Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

Drew waits. Finally I tell him about how the team goes in on lottery tickets together every week.

      He makes a production of reaching around behind him to make sure his handcuffs are in his back pocket. “Ooh! I better run ’em in,” he says sarcastically. “Think I should call for backup?”

      “Mock me,” I say, “but there could be millions involved and—”

      “Mega millions,” he corrects.

      “I’m not kidding. Let’s say that Joey had the winning ticket and one of the others knew it and pushed him into the freezer—”

      “The cooler. And this Slicer counted on the light being burned out?” Drew says. “And then what? He’s still got to kill off an entire team’s worth of players so that he can claim all the winnings himself. You don’t think that would be a little obvious?”

      “Still,” I say. After all, a couple of The Spare Slices are a slice short of a sandwich.

      He orders me to sit down, but I refuse. One thing I’ve become adamant about in my single life is that no one can order me around.

      “Fine,” he says. “Stand there.”

      Now, if I stand, I’m listening to him and if I sit I’m listening to him.

      “Try pacing,” he offers, like he’s read my mind.

      “No one’s claimed last week’s lottery,” I remind him.

      “Look,” he says, watching me go back and forth. “Could you please sit? I’ll sit first.”

      And he does.

      “So happens we knew about the lottery tickets. That woman—Fran—over at King Kullen told the detectives on the case all about it. Said that Joey was always planning what he’d do if he won. Like your friend at Waldbaum’s.”

      “Max.”

      “Right,” he says. “Max. Only I checked with the detectives assigned to the case and they assured me that the five remaining Spare Slices all say they saw the twenty losing tickets, same as every week for the last three years.”

      “But—” I start to say.

      He waits. The truth is, I’ve got nothing.

      “Has it occurred to you that maybe you’ve got murder on the brain? That you’re seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any? And that your imagination is running away with your common sense?”

      I suppose my body language says No, that hasn’t occurred to me. And furthermore, I do not think that is the case here.

      I mean, a man is dead under very suspicious circumstances.

      “The man’s death has been ruled an accident, Teddi. Why he brought that water in with him, I don’t know, but I do know what happened after that. Some spilled, he slipped on it, hit his head, got disoriented, panicked, heart attack, done. Or, he gets the pain in his chest, clutches it, spills the water, takes a nose dive, done. Whichever, it was the heart attack that killed him. Live with it.”

      “How do you know he banged his head?” I ask. “And how do you know someone didn’t bang it for him?”

      “And if the man went to sleep in his bed and died there, you’d figure it was murder because his pajamas were buttoned wrong.” He doesn’t say this like that would be a clue. Which, of course, I think it would. I remember a Columbo where the woman’s panties were on backward and that was how he knew that she hadn’t dressed herself.

      “Let it go,” he says, like he can see the wheels turning in my head.

      “Okay, but what if,” I hypothesize, “I’m on to something and that rock through Dana’s window was a warning?”

      He agrees it was a warning. “That your daughter is growing up and boys are interested in her.”

      I ask what makes him so sure.

      “Been there, done that.” He plays with a lock of my hair and I jerk my head away. “And there are times I’d like to throw a rock at her mother’s window.”

      CHAPTER 5

      Service men (or women) can make or break your project. Always investigate their qualifications, check their references, and let reputation guide you. Remember that when they finish a job is more important than when they start it, and you’ll have to live with the results for a long time.

      —TipsFromTeddi.com

      “This is a joke, right?”

      My ex-husband, the bane of my existence, the pain in my butt, the rain on the parade of my life, the—well, you get the general idea—is standing with Steve when I get to L.I. Lanes in the morning.

      Now, this morning has been bad enough already. Dana’s window will cost me almost two hundred dollars to fix. I want to have the boy’s parents pay for the repair, only Dana insists there is no boy. And no boy’s parents. She’s beyond adamant and she has no trouble looking me in the eye about it.

      Jesse, who has probably never ratted on anyone, appears unwilling to start now and all I can get out of him is a shrug.

      And I learned from Alyssa that Drew isn’t Daddy and that Daddy should live with us.

      Which brings me back to Daddy, otherwise known as Rio the rat Gallo, standing in my place of business, chatting up the owner.

      “Hey Teddi,” he says. “You see my new truck?” He points with his chin toward the bowling alley doors through which I’ve just come without noticing anything except that I have a message on my cell phone from Rita Kroll, that friend of my mother’s who is moving up to Woodbury.

      Or down to Woodbury, in my mother’s eyes.

      I bother looking—against my better instincts—and outside is a big white truck with the words Rio Grande Security written on the side. The O in Rio is a camera and a wire snakes its way through the words. It’s actually a nice logo. Not that I’d tell him so if my life depended on it.

      I put two and two—and two—together and hope I’m not getting the right sum. There’s Rio’s name on the truck, the truck is here at L.I. Lanes and I think Steve casually mentioned something to me the other day about putting in some security cameras.

      Steve asks if Rio and I know each other. I pray that Rio doesn’t answer “in the Biblical sense.”

      Do I have to tell you?

      I didn’t think so.

      Before Steve gets ideas, I tell him that we were once married, a long, long time ago.

      Rio corrects me and tells him we’ve only been divorced a couple of years.

      “Rio’s putting in a system for me,” Steve says.

      I bite my tongue so that “well then, I’m out of here,” can’t slip out. “Great,” I say instead, drawing out the word like I’m drowning.

      “It’ll be like old times,” Rio says, throwing an arm around me and hugging me against his side. “Remember when we did Lys’s room? You doing all the painting and me wiring up her lights?”

      “How could I forget?” I say with a weak smile. I doubt the fire department has forgotten either. And in the damp weather you can still faintly smell the smoke in her room.

      He’s still hugging me against him when the phone on the counter rings and Steve turns to answer it.

      “Please don’t blow this for me,” Rio whispers. “I gotta pay Carmine back for the truck and I’ve got—”

      Carmine? He borrowed money from my mother’s old boyfriend to start his business? The old boyfriend who is so blatantly mafioso that he could give James Gandolfini lessons?

      “Problem?” Steve asks, hanging up the phone.