Jennifer Crusie - GETTING RID OF BRADLEY

Two hours later, they’d looked at every piece of paper and book in Bradley’s boxes and hadn’t found a clue.

“Half of this stuff is years old.” Zack sat on the floor by the stairs and stared at the mess. “Doesn’t he ever throw anything out?”

“I guess not.” Lucy threw the last of the papers back in the box. “It’s kind of sad, isn’t it? All his personal papers are business papers.”

Zack frowned at her. “Don’t start feeling sorry for him. He’s a rat.”

“Well, he wasn’t always a rat.”

“Oh, yeah. What was he?” Zack leaned back against the stairs and watched her. “What do you know about him? Where did he come from?”

Lucy sat down on one of the boxes. “I don’t know much. He’s from a little town in Pennsylvania called Beulah Ridge. It’s on the high-school yearbook in that box there beside you. His parents are both dead, and he hasn’t been back in years. We had a very small wedding, and Bradley didn’t invite more than two or three people, and he said none of them would be able to make it. It was just my parents and Tina and some friends from school.”

“Who did he send wedding invitations to?”

Lucy frowned, trying to remember. “I think a couple of friends from high school. Not family. And anyway, he was right. Nobody showed up that he invited. It was sad, really, but he didn’t seem to mind. Anyway, after the wedding, we just settled in here. He worked at the bank, and I taught school, and Maxwell and Heisenberg moved in. And then the blonde showed up, and he moved out, and we got divorced, and you mugged me in an alley.” She shrugged. “It’s never going to make a Movie of the Week, but that was my life.”

Zack snorted. “Bradley is a rat.”

“Oh, not entirely. He was really very nice to me for most of our marriage.”

Zack looked at her skeptically. “Then why did you move upstairs in October?”

“He snored.”

“Right.” Zack turned back to the boxes to pull the yearbook out again.

“Why doesn’t anybody ever believe that?” Lucy asked.

“Because no man in his right mind would let you out of his bed for that.” Zack flipped through the book. “Is this his high-school yearbook?”

“Yes,” Lucy said faintly.

“ John Bradley the embezzler taught high school in California,” Zack said absently, as he flipped to the senior portrait section. “High-school phys ed. That was his downfall.”

“What do you mean, ‘downfall’?”

“He seduced a cheerleader.” Zack ran his finger down the page. “Knocked her up.”

Lucy’s head jerked up. “That’s awful! He should be in jail.”

“I think so, too.” His finger stopped on one picture. “Of course, I also want him there for embezzlement But he paid in his own way.”

“He must have lost his job. School administrators can be really good at ignoring anything ugly, but in this case…”

“Oh, yeah, he lost his job. But the best part is, the girl’s family was really powerful. A bunch of very big guys with very big bank accounts and very big shotguns. They probably could have killed him and gotten away with it, except there was Bianca with a baby on the way, so they did the next best thing. They got him a job in a bank and made him marry her.”

Lucy winced. “How awful for her. That’s barbaric.”

Zack snorted. “More than you know. I’ve talked to Bianca on the phone, and she is not a pleasant person. I almost felt sorry for John Bradley. I personally would have told Daddy to go ahead and shoot me rather than spend a week with her, let alone six years, but then Bradley and I are different.”

“You certainly are.” Lucy blushed when Zack looked up. “I mean, I can’t imagine you seducing a teenager.”

“Well, I tried hard enough when I was a teenager. I just never had much luck. My technique needed work.” He turned back to stare at the picture in the yearbook.

It doesn’t anymore, Lucy thought. Then she mentally shook herself. The moon must be full or something. Maybe she was ovulating, although she usually didn’t get this crazy. As a matter of fact, she’d never been this crazy. Maybe she’d just reached that mid-thirties plateau where a woman’s sexual desire was supposed to peak. Just her luck, she was peaking and here came Zack.

Of course, the real problem wasn’t that he turned her on. The real problem was that she liked being with him. She felt good around him. Happy. Warm.

Really warm.

Hot.

Okay, the other part of the real problem was that he turned her on.

“He doesn’t look like a crook,” Zack said suddenly.

“Who?”

“Porter. Your ex.”

Zack shoved the yearbook in front of her, his finger pointing to a picture on a senior gallery page. “He looks like an amoeba.”

“They all do. They’re so young.” Lucy looked down at her ex-husband, frozen forever at eighteen. He was as classically good-looking back then as he was now, but he was also as stiff and dull, too. “Poor Bradley.”

“Stop feeling sorry for him.” Zack took the yearbook back and leafed through it again. “He’s implicated in a major crime.”

“He is?”

“Yeah. He got a hotel room in Overlook. A woman was found shot there today. We don’t have any proof that he did it, but we’d like to talk to him.”

“You think Bradley shot somebody?” Lucy shook her head. “No. He’s not violent.”

“How do you know he’s not violent? He’s a rat, possibly an embezzler, and definitely a seducer of blondes. You found one in your living room, remember?”

“Not a chance.” Lucy’s voice was firm. “A rat, maybe, but not a seducer of blondes. The blonde must have seduced him. Bradley just wasn’t that interested in sex.”

Zack flipped back a page in the yearbook. “Bradley is an idiot.”

“Of course, maybe it was just me.”

“It wasn’t you.”

Lucy started at the warmth in his voice, but his attention was suddenly riveted to the yearbook. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I will be damned.”

“What?”

He shoved the book in front of her and pointed to a picture near the bottom of the page. The boy in the picture was good-looking in a sly way.

“I’ve seen that smile on kids before,” Lucy said. “I bet he was a cheat.”

“No kidding. Look at the name.” He pointed again and Lucy read the legend underneath.

Most Likely To Succeed John Talbot Bradley

“They went to high school together.” Zack’s voice was thick with triumph. “Both of them named Bradley could be a coincidence. Both of them involved with banks could be a coincidence. You in the restaurant yesterday at the same time as the phone tip? Not likely, but could be a coincidence. But now this…” He took the book back from her and gazed in satisfaction at the picture. “This is not a coincidence.”

“No,” Lucy said. “It’s not. I don’t understand any of this, but it’s not.”

Zack looked up from the book at the sadness in her voice. “Hey. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Lucy bit her lip. “I just feel stupid. I never saw any of this in him, and I was married to him for eight months. I feel so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.” Zack flipped the book closed and stood, holding out his hand. “Come on. Let’s shove the rest of this stuff under the stairs and go up and call Tony. Then we can have dinner. What are you making, anyway?”

He grinned down at her, and she forgot Bradley for a minute and just basked in his nearness. Then she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “I’m not making dinner.” She dusted off the seat of her jeans. “You are.” She smiled up at him then, glad to have him so close. It was hard to stay depressed when he was so close.