“Don’t let your guard down.” She seemed to enjoy making me squirm, though I tried not to show my concern.
I had no answer, so I simply said, “I’ll be leaving. Mrs. Garza, thanks for the visit. I hope Michael and Alex continue to do well. Bella, see you around.” And I headed for the front room trying not to hurry and half expecting a knife in the back. On the way I passed two bedrooms, one on each side of the hall. One of them appeared completely redone and quite feminine. I couldn’t imagine Bella in it.
The clock in the car told me I just had time to get the girls. I took off, too fast, and made it almost downtown on Henderson before I realized the car was getting harder and harder to steer. I had a flat tire—and I suspected from the slow leak that someone had loosened the cap on the air valve. I had never changed a tire in my life, and I was stuck in the midst of the Henderson Street Bridge. Pushing the hazard light button, I took out my phone and called Keisha.
“Got a flat. Will you go get the girls? Tell Mike I’ll call Triple A and be there as soon as I can.”
“Where are you?”
“Ryan Place,” I lied.
“Okay, where are you really?”
My voice was weak. “In the damn middle of the Henderson Street Bridge.”
“You been up to the North Side to see the Garzas,” she said. It was a statement not a question.
“And boy, do I have a lot to tell.”
“Me and Mike will be waiting.”
“Keisha….”
“All right, all right. I’m going. And I’ll keep my mouth shut. This better be good.”
As I dialed Triple A, I saw the familiar flashing lights behind me. My heart sank—now word about my whereabouts would surely get back to Mike. At least I’d have a chance to confess all before I took him to the substation tomorrow.
The officer was not someone I knew. Young, very young, and polite, he said, “Looks like you need help, ma’am.”
“I guess so. I’m dialing Triple A right now.”
“Easier and quicker if I change it for you. Won’t tie up traffic as long. You sure picked a dilly of a spot.”
I nodded. “Actually, I think someone loosened the cap on the air valve so I had a slow leak. I’ve come three or four miles.”
He nodded, escorted me to the back seat of his car, and asked for my keys. “You do have a spare?”
“One of those donut things.”
Without a word, he got out his jack, my spare, and changed the tire efficiently and quickly. He barely looked dirty, but I offered him one of the wipes I carry for the girls, and he took it.
“Thanks very much.” I hopped back in the car.
“Whoa,” he said. “I have to fill out an incident report.” He went to his car, reached in and came back with some paperwork on a clipboard. “Name?”
He was “just the facts, ma’am” polite and businesslike, but by the time he dismissed me, he knew everything about me, including the name of my nearest of kin—Officer Mike
Shandy
.
I concocted a story on my way home, but I might as well have saved my breath. Conroy beat me to it. Keisha was gone, and Mike was sitting in the dark in the living room. “Where are the girls?” I asked as lightly as I could, bending to give him a kiss.
He turned away from me. “They’re in their rooms doing homework. I told them to stay there until I called them.”
“Oh.”
Strained silence, until he asked in a tightly controlled voice, “Do you have something to tell me?”
Mistakenly I decided offense was my best defense. “Why didn’t you tell me Bella and Ben had been fingerprinted and cleared in Sonny Adams’ death?”
“Because it’s police business, not yours. It has nothing to do with real estate.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong. What I found out today is that Tom
Lattimore’s
a slumlord, probably owns a company called North Side Properties, and Sonny Adams used to collect rent for him. That’s how he met Rosalinda Garza. And my hunch is that Sonny was skimming off the top of the rents he collected—he started to redo the Garza’s house, then quit when Rosalinda was killed. Bella told Joe the key to Sonny’s murder had to do with the development on Magnolia.”
Mike settled back on the couch. “I have a feeling you better start at the beginning and tell me the whole story.”
“Want a beer first?” I asked stalling and wishing for a glass of wine.
“Not now. Talk.”
And so I did. I told him the whole story, leaving nothing out. It took a long time, and he was speechless for a minute. Then, “Kelly, did you have your gun with you?”
“Yes,” I said triumphantly, “In my jacket pocket.”
“Were you wearing the jacket? It’s been fairly warm today.”
“No. It was in the car.”
“I wish I could ground you like I can the girls,” he said. “There’s no sense going over all the reasons you shouldn’t have done this. We’ve had that discussion, and it apparently does no good.” He got up and stalked from the room, as much as a man using a walker can stalk.
I heard him tell the girls they could go see their mother if they wished. He slammed the bedroom door behind him—great, how was I supposed to change clothes? I remembered the one other time before we married that I truly angered him and didn’t hear from him for four days. Then I’d wooed him back by inviting him to cook at a barbecue. I could hardly do that again.
And another thing bothered me. I wanted us to share parenting, but he’d taken to ordering the girls around without consulting me. Who was he to say when the girls could and could not see me? I’d attributed this to his post-stress crankiness, but it was something we’d have to work on—together.
“Mom?” Maggie voice was tentative. “What’s the matter with Mike? Did we do something wrong?”
“No, girls.” I gathered them into my arms. “I did.”
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to,” Em said righteously.
Oh, but I did.
Dinner that night was silent and awkward and not very special—creamed tuna on toast. Mike and I both picked at our plates, and the girls, glancing nervously from one to the other, did the same. Finally Maggie said, “I’ll help you with the dishes, Mom,” and began to clear the table.
Mike sequestered himself in the bedroom again.
If he’s going to hide in what was once my space, where am I going to spend the evening?
Without saying a word, I went into the bedroom, got a big T-shirt and sweat pants and the book I was reading.
The girls went willingly to bed, glad to escape in sleep the tension of the house, and I spent the evening sitting on the couch, unable to focus on the book in my lap. A few tears escaped and ran down my cheeks. I knew I had not brought about the end of the marriage—Mike and I would make up and get back on our old footing, but maybe not quite the same. Some shifting was inevitable. We were learning and growing together, but Lord, how it hurt.
He and his walker clumped out about ten-thirty. “You coming to bed?”
“I thought maybe I’d sleep on the couch.”
“One thing I remember my dad saying is not to go to sleep angry with each other—and he and Mom were pretty solid for the fifty-plus years of their marriage. I don’t want to go to bed angry.”
“Can you let go of it?”
“I guess I’ll have to, Kelly, because I know there’s no changing you. No,” he held up his hand in a “Stop” position. “Don’t tell me how important it was or why you had to go up there today or even send Joe earlier. I’ll rehash all that in time. But I want you to know one thing.”
“Will it help if I promise never to do anything like that again?”
“No, because you’d only break your promise. I want you to know that I love you too much to let you take such risks. It scares me breathless. I know you couldn’t take me with you—I’m no use these days, and I’m a police officer so I can’t compromise myself on your wild errands. And I know I’d have forbidden it if you told me, so I sort of understand why you didn’t.”
I didn’t tell him I was too old to be forbidden to do anything I wanted.
“But, Kelly, I hate it when you take chances.” He finally sat down next to me and took my hand.
“And I hated it every night when you went out on patrol because I never knew when would be “the” night. The night of your accident one of my thoughts was, ‘Okay, it’s finally happened.’ I knew it would.”
“You married me knowing how I earned a living.”
“And you married me knowing my tendency to follow my instincts and my curiosity.”
“Touché. Couldn’t you have thrown a bit of caution in with it?”
“I’ll try,” I said, reaching up to kiss him. It turned into a long passionate kiss, and I swear as we got up and headed for the bedroom, I saw Maggie streak for her own room. Mike and I grinned at each other and went to bed.
****
By Thanksgiving, Mike and I had made our peace. He had said there was nothing concrete in all that I found out, nothing he could turn in as solid evidence. I had checked out North Side Properties on the internet, MLS listings, and the phone book—and come up with only a post office box number and a phone number. When I called, I got an answering service. I asked if Sonny Adams had ever worked for the company, and a bored woman, cracking her gum, said she didn’t know but would have someone call me. I doubted that would happen.
To my surprise, Tom called a few days later. “Kelly, about Sonny Adams. We had to let him go. He was skimming off the top of the rents.”
When I thanked him, I said I had another question. “Who owns North Side Properties?
“I told you. It’s my investment company.”
When I told Mike about it, he said, “Kelly, you go from suspicion to conviction in one big leap. It doesn’t work that way.”
We put it all behind us for the holiday.
Claire’s house had indeed been remodeled for entertaining by my ex-husband Tim who considered it a showcase for real estate in the area. A huge state-of-the-art kitchen, now several years old, still offered the latest in appliances and conveniences. It was a large, spacious room, easy to gather in. The girls perched comfortably on stools at the island, seats they remembered from childhood. And we gathered in the kitchen for wine—Claire had gotten sparkling cider for the girls and Anthony’s sons. The dining area in the house was simply one end of the living room. Claire’s long table sat ten, and Mike brought our folding table, which easily seated the overflow. The girls insisted on seats at the picnic table with Anthony’s sons, Megan and Liz. The rest of the “grown-ups” sat at Claire’s table, although I suspect Joe and Theresa were surprised at being considered adults. Claire had fixed a cider-glazed turkey with lager gravy she found in a magazine somewhere—not
Bon Appétit,
she claimed—and a lemony-mushroom stuffing, along with a side dish of roasted Brussels sprouts. Keisha brought sweet potato pie and her mom brought chocolate meringue and apple. My mom brought our family cranberry relish—the raw kind with apples and oranges all ground up—and Otto, who managed to find the seat next to Mom, raved about it. Anthony contributed a couple of good bottles of chardonnay, and we all had a feast.
The kids liked being at their own table because no one said brightly to them, “So, how’s school?” At the adult table, talk started with politics—we turned out to be mostly liberals except for Otto who, oddly enough, supported big business. I thought Otto would be for the little guy. Maybe it was an Old World notion he brought from his past. From politics, we moved on to the threatened development on Magnolia but Otto looked almost apoplectic, and I changed the subject to a discussion of the new restaurants springing up in the neighborhood. Ellerbe had recently been chosen as one of the top ten new restaurants in the nation by
Bon Appétit
—no small feat. Magnolia Avenue was fast becoming the place to go. Our neighborhood was on the upswing.
Cleanup went fairly easily with everyone helping, including Anthony’s sons, Stefan and Emil, and the girls, who cleared the table. Claire loaded the dishwasher, Mike washed, and I perched on a stool to dry the serving pieces. Claire, of course, owned several lovely sterling dishes.
Before we were through, Brandon Waggoner arrived from his family dinner to pick Megan up for a late date. He met with a formidable welcoming committee but handled himself well in such a situation, shaking hands, talking easily with kids and adults alike. He and Megan left amidst a shower of “Have fun” and “Be careful.”
“Every time she leaves, I say a small prayer,” Claire said to me. “I’ve discovered how fragile happiness can be.”
I hugged her. We’d both learned a lot in the last couple of years.
After many thanks and exclamations of appreciation, we all began to leave. I think Mom was a bit put out that Keisha and José took Otto home, but Otto bowed gallantly over her hand and said, “I’ll look forward to our next meeting.” I got the feeling the time and place of that meeting was already set and wondered if it was time for a talk with Mom.
Later, Mike said, “Kelly, you’re not her parent. You can’t quiz her about a relationship with a man.”
Well, darn, maybe she’ll tell me on her own.
We were cuddled comfortably on the couch, reliving the evening, talking about how nice it was to have everyone together.
Quietly, Mike asked, “Did you see the green Nova pull away when we left Claire’s? Bella’s not gone…or maybe it was Ben. Kelly, be oh so careful.”