The door closed behind Sterling and Evan, and Saint Just let out a long breath. "I've just sent two innocents out onto the ice floes. Heaven help the both of them," he said, walking toward the kitchen, where Maggie was working on the list of names Maureen had brought over earlier.
"Dad's gone?" Maggie asked, putting a finger on a spot halfway down the list and looking up at him.
"He and Sterling both, yes. Off to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and deflect them and all assault with the indomitable weapons of truth and innocence."
"He's going to do all of that? Dad? My dad?"
"I tutored him in the way of the cut direct and pointed insult, and then armed him with my sword cane."
Maggie's eyes went wide. "You didn't tell him you've got that sticker inside the cane, right? Alex?"
"Please, credit me with some small intelligence. Sending your father out with what he knew to be a sword cane would be rather like handing you Sterling's crepes pan. You might look fairly competent, holding it, but the results, were you to attempt to employ it, would be disastrous."
"Funny man," Maggie grumbled, motioning for him to sit down across the table from her. "I've been working on this list. Maureen finally figured it was fourteen women, remember?"
"I recall the number, yes. But you've drawn lines through some of the names, I see."
"Reenie crossed out two of them. Widows, and past the age of swinging bowling balls. Along with Pete, they were the charter members of W.B.B. Then we went through the list together and crossed out five more. Two never married, three are divorced, and none of them, according to Reenie, ever had anything but the nicest things to say about Bodkin."
"And about his particular talents."
"Let's not go there, Alex. Not now, not ever again, okay? So now we've got seven—six, after we deduct Reenie."
"And John?"
Maggie looked at him, shrugged. "What do you think?"
"I think I'd compare your brother-in-law to your father, as far as homicidal tendencies go."
"Yeah, me, too. With a list this long, we've got to trust our instincts, eliminate wherever we can. Then, if none of the names we kept pan out, we can go back, punt to the others on the list."
"Your mind, sweetings, is a constant delight. If you weren't writing fiction, you might wish to become a detective."
"I'll leave that to you, Samaritan, thanks. So, we've got six names. All married. None of them older than forty, so their husbands are still able to heft a bowling ball over the head and swing it with force. Man, I can't believe the names on here. I went to school with three of them. Brenda, Joyce, Lisa. Cheerleaders, all three of them—real popular, had their own little clique. One I could get nowhere near, trust me. Lisa was the head cheerleader, and a real pain in the butt. But I outted her in our senior year. Another of my few fond memories of high school."
"Outted? I'm sorry. You did what to her?"
Maggie waved a hand in dismissal. "You don't want to hear it. I mean, I'm not quite as proud of what I did now as I was back then."
Saint Just leaned back at his ease against the plastic cushion, folded his arms across his chest. "I'll wait."
Maggie lowered her eyes to the page. "Wait for what?"
"For your professed maturity to melt away so that you can tell me what it is you did to this Lisa person."
"Oh, okay," she said, and Saint Just grinned—he knew his Maggie so well. "Here's the thing: Lisa stuffed."
"Am I supposed to understand what that means? Stuffed?"
Maggie leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "Stuffed, Alex. She walked around in her cheerleader sweaters, all hot, and pushing her chest out, you know? But one day I had to leave gym class early because I ripped my shorts sliding into second base—it was spring, and we were playing softball—and I was alone in the locker room. I'd had a private bet with myself since the ninth grade about Lisa, figuring she wore a padded bra, you know?"
"You do have this fascination with women's bosoms, don't you, Maggie? Have you ever discussed this with Doctor Bob?"
"You don't understand, Alex. Men in general don't understand. Women ... women use those things. For power. It's ridiculous, but that's just the way it is and always has been. And don't tell me guys are any different. They couldn't be, or I wouldn't get a dozen spam e-mails a day asking men if they want to enlarge their—well, never mind."
"Yes, indeed. Never mind."
"Right. We're talking about Lisa here, remember? She'd gotten a note from her mom about how she was shy, and the school had to let her use a private shower and dressing area—there was a law, or something, that allowed her mom to insist. The rest of us walked around together like idiots, trying to cover ourselves with those small towels the school gave us. But not Lisa. She had her own damn shower. So I got dressed quick, and then I hid right next to her private shower area, waited for her to come in, strip for her shower, and then I checked. And she stuffed!"
"No, I'm sorry. I still don't understand."
"Tissues, Alex. Lisa stuffed her thirty-eight-D with tissues. Cripes, must have been half a box of tissues."
"How gratifying for you, to have been right."
"Damn straight. It was even more gratifying when I copped the tissues. And all the toilet paper in her hotsy-totsy private dressing area. And her socks. I was thorough, left her with nothing to use for stuffing. Lisa went to gym class that day a thirty-eight-D, and left it an hour later as a thirty-two-double-A." Maggie leaned back, sighed. "It was a shining moment in my life."
"I repeat an earlier observation, Maggie. I do not believe you were an easy child."
"I got a three-day suspension when Lisa went berserk and the gym teacher figured out what happened, and Mom had a cow when she found out. But it was worth it."
Saint Just was left with nothing much else to say to his beloved, so he slid the paper across the table and began to read down the list of names that had yet to be crossed out. "I may be leaping to conclusions here, but I would imagine that I will be the one to interview one Lisa Butts?"
"Ya think? She must have married Barry Butts. He was the captain of our football team—maybe captain of every team he was ever on. Big, blond, huge teeth, all athlete—certainly not a brain trust. A real legend in his own mind. If ever two people deserved each other, it's the two of them."
Maggie sat forward once more, grabbed the list. "Anyway, you can have Lisa, and Brenda and Joyce. I'll take Jeannette, Kay, and Jackie—they're older than me and hopefully won't remember me well enough to slam the door in my face. Now—what do we say to them? What do we ask them?"
"And therein lies our dilemma," Saint Just said, cocking his head toward the window beside him. "Did you hear something?"
Maggie shook her head. "I know. It's not like we can go knock on doors saying, hi, we heard you were bopping Walter Bodkin—so, did you kill him? And if not you, how about your husband? He handy with bowling balls? Okay, that I heard. What was that?"
"Pebbles striking the window beside us would be my guess." Saint Just slid himself across the plastic banquette and pulled back the vertical blinds. Looked down toward the alleyway. "Why, I believe we have a visitor, Maggie. One Mr. Henry Novack."
"You're kidding." Maggie scooted over to the window. "Nope, not kidding. Look at him, wearing that big white fuzzy coat with the New Jersey Devils emblem on it, straddling that go-cart. He looks like a Zamboni. You know—one of those machines that scrapes the ice between hockey periods? Oh, never mind. Get my coat for me, will you, please, Alex? Clearly we have to go down to him. If he tried to climb two floors he might explode like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man, and I'd have to clean up the mess."