The Borrowed and Blue Murders (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (27 page)

But that thought was gone by the time we broke our embrace and the wedding party was dispersing, ready to leave.

“A
RE YOU SURE?”
N
ICK
offered to have his cab drop me off at the house. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I’ll be fine. Your cab’s way too crowded.”

He frowned. “Well, we won’t be late.” His mouth brushed mine briefly as he headed off with his brothers, my father and Tim to meet his rowing and police buddies at a destination unknown to Susan or me but which, since Sam had planned the event, undoubtedly involved bare-breasted women and poles.

Susan and I stood in the lobby, watching them pile into a taxi. The plan was that we would take the next cabs available and go home. But as the men disappeared into the city lights, I realized I wasn’t ready to go home.

“How about a nightcap?” Susan asked. Apparently, she’d had the same idea. A moment later, we were perched at the brass and mahogany bar in the swank Fountain Restaurant, Susan slurping up a Black Russian, me sipping black tea.

“I think Tim’s going to get a lap dance.” Susan pouted.

“Tim?” The idea struck me as preposterous. Over the few years, Tim had developed a significant paunch. His belly arrived places before he did, protruding farther out even than Sam’s, so that when Tim sat down, he didn’t actually have much lap. I pictured a poor stripper struggling to find enough room to perform and, with no surface to support her, slipping backward onto the floor.

The image struck me as hilarious and I burst out laughing, almost choking on my tea.

“What are you laughing about? It’s not funny.”

I tried to stop but couldn’t. “Just picturing it.”

“Okay, Zoe. How about this? Let’s put the shoe on the other—” She pursed her lips. “No, let’s put the dancer on the other lap. How do you feel about some naked-assed bitch spreading her thighs across Nick’s fly?”

Susan was right. That idea wasn’t funny. But she had had a lot to drink and was slurring her words. Lisping.
Thighs
came out “thizhe,” and
Nick’s
became “Nickth.” And she was so indignant that her eyes were popping and her spit flying. I couldn’t stop giggling.

“Stop it, Zoe.”

“Sorry.” I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. I was caught in a torrent, as if all my tensions had converted to laughter and were bursting out of me in a flood.

She watched me struggle to look serious, and as she watched, her scowl crumbled, frown inverted, and suddenly we were both howling and guffawing until our ribs ached and tears rolled down our cheeks.

“Oh, man.” She was holding her sides, wiping her cheeks.

I looked at her, saw mascara streaked all over her face, and that started a new round of laughter. “Your face—” I pointed, cracking up.

“Zhoe—” Susan struggled to stop laughing but slurred my name. And that, too, seemed ridiculously comical. Or maybe I was ridiculously hysterical and Susan was ridiculously blitzed. Either way, we roared until we finally couldn’t anymore, and then we settled down and sat quietly, wiping tears, catching our breath.

After a while, we were finally calm again. “Your dad seems good.” Susan examined a dish of complimentary salted nuts.

“He does, doesn’t he?”

She frowned, pushing the dish away. “Frankly, I’m surprised at you, Zoe. Letting them go.”

Letting who go?

“They’re too old for that nonsense. A bachelor party? At our age?”

Oh, she was still thinking about Tim and the stripper. “What was I supposed to do? I’m not Nick’s mother. I couldn’t ground them.” I tried to sound independent and mature. As if I didn’t really care. As if I hadn’t intended to prevent this abominably sexist archaic ritual.

“Like I said. I’m surprised you let them go.”

Damn. She knew me too well. I was surprised, too. “Actually, I was going to ask Nick not to let Sam plan it, but. . .”

Susan sipped Black Russian, waiting. “But?”

But the truth was, what with the agent’s murder, Bryce’s accident, the jump drives and thugs threatening Tony, I’d forgotten all about the bachelor party. But I didn’t want to go into all that. “I got distracted, I guess.”

Susan nodded. Sitting beside her in dim lights among sparkling bottles, I realized again how solid a friend she was. At the most difficult times of my life—during my divorce from Michael, the terror of a serial killer in the neighborhood, a confrontation with human traffickers on the river, my reunion with my father—Susan had been there, by my side. She was my rock. I got misty, wondering if I’d been nearly as valuable to her as she’d been to me.

Suddenly, Susan put a hand on my arm. “But you know, maybe a lap dance wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

I tried to refocus, confused.

“I mean maybe it would get Tim’s motor moving. You know, inspire him?”

I didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to think about Tim’s motor.

“We’ve been together twenty-four years this June, married for twenty-one. After all that time, your sex life can get pretty—what can I say. Routine?”

Now, I liked Tim well enough. He was patient, pleasant, a good provider and partner for Susan. But the fact was, I didn’t want to confront Tim and sex in the same sentence. So I replaced him with Nick, assuring myself that our sex life would never be dull. And that Nick, at the bachelor party, wasn’t likely to participate in any unsavory sex play. He’d never be interested in something so shallow. Unlike his brother Sam, Nick didn’t see women as life support for their sex organs. In fact, Nick would probably be relieved when the gathering was over and he could come home. But then, I remembered that his buddies would be there. A bunch of macho cops. And buff rowers from his boathouse. And I thought about peer pressure and how powerful it could be. And I began to worry, imagining bare-naked, big-breasted women with sequins on their skin piling on top of the groom, but Susan had stopped talking and was waiting for me to say something.

“You must be nervous. I mean, at least a little.”

What? Was she reading my mind?

“It’s not every day that you get married.”

Oh, that. “I can’t tell. I’m kind of numb.”

“Numb?” She considered it. “Okay. Numb’s good.” She grinned. Her teeth were perfect. Absolutely flawless, bright white. I didn’t remember ever noticing how straight they were. “Here’s to numb.”

We drank together. My tea was tepid, tasteless.

“You know.” She was sloshed. “I ought to warn you. Being married to someone is no small thing. It’s like two corporations merging: You don’t just get the assets; you get the liabilities, too. The whole kit and kaboodle.” She leaned over, whispering, “For example. You know what Tim does? It’s actually kind of cute. Every single day, after the shower, in his birthday suit, he flexes. In the mirror. He poses, you know, like a bodybuilder.” She imitated a stance or two. I closed my eyes, not wanting to know Tim so well, imagining his belly.

Susan went on about things Tim did, and I tried not to listen, to let her presence and the steadiness of her voice soothe me. Okay, maybe I wasn’t entirely numb. I did have some jitters. But the bottles behind the bar glowed softly amber in the light, and liquid sounds of the fountain blended with the gentle strokes of the harpist in the corner. I sat with my friend and drifted, becoming mellow.

Suddenly, Susan nudged me. “Don’t look behind you.”

Immediately, I turned to look behind me.

“Dammit, I said
don’t.”

Too late. A bald, mustached man at the end of the bar caught my eye and winked. He wore a large diamond on his pinkie, a gray silk tie.

I turned back to Susan and took a sip of cool tea, pretending not to have noticed him. “He’s flirting?” He was. With us. The idea amazed me.

“Don’t look so surprised. We’re babes.” She picked up her purse. “Think Tim would mind?”

“Too bad if he does. What’s good for the goose …” I was joking, but Susan slipped off her stool and began to walk down the bar. I grabbed her arm. “Wait. You’re not serious—”

“Going to the ladies’.”

Susan teetered away, leaving me alone with our drinks, the bowl of mixed nuts, the bartender and the bald-headed winker. I avoided eye contact. I stared at the bottles against the wall, the brass apron at the bar, my hands, my teacup, but the eyes of the mustached gentlemen remained fixed on me. I felt them drilling holes into my face. Finally, I swiveled away so my back was to him and noticed Eli’s photo album on the stool beside me.

“Another round?” The bartender was Polynesian, maybe Hawaiian. Or Filipino? His skin was smooth, his face round and friendly.

Yes, I nodded. Of course, another round. I was getting married in less than twenty hours, and my fiance was off somewhere getting a lap dance. Might as well live it up, have a second cup of tea.

“It’s from the gentleman at the end of the bar.” The bartender tried not to smirk.

I glanced at the man. He saluted. Saluted? I nodded, smiled a hasty thank-you and looked away, not knowing what to do next. Where was Susan? What was keeping her? What was I supposed to do? I grabbed the album and opened it, hiding within its pages, trying to lose myself in photos of my children smiling and playing. Yes. And there were Tony and Sam. And Nick with Sam. And Nick with Molly. I turned the pages, thinking about how good a photographer Eli was, how he captured the essence of people. Mood, fleeting expressions.

There was a whole page of Oliver. Oliver lying on his back, paws in the air. Oliver smiling. Oliver with a ball in his mouth. Where had Eli been when he’d taken them? The next page had several shots of me. In one, I was holding hands with Nick, standing in front of the house. When had that happened? And how come we hadn’t spotted Eli? And below it, there was a wide shot of me walking with Luke down South Street. The opposite page had a closer view of the same walk. As I turned the page, goose- flesh was rising on my arms before I realized why.

Go back, I thought. Look at those photos again. I hesitated, suddenly cold and no longer the least bit mellow. Slowly, deliberately, I turned the page back. There we were, Luke in the stroller and me pushing him down South Street, approaching the corner of Fifth Street. Which was where Bryce Edmond had been hit. In fact, Bryce must have been running after me at that very moment, because my head was turned toward the street; probably I’d just heard him call my name. At the moment Eli took the picture, Bryce was still conscious, still unharmed. But in seconds he was to be slammed by a car, his head smashed against concrete. I stared at the picture, wishing I could freeze time and yell to him to stop or turn back. But by the time Eli had snapped the camera, it was probably too late even to yell. Because in the corner of the shot was the dashboard of a silver SUV And sitting in the drivers seat, small but clear as the vodka in Susan’s Black Russian, was a woman who looked a whole lot like Bonnie Osterman.

O
H
G
OD, THERE WAS
no doubt. It was. Bonnie Osterman. I stared, squinting, at the photo, processing the implications. Bonnie Osterman had been driving the car that hit Bryce Edmond. Bonnie Osterman, in fact, was in the background of several photographs. She was on a bench in Three Bears Park while I watched Molly climb the jungle bars. And she’d been half out of the frame, a bit out of focus, in a shot in which Molly, seated on the front steps of the house, was holding Luke.

I couldn’t move. I sat stock-still, my bones frozen. Bonnie Osterman had been following me. Bonnie Osterman, who’d cut pregnant women open to steal their infants, who’d made stews out of unborn children—Bonnie Osterman had been on my street, to my house. She’d seen my children—oh God. I saw Agent Harris lying gutted on my patio. Maybe it hadn’t been a terrorist or spy or weapons dealer who’d killed her, after all. Maybe— Someone brushed my shoulder; I jumped. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” The mustached man was taking a seat on the stool next to mine. “Mind if I join you?”

I must have looked frightful, because when I faced him, he ducked ever so slightly, as if shocked. I think I asked him what time it was. Or I might have said I had to get out of there, or maybe I didn’t say anything. I don’t remember. But I do remember pulling out my cell phone and calling home. And I remember listening to the phone ring, unanswered, until the voice mail picked up.

The man asked something, probably if everything was okay I looked at him, trying to figure out what he was saying, what it meant that nobody answered my phone. And then, grabbing Eli’s album, I jumped off my bar stool and ran.

I was dashing out of the Fountain Restaurant as Susan was coming back in, still wobbly. She opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off.

“I’ve got to get home.”

She did a tipsy about-face and chased after me, asking questions. But I didn’t stop.

“I’ll call you later,” I yelled over my shoulder as I raced through the lobby to the front door. “Cab,” I told the doorman, and he waved one forward. I jumped in and gave him the address, telling him to hurry, as baffled and boozy Susan spilled out the revolving door.

“Zoe—are you okay?” she shouted. “What happened?”

There was no time, of course, to explain. So I simply waved to her through the window as the cab pulled away

I
COULDN’T BREATHE.
I was drowning, swirling. all I could think of was Luke and Molly. And the hunched, squat figure of Bonnie Osterman. In the cab, I called Nick on his cell, but, of course, he didn’t pick up. He wasn’t reachable; he was busy sticking money into the thongs of stripteasers. I left a message for him to come home.

It was maybe three miles from the Four Seasons to our house on Monroe Street, but the cab seemed to crawl and to get every red light. At that hour, there was no traffic. No oncoming cars. No cops.

“I’m in a hurry.” The red light lasted forever. “Can’t we go through?”

“You want me to lose my license?” The very idea infuriated him. “I can’t break the laws, ma’am. You want someone to break laws, you find another cabbie. Not me.” He gestured as if I could get out if I had a complaint.