Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) (28 page)

“Why do you say that?”

“He got off on little boys,” said Duncan matter-of-factly. “All the kids who dance in
The Nutcracker
know about pedophiles. Some of the parents seem to think everyone in ballet is like that, but that’s bu—uh, nonsense.”

Emmie made an effort, visible to Barbara and me, if not to the kid, and controlled her face and voice. She gave him another kiss and sent him back to his homework.

“Helping Brandy will be a lot harder,” Barbara said afterward. “Stop looking worried, Jimmy. You don’t even have to remind me it’s none of my business. I encouraged Emmie to talk with him as soon as possible and left it at that.”

“I still have trouble,” I said, “believing that God was a full-fledged pedophile.”

“Whatever the connection was,” Barbara said, “I guess it ended when the boy fell off the pier and God saved him from drowning. It wasn’t Brandy’s fault; that’s the important thing. I told Emmie to call me if she needs help finding a therapist for him.”

But she never did.

*

I made my ninety days. Barbara snuck into the closed AA meeting when I qualified for the first time. Barbara thought my story was hilarious. Jimmy laughed louder than anyone. Both Jimmy and my sponsor think that office temping is okay for a recovery job but that I should eventually go back to school and get myself a real career. The other day I called Jimmy up to ask what he would think if I became a nurse. He had made Barbara get off the extension right away. But when I told him my idea, he bellowed with laughter, even louder than at my qualification. I could hear Barbara in the background, saying, “What? What?” the way she always does. She can’t stand being left out. Jimmy could barely speak for laughing, but he told her. Then he had another fit of laughter.

In between snickers, he said, “Yeah, man, I can just see you in one of those starched white dresses with the little cap.”

Barbara said, “Idiot. Nurses don’t wear those caps and dresses any more.”

Between the two of them, they sure have one weird sense of humor.

After the excitement was over, we all lay low for a while. Barbara and I both got headaches for a few weeks on account of our concussions. Jimmy settled back in behind his computer, happy as a clam. I temped and went to meetings and tried to walk the line between thinking about the future and living one day at a time. It wasn’t boring, but it was quiet. Spring took its time coming that year. Easy does it, just like getting sober.

On the first warm day, near the end of April, the three of us got in the car and drove north. We went up along the Hudson River with the Palisades on the other side. We passed through some little towns that Barbara thought were cute, with neo-country inns and craft shops and little restaurants with daffodils and grape hyacinths blooming all along their front walks. We kidded around and laughed a lot. We even sang “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and squabbled, still laughing, over which of us was the worst singer.

“How many kinds of laugh do you think there are?” Barbara asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When I was a kid I used to read these girls’ magazines. I once read an article about the different kinds of laughs—giggles, titters, snickers, guffaws. You know. Sometimes laughing comes from amusement, sometimes from malice; there are different motivations. But the best one, the laugh of laughs according to the article, was the laugh for pure joy. I always wanted one. I wanted a perfect oval face, too, but I never got it.”

Jimmy, at the wheel, grinned at me over Barbara’s head.

“Women. They’re a different breed.”

“For sure.”

“Thank goodness,” Barbara said.

We found a state park with a brook and a classic swimming hole fringed with the pale, edible green of newborn leaves. There was even a little waterfall. The brook babbled away. The falls glinted in the sunlight. It was a weekday, and there wasn’t a soul around but us. Barbara had taken a day off from work. Jimmy had even left his laptop home. We lay on a big rock that the sun was hot enough to bake to a comfortable warmth. Barbara had stripped down to shorts and T-shirt. Jimmy looked unusually relaxed with his pants rolled up to the knee and his legs getting pink in the sun.

“Are you admiring my legs?” he asked.

“I am,” Barbara said.

“Me too,” I said. “They’re very pink.”

“I’m going swimming,” Barbara announced.

“Won’t it be cold?” I asked.

“There’s one way to find out,” she said. “Want to come?”

“No, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She slid off the rock into the water. “It’s cold,” she yelped, hopping up and down. “Not too deep, though.”

Jimmy and I both sat up to watch her. The water came up to her waist.

“Watch out,” Jimmy called, “it may be slippery.”

She made her way across the pool, stepping cautiously on the rocky bottom, until she stood almost under the waterfall.

“Come on in! It feels great!” She beckoned with a broad gesture of her arm.

“No, thank you,” called Jimmy.

“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun.” She splashed to show us how much fun it was.

“You said it’s cold,” I objected.

“Not once you get used to it,” she yelled back. “Come on, it’s delicious.”

“Delicious my frozen ass,” said Jimmy. He gave me a poke, and we started roughhousing. We rolled around like little kids until we finally managed to tip each other into the water with a howl and an almighty splash.

I surfaced, spluttering. Jimmy’s cheerful pink face and dripping hair bobbed up beside me. Barbara stood there in the water with the waterfall sparkling and rushing at her back and the earthy green smell of growing things all around. She threw back her head, and there it came: a laugh for pure joy.

“I knew I’d know it if it ever happened,” she called out.

For a giddy moment, I felt like Barbara. Joyful. Like a guy with a best friend. Like a guy with a future. She caught my eye. For a moment, the radiance already fading from my face was reflected in hers. I looked from her to Jimmy, who grinned like a loon at both of us. Across the plash of the falls, she said, “We’re going to have a great summer.”

THE END

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“Zelvin [has the] ability to bring us both tragedy and humor, sometimes in the same sentence … I've become addicted to the series.”

—Lourdes Fernandez
, Lost in Books

“An extremely unique mystery that sucks the reader in and refuses to let go.”

—Cindy Chow,
Mystery Rat's Closet

“Zelvin's characters continue to grow … The tangled web of relationships that Bruce steps into reads like some of the stories one hears at the beauty parlor or while working out: convoluted, full of angst, and all too real. Zelvin excels at this.”

—P.J. Coldren,
Reviewing the Evidence

The Bruce Kohler Series
(in order of publication)

Death Will Help You Leave Him

Death Will Extend Your Vacation

Death Will Save Your Life

We hope you enjoyed
Death Will Get You Sober
and wonder if you'd consider reviewing it on Goodreads, Amazon (
http://amzn.to/16zlvZ3
), or wherever you purchased this book? The author would be most grateful. And if you'd like to see other forthcoming mysteries, let us keep you up-to-date. Sign up for our mailing list at
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ELIZABETH ZELVIN is a New York City psychotherapist whose mystery series about recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends includes
Death Will Get You Sober
,
Death Will Help You Leave Him
, and
Death Will Extend Your Vacation.
Liz’s short stories have appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
and various anthologies and e-zines. Three of her stories have been nominated for the Agatha Award and one for the Derringer Award for Best Short Story. Liz is also a singer-songwriter whose recent CD is titled
Outrageous Older Woman
. Liz blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters and SleuthSayers and can be found on Facebook. Her author website is
www.elizabethzelvin.com
and her music website is
www.lizzelvin.com
.