Despite the pain in her heart, Pescoli said, “Fine. Make the call.” Bianca eyed the phone, and for half a second Pescoli thought her daughter would call her bluff. For another half a second she didn’t care. No fifteen- year-old was going to bully her or try that stupid-ass emotional blackmail on her. She slapped the receiver into her daughter’s free hand.
Bianca sputtered, “They — they won’t believe me. You’re a cop! You’ll twist things around!” She slammed the phone onto the counter, and this time she marched off to her room.
“Slam that door and I’ll take it off its hinges! Bianca, I’m not kidding!”
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered under her breath and left the phone on the counter, then made her way to the garage, where she found Joe’s twenty-plus-year-old toolbox and carried it back inside.
The front door burst open, and all six feet and then some of her son walked inside. A gust of cold wind followed him, and Cisco went nuts again. The little dog yapped and spun in elated circles.
“Hey, Cis,” Jeremy said, bending down and scooping up the wiggling dog in his big, gloved hands. At eleven, Cisco still thought he was a puppy and washed Jeremy’s unshaven face with his eager tongue. “What’s for dinner?”
“I haven’t gotten that far, yet,” Pescoli answered.
“So, what’s going on with Dad’s tools?”
“I was just about to wrestle your sister’s door off its hinges.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t do that.” He set the dog down and pulled off his gloves, then stuffed them in the pockets of his down vest.
“Why not?”
“It’s lame.”
“So is slamming the door so hard, it nearly breaks the jamb.”
He yanked off his stocking cap, and his hair, still filled with static electricity, stood on end, giving him a few more inches and a shocked look.
“You can help,” she suggested.
“No way… uh-uh, I’m staying out of that catfight.”
“What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
He looked suddenly uncomfortable and worked hard at smoothing his hair while avoiding her eyes.
“What happened?”
He hesitated. “Okay, I got laid off.”
Her heart took a nosedive. “Because?”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “Dunno. The economy, I guess.”
“You guess?”
Jeremy heaved a loud sigh, then fell onto the couch. The old springs groaned. Cisco leaped up to his lap, and he absently petted the wriggling dog’s head. “I got fired,” he admitted.
“Fired,” she repeated in a careful voice.
“Lou claims I stole from the station, that the receipts didn’t add up.” Head lowered, he looked up at her from the tops of his eyes. “Swear to God, Mom, I didn’t do it.” His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his big hands clamped over his jean-clad knees.
“You told Lou that?”
“About a hundred times! You know what? I think it’s either Manuel or Lou himself, like maybe he’s covering his ass. Manuel’s a good guy. Really honest. But I thought Lou was, too. Shit!” He gritted his teeth. “How could this happen?”
Her heart was pounding, and a mixture of anger and fear slid through her blood. “I don’t know, Jer, but you have to fix it. Figure it out. If you didn’t do it—”
“
“You didn’t let me finish, Jer. I was saying that if you didn’t do it, then you have to find out who did. Prove it. It couldn’t be that tough. The station has cameras and records of all the transactions.”
“Are you crazy? You think they’re going to let me see any of them?”
“They’ll have to if you sue them and they fight it. Your attorney will—”
“I don’t have an attorney, and I can’t afford one. Get real!” He was starting for the back stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“My room.”
“You moved out, remember?”
“It’s still my room.” Big feet began clomping down the steps.
“I was going to turn it into a sewing room.”
“You don’t even sew!” he yelled up the stairwell.
His door slammed shut, though not with the same righteous, passionate thud as Bianca’s had.
“I’m a failure as a mother,” Pescoli confided to the dog. “A complete and utter failure.” Opening the toolbox, she searched for a screwdriver with which to pry the pins out of Bianca’s door hinges. After digging through the rarely used wire cutters, pliers, and wrenches, she found a large screwdriver with paint drips on it, proof she’d used it to force open stubborn paint cans, and was about to attack the door in question when her cell phone rang.
“Pescoli,” she said as she pressed the talk button.
“Alvarez,” her partner answered her. “I think you should come up to the bluff over Grizzly Falls. Looks like a jogger slipped and fell over the railing up around the park. No ID on her.”
“Dead?”
“Nearly. EMTs are working with her. Probably an accident. It’s slippery as hell out here.”
“Don’t you have enough to do with the cases we’ve already got?” Pescoli asked. “This isn’t even a death yet, much less a homicide.”
“Hmmm. . yeah.”
“Well, it beats what’s going on here,” Pescoli decided. “I’m on my way,” Pescoli said, tossing the screwdriver back into the open toolbox. Clicking off, she yelled loudly toward her daughter’s closed bedroom door, “This is a reprieve, Bianca, but only a short reprieve. I’ll be back.” For once she didn’t change her voice into her pathetic Arnold Schwarzenegger impression.
Today, she figured, it wouldn’t be appreciated.
Cisco trotted after her as she headed for the back door. “Not this time,” she told the dog as she zipped up her insulated jacket and stepped into her boots. She patted him on his furry little head. “Today you’re in charge.” His tail began moving so quickly, his whole rear end nearly gyrated. Then she slipped out the back door to the garage, where her Jeep was still dripping melting snow.
She opened the garage door, slid behind the wheel, and backed out. Jeremy had parked in his usual spot, as if he’d never taken a stab at moving out. There was a part of her that wanted him back home, but that was a purely emotional mother response. She knew better, had witnessed some of her friends allowing their kids to yo-yo in and out of the house.
That wasn’t for her.
The kid had to start making some serious choices.
She threw her Jeep into gear, hit the remote on the visor, and saw the garage door begin to close.
How had it come to this, where she and her kids were forever testing each other, and they were determined to make the wrong choices? Last year, when she’d been in the clutches of a madman, thinking she would never see either of her children again, she’d vowed to make it up to them, to either turn in her badge or change her ways, work only a forty-hour week, put her family above all else. And her kids, too, had promised to change their self- involved habits, to walk the straight and narrow, get good grades, make the right choices, never give her a minute’s grief.
All those New Year’s Eve vows had been broken by Valentine’s Day, and they’d slipped into their same old, dysfunctional routines.
Maybe she’d made a mistake by not moving in with Santana. Maybe a strong male role model was just what Jeremy and Bianca needed.
