“Think Roger is OCD?”
“I think maybe. But it’s not a ‘germ’ thing. I mean, he shook your hand. Shook my hand. Plays cards all the time with Mona. Maybe he’s just a clean freak.”
I’d heard of those — clean freaks. But I’d thought they were just a myth — like Big Foot and the Abominable Snowman and Size Doesn’t Matter. My mind drifted back to my own abode back in Marport City for a minute — socks under the bed, dust on the ceiling fan….
“Eddie, on the other hand,” Dylan continued, “is a slob. The biggest slob ever.”
That kind of surprised me. Big Eddie was an ex-military man. You’d think he’d be all about order. Precision. “You were in Eddie’s apartment?”
“No, I was in his storage room.”
“Did you snoop around?”
“Dix! What do you take me for?”
“Oh, good.” I was tired. My back was sore. I lay down on the bed while Dylan talked, punching the pillow for emphasis as I did. “What’d you find?”
“Big Eddie keeps a lot of crap in there. Nothing spectacular, though. Few dozen girlie magazines tucked in with the golf mags. Golf balls, of course. And all kinds of paint, including that butt-ugly color they used for the hallway Big Eddie has me painting tomorrow. Brushes, lawn feed, garden hoses, crack fill, sealant, plaster. You know, standard repair stuff.”
“Seems Edward Baskin is a regular jack of all trades,” I said.
“Yeah, but nothing gets done.” Dylan snorted. “He’s a slack Jack.”
“Find out anything else of interest today?” I said this through a yawn. A powerful one. It had been a late night, I’d been woken up early. And, well, just the running around and tension and mental alertness the day had required.
“Nothing concrete. Nothing absolute….” He pulled a hand over his stubbled chin. He looked down at his hands then back to me again. Whatever it was, Dylan didn’t want to tell me. Which meant, of course, it had to be bad news.
“Come on. Out with it.”
“You’re mother’s been selling off the rights to your father’s songs. She sold the rights to six in the last four months.”
My eyes shot wide. My jaw dropped. It was one thing for mother to get royalties for songs, but to out-and- out sell the rights? This didn’t sound like Mother.
I had heard a remake of one of Dad’s old songs on an FM station about a month ago. I hadn’t liked it. And I hadn’t mentioned it to Mother for it was always my understanding that she approved or disapproved who performed his work.
And why hadn’t she told me about it? At least it explained the big deposits to her bank account Dylan had discovered.
“Another thing. Everyone thinks your mother is guilty.”
He shrugged. “Nearly. Not Mona Roberts. But nobody else has a kind thing to say about your mother. No one. Harriet Appleton is especially nasty toward her.”
“Fuck.” I shook my pillowed head. “What is it with people? Why are they so quick to jump on a bandwagon? To gang up and kick someone when she’s down? Well, I’m just going to have to do a little kicking myself. You just —”
“Sshhh! Quiet, Dix.” With a roll off the bed and a thump of his feet on the floor, he was standing between the motel room bed and the window. He gave a quick nod to the bedside lamp and I quickly snapped it off, then joined him at the window.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear….
But Lance-a-Lot with net in hand, skimming the pool for debris. Only, not the Lance-a-Lot I was expecting. Gone were the happy Speedos. Instead, Lance was wearing loose fitting cargo pants, a sweatshirt two sizes too big hanging low. He even donned bug-eyed glasses. Oh my God, and Velcro shoes!
Two young women walked by him. I recognized the first — Rosie Sinatra — the gal who’d been at the desk when Dylan checked in the other night. Her friend I didn’t recognize, but she wore the same beige shorts and pink short-sleeve blouse as Rosie, so I assumed she too was on staff at the Goosebump Inn. The girls walked by Lance. But they didn’t just walk by. They gave him a hella wide berth. Lance didn’t so much as glance up at either of them.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Dylan.
“Ah, you recognize him too! I thought you might not, considering the change in his….”
“Attire?” I offered.
“Yeah, we’ll go with that.”
“So, Lance-a-Lot, aka Lance Devinney, has himself another job, huh? Cleaning pools on the side.”
“Yeah, Rosie says he does a shitload of pools around. Freelances. She says he’s kind of creepy. Never says a word. Never looks at anyone. Just comes in, does his job, and drives away.”
The fact that Lance cleaned pools in addition to his diving work didn’t strike me as strange, but the rest of it did. “Why would he compose himself so differently?” I asked. “Why act so differently in the two places? Why dress it up for the ladies at the Wildoh and dress down so for the younger crowd?”
Dylan shrugged. He dropped the curtain back into place. I sat down on the bed. “Maybe he’s just into older women.”
“Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Dylan sputtered. “I mean, a younger man and an older woman. Not that you’re older as in ‘older’ older. Just thinking maybe Lance liked the really old ones. Not the … older ones. Not that you’re, like, older….” He cleared his throat.
Cleared it again (and oh I bit down on the you’re-off-the-hook grin that threatened to break).
“So,” he said, changing the subject by the best means on earth. “Let’s get to work on this.” He withdrew the white board from the pile of supplies in the corner. Of all the handy dandy gadgets we’d brought, this — a tool for our minds — was still the one we turned to most.
And so we did again.
Hours later, we had six dozen stick people, lines crossed in and crossed out, diagrams that got down right rude by times (well, Dylan was the one who handed me the marker). We’d drawn up a dozen scenarios. Tens of possibilities. A few possible theories.
It was a start. A damn good start.
“Sleep over, Dix.”
Normally, this would have gotten a jolt out of me. But when Dylan muttered the words at around two in the morning, the look in his bleary eyes told me sex was the farthest thing from his mind. And mine, by this point. Plus, I knew I’d wake Mrs. P up if I went back to Mother’s. She’d told me to sleep over here. And she did pack my PJs….
He nodded to a clunky looking chair in the corner. “I’ll sleep there if you’d feel more comfortable.”
I glanced over to the world’s most uncomfortable looking contraption. Dylan wouldn’t get a wink of sleep on that, and I sure as hell wouldn’t sleep there.
“We can share the bed.”
“You sure?”
My heart sped. My mind shifted in a hundred different directions at once. Then braked in safety. “But like you said, Dylan … it’s complicated.”
“I said it’s complicated
Yeah, he had.
I grabbed the PJ bag and headed to the bathroom. You know, Mrs. P is tough as nails. Make no mistake about it. But sometimes she can be kind of, well, nice. Like taking the spaghetti over to Mona. Packing a goodie basket for Dylan. Packing my toothbrush and toothpaste and….
