Tips for Living(49)

“That’s despicable.”

“I told her that if she were a man, she’d be eating my fist. She apologized, but I could tell she didn’t mean it. She was only saying she was sorry because she didn’t want a scene in front of Stokes.”

I held Serpico closer and kept stroking his belly to make up for the meanness done to him.

“You know something? After a tour in Afghanistan, you get pretty good at reading when people are hiding things.”

“You’re saying what?”

“I saw her at the Thunder Bar a couple of times after that. She was always alone and dressed pretty hot. I usually went home before she did. I don’t know how long she stayed, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean you think Helene . . . and Stokes?”

“I was there last week when she came in again—this time to bowl with your ex for his birthday. They were with another couple. Arty types. The four of them got pretty smashed and were doing stuff like bowling on one leg, bowling backward. Real ass clowns. Some major vibes went down between her and Stokes then, too.”

“You’re sure it was Hugh Walker?” I shook my head in disbelief. “Hugh Walker would not be having a bowling party on his birthday.”

I’d always organized Hugh’s birthday dinners at chic restaurants in New York like Odeon or Orso—his favorites. Or catered parties at the loft. We spent weeks fussing over the guest list. But in fact, the timing was right—Hugh’s birthday was November tenth. Had Hugh changed that much? Or maybe this is what he’d always preferred and I never knew it? Or him.

“You sound upset. I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Eric said.

“No. No. Go ahead.”

“Trust me, it was definitely the Walkers. Serpico and I were sitting at a table in the corner. About a half hour into the party, Helene came up to the bar. She told Stokes they wanted more peanuts. Stokes was filling the bowl, but he kept looking at her while she leaned on the bar and took her index finger and kind of . . . kind of sucked on it. When he gave her the peanuts, she kind of angled herself so her people couldn’t see. She leaned across even more and moved his hand to touch her, you know . . . there.” Eric pointed to my right breast. “Your ex definitely knew something was up. He kept looking over. She giggled and went back to the bowling party and sat in his lap.”

Helene’s affair with Stokes could explain why she’d started staying out here during the week in the off-season: more playtimes for her if Hugh was working at his studio in New York. I wondered what she did with Callie on those nights. She must’ve hired a babysitter.

“Her husband, I mean your ex, kept calling out to Stokes after that: ‘Hey, kid! We need some more beer!’ ‘What about another pizza over here, buddy!’ ‘The pizza’s cold! How about you heat it up?’ Whenever Stokes showed up with the goods, Mr. Walker made it a point to grab his wife’s ass or make out with her. Humiliation, man. It’s the thing men fear most. Really fucks them up. Look at the Afghans.”

“Serves him right,” I muttered as Serpico rolled out from under my hand, sat up and began to study me with his head tilted to one side. Suddenly he jumped up on my chest and began licking my face.

“Okay, okay!”

“See? Serpico knows. He knows when you’re in a bad place.”



As I walked into the dark evening outside the Warschuks’ house and hugged myself in the nippy air, my foot sank into the mushy remains of the smashed, rotting Halloween pumpkin in the driveway.

“Shit.”

I wiped off my shoe on the frosty lawn. Helene and Hugh’s behavior at the bowling alley seemed just as slimy. The incident Eric Warschuk described was completely at odds with the perfect couple in those press photos, and with the affection they showed when I spied on them. It contradicted Sue Mickelson’s TV comments about Hugh and Helene being so in love. Given the story I’d just heard, could it be that the Walkers’ marriage was rife with betrayal and contempt? Along with a pinch of sadomasochism?

On the drive home, I reviewed Stokes’s behavior on the morning of the murders. He’d hesitated before entering the crime scene, and ultimately avoided it completely by leaving with me. He’d sat right there in the passenger seat of my car, cold-eyed and angry, describing the corpses of his in-laws. What was it he’d said about Helene and Hugh? “I’d want anyone who screwed me over like that to be fucking dead.” He must’ve been enraged at how they used him to spice up their marriage. How they played him in their sick little game. But was he capable of murder? And clever enough to set me up to take the blame in his place? He’d pretended he didn’t even know that I’d been married to Hugh. But I felt sure Helene would certainly have told him, if they were seeing each other.

If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in these thoughts, the bright, UFO-like glow coming from the vicinity of the Coop would have registered sooner. I might have figured out what was causing it and had more time to prepare. But I was only a few hundred feet from my driveway when I saw that the place was lit up like a movie set with half a dozen blazing spotlights aimed at both the Coop and lawn. It looked like every light inside had been turned on. A cop with a flashlight stood on a ladder checking the gutters. Two cops with rakes combed the grounds. The Coop’s front door was wide open.