A Fatal Stain (8 page)

He looked at my face and sighed again. “Okay, so probably we could live on pancakes and your refinishing, but is that a proper diet for a growing young man?”

I heard Ben clear his throat and had no clue what he would say, but fortunately E put in, “And oats for Ccelly.”

“Cecily?” Ben said. I realized he hadn’t been introduced to the invisible member of the family.

“Yeah, he’s a growing llama,” E said.

“You have a transsexual pet llama?” Ben asked.

“Imaginary transsexual pet llama,” I said.

“Oh, like that makes it better!”

“Not now,” Cas said, echoed by Nick. “Right now, I just want to understand why you felt the need to kidnap E, after telling your ex’s wife she could keep him over the weekend.”

“Ccelly told her I wasn’t sick,” E said.

Cas wisely chose to ignore this. “Dyce?”

“Well, I had a strong feeling he wasn’t sick, after all. So I had to go check, and then…”

“And then?” Cas asked.

“And then he said he hadn’t been to the doctor. And I thought, well…”

“You thought?” Cas said.

I chose to imagine there was no sarcasm there. “Yeah,
I thought that since they hadn’t taken him to the doctor, and he was plainly not ill, there was something weird going on, and I don’t trust them.”

Cas took two slow, deep breaths. “God knows I don’t want to defend your ex and his wife. They seem fairly odd to me, and that’s putting it mildly. But maybe they wanted to keep him over because they wanted to show him off to someone? Or maybe—okay, I know, but…” He looked at E. “They seem to want to do this fairly often. Who knows why?”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I mean, if it were that, why wouldn’t they tell me? Clearly this happens regularly enough, and I allow it regularly enough. So why not ask me properly?”

“I don’t know,” Cas said. “Temporary insanity?”

E looked up from petting Pythagoras, who had crawled into his lap while we weren’t looking. “They wanted to keep me because of the fires.”

“What?” I think the question came from all of us at once. Nick peeled off the counter and would have loomed over my child, except that Ben—who knows my child better—interposed his outstretched arm, to stop him.

E looked up at us. “I don’t know,” he said, and at that point it was impossible to tell whether he was really that innocent or had just got so startled by our response that he found it easier to pretend ignorance. “I just heard Dad say to ’chelle, late at night, that it would be easier to keep me with her, until the fire thing was resolved. And that he thought that his passport was up to date, but that must have been a joke, because they laughed.”

Cas blinked. “How did you hear this?”

“They were in their room,” he said. And then, casting
about to explain his presence, “I wanted a glass of water, so I went outside their room…”

I sighed. “There is no way all you wanted was a glass of water,” I said. “In fact, I’d bet that Michelle leaves water bottles in your room. Filtered, organic, free-range water bottles.” I crossed my arms on my chest and looked around at the bewildered males. “I’m sure of it,” I said. “It’s the type of thing a woman who insists on feeding him fiber and food with no preservatives would do.”

E stuck out his lower lip, in the way he did when he knew he wasn’t going to get around me. It wasn’t so much a pout as a gesture of defeat. “I get bored,” he said. “And they do funny things when they’re alone. Like when—”

“We truly don’t need to know,” I said. I traded a silent look with Cas that said,
Now do you understand why I don’t want to do anything unless I’m absolutely sure he is asleep?
His look back said,
Completely. Which is why we’re going to get a bedroom with a door that has a secure lock.

I abstained from telling him that, given my son’s newfound hobby, we might need to make our conjugal bed inside a bank vault.

“Well, they were talking, and Dad said, he said, what with all the fires, and that the police”—he looked up at Cas—“were investigating, and that until the police came out with a solution, they weren’t safe. And then Michelle said something and Dad said that no, he didn’t like handcuffs, even for play—” He looked at me. “Mommy, do they play cops and robbers?”

I covered my eyes. A
soundproof
bank vault. And if Benedict Colm didn’t do a better job of disguising his laughter, he was going to die in the next few seconds.

“Well, anyway,” E said, “they said they should keep me, just in case.”

I looked at Cas. The look back at me was completely nonhumorous and had a tinge of puzzled worry.

Ben managed to turn his guffaws—behind his hand, of course—into a convincing cough. Nick said, “Hey, E, why don’t you come outside with me and Ben for a moment? I have my new convertible out there. You know, the red one.”

It was much too cold for convertibles, not that anything born male would believe this. E loved the things as much as the adult males did, and he even managed to sit very still and quiet when Cas consented to take him to spend an afternoon watching Cas and Nick work on one of the convertibles they restored as a hobby. He perked up, jumping from the chair. “Peesgrass and I—”

Ben was back in full command of what passed for his faculties. He took Pythagoras away from E and dumped him on my lap. “No. Pythagoras might run away.”

E looked like he was going to protest, but he probably realized this was his one shot at being taken for a ride in Nick’s cool car, and he said, “Okay, can I drive?”

“As soon as you have your learner’s permit,” Nick said, giving him his hand.

“Ben?” E asked, reaching his other hand for Ben. “Can I get my learner’s permit?”

They were out the front door before I heard Ben’s response.

Cas and I were quiet for a long while after they left; then Cas sighed, and I said, “You said you were investigating arson cases in houses that are for sale. I know All-ex has a realty…”

Cas shrugged. “It doesn’t mean it was him. Oh, I grant
you, your son heard something. But you know what he hears is filtered through what he understands. And that means…”

“He could be totally wrong,” I said. “Like mistaking sarcasm for the truth.”

“Yeah.”

The thing is that although I was capable of suspecting All-ex of ten wrong things before breakfast, arson and criminal intent to break custody and run weren’t two of them. For one thing, All-ex was much too attached to being big fish in the little pond of Goldport, Colorado. He didn’t even—truth be told—make much of an effort to enter Denver society. And that was a personality thing. He was ambitions but local. It was almost charming how much he loved Goldport. When we’d been in college in Denver and dating, he’d insisted on running back to Goldport as soon as he could every weekend, even if there was something cool going on around college. He wouldn’t consider running. And if he did—supposing that my ex had been hit on the head and suffered a massive concussion and considered going off to start life in a new place, just him and Mrs. All-ex, and…E?

Let’s face it—E somewhere between appalled him and scared him. Not that he didn’t love his son. I was fairly sure he did. All-ex was expected to love his son, and in a conventional, down-to-earth way it wouldn’t occur to him not to love his son. But I didn’t think he wanted his son full time and without my intervention. No, not even if he said he did. And if he was so crazy as to tell Mrs. All-ex he wanted to do that, then she would talk sense into him. Oh, not openly, but over the years I’d come to realize that Michelle was a nice, traditional
wife who perfectly obeyed her husband. Provided he told her to do what she wanted to do to begin with.

“So what do you think is going on?” I asked.

“Damned if I know…” he said.

“I don’t want to give them E again on Wednesday. I just don’t. I know, I don’t see him as doing this, but…”

Cas nodded. “Well, sauce for the goose. I’ll…talk to him and tell him we need E for some wedding-related fittings or something…What is he wearing to the wedding, by the way? What are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was thinking of going naked.”

He gave me a leer, proving that the man was there, right behind the eyes of the policeman. “Mmm, my favorite. But unless we’re marrying in a nudist colony, people are bound to think it looks funny. I thought Ben had found some dresses for you to look at?”

I groaned. “Ben—aka Benedict Colm, conservatively elegant financial planner and man about town—becomes a little insane at the prospect of helping me choose a dress for my wedding.”

Cas raised an eyebrow.

“Miles and miles of gauzy tulle,” I said. “Held up with little lace roses and pink ribbons. And if I tell him I don’t want to wear white or a conventional bride’s dress because this is my second wedding, he goes to the Disney-princess-like dresses intended for bridesmaids and starts pulling out pastel pink, pale blue, and”—I made a despondent gesture—“gold.”

“Uh…” Cas said. “I’ll talk to Nick about—”

“Don’t,” I said. “Last Friday both of them took me shopping after work. I know you think Nick is a sensible man, but his taste seems to run to froufrou, like
face-covering veils. With roses. You know, it’s not too late to elope…”

Cas laughed. “Your parents would hate it on the roof rack, it wouldn’t be fair to my parents to ask them to babysit yours all the way to Las Vegas, and, besides, Nick’s parents want to come. They’ve offered to cater the reception.”

I didn’t say anything. I’d met Nick’s parents, of course. We’d gone up to the Golden Fleece, their restaurant in Denver, and met Nick’s mother and father and his ten-year-younger little brother, who looked like a copy of Nick but with more cute and less sexy. I even liked the food. And Nick’s mother was Cas’s only aunt. It was just I hadn’t been thinking in terms of reception. In my mind, if I’d visualized a second wedding at all, there were maybe some drinks, and maybe just the ceremony, and then my husband and I left…

“If you want another type of food—” Cas said.

“No. No. I’m just not sure I want them to go to all that trouble; I mean—”

“They’ll love it. Don’t worry.”

“I suppose eloping
really
is out of the question?”

He grabbed me around the shoulders and kissed me. Somewhere in the middle of the kiss, I felt my brain melt and run out of my ears. Which was very effective in making me forget all my worries.

As we heard the front door open and Ben and Nick come in with much—surely unnecessary?—scraping of feet and banging of doors and hearty talk of “That was fun, wasn’t it?” to E, we pulled apart.

While I was struggling to get my breath back, much less remember my name, let alone any plans for the wedding, Cas took advantage to kiss my forehead. “It will be
fine. I promise. We’ll find a way to run away soon after the ceremony.” He must have caught a flicker of worry in my eyes, as he pulled my hair out of my face and said, “Look, I’ll talk to Mahr about keeping E another week. I’ll smooth things over. They can’t say much, not to me.”

No, probably not. Not if they were afraid of the police. But I suspected I was going to pay for all this soon enough, if not openly.

Proving he knew it as well, he sighed. “I’ll poke around, okay? But I really don’t think he’s involved in the fires. For one, not all the houses burned down are listed with his realty company, and besides—”

And besides, Nick and Ben were now in the kitchen and clearing their throats, so we stood a little further apart, as E came and inserted himself between us. I knew this was an attempt to be reassured that we still loved him, and I was capable of rational behavior sometimes, so we hugged my son.

“Cas, we need to go,” Nick said. “There’s that interview with—”

“I know, I know.” Cas kissed my lips and the top of E’s head. “E, do try not to be too bad a boy for Mommy, okay?”

“Okay,” my son said, back to his impersonation of a cherub, which wouldn’t take in anyone who had known him for any amount of time. “I’ll take care of Ccelly, too.”

“Er…uh…good,” Cas said, getting up and starting toward the door.

Ben cleared his throat. “Uh, before you go…Which color rat do you want for your boutonniere?”

Once I managed to convince Cas that they were not
joking about the rats, he put his foot down. “Absolutely no rodents in the wedding,” he said.

Nick’s lips were twitching. “This was Dyce’s mom’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Ben! They’d eat the tuxes. Also, have you considered rat poo—”

“Right,” Ben said. “Okay. Okay. No rats.”

“And no best cat, either. Nick is my best man, and we don’t need a best cat.”

“But Peesgrass wants to come!” E said. He’d retrieved Pythagoras from wherever the cat had been sunning himself and was holding him clutched to his chest. Pythagoras’s little cross-eyed face stared at us in acute
embarrassment, whether at his position or at the idea of being in the wedding, I couldn’t tell.

“They make harness leashes for cats,” Nick said. “I’ll look after him. He’s already black; all we need is to attach a little white tie to his collar,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. If the cat died of embarrassment, the SPCA would be all over us.