Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

“I made an appointment for you last week. Maybe it was the week before. Anyway, it’s a good thing I remembered because it’s for nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” She recites the address and starts giving me directions as if I have a pen and paper at the ready.

I tell her I can’t make it at nine and she somehow worms out of me the fact that I am wanted down at the police station.

“He called you?” she asks. “That’s why I got voice mail? For Spoonbreath?”

“No, that was the pool table salesman,” I say, accepting the fact that she all but monitors my phone and always knows when I’ve gotten a call. “A policeman dropped by the bowling alley to tell me I’m wanted at the precinct in the morning.”

“Of course he wants you,” my mother says. “Tell him too bad. Tell him you’ve got a job to do. Tell him to sniff at someone else’s skirts…”

I, OF COURSE, tell him none of those things.

Sitting across the desk from him at the station the next morning, I tell him that I saw Joey arguing with several other men outside the bowling alley the night before he died. And they all had The Spare Slices shirts on.

“You hear what they were arguing about?” he asks me. He’s all business, but I notice his leg is going up and down a mile a minute, which he only does when he’s nervous.

I shake my head. “Was it murder?” I ask.

“Doesn’t really look like it,” he says. “But there are a few loose ends I want to tie up.”

He waits for me to respond. And he waits. The air in the room gets stuffy. Finally I say, “Okay, fine. Because I was scared.”

“Was that an answer to an old question or to one I didn’t ask yet?” he asks me.

I nod.

“Come on, Teddi,” he says. He’s almost whining. “Help me out here, okay? Just a clue what we’re talking about.”

“I ran because I was alone, which is scary,” I say.

“Is that you-leave-me-before-I-leave-you?” Drew asks.

I take a moment to figure out where that came from. He means running to Boca. I meant running to my car. I explain that because I was running, I couldn’t hear what the men were shouting about.

“Right,” he says.

Leave him before he left me? Is that what he thinks? Is that what he was going to do? “Were you going to leave me?” I ask.

He has the file open on his desk. A picture of Joey—frozen—is on top and he fingers it and pulls out a report sheet from behind it. “Where?” he says.

I figure we’re back to the investigation, so I say, “In front of the bagel place—you know, between L.I. Lanes and King Kullen. The one with the mini-everything bagels. Not too many places do the everythings in mini-size.”

He grimaces. “Leave you where?” he asks.

Is your head spinning yet? Because mine is. And while it’s been three months, I’m still not ready to talk about us. “What did he die of?” I ask instead of answering him.

“Heart attack,” he says. “Guy had a history of heart disease. He was living on borrowed time.”

I pick Dana’s old purse up off the floor and throw the strap over my shoulder. Bobbie would kill me if she saw the depths to which I’ve sunk, but Alyssa, my seven-year-old, painted my purse with magic marker. A new purse is not exactly in the budget at the moment, not even one from T.J.Maxx, which would pain Bobbie almost as much as Dana’s old one, I think. Nowadays you need to take out a second mortgage to buy a nice handbag. I can’t imagine what you’re left with to put inside it. You certainly don’t need a wallet cause there’d be nothing to keep in it.

“So that’s it then,” I say, coming to my feet.

“Looks like,” he says. “Only…”

He’s baiting me, but I refuse to get hooked. Still, asking “Only what?” doesn’t seem like much of a risk.

“Only the guy works in the deli, not the meat department. It’s after hours and he’s just had an argument with his buddies.”

“So why was he in the freezer?” I ask.

“And why was his shirt frozen?” he adds.

“He was locked in?” I ask. “Like you see in old movies?”

Drew shakes his head at me and smiles like it amuses him that I’m once again relating the world to some movie I’ve seen. “They don’t use that kind anymore. There are always latches on the inside to prevent accidental lock-ins.”

“And so he goes into the freezer, maybe to steal some filets, and the door closes behind him—” I start.

“One, they call it a cooler. The freezer’s where they keep the real frozen stuff—ice cream and the like. And two, there’s no reason he can’t just let himself out.”

“But he doesn’t.” I sit back down. “He has a sudden pain in his chest.” I clutch my chest. “He knows it’s the big one. He gropes for the door in the dark—” I flail my arms with my eyes closed.

“Light goes on automatically when you open the door.”

I open my eyes and remind him that the door is closed behind him.

“Stays on for thirty minutes,” Drew says. “And there’s an emergency button to push.”

“His shirt was wet?” I ask. “From sweat?”

Drew shakes his head. “Coroner says tap water.”

“And you say?” I ask.

Drew looks at the file. He leafs through a paper or two, studies the photograph of Joey. “Suspicious,” he says.

He doesn’t have to ask what I’d say.

Murder.

CHAPTER 3

Just like you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge a house by its appearance from the street. But you can provide a hint of what’s to be found inside so that the result doesn’t jar the senses. A Chinese umbrella stand on the porch, an arts and crafts mailbox, Victorian cornices—these all signal your style.

—TipsFromTeddi.com

I am not investigating anything, I tell myself. I am merely picking up some deli at Waldbaum’s for the kids’ lunches. Or just in case my father should happen to drop by. I mean, really, how can you not have some corned beef around, just in case?

“And maybe some potato salad,” I tell Max, who seems a bit more flushed than usual.