“Negative. Dr. Kurth hypothesizes that Mrs. O’Malley had some sort of undiagnosed heart disease, perhaps an abnormal rhythm or a blockage in her coronary arteries, and her rising heart rate, brought on by the stress of the roller coaster ride, and its coincident inducement of a fight-or-flight rush of adrenaline, caused her myocardial infarction.”
In other words, she scared herself to death because she had a bum ticker to begin with.
“It’d be good to see Skippy,” I say. “I’m sure he’ll be there. His dad makes him work Sunday to Sunday during the summer. Won’t give him a day off. I hope he can go to his mom’s funeral on Friday.”
“I feel certain Mr. O’Malley will want all his children there.”
And that’s when another one of the O’Malley boys walks up the sidewalk.
He’s with a friend.
A guy friend.
It’s Peter O’Malley. The gay sheep of the family.
10
“Hey, Peter? Peter O’Malley?”
He stops. Sighs. Gives me this look. “Yes?”
“I’m Danny Boyle, friend of your brother.”
“Which one? I am blessed with so many.”
“Skip.”
“Congratulations.”
His friend-this macho, macho man with a shaved head, handlebar mustache, wearing a sleeveless leather vest-smirks at me. I peg Peter to be a year or two younger than Skippy. His mustachioed friend? Hard to tell. He has that ageless bad boy biker look.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” says Peter, “we want to take a body sculpt class.”
“You have our condolences on your loss,” says Ceepak, tucking his bike helmet under his arm.
“Yes,” says Peter, “it’s a very unfortunate turn of events. So many people wanted to wring my mother’s neck. Now they’ll never get the chance.”
Biker Boy snickers. Jostles his hip to the left, which sends the chain attached to his wallet swinging.
“I take it you had issues with your mother?” Ceepak says to Peter.
“No, officer-she had issues with me.”
“Come on, Peter,” says his leather-loving friend. “Class is starting. You want to look buff in your funeral suit, don’t you?”
They hold hands and head for the door.
“Maybe we could kiss in front of her coffin,” says Peter, “give mommy dearest another heart attack!”
The glass doors whoosh shut behind them.
“Interesting,” says Ceepak.
“Yeah,” I say, as I watch Peter and his leathery friend through the plate glass windows. “So far, we’re two for two.”
“Indeed. The two O’Malley children we have spoken to both seem happy that their mother is dead.”
“You sure about the M.E.’s report? Maybe Peter or Sean poisoned Mrs. O’Malley, gave her a drug that just made it look like she had a heart attack.”
“Doubtful,” says Ceepak. “And, as you recall, Peter was nowhere near the roller coaster yesterday morning.”
“True. But maybe he used some kind of slow-acting poison that mimics a heart attack.”
Ceepak gives me his double-eyebrows-up, extremely skeptical look. “Are you suggesting that, some time prior to ten A.M., Peter O’Malley administered a lethal dose of a drug perfectly timed to kill his mother during the inaugural run of the Rolling Thunder roller coaster?”
“Well, what if it was time-release, slow-acting, heart-attack-mimicking poison?”
Hey, if I’m going to stretch logic, I might as well stretch it till it snaps.
“Then, Danny, we should’ve asked the M.E. to do a tox screen for such a poison. As you know, tests for specific toxins must be requested or they won’t be done. As a sidebar-I know of no known poison with all the properties you suggest it might possess.”
“I guess I just don’t like all these O’Malley’s saying bad things about their dead mother.”
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“I suspect they were saying these things long before she died.”
Ceepak straps on his helmet, hops on his eighteen-speed bike, and heads for home.
I’m supposed to meet him and Rita at King Putt at three P.M.
Figures Ceepak would schedule an outdoor activity involving physical exertion for the hottest part of the day.
I decide to head into the gym. Hey, I paid my monthly membership fee so I figure I should step inside Beach Bods at least once during the month of May, which is almost over.
I show the girl behind the front desk my I.D. card.
“Are you interested in Chi Gung Yoga or the Total Body Sculpt class that just started?”
“Nah,” I say. “I just thought I’d lift a few weights. Grunt a little.”
She hands me a towel. “Enjoy your workout.”
Yeah. Right. Like that’s going to happen. I enjoy a cold beer. A hot slice of pizza. I do not enjoy voluntary artificial exertion.
I head over to the dumbbells and grab a pair of ten-pound weights to do a few bicep curls in front of the mirrored wall. I figure I could save my gym fees by going back to the Acme and lifting a few ten-pound sacks of sugar. Work my way up to the pet food aisle and those fifty-pound bags of kibble.
Behind me, in the mirror, I see Gail Baker over on a blue rubber mat where some people do stretches and stuff. She’s wearing what looks like black Spandex underwear: a sports bra and sporty short shorts.
One of the Beach Bods trainers, a guy with a chin dimple goatee and Tibetan tattoo sleeves on both arms, has one hand on the small of Gail’s back, the other on her extremely taut stomach, to coach her through a series of deep knee bends.
I stroll across the gym floor and pretend like I’m interested in the Smith machine, this piece of equipment that has a barbell fixed inside steel rails so you can slide the weights up and down to do your squats or bench presses without dropping everything on your head. I load it up with two twenty-pound disks so I can be closer to Gail.
You gaze at her incredible body, you want to look better naked.
While I’m slipping the weights onto the bar, I hear Gail tell her trainer, “Anyway, I can’t slack off. Need to keep looking good.”
“Then we’ll work extra hard today.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
She does a few forward lunges.
Mike steps back, admires her form.
“Hey,” he says, as Gail switches lunge legs, “if you’re free this week, we should hang out.”
“Maybe,” says Gail. “Sounds like fun.”
She stands up. Mike moves in and massages the top of her shoulders.
“I’d stretch you out afterwards. Give you a deep-tissue massage.”
Gail laughs.
“So, when can we, you know, hook up?”
Gail does a flirty sideways twist so her breasts brush against muscle man’s biceps.
“Like I said, I’m free any night or day this week. After that, I’m fully committed till July.”
“Let me check my book. See if I can fit you in. Okay, on your back. Time for crunches.”
