Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

Someone sticks her head into the ladies’ room. “Are you Teddi Bayer?”

I try pleading the fifth.

She tells me there’s a policeman outside who wants to talk to me.

Have you ever heard God laughing? I mean, yeah, it’s possible what I’m hearing is just thunder, but under the circumstances…

Drew is leaning up against a pole when I emerge. His hair is slightly wet, the shoulders on his jacket are sprinkled with rain. He looks like a commercial for a Jeep or Irish Spring.

He pushes himself off the post and tells me he caught Dana walking in the rain and gave her a lift home. Okay, it’s more like “that kid doesn’t have the sense to come in outta the rain. And stubborn? Had to nearly drag her ass into the car. Don’t know where she gets that from.”

And all the while he’s talking, he’s taking in my outfit.

“I can’t imagine what you did to piss her off,” he says and he’s measuring the height of my heels with his eyes while he talks. “Noticed your ex is here, too,” he adds.

“Everyone’s here but my mother and the press,” I tell him. And the way my luck is going, one or the other will be next.

Unlike the usually cocky Drew, he almost seems self-conscious, standing there—like he’s trying to be casual, but knows he isn’t pulling it off. “So, you want to maybe grab something to eat when you’re done here?” he asks me.

Actually, he asks my legs.

I tell him what I really need is for him to help me check over Rio’s work after hours. He tells my legs that sounds okay and then his cell rings.

“Gotta run,” he says, and he tilts his head slightly at the hem of my skirt. “She’s probably just jealous,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves.

That was a compliment, I think. I’m not flattered and the last thing I want is for my thirteen year-old to feel in competition with me.

But at least I know she’s home and safe, even if she is pissed.

Not something I can worry about now, I figure, so I go back to the billiards area, where Don is anxious to show me how to play pool.

“Your son’s got a natural aptitude,” he tells me, being careful to keep his eyes averted when he thinks I’m looking. Rio, who is supposed to be working on the wiring for the security system, puffs out his chest, as though hanging around in a pool hall and being a pool shark is the avocation he had in mind for our son.

It might be.

“Dad’s getting me my own stick,” Jesse says as he sinks three balls in a row. Gently, Don corrects him and calls it a cue. I call it a bribe and can see the writing on the wall—Rio earning some money means that he’ll be buying the kids’ favors before his paycheck even makes it into his pocket.

While Jesse impresses his father and a bunch of boys who have gathered around to watch, I explain to Don that I need the new tables, four of them, in two weeks. He promises that he can deliver.

Two of the boys whistle as Jesse hits the white ball into the red one, causing it to hit the yellow one into the pocket.

“Combination shot,” Don says. “Boy’s good. How long has he been playing?”

Jesse looks at his watch.

“No,” Don says. “Really.”

Jesse looks guiltily at me. “Dad and I have played a few times,” he says.

This, of course, is news to me. All I’ve heard is how much he hates his father.

“How much would a pool table for the house cost?” I ask Don. If Jesse is going to play pool, I figure it’s better if I know where and with whom. Jesse’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas and immediately I regret asking in front of him.

Don tells me that I can get “junk” for under a thousand, or a good one for a little over that.

“Just sold a gorgeous antique one for seventeen big ones,” he tells me. “But the guy froze to death before the deal was done. How’s that for rotten luck? Almost sixty degrees out and a guy freezes to death.”

“Seventeen thousand?” Rio asks, and his voice cracks. He’s standing on a ladder with a bunch of wires in his hands and I’m hoping he knows what to do with half of them. “You can get that much for a pool table?”

“Nope,” Don says, “for a billiards table.”

“What’s the difference?” Jesse asks him.

“About ten grand,” Don says with a laugh.

“The man who froze to death,” I say, wondering out loud. “His name didn’t happen to be Joey, did it?”

Don looks at me and nods. “It sure did.”

CHAPTER 6

It only takes one piece to upgrade the look of an entire room if that piece is the focal point. Rather than evenly allotting a strained budget, concentrate the bulk of your spending on the area that is going to have the greatest impact—a fabulous rug, a fireplace mantel, an impressive painting. Make sure, though, that you love it, since it’s what your eye will be drawn to.

—TipsFromTeddi.com

“You tell me how a deli-counter man could buy a pool table for seventeen thousand dollars,” I ask Drew when I finally reach him by phone after I’ve gone home to change.

“You tell me how you wiggled into that skirt,” he says. “There are still some mysteries left in the universe, I guess.”

Does the word irritating mean anything to you? I hold a biscuit up for Maggie and tell her she’s got to promise to bite Drew the next time she sees him if she wants her treat.

I swear she nods, but she’s a slut for biscuits and I’ve found that sometimes she’ll lie.

“All I’m saying,” I tell Drew, “is that you need to check into what else Joey Ingraham was buying and where the money was coming from.”

“And all I’m saying,” he parrots back, “is that even if this case wasn’t closed, it wasn’t my case to begin with. I can’t just go investigate some other cop’s case.”

When I ask why not, he tells me it would imply that the cop wasn’t doing his job.