Getting Rid of Bradley

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“Nobody’s trying to kill me,” Lucy said, trying to sound reasonably calm. “Get off.”

“So you’re telling me I overreacted.” The warmth in his eyes went to her bones, and she swallowed

hard.

“I forgive you. Now, get off me.”

“You know, in this light, your hair looks sort of...green.”

“Get off me now!”

The car blew up.

“Zack!” Lucy threw her arms around him and pulled him down to her. After a moment of silence, Zack

raised his shoulders off Lucy and gazed cautiously over the hill at her burning car.

“Nice little bomb,” he said reflectively. “Very neat.”

Lucy eased the top of her body up, too, still under him, and watched the flames, horrified. He looked

down at her, and when she turned back they were nose-to-nose.

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“You okay?”

“Zack,” Lucy said. “Somebody’s trying to kill me.”

“You know,” Zack said, “I had an instinct about that.”

“Wonderfully fresh, funny, tender and outrageous... Crusie is one of a kind.”

—Booklist

Also available from MIRA Books and JENNIFER CRUSIE

MANHUNTING

Coming soon

WHAT THE LADY WANTS

November 2002

GETTING RID OF BRADLEY

Jennifer Crusie

MIRA

Copyright notice

Contents

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For Betsy Struckman, the perfect friend;

And for Steve Struckman, the perfect man;

And for Murph and Cassie, and Mollie, and

Maggie, and Rose, and Bemie, and Lucy and

Liz, and Annie, and Chuck, and Ed, and Jasper,

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and Max, and Mose, and Sam.

Chapter One

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“I’ve never known anyone who was stood up for her own divorce before,” Tina Savage told her sister.

“What’s it feel like?”

“Not good.” Lucy Savage Porter tried to smooth her flowered skirt with a damp hand. “Can we go? I’m

not enjoying this.” She gave up on the skirt and clutched her lumpy tapestry bag to her as she glanced

around the marble hallway of the Riverbend courthouse. “Bradley signed the divorce papers. We don’t

even need to be here.”

Tina shook her head. “Psychologically, we need to be here. You had a ceremony when you got married,

you need one when you get divorced. I want you to feel divorced. I want you to feel free. Now sit over

there on that bench while I find Benton to tell me why this is taking so long.”

I’d feel a lot freer if you’d stop ordering me around,Lucy started to say, and then blinked instead. She’d

been having rebellious moments like that a lot lately, but they were hard to hold on to, especially since the

only time she’d actually followed through on one, it had been a disaster. Right now she was sitting under

a brassy head of curls because she’d decided to go blonde as a symbol of her freedom. Some symbol.

She looked like Golden Barbie with crow’s-feet.

Maybe the problem was that she wasn’t an independent kind of person. Other than the hair fiasco, every

time she’d decided to be more independent, logic stopped her cold. After all, Tina was right. She did

need the closure of hearing the divorce decree. And the bench was the best place to sit. It would be

illogical to disagree just for the sake of disagreeing.

No matter how good it would have felt.

She went over and sat down on the bench.

Tina was gone already, trying to find her hapless attorney in the flood of suits that washed around her.

Poor Benton. He’d gone beyond the call of lawyerhood in ramming Lucy’s divorce through the courts in

two weeks, but that wasn’t enough for Tina. Tina wouldn’t be satisfied until Benton brought her

Bradley’s head on a platter. Lucy had a momentary image of Tina, dark and svelte and dressed in her

white linen suit, standing in front of a flustered Benton who was offering her Bradley’s handsome head on

a turkey plate.

She liked it. Tina always did have the best ideas.

Tina suddenly appeared before her, parting the suits before her like the Red Sea. “There’s some kind of

delay. It’ll be another hour, but then we’ll go have lunch.”

Another hour. “All right. At Harvey’s Diner?”

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Tina shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

“Thank you.” Lucy dug her physics textbook out of her bag.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to teach Planck’s constant tomorrow.” Lucy paged through the book. “It’s a tough one to get

across. I’m reviewing.”

“You know, the next thing I’m getting you is a new job,” Tina said, and disappeared back into the suits.

A new job?

“I like my job,” Lucy said, but Tina was already gone.

“Okay, that’s the last straw.”Lucy closed her book with a thump.Nobody’s ordering me around

anymore. From now on, I’m going to be independent even if it is illogical. I’m going to be a whole new

me.

That’s it.

I’m changing.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m quitting,” Zack Warren said to his partner. His shaggy dark hair fell across his

forehead, almost into his eyes, but he was too mad to brush it back.

“Don’t tell me, tell Jerry.” Tall, cool, and controlled, Anthony Taylor nodded toward the man who had

just pulled a gun on them.

Zack turned back to the gun, wavering now in the hands of the balding, middle-aged embezzler who

stood quivering in his bad suit behind his empty desk. Jerry watched them warily, as warily as a cautious

man might regard two big guys he was holding a gun on.

“I’m quitting, Jerry,” Zack said. “You can let me go because I’m not going to be a cop anymore. You

can have the badge.”

He started to reach into his worn black leather jacket, and Jerry squeaked, “No!”

Zack froze. “Okay. Fine. No problem.” He gauged the possibilities of taking Jerry there in his office.

They weren’t good. Jerry was very nervous and the office was very small, leaving them no room to

maneuver and nothing to take cover behind. It was furnished only with a metal desk, two plastic chairs,

and Jerry. The furniture was marginally more interesting than Jerry, or had been until he’d reached into his

desk drawer and pulled out the gun.

They deserved this. Just because the guy was pathetic, they’d gotten careless. Zack looked at the gun

wobbling in Jerry’s hand with respect. A .45. The office currently had no windows, but Zack knew it

could have a couple at any minute, a .45 being the kind of gun that left large holes in walls.

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And people.

“Why do we do this?” Zack asked Anthony, scowling at the gun. “Life isn’t depressing enough, we have

to do this, too? I’m not kidding, I’m quitting.”

“Stop complaining.” Anthony carefully picked a speck of nonexistent lint off his tailored tweed sleeve,

keeping his eyes steadily on Jerry the whole time. “You’re the probable cause of this anyway. You

walked in here in that black leather jacket, looking like you hadn’t shaved in a week, and Jerry probably

thought you were some lowlife.” He smiled at Jerry, an oasis of perfect calm in a very sweaty situation.

“I’d have pulled a gun on him, too, Jerry. I understand. Why don’t we talk about this?”

Jerry shook his head, but he kept his eyes on Anthony, listening to his even, relaxed voice. Zack moved

very slowly a few inches to his right, taking care to seem as if he were only shifting on his feet.

Jerry suddenly shifted his eyes to Zack, so Zack picked up the conversation. “Oh, and if we’d both

been dressed in pimp suits like you, he wouldn’t have pulled the gun. I ask you, Jerry, was it the jacket

that made you pull the gun? Or the badge?”

Jerry narrowed his eyes at Zack, and Anthony moved slightly to the left.

“Just don’t move,” Jerry said as he swayed back and forth. “Keep your hands up.”

“We’re not moving, Jerry,” Anthony said soothingly. “You are. Relax. You’ll feel better.”

“Don’t get smart,” Jerry said, and the gun wavered between them again. “I’ll shoot.”

“You don’t want to shoot us, Jerry.” Zack spread his hands apart. “The hassle from shooting a cop is

enormous. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jerry looked at Zack as he talked, distracted by the movement, and Anthony eased another

couple of inches to the left. “And the hassle from stealing thirty thousand from your boss is nothin‘.”

“Well, it’s not like shooting a cop,” Anthony said, and Jerry’s eyes darted over to him. Zack moved a

little more to the right. “Shooting a cop?” Anthony shook his head slowly. “They throw the key away.

We don’t want that. Put the gun down, Jerry.”

“I don’t think so.” Jerry breathed a little faster and shifted his eyes to Zack. “I don’t think so. And you

guys aremoving.” He closed his eyes as he aimed the gun at Zack and squeezed the trigger.

Zack dove for the floor as he fired, and Anthony yelled,“Jerry!” and Jerry swung the gun toward where

he’d been. Zack threw himself over the desk as Anthony flattened himself on the floor, and Jerry put a

bullet neatly through the center of the door.

Then Zack slammed Jerry down on the floor.

Anthony rolled to his feet to help. “You all right?”

“Me? Oh, I’m as good as I get,” Zack said, breathing a little heavily as he reached for his handcuffs.

“Which is a hell of a lot better than Jerry is right now. How about you?”

“There were people in that hall.” Anthony went out the door to see what Jerry had hit on the other side

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while Zack cuffed him.

“You have the right to remain silent, you jerk,” Zack said and finished reciting Miranda sitting on top of

him. Anthony came back and lounged in the doorway.

“Congratulations,” Anthony said to Jerry when Zack was finished. “You shot a water fountain.”

“Up yours,” Jerry said, but it came out more embarrassed than defiant.

Zack stood and glared down at him. “We’ve got to start hanging out with a better class of criminals.”

“Actually, this is the cream,” Anthony said, checking his jacket for damage. It was, as always, spotless.

“You want to work Vice or Homicide?”

“No,” Zack said. “I want to arrest polite people who don’t point guns at me. In fact, I don’t want to

arrest anybody anymore. I want to hang out with good people. Is that possible? Are there any good

people anymore?”

“Well, there’s you and me,” Anthony said patiently. “We’re supposed to be the good guys. Are you

sure you’re all right? You’ve been acting strangely lately.”

“Could you guys hurry this up?” Jerry whined from the floor. “I’m notreal comfortable down here.”

“You know, Jerry—” Zack was suddenly soft-spoken as he looked down at him “—I could kick your

brains out very easily right now.” He gently nudged Jerry’s head with his foot. “Resisting arrest. Don’t

push your luck.”

Jerry shut up.

“Here’s some advice, Jerry.” Anthony reached down and hauled him to his feet with one hand. “Don’t

get smart with a guy you just pointed a gun at. He’s likely to be feeling hostile. And frankly, Jerry, we

didn’t like you much before you pulled the gun.”

Jerry closed his eyes.

“I was kind of hoping he’d resist arrest,” Zack said.

“No, you were not,” Anthony said. “You have plans for lunch. You’re arresting a master embezzler at

Harvey’s Diner. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Zack pushed Jerry into the hall. “The weather. I hate February. And I hate office buildings.”

He looked around at the smooth gray walls. “Maybe I will quit. Get a nice job out in the open

someplace. No guns. You think I’d make a good forest ranger?”

“You know, you worry me,” Anthony said.

“That’s your problem.” Zack moved down the hall, prodding Jerry in front of him. “So, Jerry, what’d

you do with the money?”

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Lucy sat slumped across from her sister in a battered turquoise booth in Harvey’s shabby diner and

tortured her salad.

Tina scowled down at her own salad. “Are you sure it’s safe to eat here? I think turquoise Formica is

bad for you, and I’m positive this lettuce is. It’s white.” She tapped a cigarette from the pack on the table

and lit it smoothly, like a forties’ movie star.

Lucy leaned forward to put her chin in her hand so she could pretend to listen to Tina, and her brassy

hair fell into her face again. Tina smoothed a dark, silky strand of her own precisely cut hair, and Lucy

looked at her with envy. Maybe they weren’t sisters. Maybe Mother had lied to them. No, they had the

same cat face: wide forehead, big eyes, little mouth, pointed chin. It was just that Tina looked like a

purebred, and she looked like something condemned at the pound.

Stop it,Lucy told herself.Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re just having a bad hair day.

Well, okay, a bad hair week. And then there was the divorce.

You’re just having a bad month. Pull yourself together. Spring is coming.

“You are going to get rid of his name, aren’t you?” Tina asked. “Lucy Savage Porter always sounded

like you’d married a rabid bellboy.”

Shut up, Tina.Lucy blinked. “Could we talk about something else?” She squashed her hair back to peer

around the dim restaurant, hoping no one else had heard. Since the place was not only dim but small, it

was a real fear, but it was also almost empty. There was only a bored waitress leaning on a chipped

plastic counter beside a fly-specked case of doughnuts, and two men in a booth identical to theirs on the

opposite side of the room.

Lucy was having a hard time ignoring one of the men.

One was tall, slender, and elegant, leaning calmly back in the booth, not a crease in his beautifully cut

tweed suit.

The other man was his antithesis. Shorter, thicker, tense as a coiled spring in a creased black leather

jacket, he leaned across the table and stabbed his index finger into the Formica. His unshaven face

looked as if it were made of slabs, his hair was dark and shaggy, and his smile came and went like a

broken neon sign. He was so intense, he was practically bending the table with the force of his

personality. Lucy had been reluctantly aware of him ever since they’d entered the diner, kicking herself

for stealing glances at him but stealing them just the same.

This was the kind of man who could leave a woman scarred for life. She wasn’t so dumb after all. She

could have ended up married to somebody like him instead of Bradley.

But think how much excitement she would have had before the end.

“No, that would have been dumb,” she said aloud.

“What would be?” Tina asked.

“Nothing.” Lucy turned back to her. “That’s a beautiful suit you’re wearing.”

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“It should be. It cost a fortune. You couldn’t afford it. If you had to make a bad marriage, and I suppose