Closet Confidential (13 page)

Little Nick at least was cooperative. He lay sleeping happily, punctuating his breathing with the occasional squeak that even I had to admit was adorable.

Truffle and Sweet Marie were poised by my side throughout the ice cream eating. They like to make off with the empty containers. I wasn’t sure the vet would approve, but then again, there were no vets in sight.

“So,” I said, as we polished off our ice cream a few minutes later. “What seems to be the problem?” I stopped myself from ending it with
this time
.

“Sorry for snapping. I don’t know what’s going on. First I thought it was another woman. Nick hasn’t dealt well with all the changes of pregnancy and motherhood. He likes a woman to be trim and neat and wearing sexy underwear. Lactation freaks him out. Naturally, that’s what I suspected when he first started to act differently.”

“Well, Nick’s a big boy now. He’d better get used to real life.” I refrained from saying it was high time he grew up.

“But it’s not that.”

“So . . . ?”

“I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“Why are you worried?”

“Huh. Well that’s it. If he’s interested in a woman, and I always know when he is, he takes extra care with his appearance. Works out more than usual. Takes a razor to work so he can shave after shift. Showers there and not at home. Finds fault with everything I do. There’s a whole vibe. You don’t want to know.”

“But he’s not doing that now?”

“No. He hasn’t been to the gym. He doesn’t bother shaving on his off days. His clothes are sort of . . . rumpled. He hangs around home looking gloomy, or he pretends to be working extra shifts, even though I know he’s not.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Pepper, but maybe he’s adjusting to the whole idea of being a father.”

“I’d buy that idea if he was spending any time with Little Nick. I don’t mean feeding him or changing him because neither of those things are in the job description of the male Monahans. But if he’d even pay attention, make goofy daddy faces, give him shoulder rides, the way other fathers do. Hell, Jack even plays games with Little Nick, and he’s as single as you can get.”

“If he hasn’t seen it in his family, I guess the models aren’t there and—”

“Knock off the amateur-shrink routine, Charlotte. I’m not here to get a pep talk straight out of some useless woman’s magazine. It’s not about that anyway.”

“Help me out here, Pepper. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to listen. I want to talk about this out loud, and I’m not even sure what will come out of my mouth.”

“Deal. Talk. I’ll listen.”

“Then, when I’m finished, I want to hear what you think about what I’ve said.”

I nodded. There wasn’t much else I could do.

“He’s slumping around, not sleeping properly, and jumping at shadows. You know, the way
you
do.”

“Thanks,” I muttered under my breath.

“It’s not like him. He’s not afraid of anything, even when he should be. He has the judgment of a rubber ducky, you know that.”

I held my comments back. Pepper has always seemed to be in denial about Nick. For all I knew, she’d be back to normal the next day and mad at me for having listened to her.

“He won’t answer the phone, and he’s incredibly secretive.”

“Like you were tonight?”

“I didn’t want him to pick up one of my messages and figure out that I was coming to see you. He’d show up and I wouldn’t be able to have this difficult conversation.”

Pepper bit her lip, a little-girl gesture that was completely out of character with the hard-edged detective she’d turned into.

I said, “I’m not married. I never had a dad or even a stepdad who stuck around and did dadlike things with me. I don’t know what normal daily family life is supposed to be like. I won’t be much help to you here, unless I fall back on my useless women’s magazine advice.”

She grinned wanly. “I am worried sick and I can’t cope with this on my own. That’s why I called you.”

“I’m happy to be here for you, Pepper. Although I’m not doing much good.”

“This is very hard for me to say.” She met my eyes and glanced away.

Little Nick stirred and whimpered. He squirmed and scrunched up his perfect baby face. He opened his perfect rosebud mouth and let out one hell of a holler, without even a warm-up.

Truffle and Sweet Marie quivered before racing into the bedroom and hiding under the bed. I would have joined them, but I didn’t want to sever this new bond between Pepper and me.

She picked up Little Nick. “He’s hungry and I have to take care of that. It’s midnight, his last feeding. And I must be nuts,” she said.

“What?”

“What am I doing here with you talking about my husband?” She stood up and turned toward the door.

I said, “You thought I could help.”

“Seriously, how could you help? You’re an organizer, not a therapist. And you’re bossy and opinionated on top of that.”

“I’ll admit to all of those things. I’m so happy to be your friend again. And I’ll do whatever you want me to . . .” I obviously couldn’t say “help” again as that hadn’t worked out so well the last time I’d said it. “I’d like to hear what you have to say. Maybe you’ll feel better for saying it, too.”

She stared down at me, jiggling the squalling baby. “Sorry I bothered you. I have to go.”

Truffle and Sweet Marie emerged as soon as Pepper left. I sat there, stroking their fur, stunned. What had happened? I couldn’t let it go by. I thundered down the stairs and out to Pepper’s new bright red Ford Edge. She was leaning her head against the wheel, weeping. Little Nick was screaming his head off.

A light went on in Jack’s apartment, and he appeared barefoot and wearing pajama bottoms. “Did I dream I heard a baby crying?”

“Look who’s here, Little Nick. It’s Uncle Jack,” I shouted to the wailing baby. “Uncle Jack’s going to fix your problem. Open the door, Pepper, and give Jack the baby and the bottle.”

Jack said, “What?”

“Be quiet. Don’t argue. You’ll love it. You know what you’re like.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll take him upstairs. Let me know when you want him back.”

I reached in and picked up Little Nick and transferred his enraged being to Jack’s arms. “Hey, little buddy, pipe down,” Jack said.

The howl died on Little Nick’s lips. He stared. He reached out his tiny hand for Jack’s glasses. I took the baby bottle from Pepper’s hand and passed it to Jack. “You’re on your own,” I said. “The dogs will be no help.”

As Jack headed toward the house, I climbed into the car and put my arms around Pepper. “You’re not getting rid of me that quickly this time.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“Try me. I’ll understand.”

“You couldn’t even begin to understand, Charlotte. You’re not involved in law enforcement.” She managed a weak smile. “Except on the other side.”

I knew this meant something big. Pepper is the third generation of her family of police officers. And Nick’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been cops in Woodbridge. That’s not even mentioning the uncles.

“Why did you come to see me then?”

She turned away, stared out the window. “Exactly because you’re not a cop. I thought it was a good idea, but now I realize how stupid it was.”

“Yeah well, that’s misfits for you. Dumb as a bag of hammers.”

She gave a weak smile, leaned back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. “I’m so desperate, Charlotte. I think Nick is involved in something seriously bad.”

“We’ve ruled out women, so what does that leave?”

“Think about it.”

“Oh! A crime?”

“It must be.”

“What kind?”

“I have no clue, but he’s put his foot in something, and I’m so afraid he’s going to get himself hurt or even killed.”

“For the last time, I don’t want you to do anything. I needed to say it out loud.” Pepper followed this by blowing her nose emphatically.

All right, I may have overreacted to her comment about Nick getting himself killed.

For the fifth time, I said, “But—”

“But nothing. Your job is to listen. That’s what friends do.”

“We can’t let Nick get killed. I have to do something about that.”

“That’s right. When our lives are in danger, we call our closet organizer to fix it all up.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time the closet organizer solved the crime.” Maybe I snapped that.

“He’s not
your
husband.”

“True, but he’s . . .”

“I feel that he’s involved in something. And don’t ask me for details again, because I don’t have any. It’s intuition. And yes, cops use that.”

“So you think criminal?”

“I don’t
know
.” She blew her nose again to make the point.

She meant yes. I decided the best thing might be to sit there and quietly listen, just as she’d suggested. Perhaps that would bring out a bit more information.

After a minute, Pepper glared at me. “If you’re trying to wait me out, I know all about that. I’ve interrogated enough people. It won’t work.”

“I’m trying to listen. What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know that, either.” She managed a weak grin. “Let me rage and carry on in a paranoid manner, I guess.”

“Okay. Rage away.”

She leaned back on the headrest of the driver’s seat and closed her eyes. “I can’t. I’m too tired. I haven’t been sleeping, and that may be all there is behind this. Nick is not the easiest person . . .”

I bit my tongue to keep myself from finishing her sentence with “at the best of times.”

“He’s not good at communicating. And he doesn’t have a knack with looking after Little Nick. He’s not natural daddy material like Jack.”

I turned to look at the lights in my apartment where apparently he was being natural and entertaining Little Nick. It kept me from saying,
Damn straight Nick’s not good at communicating
. Still, I had to contribute something. “So what made you think that something’s wrong with Nick?”

“He jumps at his own shadow.”

I raised an eyebrow. Whatever you could say about Nick, he’d never been a coward.

“Sometimes I’ll tiptoe into the room trying not to wake the baby and he’ll freak.”

“Whoa.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Not like him.”

“Well, after I was attacked last year, I screamed at every loud noise. And some not so loud ones. I had flashbacks, too. And nightmares.”

“I thought of that. But except for those two incidents that involved you, he hasn’t had any bad encounters. He hasn’t been shot at or shot at anyone else. He hasn’t even had a chase. And after that dangerous situation that you were involved in, he didn’t lose any sleep, although you were both nearly killed.”

“And Jack, too. Don’t get mad, but I understand that this happens to lots of guys: Do you think it’s fatherhood?”

“I asked myself that, too. I think he’s not all that interested in Little Nick yet. I don’t think he’s afraid of him or afraid to be a father. I’m sure he’ll be better when the baby starts to do things. And if you are planning to suggest that he’s afraid of me because I look like hell, you can forget that.”

I gasped. “I would never suggest that. You are too hard on yourself. You look fine.”

“And he’s keeping strange hours and going out in the middle of the night sometimes. But he doesn’t get himself fixed up as if it were a woman he wanted to impress.” She chewed her lip.

“Perhaps it’s all in his mind, a bit of delayed posttraumatic stress disorder. Do you want me to talk to him?”

“That is the last thing in the world I want. What could you do for his PTSD, not that he has that?”

“Okay. Well, if you do want me to help in any way, let me know. If you want me to come over and let you catch up on your sleep sometime, I can do that. I can plan for it. I know you don’t have your mom to help out. New mothers need—”