AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I know that, too. November 17th. It was the first round of the Over Sixty-Fives tournament. I still couldn’t play, but I came to cheer the Oldies on.”
“You have a good memory.”
They are sitting in the living room of Welch’s third-floor Sunrise Bay condominium apartment. There are boats in bottles everywhere, Welch has told her that building them is his pastime, but the place of honor is held by the framed photograph of a smiling woman in her mid-forties. She’s dressed in a pretty silk dress and wearing a lace mantilla over her chestnut hair, as if she’s just come from church.
Welch points at the picture now. “I ought to remember. It was the next day that Mary was diagnosed with lung cancer. Died a year later. And do you know what? She never smoked.”
Hearing of a non-smoker who’s died of lung cancer always makes Holly feel a little better about her own habit. She supposes that makes her a poopy person.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Welch is a small man with a big potbelly and skinny legs. He sighs and says, “Not as sorry as I am, Ms. Gibney, and you can take that to the bank. She was the love of my life. We had our disagreements, as married people do, but there’s a saying: ‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.’ And we never did.”
“Althea says you all liked Cary. The Golden Oldies, I mean.”
“Everybody liked Cary. He was a Tribble. I don’t suppose you know what I mean by that, but—”
“I do. I’m a Star Trek fan.”
“Right, okay, right. Cary, you couldn’t not like him. Kind of a space cadet, but friendly and always cheerful. I suppose the dope helped with that. He was a smoker, but not cigarettes. He puffed the bud, as the Jamaicans say.”
“I think some of the other members of your team might also have puffed the bud,” Holly ventures.
Welch laughs. “Did we ever. I remember nights when we’d go out back and pass a couple of joints around, getting stoned and laughing. Like we were back in high school. Except for Roddy, that is. Old Small Ball didn’t mind us doing it, he was no crusader, sometimes he even came along, but he didn’t do pot. Didn’t believe in it. We’d smoke up, then go back inside, and do you know what?”
“No, what?”
“It made us better. Hughie the Clip especially. When he was stoned, he lost that Brooklyn hook of his, and he’d put it bang in the pocket more often than not. Bwoosh!” He flings his hands apart, simulating a strike. “Not Roddy, though. Without the magic smoke, the prof was the same one-forty bowler as he ever was. Isn’t that a riot?”
“Absolutely.”
Holly leaves the Sunrise Bay having learned just one thing: Avram Welch is also a Tribble. If he were to turn out to be the Red Bank Predator, everything she’s ever believed, both intellectually and intuitively, would fall to ruin.
Her next stop is Rodney Harris, retired professor, one-forty bowler, also known as Small Ball and Mr. Meat.
2
Barbara is reading a Randall Jarrell poem called “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” and marveling at its five lines of pure terror when her phone rings. Only three callers can currently get through, and since her mom and dad are downstairs, she doesn’t even look at the screen. She just says “Hi, J, what do you say?”
“I say I’m staying in New York for the weekend. But not the city. My agent has invited me to spend the weekend in Montauk. Isn’t that cool?”
“Well, I don’t know. I have an idea that sex and business don’t mix.”
He laughs. She has never heard Jerome laugh so easily and frequently as he has during their last few conversations, and she’s glad for his happiness. “You can be cool on that score, kiddo. Mara’s in her late fifties. Married. With children and grandchildren. Most of whom will be there. I’ve told you all that already, but you’ve been lost in the clouds. Do you even remember Mara’s last name?”
Barbara admits she does not, although she’s sure Jerome has told her.
“Roberts. What is up with you?”
For a moment she’s silent, just looking at the ceiling, where fluorescent stars glow at night. Jerome helped her put them up when she was nine.
“If I tell you, will you promise not to be mad? I haven’t told Mom and Dad yet, but I guess once I tell you, I better tell them.”
“Just as long as you ain’t pregnant, sis.” His voice says he’s joking and not joking at the same time.
It’s Barbara’s turn to laugh. “Not pregnant, but you could say that I’m expecting.”
She tells him everything, going all the way back to her initial meeting with Emily Harris, because she was too afraid to approach Olivia Kingsbury on her own. She tells him about her meetings with the old poet, and how Olivia submitted her poems to the Penley Prize Committee without telling her, and how she’s still in the running for the prize.
