Bowled Over

Chapter Eight

Saint Just perched at his leisure beside Maggie on the arm of the chair in Alicia Kelly's large and rather floral living room, observing.

It had been more than two hours since he'd last seen Mrs. Kelly, and the woman seemed to be back under control. Which probably had gone far in reassuring Maggie that the entirety of her world hadn't turned upside down at the moment of her father's arrest for murder.

Just ninety-nine percent of it.

They'd seen Mrs. Kelly off with Maureen, and then rejoined the others in the police station, Saint Just more than willing to take charge of the situation. After all, that was why he was here in the first place, on this plane of existence. To be a supporting prop to his beloved Maggie.

Who, as it turned out, hadn't seemed to need him at all.

He smiled now as he remembered how she'd employed her walker to cut Cynthia Spade-Whitaker effectively from the herd, asking pertinent questions and then efficiently handling the phone call to the bail bondsman. She'd not so much as blinked when the attorney then named her exorbitant fee for services, promising to have funds transferred to the woman's firm the day after Christmas.

No, she hadn't even blinked. Maggie, parting with huge sums of money without an obvious show of pain. Truly an amazing sight to behold. One he should probably treasure, as he doubted it was something he'd see again any time soon.

But she'd gone beyond that, daring to push at the sergeant behind the main desk, badgering him until she was allowed to write a note to her father, inform him that he would soon be released.

She'd told Tate to go back to the house because their mother would probably want to see him, and then ordered him to stop somewhere and find some donuts and coffee for everyone, as they'd probably be awake the rest of the night.

She'd called their mutual friend, Manhattan police lieutenant Steve Wendell, and told him to take off his skis and get himself to Ocean City, because she needed him to get some of the Ocean City cops to talk off the record about the details of the alleged crime.

Her cell phone stuck to her ear seemingly forever, Maggie had also called Bernie, to warn her that Evan's arrest was bound to hit the newspapers within a few days' time, and that they could unfortunately count on Channel 5's Holly Spivak to make the connection between Evan Kelly and Maggie Kelly. And oh, yes, by the way, she'd also seemed to have won three million dollars, and that would probably make the newspapers, too.

A second warning call went to Tabitha Leighton, Maggie's literary agent. That one took longer, as Tabby and Maureen seemed to share a similar affection for tearful hysterics. Tabby had cried for "poor Evan." Then cried again at Maggie's jackpot win. The woman was an equal opportunity crier. Although, as she was first and foremost an agent, she had rallied enough to begin tossing out plans to somehow capitalize on the jackpot win—perhaps with an appearance on Letterman?

Maggie had called Socks, their friend and doorman, telling him they'd be extending their stay in Ocean City indefinitely, so could he please make sure to feed the cats as well as Sterling's mouse, Henry, and watch out for the package from Tabitha. Tabby always sent fresh fruit, always mailed it too late to arrive for Christmas, and she didn't want the box put in a warm room so that the condo smelled of overripe grapefruit when she got home.

Her attention to detail fairly boggled the mind. But she was, as the saying went, running hard on all cylinders, and he had never been quite so proud of her.

General Kelly, commanding her troops. She didn't ask anyone. She told them. She had been short, none too sweet, and to the point.

In precisely sixty-eight minutes, Evan Kelly was walking toward them via a doorway at the back of the small police station, blinking at the bright overhead lights and looking small, older than the last time Saint Just had seen him, and infinitely bemused.

He wore baggy mud-brown slacks that looked as if he regularly slept in them, and a gray sweater with patches on the elbows, buttoned up over the collar of a garish yellow shirt. His left shoe was untied. His left sock was blue. His right sock was black. His mostly gray brown hair stood up straight on the back of his head, as though he'd been sleeping. He carried an unfortunate-looking wool tweed coat over his arm.

If this was what two hours of incarceration had done to the man, clearly he could not be allowed to be returned to prison. Although that was still no excuse for the man's inexorable taste in clothing. "Batching it," as the man had been doing for the past nearly two months, since his separation from his wife, clearly had taken its toll. Perhaps Alicia Kelly had formerly laid out his clothing for him each morning.

Maggie had seen him, closed her cell phone on the conversation she'd been having with Lieutenant Wendell, to whom she'd been giving directions to Ocean City, and crossed the room to embrace her father.

She'd cried as she'd hugged him, audibly sobbed, but then quickly stepped back, wiped at her eyes, took a steadying breath, and got back down to business.

They were shed of the discomforts of the hoosegow in less time than it took for Maggie to swipe a chocolate-covered glazed donut from the sergeant's desk.

Sterling was now ensconced in her father's bachelor apartment, watching over the man as they both dug into large bowls of puffed rice cereal, and Maggie and Saint Just had just begun reporting what they knew to the rest of the family at the Kelly residence.

Unfortunately, what they knew wasn't much, as Evan Kelly had been less than cooperative.

Yes, he'd gone to the dentist's office to have his new crown put on his front right bicuspid. He'd pulled back his lip to show them all, and it was indeed an impressive tooth, although unfortunately whiter than the abutting teeth. However, as evidence, it was at least noticeable.

Yes, he'd then come home, ascertained that Maggie had not yet arrived to share the evening with him. Which was fine, because there had been a message on his telephone answering machine: Any members of the Majesties—Evan's bowling team—who had time to kill on Christmas Eve were welcome to free lanes from six to eight, when the alley would close for the holiday.

Evan had donned his Majesties shirt and headed for the lanes—thus explaining the bright yellow shirt collar Saint Just had winced at, but did not, to Saint Just's mind, explain the two thick black stripes running down the front of said shirt, the black short sleeves, or the black velvet letters spelling out Majesties on the back of said shirt. There was nothing within the wide scope of Saint Just's sartorical knowledge that could possibly justify such an abomination.

In fact, if Saint Just had been forced to name one good thing about said shirt, it would have to be that the material seemed impervious to wrinkles. Of course, he would then be forced to add that the polyester fabric might also be impervious to soap, water, and, possibly, atomic fallout.

At any rate—hideous shirt to one side (please, God)—Evan had gone off to the bowling alley, to see two other members of the Majesties there, the only other single members of the team, also obviously with little to do on Christmas Eve. They'd bowled three games before he and the other members—yes, one had been Walter Bodkin—had exchanged wishes for a happy holiday and parted ways in the parking lot outside the bowling alley. No, Evan couldn't remember if anyone had seen either of them get into separate cars and drive out of the parking lot.

After that? Well, after that, no matter how Maggie badgered the man—and she did badger him—Evan Kelly refused to comment as to how he'd spent his time before returning to his apartment only minutes before the Ocean City police were banging on his door.

Now, having given their report, Saint Just believed it might be time he and Maggie asked some questions.

Beginning with why Alicia Kelly had blurted out that Evan had murdered Walter Bodkin for her.

Saint Just was collecting his thoughts, planning precisely how he might broach the subject, when Sean Whitaker, who had taken himself upstairs to watch CNN, bounded down the stairs and raced across the living room to switch on the television set.

"You've got to see this," he said, looking to the set, turning to grin at Maggie and Saint Just. "Oh, damn, they've already gone to commercial. Tate—what channel shows MSNBC around here? They'll probably have it, too. Come on, come on—talk to me, Tate."

Maggie reached up and pinched Saint Just's arm. "You know what he just saw, don't you? With all that's happened, I actually forgot about, you know, the money? But it looks like we made freaking CNN, if that idiot's stupid grin means anything. This is not going to be pretty."

"It certainly wasn't, the first time I saw it," Saint Just supplied, turning toward the television screen even as Maureen returned to the living room, carrying a small tray of cookies.

"Oh, no," she said, subsiding into a chair. "Daddy's on TV?"

"No, not Dad," Maggie began, inching closer to Saint Just. "Sean? Can you please not bother channel-surfing and turn that thing off? Mom? Everyone? Something happened today ..."

"Omigod, it's Maggie! Look, everybody—it's Maggie!"

"Never mind," Maggie said weakly as Maureen's high-pitched outburst had every head in the room whipping eyes-front to the television set.

"Courage, my dear," Saint Just whispered as he lifted her hand to place a kiss in her palm. "And please try to remember—winning over three million dollars, for most people, is considered to be a good thing."

"Yeah? Watch. I have a feeling that your most people doesn't include many of the people in this room."

Having already seen the footage that had appeared on the local station, Saint Just listened to the commentator and kept his gaze roaming the Kelly living room, doing his best to interpret the varying expressions of the faces of the other occupants.

"... definitely will be a Merry Christmas this year for the lucky winner of the Big-Wheels-o'-Bucks jackpot in Atlantic City earlier today ..."

Maureen had put down the tray of cookies on the couch beside her and now had both hands clamped to her mouth, her eyes going the size of saucers.

"... until Scrooge arrived in the form of a fat but not quite jolly gentlemen. Watch closely, folks. Ouch! That had to hurt ..."

Tate, sat down. On the tray of cookies. "Damn it!"

"... The lady with the great right cross declined to give her name, but sources in Manhattan have verified that she is none other than Cleo Dooley, bestselling author of something called the Viscount Saint Just Mysteries. A nearly constant name on the New York Times bestseller list, Ms. Dooley is in fact one Margaret Kelly. The man you see carrying her off-screen remains unidentified, but we do know the name of our Scrooge with the bloody nose."

Alicia Kelly's expression was unreadable. Saint Just considered this to be a blessing that wouldn't last.

"... pushed herself in front of me and grabbed my machine. That was my machine! Margaret Kelly, huh? Kelly, you hear me! This isn't over! That's my jackpot!"

Now Saint Just did turn his attention to the screen, as the man he knew as Henry Novack seemed to have a new song to sing. A threat, actually. And there he was, live, on a split-screen with the reporter, shaking his fist in the air, his face nearly purple, spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth.

The reporter seemed to agree with Saint Just's assessment: "Is that a threat, Mr. Novack?"

Henry Novack pushed his face closer to the camera. "It's whatever you want it to be! I know who you are now, Margaret Kelly. You've got my three million bucks, cupcake! I'm gonna sue. You hear me? I'm gonna sue your miserable ass—"

Henry Novack's face disappeared, and the reporter was fullscreen once more.

"Yes, Merry Christmas, Margaret Kelly, Cleo Dooley—cupcake. And now onto the real news. I've just gotten word that Santa Claus has been sighted over Newfoundland. His ETA in your town tonight, with skies remaining fair over the Northeast, is—"

"Turn that off."

"Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Kelly," Sean Whitaker said, aiming the remote at the screen.

"Margaret?"

"Yes, ma'am," Maggie said, sounding like Sean's echo. "It wasn't my fault, Mom. My leg hurt, and that guy was being a real pain, and I just sat down, and Alex put this damn hundred dollar bill in the—"

"Why do you do that?" Alicia Kelly asked her, interrupting Maggie not a moment too soon, to Saint Just's mind. "Why do you always assume I have nothing good to say about anything you do?"

Maggie shot Saint Just a quick, astonished look. "Uh ... because you don't?"

"That's cruel, Margaret, and untrue," Mrs. Kelly said.

Now Saint Just shot an astonished (for him) look at Maggie's mother.

"I'm sor—no. No, I'm not sorry, Mom. You hate my books. You complain that I don't come home enough. Okay, okay, you have a point there. You tell me I'm fat, you tell me I cause you embarrassment. You ... you never hung up my Perfect Attendance plaque I got in the fourth grade."

"That last might have been dispensed with, my dear," Saint Just whispered to her.

"Right," Maggie agreed, shifting on the seat of the chair, her posture belligerent. "You never read one of my books. Never. None of you. You just condemned them because they were romances. Filth, you called them—and you never read them."

Maureen raised her hand. "I did. I mean, I do. I read all of them. I get them from the library."

"Well, there's a mixed blessing, sweetings," Saint Just whispered, close by Maggie's ear. "She reads them, but she doesn't buy them."

"Margaret, are you quite finished?"

Maggie looked up at Saint Just, who nodded.

"Yeah, Mom, I'm done. And now I do apologize. I fell into a trap, one people under stress fall into all the time. We don't want to think about Daddy, about the trouble he's in, so we fight about anything we can fight about. I'm sorry."

"As well you should be," Mrs. Kelly said, falling back into her more recognizable form. "Now, tell us how much of this jackpot you get to keep, dear. I seem to have missed that. Enough to pay Cynthia to find a way for your father to beat this rap?"

"Beat this—uh." Maggie gave her head a quick shake. "Well, yeah, sure, Mom. I have enough money to help Dad prove his innocence. But not from the jackpot. I'm giving my winnings to Sterling. He ... um ... well, he was the one pushing the Max button. I'd found the Cash-out button, and would have pushed it, but he was having so much fun that I let him keep pushing the button, and it wasn't as though it was my money we were wasting, you know, so in some ways it is Sterling's win, not mine. And that guy, that Novack guy? I did take his machine."

"My congratulations, my dear," Saint Just told her as everyone else in the room opened their mouths, but it was as if Maggie had hit some sort of invisible Mute button, because no words passed anyone's lips. "They've been struck dumb."

It was Cynthia Spade-Whitaker who rallied first. "Margaret, here's some free legal advice. Never say that again. Any of it. To anyone. Ever."

"She'll be very careful, I assure you," Saint Just said, at last pushing himself up from the arm of the chair, as sitting close beside Maggie hadn't seemed to do much to protect her from her family.

"Good, because some ambulance-chasing lawyer would jump all over that statement. By the way how did you break your leg?"

"Maggie ..." Saint Just muttered beneath his breath warningly.

"My foot, you mean? Well, it's the silliest thing. I was jogging in Central Park when this man came running by yelling 'The sky is falling, the sky is falling.' And he was naked. Did I mention that he was naked? And this cop comes out of nowhere, to throw a tackle on the guy, and the guy rolled into me, we both went down—bam, broken foot."

"Really? You could probably sue, you know. I represented a similar case not six months ago. Smithers v. the City of New York City, and—"

"She made that up, Cynthia," her husband told her, glaring at Maggie. "She writes fiction, Tate said, remember?"

Cynthia coughed slightly. Shook back her shoulders. "Very amusing."

"Yes," Saint Just said. "Our Maggie is easily amused. Now, if we might return to the subject of the murder?"

"The alleged murder," Cynthia corrected. "The detective refused to give me any pertinent information as to TOD, MOD, COD. The whole thing could have been an accident, and this arrest-happy cowboy just took it from there."

"Time of death, manner of death, cause of death, right?" Maggie asked Saint Just, who merely nodded. He watched The Learning Channel faithfully, as well as all the CSI programs, and was familiar with all of the terms.

"Ah, but we do have at least a preliminary cause of death," he told everyone. "Evan and I had a small coze before Maggie and I adjourned here, and we deduced, from the questions posed to him from the detective, that Mr. Bodkin succumbed to a blow to the head with a heavy object. Several blows, to be precise, as I understand that Evan saw the murder weapon that had been sealed in a heavy plastic evidence bag, and was told that what he saw on the weapon was blood, bits of bone, and gray matter."

"Oh, yuk," Maggie said, wrapping her arms around her midsection. "So, what was the weapon?"

"A bowling ball," Saint Just told them, watching them in turn as he paused, let the tension build. "A bowling ball inscribed EEK: Evan Edward Kelly." He looked over his shoulder at Maggie. "Nearly as unfortunate as your We Are Romance writers organization, yes? Do you Americans never think of these things?"

"Did they read him his rights before they showed him the bowling ball? Did he identify the bowling ball as his? That's why they showed it to him. Has to be. If they asked him, they're out of line."

"That, Attorney Spade-Whitaker, I could not say."

"I can get any confession thrown out," Cynthia told them confidently, sitting back and crossing her long legs. "If they'd taken him straight to Cape May, let the county prosecutor's office handle everything from the get-go, or even called in the state police, we might have more trouble. But they didn't, not on Christmas Eve. With any luck at all, we can have this whole thing tossed, at least for a few weeks, until they have more than a bloody bowling ball. The weapon might be Kelly's, but that doesn't mean they can prove he had possession of the ball at the time of the murder. OJ got off with a lot more against him."

"So if the bowling ball doesn't fit, they have to acquit?" Maggie asked, then rolled her eyes at Saint Just.

"You're being very encouraging, counselor," Saint Just complimented, ignoring Maggie. "But I think we have a sticking point here. Mrs. Kelly seemed to believe, at first blush, that Evan murdered the late Walter Bodkin for her. Mrs. Kelly? Would you care to explain that statement?"

Maureen muttered something under her breath, picked up the tray of crushed cookies, and escaped toward the kitchen. Saint Just watched her go, something about the woman's reaction whenever Walter Bodkin's name was mentioned in relationship to her mother niggling at him. Combined with her blurted giggle at the police station, it was enough to make him believe that he'd have to speak with the woman sometime soon.

"No. I don't care to explain anything to you," Mrs. Kelly said, also getting to her feet. "It's late, I'm tired, and don't want to think about any of this any more tonight. Tate, see to your guests. Margaret, go take care of your father. We're done here."

And that was that. Maggie might be his general at the moment, but Alicia Kelly clearly remained commander-in-chief.