Lisa Scottoline - Everywhere That Mary Went

“He’s not coming back, Alice,” I say. I’m not sure whether I mean Mike or Brent, but Alice doesn’t ask for a clarification.

I fall into a chair with my killer knife and close my eyes.

The next sound I hear is the ear-splitting buzz of my downstairs doorbell. I glance at my watch. It’s ten o’clock. I must have fallen asleep. Groggy, I get up and press the intercom button, still holding the chef’s knife. “Who is it?”

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” shouts a strong voice. Judy’s.

“Hold on.” I buzz her in and she arrives in seconds, having taken the stairs two by two, like she always does. She bangs into the apartment wearing a reinforced backpack and toting a rolled-up sleeping bag. She gasps when she sees the knife. “What the hell is that for?” she asks.

“Bad guys. Are you terrified?”

“Of you?”

“Yes, of me. Of me and my big no-joke knife.” I wave it around and she backs away.

“Watch it with that thing.”

“You ought to see what this knife can do to a piece of celery. It’s not a pretty sight.”

“Is this what we’ve come to? You running around with a machete?” She kicks the door closed with the back of her running shoe and tosses the sleeping bag onto the floor, where it rolls into the couch. Alice arches her back.

“Who are you, Nanook of the North?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes narrow. “Yeah?”

“Okay as I can be.”

“I thought so,” Judy says, frowning like a doctor confirming a child’s case of tonsillitis. “I brought something to make us feel better.” She swings the backpack off her shoulder and tugs its zipper open, walking into the kitchen. I follow her in and watch her unpack a bag of sugar, two sticks of butter, and a cellophane pack of chocolate chips.

“You left Kurt to come here and bake stuff?” I stick the knife back onto the rack.

“Not exactly. Your new boyfriend called and said you needed protection. You did use protection, didn’t you?”

I feel terrible all of a sudden. It reminds me of Brent. I flash on him that day in my office, cleaning up the coffee stain. He was so worried about me.

“What’s the matter?” Judy asks, alarmed.

“Brent, Judy. Brent.” I feel myself sag and Judy gathers me up in her strong arms. I burrow into her fuzzy Patagonia pullover, with its fresh soapy smell, and start to cry.

“I know, Mare,” she says, her voice sounding unusually small. “He was a good man. He loved you.” She hugs me closer, and I try not to feel funny about the fact that we’re two women hugging breast to breast. In fact, Judy’s squeezing me so tightly that I stumble backward, to the sound of a loudreeaow!

We both jump. I’ve crunched Alice’s tail underfoot. She hisses at me fiercely.

Judy laughs, wiping her eyes. “Fuck the cookies. Let’s bake Alice.”

I laugh too, for a long time, and it feels good, a release. We take turns drying our eyes with a roll of paper towels that has tiny daisies marching along its border. Afterward, feeling shaky and sober, we look at each other. Judy’s lips are a wavy line. “This must be how you felt after Mike, huh?” she says, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Mike. His voice is gone now, and it was the last of him. I nod.

“You came back to work so soon. I never knew how you did it.”

“I had to. When something like that happens, you have to do the next thing.”

“The next thing?”

“Right. Whatever’s next. You go and do it. Then you do what comes next after that. File a brief. Bake cookies.”

Judy smiles weakly.

I point to the base cabinet. “The cookbook’s inside. You want coffee?”

“Thanks.” Judy yanks her pullover off over her head, revealing one of Kurt’s V-neck undershirts, and settles down on the pine floor of the kitchen. She tugs myJoy of Cooking from the shelf and opens the thick book, idly twisting the red ribbons glued to its spine. “What is this, the wartime edition? You should throw this thing out.”

“I can’t.” I scoop some dry coffee into the coffeemaker. “It reminds me of a missal.”

“A what?”

“Forget it.” Judy was raised without a religion, which is why she has so much faith.

“So, are you in love?”

I watch the coffee dribble into the glass pot. It takes forever.

“Mary? You in love?” She looks up at me expectantly. With her shaggy haircut, there on the floor, she reminds me of a sheepdog waiting for a Milk-Bone.

“I’m in confusion.”

“Tell me what’s going on or I’ll make the German Honey Bars.”

I retrieve two mugs from the cabinet and pour us both some coffee. I take mine with extra cream and extra sugar; she takes hers black. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Start with his German Honey Bar.” She pats the floor beside her.

“You want to sit on the floor?” I hand her the coffee.

“You had sex on the floor, didn’t you?”

I sit down with a sigh. The kitchen is so cramped our shoes touch in the middle-Ferragamo meets New Balance. I wrap my hands around my own toasty mug.

“Your Honor,” she says, “please instruct the witness to answer the question.” She looks happy again, bugging me to say the unsayable.

“What question?”

“Did you do it on the floor?”

I wince.

“It’s okay to talk about sex, Mary. You’re a grown-up now, and there are no commandments within a five-mile radius. So. On the couch?”

“Judith.”

“That counts as a yes on the couch.”

“You’re relentless.”

“All right. Forget it. You’re in confusion. Are you in danger?” She stops smiling.

“From Ned? No.”

“You sure?”

I tell Judy all about Ned, his therapy and his father. She listens carefully, sipping her coffee. When I’m done, she sets her mug down on the floor and leans forward intently. Uneven bangs shade her eyes from the Chinese paper lamp overhead.

“You want to know what I think?”

I bite my lip. Judy’s a certifiably smart person; she was number one at Boalt. If she says it, it carries weight.

“I think Brent was murdered, and I think thereis some connection between Brent and Mike. It’s too coincidental.”

“So I’m not crazy.”

“No. But listen to this. I think you’ve been analyzing this all wrong. Forget for a minute that you think the car was aiming at you, that’s just an assumption. The only facts we have are that Mike’s been killed and Brent’s been killed. So reason backward from that. Assume that the killer did what he intended to do-kill the two men closest to you. He wasn’t after you, he was after them.”

“You think?”

She yanks a hand through lemony hair.“We’ve been reading the notes as threats to you, but what if it’s someone who’s just trying to get close to you? To communicate with you the only way he can? Not someone who hates you, someone who loves you. Someone who wants you all to himself.”

My gut tightens as she speaks. She’s close to what Lombardo was saying after the memorial service, and I forgot to mention it to her. But it doesn’t square, not entirely. “A note that says ‘watch your step’? It sounds like a threat to me.”

“Or a warning. Particularly since almost the next night, the man you’re with gets hit by a car.”

“But that assumes the killer knew I’d be out with Brent, and he couldn’t have. We didn’t plan to go out to dinner, I offered to take him out after I finished a brief for Jameson.”

“Jameson? Yuck.”

I’m reminded of the weird toys in Jameson’s desk, and how Brent had laughed and laughed. I tell her what Stella said. It doesn’t seem funny now.