Joe shook his head. "The wife would have had my head in a sling if I said I was going to the lanes on Christmas Eve, free or not. I had to put together that wagon for little Joey, remember?" He swiveled back to Saint Just. "My grandson. He's three. Wanna see a picture?"
"I would greatly enjoy viewing a photograph, thank you," Saint Just said, and spent the next five minutes looking at an entire foldout string of pictures of a rather pudgy little creature sitting naked in a metal washtub.
But he and Joe were friends now—pals, he imagined Joe might say—and that made it easier to ask the man more questions.
One of the answers Saint Just received two cups of coffee and an hour later, however, shocked even the usually unflappable perfect hero ...
Chapter Seventeen
"Maggie? What happened?" Socks raced to the curb to help her out of the car when he saw the walker come out first, pushed out of the car by Maggie, and helped along with a short, pithy swear word. "I thought you said when you left here that you were going to get one of those walking cast things?"
"So did I," she told him, pulling herself to her feet. "Surprise, surprise. My idea of a walking cast isn't the stupid doctor's idea of a walking cast. I'm allowed to put the foot down, sort of, but still supporting about ninety percent of myself on this damn contraption while I do it. Six more weeks, Socks. I have to have this stupid thing for six more weeks."
"Gee, that's a bummer. Where'd you get the neat bicycle horn? I had one of those things, when I was a kid. Let's hear it, okay?"
Maggie gave the silver horn attached to the walker two quick squeezes on its large red ball end.
Oooga-oooga.
Socks laughed, gave the ball two more squeezes. Oooga-oooga. Oooga-oooga.
"Bernie's idea of a joke. It was in the overnight package you brought up earlier. You'd think she had better things to do, wouldn't you?"
"But you put it on the walker."
"Yeah, I know. I'm as pitiful as she is. A person has to get her jollies somewhere, right? I'm going to go upstairs, now, to shoot myself. Socks, you know anybody who has a gun?"
"Well, didn't J.P. have one?" he suggested, following after her, holding onto her purse.
"Are you kidding? Ask J.P.? She'd probably offer to pull the trigger for me." Maggie almost made it to the door when, in the damp dusk that had fallen over the city, suddenly the sun shone bright.
Except it wasn't the sun. It was television lights, and Holly Spivak was pushing a microphone in her face. Maggie quickly averted her head, shielding her eyes as best she could while trying to maintain her balance.
"And here she is, Fox Live at Four family, our very own Big-Wheels-o'-Bucks jackpot winner, Manhattan's own Maggie Kelly! Maggie, tell my audience, how does it feel to break the bank in Atlantic City?"
"Go ... away," Maggie said, keeping her head turned away from the lights, hoping the cameraman wasn't zeroing in on her backside. Didn't everything look bigger on television?
"Ha-ha," the blond newscaster-cum-predator trilled into the microphone, and then quickly lowered the thing, covered it with her hand. "Work with me, Kelly. We're live here."
"Yeah? How you'd like to be dead here?"
The newscaster laughed nervously. "Always such a card, folks. She's only kidding. Maggie and I go way back, don't we, Maggie. Why, just last month—"
Oooga-oooga-oooga!
Holly put the microphone to her mouth once more even as she raised her right hand to her ear as though listening to someone speak into the earpiece she wore. "What? Oh, right, Miranda. It is time we go to a break. Gotta pay the bills, folks! But we'll be right back with our exclusive interview with the woman who won over three million bucks and had her daddy tossed in the pokey for murder, all in the same day! And you think you have a crazy life? Not compared to Maggie Kelly. Stay tuned, it's a great story. Back to you, Miranda!"
"We're out. Nice juggle. Two minutes, Holly," a disembodied voice called, and Holly grabbed Maggie's upper arm, gave it a squeeze.
"Look," she said, her pleasant on-air voice dropped into its usual flat, Midwestern tones. "You're news, Maggie. You're always news. You and Alex."
Oooga-oooga. Oooga-oooga.
"Sorry, Spivak. Can't hear you."
"Will you knock that off? Where is he, anyway? Alex? My ratings go up when I can put that gorgeous face of his on-air. Now come on, we've got two minutes—less than that."
"My heart breaks for you. Go away."
"I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you. All I want are a couple of comments. You know, on winning? And maybe on your dad? Tough break there, huh? But I'm betting you and Alex are going to get him off. Look how you got your editor friend off—the crazy redhead? Great ratings on that one, let me tell you. Work with me, Maggie, you know Alex would. You want some sympathy for your old man? I can do it. Just let me ask a couple of questions, and I'll have everyone feeling sorry for you. Who knows, you could hit Larry King with this one."
"Gee," Maggie said, resting against the side of the building. "Not Bill O'Reilly? I've always wanted to talk to him. Ask him a few questions. You know, like—who the hell ever let you out from under your rock, Bill-o?"
Holly looked toward her cameraman. "Time? Okay, we've still got some time. It's longer, on the half-hour break. Maggie, not now, don't fight me now. Be a bleeding-heart liberal on your time, not mine, please. I'm trying to help you here. Look over there—see that woman over there?"
She pointed toward the curb and, against her better judgment, Maggie looked. The trim, fairly pretty blond woman of about fifty, balancing precariously on the curb at the moment, smiled at her, waved. "Who's that?"
"Her name's Carol something-or-other. Name!"
"Carol Heinie. Honest to God!" some guy yelled back at her.
"Heinie? Man, I'da changed that in a heartbeat, wouldn't you?" Holly said, turning back to Maggie. "Carol Heinie, Maggie. She works in a jewelry store in Ocean City."
Oooga-ooo —"What? Who?"
Maggie did what she knew had to be a classic double take, goggling at the woman now walking toward them, being gently pushed from behind by a short, fat guy wearing a headset.
"Sixty seconds, Holly."
"How on earth did you—" Maggie asked, getting her first real look at her dad's ... her dad's what? Paramour? Lover? Little chippie? Oh. God.
"She came to me," Holly said, preening. "Totally unsolicited, although I'm going to say I found her, of course. They all come to me, sooner or later. Don't you know that, Maggie? Now come on. A piece of fluff on the jackpot, and then we'll let Carol tell her story. Sound good?"
"How the hell should I know? What's she going to say? What did she tell you?"
"That your dad—Everett, right?"
"Evan," Maggie said, her heart pounding.
"That's good, too. Evan. That he couldn't have murdered this guy in Ocean City, because he was with her, in her apartment with her, at the time of the killing. Good, huh?"
"I think that depends on whether you're Dad's defense lawyer, or his wife," Maggie said, caught between elation and forming a mental picture of her mother's meltdown when she heard the news. No wonder her dad hadn't wanted to tell anyone where he was Christmas Eve. He was protecting Carol. Or himself. Again, depending on who found out—the cops, or Alicia Evans.
"Five minutes, Maggie, Fox Live at Four, on-air in the tristate area, and your dad's off the hook. Ironclad alibi, and she's here to tell everyone her story. It's a gift, Maggie, a gift I'm giving you here."