A Hoe Lot of Trouble (18 page)

"I think it's best for the boy, don't you?"

It was six in the afternoon and my mother looked as though she had just woken up refreshed from twelve hours' sleep. Her skin was flawless, her makeup perfectly applied. Her flaxen 'do was styled with not a single hair out of place. It was disheartening, since I resembled my father, who looked like a balding bulldog.

"I'm not sure."

"You want him with you. Don't try and deny it to me."

Deny something to Celeste Madeline Chambeau Ceceri? Impossible. "I don't want him to leave. Ever. But Kevin
is
his father."

"Kevin's made his choice. Take advantage of it."

"It's not that easy."

"Posh," she said. The teapot whistled, and she turned and shut off the burner. "This isn't about a home he doesn't want to leave. Riley cares about you more than he can admit." Facing me, she raised her eyebrows, waiting for either my agreement or my denial.

I gave neither. She was the one with the intuition—let her use it.

Steam wafted from a teacup. "He's afraid to show it."

"Even if I believed that, why?"

She
tsked
again. "Oh Nina, for someone so intelligent, you're stupid."

This from my mother. "Gee, thanks, Mom."

She set two cups on the table and smiled. "I am your Mama. I'm allowed to point out the obvious."

I sighed. The subject needed to be changed. "How are the wedding plans?"

"Just splendid. Everything's in order, except of course for your dress."

Of course
. Wrong subject to change to. I tried again.

"Are you sure you don't mind having Riley here tonight? I just don't trust him alone right now. Not after the trouble he's been getting into at school." I'd filled my mother in earlier on Riley's whole situation.

"Not at all. We've missed him lately." She squeezed a lemon over her cup. "It's more than likely a phase he's going through."

"I hope so."

"Where are you off to tonight?"

I lowered my head.

"Nina?" A little shrill, questioning.

"I just have a few errands to run." She definitely didn't need all the sordid stalking details. And she certainly didn't need to know about my involvement with the Sandowskis and a particular box of rat poison. "Ana's coming with me."

"That doesn't particularly reassure me, knowing her mother."

Rolling my eyes, I let that pass. There was no use in defending Aunt Rosetta anyway. My mother was beyond listening.

"Everything will be fine."

She took a delicate sip of her tea. "You're lying to me again."

I pressed a hand to my chest. "I would never!"

My mother smiled into her cup. "Just don't get yourself arrested."

My mouth dropped in shock. It was as if she knew I planned to do something illegal. Uncomfortable, I pushed back from the table. "I'll see what I can do."

I wandered into the living room, where Riley was lying across the sofa, stomach down. He'd come home from school that day as if he'd just gotten off the bus. He'd even moaned about how much homework he had. I needed to get him into the drama club; he was a fine actor. He'd been in the house for five seconds before we'd had a huge blowout that resulted in his calling me a rather choice name, and my grounding him for life. And yet he still opted to stay with me. It did my heart good.

I wrestled the clicker out of his hand and turned the TV off. "Hey, I was watching that."

"You're grounded."

He sat up. "It's not fair."

"I don't like liars, Riley. I won't tolerate being lied to."

"You tolerated it from Dad."

I narrowed my eyes.

"This is wrong, damn wrong," he moaned.

"What's wrong is your behavior. Your vice principal mentioned morning detention, starting tomorrow."

He shook his head, muttering under his breath about fairness and me ruining everything.

"And you'll be there, Ry."

"Oh yeah?" he challenged.

"Yeah. Because I'll be there too. Sitting next to you."

His blue eyes widened, then narrowed. "You're bluffing."

Sadly, I wasn't, and I wasn't the least bit looking forward to spending my morning in detention, but I would do it if necessary.

"And if that doesn't deter you from skipping, then I'll accompany you to every single one of your classes. Your dad has handcuffs, and I'm not afraid to use them."

"You wouldn't."

"I would."

He grabbed a pillow and hugged it tight. "What am I sup posed to do tonight with no TV?"

"Uh, read?"

He groaned. "That's so lame."

I wasn't going to get into a debate about the merits of reading. I walked over to my father's bookshelf and pulled down a tome on the Civil War. "Here, read this."

"That thing's thicker than a dictionary!" he whined.

"You have time." I smiled wickedly, like the evil stepmother that I was.

"Just wrong," he muttered.

I found my father in the basement workshop. He smiled. "Did you know that on this day in 1519, Leonardo da Vinci died?"

"No, I didn't."

"Or that in 1885,
Good Housekeeping w
as first published?"

"Sorry, nope." Dad was a history buff. He had even named his kids after Christopher Columbus's ships: the
Nina
, the
Pinta
, and the
Santa Maria
. Mom had adamantly refused to name her son "Pinta," which is how he ended up with "Peter." I'm still trying to figure out why they didn't just name him "Nino" or "Mario," but there were a lot of things I was still trying to figure out about my parents.

I'd learned to live with Dad's hobby over the years. It drove my sister Maria to the brink of homicide. Speaking of which . . .

"Mom says everything's all set for the wedding."

"Hmmph."

"Hmmph?"

"That girl shouldn't be wearing white."

My mouth dropped open.

"She should be wearing black. That man she's marrying is a bum. She should be going into mourning."

Ohh-kay.
I let the subject die. It was for the best.

"I have to go. I'll be back later to pick up Riley. Beware, he's sulking."

"He's just hurting," my father said. "I'll walk you out."

I called out my good-byes to Riley and my mother. My father opened the Corolla's door for me. We stood in silence for a minute. Something was up. My father never walked me to my car.

He cleared his throat. What was left of his dark hair blew in the breeze. Finally he looked at me, his green eyes troubled. "I'm sorry about Kevin, Nina."

Ahh. News traveled fast in the Ceceri household. My mother must have gotten to him while I talked with Riley.

"It's okay, Dad."

"I know what your mother thought of him, but I always thought him honorable."

"I think he still is, in some ways." Man, that was hard to say.

"Not in the ways that count."

I bit my lip. "I suppose you're right."

"I always am." He kissed my cheek. "There's always a silver lining, Nina."

"Always?"

"Sometimes not as clear as one would like, but always. Stay out of trouble."

"Don't I always?"

"No."

The screen door squeaked. My mother appeared. "Don't forget about Tuesday."

"Tuesday?"

"I knew you didn't write it down!"

I started the engine and backed out of the driveway before the lecture began.

Ana brushed Passionate Purple onto her baby toe. "Doesn't Bonnie mind you using her house like this?"

I pointed my binoculars at Marty. He danced to a silent tune as he placed the tools in the back of a TBS truck.

"I told her I'll put a fountain in her backyard."

"Ahh. Nothing like a little bribery."

I growled at her. "It was a fair trade-off."

Marty closed the tailgate on the truck and hopped into the cab. His headlights flashed on. I got ready to roll.

Ana closed the cap on her polish. "I always liked Marty. I hope it's not him."

"Me too."

He'd come to work for me at seventeen, full of attitude and with a gigantic chip on his shoulder weighing him down. Raised in the inner city, Marty had survived a horrific upbringing. He'd been a straight-A student with a college scholarship until a dare landed him in jail. He'd been charged with vandalism after spray-painting a local overpass.

"How'd your meeting with the builder go today?"

"He's a lech."

"I can see where that'd make him a murder victim, not a suspect."

My Corolla bumped over a pothole, and Ana and I bobbled in our seats.

"He wants that farm, and I have the feeling he'd stop at nothing to get it," I explained.

"I hear a 'but' coming on."

"No evidence." Yet. I checked my dashboard clock. It was somewhat early still. And not dark yet. I couldn't break and enter in the daylight. I had some brains.

Marty's left blinker flashed as he turned down Knickerbocker. "Looks like he's heading back to the office."

I ground my teeth. "He knows we're behind him."

Ana straightened. "How do you know?"

"He turned his headlights on when it's still light out, he used his blinker, and he'd doing thirty-five in a fifty zone." I banged a U-ey. "I think Coby Fowler has a big mouth. He probably told everyone about me sending him out alone last night."

"So, what now?"

"Try, try again."

Nothing much had changed inside Demming's unfinished house. It was still a shell—a dark shell. The streetlight illuminated the doorway, but as I glided away from the door, it became blacker with each step.

After figuring out that Marty was onto us, I decided to ditch the surveillance for the night. He certainly wasn't going to incriminate himself while I had binoculars trained on him. So, I dropped Ana off at her condo with her reluctant promise that she'd come with me to dinner with Bridget and Tim the next night.

I felt my way along the studs as a guide. The plywood flooring beneath my feet squeaked ever so slightly under my weight. I was sweating as if I'd just run a four-minute mile. My small flashlight barely made a dent in the pitchblack room.

I paused in my trek to the stairs, flashed my light behind me, where I thought I'd heard a sound. Its thin beam cut through the darkness revealing nothing but a row of two-byfour-by-twelve studs standing guard.

Maybe I imagined it? I paused again, listening. I could hear my own harsh breathing and the night sounds floating through the holes in the walls where windows would eventually be installed.

Nerves.

I crept closer to the stairs and cursed softly when I saw that they hadn't been cased yet. Of course not. That would have meant that I'd actually have something go my way in this wretched life of mine.

Flashlight between my teeth, I crawled up the stairs in a very unladylike fashion. My mother would not have been proud. My father . . . ? Maybe. When I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped. It was tiring, this sneaking about in the night.

The wind picked up. It caused the house to shake a bit. Or maybe that was my imagination. Up on the second floor, I could hear the leaves rustling outside the framed window space above my head. Goose bumps rose along my arms. Not the good kind of goose bumps, like you get when hearing a particularly beautiful song for the first time, or the kind of goose bumps you get when you're being thoroughly and enjoyably kissed. Nuh-uh. These were the Freddy Kruger's-behind-the-next-corner-ready-to-jump-out-at-you goose bumps; the Xena's-slithering-all-over-you-whileyou-sleep goose bumps.

And my thoughts were rambling again. Not good at all. I swallowed hard. My breath hitched when I thought I heard footsteps. My ears strained to catch the sound again.

Just nerves, I reminded myself. Nerves. But I aimed the flashlight down the stairs just in case. I flashed it left and right, but saw nothing out of place.

Enough stalling. I edged away from the wall, the steady rustling of the leaves outside an accompaniment to my harsh, choppy breathing. I was trying to hold my breath, to pick out any sounds that might not be made by Mother Nature, but I was only succeeding in making myself hyperventilate.

Find it. Right. I inched my way along the floor in a half crouch, half walk. The boxes were still stacked by the wall where I had seen them earlier that day during my run-in with Big & Meaty.

I held the flashlight in my mouth so I could use both hands to search the boxes. After a minute I found the box of nails. I pushed it aside, surprised at how much it weighed.

I opened the box behind it, the noise of the cardboard echoing loudly through the empty house. I cringed, even though I knew no one could hear me.

Peeking inside, I frowned. No red box tops. Orange. Screws. I looked around. Finally, shoved in the back, behind a roll of fluffy yellow insulation, I found the box with the skull and crossbones stamped on it.

Slowly, I lifted a small box out of the bigger box. In bold black letters, it read startzky's rat poison, guaranteed to work. I slipped one box into my shirt, hoping I didn't come untucked.

Suddenly, I spun. I could have sworn I heard footsteps, but the room was empty. I was really losing it.

I pulled the box toward me. As the box scraped against the plywood flooring it kicked up sawdust. The sweet smell of freshly cut wood swirled around me. I inhaled, sneezed.

"God bless you," a mocking voice in the darkness said.

I jumped back, screeching. My flashlight dropped from my mouth and extinguished as it rolled away.

Someone chuckled in the darkness. I tried to pinpoint where he stood, but it was nearly impossible.