Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

Making coffee in the kitchen, I ask Drew what he thinks really happened.

“Best guess? Someone with the hots for your daughter was trying to get her attention. Wouldn’t hurt for her to pull down her shades when she’s undressing, Ted.”

I feel my cheeks go red. After watching me do a striptease through the window of a cottage I was doing in the Hamptons over the summer, is he thinking like mother, like daughter?

“And I think that Jesse saw it as the perfect excuse to get me over here,” he adds, rubbing my back while I get the coffee going.

Better he think Jesse’s plotting to get him here than me.

“And no one called me because…?” I ask.

“Maybe Hal isn’t the only one tired of you playing cop, Teddi.” He reaches over my shoulder and pulls out the mugs and the sugar bowl from the cabinets like the house is his. “Maybe your kids have had all they can take, too. And maybe they’d like a mom who’s home at night, watching TV with them, watching over them.”

It’s so easy for people without kids to know what’s right for parents. “Maybe they like eating, too, and having a roof over their heads,” I say in my own defense. Of course, I say this despite the fact that I’m feeling like a negligent parent, like something could have happened tonight and I wouldn’t have been here to protect them. “Maybe it’s not fair that they have to live with my mistakes—but they do,” I say. And with that I manage to spill the coffee I’m pouring and burn my hand.

Drew grabs the pot and my hand and in one motion manages to put the carafe back in the Mr. Coffee unit and my hand under the faucet. “They’re fine,” he tells me. “Nothing happened. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

I should have been here, and I say as much.

“You had work to do,” he says, examining my hand and pronouncing with a look that it’s fine. “Right?”

When I don’t answer, he knows it was more than that.

“You saw the slice and dice boys,” he says with a sigh.

I admit that I ran into Max and his teammates. 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.