Extra Credit (21 page)

Twenty-Eight

I took my anger out on Crawford, which wasn’t fair, but I wasn’t thinking straight.

He walked in about an hour after I got home from the hospital. By the time I arrived, Max’s family was gone, and I wasn’t able to reach her on her cell. I had finally gotten through to Fred just a few minutes before Crawford came home, and he filled me in on what had happened. Seems that Marty had decided that he was well enough to go home and, despite Max’s best efforts at getting him back into bed, commenced putting his things together. Whether it was the disagreement with his daughter or something entirely unrelated, nobody knew, but he had suffered a massive stroke that had killed him instantly, all in front of Max. Fred said she was taking it about as well as could be expected, in that she was in bed and not wanting to talk to anyone. I couldn’t help feeling that if I hadn’t been so involved with Christine and the mystery involving her brother and a big wad of cash, I could have been there to help Max as she went through the most painful thing she had ever experienced.

I also couldn’t help feeling that Max felt exactly the same way.

Different emotions kept coming to the fore, but my anger definitely made its presence known. Crawford could practically feel it in the air when he walked into the house, calling my name with a question in his tone that let me know that he knew I hadn’t been happy when we had last been together.

“I know,” he said before I could utter a word.

“You know what?”

“I know about Max’s father. I know that you didn’t get to see him. I know that if you hadn’t gone with Christine to Chick’s apartment, you would have been there for Max,” he said, taking off his jacket and draping it on the back of a kitchen chair. “I know about how annoying this whole situation is and how you didn’t plan on being so immersed in the life of my ex-wife and her family. I know that my kids can be a pain in the ass. I know that my shoes are giant and sometimes you trip over them. And I know that I’m messy and that sometimes I don’t replace the toilet paper,” he said, gravely even though that last admission was designed to lessen the blows of the other ones. “I know it all.”

I couldn’t stay mad at him after that litany of admissions, so I stood and let him take me in his arms, where I let out the sadness and anger that I had been holding in not only this night but since Christine had reappeared, bringing her wacky brothers along for the ride.

“Hey, did you like how Minor kept referring to Chick’s ex as ‘this Sassy person’?” he asked, doing a passable imitation of Minor’s deep voice. “I didn’t think it was a good time to tell him, and you, that her full name is Sassafras.”

I pulled back. “You’re making that up.”

“I wish I was,” he said. “Sassafras Tiffany Du Pris.”

“So it’s not a stage name?” I asked. “Sounds made up what with the French pronunciation and all.
Du Pree
,” I said, affecting my best French accent. “Yep. Made up.”

“Not a stage name, not made up,” he said. “Makes it easy to keep track of her movements in and out of the penal system.”

“Should I care that she’s on the loose and looking for Chick’s money? Maybe she’s the one who poisoned Trixie. Whoever broke in was pretty good—like someone who’s already done time for breaking and entering.”

He thought about that for a minute. “I don’t think so. I doubt she’d come sniffing around here. She’s smart enough to know that we don’t have any claim to the money. Besides, she knows I’m a cop.”

Your point?
I wanted to ask. Having a cop husband hadn’t helped me all that much in the past, but if he wanted to tell himself that his law enforcement background was a deterrent to the wiles of Sassy Du Pris, I had to believe him.

He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “On the other hand, if you see a gal, say, six feet and one-fifty, wandering around the village in stripper heels, I would say that you should be alert to her movements.”

I saluted him. “Gotcha. Good advice.”

He elaborated. “If I know Sassy, and she wasn’t exactly what I’d call complicated, she’s looking for Christine mostly. Christine’s the one with the money. Or so Sassy thinks.”

I wondered how that made him feel, a question he obviously anticipated, judging by his response.

“Which is why I’ve got Greenwich PD on alert and I’ve let Tim know that he should impress upon his wife to set the alarm, keep the doors locked, and just be aware of her surroundings.”

“Do you think Sassy is capable of murder?” I asked again.

Crawford shrugged. “She knocked out her husband’s teeth on their wedding day. That, to me, speaks of a certain propensity for violence, don’t you think?”

“Propensity for violence?” I asked. “Stop getting fancy with vocabulary. It makes me think you’ve been drinking.”

“How about ‘she’s crazy as catshit and I wouldn’t put anything past her’?”

“Better,” I said. “So if she’s that crazy, how come no one is looking for her?”

He raised an eyebrow in my direction.

“They are?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“That I should never doubt you,” I said.

“Everyone in a fifty-mile radius has a picture of Sassy Du Pris.”

“That’s Sassafras to you.”

“She won’t get within ten feet of anyone we know. Trust me.”

“I will.” I had a thought. “Your professional opinion, please. Did Chick commit suicide or get murdered?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at the ceiling. I thought I was going to get something really profound but all he said was “Suicide.”

That’s what I thought.

The weight of Max’s loss suddenly fell on me again. “I have to see Max tomorrow. What does your day look like?”

“What do any of my days look like? Why?”

“I figure I’ll teach and then get over to her apartment or her mother’s house, wherever she is. I just need to know if I should call the dog sitter for an extra walk in the evening.”

“Probably not a bad idea.” He drained his beer and put the bottle next to the sink. “You hungry?”

“More tired than hungry.” I knew the question meant that he was hungry, though. “What do you want to eat?” I pulled my shoes off, holding them above my head lest Trixie get any ideas. “Just don’t say Indian. I can’t stomach the thought of it after being in Chick’s building again.”

He looked at me quizzically, but I didn’t elaborate. I headed upstairs and changed out of my work clothes into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I hoped that by the time I emerged, he would have a plan for dinner and I wouldn’t have to think any more about it. I stifled a little sob when I thought about a man who had taken such good care of me, a man I never got to say good-bye to. I decided that I would try Max’s apartment one more time to see if she felt like talking. Fred answered.

“I know I just called, but…”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Really?”

“Valium.”

That explained it. “Did you tell her that I called?” I asked.

His grunt indicated to me that he had.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” I said, feeling dejected. I found it strange that she didn’t want to talk to me, but as I had learned over the years, Max’s reaction to things were never what I expected or considered normal.

Fred’s phone manners were as decorous as Max’s. He hung up without saying good-bye, leaving me to stare at the phone in my hand.

My inclination was to strip off my clothes and climb under the covers, but downstairs was a very handsome and very hungry man, someone who recognized and freely admitted his own foibles and emotional baggage. Who was I to deny him a chicken parm wedge at his favorite Italian place now that he had come clean? I knew that if push came to shove, he would always help Christine, but getting him to admit that the situation was becoming a needless pain in the butt was a step in the right direction. I would never leave her stranded either, but I needed to vent, and thankfully, he didn’t think me a rotten person for doing so.

He had already walked Trixie when I came down to the kitchen, and she was gnawing happily on a giant bone under the dining room table, her favorite place in the house.

“Ready?” I asked.

We took his car. The backseat was still down, a reminder of when we had taken our very sick dog to the veterinary hospital a few weeks earlier. On top of it lay the bag that Crawford kept in the car to hold a change of clothes and some toiletries—and maybe a framed picture of me? I could only hope. I resisted my natural urge to peek inside.

“So the village PD really has nothing on our break-in?” I asked as we made our way through the darkened streets of our little village. Since he hadn’t mentioned any progress on the case, that seemed like a safe assumption. Still, it never hurts to ask. “Are they actually investigating it?”

“Not a thing,” he said, angling into a parking spot behind the restaurant, “and now they’re dealing with those loons who have occupied the park in the center of the village, so they have their hands full.” He was referring to a group of protesters who had taken umbrage at the pipeline that might come through the village at some point in the not-too-distant future.

“You mean the people exercising their right to assembly? Free speech?” I asked, getting out of the car. The night was cloudless, the stars twinkling over the Hudson River, the moon almost full.

“Don’t go all ACLU on me. I agree with what they’re doing, but I’d like a little more manpower on our case. I’d love to know who poisoned our dog so I could hit them over the head, accidentally of course, with my radio.”

We went into the restaurant, a knotty-pine paneled affair that smelled like garlic after years of the kind of old-school Italian cooking that went on in the kitchen. Crawford and I took a booth toward the back of the place, me ordering what was sure to be a really crappy Chianti and him sticking with the safer beer choice. Once we ordered, he reached across and squeezed my hand.

“Thanks for being so patient.”

“I haven’t been patient. Trust me.”

“Well, there are few women who would do what you’re doing with my ex-wife. I know that.”

“You’re already getting laid tonight, Crawford. Don’t lay it on so thick,” I said.

“Too much?” he asked.

“Way.”

The topic of Christine and anything related to the Stepkowskis off the conversational menu, he asked about Max’s father. I immediately welled up. “He was a doll. You know that.”

“I only met him at the wedding and one other time, I think.”

“He was very good to me after my parents died.”

“I know,” he said, his own eyes getting misty at some thought, maybe me at a young age with no siblings and no parents, doing my best to make a broken and irreparable marriage work. Although he was a stiff, according to his former in-laws, he had compassion to spare. He looked down.

“Did Fred like him?” I asked. I knew that Fred talked to Crawford more than to anyone else, Max included, sometimes.

“Loved him.”

“This is going to be hard all around, then,” I said.

We were way overdue for a quiet evening like this, and I felt like we were turning the corner on the amount of activity we were going to be required to be involved in. Just as Crawford signed his name to the credit card slip, someone turned on the jukebox. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” blasted through the speakers, and Crawford got a look on his face that let me know that he had just remembered something.

“Hey,” he started.

“All taken care of,” I lied, thinking that Meaghan’s involvement in Joanne Larkin’s midterm debacle still needed to be dealt with. Keeping Crawford in the dark was part of my master plan; if I could make the whole thing go away without bothering him with it, my transformation to “Alison Bergeron, Redeemed Stepmother” would be complete.

Before we got outside, the sound of a car alarm broke through the sound of Conway Twitty’s warbling serenade. Crawford hustled me out of the restaurant only to find the lights of his sensible station wagon blinking on and off, the horn blaring. All of the doors were closed, but the car locks had definitely been tampered with. Crawford hit the keypad and stopped the cacophony, much to the delight of an older couple exiting the car next to his.

“You should tell your girlfriend not to pull so hard on the doors if she doesn’t have the keys,” the man said, his face a study in consternation.

I looked at Crawford. “Girlfriend?”

The woman, a rotund meatball as round as she was tall, chimed in. “Yes. The big blonde.”

Crawford and I looked at each other, realization dawning on us simultaneously. “Which way did she go?” he asked.

The woman had a flare for the dramatic, obviously. Her hands fluttered as she described the woman’s exit. “It was like she vanished into the wind, never to be seen again.”

Twenty-Nine

Now we were sure that Sassy Du Pris was back in town, looking for something that none of us had—money. As we lay in bed that night, I voiced a thought that had been nagging at the back of my brain for a few days now.

“Do you think she’s involved with Tim?”

From under his bent arm, Crawford let out a sigh. “Now what would make you say that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t, really.

Crawford did. “You overheard a conversation that you had no context for about a guy who was hoping to get two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To draw a line from him to Sassy is really a stretch,” he said, his voice muffled. “Go to sleep.”

I couldn’t. There was too much going on. Between the afternoon at Chick’s and then a lovely dinner that turned ugly with the thwarted attempt to break in to our car, my mind was awhirl with theories and loose ends and a host of other things. Then there was Max’s father’s death. That was sad enough in itself, but it also nagged at me because I had been too busy—make that preoccupied—with life as I knew it to go visit a man who had done just about everything he could to help me even though he wasn’t a blood relation. I felt sick not that he was dead, but that he had died attempting a breakout from the medical center, still convinced of his own immortality and ability to move on like nothing had ever happened.