Inherit the Bones

Chapter Twenty-nine

“So it wasn’t you?” I asked Finn. We were back in the basement, picking through the materials to decide what to take home and what to leave for another day.

“How could it be? I was clear on the other side, trying to find a light switch.”

“But you didn’t answer when I called.”

He sighed and looked at me. Rubbing at the five o’clock shadow on his chin, he replied slowly, “Because, as I just said, I was on the other side of the room. I didn’t hear you.”

I put a few folders in my shoulder bag and looked around.

“Anyway, are you certain someone else was down here? You know, it was pitch-black. Our minds can play, ah, tricks on us sometimes,” Finn said. He held the folder with the Danny Moriarty transcript and I watched him flip through it, alarm bells going off in my head.

I looked back at the desk. A mountain of stuff, piles of it, and in the first few minutes of searching, we found a decades-old confidential police report pointing a big fat finger at one of our colleagues.

Scratch that, we hadn’t found anything.

Finn had found the folder.

Finn.

How many times had I watched as the two of them, Finn and Lou, left work together, headed to one of the taverns on the south side, their heads together, their laughter comfortable, familiar? Too many times to count.

I tried to keep my voice casual. “Finn, how well do you know Moriarty?”

He shrugged and tucked the folder into his briefcase. “Well enough, I guess. We’ve shared a few beers, you know, the usual. I mean really, Gemma… how well do any of us know one another?”

We drove back to the station in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. I dropped him off and wondered, again, how it was that I ended up driving everyone around so much. You’d think someone would give the pregnant lady a break here.

My stomach growled and the next thing I knew I was parking in front of Chevy’s Pizzeria and Arcade. I squeezed through a group of teenagers and entered a world of pinball machines and arcade games, comforting lights and sounds and laughter. The smell of mozzarella and garlic and roasted tomatoes hit me hard and I made my way to the back of the restaurant and found an empty booth near the restrooms.

I sank into the leather seat. And then I looked up and saw Darren Chase emerging from the men’s room, his ball cap angled low over his eyes, but not low enough to miss seeing me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

He slid into the booth before I could stop him. “Are you here alone?”

I nodded. Out of habit, I’d taken my cell phone out of my purse and laid it on the table. I started playing with it, turning it over in my hands. “You?”

He leaned back and took off his ball cap and ran a hand through his dark hair and nodded. “Yup.”

A waiter stopped by and set two menus down, then gave Darren an exaggerated gasp. The young man’s laminated name tag read “Fitch,” and he had decorated it with more glitter and sparkle than I’d seen since my high school homecoming dance.

Fitch eyed Darren the same way I eyed the pepperoni pie the waiter carried against his hip.

“You can’t still be hungry, sir. You had the Double Triple Threat,” Fitch said.

Darren laughed. “No, I’m full. I’m just keeping the lady company.”

Fitch drew a hand across his brow. “Phew. I was about to get the boys on the phone and tell them we had a tiger loose at Chevy’s.”

The waiter gave out a tiny roar and winked at Darren and then turned to me. “Uh-oh, what’s this? Eating for two, are we? What can I bring you, babe?”

“Oh, I’m not staying. I’d like a large cheese with mushrooms and black olives to go? I… I just needed to sit down,” I said. Fitch looked at my belly and nodded, then eyeballed Darren again and spun around and left.

When had I decided to make it a to-go order?

When Darren Chase had sat down. All six feet three inches, two hundred lean pounds of him.

“I’ll wait with you till your order comes,” Darren said. He smiled and I couldn’t help smiling back.

“So…”

Why couldn’t I stop playing with my phone? My hands were spinning it around on the table like it was a roulette wheel. And was I sweating? Jesus. This was worse than a middle school dance.

“So… hey, thanks for the tip about the library. Tilly is, uh, great. She’s very helpful,” I said. I looked around the arcade in hopes of spotting someone, anyone, I knew, but all I saw was a sea of Abercrombie hoodies, low-rise jeans, and trucker hats, inexplicably on the heads of teenage girls.

I wasn’t yet thirty and trends were passing me by like messengers on bicycles, fast and furious.

Darren said, “Gemma.”

I looked at him and he leaned forward and placed a hand over mine, stilling the spinning phone. “I’m not going to bite. I can leave if you want me to.”

I jerked my hand back and put it in my lap.

And then felt like an asshole.

I said, “No, that’s okay. I’m… it’s been… there was someone in my house last night.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks and I bit my lip. “Damn it, I’m fine. It’s just shaken me up a bit.”

Darren grabbed a handful of napkins from the silver dispenser at the end of the table and handed them to me. I dabbed at my face. Fitch dropped off a pitcher of water and two glasses and I waited for him to leave before speaking.

I was beyond embarrassed and surprised that I had lost it like that.

“I’m sorry, I’m normally a little more composed. It’s been a rough week.”

Darren nodded. “There’s no need to apologize. Is there anything I can do?”

“Not really,” I said. “Unless you can catch Nick Bellington’s killer, solve a thirty-year-old murder mystery, and deliver a baby in, oh, about three months. Preferably vaginally, so she doesn’t miss out on the whole birth canal experience. Apparently that’s very important, and if I have to have a C-section, she could end up going to state school, dropping out halfway through, and doing nails at the Nail Express on Highway Nine.”

“My mom does nails, on South Street. You might have seen her shop-Speedy Salon?”

Oh, shit. I felt my cheeks grow hot.

He grinned. “You should see your face. I’m kidding. Although I went to state school and I ended up fine.”

I blew out my breath. “Jokes are going over my head these days, Darren. I never cared about stuff like this before, but now I have crazy aspirations for the Peanut, like she’s going to go to Harvard and then medical school and then be the first female astronaut on Mars. I guess it’s true, kids will break your heart before they’re even born.”

“The Peanut?”

I nodded. “That’s what we… um, Brody and I, that’s what we call her.”

“And Brody is?”

Baby daddy didn’t sound exactly right. “He’s my partner… my boyfriend?”

Darren started to say something but Fitch arrived with a cardboard box, steam escaping from the side, and a bill. I looked at the box and knew I’d never make it home without tearing into it.

“Would it be all right if I actually ate some of it here?”

I signed the bill and left an extra large tip and when Fitch saw it, he gave an exaggerated sigh and said, “Well, I guess that would be okay. Thanks, doll!”

I opened the box and inhaled the heady air. Darren watched with amusement as I ate two pieces slowly, in silence.

“So, you and Brody, not married?” he asked. He reached over and took a slice of my pizza and folding it in half, took a bite. He took a second bite, and with the third, the slice was gone.

“No, we haven’t done that deed yet. We’re… well, to be honest, I’m still working out some issues. And don’t ever touch a pregnant woman’s pizza, if you value your life.”

He ignored me and reached for a second slice. “I thought all you young fillies ever dreamed of was the big white dress and the fancy affair.”

“That’s a pretty broad stereotype, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “So, what’s the hold up? He’s got cold feet? Thinks he can do better?”

“You don’t know anything about me or my relationship. Brody very much wants to get married. I’m the one with cold feet. Haven’t you ever been spooked before? Jesus, where does it all go?”

I happened to know that Chevy’s Double Triple Threat was a stuffed double-crusted, two-layer pie the size of a tractor tire. I couldn’t believe he’d eaten a whole one and was now starting in on a second slice of my pizza.

He looked at me and blinked. “Where does all what go?”

“The food you eat.”

“Fast metabolism, I guess,” he said with a shrug, and finished off the slice. A glob of tomato sauce stuck to the corner of his mouth and without thinking, I leaned forward and wiped it off with my finger.

Without breaking eye contact, he took my hand and for a moment, I thought he was going to lick the sauce right off my finger.

Instead, he wiped it with a napkin and then released my hand and I pulled back.

What the hell was going on? I’d been with Brody almost five years. We were expecting a child together. I wasn’t the sort of woman who even entertained the thoughts that were now flying across my mind like rolls of thunder and lightning, booming and sparking every which way.

I blamed it all on Celeste Takashima. I wasn’t about to cheat on Brody but if I did, he could hardly point a finger. He set the standard long before I ever lay eyes on Darren Chase.

I said, “I should get going. I need to rest before… tomorrow.”

“Nicky’s funeral? I’m planning on going as well,” Darren said. He stood and watched me gather my purse and the pizza and then push myself up out of the booth. “I’ll see you there, I guess.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Sure.”

Then we stood there, in a Technicolor sea of hoodies and low-rise jeans, staring at each other, until finally I broke eye contact and turned and walked out of Chevy’s Pizzeria and Arcade.

And found all four tires on my car slashed.