Kasey Michaels - Bowled Over

"Thanks, Alex," Evan said. "But I don't think I want to be here, Joe, when you tell Barry. If that's all right with you?"

"Sure, Evan," Joe said, looking over his shoulder to where Barry Butts was now standing on the lane, looking good in his ugly yellow Majesties shirt, staring down the pins at the end of the alley. "This isn't gonna be fun ..."

"You don't know the half of it, Joe," Evan said, and this time Maggie reached up and grabbed his wrist, squeezing it to warn him off. God, she hated confrontations. And yet, Alex seemed to live for them.

Except maybe not tonight.

"Alex? You're being awfully quiet."

"Probably because a fool should keep his mouth shut and allow people to suppose he is a fool, rather than to open that mouth and prove it fact," Alex said, helping her to her feet. "Henry? If you'd step out of the row and hand Maggie her walker, please? We need to speak privately. Oh, and there you are, Sterling, just in the nick of time. Allow Evan to take you back to his house, if you please?"

"Alex, what's wrong?" Maggie asked once Sterling and her father were on their way out of the bowling lanes ... bowling establishment. God, Alex was ruining her for American English. "And why are you a fool?"

"Can you guys talk louder? I'm missing most of this," Henry said as the three of them stood close to the wall, beneath the sign for The Eleventh Frame.

"In a moment, Henry," Alex said, nodding toward the lanes.

Maggie watched as Joe Panelli spoke to Barry Butts, Barry's face getting redder and redder by the moment.

Joe kept speaking, gesturing, and Barry started to breathe so heavily that Maggie actually could see his chest going up and down from where she stood.

"Can you imagine how Lisa must feel if he looks at her the way he's looking at Mr. Panelli?" she asked Alex, feeling a shiver go down her spine. "I'd be scared spitless. I think I already am, to tell you the truth."

Alex stepped in front of her as Barry Butts shouted a word that would have gotten Maggie's mouth washed out with soap if she'd said it within her mother's hearing. He grabbed his bowling ball, shoved it in his leather bag, picked up his street shoes, and took the steps up to where they were standing two at a time.

"Where is he?" he demanded, his eyes wide and wild. "Where's your murdering father?"

"I suggest, sir, that you step back," Alex said quietly, his hands positioned on his sword cane, ready for action.

"Yeah? And who the hell are you? Where's your father, Maggie?"

Maggie put a hand on Alex's arm, wishing he'd move away from her, and pushed her walker forward. "You're through, Barry. We know what you did."

Barry opened his mouth to say something—Maggie didn't think it was to blurt out a confession—and then turned on his heel and stomped toward the exit, still in his bowling shoes.

"He didn't change his shoes," Henry said unnecessarily. "Man, I wouldn't want to meet that guy in a dark alley."

"Or on a deserted beach," Alex said, holding onto Maggie's walker until Barry Butts was no longer visible. "And that's the piece that's missing, isn't it? How Barry Butts lured Walter Bodkin to a deserted beach at midnight, in December. All right, I believe we can go now."

"Go where?" Maggie asked, clomping her walker and wishing it, and her cast, on that deserted beach, no longer necessary. "And why are you a fool?"

"Because we were wrong, sweetings," Alex said as he pushed open the door leading to the steps and the handicap ramp.

"Wrong? Barry didn't kill Bodkin?"

"Oh, no, he killed him," Alex told her. "We don't have much time, if I'm right. Lisa could be in danger."

"Lisa? Not Dad? Why is everybody always in danger? You're getting to be like that robot, Alex. 'Danger! Danger Will Robinson!' Jeez."

"Lost in Space. I loved that show. Who's Lisa?" Henry asked from behind them.

Maggie looked at him over her shoulder. "Henry, go home."

"The hell I will. This is starting to be fun. Now, who's Lisa?"

Alex picked up Maggie and carried her down the steps and to the car, Henry still huffing and puffing along behind them, still asking questions.

"That's it, don't tell me. Just leave me here," Henry said as Maggie slid into the driver's seat. "Everybody always leaves me, sooner or later. Yeah, well, you know what? Not this time, folks. I don't know where you're going, but Henry Novack is going there with you."

He headed for his van, parked nearby, nearly at a run.

"Poor Henry. We could have taken him with us," Maggie said as Alex closed the door on the passenger side and buckled his seat belt.

"He'll follow. We're going to Lisa's, Maggie. And hurry. I was wrong, wrong from the beginning. Barry Butts didn't kill Walter Bodkin or frame your father for Bodkin's murder because he was jealous of the association—real or imagined—with his wife."

"He didn't? Is that what you were being so quiet about earlier? You were thinking? And you ended up thinking you thought wrong?"

"I'll parse those sentences later," Alex said, holding onto the dashboard as Maggie turned onto Wesley. "Think, Maggie. We saw the Majesties tonight, watched them for some length of time."

"Maybe you did. I was just looking around, being bored."

"Honest to a fault. All right, I was watching them. Observing them. The Majesties are quite the team, aren't they?"

"You know they are, Alex. Don't drag this out with the obvious. Mae Petersen told Henry, who told me, that you just about have to have someone die to get a place on the team. There's a waiting list and everything, so they say, and—omigod, Alex!"

"Exactly. When Bodkin was killed, an opening was created on the Majesties. One Frankie Kelso, first on the list, took Bodkin's place. And, when your father was arrested, shamed, and dismissed from the team, the man second on the list, Barry Butts, took his place."

Maggie stopped at the red light, which gave her time to gawk at Alex. "Don't sit there and try to tell me that Walter Bodkin was killed for his place on a bowling team."

"Think back to watching the team tonight, Maggie. Think back to the moment Henry asked you to point out Barry Butts to him."

The light turned green. "Alex! Just say it, okay? No guessing games. We're only a few blocks from Lisa's house now."

"All right. I suppose I'm still so angry with myself for attempting to find some deep, psychological reason for the murder that I'm embarrassed to realize that greed is the motive in at least half the murders in this or any other country. I really must stop watching Dr. Phil."

"And The Learning Channel," Maggie said, turning onto Second Street. "Now spill it!"

"Joe—Mr. Panelli was sitting on one side of Barry Butts when you were attempting to point him out to Henry. Miss Petersen on his other side. All three of them wearing those atrocious yellow shirts, correct? And what was Mr. Frankie Kelso wearing, hmm?"

"I don't know. Was it green? Yeah, it was green. With a Jets logo on the back. Now tell me what that means."

"It means, Maggie, that Frankie Kelso had no idea he was soon to become a Majestic, and he does not own one of those ugly shirts."

"But Barry, who was number two on the waiting list—he already has a shirt. Alex! He already has a shirt, because he knew he was going to kill Walter Bodkin!"

"Except," Alex said as Maggie pulled to the curb two doors down from the Buttses' house, "removing Walter Bodkin would not assure Barry Butts of a place on the team. He needed to be rid of two players."

"Dad," Maggie said, cutting the engine. "Don't tell me, I think I've got it. When Dad and Bodkin fought, it lit a lightbulb in Barry's brain. If he killed Bodkin and framed Dad for the murder, then he'd get his spot on the Majesties without having to wait for someone else to grow old and croak on their own." She banged her fist on the steering wheel. "The man killed to get on a bowling team!"