“Go ahead,” Phoebe said. “Take the day. I can handle things here till Bernard shows up.”
“Happy birthday, Pheeb,” Darla Jo said in a tiny, broken voice, leaning heavily on Boone. Her honey-brown hair hung lank around her pale baby-doll face.
It caused an ache in Phoebe’s heart to see her hurting so much. “Thanks, sweetie. Take it easy, okay?”
“Take care, Darla Jo,” said Rose.
And Tiffany added, “Later, hon.”
They all watched, wearing solemn expressions, as Boone guided Ralphie’s pregnant widow to the swinging door and on through.
“Ralphie, Ralphie,” Rose pondered aloud, casting her gaze heavenward, once the door swung shut behind Darla Jo and Boone. “Ralphie, what were you thinkin’?”
Tiffany was nodding, looking severe, her famous dimples nowhere in sight. “You are so right, Rose. He never should have gotten the poor little thing pregnant. Almost sixty years old, and he didn’t have the sense to put a raincoat on that big thing of his.”
“Sense? Ralphie?” Rose made a scoffing sound low in her throat. “Now, there are two words never meant to be spoken in the same sentence.” They all nodded at that, even Phoebe. Then Rose’s face softened. “Think about it, though. That baby will be the only child that wild man ever had.”
Tiffany corrected her. “Well, that we know of.”
Tiff did have a point. Chances were Ralphie had other children somewhere. Ralphie had loved women. And women had loved him. It didn’t matter that he was too skinny and too old and his nose was too big for his face. When he turned those lazy-lidded eyes on a girl, she would fall hard and fast and not give a good damn that the landing was bound to be rough.
Back when Phoebe and Ralphie were married, both Tiff and Rose had been in love with him, too. Though she knew her friends would never betray her, Phoebe had resented them for not being able to keep themselves from wanting her husband. Secretly, she’d feared that the day would come when Ralphie started falling out of love with her, the way he had with all the others before her. She’d dreaded that the unthinkable just might happen: she’d find him doing the wild thing with Rose or Tiff.
As it turned out, Ralphie did fall out of love with her. And into bed with someone else. Not Rose or Tiff, though. Thank God. In her pain and rage at his doing her that way, she’d divorced him and taken her half of the bar in the settlement. She’d dropped out of the band, and Rose and Tiff hadn’t had the heart to carry on without her.
For a while, Phoebe had hated Ralphie Styles with a passion as powerful as her love had been. But her hatred didn’t last. She just couldn’t stay mad at him forever. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Only later would you find out it was a shirt he’d borrowed from someone else.
You just had to love him, even when you weren’t in love with him anymore. Besides, once a couple of years had gone by, Phoebe really was over him in the romantic sense and truly immune to the passionate insanity he could inspire.
Rose and Tiff weren’t immune to him, though. They’d each married him—Rose first, Tiff later; short marriages that ended the same way his marriage to Phoebe had: in heartbreak and divorce. Eventually, both Rose and Tiff had forgiven him. And in time, each found herself calling him a friend.
Down the bar, the big biker caught Phoebe’s eye and raised his empty shot glass. She went on over there and served him up another round, her throat kind of tight suddenly with all the memories swirling around in her brain. That time, when she set the beer in front of him, she gave the guy a longer look. He looked back. Another shiver went through her—one that crackled with heat all the way down to where it went liquid and spread out into a warm pool low in her belly.
No, she thought.
But deep inside someone was sighing out an endless string of yesses—yesses, she reminded herself, she would do nothing about.
It was a bad day, that was all. A day that had her polishing every glass in the place and imagining what it might be like to celebrate turning thirty by doing something dangerous with a guy she’d just met—a guy who’d spoken exactly six words to her so far: Shot of Cuervo. Beer back. Thanks.
No doubt about it. Soulful eyes. Lots of muscles. Coal-black hair and a couple of shots. These were the beginnings of a truly deep and meaningful relationship.
When she returned to the Queens, they’d moved on to the subject of Ralphie’s suspicious demise.
“I’m sorry,” said Rose. “But I do believe we are dealing with foul play here.” Whoever had run Ralphie over and then fled the scene had yet to be apprehended.
“Well, duh,” said Tiff. “A hit-and-run is foul play by definition.” She sipped her margarita, frowning. “Isn’t it?”
“A hit-and-run is foul play by accident,” Rose clarified. “And I don’t believe Ralphie’s death was any accident. I am talking about someone finally getting fed up with Ralphie in a murderous way. I am talking premeditation. You hear what I’m saying? And it’s not like it’s never been done before. Remember that woman up in Tulsa last year? Got into her SUV, drove to where her husband was doing the nasty with his girlfriend, and ran the bastard down when he and the other woman came out of their favorite motel. Ran him down and then backed up over him, slammed it into drive and ran over him again.”
“I don’t think that was in Tulsa,” said Tiff. “It was on Law and Order, wasn’t it?”
Rose gave her a look. “Not the point—and think about it. As long as nobody sees you and you don’t blow it and leave the guy alive to identify you, a hit-and-run would be better than a bullet or rat poison or a stabbing to the heart.” She paused to gaze deeply into her jumbo margarita glass. Glancing up again, she added, “Yeah, you’d need a way to get rid of the car….”
“Well,” said Tiff. “Somebody did find a way to get rid of the car. Or to hide it. Or somethin’. They got rid of it after the fact. They don’t want to face the consequences of their actions. That doesn’t mean it was preplanned or anything.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Rose. “I think it was.”
Phoebe, who’d heard all this before, just wished they would stop. But they didn’t.
Tiffany insisted, “Some drunk, that’s all. Or some soccer mom on her cell phone.”
“Ha,” said Rose. “That’s a stretch. A soccer mom driving around in the Paseo in the middle of the night, calling…who?”
“I’m only trying to get you to see,” said Tiff in her most patient and reasonable tone, “that we basically know nothing beyond the fact that someone hit him and then drove away.”
“Huh. Pardon me. We know he was in the Paseo, on foot, after midnight.” The Paseo, the old Spanish district, with its stucco buildings and clay-tile roofs, was best known for its thriving artists’ community. Ralphie was no artist. He didn’t live in the Paseo, have friends there or do business there that the Queens knew of. “I ask you,” said Rose. “What was he doing there?”
Tiffany blew out a hard breath. “I’m only saying, why assume it had to be murder?”
Rose
