A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (35 page)

“Business, then,” I said. I took out the Dixie cup in its plastic bag and set it on the table.

“I think someone poisoned Liza, and that’s why she had that stroke. There’s some dried Virgin Colada in the bottom of this cup, and I need to know if that’s al that’s in there. I figured someone at some lab somewhere might owe you a favor?”

Lawrence said, “Wait, what? Why do you think someone poisoned Liza?”—the very second the waiter dashed up to our table. He was a pudgy kid with dark hair and eyes that were shaped round already. They went rounder when he heard Lawrence. He looked back and forth between us, twice, while I tried, and failed, to look bland.

“Hi, John,” Lawrence said.

“Hey, Officer Rawley. What’s going on?”

“Just hungry,” Lawrence said. His bland look was better than mine.

The kid nodded and asked for our drink orders. We both said water and hot tea, and then Lawrence went ahead and ordered food, too: steamed dumplings and moo shu pork and General Tso’s chicken. Al our old favorites. He looked to me to see if I wanted anything else, but I didn’t. The kid wrote the order down, but then he lingered, staring at us like we were zoo monkeys, I guess to see if we were going to talk any more about poisoning people.

Lawrence leveled a patient cop gaze on the kid, and he got fidgety under it and went scurrying.

When he was good and gone, Lawrence asked, “Why would you think that?”

I said, “Liza said so. She’s been working hard for weeks to tel me.”

His mouth thinned down. It was his thinking face. “What are you not tel ing me?”

“A lot,” I said.

The hostess, a high-school-age blonde in a fake-silk kimono, came close to us then, leading a lone man past the goldfish pond to the booth across from ours. Lawrence watched, his brow crumpling, and we both shut up until she’d seated him and walked away. The man put his face in the menu. I leaned in closer to Lawrence to talk, but he shook his head, barely, in a faint no. He glanced at the guy in the booth beside us, a speaking glance. I looked, but al I saw was a regular-looking fel ow, maybe fifty, balding, in a blue suit and wire-rim glasses.

While I was looking, Lawrence stood up, and in one smooth move he stepped across the aisle and pushed himself into the booth by the man. He shoved the guy over with his hip.

“Hi,” Lawrence said to him, fake and bright.

“Lawrence?” I said, but he kept his eyes on the guy, who was starting to sputter, very indignant. I stood up and stepped across the aisle, sliding into the seat across from the two of them. “What are you doing?”

The guy said, “Yes, what
are
you doing?”

Lawrence crowded in even closer to him, smiling easy. “Don’t bother. Your car fol owed hers into the lot, and then you sat tight til she was al the way in. I saw you peering in her car windows. What were you looking for, buddy?”

The guy edged farther into the booth, trying to get some room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Now his affronted sputtering sounded so fake even I wasn’t buying it.

“This is a four-top booth, and there’s plenty of two-seaters open down the other wal . So you asked to sit here. By us.” Lawrence stretched his arm over the back of the booth and leaned in closer to the guy. Real y close. Now the guy’s head was pressed against the back wal . Lawrence showed the guy his teeth, but it didn’t look like smiling. “You’re so interested in my friend here, I figured we better join you. See if we could satisfy your curiosity.”

The guy’s righteous indignation dropped from his face like a hat he was removing. “Back off,” he said, hard, and al at once he didn’t look so regular. Lawrence eased back a few inches, giving the guy the room he asked for.

Immediately the guy swel ed up like a puffer fish, leaning into the space Lawrence had made like he’d won a round. He said, “Now, get out of my way,” as Lawrence’s free hand disappeared under the table. His last word, “way,” came out an octave higher than the rest of the sentence. He sucked his breath in, and his face went white, and his mouth twisted. His spine went very stiff, jacking him up straight. His hands jumped up off the table and hovered in the air, almost as high as his shoulders.

“That better?” Lawrence said, fake friendly and conversational.

“No,” the guy said in a strangled voice.

“Lawrence?” My voice sounded thready and scared, even to my own ears.

The guy’s shoulders flexed, bracing, and Lawrence leaned a little closer, talking low. “Try it. I’d love for you to try it. But I’m fast. And I’ve got freakishly strong hands. See?” The guy gasped. “You won’t get these back. Not whole.” Then Lawrence said, louder but very calm, “It’s okay. Set the tea down on our table and go.” I saw that our waiter, John, had come back. His mouth was frozen in a silent O shape.

“Cal the cops,” the guy managed to say to John. His eyes were bulging in their sockets.

John blinked and stuttered, “But…but he is the cops.” His voice was wobbling. I couldn’t blame him. I felt wobbly, too, al over. I stuffed my hands under my thighs to make them stop trembling, or at least so I couldn’t feel them doing it.

“Set the drinks down, John. It’s fine,” Lawrence said, unworried and almost soothing, but his eyes never moved off the guy in the booth, and his expression didn’t match his voice. Not at al . John set the whole tray down on our table and abandoned it, scuttling back toward the kitchen. “Now, I could just cal you ‘asshole,’ but I’d like to know your name, I think. Show me some ID.”

A fine sweat had sprung up on the guy’s forehead. He reached into his inside jacket pocket, gingerly, got his wal et out, and flipped it open.

Lawrence glanced at the ID and read, “Mitchel Morissey. Nice to meet you. You’re a PI? Interesting. Why don’t you put your hands flat on the table for me. Nice and slow.” The guy did what Lawrence said, his wal et under one palm. “Good dog. Ginny, why would a private investigator be fol owing you?”

“Fol owing me?” I said. My throat had gone too dry to swal ow, and a panicky spit was building up in my mouth. “I don’t know.”

“You want to tel me why?” Lawrence asked Mitchel Morissey.

“No.” It was more like a gasp then a real word.

I couldn’t quite take it in. Lawrence, my straight-arrow Baptist, was doing something very bad, and not coppish, and probably il egal, under the table.

Lawrence smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant one. His arm twisted a little. Tears sprang up in Morissey’s eyes. “You sure? Because this woman you’re shadowing, she’s important to me.”

“I don’t think so,” the guy said, his voice going higher stil .

“Shame,” Lawrence said. “Hope you’ve already had your kids.”

Morissey’s only answer was a squeak.

It was awful, and wrong, and the worst part was, in a deep and primal place down in my bel y, a dreadful, girlie piece of me liked it. I had to stop it, though. I had to stop him doing it before he got into trouble.

“Last chance,” Lawrence said, leaning in close. “Who hired you? Whisper me a name and we’re done here.”

Morissey was as white as paper napkins now. He said nothing, but he didn’t have to, because I realized then that I knew the answer. I said it for him, to make Lawrence stop. To make me stop liking it.

“Claire Richardson.”

I saw surprise, a clear confirmation, cross Morissey’s face. He wiped it away fast, but we’d both seen it. Lawrence had better control over his own features, but one eyebrow twitched and he flashed a glance at me. I’d surprised him, too.

Lawrence let Morissey go, and Morissey immediately slumped forward, his spine curving, facedown. His breath came out in a soft, gobbling burble. Both his own hands went under the table, into his lap, to cradle himself.

Lawrence leaned in close to his ear and said, so quiet I had to strain to hear, “I think you’re not hungry. You’re going to get in your car and go.

Next time I see you around my girl here? You won’t get them back.” Morissey made a gulping noise. “We understand each other?”

“I understand you fine,” he said, rol ing his forehead back and forth across the cool tabletop.

Lawrence gave a short nod, satisfied, but my eyes narrowed. I’d been Liza’s mother for a long time; I’d learned there was often a big fat gap between understanding and agreement.

Lawrence stood up, and I hastily fol owed suit. I moved back to our booth, but Lawrence stayed standing as Morissey clambered painful y to his feet. He dropped a five on his table and turned, stil hunched over, and limped out. Lawrence watched him go, his eyes so cold and hard that it occurred to me he must know the difference between understanding and agreement, too.

I said, “I don’t want you to get in trouble, but should we let him go? What if he heads to my house? Liza and Mosey are there alone.”

Lawrence was shaking his head. “The guy is a licensed PI. He’s a digger, not a heavy. If he does stake out your house? Cal me. I’l handle it.”

“What does that mean, you’l handle it?” I said, not liking the sound of it.

Lawrence said, “I warned him. He keeps fol owing you, then he gets what he gets. Forget him.”

He sat back down across from me. Neither one of us spoke, watching out the window as Morissey hobbled across the lot. He got into a tan Saturn and drove away.

Once he was gone, Lawrence asked, calm, direct, “What kind of trouble are you in, Ginny?” I said nothing. “Okay, let’s start simple. How did you know that Claire had hired him?”

I wasn’t ready to answer that. I reached for the empty cups on John’s abandoned tray and set one down in front of each of us. My hands were shaking so hard the lid chattered against the pot as I poured us both some tea. I stirred half a packet of sugar into mine while Lawrence watched and waited.

I took a bracing sip and said, “That was the least Baptist thing I’ve ever seen you do.” I sounded too breathy, even to my own ears, but it made him chuckle.

“Oh, real y? Maybe not the least.” He quirked an eyebrow at me, and I found myself flushing at the memory of the two of us, twined together on his sunshine-covered bed. I smiled back, a shaky smile, but present. He went on. “I don’t think you’re al that angry with Baptists anyway. You’re plain old mad at God. We Baptists are easier to yel at, though.”

I puffed air out and said, “Maybe so. He does seem to have it in for me some years. But to be fair, very few of the Baptists that I’ve known have made me feel any kindlier toward God. You’re the exception, and look what you did to that PI. Not exactly Christian.”

That made Lawrence flash his quick grin. “Nothing unbiblical about a little righteous fury.” Then his face got serious again. “How did you know it was Claire Richardson?”

“Who’s asking? A cop? Or a guy who loves me?” It came blurting out. We hadn’t talked love. Not for years. It was pretty bold, but I was too wrung out for bul shit.

“Ginny,” he said, and the way he said my name was almost an answer. His voice was so sweet and low and deep, like a honey drip. And it stayed sweet, even as his words got spiky. “I grabbed another man’s testicles at the damn Panda Garden. It’s pretty clear that I’m al in. It’s me who should be asking. You came to my apartment pretending to be curious about my marriage, then slipped me a bunch of questions about an ongoing police investigation. I’m so tied around your pinkie finger I didn’t spend nearly enough time wondering why you were asking.” His eyes on me were so warm. “It’s me who needs to know, are you here because you love me or are you deep in some bad shit and playing me?”

I didn’t have a good answer, because al those things were true. I loved him, and I
was
in deep shit, and I had been playing him. I thought of my girls, and I gave him the simplest truth I had. “There’s only two things on this earth I love more than I love you, Lawrence.”

He breathed in, then out. If anyone could understand my choices, it was this man, who had stayed with Sandy until his kids were grown and gone.

Who had tried for more than a year to stick it out, even after his youngest was in col ege. “It al comes back to Liza and Mosey somehow, doesn’t it?

Tel me. Let me help you.”

I thought about it. Hard. But I’d jumped into a huge heap of felonies, headfirst and eyes wide open. It was wrong to pul him in, too, blind. I shook my head.

He swal owed and said, stil toothache-sweet, “Dumb-ass. I am tel ing you, I’l break every stupid law I’m sworn to uphold and go to hel on top of it, if that’s what you need. Tel me.”

I was crying then, because I believed him. I believed him. And that meant I had to settle this myself, so I could start with him clean, in November. I understood then his wanting to wait until his divorce, in a way I hadn’t before. I didn’t want anything wrong or underhanded touching us. We deserved better.

I said, “If that’s true, then the best thing you can do for me is look away. Don’t think too hard about it. Don’t try to know. Let me fix it, and I’l cal you in November.”

He had to stop looking, because he was too smart. If he looked close, he would figure it out. No one had yet, because of Mosey. She was the perfect blind. It was like one of those old riddles, like the one where the emergency-room doctor is a woman and that’s how the patient is her son.

Or how the guy who only takes the elevator when it’s raining is a midget and needs an umbrel a to reach the buttons. The answer was so obvious, but no one could see it: The lost baby in the yard couldn’t be ours, because Mosey made al our babies look accounted for.

He said, “You don’t even want to tel me why Claire is having you fol owed. Did you…You never had anything going with her husband?”

“God no,” I said. “Why would you think that?”

He shook his head. “She’s fol owing you. So she must think it.”

I felt my eyes narrowing. “What aren’t
you
tel ing
me
?”

He shook his head. “Al right, Ginny. You’re playing your cards close, but I’m going to show you my whole hand. The investigation stal ed because the state coroner didn’t find any trauma on the bones. Nothing to indicate shaken baby or any kind of violence. He said the most likely cause of death was SIDS. Meanwhile it’s footbal season, so Rick is up to his ass in new DUIs. The investigation was back-burnered. Indefinitely. But then the married couple I told you about approached him. They thought the bones in your yard might be their missing infant. They paid for more testing.”