Copperman, Ej Night Of the Living Deed

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.“I’m not supposed to say.”“Spill, Mom.I’ll find out anyway, and you’ll be a shred of your former self when I’m through.”“You’re so silly,” she giggled.Honestly, the woman may be in her sixties, but she still giggles.“Melissa called me.”So I’d been ratted out by my own daughter.“Melissa,” I said.“She didn’t want me to worry.”“Neither did I, which is why I didn’t tell you anything.”“I know,” Mom said.“You’re so thoughtful that way.”See what I mean?“I’m fine, Mom,” I told her.“Just a bump on the head.I have some Tylenol”—I didn’t mention that my prescription also had codeine in it—“and it doesn’t even hurt.”“What happened?”I told her the story, leaving out the questionable elements like the people who weren’t there, as I thought that might fall into the category of “Bad Information to Tell Someone after You’ve Been Hit on the Head.”She was completely aghast.“Alison! You could have been killed!”“Don’t overdramatize, Mom.I know what I’m doing.”“Of course you do.You’re very capable.” Sometimes I can make it work for me.“So don’t worry.I’ll be fine.In fact, I’m going right back to work on the house tomorrow.” I knew even as I was saying it that I shouldn’t, but it came out anyway.“Tomorrow!” my mother exclaimed.“Is that wise?”“I’m very capable, remember?”“I know, Ally.” No one else—no one—gets to call me “Ally.” And even my mother only gets away with it under duress.“Will you be there around noon?”Oh no.There had to be some way to head this off at the pass.“I don’t know, Mom.Don’t plan on coming over just yet.The place isn’t in shape.”“I’ll keep my eyes closed.I just want to see you, and make sure you’re all right.”“I promise I’ll let you know if I’m not.But I have a lot of work to do in the house.”“And you’ll do it brilliantly,” my mother interjected.Any opportunity will do.“Thank you.But I don’t have time to give a tour yet, and there’s really nothing to see.I promise I’ll get Melissa to take a picture of me and e-mail it to you, okay?”“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mom answered.“If you don’t want me to come, I won’t come yet.”“It’s not that I don’t want you to come.It’s that I promised Melissa the place would be ready by Halloween, and that means I don’t have much time.” I’d made no such promise, but it had been a vague goal of mine.“I completely understand,” Mom said.Never breathe a sigh of relief when talking to your mother.She’s always going to follow up.I should have learned by now.“But you’ll need something for lunch, won’t you?” she asked.Sometimes, there is no escape.Even with the drugs coursing their way through my bloodstream, I still couldn’t sleep after I hung up with Mom.So I pulled my antiquated laptop computer up onto the bed with me and plugged in the wall connection to the Internet.Tony and Jeannie don’t have Wi-Fi in the house.I admit it: I couldn’t shake the images of Imaginary Paul and Imaginary Maxie, but that seemed strange, because you usually dream about people you’ve at least heard about.I wondered if perhaps there were such people, and I’d dreamed about them for a reason.Google is a great way to waste time and not sleep.So I started looking for Maxie Malone, but got no hits.I figured “Maxie” must be a nickname, but for what? I tried “Maxine” and got no responses.Then I tried “Maximus,” “Max,” “Mackie,” “MacArthur” and “Moxie”—hey, my head was really foggy—and got nothing that went with “Malone.”A few more tries, for obituaries (Maxie had said they were dead, after all) in the Asbury Park Press or even the Star-Ledger, which doesn’t really cover the shore area, turned up fruitless.And the meds were starting to kick in—I was finally getting sleepy.I decided to give just one more news source a try; I had completely forgotten about the Harbor Haven Chronicle (it had no Web site of its own, but its content is incorporated into a regional news site, downdashore.com), the local weekly.And that was when I found something that made my head start to hurt again.There was a mention of my address and two bodies being found on the premises in a half-page article.It identified no police sources, but referred to a Detective Harold Westmoreland visiting the scene.The headline read, “Two Bodies Found in Local House.”I realized my jaw had dropped.I was shaking my head.I was breathing through my mouth.How could I have known that there had been two people who died in the house? Had the information been in the file, and I’d missed it? Somehow, I doubted that.The next morning, I left a message on my mother’s voice mail telling her to push back lunch for a day.I told myself it was because I hadn’t gotten much sleep [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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