“Okay . . .” She might have to mull that one over.
He sighed, picking up on her hesitance and confusion. “In other words, I was just as self-involved as you, my ego’s just as fat as yours, we both got some things wrong about each other and some things right, I will fart on your face very soon now, the end.”
That made a little more sense. Not the farting. The rest of it. “Okay. Thanks for indulging me, I got home from Jason’s and couldn’t go to bed until I amended my earlier apology.”
Her eyes had adjusted quite well to the gloom by now; she saw him blinking at her. “So you got home from your weird date with Detective Chambers—”
“It wasn’t weird!” she hissed, still mindful of waking Leah. Then she thought it over for a second. Tombstone cleaning, prison visit, uncle dropping the C bomb and promising at least one murder, a delicious fuck, a bitchy blow-off all culminating in a bedside confession. No wonder she was exhausted. “Well, okay. It was weird.”
“And then you came up here to wake me up out of a sound sleep and remind me that you can be a self-absorbed jerkass but tonight, at least, you were an apologetic self-absorbed jerkass.”
“No, I took a shower first.”
He settled back and hauled the blankets up under his chin. “Good. Glad we got it all cleared up. But make a note, because in another ten years I want a middle-of-the-night apology for this middle-of-the-night-apology. Just make an appointment or mention it in the Christmas newsletter so I know when it’s coming.
She giggled, something she hadn’t imagined doing even once during this conversation. “Done.”
“You promise?”
“Super done.”
“Go away, you controlling, aggravating, bitchy idiot.”
She wanted to hug him, but she’d disrupted his sleep cycle enough for one night. Instead she took the plate and quietly closed the door, and wasn’t too proud to lick her finger to get every one of those delicious pastry swan crumbs.
FORTY-FOUR
His cell rang, which was unwelcome. Jason wasn’t stupid enough to imagine it was Angela explaining she had waited until summer to pull an April Fool’s prank.
He’d known trying to go to sleep was futile and it was too soon to wax the floors again. He wasn’t hungry and he wasn’t thirsty. He had no stomach for work and didn’t feel like reading. So he was flipping through channels and rediscovering what most insomniacs knew: It didn’t matter how many channels you had or where in the world you were, there was nothing on at 1:00 a.m.
The hell with it. He didn’t recognize the number, but picked it up anyway. Woe betide the pollster in the wrong time zone who wanted his opinion on current events.
“Hello.”
“I hear you been stirring shit with a stick over at ICC, Chambers.”
“Mom?”
A gusty aggrieved sigh: “You know damned well I’m not your dead mom. This is Kline.”
Perfect.
“Kline, why are you pestering me in the wee hours? Are you so bad at retiring they’ve kicked you out of retiring? And if you are, why the hell would you call me to complain?”
“Buddy of mine works Intake Processing gave me a call tonight. Name’s Maller.”
Hmm. “Yes, I met him this afternoon.”
“He’s not really a buddy,” Kline explained, as if Jason had declared Kline had no buddies and demanded the exact truth of their relationship. “He’s married to my niece. She’s a nice kid, but he’s a shithead. He’s a gun owner and says he likes hunting, bullshit! He’s a vegetarian! How the fuck does that happen?”
“This is fascinating, Kline. Please don’t confuse that genuine sentiment with sarcasm. I’ll be crushed.”
“Anyway, turns out he was tryin’ ta help you out and got fired for it. I coulda told him it was a waste of time.”
Oh, hell. “Sorry to hear that.” And he was. Maller had seemed like a good enough guy, and had appeared to genuinely appreciate Leah’s offer of help.
“Well, he was short, outta there by the end of the month anyway, wasn’t all bad. They’re moving to the ’burbs and he hates the commute.”
“It’s kind of you to keep me up-to-date on the minutiae of your family’s lives.”
“You think I’m callin’ you at . . .” He heard hissing and immediately knew what Kline was doing. He was fond of belching, but felt it was ungentlemanly to make a lot of noise indulging his frequent, Coke-inspired gas attacks. So he hissed the belch into his fist, which took longer, was more startling, and called more attention to him than just letting it rip would have. Of all the noises Kline’s body made, the hissing was the one Jason missed least. “. . . one-fuckin’-thirty in the morning to give you updates on my niece’s move?”
“Yes, Kline. That’s what I think. Feel free to set me straight, unless you want me to commit to helping them move, in which case, I will cordially invite you to get lost.”
“Lighten the fuck up. I swear you’re the most uptight guy. Know what your problem is?”
“That would be problems, plural. And yes.”
“You need ta get laid.”
Jason laughed and for a few seconds, worried he might not be able to stop. He had to wipe his eyes before he could continue. “You were saying why you called.”
“Yeah, I was. So whatever you and those Insighters did, ya freaked Dennis out.”
“Astute and to the point, Kline, as ever.”
“Shaddup. I got the whole thing from Maller when we hit the bar. So ICC hadda do a whole TD* and bundle his howling ass to seg, right? Well, while they were bringing Drake to his new digs, he was yellin’ ’bout how his wife was gonna kill him, how even after all this time she was still pissed and she wasn’t gonna let go until the kids let go.”
Jason, who had been slumped on his couch half watching a rerun of The Tudors
(pilgrimage of Grace and Jane Seymour, not bad but season two’s more interesting. more and Fisher and the court of two queens)
dropped the remote. On his foot, but he hardly noticed. “Dennis Drake isn’t married.”
“Picked up on that, didja?”
“He’s never been married.”
“Yup.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Thought you’d like that. Toldja something was weird about this case.”
“You have said that about every single case that ever came your way.” It was automatic. Jason hardly knew what he was saying. He couldn’t hear Kline anymore. He was too busy remembering how he felt after Pat Chambers overdosed in front of him.
I am living a stolen life.
“Kline. I have to go. Thank you. For calling. My best to your niece and nephew-in-law.” He fumbled for the button to end the call and dropped the thing; it fell beside the remote.
Holy shit.
FORTY-FIVE
“He did what?”
Angela wasn’t too proud to bask in the group outrage, which was deafening and chaotic and made her feel better. A little better.
Paul had jumped to his feet. “I’ll strangle him with my tape measure! Normally I only use it to measure, but for this? I’ll make an exception.”
Jordan stabbed a bite of French toast from Paul’s unguarded plate. “I’ll buy you another tape measure and we can choke him out together.”
“Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?” Jack slammed his spatula down for emphasis, which was why there were now drops of syrup in her eyebrows. “The minute this white chocolate bread pudding is out of the oven, we’re all gonna pick out our favorite blunt object and pay him a visit.” Jack checked the oven timer. “In seventeen minutes!”
The best part of all of this, Angela thought, was how menacing-yet-adorable Jack looked in his WHAT PART OF “IT’S NOT READY YET” DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? apron.
Archer and Leah, motivated by hunger or curious about the source of the ruckus, came in. “Told ’em, huh?”
“Well, yeah.” Angela quit trying to rub the syrup out of her eyebrows with a paper napkin. “I would have had to eventually.”