Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

A moment later she came out and screamed that Joey was dead. So, I’d say she was the one who discovered the body.”

      “And you are…?” the cop asks me. It comes out a bit like who do I think I am, rather than who am I really?

      “An innocent bystander,” Bobbie, hair perfect, makeup just right, says, carefully placing her body between the cop and me.

      “And she was just leaving,” Mark adds. They each take one of my arms.

      Fran comes into the inner circle surrounding the cops. In case it isn’t obvious from the hairnet and blood-stained white apron with “Fran” embroidered on it, I explain that she was the butcher who was going for the brisket. Mark and Bobbie take that as a signal that I’ve done my job and they can now get me out of here. They twist around, with me in the middle, like we’re a Rockettes line, until we are facing away from the butcher counter. They’ve managed to propel me a few steps toward the exit when disaster—in the form of a Mazda RX-7 pulling up at the loading curb—strikes.

      Mark’s grip on my arm tightens like a vise. “Too late,” he says.

      Bobbie’s expletive is unprintable. “Maybe there’s a back door,” she suggests, but Mark is right. It’s too late.

      I’ve laid my eyes on Detective Scoones. And while my gut is trying to warn me that my heart shouldn’t go there, regions farther south are melting at just the sight of him.

      “Walk,” Bobbie orders me.

      And I try to. Really.

      Walk, I tell myself. Just put one foot in front of the other.

      I can do this because I know, in my heart of hearts, that if Drew Scoones were still interested in me, he’d have gotten in touch with me after I returned from Boca. And he didn’t.

      Since he’s a detective, Drew doesn’t have to wear one of those dark blue Nassau County Police Department uniforms. Instead, he’s got on jeans, a tight-fitting T-shirt and a tweedy sports jacket. If you think that sounds good, you should see him. Chiseled features, cleft chin, brown hair that’s naturally a little sandy in the front, a smile that…well, that doesn’t matter. He isn’t smiling now.

      He walks up to me, tucks his sunglasses into his breast pocket and looks me over from head to toe.

      “Well, if it isn’t Miss Cut and Run,” he says. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere in Florida or something?” He looks at Mark accusingly, as if he were covering for me when he told Drew I was gone.

      “Detective Scoones?” one of the uniforms says. “The stiff’s in the cooler and the woman who found him is over there.” He jerks his head in Fran’s direction.

      Drew continues to stare at me.

      You know how when you were young, your mother always told you to wear clean underwear in case you were in an accident? And how, a little farther on, she told you not to go out in hair rollers because you never knew who you might see—or who might see you? And how now your best friend says she wouldn’t be caught dead without makeup and suggests you shouldn’t either?

      Okay, today, finally, in my overalls and Converse sneakers, I get it.

      I brush my hair out of my eyes. “Well, I’m back,” I say. Like he hasn’t known my exact whereabouts. The man is a detective, for heaven’s sake. “Been back a while.”

      Bobbie has watched the exchange and apparently decided she’s given Drew all the time he deserves. “And we’ve got work to do, so…” she says, grabbing my arm and giving Drew a little two-fingered wave goodbye.

      As I back up a foot or two, the store manager sees his chance and places himself in front of Drew, trying to get his attention. Maybe what makes Drew such a good detective is his ability to focus.

      Only what he’s focusing on is me.

      “Phone broken? Carrier pigeon died?” he asks me, taking in Fran, the manager, the meat counter and that Employees Only door, all without taking his eyes off me.

      Mark tries to break the spell. “We’ve got work to do there, you’ve got work to do here, Scoones,” Mark says to him, gesturing toward next door. “So it’s back to the alley for us.”

      Drew’s lip twitches. “You working the alley now?” he says.

      “If you’d like to follow me,” Bill-the-manager, clearly exasperated, says to Drew—who doesn’t respond. It’s as if waiting for my answer is all he has to do.

      So, fine. “You knew I was back,” I say.

      The man has known my whereabouts every hour of the day for as long as I’ve known him. And my mother’s not the only one who won’t buy that he “just happened” to answer this particular call. In fact, I’m willing to bet my children’s lunch money that he’s taken every call within ten miles of my home since the day I got back.

      And now he’s gotten lucky.

      “You could have called me,” I say.

      “You’re the one who set tomorrow for our talk and then flew the coop, chickie,” he says. “I figured the ball was in your court.”

      “Detective?” the uniform says. “There’s something you ought to see in here.”

      Drew gives me a look that amounts to in or out?

      He could be talking about the investigation, or about our relationship.

      Bobbie tries to steer me away. Mark’s fists are balled. Drew waits me out, knowing I won’t be able to resist what might be a murder investigation.

      Finally he turns and heads for the cooler.

      And, like a puppy dog, I follow.

      Bobbie grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me to a halt.

      “I’m just going to show him something,” I say, yanking away.

      “Yeah,” Bobbie says, pointedly looking at the buttons on my blouse. The two at breast level have popped. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

      

      THE GUY IN THE FREEZER looks very familiar, but I can’t quite place him. I mean the dead one. The other guy I know so well that it’s hard not to just pick up where we left off.

      If where we left off hadn’t been a precipice I wasn’t ready to fall from.

      “You wanna tell me what happened?” Drew asks.

      I tell him about how I should have gone to Waldbaum’s for the brisket, but that since I’m working next door…And here I segue into how the original decorator quit and I am finishing up her work and how I don’t get paid if I don’t get it done in time for their grand opening in just over a month—though they aren’t closed during the renovations so “Grand Opening” is really a misnomer—

      He gives me the get-to-the-point look. It’s one of those benefits of knowing someone well: they don’t really have to use words.

      “So I came here because it would save time. I thought I could pick up the meat first thing this morning, put it in the fridge at the alley and then take it home with me tonight. This month is all about saving time, because of the grand-opening thing—”

      He knows I babble when I’m nervous, so he’s being patient. He only sighs rather than signaling me to hurry up.

      “And there was no brisket in the case, so I asked the woman who was putting out the chicken breasts—the cutlet kind, sliced thin—if she had any in the back and she went to get some and, well—” I point at the guy on the floor.

      Drew looks as though, when he asked what happened, he really meant it in the larger sense—the us sense.

      I tell him that I’ve seen the guy before. He isn’t impressed. I tell him, no, really recently, only I can’t place him.

      “Picture