The Boy With The Painful Tattoo: Holmes & Moriarity 3 (6 page)

“You must admit that’s not an easy message to leave on voice mail.”

More spluttering. He wasn’t usually so inarticulate. I deduced he was short on sleep and probably hungover from discussing fine literature into the wee hours.

“Well, why the hell didn’t you call
me
?” I demanded. My own grievances kicking in.

“I did! I phoned
the house
four times. Because you never answer your goddamned cell phone. You never even have it on.”

“Well, I
did
have it on.”

“I had to hear from Izzie Jones that you found a body. In our
home
!”

“In a moving crate, but yes.”

“And I called your cell. How do you think we’re talking right now? You sure as hell didn’t call me. I must have phoned you six times last night. If your goddamned cell was on how could you not pick up? I was starting to think something happened to you.”

There was a note in his voice… I realized this was about him being scared not about him being inconvenienced.

I automatically clicked over to check if he had left messages and, not being all that familiar with my cell phone—as J.X. would have been the first to point out—disconnected the call.

Chapter Four

“O
h
shit
.”

Worse yet, J.X. had called
eight
times last night. I stared in horror at that long list of missed calls, panicked, and began scrolling through contacts for his number. Somehow the damn phone had scooped up all the names and addresses from my email and dumped them into my contacts list. When had that happened?
How
had that happened? Everyone I had ever emailed seemed to be listed as a contact.

“No, no. Please, please. Where
are
you—”

The phone vibrated again, nearly jumping out of my hand with the ferocity of that ring. Or maybe it was just that my palms were starting to sweat. A lot. In fact, my glasses were fogging. I think my eyeballs were sweating too.

I clicked to answer. “Sorry,” I gulped. “Sorry about that.”

I could hear him heavy-breathing on the other end. But those years of police training stood him in good stead.

“Kit.” He got the syllable out with great control.

“I know. God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hang up on you. This time. Yesterday I was mad, I admit it. But just now, that was an accident. And if I’d heard the phone last night, I’d have answered. I have the damned thing on vibrate, and I guess I didn’t hear the first…few times you called. I took a sleeping pill.”

And slept like a baby, but it didn’t seem tactful to mention it.

“Look, I’m going to try and get a flight back this afternoon.”

Yes. I felt weak with relief. That was
exactly
what I felt he should do. No way should I have to be dealing with this myself.

But contrariwise, dealing with what? I’d had an unpleasant experience, yes, but it was all over now except for the shouting. And we’d nearly finished the shouting. In fact, all that was left was fumigating the basement. What was J.X. going to do other than lend moral support? It wasn’t like I was involved in an actual murder investigation, and even if I had been, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been through
that
a time or two before. The police didn’t really think I was involved, and dragging J.X. away from his conference was just…cowardly.

I said sturdily, “No. Come on. There’s no need for that.”

“No need? You found a body in our house!”

“In a moving crate. It doesn’t have anything to do with us. You’re at the convention for a reason, right? So let’s stick to the plan. You come home on Monday after the signing at Cloak and Dagger.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. I’m not. I’m serious. And sober. Which right there should tell you something. Because I wasn’t last night.”

“I don’t feel right about this, Kit. I feel like I need to be there.”

“Now listen. You’re the one who said it was important for you to attend this conference. So if it was important yesterday, it’s still important today, right?”

“It’s not more important than you.”

It was the way he said it. So staunch and unhesitating, like he’d never have to think twice about it. Not a compliment, not making nice after a spat, just the way J.X. saw it. It was unexpected and it closed my throat for a second.

“Well, okay,” I said gruffly. “But it’s not either or. I grant you, I was kind of freaked out yesterday. But I had a good night’s sleep and I’m okay. Seriously. It was just a gruesome coincidence. It’s over and done and you should carefully consider how much you’ll regret the decision to come home once you’re stuck with unpacking two hundred boxes of books.”

He made a semi-amused sound, but his voice was still troubled as he said, “It’s your call, I guess. I do have a couple of meetings set up with my agent, and my editor, and my publicist and some power bloggers. I don’t want to miss them if I don’t have to. But—”

“But nothing. It’s fine. I wouldn’t say it, if I didn’t mean it. Right?”

He said honestly, “I’m not sure. I think you might.”

That made me laugh. “Call me tonight. Okay? I promise to take your calls from now on.”

“All right. But if something happens—”

“What else could happen? A major earthquake followed by raging fire? Wait. I’m in San Francisco now. Forget I said that.”

J.X.’s laugh was more natural that time. “At least we know our house managed to survive the last major earthquake followed by raging fire. Okay. Then if you’re really sure about this, I’ll talk to you tonight.”

I started to click off, but he hadn’t disconnected yet, seemed to be waiting for something, and I realized I couldn’t leave things the way they were. Or the way they weren’t.

“J.X.?”

“Yes?” He sounded a little wary.

“Look. What I said yesterday. I shouldn’t have. It was uncalled for. And I definitely shouldn’t have hung up on you.”

J.X. drew a sharp breath and I knew my instinct had been right. “It’s my fault. I pushed too hard. It’s just that I want us…”

“I want us too,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but I knew in that moment I wanted it to be true.

“I want us to be a family, want you to be part of the rest of my family. I know you think they don’t accept you, don’t like you, but it’s just they don’t know you yet.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“And I honestly really feel like this is the perfect opportunity for you. It’s a chance to get to know Nina and Gage without me around, to do something for them, to wi—” He caught himself.

“Win them over?” I asked.

“To bond with them.”

“Mmhm.” I called upon my inner resources. Surely I still had some vital elements left? A little sodium. Probably some sulfur. “Does she, Nina, still need…something?”

“Maybe if you could call her and ask? If you could just make that first gesture, Kit.”

I closed my eyes. Opened them. “What’s her number again?”

I felt worse after I listened to J.X.’s progressively worried and angry messages.

He’d had a couple of drinks by the last one, placed at 1:15 in the morning. It got a little confessional in tone and I turned cold listening to it. “Kit, if you’re deliberately not taking my calls, if you’re this childish, this selfish, this heartless… I don’t know where we go from here.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t see it from his perspective. I did. After an afternoon of phone calls, I didn’t blame him for being upset. He’d stayed calm a lot longer than I would have. But that peek into his uncensored brain made it clear he too realized there was a good chance things weren’t going to work out for us, that the idea of it not working out was already in his mind, and in some corner of his heart he was already preparing for it.

And since I was already preparing to prepare for it too, I’m not sure why it made me so sad. But it did. It was like someone cut my lifeline. I sat on the edge of the unmade bed in my hotel room and I replayed the message a couple of times, and on each replay J.X. sounded more tired and more…done.

I deleted his messages, wiped my eyes, and used the hotel phone to call down for breakfast, which arrived as I was shaving.

The Fairmont did not let me down. Breakfast consisted of the house granola—almonds, mixed oats, seeds, vanilla yogurt, and fruit compote—coffee, juice and an omelet of free range eggs, smoked chicken sausage and cheddar cheese. Having waived the temptations of pastries, cappuccino, and breakfast potatoes, I felt quite virtuous as I nerved myself to call Nina.

She answered on the third ring, just as I was starting to hope my call would go safely to message.

“Hello?” She sounded soft and sleepy at ten in the morning, which was unlikely for a young woman with a small child to care for.

I said briskly, “Hi, Nina. This is Christopher. J.X.’s, um. J.X. got your call, but he’s out of town right now and he asked me to contact you.”
Contact you?
That certainly sounded businesslike. I tried to sound less like a coworker and more like a caring family member. “Is everything okay? Do you need something?”

Please say no. Please have mercy.

“J.X. is out of town?”

“Yes, he’s in Las Vegas at a mystery fiction convention. But I’m here getting the house ready, so if you need something…”

There was a pause and she said, “My ring went down the sink.”

“Your ring?”

“My wedding ring.”

Oh right.
That
ring. “That’s… Did you call a plumber?”

She said tearfully, “I don’t have money for a plumber! I don’t even know who to call. J.X. always handles this kind of thing.”

Of course. Of course he did. Because he was a glutton for punishment. Which was how we got together in the first place.

“Do you want me to…?”

She said nothing to fill my awkward pause.

“Should I come over there?” I asked, and if she couldn’t hear the reluctance dragging on every word I spoke, she was tone deaf.

Nina said with equal reluctance, “If J.X. isn’t there, I guess you have to.” Which was about as faulty reasoning as it got, but I was not moderating her debate performance, I was bonding with her. And so far it was going brilliantly.

You know what? Fine. What the hell ever. I couldn’t go back to Chestnut Lane till the police sounded the All Clear, and I didn’t want to sit in a hotel room—even a nice hotel room—reading about parasites and professors and people who hated their parents. I said, “Okay. Sure. What’s the address?”

They say when you marry someone, you also marry their family.

For me and David that had been irrelevant. I liked my family—when taken at the required minimum dosage—whereas he didn’t get along with his relatives at all. So there was never any hassle of trying to split holidays fairly or making time for monthly visits to the in-laws.

J.X., however, was part of a closely-knit family. He spent holidays with his kinfolk and even visited them between official three-day weekends. He was crazy about his nephew and made the effort to see him a couple of times a week.

All of which I liked and respected about him. So long as it didn’t involve me.

But it did involve me now.

And I honestly wasn’t sure how that was going to work out.

It took me forever to find the house. I got lost twice trying to locate Capitol Avenue. And then I got lost again trying to find a place to park. But eventually I arrived at a small, stucco Spanish/Mediterranean home with an attached one-car garage—that alone put the property beyond price in this parking hell of a city.

There was a security screen in front of the heavy dark wood door and an even more powerful protective measure behind the heavy dark wood door: Laura Moriarity—J.X.’s mother. I deduced Nina had rung her up in a panic after talking to me. Was Laura supposed to be chaperone or moral support or simply outside observer?

Whichever, whatever, the sight of her triggered my own panic attack, which as usual resulted in the immediate flapping of my mouth. “Somebody call a plumber?” I asked brightly. I don’t do “brightly” very well, so it mostly sounded desperate. Less like a question and more like a plugged-up sink crying for a doctor.

“Mr. Holmes,” Laura said forbiddingly. She was a tall and chilly blue-eyed blonde. Castilian Spanish, according to J.X. who got his own warm coloring from his “Black Irish” father. If Laura ever got tired of terrorizing in-laws, she could always find work as a butler, scaring tradesman away from the front entrance of Persnickety Manor.

“Mrs. Moriarity. I understand there’s a plumbing emergency.” Now I sounded equally grave. The specialist flown in from Zurich for consultation.
Code Blue! Code Blue! Find me a plunger STAT!

Without wasting time on chitchat, she led the way into the house. I had a quick impression of tidy, sunny rooms and hardwood floors. Nothing fancy but well-kept and cozy. There were several framed photos of a handsome, young, blond man in military uniform.

Nina was waiting in the den. There were toys at her feet, but I assumed they were not hers. She did look very young. Small and plump and pretty. She had big brown eyes and shiny dark hair. She rose as I followed Laura into the room, gazing up at me with eyes as wide and worried as something caught in a trap.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied.

I waited, but it did not seem to be a through street. I reversed and turned to Laura. Nina might be genuinely helpless, but Laura wasn’t. I wondered why she hadn’t simply summoned a plumber herself. Why again was I here?

Laura met my gaze coolly. In fact, they both seemed to be watching me with an expectancy that reminded me of lionesses contemplating zebras at a watering hole.

“So you lost your ring down the sink?” I prompted, turning back to Nina. “Which sink?”

“The bathroom. The main bathroom.”

“Would you like me to call someone?”

“J.X. just usually takes care of it himself.”

“It’s happened before?”

“Twice.” She looked sadly down at her bare left hand. “My ring is a little big. He bought it when I was pregnant.”