Polkacide (27 page)

On the other hand, my
imagination kept conjuring up
other
reasons that
weren't
so good. What if my worst
fears about Peg were true, and she
had
killed Eddie Sr.? What if Eddie
Jr. knew she'd done it and had followed her back here? Or what if
they were working
together
? He'd had major issues with
his old man for as far back as I could remember, hadn't
he?

I shook my head hard to
banish the paranoia...but I couldn't quite clear it all out. These
days, it seemed like
any
awful suspicion might come true.

So when I set foot on the front porch,
I took care to step lightly. Whoever was inside the house must have
heard me pull up, but I thought it'd be best to keep the rest of my
approach as quiet as possible.

Just in case.

The porch floorboards squeaked as I
walked across them. I winced, but there was nothing I could do
about it.

My heart jackhammered in my
chest as I reached for the handle of the screen door. Should I hit
the doorbell or knock? Either way would tip off anyone inside who
might be looking to do me harm.

I pulled my hand away and stood there
a moment. Maybe I shouldn't go inside at all; maybe it would be
smarter to call the cops. After all, Otto had said he wanted to
talk to Peg.

But what if the cops
arrested Peg and filed trumped up charges because they couldn't
find someone else to blame? Or what if Peg
had
done it, but the murder had been
justified because Eddie Sr. had killed my father? In that case, I'd
want Peg to go free, but that wouldn't be an option if the cops
were in the picture.

So I decided to go in alone,
after all. I might be putting myself in grave danger, but I thought
the odds were on my side. I doubted anyone in that house would want
to hurt me.

Unless, of course,
someone
other
than
Peg and Eddie Jr. was in there, too.

I was shaking a little as I
opened the screen door and stepped forward. My hand closed on the
knob of the inner door, and I hesitated; if the door was locked,
I'd have to go around back and see if I could get in that
way.

Luckily, the knob turned
freely. I heard the latch slide clear of the jamb, and the door
moved inward when I pushed.

Should I call out as I entered? Given
the circumstances, I thought it'd be better to keep my mouth
shut.

Especially since things
did
not
look
reassuring when I stepped inside. The living room was a disaster
area; the place looked like it had been turned upside down by
burglars.

So much for a trouble-free
visit. Maybe my paranoia had been on the money, after
all.

As I looked around the
ransacked room, the hairs on the back of my neck jumped to
attention. My stomach twisted, and my heart beat faster than ever.
If someone could tear the place apart like that, maybe they'd do
the same thing to me.

The sofa cushions were on
the floor, and the sofa was overturned. The black leather recliner
was on its side with the footrest cranked out. All the pictures and
plaques were down off the walls and taken apart. The bookshelves
were empty, the books and knick-knacks strewn around the room.
Someone had even disassembled the TV set, leaving the picture tube,
parts, and cabinet scattered on the floor.

I had to be careful not to
step on anything as I moved further into the room. There were CDs
and DVDs everywhere; disks and cases had been pulled apart and
tossed. Lamps and light bulbs lay on the floor, too, separated but
not broken. The pages of a family photo album had been pitched in a
corner; I saw a shot of myself as a little girl of five or six,
posing prettily in a pink dress with a big white bow.

Wandering onward through the
debris, I wondered what had happened here. Why would Peg or Eddie
Jr. ransack Dad's house? If they weren't responsible for the mess,
who was, and why?

Veering right, I stepped
over pieces of the stereo system and peered through the doorway
into the dining room. It was just as bad as the living room. The
table and chairs had all been upended, every drawer pulled free of
the hutch and dumped. The china cupboard had been emptied, the
china stacked haphazardly on the floor. Someone had taken down the
crystal chandelier and pried the base from the ceiling, exposing
the electrical box in its crater in the drywall.

I was about to walk into the
dining room for a closer look when I heard a creaking noise
somewhere behind me. Muscles tensed, adrenaline burning through my
bloodstream, I spun around.

Whoever was back there, I
couldn't see them yet. I guessed they were still in the hallway on
the other side of the door in the back wall. Meaning I still had a
moment to get ready.

Keeping my ears peeled for
the next telltale sound, I scanned the wreckage for a weapon. The
best I could find was the brass pedestal of an upright lamp. It was
five feet long from tip to base, and I scooped it up with both
hands as quietly as I could.

Then, I slowly wove my way through the
mess toward the front door. Better to have the way out close behind
if I didn't like whoever popped out of that hallway.

Unfortunately, before I made
it to the exit, I slipped on one of the loose CDs and stumbled
backward. The base of the pedestal lamp pitched around and crashed
into an overturned end table, shattering its glass
surface.

At which point, the hallway
door swung open.

Heart pounding, I whipped
the lamp around in front of me like a lance. My knuckles were white
as I gripped the brass pole, bracing myself to lunge it at an
attacker.

Unfortunately, the lamp
stand wouldn't do much good against the big .45 handgun that was
pointing around the edge of the door, staring me in the
face.

Chapter 40

My blood went suddenly cold. Time
seemed to slow down. All I could see was the barrel of the .45,
pointing in my direction.

My situation did not look
good. Gun versus pole wasn't much of a contest.

I thought about taking a
shot with the pole, anyway. This could be the last chance I'd get
to fight back. Maybe I still had enough surprise on my side to
knock the .45 out of the picture.

I tensed, gathering my
courage, getting ready to swing. No way was I going to make it easy
for them; I'd give them a fight to remember, in honor of Polish Lou
and Eddie Kubiak, Sr.

Sucking in a deep breath, I
prepared to leap into action. Then, just as I was ready to go, a
face bobbed out from behind the door. And back.

Then out again. And I
froze.

"
Lottie
?" It was Peg. She was staring
at me as if I'd grown a second head.

Now the question was, would she put
down the gun?

"Oh my God." The answer was
yes. She lowered it instantly and walked out in full view. "I
thought you were...
not
you
."

"Same here." I lowered the
lamp stand, but was still suspicious. The situation wasn't anywhere
near clear to me yet. "So what's up?"

Peg shrugged. "Good
question."

"What's with all this?" I gestured to
indicate the mess around me. "Earthquake?"

"We're looking for
something." Peg adjusted her polka dot glasses with her gun hand.
"Something important."

"We?" I frowned.

Peg looked outside and waved for
someone to come in. Footsteps crossed the front porch, the latch on
the screen door snapped open...

And Eddie Jr. walked in,
grinning. "Hey there, Lot." Also carrying a silver aluminum
baseball bat.

The two of them had had me
cornered all along. Peg had had me covered from inside the house,
and Eddie Jr. had boxed me in from outside. Good thing I hadn't
needed to make a run for it.

"We searched the place all night." Peg
looked around at the wreckage. "Every nook and cranny."

"As you can see." Eddie Jr.
nodded at the mess like he was proud of it.

My heart broke a little to see him
smiling like that.

How could I tell him about his father?
"What were you searching for?"

"Eddie knew more than he let
on about Lou and Eddie Sr.'s reunion." Peg aimed a disapproving
stare in Eddie Jr.'s direction. "They did more than
talk
about playing
together."

"They
recorded
together." Eddie Jr. thumped
the baseball bat on the floor. "The Polish Princes cut a new
song
."

"And kept it secret even
from
me
." Peg
scowled.

"They wanted it to be a huge
surprise," said Eddie Jr. "Lou hid the master disk and swore he
wouldn't make any copies till right before Polkapourri."

"Typical Lou, always the
showman." Peg sighed. "But he died without telling anyone where the
master disk is."

"Not even Dad." Eddie Jr.
thumped the bat on the floor again. "Which I guess is one reason
why he's been so messed up."

"Eddie..." The mention of
his father spurred me to break the bad news. "I need to tell
you..."

But Peg cut me off. "So
guess who I found tearing the place apart when I came home early
last night?" She hiked a thumb at Eddie Jr.

He shrugged. "She scared the
crap out of me. I didn't expect her back so soon."

Peg shook the barrel of the gun at
him. "You were supposed to be out looking for your father, who was
supposed to be missing."

"I fibbed." Eddie Jr.
smirked. "I wanted to find that
disk
. It's worth a small
fortune
."

Peg met my gaze. "It might even be
worth killing over."

So that was why she'd been
looking so hard for it. She thought it might be a clue to Lou's
murder. At least, that was what she'd implied.

"So I decided to join forces
with Eddie." Peg's afro wobbled as she nodded. "Two people can
search faster than one."

"But not necessarily with
twice the luck." Eddie let out a deep sigh. "We've got nothing.
That disk isn't here."

"That's too bad." I took a
deep breath and let it out with a shiver. I'd waited long enough to
deliver the news; the guilt of holding it back from him was making
me sick to my stomach. "Eddie, listen."

"You want to help?" he asked me.
"Three people can search even better than two. Maybe you know some
secret hiding places from when you used to live here."

"What about the shed out
back?" said Peg. "We were just getting started on that."

"I still say the cellar
could use another check." Eddie Jr. bumped the bat on the floor
three times. "Some of those cinder blocks looked a
little..."

"Eddie." As I said it, I
walked toward him through the debris. "Listen to me." I put my hand
on his shoulder and gazed into his eyes.

He looked a little startled. "About
what, Lot?"

I hesitated on the verge of
crossing the line. Once I told him, his life would never be the
same. And he would always remember that I was the one who'd brought
him the news. He would always associate me with this
moment.

I knew exactly how it felt to be in
his shoes.

"Lot?" He blinked
expectantly.

"I have something to tell you." I
squeezed his shoulder. "It's about your father."

Chapter 41

Peg and I both offered to
drive Eddie Jr. to the police station, but he insisted on driving
himself. He certainly seemed to be fit for the road, in spite of
the fact that he'd just found out his father was dead. He didn't
exactly look upbeat, but he wasn't shaking or crying, either. From
what we could see, he was totally keeping it together.

On the outside, that is. I
was sure the view from inside was more like the inside of Dad's
house--nothing but wreckage. Everything overturned and torn apart
as if by a combination earthquake and windstorm. Fields of
devastation kicked up in a fruitless hunt for one irreplaceable
thing. Only, in this case, the thing was not a
recording.

It was a man.

But we couldn't stop him
from leaving, so we let him go. We moved our cars, and he pulled
out carefully...but we heard his tires squeal down the block, when
he'd driven the pickup out of sight. I prayed he wouldn't wrap it
around a utility pole.

When he was gone, Peg and I
sat on the front porch glider and stared into space. We didn't say
anything for a while; it took that long for me to settle down after
everything that had happened.

"So." Finally, Peg broke the
silence. "Eddie Sr. wasn't the killer after all."

I slumped down into the foam
cushions and folded my hands on top of my head, leaving my elbows
sticking out. "Poor Eddie Jr. He and his dad didn't get along, but
still..."