Kasey Michaels: Bowled Over

"Oh, you'll see it, you'll believe it. Won't she, Tate?"

Twenty minutes later, after waving good-bye to J.P., who was more than ready to climb into her rented Mercedes and head back to the city, Maggie and Saint Just stood outside the Wesley Street condo and looked at each other. Smiled.

"I rent a Taurus, J.P. rents a Mercedes, and my spendthrift brother rents a freaking limo. It's transportation, right? Getting from point A to point B? One of these days I'm going to figure out if I'm an idiot or the rest of the world is nuts," Maggie said as the taillights disappeared in the early dusk. "Or maybe I'll just buy a Mercedes for myself, now that we've got a garage of our own. You know, more than the roof terrace, the enclosed garden, it's that garage. You know how unheard of garages are in Manhattan?"

"Maggie, you're avoiding the inevitable," Saint Just told her. "What happened with Tate?"

"You know what happened, Alex. I loaned him the money he needs. At no interest, unless he screws up. Like, if he doesn't visit Mom and Dad once a week, help them with anything they need help with, like that piece of missing siding, and the leak in the guest bathroom. Tate's really good with his hands, when he wants to be. Anyway he breaks the rules, bam, I start charging interest. And like I told him—there's bank rates, and then there's loan-shark rates." She grinned. "You can just call me Jaws. Now tell me what happened back there. I heard voices for a while, and then I didn't. And Mom's looking at Dad a little funny."

"Maggie, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," Saint Just said as he helped her into the driver's seat of her father's car. "For now, I believe it's time you and I reconnoitered this bowling establishment where Bodkin was last observed alive. We'll be obvious to anyone who remembers you from your childhood, but the time has come to do our own detecting. And then later this evening, as I've already discussed with Evan, he and Sterling will join us there."

"Daddy? Why? If he's in danger—"

"We'll protect him, Maggie. But Evan tells me that the Majesties will be practicing their bowling maneuvers every night this week, in preparation for something called the New Year's Tournament. As Barry Butts is now a Majestic, gathering everyone in one spot seems a workable solution."

"You mean you want to do a classic Saint Just Mysteries' we-gather-all-together denouement, right? But we don't have enough evidence for that, Alex."

"Which is why, my dear, I'm asking you to drive us to the bowling establishment, so that we might hopefully locate more clues."

Maggie put her father's car in gear. "All right, all right. As long as you stop calling it a bowling establishment. It's a bowling alley, or bowling lane. Got it?"

"And those two terms make sense to you?" Saint Just asked, facing front, as they headed up the street as dusk faded into yet another early winter darkness. "I don't think you Americans really listen to yourselves when you speak. A building can be neither an alley or a lane."

"Well, pardon us," Maggie said, clicking on her left turn signal. "Now tell me what happened with Mom and Dad while I was gone. The way they were looking at each other when we left? It sort of gave me the creeps ..."

"He called her Ally? Really? And she rubbed his back? Omigod, that's almost creepy."

"You have such a fascination with that word—creep. Creepy. I must say that I was myself at point-non-plus for a few moments, but signs of affection between a man and woman do not, to my mind, extend to creepy."

"That's only because they're not your parents," Maggie told him as she used the walker to clomp her way laboriously up the two-level handicap ramp that led to the front door of the bowling ally ... lane ... establishment. "Damn, they couldn't find an easier way to do this? There must be fifty feet of ramp here, and all the sections of cement pavement are at different heights. I can't imagine trying to push a wheelchair over those bumps, going uphill. You know, I have a whole new perspective on what so many people laughingly call 'handicap access.' I say we make the jerks that design these things try to go up and down or in and out on walkers, on crutches, in wheelchairs. Because somebody's doing this all wrong."

"Yes, my dear, point taken, unless you wish for me to procure a soapbox for you to stand on as you continue your tirade," Alex said as he reached over to push the metal plate meant to open the glass doors to the bowling lane.

"See? I can't reach that thing from here, can I? They think I have nine-foot arms? By the time I press the plate, get myself back over to where I can go through the doors, the doors would be closing. Stupid! Yeah, well, I'm going to write somebody a real lollapalooza of a letter when this is over. Now tell me again what we're going to do here, while I tell you that we do none of it until we've sampled their snack bar. I'm thinking pizza."

"Which we will not consume using a knife and fork," Alex informed her as he held open the door for her (the push-plate didn't seem to be working), and she pushed her way into the noise and heat and disinfected-shoes smell of one of the least-favorite haunts of her youth. That was probably because the only bowling trophy she had ever won was as Most Improved Bowler. Which wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't improved from a score of thirty-one to finally, for one game of the whole season, breaking one hundred and fifty.

Erin was the bowler of the Kelly family. She'd copped more than a dozen trophies, twice as many ribbons, and their father's undivided time two nights a week and Saturdays.

Maggie figured she probably should forgive her sister for that. Forgive, and move on. Yes, definitely she had to write to Erin about what was happening on the home front, that it might even soon be safe to come home. Maybe even call her, and not just write to her. Eeeww, that thought hurt ...

"Maggie, did you hear me?"

"Hmm? Oh, right. Not with a knife and fork. I've only been telling you that for months. It tastes better when you just pick it up and shove it in your mouth. Now try it with some french fries rolled up inside. Trust me—pure gourmet. Snack bar's to our right."

"Perhaps we might try the bar, instead," Alex suggested, pointing to a flashing sign that blinked red and blue, not too inventively, The Eleventh Frame. "That's where Henry Novack encountered the members of the Majesties, remember?"

"Drinking beer before they get their practice games in? I don't think so. These are dedicated athletes, or whatever you call bowlers. We'd have a better chance of seeing one of them in the snack bar. Ah, smell that? Thank God garlic can overcome any smell, even that of rented bowling shoes."

They settled in at the counter, all the plastic booth seats already occupied, and Maggie quickly ordered two slices for herself and two more for Alex. And two fountain Cokes. She loved fountain Cokes, and since the snack bar hadn't seemed to have changed in fifteen years, she hoped the Cokes hadn't, either.

"Maggie Kelly, right?" the woman behind the counter asked as she put down the sodas and pulled a pair of straws from her apron pocket. "Heard about your dad. Cops let him go?"

Maggie smiled weakly at one of the many nemeses of her youth. "Hi, Mrs. McGert. Yeah, they figured out he didn't do it."

"Not the way I heard it. I heard they just didn't have enough to go to trial with, like that, you know? Probably pick him up again in a week or two, that's what my Jerome says. Is he going to show up here? I wouldn't, if I was him."

"Mrs. McGert, Dad's bowled here for as long as I can remember, and I never heard him say one bad word about you. You've worked behind this snack bar for as long as I can remember, and you've been bad-mouthing him to everyone who comes in this place ever since Christmas Eve, haven't you? Sure, you have. But that's okay, because I've learned something these past few days—forgive your past, and move on. So I'm going to forgive you, Mrs. McGert, and move on."