by Sarina Bowen
Even if they weren’t a couple, he still had it bad for her.
* * *
After her bath he’d tucked her into his bed. He’d killed the lights, hoping she could sleep. Then he’d taken a long, hot shower. Twelve hours ago he’d thought his life was over. And maybe his hockey career was still about to swirl down the drain, but that problem seemed a hell of a lot smaller than it had first thing this morning.
Taking care to be quiet, he put on flannel pants and a T-shirt and climbed into bed.
Ari rolled immediately, closing the distance between them, laying her head on his shoulder. He welcomed her in with a sigh.
“Are you okay?” she asked sleepily.
“I’m fine,” he said automatically.
“Earlier today we were shouting at each other.”
“I remember,” he sighed. “But that conversation can wait.”
“You’ll tell me the truth?”
“I will,” he promised.
They lay there together a while longer, and he began to feel drowsy. Her head was a comfortable weight on his body. It held him in place. He felt grounded by her presence.
“I got you a coffeemaker,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“A coffeemaker. You asked me if they were easy to shop for, so I just bought you the same model I have at home. It’s in my treatment room. I didn’t get a chance to give it to you today.”
Oh my fucking god. He smiled into her hair. “Thank you, sweetheart. That was nice of you. Now go to sleep.”
She did.
TWENTY-NINE
TUESDAY, MARCH 29TH
Standings: 3th Place
9 Regular Season Games Remaining
When Ari woke up the next morning she was alone. But there was a note on the pillow beside her.
Sweetheart—
I had to go to practice this morning because I cannot afford not to show my face. Georgia is waiting to walk to work with you this morning. Could you please give her a call and walk with her? We’re all just trying to make sure you’re okay.
—P
Fine. She dug her Katt Phone out of her handbag that had been fetched from her house by one of the cops working the case.
Georgia answered on the first ring. “Hey! How are you feeling?”
Ari really wasn’t sure. “I’m okay. I’ll try to go one day in a row without being the team drama llama.”
“Aim high, girl. I’ll be ready to go in about a half hour. Is that enough time for you?”
“Sure. I’m just going to use Patrick’s amazing shower, in case I’m never invited back.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
“If you have time to stop for coffee on the way to work, I’ll tell you.”
* * *
Even though it was the opposite direction from their workplace, Georgia and Ari went to One Girl Cookies for lattes and pastries. And then—because you don’t have armed psychos storming your house just every day—they sat down at a table to eat and talk, even though it made them both a half hour later to work than they’d planned.
“So I gave him a lot of grief right before everything happened,” Ari said, stirring the foam in her cup. “And I still don’t know what to think. It doesn’t square up in my mind that Patrick likes to buy drugs. He just doesn’t strike me as the type. But he didn’t deny that it was true.”
Georgia folded the square of wax paper where her chocolate croissant had just been. Then she folded it again. “I’ll admit that he doesn’t seem the type, either. He’s awfully serious. And nobody has ever whispered about substances in connection with Doulie. Not to me, anyway. And yesterday, before all the mayhem began at your house, he submitted a voluntary drug test.”
“Yeah?” Ari’s heart leapt at the idea.
“But I’m told that most street drugs clear your system pretty fast.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Ari admitted. “I’m completely weirded out by the fact that he and Vince had met before. And that he bought drugs. Jesus. I should have gotten involved with a nice tax accountant who enjoys golf.”
Georgia made a face. “Then you’d die of boredom instead of gunfire.”
“True.” Ari’s feelings about Patrick were a confusing swirl of contradiction. “It’s weird how much I still trust him. That’s pretty much a summary of all my interactions with Patrick. My heart trusts him, but my brain is always screaming wait a second!”
Georgia smiled and shook her head. “You kill me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re flawed, just like the rest of us. I used to be intimidated by you and all your yoga wisdom. Now I know you’re just as nuts as I am.”
“Oh, goody,” Ari said with a sigh. “Will you at least tell me how I’ve been nuts this morning?”
“Sure.” Georgia pushed her empty plate away. “In every yoga class you always ask us to observe how we feel, and to notice it from a place of curiosity . . .”
“. . . Not judgment,” Ari agreed.
“Exactly,” Georgia said with a little eye roll. “But every conversation we have about Doulie has you saying—I like him so much, but it’s wrong. Wrong time. Wrong guy. Wrong to meet someone at work. See, I don’t think you’re observing from a place of curiosity, yogi. I think you’re Miss Judgie McJudgerson when it comes to how you feel about him.”
“Oh, hell,” Ari breathed.
Georgia patted her hand. “I know.”
“But, God. It’s like I can’t afford to be curious just now. Because I had my eyes entirely closed for the last couple of years, and that’s still blowing up in my face.”
“I get it. Except I wonder what your favorite yogis would say to the idea that you’re too busy to be curious.”
“They’d say it was bullshit,” Ari admitted. “That I’m just using fear as an excuse to withdraw. That I’ve let fear triumph over the heart’s natural inclination to explore.” She groaned. “The truth hurts.”
“The truth requires a cookie for the road, don’t you think?” Georgia got up and took their empty dishes to the bussing station so they both could get to work.
On the way toward the Bruisers headquarters, Ari checked her phone. Then she checked it again.
“Something wrong?” Georgia asked.
“There’s no schedule for me listed—no yoga class and no massage appointments. But there’s a meeting in the C-suite.”
“They’re just looking after you. No need to panic.”
When they walked into the offices, Rebecca looked up from her desk. “It’s about time you girls made it into work. Which one of you brought me a cookie?”
Georgia’s eyes went wide. “You spied on us? You tracked our Katt Phones?”
Becca pointed at Ari. “Hers is on the top security setting right now, so the GPS is open in a window on my desktop. I saw two blue dots having pastries while I was alone here, toiling at my desk.”
With a frown, Georgia pulled a paper sack out of her purse. “Here. This is for you. Oatmeal raisin.”
Becca’s pierced eyebrow hiked higher. “That’s your favorite.”
“No kidding. But take it because I love you. And no more questions.” Georgia turned on her heel and went into the office suites.
“So,” Ari asked, feeling a little uneasy. “What’s this meeting where I’m needed?” The club wouldn’t fire her this morning, would they? God knows she’d been the world’s most bothersome employee these past few weeks. But even if they’d had enough of her, it was bad form to fire her on the same morning that police were performing a murder investigation in her home.
“It’s with the private investigator,” Becca whispered. “Jay’s coming in to share the findings of the investigation.”
“Uh . . .” Ari felt her stomach roll. She’d been successful all morning at trying not to think
of Vince’s death. Until now. “Isn’t it a little late to hear his findings? I’m not worried about Vince anymore.”
Becca shrugged. “I don’t know, honey, because Hugh wanted you to hear this. And he wouldn’t waste your time, today of all days.”
Twenty minutes later Ari sat fidgeting in the conference room when a woman in khaki cargo pants, Chuck Taylor sneakers, and a blue sweatshirt walked in. “Hi. I’m Jay,” the woman said, offering a hand for Ari to shake.
It took Ari an extra beat to reciprocate, because she was surprised to find that the PI was a woman.
“I know,” the investigator said with a cheerful grin. “You were expecting a man.”
“It’s just . . . your name?” she stammered. But that wasn’t quite the truth. Ari felt a wash of shame. Here she was, doing a job that was usually held by a man in the NHL, and her idiot brain had assumed that a PI would be a man.
Jay pulled out a chair and sat down. “Don’t worry about it. I get that all the time. And it helps me, too.”
“It does?”
“Sure. Your ex, for example”—Jay raised her eyes—“and I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Ari said quickly. It was going to be so odd hearing that from the people in her life. All she’d wanted was for Vince to get lost. But she’d never wanted him to die.
“. . . He’d been very paranoid this past week, looking over his shoulders a lot. What do you think he did every time I walked through his line of vision?”
“Um . . .” Ari did not want to speak ill of the dead. But Jay would have been invisible to him. She looked like a soccer mom.
Jay smiled. “That’s right, he ignored me. Makes my job easier, let me tell you.” She pulled a folder out of a messenger bag and set it on the table. “Okay, what I’ve gathered comes too little too late. And I’m sorry about that. We don’t have to talk at all, except Hugh Major thought it might give you some closure.”
Ari was afraid of what she was about to learn. But she did want the truth. “Tell me what you found.”
Jay opened the folder. “I got some of my information from tailing him, and some of it from policemen who will share certain things with me. But I don’t have access to everything. So there’s some guesswork involved.”
“Okay.”
“The police probably won’t lay it out for you, either, because parts of their investigation will be ongoing. So my guesses might be the best you get for a while.” She pulled a photo from the file. “This is where Vince was staying before he died.”
“Yikes.” It was a picture of a shady looking roadside motel.
“Things had gone sour with the Pryzyks. From what I gathered with a little help from my friends on the homicide squad, they think the Pryzyks might have been responsible for the murder of Andre Karsecki.”
“That nightclub murder?”
Jay nodded. “It doesn’t seem like Vince was involved, but he may have witnessed it.”
“Okay.” Ari didn’t know how to feel about that. So she hadn’t been living with a murderer. Yay. But it was still weird to realize how deeply he’d fallen in with bad people. How had she missed that?
“Maybe the Pryzyks asked him to dispose of the gun, or maybe he stole it as insurance. But he’d kept it at your home for safekeeping.”
“I wonder . . .” Ari tapped her fingertips on the desk. “Why was he in and out of my storage room so much?”
Jay shrugged. “I didn’t start tailing him until after that, but I can make a few guesses. Maybe the Pryzyks knew you’d kicked him out, so he thought they wouldn’t look for him there.”
“Or for the gun,” Ari guessed.
“Right. At the very end they caught up to him, though. They tailed him to your house yesterday.”
Ari shivered.
“There’s something else you should know, though. When I was digging into Vince’s motives for harassing you, I discovered there’s a transfer of property happening regarding your Hudson Street home.”
“A transfer of . . . What does that mean?”
She opened the folder and peeked at a page inside. “Mr. Angelo Bettini is executing a transfer of ownership of the house.”
“To who?”
“To you,” Jay said. “Unless there’s another Ariana Bettini.”
“Really?” she breathed. “I thought he wanted to cash in.”
Jay tilted her head to the side. “He’s eighty-four years old. Maybe he’s realizing that you can’t take it with you. Does he have children of his own?”
Ari nodded. “Two sons. They should inherit.”
“Maybe they’re inheriting something else. I’m sorry to drop this little mystery in your lap, but I dug it up by accident.”
“Did Vince know?” Ari asked, then braced herself for the answer. Was he just hanging around the last year because he thought she was about to become rich?
“I really couldn’t guess,” Jay said softly. “Your uncle would have had the quitclaim deed notarized. Then he filed it with the state, where it became a public part of the tax rolls. But he’d have to have looked to find it.”
Well. Ari would have to find a way to ask Uncle Angelo about this strange development. “Thank you for telling me.”
Jay closed the file folder. “You’re going to be okay. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Ari admitted. “I’m going to be fine.”
“I investigate a lot of people, and some of them are pretty awful. To me, Vince just seemed really lost and scared. He made a lot of shitty choices during the last three months of his life. It happens. Good and evil are for movies, Ari. Nobody is ever that tidy.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you. I think I understand.” Ari had to stop beating herself up over her own stupid choices, because all the self-flagellation wasn’t helping.
Everyone was flawed. Everyone was complicated. Some people were lucky enough to hold themselves together, and others ended up dead from their misdeeds.
Now there was something to think about.
She shook Jay’s hand and then checked her phone, finding a text from her mother: We’ll land on time at three and take a cab into Brooklyn. See you soon, baby!
“You okay?” Becca asked from the doorway.
“I’m good,” she answered truthfully. “And I’m looking forward to the day when nobody asks me that anymore.”
“I’ll bet. I have some news—the police are done at your place, and the fix-it people are on their way over there.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. So keep yourself busy here for a few hours and then you can go home.”
She couldn’t wait.
THIRTY
After the morning skate, O’Doul’s phone glowed red with an urgent meeting someone needed him to take.
With two doctors.
Fuck.
But, hey, at least doctors weren’t the ones you’d see if they were about to throw you off the team. So when both Dr. Herberts and the team shrink, Dr. Mulvey, ushered him into a treatment room, he made his face as impassive as possible and followed.
If he’d failed his drug test, he’d be in Hugh Major’s office right now, right?
Dr. Mulvey shut the door and hopped up on the treatment table, leaving the chair to O’Doul, who sat down and steeled himself for whatever discussion was forthcoming.
Doctor Herberts spoke first. “Your drug test yesterday revealed no banned substances, no narcotics and no recreational drugs.”
O’Doul would have sagged with relief if they weren’t watching him so closely. He didn’t know what the right response was, either. He didn’t want to be cocky, so gotcha, suckers wasn’t going to work. “All right,” he said instead.
The two doctors exchanged glances. “So let’s have a hypothetical conversation,” Dr. Mulvey suggest
ed. “Because Herberts and I get paid by the hour and we like talking.”
O’Doul managed not to roll his eyes. “Okay. What hypotheticals do you feel like discussing?”
“Well, you’re the captain of the team,” Mulvey said. “So you should know a few things in case one of your guys ever needs the information.”
“All right. Shoot.”
Herberts took a shift. “If a player had a wrist injury earlier in the season, and was given some painkillers, he might become addicted to them through no fault of his own,” he said.
Ah. Maybe the guy was just covering his own ass, then.
“Sometimes a player who has a wrist injury doesn’t even fill his prescription after the hospital procedure because Vicodin made him throw up the one other time he took it,” O’Doul said. He’d never forget the time a minor league physician gave him some Vics after a knee injury. The pills made him so nauseated he didn’t eat for two days.
“All right,” Herberts said thoughtfully. “From time to time a player might have use for other kinds of pills. Uppers, maybe. In that case, the team’s doctors would still offer that player a treatment program to free himself of the addiction. And if the player doesn’t feel comfortable telling his troubles to someone who works for the team, that player ought to know that there are other doctors in the city, and other ways of getting help.”
O’Doul’s throat became inexplicably dry. Shit. The fact that they were willing to play this silly game, pretending they weren’t discussing him had to mean they really wanted to help. He hadn’t expected this. Not at all.
He cleared his throat and decided it wouldn’t hurt to keep the farce going. “That is encouraging. And I’ll make sure my team knows it. But sometimes a player tries something, and even though the effects are awfully attractive, it’s hard to get. And maybe after he burns through his ill-gotten supply, he quits because asking around for it is embarrassing.”
“Okay,” Herberts said slowly. “If that has been any player’s experience, I’d like to point out how lucky he is.” The man’s eyes held his, and they were dead serious. “Your player should know that methamphetamine is highly addictive. And those who take it soon find they need more of the substance just to feel that same rush. Quickly they’re needing two, three times as much to get by. And by now, the comedown is a bitch. Then a host of long-term problems start to kick in—heart trouble, high blood pressure, weight loss, increased risk of stroke, memory loss and severe tooth decay . . .”