Chapter 21
The best laid plans of mice and men and love-starved women . . .
Robert didn't hang around much longer; he was trying very hard to be respectful and deferential to me. I didn't respect him any more for it, but I appreciated it. The poor little rich man climbed back into his vintage red Corvette a few minutes later, leaving Grant and me to finish our dinner and poke at the tub of frozen yogurt. Neither of us felt much like dessert of any kind.
I initiated the end-of-evening non-festivities.
“You can stay,” I said, “but I think we should call it a night.”
“I'm on board with that,” he said.
It was what I wanted to hear. It was what I expected to hear. But Stephen Hatfield's words came back like a tsunami. In my world, there was no sex for sex's sake. I couldn't just say to Grant, “Hey, let's have a quick tumble. Then you can go to sleep. Or go. Whatever you want.” If there was sex, he would stay, and if he stayed, there would be an implied “something” of a relationship or a familiarity, at least, in the morning, an obligation to be friendly or close or in some way committed.
There was a price for sex with me.
“The world is indeed off its axis if I'm quoting Hatfield to myself,” I thought aloud as I went to bed. I was asleep within minutesâwithin minutes of 9:30 p.m., which was a measure of how tired I wasâand was up with the sun.
In the light of day, the thing that seemed the strangest about the previous day was the thing about the jeweler's screwdriver. Who the hell carried one of those around? There weren't any jewelers on our long list of suspects.
I was about to leave for the deli when my cell rang. It was Grant.
“Bad news,” he said. “That screwdriver belonged to Joe.”
“What for?”
“According to McCoy, who asked his sister last night, he used it to make baseball displays for Dave's memorabilia shop. Kind of a hobby.”
“So why was it in the truck?”
“He was going to tighten some of the stands during lunch. Apparently, they come loose when you screw and unscrew the plastic holders.”
“Because . . . ?”
“People like to examine the signatures, make sure they're real and not printed. Anyway, Joe kept it in the ashtray so he wouldn't forget.”
“Wow. Gotta say, I didn't see that coming,” I said.
“If it's true, it tells me the killing wasn't planned.”
“Yeah, but what a stupid, random way to dieâbecause your ball screwing tool was in an ashtray to remind you to go somewhere.”
“Would it have been better if it were a pen or pencil?”
“A little,” I said.
Though Joe would still be just as dead
.
“But you were right about the gloves,” he added. “Brenda said he always wore them when he made deliveries. Good get, Gwen.”
“Thanks.”
I had no idea where the investigation was going after this, and I was glad it wasn't my responsibility.
I got to the deli early, figuring I owed it to the staff to beat everyone there and get as much of the prep work done as possible. Naturally, it didn't happen that way. I parked, and walking over, I saw a figure sitting on the front stoop, bent low, wearing a wrinkled hoodie. The rain had stopped, but the garment was damp; the person must have been there all night.
As I neared, I saw that it was Stacie.
“Jesus, girl,” I said, hurrying the last few steps. I bent beside her, put my arms around her, helped her to her feet. Her head went back. Her cheeks were red, her skin was pale, and her eyes were bloodshot. Her hair was a scraggly mess under the hood. I didn't smell liquor on her breath, her pupils seemed normal, and her head wasn't rolling around.
“Sorry, sis,” she said. “I didn't know where else to go.”
“It's all right,” I said, my arm around her waist as I shoved the keys in the door and pushed it open. I locked it behind us and helped her into a chair. “You're freezing,” I said. “Let me make some coffee.”
I ran behind the counter, tore open a packet of instant, and used hot water from the tap. I came back with the cup, a spoon, and a Danish on a plate. I placed them in front of her. I took off the sweatshirt and threw a man's sports jacket around her shoulders. Someone had forgotten it, and I kept it in my office. I never did figure out how a man forgot a sports jacket and didn't miss it.
“Eat,” I said.
She picked up the pastry and took a bite.
“I'm sorry,” she said again.
“Nothing to be sorry for. What happened?”
She snickered. “When? With who?”
“It doesn't matter. Talk.”
She washed the pastry down with coffee.
“Good,” she said. “Real good.”
“I'm glad.”
She took a long breath, seemed to recover slightly. “Okay. So I took your advice and wrote to Stephen that I wanted to see him. He wrote back, telling me I was ungrateful, and that it wasn't necessary to come and see him. Everything of mine that was at his house was really his, he said, so there was no reason to come back. He wished me well.”
“What a prince,” I said.
“I don't blame him,” Stacie said. “It was pretty sudden. I don't regret it.”
“Good for you.”
“Maybe not.” She smiled weakly. She ate more Danish. “When I got home, I made spaghetti for Scottâhis favoriteâand told him everything that had happened. About dating Stephen, about everything you said, about dumping Stephen. All of it. You know what he did? He started to cry.”
“Did he say why?”
She shook her head, drank more coffee, added sugar, swirled it around. “He just cried for a while, and when I tried to comfort him, he told me not to. He stopped, picked at the spaghetti, had a little beer, cried some moreâand then left.”
“Had he ever cried before?”
“Only when he lost a hundred dollars on a Sting game.”
“A what?”
“Charlotte Stingâwomen's basketball. It was the first and only time he bet. It was when he wanted to get me a nicer diamond for our engagement. Instead, he had to get me one that was a hundred dollars worse.”
“I see.”
“I went out looking for him. He had the car, so I ran for a while, going to the bars he usually visits. He had been to one of them, the Ghostly Booze, but he wasn't in any of them when I got there.”
“Did you call the police?”
She nodded. She fought tears. “They found him beat up and unconscious on Harrison Street, by his car.”
“My God. How is he?”
“He came to in the hospital but was real confused, not makin' any sense. They sedated him. I left, and . . . I came here.”
“Do you think it was Hatfield?”
She drank her coffee and stared into her cup.
“Stacie?”
She looked over. “I don't know. He wouldn't take my call, and I knew he wouldn't let me in the gate. So I just sat, thinkin' that I had caused this to happen.”
“No!” I leaned across the table and took her by the shoulders. “I talked to Scott, and I saw how heavy this thing weighed on him. I think he cried when you told him because he was relieved, and maybe a little ashamed, and he just didn't know how to handle it. After he left, he had a few drinks. Maybe he talked to the bartender. Maybe he got mad. Maybe he did something stupid. But
you
didn't cause that. You did the right thing by talking to him.”
I hoped
. I wasn't a shrink, and I'd made a couple of pop-psych suggestions based on a quick read of Scott and a quick read of Stacie. God help us all if I messed up.
One thing I needed to do, though, was get a picture of what happened after he left the bar.
“Will you be okay out here for a few minutes?”
She nodded.
“I'm sorry about all this,” I said. “But we're going to make it all right.”
“I believe you,” she said.
I hurried to my office and shut the door. I had not, I'm ashamed to admit, torn up the business card Stephen Hatfield had left me. I had thought about it, more than I should have. It had a kind of electric power, like it was a conduit of the man. Even contemplating what he might have done, I found myself . . .
You're a sick girl,
I chastised myself, though not hard enough.
I was actually aroused.
I took the man's card from my drawer, picked up the phone, and punched in his private number without hesitation. I was brave and jitter free when he was . . . I didn't even know how many miles away.
The phone rang. It was either late or too early by night-crawler standards. Either he was still up or I'd wake him. . . .
“Gwen Katz,” he answered. “This is an unexpected surprise.”
“Is it?”
“Completely.”
“Just one question, Mr. Hatfield. Did you do anything to Scott Ferguson?”
There was a brief silence. “What is it you think I've done to him?” he asked.
“Had him beaten halfway to dead.”
“Not me,” he said.
He spoke with such certainty that I didn't know what to say next. Anger is good for marathon runs and multiple assaults; fury is only good for short sprints. I was furious and out of gas.
“Let me guess what happened,” Hatfield said. “Our little cheerleader confessed all to her football hero, was met with relief and confusion and probably dollops of unhappiness, after which he toyed with the idea of confronting me in person. That is what jocks do, after all. First, though, he stopped at a local booze joint to fuel up. And then, tragically but perhaps fittingly, he ran afoul of some other jock or redneck or God knows who and had his ego, face, and vague plan rearranged. Would that not be an equally likely scenario?”
I didn't know what to say. Fortunately, I didn't feel obligated to say anything to this man.
Which was another thing,
I thought miserably.
I always feel like I have to talk to Grant about something. Anything.
“Gwen? Are you there?”
“Sorry to have wakened you,” I said, chilled by the double entendre I found in
that.
“No problem. I go to bed rather early when there's no one to keep me awake.”
“Creepy.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I have to go.”
I could see him smile. He could probably see me squirm.
“You
do
fascinate me,” he said. “I hope you will consider dinner some night. Out, if you feel safer.”
“Thanks. I don't think so.”
“That's the problem,” he said.
“What is?”
“Don't think.”
I hung up. The conversation had gone on about four exchanges too long. My hand was still on the receiver. It was shaking. I wished to hell I could follow my own advice and talk about what was inside me right now. But I didn't know. He was wrong. I had done things without thinking. My first, the professor, was oneâa big one. A no-returns-accepted impulse buy my freshman year. That was probably why I was so cautious now: that one did major damage.
You have never talked to anyone about that. Not even Phil, who didn't want to hear about the men who came before. It is long overdue. Maybe now that you have a sister who has been in similar shoes . . .
My eyes fell on a scrap of paper in the corner of my desk. The writing blasted Stephen Hatfield out of my brain and into next week.
“Not possible,” I said, thinking back. “Not . . . no. How does that even fit?”
I went to call Grant, realized he wasn't the man I needed to talk to. I turned on my monitor, looked up another number. It was early, but that was too damn bad.
I took a quick trip to the dining area. “Stacie, are you all right?”
“Can I get myself another coffee?”
“Of course. Behind the counter in a box marked Maxwell House.”
She nodded.
She was all right enough. I went back to the office and picked up the phone.
As for Robert Reid, he would take my call and like it.