Irish Eyes (11 page)

What else did I have? Questions. A long list of questions and doubts and damn few answers. Looking down at my notes, I was forced to admit maybe the police brass were justified for having their own doubts about Bucky.

What really had happened at the Budget Bottle Shop last night? Only twenty-four hours had passed, but the details didn’t seem to hang together. I tried to make a sketch of the store layout, but the only thing I drew was a blank. Every time I tried to summon up a vision of the store, it came out in fragments, the green linoleum floor, the smashed beer bottles, the
Plexiglas-enclosed cashier cage, the glimpse of winking red and blue lights outside in the parking lot.

I had to go back. I had to see the store again and make it real.

I was in the bedroom getting dressed when I heard the back door open.

I stiffened, looking around for some kind of weapon. My 9-mm Smith & Wesson was in the pantry, of course, locked away in a box on a high shelf where Maura’s prying fingers couldn’t reach it.

“Callahan? You home?” I relaxed. It was all right. The intruder was Mac. Only Mac.

“Be out in a minute,” I called, pulling a heavy cable-knit sweater over my head.

I met him in the living room, put my arms around his waist, tilted my head back, and took a good long look.

“What?” He was amused. Gave me a nice long kiss. “Have I got spinach in my teeth? Spaghetti sauce in my beard?”

“Nope,” I said. “I missed you. That’s all. Just want to make sure you’re still the same.”

He was. I’ve always been glad Andrew MacAuliffe came into my life when he was already in his mid-forties, ten years older than I. I’d grown tired of men who were fixer-uppers, or worse, merely boys—big immature babies wearing grown-up clothes.

Mac was no handyman’s special. I liked him the minute we met. I liked his bushy silver beard and wavy gray hair, the blue-gray eyes with deep laugh crinkles at the corners. I liked his chapped, weather-beaten hands and the way he looked in a good dark business suit, and the way he looked, even better, bare-chested, wrapped in a towel just coming out of the shower.

“I missed you too,” he said, kissing me again, as if to prove it. “Didn’t Edna tell you I called last night? I waited up till midnight, thinking you might call back.”

“Last night? Oh, God. You didn’t hear about Bucky?”

“I saw it this morning in the
Constitution. I
picked up the
paper at the airport when I got in. I’m so sorry, babe. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

My eyes brimmed with tears. I nodded. “The doctor, this one know-it-all, he says it’s really bad. That Bucky won’t make it. There’s a lot of brain damage, they say. But Mac, last night, right after it happened, Bucky opened his eyes. He looked right at me. And he talked. He knew it was me. He asked me, ‘What’s happening?’ So it can’t be as bad as they say, can it?”

Mac knew what I wanted to hear, but unlike me, he’s a terrible liar.

“I don’t know, Callahan,” he said slowly. “Two bullets lodged in the brain? And I heard somewhere that the smaller bullets do more damage than bigger ones. But maybe you’re right. Weirder things have happened.”

For the first time he noticed the heavy sweater. “You going out?”

“Back to the liquor store,” I said. “The Budget Bottle Shop. Last night, everything was a blur. It all happened so fast. I can’t make sense of anything. So I need to go back, try to process it all.”

He frowned. “Why? It’s a police investigation, Callahan. Let them work it. They’ve got the equipment, the manpower, everything. You told me before, if a cop gets hurt or killed in the line of duty, nobody rests until the perp is brought in.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “The cops are already trying to say Bucky was involved in something that got him shot. Some sort of bogus robbery spree. I was there, Mac. It’s a crock of shit. Bucky would never have gotten mixed up in something like that. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have brought me along for the ride. He knows me better than that.”

Mac shook his head, put his jacket on again.

“You going home?” I asked.

“I’m going to the liquor store. With you.”

“You haven’t asked me how it went in Nashville.”

I looked at him sideways. We were stopped at a light. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

Mac and I have had our ups and downs over the years. We’d split up once, for a year, after he’d admitted having a one-night fling with his ex-wife. But the past few years things had smoothed out. We live in separate houses in separate parts of Atlanta, coming together when we want to, staying apart when we need to. We’d gotten mellow and really good together.

The previous Friday, while we were having dinner in his cabin in the woods north of town, I’d gotten blindsided.

“Got a call today,” he said slowly. He sat back in his chair and his blue eyes were watching me closely.

“Yeah?”

“You ever been to Nashville?”

“I went to Opryland once. Drove past Johnny Cash’s house. Saw Tanya Tucker buying a cherry Slurpee at a convenience store off the Briley Parkway.”

“I’m going to Nashville on Monday,” he told me. “Thought maybe you could ride up there with me.”

“Didn’t they close Opryland?”

“Just the theme park. Actually, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about interviewing for a job.”

“In Nashville?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. He needed a haircut. “In Nashville. They’ve just created a new position, metro planning and zoning manager. A guy called me about it this morning. They’ve been quietly checking me out. Want me to come up and talk to the commissioners who do the hiring.”

“You’ve already got a job,” I pointed out, feeling dread, panic, alarm.

“I’m a political football in Atlanta,” Mac said. “We’re strictly an advisory board at the Atlanta Regional Commission. Developers and politicians are gonna pave this town over, and I’m starting to think there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it.”

“You can. You do,” I said. “You stopped that mega-mall from coming in down in Henry County.”

“They’re going to move it to Cherokee County,” Mac pointed out. “The county commission chairman’s got four
hundred acres for sale just outside Canton. It’s the same old thing. Nashville’s different. They’ve rewritten the county charter, given some real teeth to zoning and land-planning ordinances.”

I poured myself another glass of wine. I was drinking Chardonnay. The red stuff gives me a rash.

“What do you say?” he asked, leaning forward.

“I think I’m never setting foot in that mall in Cherokee County,” I said, feeling my cheeks get hot.

“About Nashville. About me moving there. About you going with me.”

I swallowed. “You want me to leave Atlanta.” It was a fact, not a question.

“I want you to go with me. Just think about it, will you? If you go up there with me Monday, you could drive around, look at some neighborhoods, kind of get the feel of the place.”

I drank my Chardonnay and a whole glass of water, then I helped myself to his red wine. Rash be damned.

“I’ve lived in Atlanta my whole life,” I said feebly.

“Me, too,” Mac said. He reached over and took my hand. “It’s not Katmandu, you know. Nashville’s what? Five, six hours up the road?”

“That’s a long way,” I said. “What about the dogs?”

“Rufus and Maybelline aren’t particular about where they live, as long as there’s trees to pee on and a bone to chew.”

“What about Edna? I can’t just move off and leave her.”

“She’d come with us,” Mac said, like he’d planned out the whole thing. “We’ll get a place with a mother-in-law’s suite. Like an apartment. She’d love it. You know she’s crazy about country music. Every time I come in the house she’s watching TNN.”

“She’s crazy about the cable network, not the town,” I said. “You’ll never get Edna to move. Not again. I don’t believe dynamite could get her out of this house.”

“Why don’t we ask her?” Mac said. He got up and came around the table and started kissing my neck. He can be very persuasive that way. We never did finish dinner. Just before I
fell asleep, he snuggled up to me again and whispered in my ear. “Just think about it. Okay?”

Come Monday, I begged off the trip to Nashville. Too much stuff going on with the House Mouse was the reason I gave. I’d thrown some things in a suitcase, made some halfhearted notes to Edna about what needed doing, but when Mac pulled into the driveway in his Blazer, my stomach knotted up and I thought I’d puke.

I met him at the door, shaking my head. I think he halfway expected me to wimp out.

“What now?” He was matter of fact, not angry.

“Big charity fund-raiser at Bettye Bond’s house this Saturday. She wants the place hosed down, attic to cellar. The place is nine thousand square feet. There’s no way the girls can handle it without me.”

He kissed the tip of my nose. “But you’re still thinking about it—right?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Did you mention it to Edna?”

“Not yet.”

“Coward. I’ll be back Thursday,” he promised. “Talk to Edna, will you?”

“They offered me the job,” Mac said quietly.

“Why wouldn’t they? You’re the best there is.”

“Did you talk to Edna about it?”

I bit my lip. “There wasn’t time. We’ve been so busy, and then with what’s happened to Bucky …”

I looked over at him pleadingly. “You didn’t say yes, did you?”

“Not yet,” Mac said. “They have to take a formal vote at their public hearing next month. But as far as they’re concerned, the job’s mine if I want it.”

“I guess the question is, do you want it?”

He kept his eyes on the road. “I want the job. But I don’t want to go to Nashville alone. I want you and Edna to go with me.”

“Your job,” I said, feeling my throat tighten. “We keep talking about your job. You seem to forget I have a business here. Remember? The House Mouse? And what about the girls? And my clients? I can’t just walk away from all that, Mac.”

“You could sell the House Mouse. It’s a going concern. You could start a new business in Nashville. Anything you want. Or just stay home for a while. You wouldn’t have to work. I’ll be making enough money.”

“Forget it,” I said quickly. “I don’t need a meal ticket.”

He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Is that all I am to you? A meal ticket? I thought this was the year we were going to seriously consider the future.”

The future. Here it was again. We kept bumping into it. For years, Mac and I have danced around the issue of marriage, wanting to be together, yet each of us stubbornly insisting on maintaining our own homes. We’d never been able to come up with a suitable compromise, other than living apart most of the time. But now he was trying to weight our seesaw existence in his favor—all the way to Nashville, Tennessee.

“This is the year we consider the future,” I said. “But it’s only March. Don’t rush me—okay? Anyway, is Nashville our only option? Couldn’t you find something better right here in Atlanta? I mean, for God’s sake, the paper is full of jobs. All the time. We’re the friggin’ capital of the New South, Mac. There must be something right here that’s at least as good as Nashville.”

“Not so far,” Mac said. He pointed off to his right at the strip shopping center. Two cop cruisers were parked in front of the Budget Bottle Shop.

“Is this the place?”

“This is it,” I said.

We sat in the parked car for five minutes while I got busy with my pencil and legal pad, sketching the layout of the shopping center.

“That’s the worst drawing I’ve ever seen,” Mac said, leaning over my shoulder. “Rufus could draw better than that.”

I gave him the pad. “Here, Mr. Engineer, you do it.”

He started sketching. His lines were straight, and as far as I could tell, they were even to scale.

I got my purse and opened the car door. “You going in?” he asked. He didn’t look happy about it.

I pointed at the police cars. “Couldn’t be safer. Now. Relax. I’m just going to look around, pick up a few things we need.”

Mac handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “As long as you’re shopping, I’m out of Jack Daniels. Black label, of course.”

“Of course.”

The bell jangled as I pushed open the heavy plate-glass door. Two uniformed cops leaned against the front counter, chatting with a man behind the Plexiglas cage. They gave me a careful look, then, apparently deciding I was harmless, they went back to their discussion, which seemed to revolve around a basketball game in progress on a small portable TV perched on the counter.

I stood in the middle of the store, looking down at the linoleum. No trace of the blood or broken beer bottles that had littered it the night before. I stood in front of the whiskey section, looking for Jack Daniels. Rather, I looked like I was looking for Jack Daniels. Instead, I was trying to memorize the store. How the rows of dusty bottles were arranged, where the doors were, how high the front window reached to the ceiling.

The stockroom door was located right next to the gin department. I ran a finger over the bottles of Beefeaters and Tanqueray.

“Excuse me,” I said, stepping in front of the counter. The cops looked up, surprised. So did the man behind the Plexiglas shield. It was the owner, Pete Viatkos, the guy I’d seen at the emergency room the night before. He wore a loose black sport shirt and wrinkled khaki slacks and was smoking a cigarillo.

“Is there a bathroom I could use?”

Viatkos frowned. “No public bathroom. Sorry.”

I did a desperate little dance. “Please,” I whispered, “just for a minute.”

Viatkos shook his head again. “My insurance,” he said. “Not allowed.”

One of the cops took pity on me. “What about if I stand outside?” he asked. “That’d be okay, wouldn’t it, Pete?” He gave me a sympathetic smile.

“Just like my wife. She can’t go nowhere she doesn’t have to use the john.”

Viatkos shrugged. He put one hand under the counter and I heard a buzzer sound.

The cop opened the stockroom door and stepped aside to let me pass.

The back room was unheated and dimly lit. The walls were of unpainted concrete block. Stacks of liquor crates lined the walls. A small forklift was parked in the far corner near a heavy metal door. The door to the alley? The cop pointed to an open door.