Motion for Murder (5 page)

 Since I hadn't been grocery shopping since the Bush administration and hadn't inherited the Winters women's genetic ability to create culinary masterpieces from a can of peas and chicken broth, I hadn't cooked dinner for myself. I'd been lounging around on the deck hoping Curt wasn't working overtime. He usually brought home Chinese takeout on Mondays, and I don't like to eat any later than seven o'clock.

He rolled in about six-fifteen carrying a brown paper bag and wearing his uniform, which stretched nicely across shoulders well developed from hard days spent tossing fragile packages haphazardly onto porches. Not that I noticed that sort of thing. The uniform, I mean. I was too busy noticing the Good Luck Wok logo on the bag. He spotted me as he came around the corner of the house and was smiling before he reached the deck.

"Hello, dear," I said. "How was your day?"

He held out the bag. "Got caught in the middle of a high speed chase during a hostage crisis. Same old, same old."

I blinked. "Really?"

"Nah. I got a speeding ticket." He tipped his head toward the bag. "Garlic beef. Kung pao chicken. Take your pick."

I arranged the little cardboard containers on the table. "You'll make a fine husband some day."

His eyes narrowed. "And you'll make a lousy wife. When are you gonna learn how to cook?"

"I can cook." I tore the lid off the egg drop soup.

He raised an eyebrow. "Cap'n Crunch isn't cooking."

Damn. "Besides, I have no intention of getting married. I'm leaving that madness to my sister." I dug the plastic utensils out of the bag.

"Madness is such an ugly word. Can't we just say insanity?"

I shoveled a few spoonfuls of soup into my mouth and sighed with bliss. "We can say anything you want, as long as this keeps coming home with you."

He chose the beef, and I had the chicken. We ate in silence for a few minutes while the day slid into night, and lightning bugs began flashing out in the yard. Curt got up and lit the citronella candles scattered along the deck railing. Even covered up in a uniform, he looked like an athlete, and he was. Every day he ran three miles and practiced aikido for a half hour while I sat upstairs and tried to contort my limbs into pretzels for five minutes before calling it a day. I had a lot to learn about persistence.

When we were finished, Curt took the leftovers inside. When he came back five minutes later, he was wearing shorts and carrying two beers. I took the beer and refused to gawk at his legs as we moved over to the loungers. I only took a peek or two.

"So what's the latest at Parker, Dennis, and Heath?" he asked. He always asked me that, although like most people, Curt couldn't abide lawyers and had developed a particular dislike for Dougie Digits. Probably it was based on my slightly biased office gossip, but he'd also run into Dougie a few times and had come away unimpressed. Dougie had that effect on a lot of people. His wardrobe had a better reputation than his legal acumen.

"Funny you should ask." I held out my bottle. He twisted the cap off and handed it back. "A client with a gun came in this morning looking for Dougie."

Curt gave me a sharp look. "You don't say."

"He forgot to load it."

"Now that's a shame." He took a long pull on his beer.

I gave him a sidelong look. "Aren't you going to ask his name?"

"Nope."

"You know I was in grave danger," I said.

"Were you?"

I studied the label on my bottle. "Well, I could've been."

"Why don't you quit that place? Find a job where people with guns aren't coming after you."

"Technically, he wasn't after me," I said.

"Technically, you could still be dead," Curt said, and I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so we let the silence hang over us while we drank half our beers.

My mind was flitting from one topic to the next like a moth around a light, and suddenly it settled on Friday. "Hey, how'd you like to come to my parents' for dinner on Friday?"

His look made me squirm. "Are you asking me out on a date?"

"Of course not." My cheeks felt warm. "I need a buffer is all. My sister will be there, too, and my mother invited Frankie Ritter."

"Ah." Curt nodded. "The blond hair."

Okay, so I'd divulged a few family secrets. It had been purely in the interest of finding a husband for Sherri. "She's making meatloaf," I said. "She makes a terrific meatloaf. One of the best meatloafs I've
"

"As long as it's not a date," he said.

"No date," I assured him. "I'll even get my mom to pack you a doggy bag."

"There's no need for threats," he said. "I said I'd go. But as long as you're getting things, you should get yourself a better job."

I should have quit while I was ahead. This was starting to feel like a night with my mother.

*  *  *

Curt and I had a deal, and it went something along the lines of him providing dinner and me providing dish-washing services afterward. Not long after this inspired piece of negotiating, I tried to run an end-around by stocking up on paper plates and plastic forks. In response, Curt had cut off the food supply for a week, and that's why I found myself a half hour later standing at his sink, elbow deep in Dawn and garlic sauce.

"So about this guy with the gun," Curt said from his seat at the table, where he was drinking a beer and ogling my backside. Or so I'd thought. I wasn't sure whether I was relieved or disappointed to find out he'd actually been thinking.

"Adam Tiddle." I swatted at an itch on my nose and deposited a soap bubble there that left me cross-eyed. "He's a client of Dougie's."

"Naturally. Did he point this gun at anyone?"

I uncrossed my eyes and looked over my shoulder at him. "Does that matter? He was holding a gun, and he was looking for Dougie. He should be arrested, don't you think?"

"Can't arrest everyone who does that," he said. "Might be easier for you to find another job."

I let out an exasperated sigh. "I don't want to find another job. I like my job—"

"No, you don't."

"—and I work with nice people—"

"No, you don't."

"—and the money's good—"

"No, it isn't."

"—and…" My voice trailed off. I'd run out of new ideas, and the ones I had left weren't very good. Curt sat there with a smug little smile, as if he could read my mind. Lucky for him he was good to look at, because I hated attitude almost as much as I hated washing dishes. I knew he would do some digging, and I knew that he knew that I knew it. That should have been good enough, but it had been a bad week, and I was wound too tightly. "You think I want to quit working and find myself a sugar daddy?" I snapped. "You sound just like my mother."

He smiled, showing irritatingly perfect teeth. "I don't know why you still feel the need to impress your parents. You'll meet a real guy when you stop looking, and then you can trot him home to make them happy."

"You're a real guy," I said, then because I realized how that might sound, I added, "Sort of."

"There's no 'sort of' about it, honey," he said. "I'm as real as it gets. And stop looking at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you," I said. "I'm cursing you silently. And spare me the 'I'll make you glad you're a woman' shtick. I'm not trying to impress my parents—I'm trying to shut them up."

He took a sip of beer and chuckled. "First off, your sister will eventually hook some poor schlub who'll make your parents very happy. Second, I wouldn't waste my time. You'll never be glad you're a woman. And third, what's that on your nose?"

I stuck out my lower lip and blew upward to dislodge the Dawn bubble. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you've got some sort of—"

"Not that," I said. "That crack about womanhood. For your information, I'm perfectly happy to be a woman."

"Sure you are. That explains…that." His gesture encompassed, presumably, my entire body.

I slapped the dishrag down, sending bubbles skidding along the countertop. "What exactly is wrong with me? I'm in perfectly passable shape!"

"I'll have to take your word for it," he said. "Considering I never see your shape."

"Where," I said frostily, "is this conversation going, exactly?"

He shrugged. "You brought it up."

"I certainly did not. First you asked about Adam Tiddle, and then you started talking about the poor schlub my sister is going to drag home. Only one of those things is any of your business. Guess which one?"

"As long as I'm not the poor schlub," he said, "both."

"And I will not indulge your sick fantasies about womanhood," I added.

"Good. Because my fantasies are completely healthy."

I rinsed out the last glass and looked around for the dish towel. Drying wasn't part of the deal, but my hands needed something to do other than wrap around Curt's neck. Also, I didn't want him backing out of dinner at my parents' house. "Just so you know," I began mauling a plate with the towel, "I am perfectly happy to yank on pantyhose and jam my feet into high heels in the name of womanhood."

"Good for you," he said. "Now what's that on your nose?"

"Nothing." I scraped my forearm across my nose until the bubble popped. "You're not planning to be this disagreeable on Friday, are you?"

 "I'm not planning to," he said, "but it seems like a hell of an opportunity."

*  *  *

After Curt and I had called it a night, I went upstairs to my apartment and sat at the kitchen table going through the day's assortment of bills and sales circulars. No inheritance checks or sweepstakes prizes. Plenty of opportunities to invest in retirement homes, Medicare supplemental insurance, and Rascal scooters. Looked like I'd be reporting to work tomorrow.

I sat back and took a look around, wondering what I'd do if I had some money. Not much. Curt had remodeled when he'd moved in, and while my apartment was small, I had new tile in my kitchen and bathroom, and a new wall-to-wall Berber in my living room. The walls were white, the carpet was beige, and the drapes were hand-me-downs from my mother. Maybe I could spruce it up a little, but I didn't see the point. Not when I was driving a junkyard reject. I'd have been safer on roller skates, or so my mother told me. And that pretty much answered the what-would-I-do-with-money question.

Dreaming the improbable dream left me with the inexplicable urge to straighten up, probably attributable to the three bottles of beer I'd had. I'm not much of a drinker, but I am a realist; I considered beer a dietary aid. I wanted to gain a few pounds. Plus my apartment was a mess.

Fortunately, since my place is tiny, straightening up didn't take too long. Pick up the old newspapers, swipe a few surfaces with a dust rag, wash my morning cereal bowl and spoon, and it looked good as new. The Chinese food was long gone, and the effort of cleaning had probably burned up all the beer calories, so I helped myself to a chunky peanut butter sandwich when I was done. Then, because peanut butter went so well with chocolate, I ate two chocolate cupcakes for dessert.

Neither the cleaning nor the chocolate eased my financial worries, so I popped a yoga DVD in the player and hauled out my yoga mat and props. A good half hour of stretching and twisting and bending usually cleared my mind, but for some reason it wasn't working this time. The events at the office—not to mention the idea of Curt's completely healthy fantasies—had left me unable to concentrate, so around ten o'clock, I showered and changed into an oversized T-shirt, unfolded my bed and tucked myself in to watch the news. Since it was the usual glut of murder and mayhem, it didn't take long before I started thinking about the office again. Dougie had created his own mayhem today, and not for the first time. I could understand Ken and Howard's displeasure with Dougie's way of doing business. I could understand Hilary's tantrum, even though for once it had been misguided. I could even understand Donna's wounded pride.

What I couldn't understand was Missy's vengeful attitude. It made me all the more curious about the paper she'd taken from Dougie's desk. I didn't condone snooping and snitching, but I thought I might get into work early and see if I could find that paper in her desk. Assuming she didn't shred it or take it home with her. Which she probably didn't, since her dates with Braxton Malloy, the Wonder Pharmacist, tended to be all-nighters. Then again, there was absolutely no reason for it to mean anything to me, other than that Missy had been acting out of character, so probably I should just mind my own business and roll into work fifteen minutes late like I usually did.

That sounded like the better plan, so I turned my attention back to the TV as the news went off the air and was asleep before the infomercials began.

Adam Tiddle was waiting in his parked car when I got to work the next day. I didn't notice him until he came up behind me while I was looking for my keys. By that time I had nowhere to go. There was a sameness about him that should have been comforting. Same stained shirt
mustard this time
same muck-covered boots, same deranged expression. What was different was the knife. "I couldn't buy bullets," he said when he saw me looking at it. "They wouldn't sell me bullets. This state." He shook his head at the sorrowful condition of a state that refused to sell ammunition to psychopaths. "I figured this was the next best thing."