The Snow White Christmas Cookie (18 page)

There were two big recliners in the TV room, which smelled of cigarette smoke and dirty laundry. The television was turned off but Mitch could hear a TV blaring from somewhere else in the house. Paulette sat down in one of the recliners and lit a cigarette. A half-empty gallon jug of cheap Chablis and a wineglass were on the end table next to her.

She poured some wine into the glass. “Care for any?”

Rut said, “Kind of early in the day, isn’t it?”

“I’m taking a
personal
day. That means I can do anything I
personally
feel like doing, which happens to be getting slightly blitzed.” She gazed up at the old man, her eyes crinkling. “Why did he do it, Rutherford?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, hon.”

“I would have helped him. I would have done anything for him. He didn’t have to
steal
.”

“Slow yourself down. You don’t know for a fact that Hank was stealing.”

“He texted me. He said it was all his fault.”

“The man was preparing to take his own life. There’s no telling what he meant by that. He could have been referring to how unhappy he was. Trying to let you know that it was his own doing, as opposed to something you might have said or done. That makes sense, doesn’t it, Mitch?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Sure it does. So don’t get out ahead of yourself, okay?”

“I just wish … If Hank felt cornered and desperate he should have told me.”

“You’re right, he should have. But fellas aren’t made that way. We don’t go crying to mommy.”

Mitch nodded. “We’re taught from a very early age that it’s a sign of weakness.”

“Is that right?” Paulette shot back. “Tell me, what’s weaker than
killing
yourself?”

Mitch had no answer for that. “Do you mind if I get a glass of water?”

“Go right ahead.”

He went into the kitchen, where the counter was crowded with those casserole dishes from Paulette’s neighbors. He could hear the TV louder from in here—it was coming from down in the basement. The door to the basement stairs was open. A plastic laundry basket heaped with dirty clothes was parked there, which explained the ripe aroma. Mitch nudged the basket aside with his foot and started down the steep wooden stairs.

A lot of people who owned raised ranches made an effort to convert the basement into an extra room. They installed paneling and flooring. Dropped a ceiling to cover the electrical conduits and copper pipes that ran along the joists overhead. Not Paulette and Hank. Theirs was strictly a bare-bones, cement-floored basement. For décor there was a Kenmore washer-dryer and a clothesline with sheets and towels hanging from it. An electric space heater was doing what it could to fight the chill down there, and a towel had been shoved under the door to the garage to keep the draft out. But it was cold in the basement that Casey Zander called home. Also messy. There was a Ping-Pong table heaped with sports magazines and newspapers. A convertible sofa bed, which was open and unmade. Dirty clothes were heaped everywhere. A sprung easy chair was set before the TV in the corner.

Here Paulette’s pale, jiggly son sat in a flannel bathrobe watching last night’s NBA highlights on ESPN and eating a bowl of what appeared to be Cocoa Puffs. At least he had good taste in breakfast cereals. What he didn’t have was good taste in hair. His henna-tinted mop top made him look like a colorized member of The Three Stooges. He still had a bandage on his forehead from his unfortunate encounter yesterday with Kylie Champlain’s Honda Civic. There was a card table next to the TV that had a computer and printer on it. Stacked on the floor next to Casey’s chair were computer printouts of NFL game stats. Team stats, individual player stats. Mitch had never seen so many stats in his life. Many of the pages had been circled or flagged with Post-its.

“You sure are into stats,” Mitch observed. “Are you in a fantasy football league?”

“Fantasy football leagues are for assholes,” Casey replied coldly.

“I’m in a fantasy football league.”

“Gee, there’s a surprise.” He glanced up at Mitch, his surly gaze narrowing. “What do
you
want?”

“I brought Rut by to visit your mom.”

“No, I mean what do you want from
me
?”

“To tell you that I was sorry about Hank.”

“Okay, you told me,” he said, turning back to the TV.

“Also sorry about what happened yesterday on the causeway.”

Casey didn’t respond. Just sat there eating his cereal and watching the succession of slam dunks that passed for highlights.

“This is the part where you say you’re sorry, too, and then we shake hands.”

Casey heaved a sigh of annoyance. “Why don’t you go back upstairs and leave me alone?”

“Your mom’s pretty deep into the Chablis this morning. Is she okay?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“You two are tight, aren’t you?”

“She’s my mom. It’s not like we hang together.”

“Did you hang with Hank?”

He let out a derisive snort. “Hank played the
tuba.
”

“Meaning what, he flunked your coolness test?”

“We lived in the same house—period.”

“You also worked together, didn’t you?”

“We didn’t work
together.
I’m only there on Saturdays or if somebody’s sick or on vacation.”

“Are you hoping to become a full-time carrier?”

“I’m hoping you’ll go back upstairs and leave me the hell alone.”

“Suit yourself. Nice talking to you. Actually, I lied. No, it wasn’t.” Mitch started back toward the stairs.

“Wait a sec,” Casey said, allowing a tiny trace of hopefulness to creep into his voice. “Did Josie give you a message for me?”

“No, she didn’t. But I haven’t spoken to her today.”

“Yeah, you have.”

“So now you’re calling me a liar?”

“I’m betting a million bucks she asked you to tell me something. And
that’s
why you came down here.”

“Don’t ever bet with real money, Casey. You suck as a gambler.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.” He peered at Mitch with those nonpenetrating eyes of his. “Are you two getting it on?”

“Josie and I are nothing more than friends. I told you that yesterday.”

“I didn’t believe you yesterday. Still don’t.”

“That’s fine. I won’t bother to set you straight. There’s no point, since you’ve already got life all figured out. Hell, you’re sitting here in your mom’s basement watching TV in your jammies and you’re, what, twenty-six?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“When I was twenty-eight I was freelancing for two different magazines, teaching a class at NYU and finishing up my first movie encyclopedia.”

“Goodie for you, asshole.”

“I’m not bragging. I’m just saying that there was so much I wanted to do every single hour of every single day. Isn’t there anything you’d like to do?”

“Yeah, there is. I’d like to sit here without you hassling me. Jesus, you’re as bad as Hank. He was always on me about how I should be
applying
myself. Like I’d take advice from that clown.”

“You take advice from Josie, don’t you? What does she tell you to do?”

Casey reached for a pack of Marlboros and found it empty. Crumpled it and tossed it aside. “She doesn’t
tell
me to do anything. She encourages me.”

“To do what?”

He shrugged. “Be more assertive.”

“Is that why you gave her a black eye?”

“That was an accident. And I can’t believe she told you about it.”

“She didn’t.”

“Who did?”

“You did,” Mitch replied. “Just now.”

For a second, Casey looked as if he wanted to tear Mitch’s head off. But he’d already tried that yesterday and ended up with his face frozen to the causeway. So instead he stuck out his chin and said, “I guess you think you’re pretty smart. Trust me, you don’t know shit.”

“I know that you’re in love with Josie.”

“I
don’t
want to talk about Josie!”

“Then why did you ask me about her?”

Casey said nothing to that. Just sat there in petulant silence.

Mitch glanced back down at the pile of NFL stats next to his chair. “Are you into the Patriots or the Giants?” Since Dorset was situated halfway between Boston and New York, its residents’ team loyalties were divided right down the middle.

“Patriots,” Casey grunted. “The Giants play down to the level of their competition. Hardly ever cover the spread.”

“It sounds like you’re in an office betting pool. Am I right?”

Casey had had enough. He got up out of the sagging chair and took off his robe. He wore an ancient Metallica T-shirt and long johns under it. He dug a Patriots hoodie and a pair of sweatpants out of a rumpled pile of clothing on the floor and put them on. Then he made his way upstairs to the TV room, where Paulette and Rut sat talking quietly. Mitch followed him.

“I’m going out for a while, Mom.”

Paulette frowned at him. “Where to?”

“Got some errands to run. I’m out of smokes, for one thing.”

“Okay, son. Would you mind getting me two packs of Merits?”

“Are you going to give me some money?”

Paulette fetched her wallet from the kitchen table and removed a twenty-dollar bill from it. “Just do me one small favor, will you?”

He rolled his eyes. “What is it?”

“Don’t spend the whole afternoon at the Rustic. I need you here, okay?”

“Whatever.” He snatched the money from her and stormed out of the house.

Paulette sat back down, a distraught expression on her face as she listened to Casey start up his pickup and go roaring off.

Rut reached over from the recliner next to hers and patted her hand. “Hank was a real fine fellow. Try to remember the good times you two had together.”

She glanced at him curiously. “I always thought you didn’t approve of Hank.”

“That’s not true at all. Hank was okay. I was just jealous. I’d be jealous of any man who’s lucky enough to wake up and see your shining face right there next to him every morning.”

“You’re a silly old man, Rutherford.”

Rut smiled faintly, his eighty-two-year-old heart overflowing with the hopeless, unrequited love that he’d kept to himself for all of these years. Briefly, Mitch thought he might tell Paulette how he genuinely felt. But Rut didn’t, couldn’t. Just nodded his tufty white head and said, “That’s me, all right—silly.”

C
HAPTER
13

T
HE WORLD-CLASS PISSING CONTEST
—more commonly known as a team meeting—was held in the auxiliary conference room of Dorset’s Town Hall, a stately white-columned edifice that smelled all year round of mothballs, musty carpeting and Ben-Gay. Everyone was there at nine o’clock sharp with the noticeable exception of the agent from the FBI, who Des had no doubt would start throwing his weight around as soon as he walked in. The bureau was incredibly dependable that way.

Four members of the Connecticut State Police were in attendance: Des, Yolie, Toni and Capt. Joey Amalfitano, a rumpled old-timer who was with the Narcotics Task Force. Des had worked a drug case with Amalfitano on Sour Cherry Lane last spring. Everyone called him The Aardvark due to his huge, down-turned snout of a nose. Des thought of him more as a weasel.

The U.S. Postal Service had sent Inspector Sam Questa from New York City. Questa was in his late forties and bore a startling resemblance to Fred Flintstone. His huge, blunt featured head was set directly atop a massive torso with almost a complete absence of anything resembling a neck. Seated there at the conference table, Questa gave the impression of being a large man. Yet Des doubted he stood much taller than five-feet-four. He had the stubbiest little arms and legs she’d ever seen. She could not imagine how the man found clothing to fit him. He wore a plain gray suit, white shirt and muted tie. Kept his gleaming black hair combed carefully in place, but didn’t do nearly as good a job of keeping his emotions in check. He glanced repeatedly at his watch, growing more and more pissed as the minutes ticked by. The man didn’t like to be kept waiting by the FBI. The man was feeling disrespected.

And, at precisely 9:17, the man decided he’d had enough. “What do you say we get started here?” he growled. “I got a full plate and I can’t sit around all morning waiting for the goddamned bureau to grace us with its presence.”

“Okay by me,” said The Aardark, slurping loudly from his container of coffee.

Yolie nodded her head in agreement.

Questa glanced down at a yellow legal pad. “Fine, then let’s get down to business here.…”

That was when the conference room door burst open and in strutted a twenty-something testosterone jarhead wearing a pair of aviator shades and a snug-fitting red ski jacket. He whipped off his shades, then off came the jacket, too. Underneath it he had on a white merino wool turtleneck that was stretched so tight across his pumped-up muscles that Des swore she could make out his entire six-pack of abs as he stood there styling self-importantly for everyone’s benefit, his granite jaw working on a piece of chewing gum.

“Lord help us, they’ve stuck us with Maverick again,” Yolie groaned under her breath. “Did we piss somebody off?”

“Possibly in a previous life,” Des murmured unhappily.

“You
know
him?” whispered Toni, who was positively goggle-eyed.

Yolie looked at her, aghast. “Don’t tell me you
want
that,” she whispered in response.

“Loo, I swear I’ve just laid eyes on the father of my children.”

“Trust me, you won’t feel that way once it opens its mouth.”

Toni continued to gape at him. “Oh, it doesn’t have to talk.”

“Oh, yes it does. And every single word that comes out of its mouth rhymes with ‘asshole.’”

“Sorry I’m late, people,” he declared in a booming, authoritative voice. “They closed I-95 because of a jackknifed tractor trailor and I had to make it out here on Route 1. I’ve never seen so many muffler shops in my life. Seriously, how do folks out here afford to eat three meals a day if they’re always buying so many mufflers? Am I right or am I right?” He went around the table and shook hands. First with Sam Questa. “Grisky, FBI, how are you? Then with Joey Amalfitano. “It’s Grisky.”