“Oh. It’s you.”
“Ma’am?” says Ceepak, striding up the walkway to the front steps. “What seems to be the problem?”
Shona waggles a disgusted hand at Christine. “This one. She has the nerve to invade my privacy …”
“It’s Samuel’s birthday,” says Christine.
“So?” says Shona.
“I didn’t want him to think I’d forgotten.”
“Well, we’d all rather you did. You are not welcome here, Christine. And if you keep harassing me and my family, I will have another Restraining Order issued against you and this time it’ll stick!”
Christine tries to hand the shiny package to Shona. “Will you at least give this to Samuel?”
“Hell, no. It’s probably poison. Like the stuff you gave to Arnold Rosen.”
“Actually,” says Ceepak, climbing up the steps to put his big body between Shona and Christine, “we currently suspect that your brother-in-law, David, was the one who poisoned Dr. Rosen.”
“I know. Judith called me. Are all the cops in this town as crazy as you two?”
“No,” I say, hiking up the steps to stand beside Ceepak. “We’re special.”
I take Christine by the elbow and give her a police escort down to her parked vehicle.
“You can drop your gift off with Kurt in the guardhouse,” I whisper. “He’ll make sure it gets delivered.”
“It’s a game Samuel wanted. For his X-box.”
“Awesome.”
I hold open the door to Christine’s ride.
“David killed his father?” she says after she slides in behind the wheel.
“Yeah. We think so.”
“That’s horrible.”
“That it is.”
While the two of us take a moment to ponder the monstrosity of what David Rosen did, up on the porch, I can hear poor Ceepak asking Shona Oppenheimer if she “wants to press trespassing charges.”
“I’m thinking about it!”
“Then,” Ceepak says, “you should know, since your property is not marked, fenced in, or enclosed and I observe no notice against trespassing being otherwise given …”
Ceepak. I love when he sticks it to people and they don’t even know he’s telling them to sit on it and rotate.
“Go back to Becca’s,” I suggest to Christine. “Ceepak and I have a bunch of loose ends to tie up.”
“I have one more gift to deliver.”
“For who?”
“Ceepak’s mom. I know she’s from Ohio and Pudgy’s Fudgery does chocolate Buckeyes. There’s peanut butter in the middle …”
“Save me one,” I say.
She smiles. “I will.”
I back Ceepak’s ride out of the driveway so Christine can pull out, too.
As I watch her putter away in the rearview mirror, my cell phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Um, officer Boyle?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Arnie Rosen.”
“Hey, Arnie. Everything okay?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Officer Santucci is out front …”
“I know. But they snuck out the back.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad and that old guy who runs the Free Fall. He’s helping Dad run away.”
63
“I guess I should’ve called sooner,” says Arnie.“But that old guy, he’s scary.”
Yeah. Tell me about it.
That old guy is, of course, Joe “Six Pack” Ceepak.
“He said, ‘Boy, you need to be a man. Don’t call the cops. I heard what people are saying about your Pops. Him and me need to make a run for the border.’ And then, my mother, she said, ‘You heard him, Arnold. Not a word about this to anybody.’ So, it took me like ten minutes to figure out what I should do. Call you.”
Arnie is whispering all this. Probably doesn’t want his mother to know that he did the right thing. He called the cops.
“You’re in your room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Lock the door. Don’t open it till you know for sure that Officer Santucci or his partner, a nice lady named Cath Hoffner, are on the other side. Can you do that for me, Arnie?”
“Yeah. I guess. But Mister Santucci doesn’t even know Dad is gone because he didn’t see them sneak out. See, he’s out front and they cut through the backyard to our back-door neighbor’s yard and then they ran up their driveway to Swordfish Street.”
“You saw all this, Arnie?”
“Yeah. A while ago, I heard Mom being all sweet with Dad so, you know, I thought everything was all better. I went into the living room. Mom was hugging Dad but the Free Fall guy was in there, too.”
“What did the Free Fall guy say?”
“That they’d fry Dad in the electric chair for killing his father.”
Great. Mr. Ceepak couldn’t be content with scarring his own son for life, now he’s got to give young Arnold Rosen nightmares, too?
“I watched them run away from out on the deck.”
“And then what?”
“My mother told me to get my butt in the house. That I should be proud of my father for finally doing what needed to be done.”
I hear Arnie sob a little.
“Did my dad really kill my grandfather?”
I’m not Ceepak so I go ahead and lie a little. “We’re not sure about that, Arnie. So, do me a favor, and stay in your room, like I said. I’m going to call Officer Santucci. He or his partner, they’re going to take you and your mom to the police station.”
“Why?”
“You can help us protect your dad better at the police station, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Hang tight.”
“Okay. Oh, Mr. Boyle?”
“Yeah?”
“I think the Free Fall guy has a gun.”
“Did you see a weapon?”
“No, but he told Dad he didn’t have to worry about the cops and tapped his jacket, like that tough guy does in the
“Okay. Thanks for that. That’s very important.”
“Officer Boyle?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let that creepy old guy shoot you. I think he’s kind of crazy.”
