Chapter 12
It’s not a knock-down, drag-out fight, but Drew is pretty frustrated when I leave the station, and I’m still shaking with anger when I get into my car. Threatening to charge me with impeding a police investigation and withholding evidence was crossing the line, as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t care how much a full, in-tact collection of those things is worth, though the numbers Drew threw around the precinct were mighty impressive. Still, that wouldn’t loosen my lips.
You know, some people know how to coax, and some people just know how to bully, and I thought Drew was a master at the former, but when he started demanding . . .
Anyway, I didn’t tell him that I found the ivory doodad in Jesse’s sock drawer because a) I didn’t like the way his mind was leaping to conclusions about the person who had the figurine being involved somehow, and b) I really had no right to be rifling through my son’s private things. Not that I was. . . rifling, I mean. I wasn’t looking for anything. I was just putting away his clean underwear.
Okay, so that’s supposed to be his job and I usually just leave the stuff on his dresser and he puts it away because even if he doesn’t do the wash, he ought to take some responsibility for his things. I was just being nice and kind this time, putting it away for him.
You’re not buying it? I don’t think Jesse will, either. I didn’t search, I swear. And he must have wanted me to find it, since it was hardly buried at all – just under all his shorts at the back of the drawer behind his jockstraps that he never wears because he hates sports. Under the cup that protects the family jewels. In a bag.
I’m thinking about how I can possibly confront Jesse about where he got the little demon, and how I can claim any moral high ground after snooping, when I pull into my driveway and find Maggie May on the front lawn and the door to my house wide open. Since my father’s car isn’t at the curb, I can’t blame him.
“This is not a good sign,” I tell Maggie, who is dancing around my legs and making little dog noises that sound like thank God you’re home!
I do not want to call Drew, so I go next door and ring Bobbie’s bell. I can hear her high heels on the marble in her hallway.
“It’s ten-thirty in the morning,” I whine at her when she opens her door wearing a black cashmere turtleneck, black trousers and a spectacular red belt that sets the whole outfit off . “How can you look so good?”
She tells me she was getting ready to go to the supermarket. Yes, that is how people on Long Island dress to go to the supermarket. Full make-up, done hair, fresh-from-the-cleaners trousers. “You never know who you might run into,” she tells me.
I tell her I didn’t realize Matt Damon had moved to Syosset.
“I like to impress the little people,” she tells me, and I’m not sure she’s joking.
But I tell her I’m impressed, nonetheless. “Listen, my front door is wide open and I am afraid to go into the house alone. Is Diane . . .”
Mike, Bobbie’s husband, comes downstairs in a running suit. He’s a chiropractor and it seems to me his only office hours are when we need him at home. Only today he’s here in the flesh when I could actually use a man. Not that I’m a sexist–I asked for Diane first, didn’t I?
He offers to check the house out, and Bobbie and I agree only on the condition that we both go with him as backup. He rolls his eyes, but doesn’t stop us from following on his heels.
In my front hall I call out that we are coming in, that if anyone is in the house they’d better run out the back door and we’ll close our eyes so we can’t identify them. Bobbie and Mike stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. I don’t bother explaining how many people are killed on TV because they can identify suspects.
There’s no sound in response to my warning (unless you count the low “grr,” Mike emits or Bobbie’s stifled snicker).
Like The Three Stooges, we creep down the front hall. We look in the living room. Nada.
We edge into the kitchen, Mike stopping short and Bobbie and I bumping into him. “Are those your muffins?” Mike whispers to Bobbie, reaching for the last one left on the plate, which is only there because the kids found out they were bran muffins.
“Leave it,” she says, slapping his hand.
“I need it,” he says, breaking off a piece and popping it into his mouth.
I beg them to get serious, and we tiptoe back to the hall and up the steps. My room looks the way it did when I left it, and I won’t bother to describe it here because I’m too embarrassed. Suffice it to say that Mike thought I’d been broken into.
Lys’s room is untouched, as is Dana’s. And then we glance in Jesse’s doorway.
“Oh my God!” I say, cluing them in to the fact that Jesse is a neater person than I am and that his room did not look like this when he left for school. Everything from every shelf is scattered around the room. Drawers are out of his dresser and dumped in a pile on the floor. His bed is stripped and his precious secret collection of Playboy Magazines that he stole from his father are tossed everywhere.
At least now I won’t have to explain why the police have his ivory dragon.
