An Affair to Dismember (24 page)

“Your statement can wait. They’re keeping you here overnight.”

“Thank you for visiting.”

Spencer moved to the chair next to my bed.

“I’ll stick around tonight. Don’t have much else to do.”

“No police work?”

“In this sleepy town? Not much crime here, if you don’t count the five-foot radius around you. If something is going to happen, it’s going to happen near you.”

He had a point. I was a magnet for mayhem. I drifted to sleep and had dreams of gun-carrying priests flying overhead. They played a game where their goal was to throw their guns through a stained-glass window. The window was a huge picture of Bridget with enormous glasses that covered her face from forehead to chin. “Watch out, Bridget,” I yelled in my dream, but they threw their guns anyway.

“You’re dreaming.” I fluttered my eyes open, tearing myself away from the Bridget picture window. Spencer caressed my face.

“I was dreaming about flying priests and Bridget’s glasses,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

“You should leave. You don’t need to babysit me.”

The room was dim, but I could make out his face, the blink of his eyes. He was a very good-looking man. No wonder half the women in Cannes wanted him. Spencer was studying my face, too. His eyes wandered from my hair to my cheeks, my nose, my lips. Then our eyes locked.

I could hear the blood flow through my veins and Spencer’s shallow breathing. I took his hand from my face and held it in my own. I found myself caressing his palm and stopped myself.

“Gladie,” he began.

“I bet my hair is a mess,” I said.

“I didn’t notice.”

“This isn’t the part where we talk about the murders, is it?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to talk about anything else.” I was Cowardly McCoward from Scaredy Cat Town. The quiet, brooding Spencer scared me to death. I would have rather faced crazy priests with guns than Spencer getting personal.

Spencer cleared his throat. “Fair enough.”

“You should go home and get some sleep. I’ll be all right.”

He nodded. “I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t get any funny ideas and try to bust out and find Jimmy Hoffa or anything.”

“Scout’s honor,” I said.

I was asleep before he left the room.

I WOKE with a start. The room was still dark, but there was a smell of stale cigarettes that wasn’t there before.

“Spencer?” I asked, but I knew it wasn’t him.

“Who’s Spencer? Is that your boyfriend?” The woman’s voice came from the corner, where it was too dark to see. I fumbled in the sheets for the button to call the nurse.

“You won’t find it. I moved it. I wanted to speak to you alone. We’re always getting interrupted, and I’m an impatient person.”

“Jane,” I said, recognizing her voice. The Terns sister with the penchant for cutting the heads off Barbies. Swell.
Why did I insist that Spencer leave?

“What time is it?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Time doesn’t matter to me. I don’t sleep much at night.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it? Not sleeping, I mean,” I said.

The irony was lost on Jane. She didn’t care that she was waking me up in the middle of the night.

“Did you want to talk?” I asked. “Is this about Peter and Christy?” It was possible she blamed me for their arrest. After all, I had been there at the time.

“I don’t care about Peter and Christy. I say let them rot in jail. Good riddance.”

Jane came out of the shadows and approached my bed. She was taller than I remembered. Thin, like her mother. She wore khaki shorts and a cotton sweater and carried a small Prada handbag. She had nicer knees than I had. I hated my knees.

“To what do I owe the honor?” I asked.

“You’re a hard woman to find. You move around a lot. Maybe I just wanted to say hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I heard you almost got shot.”

“A priest got shot.” I tiptoed my fingers around, still looking for the call button.

“I don’t know much about priests. I’m a Lutheran. My mother used to be Mormon. Did you know that?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“She converted to be with my father, which was a joke because he wasn’t what you’d call a religious or spiritual man.” Jane laughed. It came out in one loud bark, like an explosion. I hoped the nurses heard and would be coming in soon to kick her out. Where were they, anyway? I had a concussion. They were supposed to wake me up every hour and ask me who the president was.

“Spiritual, that’s a laugh,” she said.

“Yeah, funny.”

Jane came closer and studied my IV drip. “I thought you were going to help me,” she said.

“Sure, what do you want?”

“The murder. Don’t you remember?”

“Which murder?”

“My father’s! Pay attention. Stay focused. I need your help. I thought you were going to look into it,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Peter told me you were on top of it. He said you were just like your grandmother, but you seem pretty dense to me.”

I was bone tired. I was in the hospital for rest, and I was getting anything but. The last thing I wanted was one more crazy person getting aggressive toward me. I had had enough.

“I’ve had enough,” I said. “Peter told me Rob did it. There. That’s help enough. Go wake up Rob. I need to get back to sleep.”

Jane rummaged through her purse and took out a cigarette. Her eyes darted to the Oxygen and No Smoking signs. Without lighting it, she put the cigarette between her lips.

“Rob? Are you kidding me? You’ve been wasting everyone’s time. Rob didn’t do it. You haven’t been listening. There’s something about my father you don’t know.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“What do you know?”

“About his past.”

“What about his past?”

“You don’t know?”

“I know.”

“What do you know? Wait. I’m getting dizzy,” I said. “You’re talking about the bank robberies?”

“My father? My father didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. He couldn’t rob a bank to save his life. I’m talking indiscretions. Infidelities.”

“Oh.”

“One infidelity.”

I scooted up in bed. “Jane, your mother already mentioned this to me.”

“You have to look into it right to the end. Do you understand? You have to get to the bottom of it. The truth.” Jane squeezed her cigarette in her fist. “It’s the key. Don’t you understand? You have to look there. Follow the infidelity, and you’ll solve the murder. I need you. I can’t do this on my own. You have to do it. I’m scared, Gladie. I’m really scared.”

“What are you scared of? You have to tell me more. If you know something …”

“I’ve always been a good girl. I’m the oldest, you know? People assume Peter is the oldest, but I am. I am the responsible one. A people pleaser, that’s me. I could always be counted on.”

A people pleaser? It occurred to me that Jane was having a psychotic break.

“I wish you understood. You’re supposed to be like your grandmother.” And then she was gone, walking out the door, lighting her cigarette on the way, inhaling like it was her first oxygen of the day.

I slid down in the bed, worming my way under the covers. I closed my eyes and flipped onto my side. I was exhausted. A lot of crazies had entered my life since I found out about Randy Terns’ death on Thursday. Now it was the early hours of Tuesday, and I had been kidnapped, threatened, and nearly shot. I had been lied to by a priest, seen two dead bodies, had my clothes covered in brain bits, and had been sort of pursued by two men, one unwanted, one wanted. Three, if I counted Spencer. But Spencer was a question mark. It was a lot for a long weekend. On the bright side, I had made my first match.

Take that, Jane Terns
. I might not be like my grandmother,
but I had made my first match. Besides, Grandma would never have made it to the hospital. They would have treated her at home. And she would never have been in the church or kidnapped on a mountain. She would never have been anywhere, for that matter. Maybe that’s why the Terns family had picked me, I thought. I might not have been as good as Grandma, but at least I was mobile.

I flipped onto my other side, but it was no use. I was wide awake. I found my phone and dialed Spencer. “If you don’t come and get me, I’m busting out to find Jimmy Hoffa,” I said.

“I’ll be right there.”

“Bring coffee.”

IT TOOK longer than I expected to be released. True to his word, Spencer arrived thirty minutes later, at five in the morning, holding a large coffee from 7-Eleven. The nurses couldn’t release me until the doctors signed off, and the doctors were nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, I was imprisoned in my room with Spencer tapping his foot on the floor, looking at his watch every five minutes and saying, “I don’t have anything better to do with my time.”

I thought about distracting him with the details of Jane’s visit, but Spencer yelled at me whenever I had anything to do with the Terns family, and my head hurt enough already. He was clean-shaven and dressed to the nines, whereas I was dressed in scrubs because my clothes were considered evidence.

“How did you get cleaned and dressed so fast?” I asked.

“What do you mean? How long does it take for you to get dressed?”

“To get as pretty as you? A long time.”

Spencer stopped tapping. “You think I look pretty?”

“I mean handsome.”

“Handsome?” He cocked his head to the side and gave me his signature smirk.

“I didn’t mean handsome or pretty,” I said. “You know, dressed up. You’re dressed up. You’re much more dressed up than the average Cannes citizen.”

“I bathe at night. This morning I shaved and slipped on some clothes. I have nice clothes. What of it? Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, Pinkie.”

I groaned. “Ugh. You have a way of talking, Spencer. You’re making my coffee back up on me.”

“Nice.”

Spencer took off his blazer and draped it on the back of his chair. He plopped down and stretched his legs out in front of him. He wore biker boots, a little out of line with his Dapper Dan persona.

“Fine, then,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of hours before they get your paperwork done. What should we talk about? What’s safe? I know. What do you like to do?”

“What do you mean, like to do?”

“Hobbies. What are your hobbies? C’mon, help me out here, Pinkie. I’m trying to make conversation.”

“What’s the matter? You sick or something? People really should get the flu shot.”

“So, no hobbies, then?” he asked.

What were my hobbies? I didn’t knit or collect stamps. I got a new job every couple of weeks. That was kind of my hobby, but I didn’t want to tell Spencer that.

“I like to watch TV,” I said.

“Gladie, everybody likes to watch TV.”

I counted ceiling tiles and looked out the window. Nope, I couldn’t think of a hobby.

“I like to butt into other people’s lives,” I said finally.

Spencer nodded. “That’s what I figured.”

WE DIDN’T get out of the hospital until nine-thirty. He was late for work, and I was desperate to take a shower and get to my bed. Besides, I wanted to see how Bridget was doing, and I wanted to follow up on my first match.

When we were a couple of blocks away from the hospital, however, Spencer got a call over the police radio. A man outside a store was holding a gun. All available police cars were racing to the scene. Spencer turned on the siren and the flashing lights, and we sped toward the scene of the new crime.

“If I see another gun pointed at me, I will throw up. I’ve had enough. Drop me off at the side of the road,” I ordered.

“Too dangerous. You’re going to stay in the car, and I’m locking it this time. No one is going to point a gun at you.”

“It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt,” I said.

“Trust me, you are not fun and games.”

Spencer skidded to a halt behind two police cars. We were outside the historic district in front of an old brick building. The sign read Guns N Things in faded blue lettering. The window displayed enough weapons to make the Terminator question gun rights.

Two men in their sixties stood on the sidewalk in front of the store, being questioned by two officers. Spencer hopped out of the car and locked me in. I didn’t fight him. I was tired of guns and violence. I slouched down, rested my head on the window, and closed my eyes. I was dozing when Spencer got back in the car.

He ran his fingers through his perfectly groomed hair, making it stand up. “I have inherited a swell group of guys. The chief before me loved to recruit idiots. I
thought I could train them, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

Behind Spencer, four cops were whooping it up with two armed old men. The men were talking, gesturing wildly with the guns, and the cops thought this was riotously funny.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Somebody called in a tip that a man had a gun,” Spencer said. “Duh. It’s the owner of the gun shop. He’s got a lot of guns. He’s got more guns than the National Guard. I’m going to wrap things up here, and I’m having two of the idiots drive you home. They should be able to drive you two miles without incident.”

The two idiots were Sergeant Brody and another guy who turned out to be Officer James, who didn’t look a day over eighteen. They put me in the back of a patrol car after reminding each other in a loud whisper not to call me Underwear Girl.