Good Chemistry (11 page)

They were just closing in when Richard got too close and touched the curb with one of his tires. The car jerked out of control, hopped over the curb, and plowed full force into a palm tree, which he half uprooted.

Devon slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and ran over to retrieve Judy but before he reached her, he lost consciousness once more, folding up and collapsing on the lawn.

Judy crawled out of the wreck. She and Bernie each grabbed Devon by an arm and dragged him back to his truck. They loaded him up and Judy drove him back to the pizza parlor where he worked with Bernie close behind.

Just as the two cars pulled into the parking lot Devon revived once more and threw himself at Judy, kissing her deeply and groping her silken breasts. Suddenly he jerked upright, straight as a board. Bernie had nailed him with a blow-dart through the half-open window.

Devon slumped forward. He was out cold. The pair quickly redressed him in his work uniform. After the girls got his clothes back on him as best they could they stuffed him back in his truck in the driver’s seat.

They got back into Bernie’s car and split for home. As they came around the corner to their block, Judy’s mom and dad were there standing out front at their house. They had a couple of police officers with them. They were all waiting for Judy.

Bernie pulled up and parked. Slowly the girls got out and walked up to the small crowd on their front lawn.

“Judy, honey, now don’t be upset. This is for your own good,” Judy’s mother said, in her most soothing voice as the police came over and put handcuffs on Judy and led her away. Except this time, they weren’t taking her to jail. This time, she was being involuntarily committed to the Saddle Brook Sanitarium.

This time, one of Judy’s little adventures had finally gone too far.

Chapter 12

Debra returned from the funeral home. They would bury her father the next day. Debra sank into the couch. She kept trying to think about the case but it was useless.

She was consumed with grief for a man who hated her. She was beset with guilt over the righteous anger she was only now beginning to feel. But at least she was finally able to feel it. She had begun to feel hatred openly toward her father after that horrible night in the hospital. Debra sat dejectedly staring off into space.

Running in high gear, her feelings shifted from anger to guilt to loneliness and back to anger. Debra looked around the room slowly. Everything was charged with the immense weight of sadness. She began to feel it pressing down on her chest. Making it hard to breath.

Debra’s life was being overshadowed by her father again. She’d just gotten to where she felt okay about herself when he managed to rope her back into his insanity. Even in death, Allan Manning managed to turn the tables on his daughter one last time. Now Debra was utterly torn in the way she felt about him. Hot tears began to roll down her face.

It was ironic. Her dad would have hated her even more and berated her endlessly if he could see her crying like this. Debra could no longer hold it all inside. However, she hated the sadness and hated herself for feeling it. Mostly, she hated her father. It would take Debra years to deal with the way he maimed her emotionally. His death didn’t magically make all that go away. It made it worse. Every feeling she had toward her father was legitimate and well-earned by Allan Manning. But now, all those feelings were tinged with a heavy dose of guilt as well.

Debra curled up into a ball and fell asleep at last. Tomorrow was going to be a rough day. First Allan’s funeral at eleven o’clock and then a reception at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. Plus, Debra was already gearing up to clean out her father’s house. She needed all of this to be over so she could regain some sense of control and normalcy.

The next day rolled around with amazing speed.

Debra had one of those nights where she lay down and felt like she slept twenty minutes, but it was already morning and she just felt like going back to sleep. Debra dragged herself out of bed and into her jogging outfit. She was out the door and half a block into her run before she woke up enough to realize where she was. It was so ingrained in her that she could easily do her entire workout in her sleep. Today she nearly did as she struggled to stay awake.

Debra finished her run and showered. Then she got her dress uniform out of the closet and worked the plastic bag up over the hanger. Debra held the uniform out in front of her. She just gazed at it. She had always taken great pride in her uniform but to her father it was the ultimate betrayal.

Her father had always had this picture of her growing up and joining the army. They accepted women now. They always needed secretaries and nurses just like everybody else. So he was all for it. From that point forward, Debra was going into the Army right after high school. At least in her father’s mind she was.

When graduation came, Debra announced that she’d applied to the Police Academy and was accepted. It was the last straw for her father. Debra ended up staying at a friend’s house the last few weeks before she left for the Academy.

Debra looked herself up and down in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door. She looked great in uniform. All the shades of blue set off her eyes. Debra checked her makeup one last time and grabbed up her purse. She would take it to the funeral with her as a sort of talisman against her father’s energy. She drove over to the funeral home and parked.

As she walked up to the funeral parlor, she immediately felt everyone’s gaze. A cluster of old men, veterans, ogled her from the doorway.

“Hello, I’m Bob Bishop. And who might you be?” Bob extended a hand in greeting.

“I’m Debra Manning, Allan’s daughter,” Debra said, as she shook his knobby gnarled hand.

All the men became visibly agitated like a group of nervous hens clucking and jostling around. Bob rejoined them and the murmuring was getting loud enough to draw attention.

Then, finally, one man emerged looking right at Debra. He walked over to her as though he was frightened and had to steel himself for this meeting.

“Miss?” the stooped white-haired man inquired, as he extended a feeble and shaky hand as though he was about to pet an animal he wasn’t sure how to approach.

“My name is Mel Jennings. Did you know Sergeant Manning in some way?” He studied her carefully.

“Yes. Allan Manning is, or rather was, my father.”

The old man appeared completely stunned.

“Ah, are you serious? Is this some sort of bad joke?” Mel demanded.

The clutch of old men began cackling more urgently, as if someone had thrown a handful of bread crusts among chickens.

“No! Of course no—” Debra was cut off as the funeral director hooked Mel under the arm and hustled him away to discreetly explain that yes, that was, in fact, Allan Manning’s daughter.

A few seconds later, Mel stepped back up to Debra, warmly extending his hand. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. I just didn’t know Allan Manning had a daughter.” Mel groveled meekly and then pulled himself away awkwardly.

He returned to the huddle of men and, after a few more minutes of hushed whispers and ill-disguised head turns, the men moved quickly inside the building to avoid any more awkward encounters.

Debra waited until they were all well clear of the doorway and then she proceeded inside on the arm of the funeral director. If it weren’t for him, Debra would have just grabbed a seat in the back. Mr. Gilroy led her up to the front row escorting her to the seats reserved for family. Debra heard a wave of murmurs sweep through the mourners behind her.

Her father had been a member of this VFW chapter for twenty-six years and had never mentioned to anyone that he had a daughter. Debra kept her eyes trained on the coffin with her father lying there in profile. These were his people. His friends. His real family.

Debra fought the urge to get up and leave. She could hear the crowd behind her chewing on the idea that Allan Manning had a daughter. A daughter they never knew anything about. Debra sat quietly through the whole service. A soldier handed her a United States flag folded into a triangle. Debra mumbled, “Thank you.” They were the only words she spoke during the entire service. As soon as it was over everyone headed over to the VFW hall while Debra simply drove herself home.

She wandered silently around her apartment for a second. The quiet made her feel the emptiness inside more acutely. Finally, she sat down on the couch. She just shook her head in disbelief. The realization that her father never once mentioned her to any of his friends was a blow that struck deep down at the core of her being.

She understood the implication well enough, but the magnitude of it . . . that would take years to digest fully. Angrily Debra got up, snatched up her keys, and went to her car. She made a beeline over to Home Depot to buy boxes and tape.

Then she went straight to her father’s house to pack up his things. It was her only way to fight back against him. She had already downgraded the clean-out from yard sale to charitable donation. And now she was downgrading it again to hauling every scrap of his shit to the city dump and pitching it.

Debra opened the front door to her father’s house. It was the house she grew up in. Debra put tape across the bottom of three boxes to get her started. She started going through his stuff like a hurricane. She just stuffed everything in a box whichever way it fit.

As her anger slowly subsided, fewer things got smashed or broken on their way into the boxes. Debra began to actually look at the stuff as she was throwing it out. So much Army stuff. Everything maybe. It was his whole life.

You would think a man like that would appreciate having a daughter to come home to. Debra began to cry when she came to her father’s display case. All of the awards and commendations he’d received during his twenty-eight-year spotless career. Most people would be so proud to have a parent who was honored like that.

But to her, all these medals represented was where her father’s love went. It should have been hers. Instead, these stupid squares of color-striped junk meant more to him than Debra ever did.

Bitterly she threw a handful of ribbons into the bottom of a box headed for the dump. Hour after hour Debra toiled away. She had managed to work the anger out of herself, for the moment. She hoisted one box up on top of another to make room. She felt the weight of it in her back. She felt a pinch.

That was when she decided she’d had enough. She called a moving company to send over two men and a truck to haul every last bit of this stuff to the landfill. She hung up the phone and for a moment was shocked by what she’d just done. Then she thought about her father again. She went out on the front porch to wait for the moving truck.

A few days later, Debra was back in the office pulling the records on Heidi the bartender and her low-life boyfriend Rick Tooms, whose name she found associated with Heidi from the time she bailed him out of jail.

“Hey, Sugar. I’m glad you’re back. This place goes in the crapper when you aren’t here.” Jazz nodded her head to confirm what she was saying as she handed the two files of police records to Debra.

She took them and opened the boyfriend’s first. Then she immediately started flipping pages to get to something in the back.

“What is it, Deb? You act like you already know what you’re looking for.”

“That’s because I do. Here it is.” Debra laid the open folder across Jazz’s desk. “So what is it? What am I looking at?”

“It’s Rick Toom’s military records. He got training in explosives and he was dishonorably discharged for committing fraud and petty theft while in uniform.”

“So who is Rick Tooms?” Jazz asked as she tried to puzzle out the meaning.

“He’s the boyfriend of the bartender who went missing on the same day the explosion occurred.”

“Oh, okay, I’m with ya’.”

“And check this out.” Debra pointed to the paragraph where it listed all of his previous offences. “Look at what he’s been up to since he got out of the Army: assault, check-fraud, forgery, drug possession, resisting arrest, possession of stolen merchandise. My God, it goes on for three more pages. How is this guy not in prison?” Debra pursed her lips and shook her head. “He’s got to be a part of this. He fits the profile perfectly. Plus, through Heidi he knew and disliked the victim.” Debra was talking more to herself than to Jazz at this point, as she worked the case over in her head.

“Girl, I can hear the wheels turning in your head. What you thinkin’ about?”

“Well, here’s what I
think
happened. The victims, Andrew McGee and Bernadette O’Malley, had lunch every day at Alexander’s, where Heidi worked as a bartender. Now from what I’ve been able to gather so far it looks like our victims were well on their way to creating some sort of love potion that actually works.”

Jazz lit up. “Oh put me down for one.”

Debra smiled and continued, “One of them must have said something about it to Heidi, so she tells Rick. The next thing you know, we have a blown up lab and three people are dead. Plus, Rick and his girlfriend have both conveniently gone missing.”

“Sounds like you got it all figured out.”

“Not quite. There is one thing that still doesn’t fit. Where in the world did he get his hands on an explosive like that? I mean if he has a contact inside the military feeding him this stuff then we’ve got an even bigger problem on our hands than I thought.”

“Maybe he stole the explosives himself?” Jazz couldn’t help but put in.

“Yeah, maybe. But when you consider the formula they stole, they’re going to need some help if they ever hope to sell it. It just doesn’t add up. You’ve got a petty thief like Rick stealing a scientific formula. What’s he going to do with it?”

Jazz nodded slowly, as she hung on Debra’s every word. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“Someone else has to be involved. Someone with the resources to take a formula like that, analyze it, figure out how it’s made, and then mass-produce it. I mean, if you’re not set up to do all of that what would be the point of stealing it?”

Just then, Kane and Meacham strolled by with devilish looks on their faces. Debra watched them warily until they were out of sight. With them on the take, it occurred to Debra that when she had nailed Loman, she had taken down their partner in crime.

“Those two mean to do somebody some real harm. They scare the shit out of me,” Jazz confided in Debra after the two men were gone. Jazz had no way of knowing how right she was.

Debra just said, ‘yeah’ without bothering to look up. She hated to think about those two buffoons. They were pocketing a forty-carat diamond and she was powerless to stop them without confessing to evidence tampering.

“Thanks, Jazz, I’ll see you later.” Debra closed the file and headed out to begin following up on Rick Toom’s record with explosives.

Major Forester had been a friend of Debra’s ever since she found his daughter and brought her back after she ran away. And thankfully, he had no connection to her father. Debra pulled into the parking lot at Denny’s. Forester arrived a few minutes later and joined her at her table.

“Debra Manning, how in the hell are you?”

Debra perked up a little. She liked the Major. “Well, I’ve got a case involving a former soldier and was wondering if you could get me a little more information than I get from the usual channels.”

“Sure, no problem. What’s it about?” the Major asked, as he looked over the menu.