Suggestion of Death Page 4

  “I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet and extracted a twenty-five dollar check made out to her.

  She took it from him, glanced at it, frowned almost imperceptibly, and set it on the counter. “Thank you.”

  His stomach clenched. He knew it wasn’t much, but it was something. “I was notified the other day that I won third prize in a short-short contest so that’s twenty-five percent. I haven’t received the money yet, but thought you might need it today, that’s why I’m giving it to you directly.” He felt like a puppy putting his head up hoping for a hand to pat him.

  “You know you’re supposed to send any payments to the A.G.’s child support office.”

  “I trust you...you will notify them to give me credit, won’t you?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “Yes.”

  Her glance caused a thickening down below. “You’re very sexy.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that. We’re not married anymore.” Her chin went up, her gaze stayed steadily on his.

  “You’re not dating someone else again, are you?”

  “That’s none of your business. What I do is my affair, not yours.”

  He wished she hadn’t used that word. He glanced at the refrigerator, which held the children’s schoolwork, and took a deep breath. He didn’t want to fight with her; he wanted to make up. “Pat, would you be sorry if I got a job in another city?”

  She stared down at the paper for several moments before answering. “Is that a possibility?”

  “I mailed over two dozen resumes a few minutes ago.”

  Her forehead drew together. “To whom?” She sounded like an English teacher, not a woman concerned he might move away.

  “To every newspaper and magazine I could find within five hundred miles. I’m serious when I say I’m not in this financial situation because I want to be.”

  She nodded and seemed to think that over, her lips moving side to side over her teeth.

  “I’d hate to go so far away.” He wanted her to say she didn’t want him to go, would hate for him to be that far away.

  She didn’t reply, but let go of the newspaper, which floated down to the counter.

  The vise he’d felt earlier tightened on his chest so he had trouble breathing. He straightened in his chair and put his shoulders back. “I’d miss the kids. I wouldn’t be able to visit as often.”

  “That’s true, but you know I’d work with you on your visitation. I always have. You know that.”

  “I’d miss you, too, Pat. Patty.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it back. He felt like she’d just kicked him where it hurt most and dropped his hands into his lap. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “What’s keeping the kids? Patrick! Jeanette!”

  Turning back to catch her eye, Jim hoped for some signal that she hadn’t totally shut him out. She looked everywhere but at him. Clearly she needed more time. He wouldn’t give up. He was a far cry from giving up. As soon as he had some money and had regained some self-respect, he could be more direct with her.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. Jim turned in time to see Patrick swaggering up. Although his first reaction was a swell of pride, he had to wonder who the boy was emulating. An absent father missed so much. He pulled his son to him.

  Patrick struggled. “Hey, Dad. Watch it.”

  “What do you mean, watch it? You’d better give me a hug and I mean right now.” Jim tousled Patrick’s hair. “It’s me, remember?” He got down from the barstool and hugged the boy. “Got the soccer ball?”

  “Yep. I left it by the door with my suitcase. I thought we could practice kicking.” Patrick grinned, that momentary aloofness that came from their not living together had evaporated.

  “Great. Where’s your sister?”

  Jeanette ambled into the doorway with her nose buried in an open book. He took two steps and bent down before her. “Hi, Sugar Bear,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. He stuck his finger in the opening of the book. “Got a book mark? Time to go.”

  She smiled up at him, her small eight-year-old face, a mirror image of his, yanking his heart out of his chest by the arteries. “But it’s so good. I’ve only got a few pages left.”

  “Later, Toots.” He encircled her with his arms and kissed her temple. “Both of you kiss your mother goodbye.” He picked up her bag and the book.

  The children lifted their faces to their mother. “I’ll miss you,” Pat said when she straightened up. Jim glanced at her and could have sworn she’d said that for his benefit, but decided it was wishful thinking when she smiled in the children’s direction. As she ushered them to the front of the house, Jim’s eyes lingered on her until she closed the door, but she wouldn’t look at him. Still, he could always hope.

  Chapter Four

  Jim did take the kids for hamburgers at McDonald’s. He let them play on the slides and swings and tunnels before taking them to Town Park where there were rows of trees and baseball fields and ducks swimming in a pond. Jeanette brought her book and was content to read under a tree and watch her father and brother chase a soccer ball. When he was worn out, Jim retired to the grass beside his daughter, leaving Patrick to play with kids closer to his age.

  “What are you reading?” He took the book from her, holding his finger in her place, and scanned the reviews on the back. “I don’t know this author. Is it something you have to read for school?”

  “No. It’s from our summer reading list. Mom let me start early.” Jeanette reached for the book and clutched it to her stomach like she was afraid he wouldn’t let her keep it.

  “It’s pretty thick. Are you sure this is from the fourth grade reading list?”

  “Tsk. Tsk. Dad, I read all the Harry Potter books last year when I was eight.”

  “Oh and you’re almost nine now. I forgot.” Still, was the book age appropriate? “What’s this one about?”

  She rolled her eyes and flipped the book over. “See it tells you here.” She ran her finger under the words like a parent teaching a child to read. “Fifteen-year-old Abicat Nathan lived on a spaceship, not knowing anything about planets until one day her mother told her they were going to visit relatives on a place called Earth.”

  “But she’s fifteen and you’re going on nine.” He struggled to keep a straight face.

  “It’s okay, Dad. I know a lot about teenage stuff.”

  “Because you read about it, right? I mean, you haven’t done any fifteen-year-old stuff, have you?”

  Her face twisted up in a big frown. “Eww, no. I’m not going to do that stuff even when I’m fifteen.”

  Relief coursed through him and the muscles in his stomach relaxed. “Hey, you know this is science fiction, right? That people, except for astronauts, don’t live on space ships?”

  Jeanette giggled. “You’re so funny. Next you’ll be telling me there aren’t any vampires or werewolves.”

  Jim’s mouth fell open. He grabbed the book from her hands and said, “I ought to swat you with this.”

  Laughing, Jeannette fell back on the grass where she stayed for several minutes in a fit of giggles. Each time she started to sit up, she’d take one look at Jim’s face and roll with laughter again. Finally, after a while, she managed to get herself together and sat facing him, Indian style.

  “It’s a good book, anyway, Daddy. You might like it. Abicat and her mother are stuck on earth when their spaceship explodes, and they have to learn to live like us. It’s cool to see all the stuff she has to learn about things, like that milk comes from cows. It could happen someday.”

  “But not for a long time. Civilizations won’t be living on spaceships for a long, long time.”

  “I know that.” She shook her head.

  He scooted back and leaned against the tree to ease an ache in his lower back. He wasn’t accustomed to sitting on the ground. The grass beneath them was cool and soft and made a nice pad. Jeanette shifted over and leaned back into his arms, almost sitting in his lap. S
he was still a lot of elbows and knees at almost nine.

  Patrick played with the other kids for a little longer while Jim and Jeanette continued to talk about what kind of stories she liked.

  He’d always thought he would be the one to teach the children to read. His own father had taught him when he was four. But when the time came, Jim had gotten lost somehow and wasn’t there to teach either of his children. When it had been time to sit with them, to teach them the alphabet song, to put his arm around them like his father had him, like he was doing with Jeanette now, Jim had been off in one of two places. He’d either been chasing a story or drinking with his cohorts.

  Looking back now, sitting with his little daughter and her books, seeing her adoring eyes watch his face as he spoke to her, a deep ache swelled in his chest at the loss of the precious time he’d freely given up in favor of inane activities. He could never get those moments back. He could have been there for them, for Patty as well as the children, but he hadn’t valued them until it was almost too late.

  He remembered the day he’d come home and found another man at his house. Not that he’d actually caught Patty and the man in flagrante delicto. No, Bob had merely been sitting at the head of the dinner table with Jim’s family, looking like something out of a television commercial for soup.

  Jim had walked in, taken one look, and understood the situation. It didn’t take a genius. Only the drinks he’d stopped for on the way home dulled the pain that shot through him when he saw them. His chest seized like he was having a heart attack, the jabs of pain like stabs wounds from a butcher knife. He would have almost preferred to catch Patty in bed with the guy as have the picture of what his family’s life would be without him running through his mind’s eye like a never-ending video.

  Patty had stayed seated and given him a casual, “Hello.”

  The kids had run to him, throwing their arms around him.

  Bob had stood and extended his hand, dropping it when Jim didn’t take it.

  Jim had wished later that he’d grabbed Bob’s hand and held the guy down and slugged him, but he’d been too stunned at seeing another man sitting in his place at the table to do anything but stand there wrapped in the children’s arms and stare at Patty.

  “Finish your dinner, kids,” Patty said. “James, would you like to join us?”

  The rest of it was like the blur of a country song. “Who’s that with my wife, stealing my wonderful life?”

  Now, as Jim sat with Jeanette, he stroked her head and felt grateful for moments like these with the kids, grateful he hadn’t lost all contact with them, grateful that Patty understood how important it was for a father to be involved even if he hadn’t been initially. Jim hugged his daughter, his chest swelling with pride. When she wrapped her arms around him it made him feel like the future was a lot brighter than he’d thought that morning, that life could be different, that he could make it better if he worked hard.

  “I love you sugar bear,” Jim whispered into her fresh-smelling hair.

  “Me, too, Dad.” She patted his arm like she was the adult and he, the child.

  * * *

  The following morning, after he phoned a magazine he’d already published in and the editor agreed to look at his story, Jim emailed it before taking the kids to the library to see what the volunteering thing was about. Ethan never asked Jim to do something without a reason. If the library needed help, they must be in very bad shape.

  The library sat on the top of Mueller’s Hill, above Wendy’s and Wal-mart, which were in the middle. At the bottom was Town Park, where he’d taken the kids the night before. Jim walked the kids to the children’s section, where he’d spent many hours from the time he was a little boy.

  “You guys pick out some books, and I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said and walked back to the front desk where a lone woman who was only slightly younger than his mother would have been stood at a counter and processed books for a line of people wanting to check out. When she finished with the people in front of him, Jim said, “I’m looking for Frieda Boggess. I believe she’s the executive director?”

  The woman turned startling blue-gray eyes fringed by gray eyebrows on him, Ethan’s eyes. “I’m Mrs. Boggess.”

  He put out his hand. “Hi. I’m Jim Dorman.”

  She squeezed his hand with her veined one. “What can I do for you, Mr. Dorman?” She wore a long, brown skirt and a long-sleeved flowered blouse with a button-up sweater over it. Glasses hung down from her neck on a beaded chain. His mother used to keep her glasses on a chain, even when she’d been his age.

  “I heard a rumor the library needs volunteers. I wonder if you could point me to the Volunteer Coordinator.”

  “You’re looking at her.”

  Jim stepped back. “But I thought you were the Executive Director.”

  She nodded, her lower lip stretching across her teeth. “I’m a bit of everything, I’m afraid.” Side-stepping over to the returned book bin, she picked out books and began stacking them on a cart. “We never had a large staff to begin with. Now we have even fewer employees and shorter hours. I’m in charge of just about everything: grant writing, fund raising, public speaking engagements, volunteers, and training. I’m also the head librarian, research librarian, and children’s librarian. You name it; I’m it.”

  His throat tightened. How long had that been going on, and how long had he been patronizing the place, blissfully unaware of the situation? “Doesn’t anyone else work here?” He glanced around but didn’t see anyone who looked official.

  She laughed. “Yes, of course. The city won’t let me hire anyone to fill vacancies, but they didn’t make me fire anyone, either.” She went back over to the bin and fished out more books. “We have a maintenance man. He’s also janitor and the security guard. And, Merrie Fleiss is our adult section librarian. We’ve been using volunteers for everything else.” She rolled the book cart to the gate separating the desk from the public and returned to Jim.

  “Wow. Years ago the city couldn’t do enough for the library.”

  “You don’t mind if I sit down, do you?” She perched on a tall, wooden stool and breathed out a sigh. “Money is tight all over. So,” she looked him over, “you want to volunteer? What is it, court-ordered community service work?”

  “Now, Mrs. Boggess, do I look like a criminal to you?” He leaned on the counter and stared at her. Her short hair was still long enough to cover her ears so he couldn’t see if they were like Ethan’s.

  “You never know these days. We had a community service worker here for a while. He wasn’t half bad. He was on probation for driving while intoxicated. We used him to police the grounds and re-shelve the books.” A man holding a couple of books came up behind Jim. “You mind?” Mrs. Boggess asked.

  “I hope you can find something useful for me to do. I know a lot about computers.” Jim moved to the side so she could check out the man’s books.

  The man left and she turned back to Jim. “Okay, now, Mr. Dorman, you want to tell me what your motive is?”

  “Ah, you’re a mystery reader.”

  “Yes. I have a very suspicious mind.”

  Jim liked her sense of humor. She was more like Ethan than she probably knew. “I have no motive. My friend Ethan Hale asked me if I could give you a few hours, since I’m unemployed right now.”

  “Ethan?” Her lips parted into a smile and she nodded. “Well, I can’t pay you anything at all.”

  “No, ma’am. I know that. I’ve already been paid in kind. I’ve been using this library for years. In fact, my children are picking out some books right now.”

  “I saw y’all when you came in.” Her eyes widened. “Not much I miss. Anyway, this library has been good to all the people of Angeles. I don’t know why they don’t want to support it now.”

  “People just don’t want to pay taxes. So, could you use me? I’m a writer by trade. I’ll be over here soon anyway using the library’s computers to access the Internet.” It wouldn
’t save him much money, but at this point, every little bit counted, especially with the cost of postage.

  “At least we still have that,” she said. “What I need is someone to supervise the Internet room. Also, could you read to the young children? You have a nice, deep voice, and I bet you could do characters’ voices well.”

  “So how many hours are you talking about?”

  She looked at him sideways. “You could use one of our computers to do your work and supervise the room at the same time. I’ve placed the newest one in a corner where you can see everything that goes on in there. Got it on a grant.”

  “Are you evading the question, ma’am?” Jim grinned. There was something about her that drew him in, something warm in addition to the resemblance to his friend. She had a kind face and a gentle manner and a humorous, good-natured way of carrying on a conversation.

  She pursed her lips. “How many hours can you give me? Keep in mind the city reduced the hours we’re open. We’re not open on Sundays at all. We close today and every Saturday at six p.m. We also don’t open Monday through Friday until ten a.m. and close at six p.m. except for Thursdays when we stay open until nine.”

  “I’m going to have to write that down.”

  “It’s on the door. I’m not asking you to work all of that.”

  “I hate to admit I’m relieved, but I am.”

  “Thursday nights would be really helpful. That way there would be two of us here.”

  He could understand her not wanting to be alone in the building at night even if it did stay light longer now. “And once school is out for the summer?”

  “One morning a week? I can schedule the children’s story hour around that.”

  “No problem. I’ll do even more if time permits, but I have to warn you. I’m looking for a job. As soon as I can find one, I might not be available.”