A Score to Settle Page 4

  "Fanny Topliss," I mused. "You can't make up a name like that."

  Michelle turned toward the window, toward the low, tree-softened landscape outside, and I realized that all roads, however rocky or soft, led back to her primary concern. We were talking family, the genesis of life, about the people who took you in when you were down and out, the ones who ran to your side when you called. Even the most friendless mass murderers had relatives, mothers who cared.

  "The baby isn't all you're worried about," I stated gently.

  Michelle waved her head back and forth. Her long fluffy pale brown hair touched her cheeks, and she pushed it back with both hands. Then she left the hands behind her head, turned her elbows in protectively.

  I waited until she lowered her arms. She eyed the corkboard on the wall with its two Get Well cards, slid her gaze out the window and back to me.

  "I know Doug didn't do anything wrong," I assured her, hoping that was what she needed to hear.

  She drew in a ragged breath, smoothed a hand across her abdomen, her baby. When she spoke, she nearly whispered, forcing me to strain forward to hear.

  "Innocence isn't always the best defense," she said.

  "No," I had to agree.

  Our eyes met and made their assessments, their pronouncements. Respect, trust, and affection were exchanged in that moment. Certainly there was more to be said, but the start was right; and if the start was right, usually the rest would come.

  "I think Doug's going to be a suspect," Michelle confided.

  I nodded. "Ronnie thought you might be worried about that. Did something happen during the game?"

  "No."

  "Before then?"

  Michelle looked away. Her lower lip trembled.

  "I think it had something to do with Coren."

  That raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Doug's sister, Coren, was the one who had very recently committed suicide. Although I couldn't guess at any connection between Coren and Tim Duffy, I didn't like the timing, especially since Doug's only alibi was Michelle.

  "Do you want to tell me about that?"

  "I'm not sure I know the whole story. Maybe you should ask Doug."

  She lolled her head back on the pillow. Beside her a jagged white line zigzagged across a blue screen. The screen faced the door to the hallway, sheltering her from the second to second ups and downs of her physical existence–and her child's.

  She had given me a difficult task, pressing a near stranger for details about his motive for murder, but if I was to honor Ronnie's request and relieve Michelle's mind, I needed information about the source of her stress.

  Michelle suddenly seemed exhausted, but my pass into the hospital world had nearly expired anyway.

  I patted her hand. "So what does a professional football player eat for dinner?" I asked.

  My cousin's eyes widened. "Oh. Oh my. Doug eats everything you put in front of him."

  "Lucky for me."

  She appreciated the joke. "I'm afraid there isn't much in the house to eat,” she said. “I was on my way to the grocery store when..." she lifted the arm with the wire attached.

  "No problem. Just give me your car keys and directions, and I'm outta here."

  Gratitude had made the mother-to-be teary, but she tried a smile. "Thanks," she said. "Ronnie said you would take care of everything."

  Considering the tasks ahead, her relief frightened me. I had never tried to feed a football player before. Neither had I tried to solve a crime of national interest.

  "Life is one obstacle after another," Dad liked to remark, often with a lug wrench in his hand. "Just take 'em one at a time, and you'll be fine."

  With that comforting thought in mind I managed to find Michelle's red Jeep station wagon in the hospital parking lot. Small successes build confidence. Any educator's wife could tell you that.

  Chapter 6

  THE EARLY WINTER NIGHT had closed in well before my arrival in the Broad Bay Point Greens section of Virginia Beach. Still, the Jeep's headlights reflected off a couple of low white "Cart Crossing" signs advertising the proximity of a golf course. Lawns appeared to be a crazy quilt of brown or some hardy grass that survived frost in this moderate climate. The greenery I could pick out in the dark offered a settled-in appearance, although the tree heights suggested that the development was scarcely a decade old.

  Although brick colonials predominated, Doug and Michelle's house possessed an individuality of its own, as did each custom-built neighbor. I parked in my cousin's drive and wheeled my belongings up a bumpy brick walk to a white front door with a leaded window of frosted glass and two matching side lights.

  Inside I disarmed the security system using the code Michelle had provided.

  Lightheaded with hunger, I abandoned my luggage in the vestibule and rushed the hot food I had picked up in from the car. Blessing the in-house cooks at Harris Teeter, the upscale grocery store Michelle had recommended, I tucked into some very comforting fried chicken and coleslaw at the kitchen counter. Feeling a thousand times better, I was finally ready to take in my surroundings.

  The Turner home was spacious, tidy, and dotted with the empty spaces of a couple who had recently moved in. The formal, oyster white and pale blue living room contained a sofa, end tables, a coffee table, and one lamp–period. The dining room needed a sideboard or hutch or something. It reminded me of my Grandmother Siddons’ wisdom.

  "Whatever you bring into your house will soon become home, and you'll never get rid of it," she had cautioned me. Rip and I couldn’t afford to heed the advice, but I was pleased to see that Doug and Michelle could.

  The most completed spot, a family room off the opposite end of the kitchen, lured me in. Full of pine bookshelves and sturdy, comfortable seating, a braided wool rug in brighter colors than my own warmed the space. Notably absent were any trophies, game balls, or plaques that a professional quarterback had surely earned. If the goal was to keep Doug’s fame in perspective, it was a good sign. Of course, a huge TV for watching games dominated the room.

  As it was already well into evening visiting hours at the hospital, I figured Doug had gone there directly from the stadium. Surely Michelle would alert him that there would be a visitor waiting back at their house.

  With nothing to do but amuse myself, I watched an ancient Laverne and Shirley episode until it was time for Monday night football. Yet my interest in the Steelers vs. the Cowboys faded when I noticed a stack of recent newspapers on a bookshelf. Settling down with a cup of tea, I hunted for everything the Virginia Pilot had to say about Tim Duffy's murder.

  Half an hour later I knew that the Tomcats’ backup quarterback had been shot in the training-room whirlpool sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 P.M., fairly soon after the team's victory over the Houston Hombres. The assumption being forwarded by the franchise and seconded by the police was that an enraged fan had hidden in the stadium until the perfect opportunity presented itself.

  Whether the murderer had amazing luck or knew Tim’s habits extremely well didn’t matter. Tim Duffy was gone, and so was his killer. With no eyewitnesses and enough traffic around the crime scene to occupy a forensic team for a month, I couldn't imagine how the law enforcement officials would pin this one on anybody. As so often happened, I suspected they would have to match the evidence to the case after the killer was identified some other way–some clever, creative way.

  My curiosity twitched. A large batch of very high profile people was about to be examined under a lens as intense as the Hubble telescope, and I doubted that many of them would stand up to the scrutiny. Too bad. Pedestals were pretty hard to climb and awfully easy to knock over.

  Yet at least initially a fragile grace period would reign while the PR people held back and the police carefully gathered the facts.

  Perhaps if I could get Doug to confide in me, I could use that same grace period to steer the media mob away from his pedestal. Although I had serious doubts about my chances for success, it was worth trying, if only to ease M
ichelle's mind and protect their unborn child.

  Then, too, I was Cynthia's daughter and a mother myself, like it or lump it. I desperately wanted to help Michelle and Doug through this crisis. Just as Ronnie guessed, there was nothing anywhere near as important on my plate right now.

  Doug's arrival home coincided with the Steelers picking up a Dallas fumble. I stood to greet my cousin's famous husband.

  "Gin," he welcomed me while TV announcers rhapsodized in the background. "Nice of you to come."

  Filling the hall doorway, jacket hooked over his shoulder, the man impressed me yet again with his Nordic virility, assertive jaw, and just plain hunky charm. He surely had swarms of female fans, and I wondered whether Michelle ever worried about that.

  "Glad to be here," I murmured, but the TV cheers drowned me out. The point after was good, too, and the station instantly broke for a truck commercial featuring a dusty, off-road chore set to a blast of country-western guitar.

  "Anyway," I continued, "the Eagles stink this year so I thought I’d come down and see a real team. Ronnie knows how disappointed I am with the Eagles this year, so he thought I should come see a real team."

  "Like hell." My host laughed, for the Eagles were on fire and the Tomcats had been tightrope walking the 500 mark all season.

  We continued to smile across a comfortable distance, avoiding the social hug and kiss. We weren't really very well acquainted, and neither were we blood relatives. Plus we were alone in his house. Soon our awkwardness would probably ease into friendship, but we weren’t there yet.

  "How you doing?" I asked.

  Without answering, Doug tossed his jacket on a chair and walked over to a bar unit that was part of the bookshelves. "Want something?" he offered, and I had my answer.

  I shook my head no and sat down again.

  Despite the December temperatures, Doug wore casual slacks and a golf shirt. His arms looked limber and strong but not freaky huge like a lineman or a tackle. The hands extracting ice from the miniature freezer, pouring amber fluid from a bottle, seemed nimble and sure. He could have been the same fit college guy he had been so recently, except for his face. His face had aged a decade.

  "Michelle had another scare," he admitted.

  "Oh, no." Please no.

  "It's over. I think. Hell, who knows. But she was okay half an hour ago, so everybody insisted that I come home–doctors, nurses, Michelle–everybody." He looked at his drink and waved his head. "Like they were more concerned with taking care of me than taking care of Michelle and the baby." He scowled at the drink as if it were the whole cockeyed world, then he tossed it down and poured another.

  My eyebrows straightened with surprise and mild disapproval. Surely athletes didn't drink during the season. Did they?

  Of course they did if they wanted to, just as they came home for dinner and shopped for clothes and played with their dogs. I hastened to remind myself that my father had coached a high school team roughly twenty years before, so my preconceptions were bound to be immature and out of date.

  Doug lowered himself onto the other TV chair. His eyes scanned the game the same superficial way I read cereal boxes or warranties or anything in print that comes before my eyes. I hit the mute button, and my host didn't even blink.

  "She's beautiful now, don't you think?" Michelle’s husband reflected. My presence here underscored my cousin’s absence and mandated that we speak almost exclusively about her.

  I agreed, although nearly all I knew of Michelle at this age was that she looked lovely when she slept, and that she had expensive taste in furniture.

  "You met at a party?" Both of them had attended the University of Michigan.

  "Yeah, Ronnie brought her. I swear when she looked at me my heart stopped." He waved his head at the memory then fixed me with a worried scowl. "I don't know what I'd do without her, Gin."

  Guess his wife didn’t have to worry about groupies after all. “You do seem perfect together,” I said with a smile and a nod. I was beginning to like this guy.

  "Oh yeah. She's patient, kind, gentle. She's going to be a fantastic mother. But you know all that."

  I did now.

  "Opposites attract," I teased, and we both chuckled. Yet, as always, there was truth behind my lame joke. Doug's profession was so macho, he probably craved Michelle's very obvious femininity.

  "You know she's worried about you, too," I hinted, hoping he might say something about the murder.

  The man sighed back into his chair. "We've got a heap of expenses right now," he admitted, misinterpreting my change of direction. "The new house, doctor's bills, the baby..."

  I took pity on him. "You've got a very promising future..." In a few years he would probably be endorsing everything from dental floss to spackle.

  "Not as promising as it was yesterday."

  Ah, there it was. "Because of Tim's death, you mean? I take it you don't think he was killed by a crazed fan."

  Doug snorted. "What do you think?"

  I shrugged. "You would know better than me. How likely is that theory?"

  Doug waved his head and flicked out his hands. "Not very. Security checks all the rest rooms before locking up. If somebody was determined enough, they could probably avoid detection, but I think the whole idea is pretty far-fetched."

  "Really? More than a few fans look a little out there, if you ask me." Shaved heads painted like helmets, signs that read, "Kill the Raiders;" why couldn't one of the nuts–be nuts?

  "Oh, I'm not saying it isn't possible. Not after what happened to Monica Seles," the tennis top seed who was stabbed by someone from the stands, ostensibly to benefit Monica’s opponent.

  "We all get threats," Doug admitted. "But people rarely carry them out."

  "Wait a minute. You all get threats? Death threats?"

  "Well, yeah, sort of. It comes with being a public figure. You can't spend a lot of time worrying about it.”

  John Lennon's demise came to mind, and Doug noticed my discomfort. "They're almost always hot air, Gin," he assured me.

  Almost always, which meant that once in a while the threat was one-hundred percent serious.

  A previous point tapped me on the shoulder, something I had overlooked while I was busy being horrified. Doug did not believe the murder of Tim Duffy had been performed by a random maniac.

  "Sorry," I said. "You were saying you think Tim was murdered by someone who knew him?"

  "Of course. And pretty soon the police will think so, too, if they haven't figured it out already. Like I said, the loony 'toons rarely act on their anger, but people with rock-solid motives pop off their enemies all the time."

  Unfortunately, he was right. Murder put the killer’s whole future at risk, possibly even his life, so nobody whose mental faculties were in working order went that route without enormous provocation. At least that’s what I liked to think.

  Had something more than professional rivalry been going on between Tim and Doug? Was that why Michelle was so afraid Doug would be a suspect? If so, Doug was faking it pretty well right now.

  "Michelle mentioned something about Coren,” I hinted, “but she says she doesn't know the whole story."

  Ignoring me, Doug stood up, stretched, and yawned. "Steelers are going to lose," he said after glancing at the score. Then he headed toward the hallway.

  "Doug," I called after him, and he stiffened.

  I braced myself for a rebuke that didn’t come. Instead he showed me an expression that was difficult to face and hard to forget. Anyone with a heartbeat would have wanted to ease his mind, and my heart was certainly beating.

  However, no words were up to the task, so I said there was fried chicken in the refrigerator if he was hungry.

  Chapter 7

  THE TURNER HOUSEHOLD’S guest room was equipped with a bed and an ugly mauve princess phone that will never break but that stopped matching anything back in 1972. Doug offered me the use of it as he handed me some towels. “We get lousy cell service,” he explained.<
br />
  I decided to make myself even more at home and ask whether I might borrow the laptop I’d seen in the small office off the kitchen for a little while in the morning.

  One blond eyebrow raised, but he said, "Sure. If you really need something to do with yourself, I've got a bunch of games in there."

  When I had a starting point, I intended to do some internet research to try to help him and Michelle, but I thought it best to keep that to myself until we knew each other better. I settled on a gracious thank-you and the promise of lots of bacon and scrambled eggs at whatever hour he preferred.

  Doug grimaced. "Nice offer, but a bagel and coffee will be fine until I get to the stadium.”

  "Good choice.” Lucky, too, since there still wasn’t much food in the house.

  We parted company and made a bee-line to the vintage princess phone.

  Rip answered on the first ring.

  "Yo," I said. "You in bed?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Sparkle Plenty," I replied.

  My husband settled back on his pillow. "Well, Sparkle. What are you wearing?"

  I glanced down at myself. "Gray sweats. I didn't pack very well."

  "You left in a hurry. How’s Michelle?"

  I told him she was so afraid her husband was going to be accused of murder that she was in danger of losing the baby.

  "They alibied each other," I added, sounding more than a little worried myself. "If Doug's got a halfway decent motive, he could be in serious trouble."

  Rip released a sigh, whether it was the long-suffering variety or one of resignation I wasn’t sure. "What happened to the crazy-fan idea?"

  “Unlikely,” I replied then related Doug’s reasons. "Plus the timing bothers me. It was such a risky place to shoot someone, you know? Why not somewhere else, anywhere else?"