“I’m proud of you,” I said.
“Me, too.” There was still some hesitation. But she took a deep breath and got to her feet, and gave me a hand up.
Leslie looked down at Mike, who was scrambling to his feet. “Get out your little notebook, Detective Flint. Time to tell all. Just one condition.”
“Name it,” he said.
“I want Maggie in there with me.”
I took her arm and turned to bat my eyes at Mike. “Hear that, detective? She wants me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, lah dee dah.”
CHAPTER 20
“The cockroaches in the Cabo jail were bigger than the rats?” I said, my third guess.
“Nope.” Mike fiddled with the handcuffs dangling from his turn signal. We had driven back to downtown L.A. and traded the Blazer for his city car. Now we were exiting the San Bernardino Freeway, stalled behind an endless line of red brake lights. “Three strikes, you’re out. No more guesses.”
“Good. Because I don’t like this game. Anyway, for delivering George to you, you owe me big-time. Tell me, why did Elizabeth agree to fly home?”
“Oldest story in the world.” He made the handcuffs spin. “The boyfriend, Ricco Zambotti, bribed his guards to turn their backs, then took off with the boat while Elizabeth was still in custody. Last seen, he was headed due west, straight for the two-hundred-mile limit.”
“So Elizabeth got mad and spilled her guts, right?”
“That’s it. According to her, Ricco did it all. When she found Randy’s body, she called Ricco for a little hand-holding. She said it was his idea to sink the corpse, give her a little time to loot the bank accounts. Who could blame her? she said. And it was Ricco who gave Hillary a bad time, telling her that Randy had abandoned her. That Randy wasn’t her real father anyway.
Elizabeth said she was just awfully upset, and hurt, when Hillary took off. She said she sent Ricco out to find the kid and bring her home. Instead he slit her throat and tried to make it look like the same killer who had sliced Randy, in case Randy ever bobbed up.”
“She was so upset with Ricco that she took him on a cruise?”
Mike gave me a sidelong leer. “I’m thinking maybe I should let you and Leslie get the truth out of her. There’s a flashlight in my trunk.”
“Anytime,” I said. “Anytime.”
I was thinking a great big old hammer might be helpful, too, when Mike pulled up in front of MacLaren Hall.
“I need the receipt for the tires,” he said as he got out.
“I told you I’d take care of it.”
“No need. I’ll turn it in to the department. The boss said he can find funds to cover it.”
Couldn’t argue with that. I opened my bag and handed him the receipt. He didn’t even look at it when he put it into his pocket.
In the last hour of daylight, the MacLaren play yard was full of kids and full of racket. At one end of the asphalt six or eight of the older boys were pitched against some of the teachers in a rowdy game of half-court basketball. A bruising round of dodge ball took up the other end of the pavement, with hopscotchers and jump-ropers filling the space between. The lines between the games slopped over now and then, but no one seemed to be bothered by proximity.
Sly, my little loner, was off on the grass away from the other children, playing hit-and-run softball with a single adult. The young man with him was tall and slender, with dark shoulder-length hair and a single stud earring that caught the low sun. I pegged him for a volunteer, or maybe a college student collecting clinic hours for class credit.
The young man pitched a slow, straight ball at Sly’s bat, talking to Sly the whole time, encouraging, joking with him. Sly slugged the ball, a bouncing grounder, and took off on a shambling run toward the single base. The man snagged the ball barehanded and went after the boy, full out, giving him no slack. About halfway to the bag, man caught boy in an easy tackle around the legs and wrestled him to the ground.
“You’re out,” he said over and over, using the ball to tickle Sly’s midsection.
Sly was screaming. With delight, I thought. Before I could stop Mike, he lit out toward the dog pile, his marathon-runner legs pumping for all they were worth, suitcoat flapping in the wind.
“Wait, Mike,” I yelled, sprinting after him. I didn’t want him to interfere. To me it looked like the sort of good-natured roughhousing Sly had doubtless missed out on. But Mike had left the starting blocks first, and he’s just plain old faster than I am.
To my utter and absolute astonishment, when Mike reached the tussle on the grass, instead of breaking it up, he joined in. Mike pounced and somehow rolled up on his back with his legs locked around the young man’s midsection. Sly squealed with joy.
“Tickle him, Sly,” Mike urged. “Get him in the ribs. Atta boy. Now the other side.”
I stopped at the edge of the fray. They all stopped and looked up at me, all three of them red in the face and sweaty and giggly. To my further astonishment, the young man relaxed his head back against Mike’s chest and Mike kissed him, a wet one, square on the cheek.
“See?” Sly said to me with mock disgust. “I told you the cop was a faggot.”
“Maggie,” Mike said, panting, “meet Michael.”
“Hi,” I said, dumbfounded. Here, at last, was Mike’s seventeen-year-old son. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Me, too,” he gasped, looking at me through the same gray eyes as his father’s. Very disconcerting.
Sly, who had collapsed atop Michael, started in tickling again. Mike released Michael and rolled away. The youth bounded to his feet holding the squirming, scrawny boy in a headlock.
“Save the energy for the arithmetic.” Michael knuckled Sly’s head, sending out a spray of grass clippings. “We have two whole pages of it to do, squirt. We’d better get started, because I have to go home and do my own homework.”
Reluctantly, Sly settled down, still breathing hard, still grinning so big his face might have split. He looked up at Michael with absolute adoration. I didn’t blame him.
Mike got up and brushed himself off, managing to shoulder-bump the others a few times as he rose. This was a new side of Mike. I roughhouse with my daughter, I tease with Mike. But it’s pretty tame stuff in comparison.
They were all looking at me, as if I had come with some message. Or a wet blanket. I said, “We’re going to get dinner, Michael. Will you two join us?”
“We already ate here,” Michael said.
“Pig vomit,” Sly confirmed.
“And bats’ asses,” Michael added. “It was great.”
I couldn’t laugh yet. Watching Michael gave me such a strange feeling. Here was a younger, probably more handsome, maybe more saintly version of Mike. Whatever, he was Mike’s product. A magnificent product. Like a rush I was hit with how deeply I adored Mike and everything about him. I stood there as if stricken, gasping as if I had been wrestling. I think Mike mistook my quietude for disapproval.
“Girls,” Mike said, grabbing me in a headlock. “Girls can’t take it.”
“Can too,” I said, punching his hard backside. “Just not now.”
He kissed my cheek then, and let go. “Can’t take it, but they sure can dish it.”
Michael was watching us. “We saw one of your films in sociology, something about old people who live alone. I told the class my dad’s girlfriend made it and no one believed me.”
“Want me to write a note to the teacher?” I asked, jangled by the sound of “my dad’s girlfriend.”
“No big thing.” He shrugged. “Dad says you’re working on a film now. I wouldn’t mind tagging along on a shoot.”