The
Black Knight Squash Fiction League Match #2
The Handouts versus The Tin Ringers
EAST
SIDE A
Collaborative Novel
Chapter 17 Pike’s Pique by Jeanne Woods
A smiling Hank was
bidding farewell to Lotte Van Alstyne, thinking about the calls he’d
make to the newly defected members when Yvette approached, flanked by
two men who looked like cops. Lotte took this as her cue to leave,
saying they’d talk soon to begin working on plans for the new East Side.
The men dismissed Yvette with a “Thanks, we’ll take it from here.” Yvette retreated several steps.
“Mr. Reynolds, I’m
Detective Fazio and this is Sgt. Connor with the NYPD. Can you tell us
where you were night before last, Saturday, between 5:00 PM and
midnight?” asked Fazio, the better dressed of the two.
“WHAT? What the hell! You think I attacked my own daughter?”
The two men exchanged a
quick look, “No sir, we don’t know anything about your daughter, but we
do wonder if you killed your ex-wife.”
“This is crazy! Kate is
my daughter, not my ex-wife. And she’s not dead. She’s still in the
hospital. They kept her there to pin her wrist, they--they had to get
the swelling down first. I’m supposed to pick her up in twenty five
minutes. That creep attacked her. You should be out looking for him!”
Again, the quick look
between the cops. “We’re not here about your daughter, Mr. Reynolds,
but if the police were called I’m sure the matter is under
investigation. Mr. Reynolds, are you aware that your ex-wife, Margaret,
was killed sometime Saturday night?”
Hank steadied himself
with the edge of his desk, color draining from his cheeks. “Jesus…”
Amid the rush of thoughts and feelings was a stab of guilt for those
angry fantasies of Margaret slipping on the cosmic banana peel--of
simply ceasing to exist.
“Mr. Reynolds, it’s
standard procedure, when a woman is murdered, to question the husband,
ex-husband, and boyfriends of the deceased. So please, just tell us
where you were Saturday between 5:00 PM and midnight.
Hank struggled to
understand the situation. Kate attacked. Margaret murdered the same
night. “I left the club about 6:30. Yvette,” Hank nodded in her
direction, “and I went to dinner and then back to her place until about
1:00 AM when I got a call from my daughter, Kate. She’d been attacked
outside Chelsea Piers. She was frightened, crying... I went straight to
NYU Hospital—they had to pin a bone in her wrist and she…”
“What time did you meet your friend, Miss ahh…?”
“Towers. She met
me here at about 6:00…” He shook his head, ran a hand through his
graying hair, “What happened to Margaret? Where was she?”
Fazio relented
slightly, “A cleaning lady discovered the body this morning in an
apartment on the upper west side. Head trauma. Mr. Reynolds, when did
you last see or speak with your ex-wife?”
“I haven’t seen her in about four years, but we spoke briefly on the phone a few weeks ago. About our daughter…
“Did you try to call her about your daughter’s incident?
“No, Kate asked me not to. They’re--they were estranged...”
“Mr. Reynolds, how would you characterize your relationship with your ex-wife?”
“Not cordial.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your ex-wife?’
“No. I don’t know anything about her life anymore.”
“O.K., here’s my card.
Call me if you think of anything I should know, and don’t leave town in
case we need to speak to you further. I’ll have a word with, uh,”
looking at his note pad, “Miss Towers.”
______________
Run-limping from the
scene of the thwarted attack, Pike had finally managed to find the
black Denali in the parking garage. He sat behind the wheel weighing
his next moves and cursing his luck as he caressed his throbbing knee. That bloody tattooed roller dyke...
Then, oddly it seemed, he thought about his mother, whom he’d barely
thought of in years. Only impressions remained. She was pretty and
tall, but then everyone is tall when you’re seven. He mainly remembered
was how empty the house had looked when he got home from school that
day, and the beating he’d received from his dad. He brushed the thought
away with a small flick of his hand.
He would return to the
apartment, liberate a few choice and readily negotiable items, remove
any traces of his presence and get some ice on the knee. Then it was
time to get out of the city. His knee was in no condition for moving a
body, not to mention the logistics of getting her from the 12th floor
to the basement garage, unseen. He’d leave Margaret in the apartment
and hope no one finds her for a few days. He’d regroup at Margaret’s
house on Long Island where he was sure to find other merchantable
items. He knew of a “fence” nearby where he could convert his booty
into traveling cash. Miami, maybe. Or New Orleans. Some place warm with lots of flesh on display, he thought.
Pike then remembered he
had unintentionally pocketed Margaret’s cell phone and needed to ditch
the battery. He checked his pockets. Bloody fookin’ hell, I must have dropped it in the scuffle with Kate or that bloody roller slut!
He pounded the steering wheel with the heels of his hands, screaming a
long, much hyphenated curse on womankind. If the wrong party had picked
up that phone he had a problem.
All but sputtering,
Pike peeled out of the parking space, clipping the fender of an
Escalade and activating its alarm. The exit gate was unattended, so he
ploughed through the gate arm and, momentarily forgetting that
Americans drive in the right-hand lane, pulled into on-coming traffic.
He narrowly dodged a large truck with a very loud and persistent horn.
Swerving into the “proper” lane he nearly side-swiped a BMW,
engendering more honking and one-finger salutes which, for the first
time he could remember, he let slide.
By the time he reached
the parking slip in the basement of the apartment building Pike’s first
priority was a couple of oxycodones and a stiff drink. The drive over
the Queensboro Bridge to Margaret’s place in West Islip was going to
require some fortification.
_____________
April was
visiting Kate when Hank arrived, nearly on time, at the hospital. They
were looking at an iPhone screen--everything normal there. Kate’s
greeting was “Dad, look! April says the guy who attacked me dropped
this and I’m pretty sure it’s Mom’s. I recognize a couple of the names
and the red case. Ashley picked it up and, with all the commotion,
forgot all about it until she found it in her jacket pocket this
morning. What was Pike doing with Mom’s phone?”
So it fell to Hank to
tell Kate what little he knew about her mother’s demise, all the while
fingering Detective Fazio’s card. Kate listened in stunned silence. He
told her about the police visit and his presumption they’d come about
Kate’s attack. He told her how much he loved her and how glad he was
that they were together at that moment.
It was agreed that Kate
would lay low and stay with April, Trixie and Ashley for a few days.
Marie was staying with her cousin, Arty. April encouraged Hank to visit
Kate when he could. She seemed bright and confident. Hank felt sure
that Pike would be no match for Mayhem.
Jeanne
(2 syllables) Woods is a real estate broker in Sonoma County, an hour
north of San Francisco, whose squash expertise is limited to her avid
gardening and cooking.
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
