Why Is Murder On The Menu, Anyway?

“How about a police officer?” Drew says in response, and laughs when Dana reddens and pushes past him, Kimmie in her wake. “That one’s gonna be a handful,” he tells me, like he’s raised any kids of his own.

“Yeah, well,” is all I can say. That and it would have been nice if you’d given me enough warning to put on some makeup and decent clothes. Of course, I don’t say that.

“Just like her mom,” he says, looking me over from toe to head. “A real handful.”

I ask if he wants coffee and fumble with the maker.

“What I’d like is to know what the hell you were doing at Joe Greco’s funeral.”

That’s it. He doesn’t say more.

“Saying goodbye?” I suggest.

He just waits.

“I was one of the last people to see him alive,” I say. “Closure?”

“Just how well did you know him?” he asks, and his tone implies I was having sex with the man on a regular basis.

I tell him I didn’t know the man at all. Not even his name.

“Never saw him with his pants down?” he asks.

“Only dead,” I remind him, like if he’s trying to trap me, he’s failed.

“Lunches on Wednesdays?”

This is clearly a clue, but I say nothing.

He takes out a small tape recorder and places it on the counter. I hear myself telling Joe I’ll miss him.

I repeat that I didn’t know the man, though I admit that it does seem fishy.

“Everything with you seems fishy,” he says. “But until now you’ve always been honest with me and didn’t play games.”

I tell him I’m being honest about not knowing Joe, but the way it comes out it sounds as cagey as it is.

“I’m asking you, as a police officer, what you were doing at Joe Greco’s funeral, crying over his dead body.”

“Are you jealous?” I ask. It’s a dangerous question, but it could take us off the subject at hand, and give me time to think.

He tells me he’s not jealous, he’s angry. “I’ve put myself on the line for you, Teddi. Not once, not twice, but enough times to get the whole damn department betting on what you’ll do next. You know what it took to ditch Hal this morning so that I could take care of this alone?”

I ask him what he’s talking about, but my skin is already crawling.

“The Department’s a club, a fraternity. Christ, it’s a legal gang. It’s got rules, codes, and there’s no such thing as secrets.” He looks embarrassed, but seems to shake it off. “And you, Teddi Bayer, are one interesting woman.”

“What does that mean?”

He tells me that I’m as smart as I am interesting, and he doesn’t mean it as a compliment. “So you figure it out. And while you’re thinking on it, you want to explain your relationship with Joe Greco to me? Or to some guys down at the station?”

I tell him again that I have no relationship with Joe Greco, but I can see that isn’t going to be enough.

I tell him I was returning a ring. He asks what kind of a ring. I tell him a diamond. I’m so angry I’m letting him jump to every wrong conclusion he can.

“Joe Greco gave you a diamond ring?” he says. “You need a sugar daddy that bad, kiddo?”

I tell him that my mother didn’t think he was too old for me and he just laughs.

“Your mother, as we both know, is a whacko.”

I nod. “Whacko enough to use a men’s room when the ladies’ room is occupied. Whacko enough to take a dead man’s ring from where it was left on a sink ledge in that men’s bathroom. Whacko enough to give it to her husband, and whacko enough to be mad at her daughter for taking it back and returning it to the dead man’s finger.”

Drew just sighs. Then he asks if I have any proof.

“That my mother is whacky? I have a police detective’s assessment.”

He gives me a sick little smile.

“And then there’s the hospital report from Sunday when I took my father there to have the ring removed from his finger when he couldn’t get it off. Will that do?”

“Was that so hard?” he asks me, and the hand on the counter is balled in a fist. “When the hell are you going to realize I’m on your side?”

“Against whom?” I ask, and I’m trembling because I don’t want to need him on my side. I don’t want to need anyone on my side. I want to stand alone, be left alone. “I didn’t ask to be part of this mess. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.”

Drew comes to his feet and pushes me against the refrigerator. I can feel Alyssa’s latest drawing behind my back. He presses himself up against me and kisses me like he is making up for three months of being AWOL. He kisses my mouth, my cheeks, my neck. He kisses my eyelids until I’m forced to close my eyes, and he kisses my forehead so tenderly that if he wasn’t pressed against me I’d just melt in a puddle on the floor.

And then he pushes himself away from me. “Damn it to hell, woman,” he says. “You could have just given me the ring.”

I could have, I think to myself. But I wouldn’t have gotten kissed like that if I had.

He shakes his head at me. “Damn it,” he says again, grabbing up his jacket and heading for the door.

“Drew,” I say, wanting to tell him about what Frank Greco said about Wednesdays, like Joe met someone regularly, and what the other man by the casket said, but he doesn’t turn around. He just waves his hand over his head.

“Damn it all to hell,” he says again and then slams my door.

At 10:00 a.m. I call two potential clients and then answer a bunch of questions on my Web site about shelving, including why Miss Stake’s shelves look like the library’s instead of her sister’s. I tell her to arrange the books by size instead of alphabetically, and to pull all the spines to the front edge of the shelves. And she wants to know how to stop them from making the room look smaller (paint the backs of the units the same color as the walls and put very few items on them).

Then I meet Mark Bishop, my carpenter, at The Steak-Out.

Mark is young, big and strong, and he’s built well enough that seeing a bit of his butt when he bends over is still a treat. He’s got a million girls calling him and showing up to “help him work,” and he is two hundred percent male.

The best part is that he’s a tease and a flirt, always coming on to me, always pretending he’d throw over all his little chickies for one roll in the hay with me.

He takes one look at me today and he can see that I’m already done in. “Come to papa, gorgeous,” he tells me, and I let him give me a big bear hug. “When are you going to give in and let me take care of you?”

I tell him that on what I pay him, he can’t afford to take care of me. “Who’s talking about financially?” he asks with a wink.