He didn’t sound amused. “I can help you with a parking ticket, Ali, but this is different. Why do you want to know this anyway?”
I knew Sean would ask that and I’d played through several different scenarios before calling him. At first I’d thought of telling him that a guy on that particular motorcycle had cut me off in traffic, but Sean would ask the Sewickley police to give the guy a warning or, worse, he’d want to look into it himself, and neither of these would involve giving me the guy’s name or address. I could tell him that the motorcycle owner was a Good Samaritan who’d helped me change a flat tire, and I’d forgotten to get his contact info so I could send him a thank-you. But he’d probably ask why I hadn’t just called AAA or Michael.
“He had a FOR SALE sign on his motorcycle,” I said, “but I didn’t get the phone number and I didn’t have the time to follow him in traffic until I could get it.”
“You’re going to buy a motorcycle?” It wasn’t easy to shock Sean, but I’d achieved it.
I switched lanes, passing an old man crawling along, keeping an eye on the time. The school bus would be arriving in less than ten minutes. “I’m just thinking about it, for Michael, for his birthday. He’s turning forty, you know—”
“And he wants a bike? Wow, I’m surprised you’re okay with that.”
“I’m not sure I am, it probably won’t happen, but I’m looking.”
“Have you looked on Craigslist? I bet he listed it there. And there are plenty of bikes for sale online.”
“I checked online before calling you, but I couldn’t find it,” I lied easily, pulling onto the street where the bus arrived and taking my place at the back of the cars already queued up. One of the other mothers waved as I passed and I lifted my own hand in response. The bus would be there soon—I needed to get off the phone before the kids got in the car. “I really wanted to take a look at that bike. Please, Sean.”
He sighed. “Okay, I’ll do it, but you can’t tell him—or anyone—how you got the information. Agreed?”
“Yes, definitely. Thank you so much, Sean, I really appreciate it,” I said, just as the bus came chugging up the hill.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Just hold on a second.” He put the phone down and I switched off the car and balanced my phone against my ear as I dug around in the glove compartment for a pen and something to write on. I found an old envelope as the bus wheezed to a stop and the door opened, the children clambering out, running to their mothers or the nannies sent to get them, chirping about their day like newly hatched chicks. I got out of the car, surprised to slip a little, weak-kneed with fatigue and relief. Lucy stepped off the bus, deeply engrossed in conversation with a friend. She nodded at me, holding up one finger in a perfect imitation of her mother staving off an interruption from her or her brother. Matthew came off a few kids after her, standing on the top step and looking around nervously before he spotted me and stepped down. My heart squeezed with the usual anxiety.
“Okay, I think I found it.” Sean came back on the line. “The missing number makes it harder, a bunch of registrations popped up, but this one’s tied to a motorcycle. You got a pen?”
“Yes, shoot.” I held the envelope against the car, pen poised, while keeping an eye on the kids and the cars.
“That bike’s registered to a Raymond Fortini.” He rattled off the spelling of the name and then an address.
“Great. Thank you so much.”
“Yeah, okay. Just remember—this is a one-time thing and you don’t mention it to anybody.”
“Got it. Thank you. Oh, and Sean, don’t tell Michael, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”
Matthew noticed the yoga bag in the back as the kids climbed into the car. When he asked what was in it, my tongue froze despite my having lied smoothly and successfully for weeks, and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say.
He clambered over the seat before I could stop him and unzipped it. “Were you playing baseball with your friends?” he asked in the sweetest way.
That melted the irritation I felt, and I smiled as I helped him climb back over and into his booster seat. “No, Julie thought she needed to borrow a bat for Owen—”
“Owen?” Lucy said incredulously. “Owen doesn’t play baseball.”
“Maybe it was for Aubrey then.”
“She doesn’t play either. They don’t like baseball—they only like soccer.” Lucy spoke with her usual authority.
“I think their mother thought they might,” I said. “But it turns out they had a bat, so they didn’t need ours after all.”
“Dad would be upset if you gave away the bat,” Lucy said. “He loves baseball.”
“Loves, loves, loves,” Matthew repeated.
“Stop copying me, Matthew,” Lucy said with more resignation than annoyance. “Mrs. Hammond says that people should try to be original.”
Their bickering receded into background noise as I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d heard Raymond Fortini’s name before. Once we were home and I’d settled the kids in front of the TV with a snack, I grabbed my laptop and began searching for him.
Fortini didn’t show up in the elementary school directory—no one with that last name did. While it was a relief, in one way, to realize that someone we knew wasn’t blackmailing us, in another way it just made things harder. Who was this guy? He was surprisingly difficult to find; he didn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account or any other social-media profile that I could locate, nor was he mentioned on anyone else’s. There were plenty of other Raymond Fortini profiles, but I eliminated them one by one.
Odd to fly so under the radar in the digital age, which prompted another type of searching, although knowing my brother, if the man had a criminal record Sean would have shared that information with me. Eventually, I found an article from four years earlier about a bartending contest held at a Pittsburgh nightclub, and lo and behold if a Ray Fortini, bartender at The Crooked Halo in Bellevue, wasn’t listed as one of the winners. They even had a picture of him—a white, thirtysomething man who was handsome in a scruffy sort of way, dark hair and eyes, a wicked grin, and one of those semi-beards that might not be a beard at all, but just a day or two without shaving. I’d only caught a quick glimpse of his face at the house and he certainly hadn’t been smiling, but otherwise the man in the photo seemed to match my memory.
I was burying the bat back in the sports bin when my phone chimed. It was a shock, but a good one, to finally see a reply to my text: 10 a.m. tomorrow. Cemetery. Last chance.
I hurried to call Julie and Sarah.
*
“A girls’ night out on a Tuesday?” Michael said, surprised. “I thought you hated doing that on weekdays because you couldn’t sleep in the next morning.”
“It’s a special case—Julie’s celebrating a house sale.”
“Oh, really? What house?” He was searching the fridge for a beer and didn’t see my expression, which was fortunate because I was stumped.
“I don’t know. Apparently it’s some property that she’s been trying to unload for months.”
“That’s nice.” He had his beer, but now he was searching the kitchen, opening drawers.
“Here,” I said, opening a drawer on the opposite side and finding the bottle opener. I passed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, popping off the cap. “I could have sworn we kept it in this drawer.” We didn’t—it had been in the same drawer for the entire eight years we’d lived in this house—but I just smiled. He took a swig of beer. “So, did you have any plans for dinner?” he said in the hesitant voice of a spouse who’s really hoping no one’s counting on him to cook something.
“There’s some pasta,” I said, opening the fridge. “There’s chicken. You’re great at improvising—I’m sure the kids will like whatever you feel like making.”
“Sure, okay,” he said with forced enthusiasm. “We’ll be fine—you have a good time.”