Best Friends Forever Part 10

"Not even to get them to confess," he said. "Just to have something to do with our hands. We're all trying to quit smoking, so... oh, and when we're on stakeout?" He lowered his voice. "We pee in empty mayonnaise jars."

"I always wondered about that. Why not mustard? Why not some other condiment? Salsa or chutney or something like that?"

"Wide mouth."

"Makes sense," she said, her lips curving, cheeks flushed. For a moment they were silent, just looking at each other. Jordan pointed at the wall. "Where'd you get all the art?"

"Those?" She looked fl.u.s.tered. "They're mine. I mean, obviously they're mine, I didn't steal them." She laughed a little shrilly. "I painted them." She lifted her mug. "This, too."

Jordan looked at the mug, which was heavy, cream-colored glazed ceramic. On one side was a small bouquet of flowers-daffodils, maybe?-tied in a painted ribbon. "You..." He groped for the terminology. "You do pottery?" That wasn't right-throw pottery, that was the word he'd been looking for.

Addie shook her head. "Oh, no. Not the mug. The picture on it. The flowers. I painted them."

He looked at them more closely. "Nice." Addie made a face, with the corners of her mouth lifted and her eyebrows raised. "So that's what you do?" Jordan asked. "You're an artist?" He pointed at the pictures on the walls.

She waved the word away, looking embarra.s.sed. "I do greeting cards, mostly. The occasional mug. I did a spoon rest once. That was a real highlight."

He polished off his doughnut and tried to keep from sighing in grat.i.tude as the carbs landed in his belly and the sugar hit his bloodstream. "This is great," he said. "You're saving my life."

"Wow," she said. She probably blushed easily when she was fl.u.s.tered or, Jordan bet, when she was turned on. She'd turn a pretty rosy color, pink from her throat to her chest, with her pupils dilated and her hair spread out as she tossed her head against the pillow... "You're easy."

"Don't tell, okay?" He looked down, remembering why he'd come here, and that it wasn't to chat up friendly single women and eat their doughnuts. "Your brother," he began. "Have you heard from him lately?"

"Thursday. I saw him Thursday, for Thanksgiving. What's wrong?" The worried look was back.

"Does he live here?"

She shook her head. "Jon's at a place called Crossroads. He moved there when he turned twenty-one. Why? Did something happen?"

"Was he at the reunion last night?"

Her hands twisted in her lap. "I can't-I mean, I wasn't there, either-but I can't imagine he'd want to go, and if I didn't take him, he wouldn't have any way of getting there." She paused, clearly deciding how much to tell him. "Jon didn't have a very easy time in high school." She looked off into the distance, fingers twining and untwining. "My brother was in a car accident when he was fifteen. The two boys in the front seat died, and Jon was hurt pretty badly. He had brain damage. Short-term memory loss, seizures-not for a while now, but he had them pretty regularly when he was a teenager-and some personality changes." She sighed. "Medication helps, but he could be-he can be-a little strange."

"Everyone's strange in high school," said Jordan.

Addie Downs seemed surprised to hear it. "You think so?"

"You should have seen me. I had such bad acne, it looked like someone taped a sausage pizza to my face."

She smiled faintly, still looking troubled. Jordan fought the urge to reach for her, to touch her hand, even as a cool, removed corner of his brain inquired What, exactly, do you think you're doing?

"Were you home last night?" he asked her.

"I had a date."

"How'd it go?"

She gave him her wry half-smile. "About as well as high school."

"Would you mind telling me his name?"

Addie put half a bagel on her plate. "Only if you tell me what's going on."

"We found a man's belt and some blood in the country club parking lot. We're trying to find out who they belong to and make sure no one got hurt."

Lines bracketed her mouth as she frowned. "I could call Jon and make sure he's okay."

"Was anyone in high school particularly bad to him?" Jordan asked casually. "Anyone he would have wanted to get back at?"

Addie looked surprised. Then she narrowed her eyes. "You think Jon hurt someone?" Her voice was rising; that pretty flush was tinting her cheeks and her neck. "Jon would never do anything like that."

He kept his own voice low. "Ma'am, we're trying to figure out who that belt belongs to and if that person is injured. We're not accusing anyone of anything." Adelaide Downs was glaring at him, cheeks pink, eyes flas.h.i.+ng, righteously p.i.s.sed.

"He used to take things out of lockers sometimes," she said. "Somebody told you that, right? That's why you're here. You think Jon did something."

"n.o.body thinks Jon did anything," Jordan protested. "All we're trying to do right now is make sure everyone's okay. Jon included."

"I'm sorry," she said. Her hands were balled into fists, like she was going to sock him. It was charming, even though he was certain she didn't mean for it to be. "Have you ever been to the high school?"

"Cla.s.s of 1987," Jordan volunteered.

Addie appeared not to hear him. "It's four stories high. There were boys-I never knew which ones, exactly-they'd take Jon's backpack and drop it down the stairwell. Four stories down. If it had ever hit someone, it could have really hurt them. They'd take off running, and the teachers on the first floor would find the backpack with Jon's name on it. He'd get in trouble because he wouldn't say who'd done it." She took a deep breath. "You can understand why I'm a little overprotective."

"I understand," he said. More than that, he admired it. He wondered if he'd been the one with problems, what his own brother would have had to say if the cops had come knocking. Sam probably would have thrown him to the wolves without thinking twice-would have driven the cops to his door, if it came to that. "It would help," he ventured, "if we knew where your brother was last night."

"Working." Addie snapped the lid on the tub of cream cheese and wiped off the b.u.t.ter knife with a napkin. A cloth napkin. Her cheeks were still pink. "He works Tuesdays through Sat.u.r.days at the Walgreens on Lower Wacker. He's been there for fifteen years. He always works on holidays so that the people with families can spend time with them."

"Sounds criminal," said Jordan. Addie didn't answer. "I'm kidding," he said. Not even a hint of a smile flickered across her face.

"You can probably talk to the manager, or check his time cards, or something." She set the knife down. "Look, I know in the movies and on TV it's always the guy with mental problems who does it, but believe me, my brother wouldn't hurt a fly."

Jordan stood as Addie got to her feet, then bent down for the tray. "Let me help you."

"No, I've got it."

For a minute, they were face-to-face, each of them gripping one side of the tray, so close their noses were almost touching, so close he could smell her lemon-and-sugar scent, until Addie let go. "I can give you the number of the house where Jon lives, and his boss's name and number at the drugstore," she said. "They'll be able to tell you where he was last night."

"Appreciate your help." He handed her the tray. She carried it into the kitchen, and came out a minute later with a slip of paper and handed it over. "Anything else?"

"Your date last night," he said. "I'm sorry, but I need a name."

"Matthew Sharp."

"And where did you go?"

She named a restaurant downtown.

"You drink martinis? They do one there with olives stuffed with blue cheese." Christ, he thought, I'm losing my mind.

"I had wine," said Adelaide Downs.

He offered her his hand, and after a minute, Addie shook it, her palm warm against his. "I'm sorry if I offended you," he said.

"Sure," she said. Her voice was stiff. She stood there for a minute, then said, "Hang on." Jordan waited. When she came back, she was carrying the bag of doughnuts.

"Here," she said. "You can take these with you."

"Oh, no. That's okay."

"Take them. Enjoy." She gave him a little wave. "Don't beat any suspects," she said. For a minute, he thought she'd say something else-maybe "Wanna fool around?" the way Judy Nadeau had-but instead, she simply swung the door shut.

TWENTY-TWO.

Up in my bedroom, Valerie listened, stone-faced, as I breathlessly recounted my conversation with Jordan Novick. "Belt," she muttered. "f.u.c.k. We should have taken it. What if they find fingerprints?"

"I barely touched it. And I don't think it's the belt that's the problem as much as the blood. But Val, they think Jon did it!"

"Or else they think it's his belt. His blood."

I shook my head. "It's going to take the cops about five minutes to figure out that Jon's okay, and maybe ten minutes to make sure he wasn't really there, and probably another ten minutes after that to figure out who the blood and the belt belong to... and then five seconds for Dan to tell them what you did. What are we going to do? We have to find Dan," I said, answering my own question. "We have to find him before the police do."

"Yeah, okay, but how?" Val sat on my bed, pulled the towel off her head, and started rubbing it slowly against her hair. "I told you, we can't let anyone know that we're looking for him, because then we look suspicious."

"But we were looking for him. We already went to Chip's house! And you talked to Dan's doorman!"

"They're not going to call the doorman."

"Valerie. Of course they're going to call the doorman!"

She nibbled at a thumbnail. "Well, Chip won't say anything. He doesn't know we were there to find Dan."

"Oh, yeah. He'll just think you were suddenly overcome by uncontrollable l.u.s.t, and you just had to have him."

"He probably will think that," she said. "I was extremely convincing."

"Valerie. Think. We are under suspicion. We are persons of interest. We are..."

"Have you ever been to Florida?"

I blinked at her. "What?"

She shook her damp hair over her shoulders. "I still think our best bet might be to get out of town for a little while."

Struggling with my temper, and with the urge to grab her tanning-bed-basted shoulders and give her a good, brisk shake, I said, "I don't think this is exactly the right moment to be taking a vacation. We're not kids. We can't just ditch everything and drive to Cape Cod."

"But what else are we supposed to do?" She got to her feet and started pacing, leaving wet footprints on my bedroom rug. "We can't look for Dan. We can't just stay here and be sitting ducks." She got to my bedroom door, turned, and walked back to the dresser. "And Dan might not even remember what happened. He could have amnesia..."

"Come on! This isn't Days of Our Lives."

"Or," she continued, "he might not want to talk about what happened. Being tricked, being naked... I'll bet he's just holed up somewhere trying to forget the whole thing, and hoping I don't e-mail his picture to everyone in my address book, which I totally could do. Plus, he was the one who jumped in front of my car." She paused. "I think. Now come on!" she said, bouncing on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet and doing that old cheerleader clap. "You didn't have anything planned for the weekend, did you?"

I opened my mouth, then shut it, then shook my head. "I can't leave Jon."

"So we'll go see him." She opened my closet, stood on her tiptoes, and pulled the single suitcase I own, a small wheeled one that my mother had used for her overnight stays in the hospital, off a shelf. "Underwear?" Before I could answer, she'd opened a drawer and produced a fistful of faded cotton briefs. "Yick. Where's your good stuff?" She rummaged some more and found the pretty, lacy things I'd bought for Vijay that spring, opened the suitcase, and flung them in. "Let's see... swimsuit?"

"In the bathroom," I said. Maybe it was the sleeplessness, or the adrenaline rush of having to deal with the policeman (the cute policeman) in my living room, but I felt like I was nine years old again, like I'd run across the street to stuff a swimsuit in my backpack and that Val and I would soon be off somewhere wonderful.

"Makeup? Face cream?"

"I don't really wear too much, and..."

"Condoms? Pills? Morning-after pills?"

"What kind of vacations do you take?"

"Good ones," she said, giving me a broad wink that reminded me, with an almost dizzying sense of dej vu, of her mother. She rifled through my closet, pulling out a pleated pink sundress, a pale-yellow cardigan, and a pair of lace-up orange espadrilles that I'd bought two summers ago for the unbelievable price of eight dollars, before realizing that they were so cheap because there was no place in my wardrobe or, really, any woman's, for lace-up orange espadrilles. Except maybe Valerie's, I realized as she held the shoes up to the light, turning them this way and that. "Cute."

I grabbed a tote bag from my closet and supplemented Val's random packing (she added a scented candle and some lotion to the suitcase, but hadn't bothered with toothpaste, or a nightgown, or bras) with workout clothes, a few pairs of cotton pants, T-s.h.i.+rts, my vitamins, a sketchbook and a tin of colored pencils, and my favorite photograph of my family. We'd posed on our front steps on my first day of school: me in a navy-blue jumper, Jon in new jeans, my mother in a floaty white sundress, my father in a suit and tie, the four of us smiling into the sun.

Back in the bathroom, Val complained about the low wattage of my blow dryer, then rejected everything in my closet and wriggled back into her foundation garments and slinky red dress. I sat on the bed while she deftly applied foundation and contouring shadow, blush and gloss and eyeshadow and eyeliner and even a few fake eyelashes, all pulled from a zippered case in her giant red bag. "You know, we really should get going," I told her. "Seeing as how we're on the lam and all."

"I have an image to maintain," she said. "Do you think I want to wind up in 'Stars Without Makeup'?" Before I could answer, or point out that she wasn't a star, she stuck the end of an eyebrow pencil into her mouth and started chewing. "We need another car," she mumbled around the pencil.

"We can't take mine?"

She chewed, thinking, then shook her head. "We need a car that's not connected to either one of us."

"Why not?" It hit me as soon as I'd asked: this was real. A crime had been committed. Val had committed a crime, a crime to which I was now an accessory, and instead of doing the right, good-girl thing, instead of telling, the way I always had, I was preparing to throw caution to the wind, I was breaking the rules. I was going for it. It felt, I was surprised to find, pretty good.

"I have an idea."

In the garage, Val helped me pull the tarp off the old station wagon that hunkered down on half-flat tires like an exhausted elderly dinosaur. She wrinkled her nose as I opened the door. "Seriously? Does this thing even have a radio?"

"AM, FM, and a ca.s.sette player," I bragged, sliding behind the wheel, slipping the key into the ignition, and feeling relief flood through me when the engine started up.

Val made a face as she climbed in beside me. "This is very depressing."

"It runs. Beggars can't be choosers." I backed out of the driveway through a cloud of bluish smoke and drove gingerly down the street, plotting my course in my head: the first gas station, where I'd fill the tires and the tank, the exit onto the highway, and my brother.