3 Swift Run (24 page)

A man’s figure, arms upraised, came out of the hall. “Don’t—” he started.

Nolan danced between us, barking furiously. “Bite him, Nolie,” I yelled, swinging
the Ping-Pong paddle in what I hoped was a threatening way. I wished I had a baseball
bat or, better yet, my gun, which Charlie insisted on keeping locked in the office
safe. Even my Taser would give me a better chance, but Charlie had insisted on locking
that up, too, after I tased her by accident. I couldn’t believe a little electrocution
made her so testy.

“Gigi.”

I screamed again.

“For God’s sake, Gigi, stop that screeching. And shut that dog up. Jesus!”

It dawned on me that the intruder hadn’t moved and that he was saying my name. I lowered
the paddle. “Les?”

He stepped into the light. “Of course it’s me,” he said irritably.

Of
course
? Where did he get off thinking he could just sneak into
my
house? I asked him that, my voice scratchy from screaming.

“It used to be my house, too, Gigi,” he said. “Remember? I paid for it. I’ve still
got my keys.”

“Well, it’s mine now, and you have no business sneaking around in the basement, scaring
me to death. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I need a place to stay,” he said. When he stood under one of the track lights, I
could see his face was grayish, and dark circles even my Stila concealer wouldn’t
have hidden made his eyes look sunken. His shirt was untucked, hanging over his paunch.
He looked much worse than when I’d caught up with him in Aspen. I stomped on a spurt
of sympathy.

“Not here. Kendall and Dexter—”

“The kids don’t have to know,” he said quickly. “I’ll stay down here. It’s only for
a day or two, until I can get hold of some cash and get out of Colorado. Someone’s
after me, Gigi.” He looked out the window as if a serial killer with an ax might be
crouched in our garden.

I leaned sideways and let down the blinds. You never know. “No.” I put enough force
into my voice that Nolan growled. “You can’t move back in here. It will confuse the
kids.” It would confuse me, too, but I didn’t say that.

“I’m not talking about moving in! I’m talking about camping out for a couple of days.
Do you have to make a federal case out of everything? In case you haven’t noticed,
there’s a goddamn blizzard raging out there. Do you want your children’s father to
freeze to death?”

I bit my lip. I didn’t want Les staying here, but I could hardly kick him out into
a blizzard. “Well, I guess … for one night…”

He smiled, and some of the old confidence returned to his face. “That’s my Gigi.”
He moved toward me, arms open wide. “Hey, we had fun the other night in Aspen, didn’t
we? Got the old fires going again pretty good. Since the kids aren’t here, maybe we
could—”

I smacked him across the face with the Ping-Pong paddle. The force of it tingled up
my arms. It felt
good
.

He jumped back, his hand going to his face. “Ow! What’d you do that for?”

“For thinking you can waltz back in here and I’ll fall into your arms.”

“Well, that’s what happened in Aspen.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “You
haven’t been getting any, have you? C’mon, babe, we always had great chemistry—”

Heat surged through me, and I knew it wasn’t a hot flash; it was anger. I was mad,
mad, mad at Les Goldman for the way he’d treated me. I lunged toward him, swinging
the paddle, and connected with his ear. I hadn’t known how much anger was bottled
up inside me, but now it burst out like floodwaters punching through a levee. Before
he could move, I struck again, whapping the tip of his nose, and then a fourth time,
getting the bald spot on top of his head as he ducked. “Hi-yaa!” I think I yelled
like they do in those martial arts movies. That felt good, too.

Les backed up, arms covering his face. “Okay, okay, I get it: no nookie.”

I glared at him, pffing a lock of hair off my forehead with an upward breath. Now
that I’d gotten it out of my system, I felt lighter, freer. I wished Albertine could
have been here to see me get my mad on. “You are lower than a slug’s belly, Les Goldman,”
I told him. “You cheated on me with Heather-Anne, and then you cheated on her with
me. I’m going upstairs to change. You’d better be here when I get back. Then we’re
going to talk, and you’re going to tell me everything you know about Heather-Anne’s
death and—”

I stopped because he didn’t seem to be paying attention. His brow crinkled and he
tilted his head up, sniffing. “What’s that? Smells like fire.”

I sniffed, too, and noticed Nolan doing the same. It came to me in a flash. “My pizza!”

I dashed upstairs and burst into the kitchen in time to see smoke escaping from around
the oven door. Would it be smarter to open the door and fling some water in, or keep
it closed and hope the fire didn’t spread? My eyes watering from the smoke, I fanned
it away from my face and was reaching to turn the oven off when the smoke detectors
began to shrill. Nolan, who had followed me up, started yapping fit to beat the band,
and the din gave me a headache. Flinging open a couple of windows, I dragged a kitchen
chair over and climbed on it, reaching up to shut down the smoke alarm. I punched
buttons randomly but couldn’t get the thing to stop. My arms ached and I felt tottery
on the chair and I had had enough. I ripped the detector off the ceiling and slammed
it onto the tile floor. The battery bounced out and the alarm gave one last chirp
and died. The silence was heavenly, but I ruined it by slumping onto the chair and
breaking into tears.

This week had been too much: finding Les, sleeping with him, getting arrested, finding
Heather-Anne’s body,
Dexter
getting arrested, Les showing up again and me going after him like some kind of deranged
Fatal Attraction
psycho. Too much. I boo-hooed for several minutes before getting up to blow my nose
and splash water onto my face. Pulling a box of frozen éclair minis out of the freezer,
I sat at the kitchen table and popped one into my mouth. The room reeked of smoke,
and the open windows were letting the blizzard and cold blow through, but I ignored
the discomforts, propped my chin on my hands, and ate another éclair.

That’s how Les found me. He poked his head cautiously around the basement door and,
not seeing anyone—firemen, I guess—he crossed to me and patted my shoulder. I shrugged
away from his hand, and he dropped it awkwardly to his side before crossing to the
oven and peering inside.

“What a mess.”

“Don’t start.” My voice quavered, so I folded my lips together. I was not going to
cry in front of Les.

He held up his hands in a surrender gesture. “Let me clean it up.”

I perked up at that. Les clean? He’d never made such an offer when we were married.
Maybe I should have whacked him with a Ping-Pong paddle years ago. I watched morosely
as he slid the rack with the carbonized pizza out of the oven and dumped the charred
disk into the trash, then dug around under the sink for a Brillo pad and cleanser.
“You don’t have to do that,” I heard myself say.

He ignored me. Good. I looked down and realized I’d eaten half the box of éclairs
and was feeling a bit sick to my stomach. There wasn’t much an éclair couldn’t fix,
but this situation was beyond the power of Bavarian cream and chocolate. I pushed
the box away. The movement reawakened the smoke smell, and I sniffed at my robe. Pee-yew!
I smelled like my daddy used to smell when he came in from burning yard trash in the
fifty-five-gallon drum in the backyard.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I told Les. I didn’t wait for a reply but headed upstairs
to my room. I had just closed the door when I realized I’d never checked on Dexter.
I dialed his cell phone, and he answered. I sighed a little prayer.

“Yo.”

“Hi, baby. Are you okay? Where are you?”

“James’s. His folks picked us up from school today—they didn’t want him driving in
the snow. They invited me to stay.”

The way James drove, they shouldn’t let him near any vehicle more dangerous than a
skateboard, rain or shine. “You didn’t think to call?”

“No. Gotta go. It’s my turn.”

The line went dead. Not bothering to wonder what it was his turn at, and relieved
that Dexter wasn’t dead, in jail, or coming home tonight, I stuffed my stinky robe
in the hamper and stepped into the hot shower.

*   *   *

Half of me wanted to climb under the duvet with a good Barbara Cartland book, but
I knew I needed to have it out with Les. When I went downstairs again, dressed in
my mauve velour sweatpants and the Prada sweater with the metallic thread through
the lavender yarn—I didn’t want to give Les any ideas by coming downstairs in my jammies,
not now that I’d finally given him what for—I found that he had finished with the
oven and was watching Fox News with a glass of Scotch at his elbow. Just like when
we were married. I marched to the television and turned it off. Take that, Bill O’Reilly.

“Hey, I was watching that.”

“Did you kill Heather-Anne?” I had tried not even to consider the possibility, but
now I had to know.

He goggled at me and spilled Scotch on the leather sofa. It would wipe up. His mustache
twitched, and he put on a wounded look. “Gigi, I can’t believe you’d even—”

“Did you?”

“No! God, no. I threw up when I heard she was dead.” His face had a greenish tinge
at the memory.

“Why did you leave Costa Rica? Was it the newspaper clipping?”

He clanked the rim of the glass against his teeth, and Scotch dribbled down his chin.
“Stop
doing
that. How did you— Oh, you found my folder in the BMW?”

I nodded. “Charlie’s in Wyoming interviewing that family right now. She thinks your
Heather-Anne and the wife in that clipping may be the same person.”

He took a long sip of Scotch without spilling any, and I knew he’d had the same thought.
“I can’t believe it.”

He didn’t
want
to believe it.

He gave me his sincere look. “I should never have left you, Gigi. I know that now.
I didn’t realize how good I had it living here in Colorado with you, the house, the
kids. Yes, even the kids. Costa Rica’s so effing humid you can’t think some days,
like your brain’s trapped underwater, and the damn monkeys are everywhere, like big
furry cockroaches.”

I tried to keep from laughing, but a little snort came out my nose.

“You can laugh,” he said, gesturing with his glass, “but it’s true. I’d go to sleep
at night under layers of mosquito netting and wish for a crisp Colorado day. I guess
we don’t always appreciate what we have until we lose it.” His shoulders slumped,
but I channeled Albertine and trampled the urge to comfort him.

“Who do you think killed Heather-Anne?” I asked. “And why?”

“It was probably some lunatic, some Ted Bundy–type just passing through.”

That wasn’t even worth responding to. I sat on the sofa across from Les and crossed
my arms over my chest. The wind howled outside, and I reminded myself to call Kendall
at Angel’s to tell her good night.

“Well, it
could
have been,” Les said when I didn’t say anything.

“You said someone’s after you … Who?”

“I wish to hell I knew.” He tossed back the rest of the Scotch and rose to get more
from the bottle he’d left on the sink.

“You don’t have any idea?” I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him. The éclairs
had worn off, and I needed real food. I don’t think as well when I get low-blood-sugary.
I followed Les into the kitchen and pulled the makings of Alfredo sauce from the fridge.
Even though it felt like midnight, it was only seven o’clock. “How about Patrick Dreiser
or one of the other people you robbed?”

“I didn’t rob anybody. I practiced creative accounting. Caveat emptor and all that.
I guess it could have been Dreiser—he took my departure badly, sent me threatening
notes for months. Do you want me to put the water on?”

I nodded, and he filled a deep pot with water and turned the gas on under it. If he’d
been half this helpful when he lived here, I might have missed him more when he left.
The thought made me drop the whisk I was using on the cream and butter. I thought
I
had
missed Les, but was that true? What had we talked about the past couple of years?
Dexter’s suspensions, my shopping habits, Les’s gripes about some of his business
partners. Not much else. Huh. Did I
really
miss Les? I missed the sex—I was menopausal, not dead—even though there hadn’t been
as much of that in the year before he left. I put the idea away to think about later …
maybe. What kind of person was I if I didn’t even miss my ex-husband?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. I shook my head hurriedly, and he
held up two boxes of pasta. “Fettucine or linguine?”

31

Charlie froze.

“Ah-hah!” the man said. He was shorter than Charlie and dressed like a cross between
an Arctic explorer and an 1850s miner, with a furred hood framing a whiskery face
and an unzipped jacket showing a plaid shirt and jeans held up by suspenders. She
guessed he must be over seventy. “I knew it when I saw the light! Looters! Hands up!”

Charlie obliged. “I’m not a looter,” she said, carefully not mentioning Dan. She didn’t
want to make the enraged store owner any antsier than he was, not with the shotgun
leveled at her abdomen. “I got stranded in the storm and had to find shelter.”

“What’s that, then?” The man pointed at the Hostess pie wrapper sticking from her
pocket. “Looter!”

“I was hungry. I was going to leave money—”

“Sure you were.” He sniffed and took one hand from the gun to swipe his jacketed forearm
under his nose. “Cold gets me every time. You just stay right where you are, missy,
while I call the police.”

“Look, Fred—are you Fred?”

His eyes narrowed to slits. “How’d you know my name?”