Stay At Home Dead (14 page)

Authors: Jeffrey Allen

BOOK: Stay At Home Dead

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When you have a concussion, even though the only thing you want to do is sleep, it is the last thing you are allowed to do. Some elected member of your family must wake you up every two hours in order to ensure that you haven’t died, that your eyes still work, and that you still can’t remember the date of your wedding anniversary.

So it was a long night.

I woke up for good around seven, as Julianne was dressing for work. My head felt as if someone had taken a large hammer and repeatedly struck me in the back of the head with it. The knot on my skull had grown from a small egg to a larger one.

I pushed myself to a sitting position. The nausea I’d experienced before was gone. My mouth was dry and my neck was sore and the headache was front and center, but I was okay.

Julianne emerged from the bathroom, working an earring into her lobe. “How are you?”

“Awesome.”

“I already talked to your mother,” she said, smoothing the cream-colored skirt and jacket she had on. “She’ll take care of Carly today.”

Rather than bringing her home amid all the chaos, we’d let her spend the night with my parents.

I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. My balance was back. I pulled on a T-shirt and followed Julianne out to the kitchen.

“You never told me what happened after I left in the ambulance,” I said.

“Nothing, really.”

“Nothing as in nothing, or nothing as in you punched Sharon Ann?”

She smiled. “Trust me. If I’d socked Sharon Ann, I’d be telling you.”

“So what happened?”

She rifled through a stack of papers on the kitchen table. “I just told her to back off. And that if she insisted on going ahead with her little emergency meeting, she could expect a fight.” She set the papers in a neat stack. “I may have called her a name or two, as well.”

“Even with this headache, I’ve never found you more attractive,” I said.

“I love it when a man with a brain injury flirts with me.”

I went to the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice. “There was something I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday.”

Julianne’s face wrinkled up with irritation. “Deuce, I swear, if you tell me you went and bought her a dog ...”

Carly had been hounding us for months about wanting a dog. I was okay with it; Julianne was not. She believed animals were meant to roam free. In Africa. Far away from her.

“Relax,” I said, holding my hand up. “I don’t have that kind of a death wish.”

She watched me, not entirely sure I was telling the truth. I made a mental note to call the pet store and get my deposit back.

“I got some information on swimming lessons,” I said.

Her features softened. “Oh. Good. Where?”

I stared into my glass of juice. “Tough Tykes.”

I took a sip from the juice. At first, there was no initial furor, and I thought maybe I’d get away with it.

But I should’ve known better.

She bit the tip of her tongue for a moment before lashing me with it. “I know that you don’t mean the same Tough Tykes that Benny supposedly went to before he died. Because if that was that specific Tough Tykes that you meant, you’d know how much I would disapprove and how my disapproval would lead to a stomach punch for you.”

“I didn’t say a word about Benny,” I said, setting the juice down on the counter in case I had to block her punches. “I went in for swimming lesson info. That was it.”

“Do I look stupid to you?”

“No. You look hot. Really hot. Like always.”

“Deuce,” she said, taking a deep breath, unswayed by my blatant sucking up. “You said you’d stay out of Benny’s death.”

“How does getting swim lesson information for our daughter have anything to do with Benny?” I pleaded. “Where else should I have gone?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

“The swimming pool looked great, and so do the lesson programs,” I continued so she couldn’t cut me off. “And Carly loved the place. I swear to you that I did not say one word to anyone about Benny. No questions, no comments, no nothing.”

She studied me like a beautiful human polygraph machine, trying to decipher my blather. If I’d been lying, I would’ve wilted. But since, technically, I was telling the truth, I stood strong.

“Okay,” she said.

“But that’s not why I brought it up,” I said.

“You are just killing me this morning, husband.”

“I know. Sorry. But the guy that owns the place offered me a job.”

Confusion spread across her face. “A job? What? Cleaning the pool?”

“Funny. No. Coaching football at their summer camps.”

She grabbed the stack of papers off the table and slid them into her leather briefcase. “How exactly would that work?”

“I don’t know.”

She zipped the bag shut and looked at me. “Why are you telling me this?”

I shuffled my feet and bit the inside of my cheek. “Because I think I want to do it.”

Actually, I knew I wanted to do it. I knew it the second he offered me the position. It wasn’t that I didn’t love being home with Carly. I did, and there was no doubt that she was still my first priority. But when he said he’d work with me on scheduling and let me call the shots, I was already thinking what the first day would be like.

“What about Carly?” Julianne asked, slipping the bag onto her shoulder. “What do we do with her? The whole reason you left the school was so that we wouldn’t have to put her in day care or hire a babysitter.”

“This wouldn’t be like a full-time job, Jules,” I said, frustrated that she wasn’t immediately agreeing with me. “Couple of weeks during the summer. I can set the schedule any way I want so it works best for me. Shoot, I might be able to bring her with me.”

“And fit her with a helmet and shoulder pads, probably.”

“Couldn’t hurt. She needs to work on her tackling.”

She frowned.

“I’m kidding, Jules,” I said. “About putting a uniform on her. But if we could figure it out, I think I’d like to do it.”

She adjusted the bag and swiped her car keys off the table. “I’ve already got three cases on the calendar for the summer, plus our vacation. I don’t have any wiggle room.”

“I’m not asking you for any,” I said. “If I can’t make it work, I won’t do it.”

She shook her head, clearly not in favor of the idea. “I’ve gotta get going.” She kissed me on the cheek. “I can’t think on this right now. Let’s talk about it tonight. When your head is better and you can see that this probably isn’t a great idea.”

I was given strict orders to lie around and relax.

So I ate some toast and took a hot shower and got dressed slowly.

Enough relaxing for me.

I drove over to Delilah’s to join my father and his pals for breakfast, more because I had a few questions than because I was hungry. He, Cedric, Sheldon, and Judge Gerald Kantner were at their usual table.

My dad studied me as I approached them. “You look fine to me.”

“A little uglier,” Cedric said.

“Nah, he was always ugly,” Sheldon said.

Gerald laughed into his coffee.

I grabbed a chair at the table across from them and slid it over next to Cedric. “Seriously. You guys are a riot. When I put you all in the old folks’ home, you’ll be the life of the place.”

“Big words from a guy who fainted before his big confrontation with a bunch of mothers,” Sheldon said, adjusting his glasses.

“I didn’t faint. Somebody hit me.”

Sheldon peered over the top of his glasses. “I know. It’s just funnier when I tell people you fainted. Getting assaulted makes it sound like you’re some sort of tough guy.”

“Tough guy who doesn’t check behind him,” my father said.

“Maybe you got hit with a purse,” Cedric suggested, then bit into some crisp bacon. “Someone with a heavy wallet. Maybe there was a make-up bag inside.”

“Easy, gentlemen,” Gerald Kantner said. “Deuce has had a rough couple of days.”

Judge Gerald Kantner was the reasonable one in my father’s quartet of pals. Short, thin, with a thick mop of dark hair on his head, he carried with him the serious presence you’d expect in a judge. He was always polite, always thoughtful, and always the one people looked to when they needed the right answer.

What he was doing with Huey, Dewey, and Louie, I wasn’t sure.

“Judge,” I said, offering my hand. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

We shook, and he looked me right in the eye. “Sorry about the TRO, Deuce. Not much I could do, though.”

“It’s all right, Judge.”

“TROs are strange nuts. You can obtain one almost without cause,” he explained. “Someone comes in asking for one, it’s awfully difficult to deny.”

“So I could get one against any of these three?” I asked, pointing a finger at the other three men.

“I’ll grant those right now, if you’d like.”

They all rolled their eyes and continued eating.

I waved at Doris, the waitress, signaling for coffee, and she acknowledged me with a disinterested nod.

“Can I ask what the reasoning was?” I asked Gerald. “For the restraining order. Did she give a specific reason?”

The judge shook his head. “No. And she didn’t appear. Billy handled the request.”

That didn’t surprise me. He seemed to be handling everything for her.

“He requested the order based on your visit,” he said, folding up his napkin and laying it next to his plate. “Said you showed up uninvited, wouldn’t leave, and that because she was under duress due to Benny’s death, she did not want you returning.”

“She called me,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Not the story I received.”

I pulled out my cell and scrolled through the received calls log. I didn’t see Shayna’s name, and it puzzled me at first. Then I saw the word
Restricted.

“The call came in restricted,” I said. “But that was her.”

The judge’s lips twisted a bit, skepticism taking root. “As someone who’s known you your entire life, I believe you. As an officer of the court, I’d need more than that.”

My father stuck a fork in my direction. “She got you again, you big dope.”

“Again?”

He set his fork down on the edge of his plate, wiped his mouth, and gave me that look that made me feel like I was ten years old and had screwed something up.

“Deuce, she was a pain in the ass when you pined for her in high school,” he said. “She used you then, and she’s using you now. Back then, I knew why. Because you were a star and she liked being along for the ride and she thought that ride was taking her all the way to the top. When the ride came to a screeching halt, she nearly broke her ankles jumping off so fast.” His lips puckered like his eggs were filled with lemons. “This time, I don’t know why, and I don’t know what she’s doing. But you can bet your ass she knew exactly what she was doing when she called you. Shayna has always been trouble in a pretty face.”

The men fell quiet, the other sounds of the restaurant—dishes clanking, silverware clinking, and soft conversation—f iltering across the table. My father wasn’t stating anything I didn’t already know, but he had a way of saying things that bit into me. He knew it and I knew it and it had been that way for as long as I could remember.

“Ah, take it easy on him, Eldrick,” Sheldon said, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “Shoot, can’t blame the kid for wanting to see what was under her shirt.” He paused, a wry smile spreading across his face. “Far as I’ve ever been able to tell, Shayna is blessed in that regard.”

The laughter cut through the tension at the table. But my father was correct. She’d used me then, and she was using me now. I just didn’t know why or how.

The judge stood and put a hand on my shoulder. “You can find me anything on the phone records, give me a call.”

“Will do.”

He walked out of Delilah’s, saying good-bye to half the diner on his way out.

“Call was on your cell?” Cedric asked.

I nodded.

“Okay. I know a guy who might be able to help.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cedric said, waving a hand in the air. “I’ll see if he can come up with anything for you.”

“How’s your head?” my father asked.

“All right. Have a headache, but I’m fine.”

“Julianne told your mother you were supposed to be home in bed,” he said, but his tone was less sharp than before.

“Yeah, well, keep it quiet then, all right?”