Tips for Living(19)

“You think maybe I could get a ride with you to the alley? Mac and Al don’t really need me. It’s almost nine forty-five. I usually open the lanes by ten.”

Strange. Was he just going to walk off the job? Leave them wondering where he went? I nodded and waited for him to catch up. But the rain didn’t wait. It came down in sheets as we ran.



Breathless, we reached the car and jumped inside. I opened my coat and began wringing out my baggy pajama bottoms. Luckily, the police didn’t see a woman in soaking wet pajamas sneaking around the scene of her ex-husband’s murder. What was I thinking? The dark pajama water pooled under the gas pedal. The ride back would be tricky, not just for a car with funky wipers, but also for anyone traveling outside of an ark. I turned the key, cranked the heat and pulled out of the Dune Club lot. It was like driving through a car wash.

Stokes didn’t seem to notice the monsoon. He was making a call on his cell.

“Mac? No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t want to walk into the middle of . . . of . . . a crime scene and be sick. I hitched a ride from one of the neighbors who was on his way to church. I would’ve called sooner, but I just got cell service.”

A convincing liar, Stokes was, innocent face and all.

“Sure thing,” he said.

He hung up and stared out his window. His jaw was clenched. He’d turned distant and morose. We rode without speaking as the rain pounded the hood. I kept thinking about the gray body bags. The mauled painting. The sickening violence. The dreadful suspicion I’d tried to suppress kept surfacing. I needed to focus on the slippery, winding road, or I’d spin out. The wipers were functioning slightly better at the moment, only missing one beat out of four. Still, the driving was treacherous. Suddenly there was a lightning flash, and a blinding torrent of water cascaded down the glass. I flinched at a thunderclap.

“Shit,” I said, hunching over the steering wheel and trying in vain to see the road ahead clearly.

“Make a U-turn,” Lady GPS ordered. “Make a U-turn.”

That snapped Stokes out of his fog. He scowled.

“What’s up with your car?”

“It has Tourette’s.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I groaned. “Who ever heard of a lightning storm in late November?”

“You know, they had a tornado in Catskill last month. The oil companies want us to think it’s a ‘natural cycle.’ Bullshit. The earth is a living thing, like an animal or a person. When it’s threatened, or attacked, it fights back.” He folded his powerful arms across his chest and glared straight ahead. “To the death, if it has to.”

Anger was swirling in the air around him, as if a tornado were right there in the car with us. What was he so ticked off about?

I struggled to concentrate on driving. We sat in silence again except for the drumming rain and the intermittent click and squeak of the blades. I was exhausted, emotionally drained. I just wanted to drop Mr. Moody off, go soak my frozen bones in a tub and clear my mind of disturbing thoughts. Then, as we passed the Tea Cozy, the rain miraculously let up. Within seconds, it stopped completely. I leaned back into the seat and shut off the wipers. Stokes turned to face me.

“Have you ever seen a dead body?”

“What?” I glanced over at him. His long, girlish lashes framed intense, dark eyes that glared into mine.

“Have you ever seen a dead body?”

Spooked, I looked back at the road. “No. Fortunately, I have not.”

“I have. I found my in-laws in their bed. Curled up next to each other like honeymooners. They looked so healthy, I didn’t realize they were dead at first. Their cheeks were all flushed pink like they’d just come back from a run. That’s what the CO does.”

He cracked a few knuckles. I winced.

“I ran around opening windows and doors, but they’d died hours before. That’s what the coroner said.”

“It must’ve been awful for you.”

“Yeah, it was bad. But I didn’t like them much.” Another knuckle sounded. “You know what was totally weird? Finding them together like that—snuggled up. They hated each other.”

I peeked over at him again. He was clenching and unclenching his fists.

“They made everyone around them miserable, too. My father-in-law was a cheap son of a bitch. Sitting on a pile of money he’d made selling some of his farmland to a fracking outfit. I think death by gas was . . . what do you call it? Poetic justice. He never gave any money to Kelly and me. Never helped us out. The bastard even made us pay our share whenever we ate dinner there. He’d show us the grocery bill. And Kelly’s mother had battery acid for blood. Nothing good to say about him, or us, or anyone. But there they were, spooning.”

I was amazed Kelly had turned out as well as she had, given Stokes’s report on the people who raised her. But even if the murder scene had triggered his memory of finding his in-laws’ corpses, why air all this family laundry with me?

“I guess you never know what goes on between couples in bed,” I said.

Relieved to see the bowling alley coming up on my right, I flicked my turn signal on.

“Here we are.”

I steered into the parking lot and stopped next to the hulking, unlit VAN WINKLE LANES sign. Stokes unbuckled his seat belt and hesitated. He turned and studied me for a few seconds.