Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One) (18 page)

The rain had continued on and off the entire day. Rich stood on the porch, a bedraggled pathetic figure, like one of those flood victims caught on camera watching his house float away. His face looked ravaged. His hair was plastered to his head, and his eyes were bloodshot with black rings under them as though he’d been drinking and hadn’t slept. I felt zero desire to comfort him.

“Can I come in?”

I hesitated.

“Please.”

I stepped aside, pushed the door shut against the wind. “What do you want, Rich?”

“Just to talk.”

“We talked yesterday. There’s nothing left to say.”

“Please,” he murmured again heaving a sigh that should have moved mountains. “Would it be okay if we sat, maybe had a cup of coffee?” Not waiting for an answer, he walked into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair.

There was nothing I could do but follow. “Don’t get comfortable. You’re not staying.”

I’d be damned if I was going to make him coffee.

“Just let me get dry.” Picking up a paper napkin, he mopped at his face. “Don't suppose there’s an old T-shirt of mine around here anywhere?”

“Only those I’ve cut up for rags.” I walked to the sink and tossed him a dish towel. “Why don’t you go home and change?”

“Can’t stand it there. Tried to sleep there last night. Nearly drove me crazy. So goddamned lonely.”

Tell me about it.

When I didn't answer, he went on. “You can’t imagine how empty that house feels without the kids.”

I couldn’t imagine that house at all without our children. “Our kids haven’t been living in that house on a regular basis for over a year. Did you just notice?”

“It’s hitting me how much I miss them. I keep listening for that awful loud music they were always playing, and those beeps from Matt’s Gameboy that went on half the night. All that stuff used to bother the hell out of me. Now all I hear is the silence.” He leaned over and gave Horty’s rump a couple of friendly smacks. “I even miss this elephant you call a dog.”

He gazed at me expectantly. What did he want me to say? I could feel my EDR go up a couple of degrees. Was he going to ask to change the custody arrangement? When the quiet became unbearable, he said, “Where are the kids, anyway?”

It annoyed me that he couldn’t remember. “Allie went to Boston with the chorus. Matt was invited to Jeff’s. It’s why you have them next weekend. We told you about it.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” He gave me the crooked grin that not so long ago would have had me on his lap, arms wound around his neck. “You look nice. Going somewhere?”

I glanced at my watch. I didn’t want him around when Ted came. “Very soon. Why’re you here, Rich?”

“I told you. I wanted to see you.”

I started toward the foyer. “Well, you've seen me.”

He looked as though I’d struck him, started to get up, grimaced as his arm hit the table, sank back. “Ow!”

I softened. “You okay?”

He touched the arm gingerly. “It’s killing me. And I'm starving. Haven't eaten a decent meal in days.”

I didn't move.

“I can't believe what’s going on. That cop, Brodsky grilled me yesterday like I was O.J. Where was I this day, that day—-at three o’clock, at four o’clock, at ten o’clock? How the hell was I supposed to remember?”

“Try telling the truth.”

“Dammit, Carrie, cut me a break.”

Horty came over and sat next to me, his eyes shifting anxiously from one to the other of us.

“Rich, I really haven't got time.”

“Wait. Please. We’re getting off on—-I’m not doing this right.” He rose, went over to the sink, poured himself a glass of water, drank. “You’re making it hard.” He fiddled with the folds of his sling, reached down, and rubbed his leg where the footrest had banged it yesterday afternoon. When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes. Matt's face, the time his baseball came through an open window and nailed my favorite lamp. “I know I haven’t always been straight with you, but you have to believe me. I never wanted it to be bad between us.”

The sociopathic mind is an amazing mechanism.

“Okay, I’ve been a bastard,” he said, catching my reaction. “I put you through hell. Maybe it was the middle-age thing. Happens to lots of guys. But I’m over it.” He crossed to where I was sitting, knelt, took my hand in his good one. “Cat, let’s try again.”

The words I had longed to hear. Why wasn’t I dancing for joy?

He saw my hesitation, pounced on it. “You don’t easily break a bond of nearly twenty years. I've learned that. There's still something between us. You know there is.”

I did know it. No other man could be the father of my children. No other man would ever know the open, care-free young woman I had been-—would ever share the memories constructed over a lifetime.

He read my mind. “We have so much history.”

For a brief moment a picture of us as a family again played over in my head, and oh, how I would have given ten years of my life to have it the way it was-—the way I’d thought it was. But then I remembered those terrible months after he left, for an instant relived the sleepless nights, the shock of going through his records and finding the paper trail of his betrayals.

He mistook my silence for capitulation. “I’ll make it up to you. We'll be better than we ever were.”

We
. How long had it been since he and I had been a we? “What were we, Rich? Not what I thought we were.”

He ignored that and went for my weak spot. “It’d be better for the kids. You know it would.”

I looked at him then, searching his face for the man I had loved, the man who’d cried with me when we’d had to put our old dog to sleep, who’d been there to help when my dad had his first heart attack, the man who’d lent me his strength when the doctor told us our first baby was in trouble and would have to be delivered by C-section. But there was no sign of him, only this stranger, this emotional cripple who could no longer give or receive love.

“You’re not worried about Allie and Matt,” I said wearily. “You’re worried about you. Erica’s gone, Dot’s gone, you're tired and hungry and afraid of being alone.”

“That’s not true. I’m a man. Men make mistakes.”

“A mistake? You really believe that’s all this was?”

“I know it’ll take time but I’ve never stopped loving---”

My hand covered his mouth. “Don’t say it.”

I could hear the clock ticking, or was it my heart pounding? Sensing the tension, Horty slunk away from the table and curled up by the refrigerator, whining softly.

Rich struggled to his feet. “Well,” he said in a last-ditch effort to salvage his pride, “I tried. Don’t ever say I didn’t try. Just remember the ball was in your court, and you threw it in my face.”

“You’ll be okay,” I said softly as I followed him to the door.

“You bet I will. I don’t need you or anybody.”

“I know.”

I watched him get into his Mercedes and roar off.

I wish I could say I felt elated, or at least a sense of satisfaction that I had once and for all cut the cord. I didn’t. What I felt was lighter, as though I’d finally jettisoned a stone that had been pressing on my heart. Which is progress. The other, I guess, will come.

As I was closing the door, I saw a black car swing out of my neighbor's driveway and take off in the same direction. I tried to see the license plate but missed it. I decided I was getting paranoid about black cars.

WHEN THE DOORBELL rang fifteen minutes later, I found myself looking at Ted Brodsky with the eyes of a woman ready for a new relationship and fervently wishing we had met under different circumstances.

Sensing my mood, Ted tactfully refrained from asking questions. We made small talk while I searched for my raincoat, wedged in the back of the coat closet behind two snowsuits, a pair of skis, and the crutches Matt had used after his first trip to Hunter Mountain. I gave up trying to find an umbrella.

The rain had lightened to a fine mist. I stopped to admire the sleek white Miata parked at my curb.

“Yours?”

“Poor man’s Porsche,” he joked. “And a little older than Horty.”

“Doesn’t look it. It’s beautiful. I thought the brown Chevy was yours.”

“Department issue.”

He opened the door for me, and I sank into the passenger seat. “Going to be interesting, watching you get in.”

“Roomier than it looks.” He maneuvered his long legs into the cramped space under the dashboard. “‘Course you have to be highly motivated.”

The car slid smoothly into gear. Ted was a good driver. I’d imagined he would be. The other times I’d driven with him, I’d been too preoccupied with the catastrophe de-jour to notice.

You can tell a lot about people by the way they handle themselves behind a wheel. Ted drove at a good clip, as if he were one with the machine. Rich, too, had been a competent driver, except when he got pissed off at someone and decided to teach him a lesson by driving up the car’s rear end. One night he flew out of the car and kicked a cab that had cut him off. It was the night of the snowbank incident. He broke his toe. Since then it’s been a lot easier to believe in Goddess.

Thoughts of Rich brought to mind the reason we were headed for Greenwich Village.

“If Rich is willing to take a lie detector test,” I remarked as we crossed the George Washington Bridge, “you’ll know if he was lying about the woman at Haji’s.”

“Maybe. The tests aren’t foolproof.”

I knew that was true from my own work teaching clients to bring down their electrodermal response levels. “I don’t think he’d lie about her under oath. Unless they’re both involved in some way.”

“From what you tell me, your husband’s a good liar.”

“I was an easy sell. I would’ve believed him if he’d told me his mother was Anastasia and he was the czar’s only surviving grandson.”

“Don’t go into the detective business. I wouldn’t believe Anastasia was Anastasia if she showed me the crown jewels.”

“Well, I’m savvier now. Did he tell you her name?”

“Sharon. Said he never asked her for her last name. They just talked and had a drink.”

“Right. And they were playing catch with the pretzels.”

“He denied that whole thing.”

“You think she’s important?”

“Right now everyone’s important.”

Traffic on the Henry Hudson moved at a steady pace in spite of the drizzle and despite its being Saturday night. We were in the Village in less than an hour from the time we left Norwood. It was getting dark by the time we made our way through the groups of Saturday-night revelers to the hazy smoke-filled café.

I could see this was primarily a singles meeting place. Men and women, ranging in age from twenty to sixty, were standing at the bar three deep, eyes constantly on the move, checking out new prospects each time the door opened. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the thought that, one day, loneliness could drive me to a similar fate.

“It’ll be a miracle if anyone remembers Rich and that woman,” I whispered. “The turnover here must be mind-boggling. Isn't anybody afraid of venereal disease?”

“It’s a cold world out there. People’re lonely,” he replied with surprising compassion. “And they convince themselves those only happen to somebody else.”

His eyes swept the room. I wondered if he was trying to commit to memory that entire sea of faces.

An alluring young woman with heavily made-up dark brown eyes and long black tresses, wearing a revealing belly-dancer costume, led us to seats on huge green and gold cushions. She curled her lips in a sultry smile. “I’m Fatima,” she said in pure Brooklynese. “I’ll be your waitress for tonight.”

Middle Eastern music wailed softly in the background. Strange enticing aromas assailed my senses, making me aware I’d skipped lunch. In spite of our reason for being here, I began to enjoy myself. I hadn’t been on a date since Rich left. Not that this was a real date, I reminded myself, but it was going to be fun sitting on the floor, eating food off a tray table.

I caught Ted’s eyes following Fatima’s swaying hips as she moved off.

“Watch it,” I teased. “You’re working.”

“I’m a working stiff,” he responded, a half-smile erasing the lines around his mouth. “Not a dead one.”

MUCH LATER, AFTER we’d polished off a bottle of wine along with an assortment of Middle Eastern specialties that we ate with our fingers, I got up to wash my hands, and Ted made his way to the bar. When I came out, he was deep in conversation with one of the bartenders. I went back to our table. Fatima was placing little cups of black muddy coffee on the tray.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Delicious,” I replied. “Is it always this jumping?”

“Well, Saturday night, ya know, the singles’re minglin’. It’s quieter during the week.”

I decided to prove Ted wrong about my detective skills. “You open for lunch?”

“Twelve to three.”

“Long day for you.”

“Yeah, but I only work Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” She leaned over, displaying ample cleavage, and vacuumed the crumbs off the brass tray with a tiny hand-held brush. “And the tips’re good. ‘Specially after the show.”

I’ll bet they are. “You in it?”

She indicated the other waitresses. “We’re all belly dancers. You should stay. The show’s good. I’m good.”

“What time does it start?”

“Eleven.”

I saw Ted move away from the bar and begin a conversation with the maître d’, who was all done up like a Turkish pasha, from his fez down to his elflike shoes.

“You ever have trouble?” I asked. “I mean, does it get rowdy?”

She made a face. “Well, sometimes you gotta peel the guys off you, but we got bouncers.”

As she turned to go, I deliberately knocked over my coffee. “Oops, sorry.”

Fatima whipped out a cloth from a hidden pocket in her voluminous pants. “I got it.”

I moved Ted’s cup out of the way of her quick hands. “Somebody told me you had some excitement here a few weeks ago,” I said, making casual conversation. “Some woman making a scene, throwing pretzels at a guy. You see it?”

“Yeah,” she hooted. “Yutz was givin’ her a real hard time. She went ballistic. Let him have it right between the eyes. Management didn’t like it much, but we was all cheerin’ her on.”