Kasey Michaels - Bowled Over

"English over there will take an hour getting to the point, Mrs. Kelly," J.P. said, "so I'll just lay it out for you. The D.A. has dropped the charges against your husband for lack of evidence. My doing, because I'm very good at what I do. Which, for some reason, English and sunshine over there seem to think makes everything worse, not better. Alex, back to you."

"Yes, thank you, J.P." Saint Just looked about the room, Tate's absence noticeable. "Your son, Mrs. Kelly?"

"Upstairs, packing. Cynthia and Sean have already left."

"Ah, shucks," Maggie said happily. "Did she take the Crock-Pot of meatballs with her? Nah, I guess not."

"I have no idea, Margaret. They called themselves a cab and went sneaking off without so much as a 'thank you for having us.' And Tate and I ... well, we aren't speaking, so I have no idea what he's doing or where he's going. This entire family is falling apart."

"Not that it had far to fall," Maggie said quietly before joining her mother on the couch. "Do you want me to talk to him?"

"Would you, Margaret? I don't want him leaving in a huff. And I think," she added, attempting a whisper that failed badly, "I think he may have, you know, money problems? And I thought he was doing so well with his new business venture."

"A three-state tanning bed franchise might not have been the way to go right now, Mom, what with all the skin cancer scares. He should just stick to mechanical engineering—that he supposedly knows how to do. What did you two argue about anyway?"

"This place," Alicia said, spreading her arms to encompass the entirety of the condo. "He wants to sell it, and I said, no, I can't do that. Not without speaking to your father. And since I'm not speaking to him, I suppose the condo won't be going on the market anytime soon."

"Logical," Maggie said, grinning up at Saint Just. "Kelly-logical, anyway."

"Can't you ever be serious, Margaret? And now you say your father has been exonerated?"

"The charges were dropped, Mrs. Kelly," J.P. said. "That doesn't mean they can't be brought again, if the police find new evidence. But, yes, for now, your husband is no longer a suspect."

"But he's in danger? Didn't someone say he's in danger? You said it, didn't you, Margaret? In danger of what, for pity's sake?"

"Danger? Who's in danger?" Tate Kelly asked, entering the living room, his suitcase in his hand. "Hello," he said to J.P., holding out his hand. "I'm Tate Kelly, and you would be ... ?"

"Wondering what the hell I'm doing here," J.P. said, shaking his hand, her firm grip, Saint Just noticed with some amusement, causing Tate to flinch. "I hear you might need a good bankruptcy lawyer? I don't do bankruptcies as a rule, but I could make an exception for a friend of Sunshine's here."

"Mom!" Tate exploded. "What did you do—rent a billboard, for crying out loud."

"Don't you yell at Mom!"

"Don't you tell me what to do!"

"Stop that this minute, you're both an embarrassment! Margaret, sit down, and tell your brother to do the same! Don't you yell at each other. You weren't raised by wolves, you know!"

"Alicia? Children? What's going on in here? Sterling and I could hear you all the way out in the kitchen."

"What do you care, Evan? I raised these children, not you. Four children, and I raised them on my own. Not you, working all the time, bowling all the rest of the time, watching television all the rest of the time."

"That's a lot of rest of the times, Mom," Maggie broke in, looking at Saint Just, her expression now more embarrassed than angry.

"I'm sorry you feel that earning a living, keeping a roof over my family's head wasn't enough for you, Alicia," Evan said, showing a remarkable amount of backbone, Saint Just thought. It was probably a shame he hadn't shown it earlier, as in for the last forty or more years.

"Hi, everybody, I saw Daddy's car outside and figured you were here, Maggie, and might have some news?" Maureen said from the head of the staircase, smiling as she walked into the room, her winter coat hanging open over a nondescript blue dress and her ever-present apron. "Daddy? You're here? What's going on?" Then she must have sensed the tension in the room. Her smile began to slip and she backed up a few paces even as she began digging in the pocket of her apron. "Ex ... er ... excuse me. I need to go get a drink of water."

"And there she goes, off to swallow one of her little pink pills," Alicia said, collapsing onto the couch once more. "What have I done, Evan? What did I do wrong? Erin's as good as gone, Tate's trying to sell our house from under us, Maureen's a ... a pill-popper, and Margaret—" She stopped, blinked, and looked at Maggie. "I don't know anymore, Margaret. Sometimes you seem so normal."

"If she's normal, I'm Donald Trump," Tate declared hotly.

"Oh, I don't know, Tate," Maggie said sweetly. "You might not have his money, but you might want to consider trying his comb-over soon. And now that the subject's out in the open—how dare you try to sell Mom and Dad's house out from under them?"

"Maggie," Evan said, "we'll handle this, your mother and I."

"How are we going to do that, Evan? I'm not talking to you, you philandering old fart."

"Me? I philandered? What about you, Alicia? If I philandered, it was only because you philandered first."

"Mom had an affair, too? Why did I think it was just Dad?" Tate finally found his way to a chair and sat down. "Oh, I love this. I just love this."

"You would," Maggie growled at him. "You'd love anything that gets them to split up so they let you sell the house."

"They were already splitting up. Mom kicked him out, remember? And I can sell this house anytime I want to sell this house. It's my house!"

"Oh, yeah?"

"Oh, yeah!"

"Over my dead body, sport!"

"And speaking of dead bodies, Maggie ... ?" Saint Just wasn't easily discommoded, but the idea that a family war might be about to break out in front of him was decidedly discomforting. In case everyone else had forgotten, they had a murderer to unmask. "If we could just get back to the point ... ?"

Maggie, who was pointing a finger within an inch of her brother's jutted-out jaw, dropped her arm to her side and sighed deeply. "Well, that was fun, wasn't it? Like a flashback, or something. You're right, Alex. Back to the problem at hand. This is an old problem, and we've embarrassed ourselves enough in front of you and J.P. Sorry, Alex, sorry, J.P."

"Don't worry about it," J.P. said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "It's not really a family fight until somebody throws something. My mom's favorite was always the TV remote. She had a real hate for my dad's TV remote."

Evan, intelligent enough to know that retreat was sometimes not only the best but the only option, crossed the room to stand beside Saint Just. "I think she's weakening, Alex," he said quietly as Maggie and her mother engaged in a low conversation on the couch. "Maybe if I bought her a gift or something? Jewelry? Jewelry would be nice, don't you think?"

"Ah, no, not jewelry, Evan. Not in this case."

"But Carol could probably get me her store discount on—oh. Right. Flowers?"

"A good thought, yes."

Maggie waved to him from the other side of the room. "Alex? Mom says she's ready to hear about Dad being in danger. Our theory on it, anyway."

"Excuse me, Evan," Saint Just said before crossing the room to take up a chair only in time to rise politely from it again as Maureen reentered the room, carrying a bowl of puffed rice and followed by Sterling, whose ears were quite red, obviously a result of overhearing the Kelly Family At War.

Saint Just was more than willing to explain his and Maggie's theory, even as he knew that theory had more than a few gaping holes in it that had to be filled in only by rather large leaps in logic.