Stay At Home Dead (18 page)

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Authors: Jeffrey Allen

BOOK: Stay At Home Dead
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45
I returned Victor to the parking lot at school.
“I’ll do some digging around today,” he said, hopping into the MG. “See what I come up with.” He threw his head back toward the school. “Have fun tonight. Try not to let the ladies embarrass you.”
“Try not to get mistaken for a kindergartener,” I said.
His laugh drifted into the air as he sped off.
It was time to stop goofing off and go to work.
I went home and threw some laundry in, did the dishes, and picked up around the house. I returned a movie to the video store and picked up Julianne’s dry cleaning.
The important things.
I picked up Carly at school and dropped her off at my parents. There had been some thought on my part that taking her to the meeting might win me a little sympathy. But I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to be there, in case I started dropping profanity-laced rants on the WORMS.
My father was nowhere to be found, and my mother wished me a perfunctory “good luck.”
“Don’t get Carly kicked out of the school,” she suggested. “I could care less about what happens to you, but don’t go messing up that little girl’s life.”
It was funny how once grandchildren were born, children were dropped to the bottom of the parental food chain and the grandkids sat at the top. I could’ve been choking on a piece of food and the first thing that would’ve occurred to my mother would have been to move Carly out of the way so that when/if the food ever came out of my throat, it would not strike her in the face. If I fell over dead, well, at least Carly hadn’t taken a piece of apple to the forehead.
I spent the next few hours surfing the Internet, looking at names. Jimmy Z. Landry, Zeke Stenner, Shayna Barnes, Billy Caldwell, Benny Barnes, Odell Barnabas. Resulted in a handful of nothing.
I was just getting off the computer when I heard the front door open.
Julianne was standing there, smiling at me. “Hello, househusband.”
“What are you doing home?”
She tossed her briefcase on the sofa. “Funny. I expected to hear ‘Wow. What a great surprise that you are home, instead of slaving away to support my big butt.’”
“That is what I meant to say.”
“I f igured.” She shed her suit jacket. “I just assumed you might need some moral support before the big showdown tonight.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not easily frightened.”
“I remember that one time you wouldn’t kill the spider in the shower.”
“That was a big freakin’ spider.”
“The size of a quarter, as I recall.” She kicked off her pumps. “Nonetheless, I thought a little relaxation before the meeting might help.”
“Okay.”
She stood there, amusement in her eyes as she stared me down.
“What?” I asked.
“Were you this lame when we first started dating?”
“That feels like some sort of trick question.”
She started undoing the buttons in the middle of her blouse as she backpedaled toward the stairs. “I came home early from work. To seduce my husband. Because I felt like it.” She popped open the last button, pivoted, and started up the stairs. “Problem with that?”
“None whatsoever,” I said, finally getting over my lameness and moving at double time toward the stairs.
46
“Seriously. Why did you take the afternoon off ?” I asked.
We were still lying in bed, naked and twisted in the sheets like a couple of pretzels.
She brushed the brown locks of hair away from her eyes. “I needed a reason?”
“Usually you do. Don’t get me wrong. This is way better than a phone call. But sometimes I can’t even get you on the phone.”
She wrapped her fingers into mine. “I had an appointment outside the office. I decided not to go back. And I wanted to make sure you weren’t getting yourself into some sort of trouble.”
Good thing she hadn’t come home a couple hours earlier, then, when Victor and I were playing detective.
“Plus, I was afraid of what might happen to you if I sent you to the meeting by yourself again,” she said, grinning.
“Thinking I might wear a helmet.”
“Oh yeah. One of those Viking ones, with horns. Make a statement.”
“That way I could impale Sharon Ann.”
“I’m totally getting turned on by this.”
We both laughed.
It was good to see her in the middle of the day, rid of the stress that went with her job. She was undertaking a huge sacrifice for our family by agreeing to be the breadwinner. Not just the working part, but missing out on spending the entire day with Carly. There were days where I felt guilty, but I wasn’t entirely sure how to rectify it. We’d grown accustomed to a lifestyle that I didn’t have the earning capacity to support. I knew that, realistically, we were doing the right thing for Carly and the three of us, but some days it felt more right than others.
That afternoon it felt about as right as it got.
“I saw Billy this morning,” she said, stretching her long legs and pointing her toes like a cat.
I kissed her neck. “That is a mood killer.”
“He wanted to know if we wanted to settle.”
I stopped in midkiss. “I got the same offer.”
“I offered him a dollar,” she explained. “But then I rescinded.”
“Nice work.”
“He’s gonna need a little more proof that you are a psycho to get any money out of me,” she said.
“My mother told me something interesting.”
“What’s that?”
I told her about Shayna’s alleged make-out fest with Billy.
“I don’t really find that surprising,” Julianne said.
“I didn’t either,” I said. “Makes me feel badly for Benny, though.”
“The guy who permanently damaged you and then got blood all over our van?”
“Come on. When he hit me, it was clean. Part of playing football. And I don’t think he had any say in wherever who killed him placed his body.”
“He chose Shayna,” Julianne said. “He knew what he was getting.”
She was right, of course. But it didn’t mean that a small part of me didn’t feel some sympathy for the guy. I didn’t know what had been going on in his life, but it seemed clear that none of it had been good.
“Both of them hate you, Deuce,” she said. “And Benny probably did, too. I couldn’t care less about any of them. I’m sorry someone killed Benny, but you didn’t do it and you have nothing to be sorry about.” She tapped me on the chest. “And their retarded little restraining order is just one more thing for the WORMS to throw at you.”
I cut my eyes sideways toward her. “Think things will be thrown?”
Julianne pushed up toward my ear. “Count on it.”
47
I wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening right where we were, but Julianne convinced me that missing my own hearing would not be beneficial.
That’s why she’s considered to be the smart one in our family.
So we showered and dressed. My stomach began to do flip-flops as we left the house, and I was surprised. I didn’t think I’d be nervous, and I certainly didn’t want to be nervous. But I’d had a bad week, and I knew most of it was going to be put on display for all to see. I didn’t like that, and as much as I wanted to play it cool, the anxiety was hammering away at me.
“Could you speed it up?” I asked Julianne.
We were in her little Lexus SC. It was the antithesis of the minivan. Sporty, fast, and cool. The car was the one completely selfish and irresponsible gift Julianne bought herself when she made partner. She’d grown up driving old pickups, and she’d promised herself that when she was able, she’d buy any car she wanted, and she settled on the Lexus.
The only uncool thing about the car was the way she drove it. About five miles under the posted speed limit at all times, keeping approximately 670 feet between her and the car in front of her, barking at anyone that dared to close within that distance from behind. She might as well have had the hazards on all the time. I wanted to replace the speedometer with a sundial, but I wasn’t handy enough to know how to do it.
As usual, she ignored me. “Don’t let them goad you into an argument up there, all right?”
A horse and buggy passed us. “I’m not going to get into an argument.”
“Just stay with what we’ve talked about,” she said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “I’ll keep my mouth shut until it’s time for me to get involved.”
“How will I know when that is?”
“When I start talking.”
“Right.”
Two cars swerved around us and sped past, one saluting us with a middle finger.
“So rude,” Julianne said.
“Well, if you actually pressed down on the accelerator. . .”
“You are rude, too.”
“Rude is holding up traffic.”
“Rude is not being polite to your wife after she’s just spent the afternoon in bed with you and is coming to support you at a public flogging,” she said.
Incredibly tough to argue with that.
After she’d turned a fifteen-minute drive into a thirty-minute cruise, we finally pulled into the Rettler-Mott parking lot. As far away from all the other cars as was physically possible. Would probably take us another half an hour to reach the building.
She reached for my hand. “Don’t be nervous. You are the best Room Dad ever.”
“We should’ve worn shirts that said that.”
“And I won’t let anyone crack you over the head until we get inside tonight.”
I thought I saw a glimpse of a smile on her face as she slid out of the car.
I was staring at the ground, thinking about what I wanted to say, when Julianne came to a halt and gripped my hand tight. “Who is
that?
”
I looked up. Parked in the row of cars closest to the school, leaning against an old station wagon, was Odell Barnabas.
“Oh. That’s Odell,” I said.
“You actually know him?” she asked, pressing in closer to me. “Seriously? My God. What is on his head?”
Odell saw us and pushed himself off the wagon. He yanked the toothpick out of his mouth and tossed it on the ground. He stuck his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans and lifted his chin in our direction. “What’s goin’ on, y’all?”
“Hey, Odell,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Lookin’ for you, Ace. Heard you had a little deal here tonight,” he said, his eyes making their way toward Julianne. “This your lady?”
“No, this is my wife,” I said, glancing at Julianne. Her eyes were firmly ensconced on the toupee.
Odell chuckled and wrinkled his nose. “Sure, sure. Looks like a cool chick.”
Julianne was too entranced by the fake hair to realize he was speaking about her like she was an inanimate object.
“So,” Odell said, moving his eyes back to me. “You make up your mind yet?”
“Make up my mind?”
He rolled his eyes like I was the most forgetful human being he’d ever encountered. “On Killer Kids, Ace. Killer Kids.”
“Ah, right,” I said. “Think I’m gonna have to pass, Odell.”
His hopeful expression crashed. “Come on. You don’t wanna do that, Ace. It’s gonna be huge.”
“Gonna have to be huge without me, Odell. Just not my thing.”
His lips twisted in disappointment. Then he raised his eyebrows. “Maybe you could be a silent partner. You know, just invest, but not do anything? Like I said, I’ve already got a couple of those. Then you’ll still get rich when we all get rich.”
His ignorance was almost sweet.
“Afraid not, Odell,” I said, pulling on Julianne. She stumbled a bit, her eyes still examining his hair. “I think I’ll just have to watch you and everyone else get rich.”
He looked like a six-year-old who had all of his toys taken away.
“We’ve got to get inside,” I said, motioning at the building. Julianne slowly moved her feet forward, but her eyes stayed put. “But I did want to ask you something.”
Odell shrugged, as if he could care less now that I had removed myself from his plans.
“You told me the other day you had something going on with Shayna,” I said. “Did you sleep with her?”
He bit down on his upper lip, and color flushed through his cheeks. “Hey, man, you know. A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, okay, Ace? I told you the other day—”
“No, you didn’t,” I said, staring at him. “You didn’t tell me anything. You wanted me to think you and Shayna had something going on, but you never explicitly said you did. So I wanna know. Did you?”
He chewed on the lip a bit more urgently and started cracking his knuckles. “Hey, Ace, if you—”
“Odell. I want an answer. Yes or no. Did you and Shayna sleep together?”
I thought I heard Julianne whisper, “It can’t be real,” but I wasn’t sure.
Odell shuffled his feet and mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“What did you say, Odell?”
The feet shuffled again, and he let out a sigh. “No. We didn’t sleep together. She turned me down.”
Finally. Something made sense. I didn’t care how crazy or drunk Shayna was, I knew she and Odell Barnabas had not slept together.
“But she
was
sleeping with that other fella at the store,” he said with the tone of a defiant teenager.
“Yeah, Odell. That would’ve been her
husband.
Because she was
married
to him.”
Julianne pulled me toward the building. “We’re going to be late.”
Odell frowned and shook his head. “No, Ace—”
“We gotta go,” I said, cutting him off and continuing to move with Julianne toward the school. I didn’t want to be late to this thing, and I’d had enough of Odell. “We’ll see you around.”

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