Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

I felt my face grow hot with anger. “I told you there was nothing going on between us. What part of ‘nothing’ don’t you understand?”

“Hatch obviously thinks there’s a tape of you and Ingram.” Nicholas was angry, too. I could tell from his stiff shoulders and the muscle tic in his right cheek. “You asked me what kind of a man Ingram was. You said you were concerned for Eileen, but it must have been yourself you were worried about. You met Ingram while we’ve been seeing each other.” He let out a snort of disgust. “I thought we had a deal.”

“A deal ? Is that what you call our relationship? An exchange of services?”

“No. I’d thought it was more. But I’ve been wrong about women before.”

“I’m not going to defend myself to you,” I said.

“Ha! The old non-denial denial. Now you sound like a politician. I think you missed your calling, Toots.”

“Don’t you dare call me ‘Toots.’ After all these months, if you won’t take my faithfulness for granted then I don’t want you here.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice.”

“I wasn’t asking!”

Nicholas stomped off, ignoring the brick path and digging his heels into my lawn with every step of his heavy stride. The path was a more direct route to his car, but he knew how much I prized my lawn.

“Hurting my grass is childish,” I yelled.

He ignored that. When he reached his car he hurled himself inside and-uncharacteristically-slammed the door. Nicholas usually treated his silver bullet as gently as I treat my pets.

Nicholas gave his steering wheel a hard yank to the right, barely missed hitting Hatch’s rear bumper, and roared off up the street, spewing a cloud of pungent gray exhaust fumes behind him.

“I hope you get a ticket for polluting,” I yelled.

I didn’t know which of us was the more furious: Nicholas because he thought I’d slept with Keith Ingram, or me because the only man I’d been to bed with since Mack died didn’t trust me.

I sat down next to Emma’s carrier, unzipped enough of the top of it to fit my hand inside, and stroked my sweet cat. Her responding purr made me feel better.

“As long as you and Tuffy and I, and the people I love, are okay, then nothing else really matters,” I whispered to Emma. “My possessions are just things.”

I hoped I’d still feel that way when I finally got back into the house.

When John returned fifteen minutes later it was with only two containers of coffee. He handed one to me.

“Thanks. Didn’t you get any for Nicholas?”

The slightest hint of a smile twitched the corner of his lips. “I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be here.”

I took a welcome swallow. The coffee was hot enough, without burning my throat, and he’d put the right amount of Sweet’N Low and half-and-half into it. It was my favorite flavor: Vanilla Nut. Caffeine an’ Stuff was on the container, but when I tasted it I would have known where it came from. In my coffee-craving opinion, that café brewed the best Vanilla Nut.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, John asked, “Anybody come out while I was gone?”

“No.” Fortified with the coffee, I asked, “Why did you think Nicholas would have left?”

John watched two birds twittering at each other on a low branch of my willow tree. He didn’t look at me as he said, “Because he doesn’t know you as well as I do, that you’ll take a bullet for someone you love.”

I knew he was making a subtle reference to Eileen and Ingram. I didn’t respond to that because Eileen’s involvement with the dead man was the last thing we should be discussing right now. Surely John had realized that if I broke into Ingram’s house, it had to have been for Eileen’s sake. He couldn’t ask me and I couldn’t tell him what I knew, or admit what I had done. Even though he wasn’t part of the Ingram murder investigation, as a member of the LAPD who’d sworn to uphold the law, he was obligated not to withhold pertinent information. What John didn’t know didn’t have to be revealed; he was allowed to keep his theories to himself. By our shared silence, we were protecting his daughter. Come to think of it, we were protecting me, too, from a charge of breaking and entering. With that subject out of bounds, it didn’t leave much for us to talk about, so we drank our coffees and watched cars go by. Neighbors left for work, or took their children to school. Several noticed the police car. It was impossible to miss. Several sent curious looks in my direction. I smiled, trying to give the impression that it was the most natural thing in the world to have a police car outside my house, and for me to be on the front steps with a tall man and a cat carrier.

The woman next door, who had lived in her house even longer than I’d lived in mine, called out “Hi” and waved at us as she hurried to her car. We waved back.

“I’ve seen her somewhere before,” John said.

“Julie Coombs. You met her and her husband at Mack’s funeral. She works at a talent agency and he’s in computers.”

“Oh, yeah.” I could tell from his inflection that he did remember her. John had a remarkable facility for recalling names and faces.

A few minutes later a familiar ivory-colored Range Rover came up the street and parked behind John’s Lincoln.

“That’s Liddy,” I said, getting up. John stood, too, but remained in place as I hurried down to the street to greet her with a hug.

“I’m so glad to see you,” I said. “But why are you here?”

“Nicholas called to tell me police were doing their cop thing in your house. He said you needed me.”

“I do.”

Liddy waved at John. “Where is your Sicilian stallion? Did Big John chase him off?”

“We had a fight,” I said.

“A bad one?”

“Very bad.”

“So, he stalked off in a snit, but he didn’t want you to be alone. I like him.”

John greeted Liddy with a quick squeeze of her hand. “Glad to see you. Do you know what’s going on?”

“Nicholas phoned her.” Something occurred to me. “John, if he contacted Liddy he might have phoned Eileen, too. You’d better get hold of her and tell her not to come here. Tell her I need her to go to our shop and handle the business until I call her later.”

“Good idea.” John pulled his cell phone out of his jacket, pressed a number on his speed dial, and walked down to the street for privacy.

“The forensics techs found my fingerprint at the back of Ingram’s house, where I broke in.”

Liddy’s eyes widened. “How? You were wearing gloves.”

“Latex. I cut myself on a piece of broken glass that sliced through one of the fingertips. I didn’t think I’d left a print, but I must have. It was enough for a match to the prints they had of me from before.”

Liddy nodded, remembering that I’d been suspected of murder a few months ago. At that time I’d volunteered to give the police my prints to prove that I’d never touched anything belonging to the victim. Eventually, I’d been cleared, but they had my prints in their system.

I saw John close his phone. He came back to join us at the front door.

“Your friend didn’t call Eileen,” he said. “So I didn’t tell her what’s going on here. I just said you were giving Hugh Weaver and me some additional information about people who’d been at the gala, and that you’d asked me to give her the message about going to your shop.”

Liddy opened her tote bag. “I brought us a deck of cards and a pad to keep score. How ’bout some three-handed gin while we’re stuck out here on the doorstep?”

For the first time in several days, I saw John smile. I guessed what he was thinking: that it reminded him of the “old days” when Liddy and Bill, and John and Shannon, and Mack and I played gin on Saturday nights.