Closet Confidential (20 page)

Tierney gave me a hard look.

I said, “And being Nick, he could have been afraid of embarrassing himself in front of his co-workers. He’s as dumb as a post, but he’s not crooked in any way.”

“Embarrassing himself? How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s losing his hair. You know how vain he is.” I was surprised to find that I felt a smidgeon of guilt over trashing Nick in front of his superior officer. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about Nick, although he was like having a badly behaved little boy around. That reminded me of Pepper.

“We shouldn’t be wasting time here. I want to go to the hospital and see if Pepper’s all right. Maybe I should call Sally. Her husband’s a doctor and—”

“I’ve met Sally and Benjamin, remember? At Margaret’s after wedding party?”

“Sorry. I forgot. I’m rattled by all this. Can I go? Do you think I can help here? Do you want me to look through the woods for Nick? Because—”

“I would ask you to, but you’re wearing the wrong shoes for it,” Tierney said.

“What?”

“Of course I don’t want you to look through the woods for Nick. You saw Pepper’s injuries. She’s a trained police officer and look what happened to her. You are a civilian. And a tiny, unpredictable, utterly obsessive civilian at that. You have a handbag as a weapon. Oh wait, you don’t even have that with you. It’s in your car, I bet. So. Do I have your assurance that you’ll call me if you have an idea? I mean any idea remotely connected to Pepper and Nick? I’d like to know that you won’t run into another dangerous situation because you are too stubborn to call me.”

“You don’t need to use that tone.”

“But you
do
need to keep in touch with me on this.”

I still didn’t see what choice I’d had. And while I did agree that keeping in touch with Tierney was a good idea, I couldn’t imagine going on a date after what had happened to my friend.

“I guess our dinner’s off. You’ll be tied up with . . .” I gestured around at the squad car and Pepper’s vehicle.

“We’ll be doing a search for Nick. We have to get as much covered as possible before it gets dark.”

“Will you keep me in the loop about Pepper?”

He paused and nodded. “If I can.” I was pretty sure he was bending some rule and I appreciated it. “I don’t imagine they’ll let anyone see her for a while. She’ll need to be examined. That kind of head injury is going to require tests.”

I had to admit that was true. “I should get over to CYCotics and help Jack figure out what to do about Little Nick before I go to the hospital. I hope Pepper left everything the baby needed. She didn’t expect to end up in emergency.”

“Good idea. And Charlotte. You’ve been friends with both of them for a long time.”

I blurted out, “Pepper’s been my friend almost all my life. We went to school together. We used to call ourselves the misfits. Along with Sally and Margaret and Jack.”

“But not Nick?”

“Oh no. Nick wasn’t a misfit. He was always a cool guy. We were spectacularly uncool.”

Tierney’s mouth curved in a smile. A cool smile. “Pepper and Nick are a strange couple. And from what you said earlier it sounds like they’d been having some issues lately.”

“Lately? They always have issues. Nick loves to chase women. He doesn’t usually catch them. But the chasing, that’s an issue in itself.”

“I get where it would be. So my point is, do you think that Nick would have hit Pepper?”

“No.”

“Hear me out. Maybe he backhanded her to keep her from screaming at him? Didn’t mean to hit her that hard. Then he panicked and—”

“No!”

“People are often in denial about what others are capable of doing. We don’t like to think that one of our friends could beat his wife. But it happens and we have to face up to it. Do the right thing.”

“No argument here. I don’t think that Nick would do that. For one thing, he’s not an angry person. He’s not struggling with rage or control issues. He loves Pepper. In his own stupid way.”

“A lot of guys beat the women they think they love.”

“I understand what you’re saying and I’m trying to get my head around that, but the fact is, Nick is scared of Pepper. She’s in charge. I could believe that she’d clobber him before I could see it happening the other way around. But at the same time, I don’t believe she would hit him. Oh God, I hope I’m right about all of this.” I stared at Tierney.

“I hope you are, too.”

I stood there chewing my lip. Pepper had grown up in an abusive home. She’d had the bruises to prove it, although she always denied that. Her dad had been a cop, too. Had she found more of the same with Nick? A pattern repeated? Had I missed the signs because I was too caught up in my own images of what kind of people they both were?

I felt shaky about the entire situation. “Can I go now? I’d like to go see her. And I need to find out if Jack’s all right, too.”

“You know something, Charlotte. You’ve had a shock. You’ve been in a bad situation. Why don’t you go home and go to bed. Or take a bath or something to relax. Everything in the world is not your responsibility.”

“Maybe that’s true. But my friends are. Pepper is. Nick is my friend in a weird way. How can I go home and take a bath when we don’t know if Pepper’s going to be all right or what’s happened to Nick?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll get one of the officers to take you by the bike shop and then to the hospital. We’re on the lookout for your car.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry tonight didn’t work out.”

“There will be other nights.”

“Let’s hope you find Nick and he’s all right.”

Tierney nodded grimly and stared out over the Hudson for a long minute. I had no idea what he was thinking. Half of the uniformed officers milling around kept their eyes on him. I understood this was serious business, two of their own.

The smart young officer drove me to CYCotics, his dark intelligent eyes lacking the humor I usually saw there. No sign of his quick wit, either. He seemed distracted by the seriousness of a situation that couldn’t have a good ending. I was, too, and forgot to ask his name. I figured I should find it out as he kept showing up at crime scenes that involved me. Something in common and all that.

I don’t know why I’d been so concerned about Jack. He had Little Nick rigged up in his one office chair. He was using his foot to gently jiggle it up and down as he did a bit of paperwork standing at the cash desk.

A grin creased his face. “Hey, Charlotte. This is a boys’ club, but maybe we’ll let you in. I’m almost finished here. We had a ton of customers around the time we should have been closing, right, little dude?” He glanced behind me at the young officer with the serious face. “What’s going on?”

“Pepper’s been hurt. She’s at the hospital with some kind of head injury. I’m going over there now. I needed to know if you were all right and managing.”

“Why wouldn’t I manage? Never mind. What happened to Pepper?”

“We don’t know.” I glanced at the cop, but he had ambled to the other side of the shop to examine a particularly seductive racing bike hanging on the wall. Jack would have cheerfully sold it to him for less than ten thousand. He wasn’t paying any attention to us.

“That’s bad,” Jack said.

“And Nick is missing,” I hissed.

“What?”

“Shh. Do you think it’s possible that Nick could have injured Pepper? Hit her? Have I been wrong about him all these years? Is he worse than merely a vain and vacant pretty boy?”

Jack scratched his head. “I don’t know, Charlotte. Pepper would have sent him flying through a window if he’d even thought about something like that. But—”

“But what?”

“People in abusive relationships hide it. The abuser wants to get away with it, and the person who’s being abused may be frightened and ashamed. Might be afraid to be left alone.”

“I understand all that, Jack, as upsetting as it is. I’m wondering if that’s what we have here.”

“Nothing to do but ask Pepper, I suppose. She’ll probably be furious if you even try.”

“For sure. But trust me, the cops are going to ask her. I’m getting in there first. Let’s hope that she’s able to answer questions.” My voice wobbled. “Oh, Jack, there was so much blood.”

Jack wrapped his long arms around me. I needed to be held and comforted in this terrible situation. He whispered, “Did you see the wound?”

“I saw an awful gash on her forehead. She was lying against the steering wheel.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” Jack said.

“It’s good to have a tame philosopher around in these challenging times,” I muttered.

The smart young officer cleared his throat. I had forgotten he was even there. I supposed he had things to do. I said, “Jack, you’ll have to take Little Nick home. Better put him upstairs in my place.”

“Why?”

“Because if for any reason they send a social worker around to check on him, your house is furnished in bike parts and there’s no food in the fridge. No fridge at all, unless you bought one yesterday.”

“But you don’t have food in your fridge,” Jack said.

I heard the cop clear his throat again. I raised an eyebrow, and Jack turned and stared at him.

He said, “No, ma’am, but it’s a nice place, well-decorated and clean, and obviously a home. You’re right. It will make a good impression.”

I told Jack not to let any social workers look in the fridge until I stocked it up. “Call Sally,” I added. “She’ll know what to do when you run out of anything that has to do with babies.”

“What is everybody talking about?” Pepper said. “I can’t remember anything, and the questions these so-called doctors ask are absolutely ridiculous. How did any of them ever get through medical school?”

At least she wasn’t in the intensive care unit. And she hadn’t required surgery. It was bad enough though that she was surrounded by mysterious equipment and equally mysterious hospital smells. Still, Pepper lay in the hospital bed, pale, wan, and even feistier than usual. The bandage on her head covered part of her hair. “I hate it here,” she added with a grimace. “I don’t want to be in a place like this without getting to carry home a squirming bundle of joy at the very least.”

She made eye contact with the tall, dark-haired police officer who’d been assigned to guard her. Of course they knew each other from work. He was expected to guard her from me at this point, apparently. I recognized him in the crowd of milling officers at Bakker Beach. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I thought that was a good thing.

His name was Officer DeJong, but Pepper called him Roger. As in “Go ahead, Roger. You can take a coffee break. I need to talk to my friend in private. She’s okay.”

From the intense look on his face, I figured he probably carried a torch for our Pepper. He was a bit too young and she was too married, and there was the matter of his bad mustache, but I was happy that someone beside her misfit friends appreciated Pepper. He flushed, too, when she spoke to him. He said, “I’ll be right outside. You just have to call for me.” He shot me a look, equal parts unfriendly and suspicious. I supposed that was in case I turned out to be a danger, being a magnet for murder and all. Didn’t bother me. I was happy she was guarded by someone who took the job seriously.

I said, “And speaking of squirming bundles, Jack still has Little Nick. Oh, Pepper, don’t try to sit up.”

“Why is Little Nick with Jack?”

“Come on, Pepper. I said not to sit up. Now look.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes. If anything, she was even paler than before. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

I said, “They say you have a concussion and a hairline fracture, so please don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t you want to get out of here and back to Little Nick?”

“Answer the question.”

“Jack has Little Nick because you dropped him off at the bike shop. You had something to do. I believe that something was to go looking for your husband who was under the impression that he was in danger and that he might be putting you in peril as a result.”