She was out of the loop for the last one, and as for the bad stories? She was part of a big one that didn’t have a har-har at the end.
Anne looked down at her prosthesis. When she’d had the mold taken of her remaining hand, she remembered the guy asking her if she wanted the nails painted any specific kind of color. She’d thought he’d been serious, but it was a joke—and not a mean one. He’d been a veteran who was missing both his legs and walking very naturally around on his artificial limbs.
You can do this, he’d told her. I promise you.
“I can do this,” she said to her empty house.
The lack of an answer back seemed a commentary on her life, and that made her think of her mother’s latest bright idea. The woman was always offering to come over and “add a few touches” to Anne’s place. “Spruce things up.” “Make things more cozy.”
So she wanted to bring over a ficus. And not a plastic one.
Anne had sent her an email saying no because that was more efficient than a phone conversation that had a one-minute hello and a nineteen minute I’ve-got-to-go-now on her side. And as for the home stuff? The woman had never understood. These four walls and a roof were like the refrigerator of someone who ate out all the time. Back when she’d been at the fire station, she’d only come here to crash and recover enough to go back to work.
Her home had been where her job was.
Besides, she’d had enough Laura Ashley in the nineties to last her twelve lifetimes.
When one of her ankles began to ache, she glanced across at the digital clock on the microwave. She’d been standing here for a good half hour.
Motivating herself, she went across to the year-round porch that overlooked her small fenced-in backyard. She’d set up an office in the space as a way to ground herself in her new reality, thinking that she’d need a home base as an investigator. A trip to OfficeMax had yielded a laptop and a scanner/copier, as well as a low-end desk and a cheapie black chair with rollers under the base.
As she parked it in front of the setup, she opened the laptop, but didn’t turn it on.
She’d also bought herself some pens, document clips, a small pack of folders. Three legal pads and a ream of paper.
Looking around at everything, she decided it had been a waste of $400, just the vocabulary of an office instead of—
Anne frowned and focused on the laptop. Then she pushed herself back and regarded the desk. The scanner/copier.
The laptop again.
Office supplies. Bog-standard . . . office supplies. Like the ones that had been in her warehouse fire.
With a burst of energy, she got to her feet, flashed into the kitchen, and grabbed her bag.
She was in such a hurry to leave the house, she forgot to lock up.
chapter
13
The Timeout Sports Bar & Grill was a venerable establishment, with a founding date of 1981. Back then, when everyone had been calling 867-5309 because some chick had Bette Davis eyes and every little thing she did was magic, it had been cutting-edge with its video games in one corner, the pool tables in the back, and the pictures of Larry Bird, Bobby Orr, and the “Miracle on Ice” team fresh and unfaded.
Thirty-seven years later? The original posters were still up, but Nomar and Dustin, Tom Brady and Cam Neely were flashing smiles along with the old greats, and the video games had been replaced by a booth section and more flat-screen TVs than a Best Buy’s showroom. The pool tables were still there, however, and Carl’s old lady, Terri, who ran the place after his death, would let you light up in the back as long as you popped a window and ashed in your longneck, not on her floor.
As with the evolving heroes in the frames, so, too, the clientele was a new generation of the same that had gone before. The firemen, cops, and detectives who were now sitting at the tables, playing pool, or hanging around the bar were the sons and nephews, the daughters and nieces, of the ones who had been there in the eighties, the nineties, the aughties.
“I bring you another one.”
Danny glanced up at the waitress as she put a fresh Bud down in front of him. Josefina had worked there for a year now, and with her long black hair and her deep brown eyes, she was something to look at, for sure.
“You know me too well,” he said.
“Sí, Dannyboy. I know you.”
As the woman winked and headed back to the bar, Moose cursed. “Do you mind.”
Danny took a pull and sat forward in his hard chair. “’Bout what.”
“Why do you have to get every female in this place?”
“I haven’t gone out with her.”
“Yet.”
“Nah.” He eyed the dark-haired woman as she took an order from another table. “Chavez would kill me. He’s in love with her.”
“Reallllllly.” Moose sat forward, too, his bulk turning the sizable six-top into a Post-it note. “Amy wants her?”
“I don’t know. Whatever.”
“Come on, man. Tell me.”
“I don’t know nothing.” Danny made a point of nodding toward the pool tables. “We’re up next on number three.”
“Yeah, after those Brads. Did they buy everything at the Polo outlet before they came here?”
Danny measured the loafers. The watches. Those haircuts. “Moose, buddy, those boys do not shop at outlets.”
The set of four matching preppies, aged twenty-one to twenty-five, had sauntered into Timeout about twenty minutes before, and he was guessing they had boated to the New Brunswick Yacht Club under sail, parked in a private berth, and were slumming it here after having dined on lobster thermidor and baked Alaska with Mumsey and Dads. No doubt they were hoping for some hot, raw townie sex before they went back to their oceanfront mansions and their two-entry-only Daughters of the American Revolution fiancées.
He’d seen the type before. And they’d come here again because these Brads were like the social equivalent of the rhinovirus. Bound to show up from time to time, but nothing that was terminal, and by reducing exposure, you had less a chance of catching one.
So yeah, he was going to give ’em plenty of time at that pool table. Until they moved on on their own.
“You drive me batshit.”
He refocused on Moose. “Usually I just try to piss people off. I’m over-succeeding with you without meaning to.”
“If you know something about Amy, why aren’t you tell me?”
“Go talk to Chavez directly.”
“He never goes into his personal life.”
“So guess you’re screwed.”
“Fucker—”
A whistle broke through the argument, and both he and Moose looked toward the pool table.
“More beers,” one of the frat boys said over the din. “Now, not later, chiquita.”
Danny frowned and sized the kid up with the mouth up. He looked like law school material. Or med school—i.e., more forehead than jawline. With that gold watch and those Bermuda shorts, it was also an easy guess he had some roman numerals after his last name.
Subtly turning his body in the direction of the pool game, Danny swallowed some beer and told himself not to get involved.
Two minutes later, Josefina walked over to the quartet with, oh, of course, some craft bullshit on her round tray, and the James Spaderses, circa Pretty in Pink, stared at her in a way he was sure Chavez wouldn’t appreciate.
“Get anything good at the hospital?” a male voice said.
As Duff pulled a chair out, Danny nodded a greeting, and then realized the question was to him. “Nope. Just a co-pay I gotta get reimbursed by the department.”
“You need any respiratory rehab?”
“Nope.”
“Where’s Chavez?”
“He’s coming,” Moose said. “It’s early.”
Over at the pool table, Danny refocused—and watched Josefina bend down and pick something off the floor. As she made her way back to the bar, she was frowning.
“Oh, great, Rizzo’s in the house,” Moose muttered.
Sure enough, Rizzo and some of the 617s were filing in, and as usual, they went in the opposite direction, to the booths by the front windows.
“You want another one, Dannyboy?”
Danny looked up at Josefina. “I didn’t know I was done. Yeah, I do.”
The woman smiled. “When you want me to turn you off tonight?”