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“Captain Perlmutter?”
“Yes.”
“Please leave,” she said.
chapter 35
While waiting for Carl Vespa to arrive, Grace started picking up the bedroom. Jack, she knew, was a great husband and father. He was smart, funny, loving, caring, and devoted. To counter that, God had blessed him with the organization skills of a citrus beverage. He was, in sum, a slob. Nagging him about it—and Grace had tried—did no good. So she stopped. If living happily was about compromise, this seemed to her like a pretty good one to make.
Grace had long ago given up on Jack clearing out the pile of magazines next to his bed. His post-shower wet towel never ended up back on the rack. Not every article of clothing made it to its ultimate destination. Right now, there was a T-shirt draped half-in, half-out of the hamper as if it’d been shot trying to escape.
For a moment Grace just stared down at the T-shirt. It was green with the word FUBU plastered across the front, and it might have one day been in vogue. Jack bought it for $6.99 at T.J. Maxx, a discount clothing store where hip goes to die. He’d put it on with a pair of too-baggy shorts. He stood in front of the mirror and started wrapping his arms around his body in a bizarre variety of ways.
“What are you doing?” Grace had asked him.
“Gangsta poses. Yo, whatchya think?”
“That I should get you seizure medication.”
“Phat,” he said. “Bling-bling.”
“Right. Emma needs a ride to Christina’s.”
“Word. Dawg. Hit dat.”
“Please go. Immediately.”
Grace picked up the shirt now. She had always been cynical about the male species. She was guarded with her feelings. She did not open up easily. She had never believed in love at first sight—she still didn’t—but when she met Jack, the attraction had been immediate, flutters in her stomach, and deny it now as much as she wanted, a small voice had told her right then and there, first meeting, that this was the man she was going to marry.
Cram was in the kitchen with Emma and Max. Emma had recovered from her earlier histrionics. She had recovered the way only kids can—fast and with very little residue. They were all eating fish sticks, Cram included, and ignoring the side dish of peas. Emma was reading a poem to Cram. Cram was a great audience. His laugh was the kind that not only filled a room but pushed against the panes of glass. You heard it, you had to either smile or cringe.
There was still time before Carl Vespa arrived. She didn’t want to think about Geri Duncan, her death, her pregnancy, the way she looked at Jack in that damned photograph. Scott Duncan had asked her what she ultimately wanted. She’d said her husband back. That was still very much the case. But maybe, with all that was happening, she needed the truth too.
With that in mind Grace headed downstairs and flipped on the computer. She brought up Google and typed in “Jack Lawson.” Twelve hundred hits. Too many to do any good. She tried “Shane Alworth.” Hmm, no hits. Interesting. Grace tried “Sheila Lambert.” Hits about a woman basketball player with the same name. Nothing relevant. Then she began trying combinations.
Jack Lawson, Shane Alworth, Sheila Lambert, and Geri Duncan: These four people were together in this picture. They had to be linked in some other way. She tried various combinations. She tried one first name, one last name. Nothing of interest popped. She was still typing, going through the useless 227 hits on the words “Lawson” and “Alworth” when the phone rang.
Grace looked at the Caller ID and saw it was Cora. She picked up. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I’m sorry,” Grace said.
“Don’t worry about it. Bitch.”
Grace smiled and kept hitting the down arrow. The hits were useless.
“So do you still want my help?” Cora asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Enthusiasm. I love that. Okay, fill me in.”
Grace kept it vague. She trusted Cora, but she didn’t want to have to trust her. Yeah, that made little sense. It was like this: If Grace’s life were in jeopardy, she’d call Cora immediately. But if the kids were in danger . . . well, she’d hesitate. The scary thing was, she probably trusted Cora more than anybody, which was to say that she had never felt more isolated in her life.
“So you’re putting the names through search engines?” Cora asked.
“Yes.”
“Any relevant hits so far?”
“Not a one.” Then: “Wait, hold on.”
“What?”
But now again, trust or no trust, Grace wondered what would be the point in telling Cora more than she needed to know. “I gotta run. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay. Bitch.”
Grace hung up and stared at the screen. Her pulse started giddying up, just a little faster now. She had pretty much used up all the name combinations when she’d remembered an artist friend name Marlon Coburn. He was constantly complaining because his name was misspelled. Marlon would be spelled Marlin or Marlan or Marlen and Coburn would be Cohen or Corburn. Anyway Grace figured she’d give it a go.
The fourth “typo” combo she tried was “Lawson” and “Allworth”—two Ls instead of one.
There were three hundred hits—neither name was that uncommon—but it was the fourth one that jumped out at her. She looked at the top line first:
Crazy Davey’s Blog
Grace knew vaguely that a blog was a sort of public diary. People wrote down their random thoughts. Other people, for some odd reason, enjoyed reading them. A diary used to be about being private. Now it was about trying to be shrill enough to reach the masses.
The little sample bit under the link line read:
“. . . John Lawson on keyboards and Sean Allworth who was wicked on guitar . . .”
John was Jack’s real name. Sean was pretty close to Shane. Grace clicked the link. The page was forever long. She went back, clicked “cache.” When she returned to the page, the words Lawson and Allworth would be highlighted. She scrolled down and found an entry from two years ago:
April 26
Hey, gang. Terese and I took a weekend up in Vermont. We stayed at the Westerly’s bed and breakfasts. It was great. They had a fireplace and at night we played checkers. . . .
Crazy Davey went on and on. Grace shook her head. Who the hell read this nonsense? She skipped three more paragraphs.
That night I went with Rick, an old college bud, to Wino’s. It’s an old college bar. Total dump. We used to go when we went to Vermont University. Get this, we played Condom Roulette like the old days. Ever play? Every guy guesses a color—there’s Hot Red, Stallion Black, Lemon Yellow, Orange Orange. Okay, the last two are jokes, but you get the point. There’s this condom dispenser in the bathroom. It’s still there! So each guy puts a buck on the table. One guy gets a quarter and buys a condom. He brings it to the table. You open it and whammo, if it’s your color, you win! Rick guessed the first one right. He bought us a pitcher. The band that night sucked. I remembered hearing a group when I was a freshman named Allaw. There were two chicks in that band and two guys. I remember one chick played drums. The guys were John Lawson on keyboards and Sean Allworth who was wicked on guitar. That was how they got the name, I think. Allworth and Lawson. Combine it into Allaw. Rick never heard of them. Anyway we finished up the pitcher. A couple of hot chicks came in but they ignored us. We started feeling old. . . .
