Kasey Michaels - Bowled Over

In fact, if Saint Just had been forced to name one good thing about said shirt, it would have to be that the material seemed impervious to wrinkles. Of course, he would then be forced to add that the polyester fabric might also be impervious to soap, water, and, possibly, atomic fallout.

At any rate—hideous shirt to one side (please, God)—Evan had gone off to the bowling alley, to see two other members of the Majesties there, the only other single members of the team, also obviously with little to do on Christmas Eve. They'd bowled three games before he and the other members—yes, one had been Walter Bodkin—had exchanged wishes for a happy holiday and parted ways in the parking lot outside the bowling alley. No, Evan couldn't remember if anyone had seen either of them get into separate cars and drive out of the parking lot.

After that? Well, after that, no matter how Maggie badgered the man—and she did badger him—Evan Kelly refused to comment as to how he'd spent his time before returning to his apartment only minutes before the Ocean City police were banging on his door.

Now, having given their report, Saint Just believed it might be time he and Maggie asked some questions.

Beginning with why Alicia Kelly had blurted out that Evan had murdered Walter Bodkin for her.

Saint Just was collecting his thoughts, planning precisely how he might broach the subject, when Sean Whitaker, who had taken himself upstairs to watch CNN, bounded down the stairs and raced across the living room to switch on the television set.

"You've got to see this," he said, looking to the set, turning to grin at Maggie and Saint Just. "Oh, damn, they've already gone to commercial. Tate—what channel shows MSNBC around here? They'll probably have it, too. Come on, come on—talk to me, Tate."

Maggie reached up and pinched Saint Just's arm. "You know what he just saw, don't you? With all that's happened, I actually forgot about, you know, the money? But it looks like we made freaking CNN, if that idiot's stupid grin means anything. This is not going to be pretty."

"It certainly wasn't, the first time I saw it," Saint Just supplied, turning toward the television screen even as Maureen returned to the living room, carrying a small tray of cookies.

"Oh, no," she said, subsiding into a chair. "Daddy's on TV?"

"No, not Dad," Maggie began, inching closer to Saint Just. "Sean? Can you please not bother channel-surfing and turn that thing off? Mom? Everyone? Something happened today ..."

"Omigod, it's Maggie! Look, everybody—it's Maggie!"

"Never mind," Maggie said weakly as Maureen's high-pitched outburst had every head in the room whipping eyes-front to the television set.

"Courage, my dear," Saint Just whispered as he lifted her hand to place a kiss in her palm. "And please try to remember—winning over three million dollars, for most people, is considered to be a good thing."

"Yeah? Watch. I have a feeling that your most people doesn't include many of the people in this room."

Having already seen the footage that had appeared on the local station, Saint Just listened to the commentator and kept his gaze roaming the Kelly living room, doing his best to interpret the varying expressions of the faces of the other occupants.

"... definitely will be a Merry Christmas this year for the lucky winner of the Big-Wheels-o'-Bucks jackpot in Atlantic City earlier today ..."

Maureen had put down the tray of cookies on the couch beside her and now had both hands clamped to her mouth, her eyes going the size of saucers.

"... until Scrooge arrived in the form of a fat but not quite jolly gentlemen. Watch closely, folks. Ouch! That had to hurt ..."

Tate, sat down. On the tray of cookies. "Damn it!"

"... The lady with the great right cross declined to give her name, but sources in Manhattan have verified that she is none other than Cleo Dooley, bestselling author of something called the Viscount Saint Just Mysteries. A nearly constant name on the New York Times bestseller list, Ms. Dooley is in fact one Margaret Kelly. The man you see carrying her off-screen remains unidentified, but we do know the name of our Scrooge with the bloody nose."

Alicia Kelly's expression was unreadable. Saint Just considered this to be a blessing that wouldn't last.

"... pushed herself in front of me and grabbed my machine. That was my machine! Margaret Kelly, huh? Kelly, you hear me! This isn't over! That's my jackpot!"

Now Saint Just did turn his attention to the screen, as the man he knew as Henry Novack seemed to have a new song to sing. A threat, actually. And there he was, live, on a split-screen with the reporter, shaking his fist in the air, his face nearly purple, spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth.

The reporter seemed to agree with Saint Just's assessment: "Is that a threat, Mr. Novack?"

Henry Novack pushed his face closer to the camera. "It's whatever you want it to be! I know who you are now, Margaret Kelly. You've got my three million bucks, cupcake! I'm gonna sue. You hear me? I'm gonna sue your miserable ass—"

Henry Novack's face disappeared, and the reporter was fullscreen once more.

"Yes, Merry Christmas, Margaret Kelly, Cleo Dooley— cupcake. And now onto the real news. I've just gotten word that Santa Claus has been sighted over Newfoundland. His ETA in your town tonight, with skies remaining fair over the Northeast, is—"

"Turn that off."

"Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Kelly," Sean Whitaker said, aiming the remote at the screen.

"Margaret?"

"Yes, ma'am," Maggie said, sounding like Sean's echo. "It wasn't my fault, Mom. My leg hurt, and that guy was being a real pain, and I just sat down, and Alex put this damn hundred dollar bill in the—"

"Why do you do that?" Alicia Kelly asked her, interrupting Maggie not a moment too soon, to Saint Just's mind. "Why do you always assume I have nothing good to say about anything you do?"

Maggie shot Saint Just a quick, astonished look. "Uh ... because you don't?"

"That's cruel, Margaret, and untrue," Mrs. Kelly said.

Now Saint Just shot an astonished (for him) look at Maggie's mother.

"I'm sor—no. No, I'm not sorry, Mom. You hate my books. You complain that I don't come home enough. Okay, okay, you have a point there. You tell me I'm fat, you tell me I cause you embarrassment. You ... you never hung up my Perfect Attendance plaque I got in the fourth grade."

"That last might have been dispensed with, my dear," Saint Just whispered to her.

"Right," Maggie agreed, shifting on the seat of the chair, her posture belligerent. "You never read one of my books. Never. None of you. You just condemned them because they were romances. Filth, you called them—and you never read them."

Maureen raised her hand. "I did. I mean, I do. I read all of them. I get them from the library."

"Well, there's a mixed blessing, sweetings," Saint Just whispered, close by Maggie's ear. "She reads them, but she doesn't buy them."

"Margaret, are you quite finished?"

Maggie looked up at Saint Just, who nodded.

"Yeah, Mom, I'm done. And now I do apologize. I fell into a trap, one people under stress fall into all the time. We don't want to think about Daddy, about the trouble he's in, so we fight about anything we can fight about. I'm sorry."

"As well you should be," Mrs. Kelly said, falling back into her more recognizable form. "Now, tell us how much of this jackpot you get to keep, dear. I seem to have missed that. Enough to pay Cynthia to find a way for your father to beat this rap?"

"Beat this—uh." Maggie gave her head a quick shake. "Well, yeah, sure, Mom. I have enough money to help Dad prove his innocence. But not from the jackpot. I'm giving my winnings to Sterling. He ... um ... well, he was the one pushing the Max button. I'd found the Cash-out button, and would have pushed it, but he was having so much fun that I let him keep pushing the button, and it wasn't as though it was my money we were wasting, you know, so in some ways it is Sterling's win, not mine. And that guy, that Novack guy? I did take his machine."