Barbara Callahan: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007

For some reason that irritated me. Normal. What was abnormal about taking care of your kid brother?

“If I don’t take care of him, who will?”

“Oh, let’s see — maybe himself. He’s an adult, Chet. At least that’s what it says on his driver’s license. You have your own family and your own problems you need to take care of. You can’t keep spending all your time on him. It’s unnatural.”

Abnormal. Unnatural.

“You know how selfish that sounds?”

“Selfish? What’re you talking about?”

“That I shouldn’t worry about my own little brother?”

“Worry, fine. But try to turn his life around — no way.” Her hand had pulled from mine a minute ago. Now she used it as a lever on the arm of the chair to pull herself up. “You know I don’t like him. But sometimes I can’t help myself — I feel sorry for him, the way you’re always putting yourself in his business. I understand why he resents you, Chet. I really do.”

And then the line I hated most where my little brother was concerned: “You could always see the police shrink. I really think it’s something you should talk through. We’ve been arguing about this since we first started dating. And it never seems to get any better.”

“And you never stop saying that I should see the police shrink.”

She was all done with banter. Tears trembled in her voice. “You ever think that’s because I love you? You ever think how tired I am of all this? And I meant what I said about Michael. I feel sorry for him sometimes. I really do. But if he’s going to screw up his life, that’s his business.”

“If it’s his business, why did Laura call me today and tell me she’s worried about their marriage?”

“Laura called you?”

“That’s right. So if I’m butting in, it’s because she asked me to.”

“Oh, great,” Jen said. “Now we’ve got her pulling you into their lives. This whole thing is insane.” She started to walk back to the stairs. “I’m going to sleep on the couch in the TV room. You need your sleep, so you take the bed.”

I started to object but she stopped me.

“I’m too tired to argue about it, Chet. I’m taking the couch. I’ll grab a blanket from the closet upstairs.” Six steps up the staircase, she said, in a gentler tone, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I spent the next few days finding out what I could about Jane Cameron and found nothing I liked.

You couldn’t call her rich, I suppose, but she did have the remains of a large inheritance to rely on if she needed it for her business, which was public relations. You would have to call her beautiful. College-girl beautiful, though she was mid-thirties — fine, clean features; gym-trim body; and a radiant blond presence in any environment. A ten-year-old daughter conveniently locked away at a boarding school in Vermont. Two ex-husbands, several lovers, at least three of whom had been married at the time. A few very public and very angry scenes with angry wives.

As I sat at my computer looking at her photos, I realized what my little brother was living out here. He’d met her the night a jilted lover of hers had assaulted her in the lobby of her expensive condo. Michael and his partner were the first on the scene. It probably hadn’t taken long for Michael to find himself in the sort of bad movie he used to star in frequently. Married cop intrigued by fashionable, vulnerable beauty cheats on family, honor, good sense.

For three nights, I followed him. Twice he left work to meet her at the bar across the street from her condo, the bar where all the successful young lawyers in town like to do their cheating. An hour of drinks there and back across the street to her condo. The third night, still in uniform, he went straight home. In my talk with Laura, she’d said this was his standard pattern, but she was still hoping none of this had to do with a woman, that he was just carousing with the boys.

One night I took my camera and got some good snaps of them making out in the parking lot of the bar.

I put them in a manilla envelope and set them in the front seat of his new Pontiac.

The next night, when I got off shift, I found them sitting on the front seat of my own car.

He came over, still in uniform, and slid into the shotgun seat.

“You really think I wouldn’t figure out you were behind this bullshit?”

“I wanted you to know, Michael. If you hadn’t figured it out, I would’ve told you.”

“You’re insane, you know that? Clinically, I mean. Off your damned rocker.”

“You know anything about her, Michael?”

“Sure I know about her. She’s a very beautiful and a very successful woman.”

“And she has a lot of enemies.”

“That’s because she’s so successful.”

“That’s because she’s slept with so many important men around town.”

“People change.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“In Japan they get their hymens sewn back in for the wedding. She thinking of doing that, is she?”

“Be careful here, man. You may still be able to take me, but I can put a lot of hurt on you.”

I stared straight ahead. Sighed.

“So now it’s supposed to be serious, Michael?”

“Isn’t ‘supposed to be.’ Is.”

“I thought it was going to end.”

Now it was Michael who stared straight ahead and sighed.

“I’m not sure what to do, Chet.”

“Take out that picture of your kids in your billfold and look at it for a while. That’ll tell you what to do.”

Silence for a time.

“You know how good a woman you’ve got in that wife of yours, Michael.”

“Of course I know.”

“And you treat her like this, anyway?”

“We’re different, is all, Chet. You and me, I mean. You’re satisfied to sit home and watch TV and I want—”

“Excitement.”

“Not exactly. Not the way you mean. Not running around and getting all boozed up and hanging out in clubs. It’s just — I’m starting to feel old, Chet. I’m young. But when I met Jane I realized that mentally I’d become an old man. She didn’t make me feel young exactly, but I didn’t feel old anymore, either. I’m a better cop now because of her. I know that sounds funny, but it isn’t. She really thinks it’s true. I’m even thinking about taking the test for detective.”

“Laura wanted you to do that two years ago.”

“Yeah, but with Laura it was different. It was just because I’d make more money. But with Jane, being a detective isn’t just about that, it’s because being a detective is—”

“Cool.”

“God, Chet, you don’t understand any of this.”

“I don’t think you do, either. You’re getting a nice piece of ass on the sly and you think it’s worth destroying your family for.”

“I’m going to go now. I can’t sit here and let you lay all this on me. Remember when I called you The Pope once? Well, you haven’t changed. You think you can run my life from this big-ass throne you sit on. But it doesn’t work that way anymore, Michael. Maybe I am screwing up my life. I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But right now I can’t pull myself out of it. And you playing Pope isn’t helping. You can’t order me around anymore, Michael.”

He opened the car door.

“Let me ask you one thing. It’s my place to tell Laura. Not yours. So until I tell her about this, don’t say anything to her. All right?”

I just stared at my big hands on the steering wheel.

“All right, Chet?” The anger coming back into his voice.

I could barely whisper. “All right, Michael.”

The next day, I started following her. I wanted to see where the best place was to have the conversation she was forcing on me.