"Oh, yeah? Really?" Maggie said, pushing herself to her feet—foot, anyway. "I'm on one foot, sure, not able to run away. But tell me something, Novack. Did you happen to notice this guy with me, huh? The tall, athletic one with a freaking sword in his hand, pointed at you? We're not going to do anything I don't want to do. Not now, not ever. Not unless you want me to sic him on you."
"I begin to believe, sweetings, that this hero-to-the-rescue business has begun to go to at least one of our heads," Alex told her dryly, not taking his eyes, or his sword, off Novack. "I remember a time when you weren't quite so comfortable depending on me."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't hopping around in this stupid cast then, either," Maggie pointed out, still rather heady with her earlier bravado at the police station and at her mother's house. "Novack? You still here? Why are you still here? Oh, I know. You want to ask me how I broke my foot, right?"
"What the hell do I care how you broke your damn foot?"
Maggie grinned. "Don't do that. I could begin to like you, Novack. Tell me something—how many miles a charge do you get on that thing?"
"You stole my machine. You stole my jackpot."
"Mr. Novack," Alex said, lowering the sword to his side, "you become wearisome, not to mention redundant."
"You've got money," Novack went on, as if Alex hadn't spoken. "I Googled you, too. The great Cleo Dooley. You didn't need that jackpot. I need that jackpot. Sam says you'll pay me, just so I don't sue. Just so you can keep your face out of the papers and off the news, because the great Cleo Dooley can't be seen as cheap, and a cheater. Especially not with her daddy in the slammer for murder. And me handicapped, too. That's the topper."
"Who's Sam?" Maggie asked, subsiding onto the wooden stair once more. She'd had worse days, but she couldn't think of any of them at the moment.
"My lawyer, that's who Sam is," Henry Novack crowed in some satisfaction. "My brother's second daughter's husband's cousin—and he's smart, too."
"It's possible, seeing as how he's not your blood relative," Maggie said, reaching into her pocket for her empty nicotine inhaler.
"Sam says Fox News eats up stuff like this. And that blonde with the bulgy eyes on CNN? Her, too. What's her name? I can't remember. Haircut like she belongs on one of them Dutch Boy paint can labels. Now there's a real barracuda for you. They'd all want me on the air."
"I'll just bet they would," sparing a moment to think of Alex's "pal" at New York's Fox News, Holly Spivak. She wasn't Nancy Grace, thank God—the barracuda—but she sure did love a juicy bit of scandal. Maggie searched through her purse for her very last, hoarded, nicotine cylinder. And people who couldn't get through stressful days without their caffeine or their daily booze wondered why other people smoked ...
"Every week, I play that machine. Every week since the day the machines went in. Do you know how much money I've put through that machine?"
"Maybe you should have used that money to join a health club instead," Maggie muttered under her breath, figuring the man weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. No wonder he used a cart—he could have used a U-Haul.
"Mr. Novack," Alex said, stepping in front of Maggie. "Impressed as we both are by your tenacity, if not your arguments, we would appreciate it greatly if you were to, um, retire from the field for the night. Now, what would it take, Mr. Novack, for you to do just that, hmm?"
"Here it comes," Maggie muttered, then sucked on her inhaler.
"I want to talk, that's what I want. I want to deal. You deal, you do right by me, and I won't talk to reporters anymore."
"Oh, God, Alex," Maggie moaned. "Can't I just pay him?"
"Hush, sweetings." He stepped closer to the street even as he sheathed his sword, sliding it back inside the cane. "As you have told us you know about Miss Kelly's other problems, and as tomorrow—today—is Christmas, I believe we would like very much to postpone our conversation until Boxing Day, if that's agreeable to you."
"Boxing Day? When the hell is that? There's no fights scheduled at Caesar's until January, I know that much. Is there one at the old Convention Hall? Who's on the fight card? Any heavyweights?"
Maggie eased back against the steps, giggling. Sometimes, she thought almost hysterically, you just had to roll with the punches.
"December the twenty-sixth, Mr. Novack," Alex explained. "Somewhere discreet."
"Oh, okay. Why didn't you just say so? Boxing Day? That's some English thing, right? And I'm not a monster, ya know," Henry Novack said, his go-cart beeping as he backed away from the curb. "I got feelings, too, ya know. I just want what's mine. Okay, okay. Day after Christmas, right here in Ocean City, up on the Boardwalk. We'll meet in front of the Music Pier, off Eighth Street. Nobody's going to be there at night. Too cold, right? Midnight good for you? It's good for me."
"Oh, for crying out loud, Alex. The guy thinks he's freaking Deep Throat on a go-cart, or something. And not on the twenty-sixth. That's the day of my appointment to get this foot X-rayed, get into a walking cast, remember? I have to drive back to the city. Make it the twenty-seventh. At eight o'clock. Otherwise Dad would want to know why we're going out so late."
Novack put the go-cart in drive, bumped at the curb. "Now you're putting me off, aren't you? Hoping I'll go away. Not happening, cupcake. You go to the city, sure, but you'd better come back, because I know where you live. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I'm going to be watching you. I'm your worst nightmare."
Okay, fun was fun, and all that, but fun time was now over. Maggie grabbed the walker and stood up. "Buddy, you don't even come close to being my worst nightmare, so just take a number and get in line, okay. I said we'd be there, and we'll be there. The twenty-seventh, eight o'clock, at the Music Pier. Pin a red midsize Buick to your lapel, so I recognize you. Now go away."
Alex watched until the go-cart had turned the corner before walking back over to Maggie and allowing her to steady herself against his shoulder while he folded the walker, slid it up and over his shoulder, then lifted her into his arms.
"A midsize Buick?" he asked her, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.
"I know. That was pretty good, wasn't it? But he made me so mad."
"You're not meeting with that lunatic, you know," he told her as he carried her up the stairs. "I'm meeting with him."
Maggie snuggled her face into his neck. "Are we going to fight about this? Because I'm going. I know I don't owe the man. Not really, not legally. But I do feel sorry for him. I never would have sat down at that machine if he hadn't been such a jerk."
"You can't give him money, Maggie. He'll keep coming back for more, over and over again. He's gone beyond a rather pathetic man with bad luck, and graduated into stalking and a strange form of blackmail. That cannot be countenanced. Reach down and open the door, if you will, please."
Maggie did as he asked, then held on tight as Alex climbed the first half flight, turned on the landing, and mounted the second half flight leading to her father's door. Bless the man, he wasn't even breathing hard when they reached the second floor. That did a lot for her female ego. "So why did you suggest we meet with him? Are you planning to scare him off somehow? Threaten him?"
He put her down, opened the walker for her. "I've not as yet formed a strategy. Are you planning to adopt him?"
"No, of course not," Maggie said angrily, grabbing the walker. "I'm ... I don't know what I'm planning. Cynthia says I can't pay him. You say I can't pay him. I don't know what to do with him. I just know I don't want him following me around everywhere in that stupid go-cart like some motorized Lassie until we figure out some sort of solution that makes him go away. Did you take the key with you when we went to Mom's?"