"I stand by my first impression. That is sick. So what's my dad been looking for?"
Saint Just picked up his cup of coffee once more. "Similar evidence of marital infidelity?"
"No, that can't be it. That makes them both voyeurs. I can't live with that, so I'm not going to believe it. They're just nosy. And don't correct me. I write fiction. I like fantasy, happy endings. Anything else is too real, especially this early in the morning. Lower the blinds, will you? I don't like being on display. Or would that be too obvious?"
"Too obvious by half, yes."
"Damn, I think so, too. Well, then let's just behave normally, like we don't know she's out there. And, boy, is she out there. Oh, good," she added, raising her voice, "there's more coffee. You made the coffee, Alex? Thank you so much. I believe I'll have some coffee now."
"Yes, I did indeed prepare the coffee. There's really no end to my talents, once I apply myself. But, as you playact, sweetings, remember that we are only, in a way of speaking, on video, and not audio."
"You'd hope so, wouldn't you. I don't know how good Mom is. They sell a lot of weird things at Radio Shack these days. Do you think Mom can read lips from that distance?"
Saint Just smiled at her pained grimace. "Sterling, by the way, has gone in search of donuts, as your brother failed so miserably to do so last night. Your father went with him. I've asked that they procure copies of all the morning newspapers, as I'm convinced you'll wish to read them."
"I guess I have to. As long as a picture of my dad doing the perp walk in leg shackles isn't above the fold. Anyway," she said, balancing on one foot as she spooned three sugars into her coffee as Saint Just manfully suppressed a wince, "Dad can't be watching to see if Mom is up to any hanky-panky. Walt Hagenbush died three years ago."
He took her coffee cup and placed it on the table for her. "I beg your pardon? Who?"
"Thank you." Maggie slid onto the slick, curved plastic cushion of the built-in bench and table that fit below a rather lovely bow window. The garishly flowered plastic, however, seemed an unfortunate choice. "Mom's lover, Alex, remember? That's what started all of this in the first place."
"Ah, yes, I believe I can recall that now," Saint Just said, sitting down across from her as she scooted farther onto the bench and rested her casted leg on a display of unnaturally large begonias. "Vaguely."
Maggie slid her forearms forward on the tabletop, the mug with the words "Lefties Do It Better" grasped between her palms. "On the occasion of their fortieth wedding anniversary this past summer, Mom decided to make a clean breast of things and tell Dad about an affair she had with Walt Hagenbush ten years earlier. That's when everything started to go off the rails. Coming clearer now?"
"Yes, it is. I had attempted to banish such intimate knowledge of your family's domestic travails from my memory, I'm afraid. Your father, worried over the admission of your mother's foray into infidelity, decided that the only way he could ever find it in his heart to forgive her would be if he had an affair of his own. Enter Carol, the jewelry shop clerk."
"The little chippie, as Mom calls her, yes. And exit Dad, to this place, when Mom found out about it," Maggie said, lifting the coffee cup to her lips. She took a sip, frowned, and asked Saint Just to please bring the sugar bowl and the spoon over to the table for her.
This time, as Maggie added another heaping teaspoonful of sugar to the cup, Saint Just did wince. But he did politely refrain from pointing out that it might be easier if the dear woman simply poured coffee into the sugar bowl, rather than the other way round.
"So your father couldn't have been watching your family home to ascertain whether or not your mother had taken up a romantic association with the late Walt Hagenbush once more. Leaving us to assume that he may have been watching the condo and saw her—"
"Playing house with Walter Bodkin," Maggie finished for him, subsiding against the back cushion of the banquette. "What is it with men named Walter, anyway? Does my mother have some kind of a name fetish? No, don't answer that. And I mean that sincerely. A daughter should never say the words mother and fetish in the same sentence, not if the daughter hopes ever to be able to look that mother in the face again."
"We have to look at this thing logically, Maggie."
"I know that. But it's not easy for a daughter to think sordid and Mommy and Daddy at the same time. Hell, I think I was twenty-one before I'd finally given up the fantasy that my parents had four kids, which meant they'd had sex four times. God, Alex, I'm going to be seeing Doctor Bob every week for the rest of my unnatural life, I swear it."
"But you are thinking about the situation now, correct? I'd forgotten the late and unlamented Mr. Hagenbush, but this might come down to your mother having an affair, your father having a revenge affair, and your mother then launching a double-revenge affair. You know, Maggie, this scenario has all the earmarks of a two-part Doctor Phil special."
"Bite your tongue! So what you're saying—what you think the cops could say—is that Dad saw Mom and Bodkin—we'll just call him Bodkin, because Walter is too confusing—and offed him?"
"They might think that, yes. Shall we dispose of the binoculars? Or, at the very least, relocate them?"
"Tampering with evidence. We can't do that," Maggie muttered, her brow creased, as she appeared to be deep in thought. "Besides, this is a pretty small town, especially in the winter, with the tourists gone and half the condos empty. If Mom was ... with Bodkin, someone would have seen them, and someone would most probably have told Dad. Mom said Dad did it for her—killed Bodkin for her, that is. Not because of her, because she was having an affair, but for her. That doesn't quite fit, does it?"
She looked toward the doorway. "He's got to talk to us this morning. Be honest with us. He looks guilty, refusing to tell anyone where he was last night. And Cynthia is just going to tell him not to say anything to anybody, so we have to get to him first. How long ago did he and Sterling leave?"
Saint Just glanced up at the wall clock. "No more than forty-five minutes ago, I'd say. I wasn't particularly paying attention. That was lax of me. Perhaps I was still quietly rhapsodizing about the woman I'd just left and the pleasant memory of a most remarkable interlude."
"We had sex, Alex. And this damn cast didn't make it easy, either," Maggie said, rolling her eyes as she struggled to stand up. "So enough with the romantic interlude business, and definitely enough with sitting here, pretending we don't know Mom is playing secret agent with us in her sights. Take my coffee cup into the living room for me, will you, please? My leg will be more comfortable on the couch. I can hop, but I still can't juggle worth a darn."
His Maggie was so easily flustered in the daylight. Thankfully, not once they were alone together, in the dark. But it was early days yet, he'd give her all the time she needed. Saint Just brushed his fingertips across the back of her neck as he led the way past the doorway, and into the living room of the condo. "Call it what you will, sweetings. I know what it was."
"Yeah, well ... okay," Maggie said, tagging after him, her casted left leg bent at the knee, her right foot bare, and probably cold on the tile floor. "Hey, where are you going? Aren't you going to stay here with me? Aren't we going to talk about this some more?"
"Then you do wish to discuss our romantic interlude?" Saint Just inquired, pausing at the short half flight of steps that led up to the three bedrooms in the condo apartment. "Anything you wish, Maggie."
She fell backward onto the couch, then struggled to sit upright, grabbed her coffee mug once more. "Ha. Ha. I meant Dad. And Mom. And the two of them spying on each other. That's creepy. Don't you think that's creepy? If they don't care about each other, why watch each other?"