Murder Bone by Bone (13 page)

Despite being a little deaf, he’d still heard an altercation behind him across the street, but he hadn’t paid much attention. He’d fished out the bottles he wanted, stowed them tenderly in his cart, and looked around to see if the truck was coming. Instead he saw the figures across the street like a tableau shown through gauze—one person turning around, as if to leave, the other stooping for the chunk of concrete and lashing out. He couldn’t even say if they were male or female. In the instant after the impact, he’d turned his cart around and headed back the way he’d come, shambling as fast as he could. The assailant might have heard his cart rattling down the sidewalk, but the recycling truck had turned the corner, and it was plenty noisy on its own. Old Mackie had spent a couple of hours crouched in a service alley behind a condo complex before venturing out again. I thought he’d probably be lying low for a while, and not just because he didn’t want to talk to the police.

Drake sighed at the end of the story. The house was quiet; Moira was napping and Sam having downtime on his bed, which meant he was probably napping, too. “This doesn’t really get me any closer,” he said morosely. “The guy wasn’t even wearing a watch, for pity’s sake.”

“You might be able to find out when the recycling truck made its rounds. Maybe the driver saw something. They sit up high in those trucks.”

“Teach your grandmother,” he said, standing up. “I’ve got to get back to the office. We have no good leads, but we still have to follow up on all these bad leads. What time is dinner?”

“I don’t know. When can you come?”

“After six,” he said, giving it some thought. “I might have to go out again later to catch up on the paperwork. But I am staying here tonight. I don’t like this happening so close to Bridget’s kids. So close to you. Maybe we should tell Bridget and Emery.”

"The kids are supervised practically every minute of their day.” I didn’t want to endanger them either, but I knew Biddy really needed her vacation. “We could all go live at my house, I guess.”

Drake heard my lack of enthusiasm. “Guess your place isn’t really set up for kids, or big enough either.”

“Four carloads of toys would solve the first problem, but nothing solves the second one.” I gave him a grateful smile. “You’ll find out who’s doing this soon. Then I won’t have to go.”

“Your confidence would be gratifying if it wasn’t misplaced,” he growled, and left. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what to make for dinner and what ingredients we’d need. We had beautiful fresh green beans and salad makings, sweet tomatoes and cukes and even some small red onions. We were perilously close to being out of the major Montrose food group, cold cereal, and its accessory, milk. I jotted those things on the list, along with fruit, crackers, and peanut butter, which also were in short supply.

Sam wandered into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. I asked him what everyone liked.

“Pizza,” he said promptly.

"We had that last night.”

He looked puzzled. “Noodles,” he decided finally.

Noodles it was. Moira woke up a few minutes later. After the usual hectic diapering, juicing, crackering, banana peeling, and assembling the multitude of gear, we stuffed ourselves in the car and drove to the preschool for Mick and to Addison elementary school for Corky and the two other kids in the carpool. The car filled with noise. I plugged in a Raffi tape, only to be ordered by Corky to turn it off.
“It’s stupid,” he said heatedly.

“I like it.”

“Me, too,” one of the carpool kids said. The other one, the only other girl in the car besides Moira, chimed in. Corky crossed his arms and seethed in silence while Raffi sang about the big beautiful planet. The song had a soothing naiveté that I found refreshing. All of us but Corky sang along.

After we dropped off the carpool kids, I let Corky pick the music to put him in a better mood for grocery shopping. He chose Ray Stevens, not exactly music. I was thankful the drive to the Co-op didn’t take too long. We blitzed through the store, leaving a wake of crumbs from the four boxes of animal crackers I bought to ensure compliance. The kids had many suggestions.

“Why can’t we just have Spaghetti-Os?”

“I like those Sugar-Marshmallow-Cocoa-Grahams cereal!”

“Cocoa—peas!”

“Mom lets us drink Coke. Really!”

I ignored all of them. We did get back home without an actual scene. I made cocoa all around with those instant packets, of which there was a lifetime supply in the pantry. Moira was happy, and I was able to put away the groceries before the next crisis began—cooking dinner.

Chapter 15

“Hi, honey, I’m home.”

The boys glanced away briefly from “Square One,” waved at Drake, and went back to viewing. Moira didn’t even look up from the noodles she was picking off her high chair tray.

I turned from the stove and smiled at Drake. “Who are you? Ward Cleaver?”

“I’ve always had that ambition.” He gave me a sitcom-dad kiss on the forehead. “Hi, June.”

“Not in front of the children, Ward.” I fended off his puckered lips. “You’ll get drool in the noodles.”

“Noodles? June always had pot roast for her man."

“That was then, this is now.” I whacked him with the wooden spoon. “Besides, you’re not my man.”

“We’ll see about that.” Before I could respond, he took the spoon out of my hand and stirred the contents of the pot. "This looks like fettuccine Alfredo.”

I took the spoon back. “Why don’t you dress the salad? We’re about ready.”

“Let me put down my stuff.” He disappeared into Bridget and Emery's bedroom—the room I was using—and came back without his shabby tweed jacket and the bulging briefcase that went back and forth to his office with him.

I tipped the fettuccine into a bowl, shook the green beans out of their pan, and turned off the oven on the garlic bread. It had been a strain to get so many dishes ready at the same time. I generally have a baked potato or rice along with steamed veggies or a big salad in the evenings. Never wash more than one pot or one dish is my motto.

I stuck my head into the living room to tell the boys that dinner was ready. “Square One” was just ending in a lavish production number. “Nine, nine, nine,” sang the perky actors. “That magic number nine.”

Drake was putting pieces of cucumber on Moira’s tray when I turned back into the kitchen. I started to tell him not to bother, since she wouldn’t eat it, but she confounded me by smiling sweetly at Drake and crunching down on a slice.

“You can sit next to her,” I said, arranging the garlic bread in a basket. “She likes you.”

“She likes you, too,” he assured me.

“Really?” I waved a small piece of garlic bread in the air to cool it, then put it on Moira’s tray. With a disdainful motion of her small hand, she pushed it off the edge. Barker, who’d already learned to lurk beneath the high chair, snapped it up, crunching with gusto. After this child-tending gig was over, I would have big trouble getting him back on his dog food only diet.

“You must have alienated her somehow.” Drake accepted the seat beside the high chair. The boys surged into their chairs, and I sat at the head of the table with an unaccustomed feeling of hostessy accomplishment.

I didn’t sit long, though. Many times when I’d been at the Montrose house for dinner, I’d seen Bridget hop up and circle the table, dishing out food onto her children’s plates, and wondered why she didn’t just let them wait on themselves. Now I found myself circling the table, coaxing green beans onto Mick’s plate, helping Corky handle the salad servers, assuring Sam that I’d grown all the vegetables in the salad, while preventing him from taking a huge mound of noodles and leaving none for Mick. “You can have more later if you want.” I wondered if I was channeling Bridget, if she in Hawaii had any idea that I in Palo Alto was parroting her words, her actions, her total mom-schtick.

Drake found it all hilarious. He did his part by overacting his delight in the victuals. The boys shoveled it in with occasional detours into poking each other. Moira sucked noodles slowly into her mouth, reflecting on each one, and rejecting the ones that didn’t meet her invisible standard. Drake kept giving her noodles, oblivious to her increasing restiveness, until she cut him off with a businesslike howl.

I took her over to the sink for a quick hose-down and debibbing while Drake cleared the rest of the meal. He tried to put his arms around me after depositing the dishes on the drain-board, but I forestalled him by turning and handing him the baby. “She’s wet.”

“Where’s the towel?”

“No.” I took the tea towel out of his hand when he started dabbing at Moira’s smeary overalls. “Her diaper’s wet.”

He blanched. “You don’t want me to—”

“Why not?” I turned back to the sink and started rinsing dishes. “Use the disposable diapers. There’s a stack of them right by the changing table, and one of those step-on trash cans.”

“But—but she’s a girl baby!”

“So?”

“All the—equipment is different. Everything’s—funny.”

“You’ll manage.”

While he was gone—and it took the best part of twenty minutes—I tried to figure out my problem with Drake wanting to be my honey. I was attracted to him physically. He made me downright quivery sometimes. But the closer he tried to get, the more I backed away. My intimate experience of men was limited to my ex-husband, who’d engendered such fear and loathing in me that at one time I tried to kill him, which earned me several years in a correctional facility for women.

Tony’s recent death at someone else’s hands had freed me, I thought, but inside my head he was still alive, telling me I wasn't worth a man’s attention, that I didn’t have what it took to satisfy a man. And my own experience told me that love is just a source of pain for a woman.

The kitchen was almost clean by the time Drake came back with Moira. “I put her sleeper on,” he said proudly. I didn’t mention that he’d put the bottom half on backwards, though the little plastic feet pointing behind her should have been a dead giveaway. “Hey, I would have helped you with the dishes if you’d waited.”

“I took care of it.”

Moira squirmed to get down, then sat on the floor and tugged on her toes. “Feets bad,” she said, her eyebrows puckered. “Bad!”

I pretended not to notice. Drake watched her for a minute before he figured it out. “Just a minute.” He scooped her up again. “We’ll be right back.”

He would make some kids a good father. But they wouldn’t be mine. I just don’t have it in me to be a mother. I could cope with this temporary version, and I did like Bridget’s children and enjoy them for short stints, but the concept of the endless responsibility that parenthood carries is too scary.

The rest of the evening went by in a blur of stories, games, constant picking up of toys, shooing the boys into bed, rocking Moira into somnolence, putting Sam back to bed again. I might have collapsed if Drake hadn’t been there. When the kids were finally down and staying, we both sat in the quiet living room for a few minutes, stunned by the silence.

“So I didn’t get to ask you this afternoon,” I began. I was determined to get some answers to questions that had been nagging me all day. “How’s Richard Grolen doing? And exactly what did you find out about the bones?” I felt safe bringing up this topic with the children in bed.

Drake took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Grolen’s holding his own. The MRI looks positive, but the docs say he’ll be in a coma for a while—maybe days. They expect him to pull through, barring complications. He was found soon after the attack, and that’s in his favor.”

“And Dinah Blakely? She seemed pretty distraught.”

“She was still at the hospital when I checked in there this afternoon.” Drake moved a little closer on the sofa, his arm tightening around my shoulders. “Melanie was there, too. Had a bit of a confrontation with Dinah over who got to sit next to Grolen. The ICU staff had to threaten to toss them both out before Melanie would leave.”

“Melanie is really acting strange.” I tried to ignore the warmth stealing through me at Drake’s touch. “What Richard said to her yesterday while I was in the Suburban—like he knew something that she wouldn’t want to come out. Do you think—nah. No way she would get so possessive over him if she’d bashed him with that chunk of concrete.”

“She sure seems to have a thing for him.” Drake sounded absentminded. His hand made little circles on the ball of my shoulder.

“But what about Hugh? Do you think they’re having marital troubles?”

“I’m not particularly interested in someone else’s relationship right now.” He tightened his hand, turning me to face him. Paralyzed by indecision, I couldn’t move. His face came closer.

The phone rang.

I jumped up, almost taking out Drake’s nose on the way. “The phone!”

“Let it ring.” He stood, too, reaching for me.

“It might be Bridget. She’d be worried.” I rushed to pick up the receiver, relieved and disappointed at the same time.

It was Bridget, sounding happy and relaxed. "Hi, Liz. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, but we just got back from
a surfing expedition. Are the kids in bed?”

They weren’t anymore. Corky popped out of his room, Sam behind him. They seethed around, demanding the phone, and I let them each speak to their mom and dad. Then I had to answer Bridget’s questions and reassure her that things were going well. The boys said good night, getting a bit choked up in the process, and took twenty minutes after we hung up to settle down again. I was just glad that Mick and Moira had slept through it.

The phone rang again. I glanced apprehensively at the boys’ bedroom door, but they stayed down.

“Bruno, for you.” I handed Drake the phone.

He listened, hung up. “Bruno wants to get together, review the data. I’m going over to his house.” He came closer, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Then I’ll come back. I don’t want you here alone tonight.”

His eyes asked a question.

“I made up the couch.” I hesitated, not knowing what else to say. Despite the feelings he created in me, I couldn’t offer him a place in Bridget and Emery’s bed. I kept imagining Sam getting up in the night, finding us together. “This—is not the seductive hideaway of your dreams, you know.”