John Miller - Upside Down

“Absolutely not. I hate losing the same money twice.”

“If Daddy wins, we play one more hand. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sean said quickly. “Like that's going to happen.”

“Dealer is standing pat,” Rush said, laying aside the deck and lifting his cards. “Bets?”

Unbelievably, Winter had drawn a third five and a pair of sixes. Full house.

Sean bet five chips. Winter raised her a like amount.

Rush put in twenty.

“Perfect. I have only ten left,” Winter said.

Sean pushed in her remaining chips. “I'll be light two.” She laid her hand down. “Three aces,” she declared triumphantly. “Beat that, Misters Massey.”

Winter cut out three cards, which he put facedown on the table. He put down the other two faceup. “Beats my pair of fives.”

“Read 'em and weep.”

“What in the world do you call that?” Winter said, laughing. Rush laid down a hand devoid of any merit whatsoever.

“I was bluffing,” Rush replied.

“You were trying to let us win,” Sean accused.

Winter watched his son laugh. If you didn't notice the scar that ran from his temples, across both eyelids and the bridge of his nose, you would never guess that Rush was blind. Despite the limitations caused by his blindness, his son came as close to leading a normal life as most kids his age. Often it seemed that his other senses more than made up the difference. Winter hadn't thrown the hand to let Rush win because the boy was blind. He had thrown it because he didn't care if he won. He didn't at all mind coming in last in his home. Rush and his wife Sean meant everything to him.

“Did Mama call today?” Winter asked.

“No, Lydia hasn't called yet,” Sean said as she gathered up the cards and boxed them.

“It's that new friend, ” Winter said. “Distracting her from her motherly and grandmotherly duties.”

“Her condo beau.” Rush was grinning. “Gram calls about every single night. Think they'll get married?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Winter said.

Lydia Massey had moved to Sarasota, Florida, the week after Winter and Sean's wedding the previous March. She was dating a retired doctor who had a unit on the floor above hers. Winter had spoken to the doctor on several occasions and he seemed nice enough. It was just weird that his mother was dating.

“I have something for you fellows,” Sean announced. “A present.”

“What kind of present?” Rush asked suspiciously.

“A small one representing a very large one.” Sean leaned back and opened a drawer in the Stickley sideboard and removed a thin, gift-wrapped package. She handed it to Rush. “Open it.”

Rush tugged the ribbon off and removed the paper. It was a small silver frame.

“A picture frame?” Rush sounded disappointed. “So what's in it?”

“Nothing,” Winter said.

“Why is it empty?” Rush asked. “What's it for?”

“That's where we'll put the very first picture.”

“You bought a new camera?” Winter asked. Sean had told them it was a small something representing a larger something.

“Nope. The first picture of the new baby,” she said softly.

“A new baby? Holy shit!” Rush said.

“Rush!” Winter snapped. “Don't say that. Whose new baby?”

“Holy crapoly,” Rush said.

Winter finally got his mind around what his wife had said. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Sean replied.

“The doctor said so? That's why you've been sick?”

“You don't just guess at something like that,” Sean said, laughing.

He stood and pulled Sean up out of her chair and hugged her to him.

“Winter, are you crying?” she asked.

“Of course I'm not. I'm happy!” He knew, of course, that he was crying. But they were tears of joy. “We need champagne!”

“We have champagne,” Sean said. “In the fridge.”

“Holy-” Rush started.

“Rush,” Winter said warningly.

“Sorry! Do I get champagne too?”

It was a big deal for all of them. Winter didn't believe he could be any happier. He wished he could freeze that moment so he could have it to take out and relive over and over for the rest of his life.

The telephone started to ring.

“Let it ring,” Winter said.

“Might be Lydia,” Sean said.

“Gram is gonna freak out!” Rush said gleefully.

“I'll get it. I need to get some soap to wash out Rush's mouth with anyway,” Winter joked. He rushed into the kitchen to answer the phone, certain that he was going to be able to share the news with Lydia.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully.

“Is this Mr. Winter Massey?” The unfamiliar voice was heavily accented.

“Yes,” he answered, still thinking of Sean and her news. A baby. “I'm Winter Massey.”

Of course it would be a salesman, but for once he didn't care. From where he was standing, he could see into the dining room where Rush and Sean were actually dancing arm in arm. He wished he had a camera so he could capture the image. “So friend, what is it you're selling on this fine evening?”

“I'm Nicky Green.”

“I'm sure you are,” Winter said distractedly. “What's the pitch?”

“I'm a friend of Hank and Millie's.”

Winter's mind downshifted and he started paying closer attention. Why would he be calling? Maybe Hank put him up to something. “Sure, I know who you are. Sorry, what can I do for you, Mr. Green?”

“Well, I hate worse than anything to have to call you, but I'm afraid I have some god-awful news. It's bad… I… I…”

The smile had left Winter's face, and ice-cold fear froze his mind. Hank's old friend couldn't continue because he was crying.

In the open pool cabana, behind the sleekly modern concrete-and-glass house, a fire dancing in the small metal-mesh wastebasket positioned on a slate bar top was mirrored orange-red in the lap pool's crystal-clear water. Marta Ruiz, who sat on a stool at the outdoor bar before a cassette player, was at the end of an hour spent going through the stack of audiocassettes she had taken from the Porter house.

“Not here,” she announced.

Frustrated, she jerked the final audiotape out and tossed it into the wastebasket inferno. Arturo, standing outside the cabana biting his fingernails, uttered a long string of obscenities, then stomped around in the wet grass beside the rain-slick patio. Before listening to the cassettes, Marta had inspected each of the strips of negatives he'd taken from the dead lawyer and thrown them all into the same fire.

“I'm fucking cooked!” Arturo yelled.

“It isn't good,” Marta agreed. “Let's stay calm. We don't know that she has them either. The negatives could be anywhere Amber was during the days she was missing.”

“The tape…”

“If such a tape even exists,” Marta said, trying to calm him.

“All the police saw was an open machine, right? Probably there was no tape inside it. But if there was, it has my voice on it, Amber said my name a couple of times! It has my voice! I think I said Mr. Bennett's name! It has the fucking hits recorded on it!”

“Unfreak, Turo,” Marta said calmly. “There probably isn't a tape.”

“That's easy for you to say! Your balls aren't in the vise.”

“It's always counterproductive to freak. You are a professional. Anyway, Mr. Bennett doesn't know what might be on the tape, and the cops didn't find one.”

“Oh, so now there is a tape,” he said sourly.

“Whether there is a tape is not yet relevant to the situation,” she told him. “What Bennett is most worried about is the negatives-”

“Negatives which he didn't mention,” Arturo interrupted. “How dare that strutting rooster be angry with me, when he didn't bother to mention them in the first place!”