Be My Baby Tonight (9 page)

She stopped, turned, handed him the car key
she’d fished out of her purse. “No, they’re not. They’re not even
close. How do you think I was always able to tell you apart? Now,
come on. We’ve got to drop off Margo and get to Philly, before Sam
Kizer puts out an APB for you.”

He trotted after her, to keep up. “We’ll talk
about my eyes again, later? Because this is interesting, Suze. I
mean, Jack and I are identical twins. So what is it about my eyes
that’s different from Jack’s?”

She blew out a quick breath. “Okay, but only
because you’re going to drive me crazy until I tell you. It’s the
devil, Tim. He peeks out through your eyes. Jack got the angel, and
you got the devil. Happy now?”

He sort of tipped his head from side to side,
as if considering what she’d said. “Yeah, okay. I kind of like
that. Ready to roll, babe?”

She sighed. Someday, in twenty years or so,
maybe she’d tell him she hated when he called her babe.

For now, she’d just go with the flow....

* * *

Tim steered Suzanna’s late-model four-door
sedan down the narrow macadam road, past Jack and Keely’s place and
several other large homes built on three-acre lots sold to them by
Jack, who pretty much owned this entire small mountain. They
crossed over the small, one-lane bridge that spanned the narrow
Coplay Creek that flowed in front of Tim’s property, then pulled
into the long drive that led up to his own house.

“There’s no time to stop in, see Jack and his
wife?”

Tim shook his head as he parked the car on
the circular drive outside his mansion—his “pseudo Tudor” mansion
his Aunt Sadie had informed him—with lots of brown brick, dark
wood, and that stucco stuff. “We’ve got about ten minutes, tops, to
see Mrs. Butterworth, drop off Margo, and get moving again. Come
on, we’ll go through the house, out the kitchen, so you can see
some of the place. But just look, don’t stop.”

“Bossy,” Suzanna said, opening her own car
door as Tim reached in the back, removed Margo’s carrier.

When he joined her, she was standing very
still, looking up at the house. “So? What do you think?”

“It’s big,” she said. “Very big.”

“I know. Aunt Sadie sent me all these books,
with pictures in them, floor plans. We were out west, on a long
road trip, and I didn’t have much else to do anyway, so I looked at
the books. This is the one I liked best. I moved in just before
Thanksgiving last year.”

“Henry the Eighth would have liked it, too,”
she said, heading up the three brick steps that were fashioned in a
huge semicircle around the front doors—two dark brown wooden things
with leaded glass inserts. A battering ram couldn’t get through
those doors.

He fished in his pocket for the key, then
opened one of the doors, waved Suzanna in ahead of him, then waited
for her reaction.

He liked his house, really liked it. Liked
all the dark wood, the dark colors on the walls. Those things Keely
had called “accent sconces” that were on the walls. The place might
be almost new, but it looked as if it had been here forever.

“Keely decorated the place, top to bottom,”
he told Suzanna as he pointed toward the rear of the house and the
kitchen. “She’s really good.”

Suzanna nodded, and kept on walking. “It
suits you, Tim. Like a great big cozy den for Tim the Tiger.” She
stopped halfway down the hall. “Oh, wow, is that a real tapestry,
or a reproduction?”

Tim looked at the wall hanging that stood at
least eight feet high in the two-story foyer and fifteen feet wide.
It was one of his favorite things in the whole house, and it
pleased him that Suzanna had noticed it. “Keely got it from some
place in New York. An auction house.”

“Sotheby’s?” Suzanna asked, her eyes wide as
she looked at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I think that’s the place. I saw it in a
catalog she had at the house, and told her I wanted it. All those
great faces, all those people. The castle in the distance? I don’t
know. I just liked it.”

“This from the man who had posters of Vanna
White on his ceiling,” Suzanna said, shaking her head. “And the
poster of that guy with the green tongue.”

“You remember that? That was during my
professional wrestling fan phase. What were we? Ten, twelve years
old? What was that guy’s name again? Oh, yeah. George ‘the Animal’
Steele. Hairy shoulders, green tongue and all. Remember the time
Jack and I took you and Jan Overly to the Allentown Fairgrounds to
see the wrestlers?”

Suzanna shuddered. “I remember sitting in the
first row, wondering how flat I’d be if that Andre the Giant guy
fell out of the ring and landed on me.”

Tim laughed, putting an arm around Suzanna’s
shoulders. “So that’s why you and Jan spent most of the night in
the ladies’ room?”

“You got it. It’s also why I practically fell
on your dad’s neck in thanks when he showed up to drive us all home
again,” she said, smiling with him. “Hey, we’re wasting time.
Where’s the kitchen?”

“Back through here,” he told her, guiding
her, “but don’t look. Keely really outdoes herself with kitchens,
and if you’re anything like any other woman who’s seen this
place—meaning Aunt Sadie and Mrs. Butterworth—you’ll start
ooh
ing and
ahh
ing, and Sam will have a breakdown
waiting for me.”

“Um, Tim?” Suzanna said as they walked
through the huge kitchen—complete with fireplace—and out the back
door. “Remember what a great cook my mom was?”

“Buttermilk pancakes with blueberries?
Chocolate cake that was so moist it was almost black? Sunday
afternoon and roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy? Oh, yeah,
Suze, I remember.”

“Well, hold that thought, Tim. Because I
can’t cook.” Tim stopped on the wide brick patio and stared at her.
“Your mom never taught you?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I have
all her recipes, packed away somewhere, but I’ve never tried any of
them. I... I eat out. Or microwave stuff.”

Tim rubbed a hand over his chin. “Do you
want
to know how to cook? Because Keely’s a great cook, and
if she had your mom’s recipes, she could, you know,
teach
you?”

One thing about Suzanna Trent, now Suzanna
Trehan, that Tim remembered well. When she got mad, you knew
it.

He knew it now.

It was simple, really. When they had been
little, she’d punch him in the gut. When she got older, grew out of
that punching business, she’d just tell him to go to hell.

She said it now: “Go to hell, Jack.”

“Knew it,” he said, tagging after her as she
walked toward the large three-car garage, still carrying Margo.

They were doing all right, he and Suze. They
would probably do better as time went on.

But he’d have to remember that temper....

Players like rules. If they didn’t have any
rules,

they wouldn’t have anything to break.

— Lee Walls, coach

Sam Kizer had the most interesting vein on
the side of his rather large, bulbous nose. The redder his nose
got, the bluer the vein got. And when he began yelling, it
throbbed.

Fascinating, Suzanna thought, watching the
vein do its thing.

Intrigued as she was by his nose, there was a
lot of Sam Kizer to look at. The Phillies’ skipper was short, with
a generous belly that overhung the belt on his home uniform that
fit him like a second skin. He had a mop of white hair that bore
the imprint of the cap he’d hurled across the office a few minutes
ago, and if there was ever a set of legs that didn’t look good in
red stirrups socks, Sam owned them.

“Sam,” Tim was saying. “Sam, Sam, Sammy. I’m
here, aren’t I? I said I’d be here, and I’m here. So what’s the
problem?”

“What’s the problem? What’s the—” Sam put out
both hands, as if pushing his temper away. “No. I’m not going to go
nuts. Lesson seven, Tim. When faced with idiots, do not say
anything. Just walk away. Lesson seven, Tim. I’m on f-ing lesson
seven, and you aren’t going to make me blow it.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Sam. I think you oughta
blow,” Tim said as Suzanna stepped in back of him, because if the
guy was going to explode, she wanted to have already ducked for
cover.

“Tim. He said he didn’t want to get angry,”
she whispered, hoping he’d hear.

“I know, Suze,” Tim said back to her as Sam
Kizer walked back behind the desk in his jumbled office and sat
down. “But if he doesn’t blow at me, he’s going to blow at an
umpire, and the owners aren’t going to like that. He’s been warned.
He can be thrown out three times this year, and that’s it. I
wouldn’t want him to waste one of them on me.”

Tim raised his voice slightly. “Isn’t that
right, Sam? You don’t want to get thrown out of tonight’s game
because you really want to yell at me? Come on, Sam, you know you
have to do it. Give it to me, both barrels. You know you want
to.”

Sam looked up at Tim. He raised his hands
from the desktop, slowly curled his fingers into claws. His eyes
grew wide and showed white all around the irises. “I don’t want to
yell at you, Trehan. That’s too f-ing easy. I want you boiled in
oil. Tarred and feathered. Hung up on the flagpole. I want,” he
said, slowly rising from his chair, “I want to—”

“Wait outside,” Tim said with a grin, at the
same time Suzanna mumbled, “I think I’ll go wait outside.”

She closed the door just as Sam’s almost
polite “f-ing,” that had probably been cleaned up for her benefit,
was discarded for a more definitive term. She walked down the lime
green painted cinder block hallway, as far as she could safely go
without getting lost and yet still far enough away not to hear
every word Sam Kizer said.

Tim hadn’t been kidding. The man had a
definite temper. And, in Suzanna’s considered opinion, a really
good reason to go ballistic on Tim.

She and Tim had met at the stadium in
Pittsburgh Sunday night. Monday, they had jetted off to Vegas. In
the very early hours of Tuesday morning, they had flown back to
Pennsylvania. Who would have thought the world would miss Tim
Trehan so much if he disappeared for a little over twenty-four
hours?

They had driven down to the stadium in Tim’s
sports car, after he’d stopped in the driveway to transfer her bags
into his trunk.

An hour. That was all it took to get from
Whitehall to the stadium. There were players who lived in New
Jersey, Tim had told her, right over the Walt Whitman or Ben
Franklin bridges. There were players who lived in other
Philadelphia suburbs. Sometimes it took players who lived closer
longer
to get to the ball park.

But not Tim. Because there was nothing but
super highway and generous speed limits between Whitehall and
Philadelphia.

So an hour. Hour and ten minutes, tops. That
was what Tim had promised her, assuring her that flying into the
local airport instead of Philadelphia International and taking care
of Margo wouldn’t be any problem. They would still get to the ball
park on time, in plenty of time.

Unless there was an accident on the turnpike,
or a backup on the Schuylkill Expressway.

Today, they had had both.

So here they were, at the stadium, with a
seven-twelve start time, and it was already five-twenty-two.

The manager probably had a legitimate
beef—but Tim’s late arrival time was only one small part of Sam’s
anger.

Because, according to Sam, there had been
reporters milling around all day, driving him nuts, asking
questions about Tim’s absence.

Why hadn’t he flown back on the team plane?
Did that hit from Sanchez do more damage than anyone was telling
them? Was it true Trehan was in a Pittsburgh hospital, checked in
under another name, and in some sort of coma? Hey, no, someone else
said it was a punctured lung, and they had found him unconscious in
his hotel room. Or was management thinking trade, because everyone
knew Tim became a free agent at the end of the season, and the
Phillies had so typically refused to talk contract yet. Was Trehan
boycotting the team?

Suzanna had heard it all, both on the
all-sports station Tim had turned on in the car, and in the
hallways as they walked toward Sam’s office. Sam had then told them
all of it again... as little flecks of foam had gathered at the
corners of the manager’s mouth.

Two reporters entered the hallway, and
Suzanna turned her face toward the wall, hoping neither of them
recognized her from the quick sprint she and Tim had made between
his car and the players’ entrance.

“I say he’s pulling a fast one, faking an
injury,” one reporter said, adjusting the press pass hanging around
his skinny neck. Then he pulled out a cigarette, lit it. “Man, I
needed this. Let’s just stay here a while, okay?”

“Why in hell would he do that?” the second
one asked.

“Do what?”

“Pay attention, at least to yourself, for
crying out loud. Fake an injury. Why would Trehan fake an injury?
And blow that damn smoke somewhere else, okay?”

“I’ll tell you why. It’s simple. Sit out a
few games, show management how much they’d miss him if he goes.
When are they going to wise up upstairs?
Sign
the man.”

“The way I hear it, Moore wants over a
hundred million for six years,” the second reporter said.

Suzanna sort of choked, coughed, and put one
arm against the wall, bracing herself, pretty sure anyone who
looked could now see the white all around the irises of
her
eyes.

“Chicken feed, Alex. Look at the Rangers,
throwing down more than twice that for a ten-year deal.”

“Yeah, but what happened in Texas is never
going to happen again. Damn sure not here in Philly. Hell, they let
Shilling get away. You could damn near field a team of All-Stars
with ex-Phillies who are still out there, playing. He’s gone, I’m
telling you. If they don’t cough up the bucks, Trehan’s gone at the
end of the season. Off to greener pastures.”