Flinch Factor, The Read online

  “You go, girl.”

  “He shook my hand.”

  “Did he ask you out again?”

  “He did.”

  “Did you go out with him?”

  “No.”

  Benny was grinning. “Trust me, Rachel, he’s never forgotten that handshake. He’s still pissed.”

  “That was more than twenty years ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He remembers. That’s why he’s trying to get his revenge now.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Benny.”

  “That’s life, Rachel. He’s a guy. Guys are jackasses. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  “Not all.”

  “Maybe not me. But the rest of us? Come on. Look at your fakakta Frankenstein case. You have three primo jackasses in it, including that whackjob judge.”

  I sighed. “It’s quite a crew.”

  “Oy, vey. As if that wasn’t bad enough, your case is a piece of shit.”

  “It does have some flaws,” I conceded.

  “Some flaws? That’s like calling the bubonic plague a mild infection.”

  “They upped their offer this afternoon.”

  “To what?”

  “They’re willing to pay each homeowner a fifteen percent premium over the appraised value.”

  “That’s pretty damn good.”

  “We’ll see. I’m meeting with Muriel and the homeowners’ committee tomorrow night.”

  “They’d be nuts not to settle.”

  I sighed. “Benny, it’s not about the money. These are their homes. Their neighborhood. Their school system. For a lot of them it’s a matter of principle.”

  “A matter of principle?” Benny sighed. “Tell them it’s a matter of eminent domain. If the city wants to let Rubenstein bulldoze their homes and put up his gated community, it has the power to do so.”

  “They know it’s an uphill battle, Benny. I’ll explain the settlement and see what they want to do.”

  Benny gave me a sympathetic smile. “What a mess.”

  “What?” my mother said from around the corner. “What mess?”

  I turned toward the kitchen entranceway as my mother walked in with Sam. She’d gone upstairs with him after dinner to give him a bath.

  Benny said, “Awesome PJs, Schmul.”

  Schmul was one of Benny’s many nicknames for my son.

  Sam grinned. He had on his St. Louis Cardinals pajamas, which were a replica of the team’s red-and-white home uniform, including the birds-on-the-bat logo. I’d bought them last month for his sixth birthday. On the back of the pajama top was the number 4—the number of his favorite player. But instead of the name Molina in red letters above the number, I’d sewn on the name Wolf. It was Sam’s second favorite pair. His favorite, currently in the dirty clothes, were his train pajamas, which he liked to wear to bed with his engineer’s cap.

  Sam’s smile brightened my day and swept away my angst over the Frankenstein case. He had his father’s dark features, my curly hair and green eyes, and the gentle disposition of his namesake, my dear late father Seymour, whose Hebrew name was Samuel.

  I knelt down and held out my arms. “Come here, Smooch.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Mommy.”

  “Get over here, handsome.”

  Despite the indignity of being hugged in public by your mom while wearing your official St. Louis Cardinals pajamas, he made the trek over to me and endured the hug and the kiss.

  I stood and turned to my mother. “Put some tea on, Mom. I’m going to put Smooch to bed. Then I’ll fill you guys in on some interesting information I learned today.”

  “Someone I know?” she said.

  “Nick Moran.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “My, my.”

  Chapter Five

  The unifying theme tonight was New England. We’d started in the hills of Maine with Blueberries for Sal, moved down to Boston for Make Way for Ducklings, and were now in the fictional Yankee village of Popperville for Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I had been reading this book to Sam at least three times a week since he was two. He loved it so much that he had his own toy steam shovel named Mary Anne.

  The three of us were snuggled together on the bed—Sam, Yadi, and me. Sam was under the covers, I was seated on the edge of his bed near his pillow, and Yadi was in his usual bedtime spot, curled up on the comforter at the foot of Sam’s bed.

  Yadi was our four-year-old collie-shepherd mix. We got him as a puppy at the Humane Society after my beloved golden retriever Ozzie died at the age of fifteen. Many people mistook Yadi for part wolf—a golden-haired version of a grey wolf—but his ears and personality belied that idea. He had one straight German shepherd ear, one floppy collie ear, and a sweet temperament. He jogged with me in the morning and walked with me before bedtime, but the rest of his life was devoted to Sam.

  Our copy of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel—with the raring-to-go open-mouthed Mary Anne bursting through the bright red book cover—was the same copy my mother had read to me as a little girl. I, too, had once had a toy steam shovel named Mary Anne. Though the book cover had faded and many pages were dog-eared or stained, the story had lost none of its magic for me either.

  When I closed the book after that wonderful final page—which finds the two of them in the comfy basement of the Popperville Town Hall, Mike smoking a pipe in his green rocking chair next to Mary Anne, who is now the furnace—Sam smiled up at me and glanced over to where his Mary Anne sat on the carpet by the bookcase.

  I turned off the light, sang him a bedtime song—tonight’s was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”—gave him a kiss and hug, told him again how much I loved him, patted Yadi on the head, and said a final goodnight to both at the door.

  As I went downstairs, I could hear Benny and my mother in the kitchen discussing his appearance last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Literally, his appearance.

  “It’s the same suit you wore on that CNN program.”

  “It’s my TV suit, Sarah.”

  “It’s your only suit.”

  “Same difference. They make me wear a suit and tie. That’s the one I wear.”

  “But always the same? What’s your mother say?”

  “She sounds like you.”

  “She’s a smart woman, your mother.”

  “She’s a Jewish mother. You’re all alike, Sarah. Because I refused to be a doctor for her like her sister’s son Maury, now I should tear out her kishkes a second time by wearing the same suit on TV every time.”

  I looked on from the kitchen doorway. They were seated across the table from each other—Benny facing me, my mother with her back to me.

  “That’s because she’s proud of you,” my mother said.

  “No, that’s because her friends ask her, ‘Shirley, your son the teacher doesn’t make enough money to afford a second suit?’” He shook his head, amused. “You’re all meshuggah, Sarah. How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

  “What?” she said.

  Benny caught my eye and winked. He looked back to my mother, who turned to see me standing there.

  “How many, Sarah?”

  She looked back at him. “A light bulb? What am I? An engineer? I give up. How many?”

  “It’s okay,” he said in a resigned Yiddish accent, “I’ll sit in the dark.”

  “Very funny, Milton Berle. Meanwhile, they have a sale at Macy’s. Tomorrow I’ll buy you a tie. Next time you go on with that Matthews fellow, you’ll have on something new. Your mother will be thrilled.”

  She turned and gestured. “Come sit, Rachel. I made you tea.”

  I joined them at the kitchen table, where Benny had already consumed almost an entire platter of my mother’s kamishbroit, a crunchy Yiddish cousin of the Italian biscotti—except that my
mother’s version would make a Venetian baker jealous.

  She poured me a cup of tea. I took a bite of a kamishbroit.

  “Delicious,” I said. “Is this the batch Sam helped you make?”

  “We baked them this afternoon.”

  Sam was only two when Jonathan—his father, my husband—died in a plane crash. My mother, God bless her, quit her job and moved in to help me raise Sam and my two stepdaughters, Leah and Sarah. Eventually, my mother sold her condo and moved into our coach house in back, which Nick Moran had beautifully renovated for her. Leah is now a sophomore at Brandeis University, and Sarah is in her senior year of high school. Although the two girls call me Rachel, all three of my kids call my mother Baba, which is Yiddish for grandmother. Their Baba is hard-headed and opinionated and sets high standards for her grandchildren. Don’t ask the girls how many times their red-headed Baba made them rewrite their college application essays. Though she can exasperate me like no other human on the face of the earth, we all adore her. Even me.

  Now that Sam was in kindergarten, she’s been talking about going back to work part-time or increasing her docent hours at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum. Meanwhile, seemingly endless queues of elderly Jewish suitors await their turn to take the lovely Widow Gold the Elder to dinner and a show. She has gone on record that the developer of Viagra deserves a special place in Hell. I try my best not to think about the implications of that statement.

  “So?” Benny said. “Let’s have some juicy details.”

  I checked my watch.

  Ten minutes to nine.

  My stepdaughter Sarah was at a boys varsity basketball game against her school’s big rival. Although a high school senior today knows more about life and sex than I did after college, there were some details I didn’t want her to overhear, especially because she had been so fond of Nick Moran.

  I probably had enough time before she got home.

  I told them about my morning, which I’d spent at the offices of Moran Renovations. Nick’s sister had arranged it all. She met me at the office and introduced me to the secretary-receptionist, a pleasant fortysomething woman named Linda who was in the process of closing down the operations.

  Linda had been the only other full-time employee of the company and had worked there for almost five years. Nick had a large group of preferred subcontractors and craftsmen that he would hire for particular jobs. On any given day he might have four different painters at four different sites, and three plumbing subcontractors working at three other sites.

  I said, “The police talked to Linda the day after they found the body. They asked the usual questions—whether there’d been any recent disruptions or changes in his behavior or the business. She’d noticed nothing like that. She’d never seen him use any drugs. Though he kept a case of beer in the office fridge, he usually drank only on Friday afternoons, and rarely more than a bottle. Although he didn’t talk to her about his private life, she had no reason to believe he was gay.”

  “Did he have a computer?” Benny asked.

  “In his office. He didn’t have one at home. He didn’t use the office one much. Linda told me that days could go by without him even turning it on. I booted it up and poked around some. He didn’t use the calendar feature. She kept all his appointments on one of those day planners that he’d take with him. I checked his email. Not much, and nothing that interesting.”

  “Who did he email?” Benny asked.

  “A few of his subcontractors seemed to prefer to schedule jobs by email or to send invoices that way. He mostly forwarded them on to his secretary, who would print out the bills and write the job schedules into his day planner.”

  “No emails to boyfriends?” Benny asked.

  “Nope. And none to girlfriends. Or family. I checked his Sent folder, his Deleted folder and his Saved folder. Nothing personal.”

  “What about the Internet?” my mother asked.

  “Not much there, either. I made arrangements for one of my tech guys to analyze the hard drive, but I didn’t find anything promising. He just wasn’t a big computer user. He had a high-speed Internet connection, but that was mainly for his secretary’s use. I went online and checked his history of Website visits. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. Home Depot, Mapquest, plumbing suppliers, Google, a few used car sites.”

  “No male porn?” Benny asked.

  “No porn period. He did go to some fishing sites. And hunting sites. Places like Bass Pro and Cabelas.”

  “Did he have a cell phone?” my mother asked.

  “Same story. Had one but didn’t use it much. His secretary said most days he either forgot to charge it or he’d leave it at home. He mostly used pay phones and his customers’ land lines.”

  “Let’s pause for a recap,” Benny said. “No Internet porn. No salacious emails. No records of cell phone calls to male escort services. Unless I missed something, you’ve told us nothing that could even charitably be described as interesting, much less juicy.”

  “True,” I said.

  “So?” Benny replied. “What else you got?”

  I smiled. “For starters, how about a surveillance video of a naked gay housepainter?”

  Benny laughed. “Are you shitting me?”

  “Do you think I could make that up?”

  “A surveillance video?” my mother asked.

  “The man’s name is Bobby Clay,” I said. “He was one of Nick’s painting subcontractors. Apparently, he preferred to paint in the nude, although Linda didn’t know when exactly Nick learned about his painter’s quirk. Since Bobby was usually alone in the houses he painted, it hadn’t been an issue before.”

  “Naked?” Benny shook his head in wonder.

  “He’d strip down to nothing but his work boots and his iPod, which he wore on a strap around his waist, and he’d dance and paint the day away.”

  “So what happened?” my mother asked.

  “About three months ago he painted a den that had one of those hidden surveillance cameras. When the husband got home that night and reviewed his videotapes, he was not pleased. He fired Nick and dropped off a copy of the surveillance tape with the cops. According to Linda, Nick went down to the police station and got everything taken care of.”

  “What happened to the painter?” my mother asked.

  “Charges were dropped. Nick continued to use him on jobs, too, but only after he agreed to comply with the new dress code.”

  “You saw the tape?” Benny asked.

  “The cops gave it to Nick. Linda showed it to me.”

  “And?” Benny said, eyes twinkling.

  “Interesting.” I smiled. “It would have been better with a soundtrack, because he was really swaying those hips.”

  “And?” Benny said.

  I shrugged. “Lots of movement down there. Reminded me of a cowboy doing rope tricks.”

  “You said this naked painter is gay?” my mother asked.

  “According to Linda. And he seemed pretty flamboyant on that tape. Like one of the Village People. And in his emails to Nick.”

  “What kind of emails?” Benny asked.

  “Business, actually. A total of three. Confirming job sites and schedules. But he called Nick ‘darling’ in two of them, and he signed off once with the phrase ‘kisses and misses.’”

  “Do you think he and Nick had a relationship?” my mother asked.

  “I hope to find out tomorrow. He’s working on a job in U City. He agreed to meet me after work at Blueberry Hill.”

  Benny said. “Anything else?”

  “I found five possible girlfriends.”

  “Nick’s girlfriends?” my mother asked.

  “Apparently. At least according to his sister. Nick occasionally talked to her about his social life. She was always bugging him to get married. She remembered three names he mentioned to her: Brenda,
Ruth, and Barb. She didn’t know any of their last names. When I went through his customer files this morning, I looked for those names. I think I identified all three. His secretary gave me two more names. An interesting group. I called them all today and set up meetings with each of them tomorrow.”

  “Do we know any?” Benny asked.

  “You know at least one of them.”

  “Who?”

  I gave him my lawyer look. “This is confidential. You can’t tell anyone.”

  Benny mimed zipping his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Especially since these may not be girlfriends. There may be nothing romantic about these relationships. Even if he’s heterosexual. And especially if he’s gay. These could just be lady friends.”

  “Fine,” Benny said. “I understand. Now which one do I know?”

  “Ruth,” I said.

  “I do?”

  “She’s on the law school faculty.”

  “Ruth?” He frowned. “He was banging someone on the—hold on.” His eyes narrowed. ‘”Ruth Parnos?”

  I nodded. “Professor Parnos.”

  “Ruth?” he said, incredulous. “I thought she was a dyke.”

  “I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Ruth Parnos?” He leaned back in his chair. “No way.”

  “You might be wrong, Benny.”

  “For chrissake, she drives a Subaru Outback.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Rachel. Don’t give me that Little Miss Muffet shtick. A chick behind the wheel of a Subaru Outback is one of the two most reliable indicators.”

  I gave him a weary sigh. “And the other is what? Varsity softball?”

  “Bingo. The sport with the highest concentration of carpet munchers in America.”

  “Carpet what?” my mother asked.

  “Never mind,” I said to her.

  “You played softball, honey,” my mother said.

  Benny snorted. “That was in law school, Sarah. On a co-ed team at Harvard. Doesn’t count.”

  My mother patted me on the hand. “I’m sure you were an excellent player, even on carpet.