Best Friends Forever (37 page)

Hair of the dog, he decided, remembering Judy Nadeau grinning at him drunkenly, asking if he wanted to fool around, and took a sip from the Voodoo Bucket, which he’d brought with him and belted into the passenger seat. Patti’s voice said Her name is Lily in his head. It was just after three in the morning. Let them sleep, he decided. He’d confirm that Val and Addie were in there as soon as they walked out the door, which they would have to do eventual y. He’d corner them, talk to them, convince them to confess. He would take them to the Key West police station where they’d turn themselves in. Then he would cal Sasha and tel her that he’d solved the crime. Jordan leaned his head against the window, and his eyes must have slipped shut. When he opened them, the sun was rising, turning the sky an unnatural flamingo pink. He could hear the wind moving through the trees and, faintly, the sound of the ocean…and the sound of someone tapping on the window. He straightened, bracing himself for a pissed-off neighbor or, worse, a fel ow officer of the law, asking him his business, tel ing him to move along. Instead

—he blinked, wiping at his watery eye—he saw the Nighty-Night Lady. No snail puppet, but he recognized her anyhow. She’d gotten a tan, and with the pink sky behind her, she was even more beautiful in person than she was on TV.

“Jordan?” she said. She looked puzzled

…maybe even afraid. “Jordan Novick?”

He blinked again, and the Nighty-Night Lady’s features resolved themselves into Addie Downs’s face. He got out of the car, stiff-legged and achy, waiting for that hit of adrenaline to come roaring through his veins.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“What

are you doing here?” he

countered.

She looked sideways at a gumbo-limbo tree. “Vacation.” Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her. “I’m on vacation.”

He cleared his throat, hoping his own voice sounded authoritative, no-nonsense, but even as the oxygen reached his brain, he realized that he was much, much drunker than he’d planned on being.

He spoke slowly, keeping each word distinct, each syl able precise. “Where is Dan Swansea?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. He didn’t think she was lying—there was no hesitation, no flinchy look away, no hand raised to the hair or fingers to the mouth.

“Why’d you run?”

“I didn’t run,” she said. “I just decided to take a little vacation.”

Jordan took a step forward—to do what, to say what, he wasn’t sure. The toe of his foot caught a tree root, and he stumbled, astonished at the speed with which the ground rose up to meet his face. He heard Addie say, “Hey!” and felt her fingers brush his sleeve as he fel

…and then his forehead bounced off the sidewalk and he groaned, thinking, before the world went black, that this wasn’t going wel at al .

FORTY-EIGHT

“The police chief?” Valerie stared down at Jordan Novick’s driver’s license and then up at me. “What’s he doing here?

“I assume he came here to find us. He had our pictures in his pocket.”

Valerie considered this. “Was it a good picture? God. I hope it’s not the one from Wikipedia. Some asshole who’s, like, obsessed with me keeps posting this terrible shot, and it looks like I have three chins…”

“Valerie. Focus.”

She sat down cross-legged in an armchair. “Wel , shoot,” she final y said.

“What are we going to do now?”

I wasn’t sure. I’d gone out to watch the sunrise, thinking that I’d snap some pictures with the cheapie camera I’d bought, maybe do a few quick sketches of the sky. We’d been walking on the beach the day before, and the setting sun, the play of that strange fiery light on the water, enchanted me. I wanted to paint it, and not one of my miniatures, either. For this, I’d want a big canvas, maybe one as wide as a whole wal , and maybe something other than my usual watercolors. Maybe I’d do it in encaustic. The colored wax gave you a rich, layered look, the il usion of depth. It was wonderful for water, and I bet it would be great for the sky here, too.

So I’d gone out barefoot, in my nightshirt, with my camera in one hand and a house key in the other, and noticed the car parked in front of our driveway, with Jordan Novick asleep behind the wheel. After he’d fal en, I’d thought about cal ing 911, tel ing whoever answered that a man had passed out in front of our cottage, then just hanging up and leaving him there, but when I’d bent down to see if he had a phone in his pocket, Jordan had moaned and grabbed the hem of my nightshirt. Please, he whispered. I’d helped him inside, half walked, half dragged him into the bedroom, and left him on my bed, on his side, so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. Then I’d woken up Val, who’d been on her way to the bathroom. She’d peeked into the bedroom long enough to see his passed-out, prone figure, and said, “Oh, hey!

You met someone!”

I’d told her what had happened. Together, we’d taken off Jordan’s shoes and cleaned off his face. Then we’d adjourned to the living room to try to come up with a plan.

“How about this?” said Val. “We’l put him in a shopping cart, and we’l leave him in front of the emergency room. Like they did with that girl in Animal House. ”

Oh, Lord. “Okay, first of al , I don’t think Animal House was supposed to be instructional.

He might have real y hurt himself. And where are we going to get a shopping cart?”

Val

thought

it

over.

“Excel ent

points.

Okay.

We cal a cab…”

“I think we’d better just take him to the police station.” I paused. “And confess.”

“I don’t know,” said Val, frowning. “He doesn’t seem to be exactly in an official capacity at the moment.” She picked at a cuticle. “Especial y since I took his pants off.”

I stared at her. “You did?”

“Yup,” she said, looking pleased with herself.

“Why?”

“They were dirty.” She nibbled at her thumbnail. “Also, you know, if he tried to escape or something. It’s very hard to escape when you don’t have any pants.”

She worried at her nail some more. “Not that I know this from personal experience.”

“Valerie.” I struggled for patience. “Have you ever considered that there might be something wrong with your brain?”

She gave me a sweet, guileless smile.

“Oh, I think that maybe there’s something wrong with everyone else’s.”

I picked up the telephone. “Maybe we should just cal the cops.”

“Let’s wait until he wakes up,” she said, standing and stretching. “Why rush?”

“I should make sure he’s okay.”

“You do that,” said Val. “Go on with your bad self.” She drifted toward her bedroom, and, after a minute, I walked into mine. Jordan Novick lay underneath the light down comforter, his face already starting to swel where he’d struck it. I brushed the hair off his forehead, feeling its thickness against my fingers. I was just looking, I told myself. My interest was purely professional. I had to make sure he wasn’t bleeding. He sighed in his sleep and burrowed his head into the pil ow, looking like a little boy. I went to the kitchen, wrapped ice in a dishtowel and pressed it against his cheek. He groaned and rol ed over.

“Patti,” he said.

“Shh.” I let myself stroke his hair again, very gently, just once, and touched his cheek.

This was what I’d wanted, maybe al I’d ever wanted: a man to lie beside at night, a man who knew me, and who’d say my name. Or who’d lie beside me and say someone’s name. At this point, I’d take what I could get.

“Nighty-night,” said Jordan.

This was weird. What if he had a concussion? What if his brain was bleeding? I thought for a minute, trying to remember the dialogue I’d read in medical mysteries or remembered from TV. Pupils fixed and

dilated were bad. Reactive pupils were good. A patient who was oriented to place and time was also good. I knelt on the bed beside him, took the shade off the lamp by the side of the bed, and brought the bulb down close to his face.

“Jordan,” I whispered.

He opened his eyes. His pupils shrank to slits. He squinted, then covered his eyes with his hand. “Ow.” I flicked the light off.

“Do you know where you are?” I whispered.

“Bed,” he said. There was a pause.

“Florida.”

“Can I cal someone?” I asked. “Your wife or…someone?”

“No…wife.” He was struggling to push himself upright. The covers and sheets slipped as he did it, exposing white boxerbriefs. “Divorced.” He rubbed his head, wincing. “She married our dentist. They adopted a girl.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that.

“You sure you don’t know where Dan Swansea is?”

I sighed. “Valerie—my friend Valerie Adler

—thinks maybe she hit him with her car in the country club parking lot after the reunion.”

“She thinks?” I couldn’t see his expression in the dark—couldn’t see anything more than the outline of his face and body—but I could imagine the skeptical look. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you’d remember one way or the other?”

“For most of us, yes,” I agreed. “My friend is an exception to many rules.” I gave Jordan a minute to take that in, then continued. “She came to my house al upset because she thought she’d hit him…” I paused. “In her defense, though, she said he jumped in front of her car. And he was naked. Val made him take his clothes off.” I waited for Jordan to ask me why, but he didn’t. Then I remembered that Val had taken off his pants. Maybe he remembered that, too, and figured that, with Valerie Adler, de-pantsing was standard procedure. “We drove back to the country club…”

“You didn’t cal the police?”

I pul ed my knees up toward my chin. “We were going to see if he was okay.”

“It was November, and he was naked, and he’d been hit by a car.” Jordan sounded skeptical.

“Wel , Val wasn’t sure she’d actual y hit him. We just wanted to see…”

I heard Jordan take a slow, deliberate breath, the kind I’d heard the mommies in the coffee shop take when their kids dumped their lattes on the floor. “Okay,” he said. “Val shows up, you go back…”

“And Dan was gone! We found his belt

…and then we went to look for him…”

“In Key West?”

I bit my lip. “Wel , no. We actual y started our search in Pleasant Ridge. The Key West part was only after we couldn’t find him. We thought maybe we’d get out of town until he showed up again.”

The bed creaked as Jordan shifted. “He hasn’t. Shown up.”

I wrapped my arms around my knees. Jordan sighed again, and when he spoke, his voice was a raspy growl. “I liked you,” he said.

“You…you did?”

“I liked your house.”

I gulped, thinking I was going to start crying. “Oh.”

“And your bedroom.”

My skin bristled with goose bumps. “Wait. You were in my bedroom?”

“Looking for you. Only because I was looking for you. Your neighbor’s worried.”

I sighed. Mrs. Bass. Lord love her. But stil . How long had I been waiting for a man to say that he liked my house, that he’d been looking for me? Under different circumstances, of course, with the words meaning something else entirely. Jordan reached for my face, cupped my cheek in reached for my face, cupped my cheek in his palm and turned me toward him.

“I liked you,” he said again, his voice cracking as he pul ed me close. His lips were warm against mine, his hands moving in my hair, his body easing mine down into the bed. I felt like I was slipping under the water, as if the warm air, the heavy smel of flowers, the sunshine outside were al conspiring to make me behave in ways I never would in sober, cold Chicago.

Jordan’s whiskers rasped against my cheeks.

“Addie.” We kissed and kissed. The bed rocked like a boat on the sea, and I could feel myself glowing, every inch of my skin lit from the inside, and somewhere nearby, something was buzzing, louder and louder. It took everything I had to pul myself away from him, to recognize the sound, to form the words. “Phone,” I said, and reached across him to turn the light back on. He sat up, bruised and blinking. “Huh?”

“Phone,” I whispered, and pointed toward the chair where Val had left his pants. Jordan crossed the room in three long steps, pul ed out his cel phone and looked at the screen.

“Novick,” I heard him say. “Gary, is that you?” He listened for a minute, rubbing his head, frowning in the faint light, his body

—stocky, but graceful—turned to the side.

“He’s here?” he said after a minute. His voice had gotten louder, and he sounded confused. “Turned himself in for what?”

I couldn’t keep quiet, couldn’t hold stil . “Is it Dan Swansea? Is he al right?” The words had barely left my mouth when Valerie burst through the door. She was wearing her Gap nightshirt, and there was a smal silver gun in her hand.

“Hands up. Drop your weapon.”

Jordan looked at her and let the cel phone slip to the floor, where it landed with a thunk.

“Chief?” said a tinny voice. “Chief, you there?”

Valerie kicked the phone into the corner of the room without taking her eyes, or the barrel of her gun, off of Jordan, who had raised his hands in the air. “Now listen to me, you son of a bitch,” she hissed. “My friend and I are walking out of here. Doesn’t make any difference to me whether we do it with you dead or alive.”

“Val,” I said.

“Chief?” said the voice from the phone.

“Chief, can you hear me?”

“She’s sick,” said Val, pointing her chin at me. “She needs to go home. She needs to see her doctor, and…”

“CHIEF! WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO

ABOUT SWANSEA?” shouted the voice on the telephone. For a minute, there was silence. Then Jordan looked at Valerie, eyebrows lifted.

“May I?” he asked.

She waited a moment, then nodded and lowered her gun. Jordan crossed the floor, keeping his hands in the air, and waited for Val’s okay before he picked up the phone and pressed it against his ear. “Gary? What’s going on?”

Val came to sit on the bed beside me, gripping my right hand in her left one. Her own right hand was aiming the gun at Jordan’s head. “You might want to put that down,” I whispered.

“Not a chance,” she whispered back as Jordan said, “I’m on my way. I’l give you a cal from the airport,” and flipped the phone shut.