this situation.
“You’re going back,” Eliot reassured me, brushing my hair off my forehead to stare into my eyes. “Don’t let your mother get to you.”
“Yes, because this is all my fault,” Mom hissed. “I’m the one who taught her to embarrass politicians on the news.”
“She obviously inherited it from someone,” Eliot shot back. “You’re her mother. Perhaps she got it from you.”
It was rare that my mother was rendered speechless, but Eliot’s words had the desired effect. “I ... you ... there’s no way ... this is not my fault ... I can’t even.”
“Do you know which time I liked?” one of my irregular cousins asked. I wasn’t particularly close with Lena, but she was hardly the worst of the lot. “I liked the time she manipulated him into going off about cross-dressers, and as part of his apology he had to prove he wasn’t homophobic. He had to let the drag queen bingo chicks in Royal Oak glam him up. He openly cried on the air as it was happening.”
Hmm. Now that my mother brought it up, I had tortured him more often than I remembered. No wonder the cops were looking at me so closely.
Eliot slid me a sidelong look. “I know what you’re thinking. No matter what, you didn’t ask for this to happen.” He kept his voice low. “We’re far from down and out in this one.”
I hoped he was right. It was probably time to brace myself for the worst, though. I had no idea how to dig myself out of this situation. Maybe karma was finally coming for me after all.
20 Twenty
Eliot was agitated when we left the restaurant. He kept muttering under his breath as I futzed with the radio, ultimately landing on the local news station, which happened to be covering a candlelight vigil in front of Tad’s hospital. Fawn was leading it ... and she sounded full of herself as she talked to the reporter.
“It’s important to me that Mr. Ludington know we’re here for him,” she declared. “He’s a good man. He’s a public servant. He’s done so much for this community, and he’s not finished yet. When he wins this election Tuesday — and make no mistake, he will win — he’ll continue to serve in the fashion everyone has become accustomed to.
“I look for this horrible thing to turn into a rallying cry,” she continued. “People are going to stand up and say ‘no more’ to bullies, and that’s what Avery Shaw is. She’s a bully who went after the wrong man.”
Eliot jerked his eyes to the console. “Did she just accuse you of doing this on the radio?”
At least he wasn’t completely lost in his own world. “She did,” I confirmed. “I’m hardly surprised. She’s fairly well-spoken, though. I didn’t see that coming.”
Eliot’s scowl grew more pronounced. “I should’ve fired her the first time she ever said something negative to you. She would’ve been gone long before she figured out that pairing up with Ludington would hurt you.”
He was looking at this the wrong way. “I think it’s good they’re working together.”
His eyebrows practically flew off his forehead as he navigated the traffic on I-75. “You do?”
I nodded, my eyes trained out the window as a very bad idea started to form. “It’s good to know who your enemies are. In this particular instance, my enemies have teamed up. That makes them easier to take down.”
Fawn continued speaking on the radio. “We plan to stay here until midnight,” she explained. “We want Mr. Ludington to be able to look out the window and see us. He’s beloved in this county, and even though I haven’t yet been able to visit with him, it’s important to me to be able to send a message. This is my message.”
“She sounds like a politician herself,” Eliot grumbled. “I just don’t understand any of this. Do you know what else I can’t fathom? Why aren’t you angrier about the things your mother said? She made you out to be the bad guy in all of this when Ludington has been making your life miserable for years.”
Well, he was in a mood. Usually he was telling me to let it go when my mother said something he thought would agitate me.
“She can’t help herself.” I was more interested in how I was going to present my plan to Eliot but because I was still figuring things out it seemed I should at least play along. “She doesn’t understand me.”
“She raised you. You would think she would be proud of the woman you’ve become.”
“That’s not how it works. She needs things a specific way and can’t see past that. She believes that everyone wants the same things out of life, likes the same things no matter how lame. She thinks people should strive for the sort of life she wants to live. She doesn’t get that not everybody agrees.
“In her mind, I should’ve stayed with Jake in high school and settled down to be a happy homemaker. She doesn’t get that even though Jake and I cared about each other we both had separate lives we wanted to live. I was kind of a wild child and never cared w
hat others thought about me. In her own way, she doesn’t care what others think either, but it’s not as simple as that for her.
“She can’t understand the things that are important to me,” I continued. “She wanted me to be demure and live a quiet life. She hates the video games ... and all the things I’ve collected ... and my inappropriate shirts. She just can’t accept that I’m who I am. On the flip side, I can accept that she is who she is because I understand there is no changing her. I’m resigned to that. I think that makes it more difficult for her.”
He furrowed his brow, thoughtful. “You seem ridiculously calm about this. I don’t get it. I would’ve thought you would be stomping and swearing up a storm.”
“I can’t change her. I’ve accepted that. It’s her way or the highway in her world, and she refuses to adapt. Me, I can accept who she is even if I don’t always agree with her beliefs and feel like an utter disappointment in her eyes. I’ve learned to embrace that disappointment because it won’t change. She wants to control everything around her, every other person. I’m not controllable. That will always be the fundamental wedge in our relationship.”
He was silent for a long time, and when I turned to him I found him watching me with stormy eyes.
“What?” I felt self-conscious.
“Most people would be proud to have you as a kid,” he said. “I mean ... you’re not perfect, and I would never pretend otherwise. You’re stubborn, and you have a lazy streak a mile wide. You’re mouthy and get off on starting fights with people.
“You also try to help and give of yourself whenever you can, though you like to downplay that because the attention makes you uncomfortable,” he continued. “You prefer negative attention. You fight for the little guy and, unlike what Fawn said, you fight against bullies. You’re not one.”
His response was heartfelt, but it made me chuckle. “I think you might be looking at me through sex-colored glasses. You only see the good in me because if you spend too much time thinking about the bad it might change our relationship, and you don’t want that.”
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