Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unfit to Practice

Paul said, “There’s no special reason to put the two women together, Ames and the woman in the bathroom. But it’s a thought. Ames moved out of her place a while ago. You want me to locate her? I know who could help. John Kelly could.”

“Who’s that?”

“Stinson’s best friend. An old friend of Carol’s, too. I ran into his name a couple of months ago when I was looking at the drug connection. He did a little business with Mario and Cody a long time ago.”

“Do you think this is too far-fetched?”

“For me it’s just another evening like so many evenings before, without my love in my arms. I might as well eat poorly and hunt down another guy’s old girlfriend. Oh, Nina, I miss you.”

Inspired by this comment and further comments on the topic, they didn’t make it all the way to Tahoe nonstop. At eight-thirty she called Bob from her mobile phone explaining that she would be a little later than expected. She and Paul registered at a historic hotel on the main street in Placerville, stripped, and jumped together into the fresh, starchy sheets. For an hour they kissed, murmured, and touched each other’s skin. For Nina, the release felt fantastic, her passion intensified by her inner turmoil.

Later, eating shrimp salad on the balcony overlooking the main street while Paul had a nap, Nina realized that she wasn’t thinking at all about the hearing. Paul was the subject on her mind.

She loved Paul. She didn’t know what she would do about it, but she felt a decision was imminent, forming somehow out of her situation.

She woke him up a few minutes later. They got to Tahoe by ten. Kissing her warmly, he dropped her at the house on Kulow, declining to come inside. “I love you,” he said.

She kissed him again, not able to say the words.

“Bob?” she said, unlocking the door to their cabin. Strange that Hitchcock did not seem to be anywhere around. She dropped her small suitcase and briefcase right inside the entryway and dragged the house, calling for Bob and for Hitchcock. She checked Bob’s room, finding the door closed, lights off, and blinds shut. Hitchcock was definitely not at home, and neither, it seemed, was Bob.

In the kitchen, she pulled out some old wheat bread, spread peanut butter and jelly on it, and called Matt at the hospital. “How’s it going?”

“Andrea’s doing well. Should go home in the morning.”

“Matt, have you seen any sign of the boy?”

“Your boy? Why, no,” he said. “How’d it go at the hearing?”

“I’ll tell you later.” She asked some more after Andrea, but the questions were pro forma and he knew it, so they kept the conversation short. Pouring herself a drink from a pitcher of iced tea she found in the refrigerator, she called Taylor Nordholm’s house and got stuck in a diatribe his mother launched about the high school. “Have you seen Bob?” she finally asked.

“No.”

So, where could he be? Where was he now, her wandering boy, the boy of her tender care, the boy who was her joy and light, child of her love and prayer-then she realized where Bob must be. Resisting the impulse to stick her head out into the backyard and scream bloody murder, she ran upstairs to change into jeans and a sweater. She ran outside and fired up the Bronco.

She drove the couple of miles to the Bijou, parked across from the dilapidated cabin, and got out. Straightening her shoulders, she thought, well, I’m a Mom, I spell M-O-M. Mom.

She knocked on the door.

“Nina!” Daria Zack, eyes wide, her blouse open almost to her navel, answered the door, Hitchcock drooling beside her like a huge, black witch’s familiar. “Wow, did I not expect you.”

“Bob here?” Nina asked.

“Um. I don’t know,” Daria said. “Maybe.”

Well, Nikki had always described her mother, Nina’s former client, as a flake. Nina now knew what extremes of flakiness were possible, as she walked inside the sparse living room and greeted a man in his twenties, half dressed, sprawled across a few pillows near the fireplace.

“Hi,” he said feebly. Holding one hand across the fig-leaf area, he put his other hand over the smoldering joint in the fifties ashtray, as if he could hide these things behind six-inch hand spans.

Politely greeting him, Nina thought, Bob better not be here. At least Hitchcock remembered his manners. Since her arrival, he had stuck close to her heels.

“You could check her room,” said Daria, some small recognition of the seriousness of the situation dawning.

“Okay,” Nina said, heading toward one of the two bedrooms.

She tried the door and found it locked, so she knocked. There was no answer.

“Maybe they left,” Daria offered from a few feet behind, buttoning up the middle button on her blouse.

Nina knocked again. The door opened. Nikki, entirely too relaxed-looking, stood in front of her. “Oh, hello, Nina.” Behind her, Bob loomed, a worried look plastered across his mug.

“Ms. Reilly to you,” she told Nikki. She grabbed Bob’s arm and propelled him through the living room, out the front door, and into the car. Hitchcock jumped into the backseat.

“What’s your problem!” Bob asked as she pulled away.

“Why aren’t you home?”

“You said you’d be late. We wanted to practice-”

“Do not, please, do not give me that. She was high. I could see it in her eyes.”

Silence, then, “It was just really dark in the room. She doesn’t get high, far as I know.”

Really dark in the room. Reassuring words. “Are you?”

“What? Mom, I’m not even fourteen!”

“Are you,” she repeated, her voice steely, her hand on the wheel curled rigid as pipe, “high?”

“No.”

“Bob, we’ve talked about this.”

“About what?”

“Drugs.”

“I don’t do that stuff. I have zero interest. I told you!”

“Daria’s boyfriend was smoking pot in that house while you were there. That’s not only unacceptable, it’s illegal.”

“She told him to quit it and so he put it out. She’s not pushing a drug agenda, Mom.”

“Would you have taken anything if she was? Because my impression is that these people have a hold on you.”

“Nobody’s got a hold on me,” he protested.

Unfortunately, that included her. She decided to use Paul’s frequently stated solution: Nail his feet to the floor. She told him there would be no further practice of any kind, music or otherwise, with Nikki. Bob folded his arms, stared straight ahead, and no doubt hated her all the way home.

After Paul dropped Nina at her cabin, he called Wish, who needed to tell him all about the terrific spinning restaurant he had found at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco before agreeing to meet him in half an hour.

“Hey,” Paul said, pulling up next to him in the parking lot of the Starlake Building.

“Hey.” Wish climbed in beside him. “Where to?”

“Ever heard of this outfit?” He handed Wish a piece of paper Nina had written for him.

“Big Lake Sport Fishing,” he read. “Sure. They’ve got an office at the Keys.”

Turning right onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard, Paul glanced over at him. “You look sleek.”

“I do?” Wish wore a brown leather jacket over his jeans.

“So you had lunch in the city.”

“Yeah, after walking up to Chinatown and playing around for a couple of hours. I found a couple of Japanese animes I’ve been looking for.”

“Didn’t you drop Nina off this morning at nine? Strikes me as funny, you being in the same vicinity several hours later. So I surmise a special reason for hanging around. Hmm.” He tapped his chin. “Whatever could it be?”

Wish grunted.

“Lunch with a lady.”

“You caught me red-handed, Copper.”