A Score to Settle Read online

  "Gin," Rip interrupted.

  "What?"

  "Don't start."

  My enthusiasm sank even as my heart warmed. Rip never could handle me putting myself in harm's way. Hammering nails, installing chandeliers, climbing ladders–he understands that I love a challenge but still gets upset about some of the things I chose to tackle.

  "I'm cool," I said. "Not to worry."

  "Yeah, sure," Rip groused. "Next you'll tell me you're down there to cook."

  I opened my mouth to protest but swiftly reconsidered. "What exactly are you saying?" I asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "Nothing, as in not anything. You're down there to help, and I trust you to keep your wits about you and stay out of trouble. Besides, I don't see how you could possibly involve yourself in the case. Armies of police are already working on it, so..."

  "Stop. Please stop.” He was about to say something I didn’t want to hear, especially from my husband.

  "What did Cynthia make for dinner?" I asked to steer the conversation into safer territory.

  "A ham slice with mushroom gravy and black-eyed peas." That was Barnes code for “Nana burned the peas.”

  I also learned that Mother’s new friend, Gracie, was small and chubby, “and she giggles through her nose."

  After Rip and I were caught up enough to say good-night, I sat on the edge of the bed and admitted it. I was many miles from home and lonelier than I’d been in a long, long time.

  MY SUBCONSCIOUS MUST have gnawed on the murder question overnight, because I woke up with a conclusion. That it was an obvious one only served to cement it in my brain.

  Since the Tomcats had won in front of an adoring hometown crowd, I agreed with Doug. The enraged-fan idea was preposterous. Equally unlikely was the possibility of a cold-blooded ex-lover. Catching Tim alone was too uncertain and the odds of getting caught huge. My bet was on a spur-of-the-moment murder with an intense, football-related motive. Exactly what that was I had no idea.

  When I got downstairs, bagel crumbs dusted the counter and the fragrance of coffee made my head swim. Doug had already gone; nobody to pamper but me. While my own bagel toasted, I put CNN on in the kitchen and grabbed the morning's sports page from the chair where Doug had left it.

  The TV news offered nothing factual regarding either Tim Duffy or the Tomcats, and the newspaper was stingy with information, too. Crisis control by the police or someone else with clout? Possible. Lots of high-profile names involved.

  After breakfast, I padded into Doug's home office and booted up his laptop. NFL.com told me Sunday’s win put the Tomcats at seven wins and seven losses while their opponent, Houston, continued to struggle at three and eleven. Considering that both were new expansion teams, the Tomcats were doing exceptionally well. I read a summary of the week's significant advances then logged out.

  Around ten I phoned Michelle at the hospital and learned that she was stable enough to return home tomorrow. We chatted about household do's and don'ts: Don't clean–they had a service. Okay to do laundry. Stuff like that.

  Mostly I waited for an opening. I certainly didn't want to distress her, but I needed to know whether I could mention Tim Duffy's death without having to call 911.

  "When I visit this afternoon," I began, "I'd like to get your impressions of the Houston game."

  Michelle hesitated, but I heard no sharp intake of breath, nothing to suggest that I had set off a panic.

  "In what regard?" she asked.

  "I’d like you to help me understand the dynamics so I won't sound like an idiot when I talk to Doug."

  The fragile mother-to-be laughed. "I suppose I can do that, although I can’t guarantee you won’t sound like an idiot."

  "Ouch," I told her, but I was grinning ear to ear. The Siddons’ sense of humor had always been the family’s lifeline, and I was thrilled down to my socks that Michelle still had a good grip on it.

  After we finished on the phone, I raided the aisles of her favorite food store as if I could actually afford the place.

  "That Harris Teeter place is amazing," I told my cousin in person as soon as afternoon visiting hours began.

  "How about those desserts?" she exclaimed. Beneath her glasses her cheeks were pinker today, and she had twisted her fluffy hair into a topknot that wouldn't make a lump against the pillow.

  "There's a raspberry chocolate clam shell waiting for you at home," I promised. So what if it cost $3.29? She and Kewpie deserved a treat. I had also bought a selection of Dr. Brown's soda (skipping the celery flavor), a couple Italian supreme pizzas, some stuffed grape leaves (always wanted to try them) and a meal's worth of lemon/garlic grilled chicken breast with a side of glazed carrots.

  Michelle licked her lips and patted her tummy. Then she caught me noticing the newspaper she had set aside, and her expression fell. "Pretty short on substance, aren't they?" she observed.

  "Very short on substance."

  "So what do you want to know about the game?"

  I settled onto a chair at the edge of the bed. "Did anything unusual happen?"

  Michelle flopped back and turned her head to answer me. "Laneer benched Walker Cross; but you said you saw the game, so you knew that."

  A matchup of little interest outside Texas or Virginia, the Hombres/Tomcats game hadn't been offered in our region. Didi, however, had noticed it in her satellite listing and generously invited all of us Barnes's over for the afternoon. The Tomcats' premier receiver had been notably absent from the second quarter on, but at the time I hadn't given it much thought.

  "Why?" I asked now.

  Michelle shrugged. "The Tomcats jumped ahead 21 to nothing in the first quarter, so maybe Laneer just wanted to make sure Walker would be healthy for this week's game with the Eagles."

  "Reasonable, I guess."

  "Yeah, except Walker was pretty peeved."

  That, too, seemed natural. Nobody at any level of any sport liked to be benched.

  "Anything else?"

  "Doug had the wind knocked out of him–twice."

  I remembered that, too. Doug took tough hits in both the first and fourth quarters and had to step out to recover. Duffy filled in and the second time threw for a touchdown that effectively ended the game.

  I was about to ask whether Michelle knew of anyone on the team who hated Tim Duffy when two other visitors arrived. Well-groomed and slender, both were fine examples of what a woman could do for herself given enough time and money. On Philadelphia's Main Line, where I lived (thanks to Rip's occupation), quite a number of women looked like these two, although at home probably half or more didn't dress any better than me. For that reason I reserved judgment on Michelle's new guests; first impressions could be bought and often were a waste of money.

  The older woman exercised her seniority. She lunged ahead of the taller woman to grasp Michelle's hand even as her eyes softened over the mound that contained the Turner heir.

  "Shelly," she said. "You're looking wonderful. How do you feel?"

  The second woman lingered at the end of the bed with her clutch purse between her hands and a fond smile on her face. Slightly younger than me, she had high cheeks the color of dark chocolate, and her hair had been meticulously smoothed back into a knot of braids. When I moved back from the bed nearer to where she stood, I thought I detected the fragrance of hyacinths.

  "I feel fine, thanks, Barbara. Teal," Michelle addressed the younger woman, "so nice of you to come."

  "We've been thinking of you," Teal replied with warmth.

  "Let me introduce my cousin from Philadelphia, Ginger Barnes. Gin, this is Teal Todd, Morani Todd's wife–Morani is the Cats' biggest and best defensive lineman–and Barbara Laneer. Jack Laneer is the Tomcat's head coach, of course. Barbara, Teal, and I became friends working on a charity event sponsored by the team."

  "Mount Trashmore Three," Barbara concurred with a smile. "Around here we like to turn piles of garbage into playgrounds."

  "They're the
only sledding hills we have," Teal boasted.

  "Sounds wonderful. It's a pleasure to meet you both," I responded, nodding to each individual in turn.

  Both women nodded back before returning their attention to Michelle.

  As I listened to the three friends exchange trivial news, I noticed that Michelle appeared more relaxed, more herself, than she had been on Thanksgiving with Ronnie and me. There was always the eight-year age difference, of course, but I also realized that the brother/sister pair might also reflect the stage their parents had been in at the time they were born—Ronnie, the feckless youth; Michelle the measured adult.

  Barbara Laneer giggled. I didn't hear why, but I giggled along because I was utterly charmed by the woman. She wasn't especially beautiful, not with that crooked pointy nose. Nor was she as perfectly groomed as Teal–a swipe of lipstick was about it. What she was was sincere. One hundred percent real. Artifice never crossed her mind. I fervently hoped I would be just like her when I grew up.

  A nurse bustled in on quick, rubber-soled feet. "Excuse me, ladies, the doctor needs a few minutes." She tugged the white privacy curtain along its ceiling track and effectively shut us visitors out.

  "Buy you two a cup of coffee?" I suggested to Barbara and Teal.

  They murmured assent without even looking at their watches. Nice women. Good women. They were exactly perfect for my purposes. I tried not to gloat in the elevator down to the Tidewater Cafe, Virginia Beach's version of hospital hospitality. I turned up a palm to usher my two guests in under the dark green awning with white scalloped edges gracing the entrance.

  Barbara bypassed the "Salad Garden" and poured herself some coffee at the "Drinks" station.

  Teal and I followed her example, and despite my protests Barbara paid. Part of being a head coach's wife perhaps, or a way to avoid the dithering that women often do when a check appears.

  We settled into seats, and hoping to steer the conversation in a useful direction while I still had the chance, I said, "Michelle is really distressed by what happened to Tim Duffy."

  "Of course, we all are."

  "Yes, it's horrible. Poor Elise," Barbara lamented. I surmised that Elise was now Tim's widow.

  I inquired whether the couple had any children. No. Conversational dead end. I sipped coffee and regrouped.

  Then I addressed Barbara. "Will the publicity hurt the Tomcats much?"

  We sat on three sides of a square Formica table, and Mrs. Defensive Lineman seconded my question with her eyes, something Mrs. Head Coach noticed and acknowledged. Careers were at stake here, very lucrative careers and the lifestyles that accompanied them.

  "I guess that depends on what the police find out," Barbara answered, squirming a bit under Teal's intense stare. "The public already thinks Bobby Frye is a flake, in fact they seem to love that about him. But if something sinister gets attributed to anybody on the team, the sympathy could swing the other way faster than..."

  "Faster than Walker Cross going in for a touchdown," Teal finished kindly.

  Robert, "Bobby" Frye owned the Tomcats, but I knew little else about him. Only that he had earned millions in the technology field and was rumored to have lost millions as well.

  Rather than speculate on what "Bobby" might do if his team took it on the PR chin, I wondered aloud whether my new inside sources knew anyone on the team who had a motive to kill Tim Duffy.

  Barbara took a panicky gulp of coffee, and Teal snorted. "No, of course not. The Tomcats are family, isn't that right, Barb? And all families have their squabbles." Her sarcasm was just slight enough to tantalize.

  I thought of the pears my mother said she’d been staring at when she heard the news of President Kennedy's assassination. I envisioned sunlight streaming through our kitchen window turning the fruit from green to yellow, heard my mother sobbing into her arms in response to the television announcer's broken voice.

  I wondered aloud whether this might be another tragedy that made you remember what you were doing when you heard about it, “like when the first Gulf War broke out or when John Lennon got shot."

  "Oh, I know what you mean," Barbara reflected. "Jack and I were at the Coastal Grill with our son and his wife when a young man came in. 'Tim Duffy's been shot,' he announced to his friends at the table right next to us. Well, the whole room just about held its breath, and everybody seemed to look straight at us. It's a fairly small place, and I guess a lot of people had recognized Jack when we sat down."

  "What did your husband do?"

  "He got a dark, intense look on his face. Teal, you know how he gets when it's third and long yardage and the center bobbles the snap? Well, Jack tapped our son's hand and said, 'John, will you please drive your mother home after dinner? I believe I should be going back to the stadium.'"

  Evidently my veiled, "Where were you the night of December 8th?" hadn't fooled Teal for a second, because during Barbara's last words she had begun to watch me with undisguised hostility.

  When she said, "I saw it on the eleven o'clock news with my husband–in bed," each word resembled the wave of a knife.

  Barbara sensed something amiss and sat up straighter. "What?" she asked. No, demanded.

  Teal still fixed me with a searing gaze, but I’d already tired of standing my ground. I softened my face and addressed the older woman.

  "My cousin almost lost her baby because she's so worried about what will happen to the team," an abbreviated form of the truth. "I promised her I'd try to assess the damage and, with luck, I'll be able to set her mind at ease before anything worse happens. Losing this child would ...would...devastate her."

  Teal took a breath, "And just how do you propose to set her mind at ease?" The sarcasm remained, but the threat was gone.

  "I don’t know. How about a baby shower?”

  The idea had been tickling the back of my mind, but now that Teal forced me to state the thought out loud, I liked it. Michelle's only friends in Norfolk seemed to be the wives she met working on the Tomcat's charity event–and who would know better about the inner dynamics of the team than the women who were married to the players? Gathered so soon after the murder they would almost certainly talk about their fears and suspicions.

  Teal not only saw through my strategy, she signed on in less time than it takes some people to blink. And why not? Now I was mirroring her own concern, albeit from a slightly different angle.

  "We'll have it at my house," she announced, leaving no room for discussion.

  "This Saturday?" I suggested. Extremely short notice, but my reasoning seemed to be handwriting on the wall to Teal. Disconcerting, but also kind of cool.

  Barbara's mind must have wandered, for her face screwed up when she asked, "Have what Saturday? What's going on?"

  "Teal wants to help me do a baby shower for Michelle," I answered as if my telepathic exchange with Teal had no other agenda. "Not a surprise one, though," I cautioned.

  "Delightful," Barbara responded, relieved to be back in the loop. "We could all use a pleasant distraction. I'm amazed that nobody thought of that before. Please," she begged, "let me bring the dessert. I'm known for my desserts."

  And just that quickly it was settled–except for securing Michelle's cooperation, which wasn’t at all a sure thing. The reason no one from the family had planned a baby shower was because of her previous miscarriages. Women instinctively knew how–and when–to protect each other from the pain of packing away booties and t-shirts and pastel sleep sacks after the unthinkable has happened. Just telling Michelle about this potentially heartbreaking gesture would hurt. It hurt me to imagine the conversation.

  Although maybe she would cooperate if she remembered that more was at stake than her maternal sensibilities.

  Barbara was the one who finally glanced at the time. "That's decided then," she beamed. "Let's go tell her the good news."

  Teal and I hung back for two seconds to finish assessing each other, a task that included past histories dating back to birth, all orientations and opin
ions, all applicable statistics, including current checkbook balances and the number of pennies rolling around in the bottom of our purses–well, my purse, because Teal only carried plastic.

  That accomplished, we both smiled and proceeded to follow Barbara back to the elevator.

  Chapter 8

  THE WAY MICHELLE STARED at me when Teal told her we wanted to give her a baby shower told me she knew the idea was mine.

  "Be a good chance for everybody to put this Tim Duffy business behind them," I hinted carefully. "A chance to focus on something positive."

  My cousin heard that as, Teal and I are working undercover here, I hope you'll back us up, and, It'll be good for you and Kewpie, too–communal optimism, women's magic, old as time.

  "Thank you, Barbara, Teal, Ginger," Michelle replied with a last glance toward me. "What a sweet idea."

  "We'd like to invite, uh, Wanda Cross and Lyn Smith," Teal improvised, probably naming a receiver's wife and the wife of the third string quarterback respectively. She glanced at me to see whether I followed her logic, and I nodded to indicate I did. If Morani Todd was half as aggressive as his wife, he would probably make the NFL Hall of Fame.

  With hands folded on her bulging lap, Michelle pressed her lips together and watched the three of us with a fascinated smile.

  "And Pamela Cork, everybody likes her." Barbara bubbled on.

  "She doesn't date Roger anymore, Barb," Teal alerted the older woman, "in fact I'm pretty sure she married somebody else. But you're right. Everybody liked her." To me she said, "Pam used to be with Roger Prindel. He's the Tomcats' offensive coordinator." An eyebrow told me that Pamela might be worth tracking down.

  "And Mandy Shifflett," Barbara continued in spirit, if not in sync.

  "Certainly," Teal agreed. I had dug out an airline folder with enough blank space to write a list. Teal handed me a pen.

  "Phone numbers?"

  "Green book in the kitchen drawer by the phone," Michelle told me, lips twitching with amusement.