The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) (29 page)

I had no idea what a “Diego” was, but it sounded pharmaceutical.

I played my last card. “Uh, is Connor allergic to cats, by any chance?”

“You have a cat? Connor loves cats. Connor? Remember Mommy’s friend Ten? He has a cat!”

“Tat!” I heard. “See Tat!”

Tank sealed the deal.

By the time I’d finished a mad scramble to put anything obviously dangerous out of a small boy’s reach, including double-checking that my firearms were safely locked away, Stephanie and Connor were at my door.

“Hey, Connor,” I said, out of breath. I knew enough to squat down. Little kids prefer eye-level communication, I recalled. I didn’t want to scare Connor and accidentally set off one of the four F’s.

“Tat!” Connor marched right past me and hunkered down himself to make deep, soulful eye contact with Tank.

“I’ll be back, Connor,” Stephanie called out, but Connor was lost in Persian Tat-land.

Tank’s languid tail swished, a sure sign that he was having a good time. Connor reached for Tank’s fur.

“Gentle,” I said. “Like this.” I took Connor’s hand and helped him stroke the soft fur along Tank’s spine. Tank ratcheted up the purrs.

“See? Nice cat.”

“Nice tat,” Connor said.

Tank took care of 15 minutes. For the next 40, I plied Connor with every edible snack and drinkable bottle and box in his backpack. “Diego,” I discovered, was a DVD of a children’s show starring a young Latino rescuer of animals, not a drug, at least not in so many words. I followed up the food-fest by propping Connor on the sofa with my
Diego
-loaded laptop and his blankie. One hour down. One to go.
No problemo.

I was helping Connor and Diego save an endangered rhinoceros when Tory’s delegation paid me a visit.

I knew it was trouble calling the minute I saw the car: a white Escalade with tricked-out wheels and smoked windows, a high-end gangster ride. The two black guys who climbed out wore black suits and black bow ties, very dapper.

They approached at an easy stroll and climbed the outside stairs to the deck. Something about them, their outfits maybe, or their somewhat exaggerated gait, rang a little false, but I couldn’t take any chances.

“Stop right there,” I called out through the kitchen window. I slid open a kitchen drawer and fisted a corkscrew. “I need to let you know I’m a private detective and I’m armed.” “
¡Al rescaté!
” I heard Diego cry from my laptop in the living room. “To the rescue!”

“Who are you?” I said to the front man, who had the bulkier build.

“We’re the, uh, the delegation.”

Right, the delegation. “Okay, what does the
delegation
do?”

“Right now? Invite you to meet somebody you probably want to meet anyway.”

“Who’s that?”

“Mr. Tory Wiggins.”

Tory may have quit being a gangster, but he hadn’t given up his gangster ways, not entirely. And he clearly didn’t have a lot of patience.

“How did you guys find me?”

“Go, Diego, go!” Two voices, one shrill and piping, the other belonging to Connor.

“G-Force,” the second guy said. “Tory tracked his phone. Tory likes to know how his business associates spend their time.”

“
¡Gracias!
” Diego’s piercing voice piped up. This time Connor hadn’t joined in.

The first guy grimaced. “Your kid into that show, too? If I had my way, I’d gag Diego. Dora, too. But my daughter can’t get enough.”

“Oh, that’s not my …”

But he was onto other things. “I’m going to reach in my pocket and pull out something Tory wants to give you. Don’t go shooting me.”

The best I could do was unscrew a cork at this point, but luckily he was none the wiser.

He extracted a shrink-wrapped block of cash. He set the money on the deck, just outside the kitchen door transom.

“Tory says you can keep it, or bring it back to him if you don’t want it—either way’s fine with him. He just wants to lay a little good faith on you. That’s five thousand dollars there. Think of it as a down payment.”

The living room was ominously quiet. I turned my head to quick-check the sofa.

It was empty.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t …”

He and his buddy ambled back down the stairs and crossed the driveway to the Escalade. They bumped elbows, as if to congratulate each other on a job well done. The first guy called back, “I left Tory’s information on top of the cash.”

Where is Connor?

I was close to full-on panic, helped not at all by the distinctive whine of Stephanie’s blue Prius whirring into the driveway. She pulled to a stop right behind the Escalade, like a dewdrop challenging an iceberg. The “delegation” eyed her, as if they’d never seen a woman driving a Prius before. They climbed into their four-wheel monolith, she reversed out of their way, and they lumbered off.

“Connor? Connor!” There were only four rooms to check, including the bathroom. I found Connor behind the living-room screen that blocked off my meditation area. He was vroom-vrooming his car along the edge of one wall, a confiscated carved wooden Buddha from my altar at the wheel, as inscrutable as always.

I scooped Connor up and was back in the kitchen just as Stephanie walked inside.

“I think your friends left you this.” She traded the brick of cash for her son.

“Uh.”

My cell phone pinged news of a text from my pocket. On stress-induced automatic pilot, I pulled it out to look.

BILL’S BACK. ON MY WAY OVER. THERE IN FIVE
. I had to read the name twice to believe it. Julie.

Training to become a Tibetan Buddhist lama gives one many tools for life. A handle for this kind of situation wasn’t one of them.

“You’re obviously busy. Maybe we should go,” Stephanie said, a slight edge to her voice.

“No, wait,” I said. “The weirdest thing just happened. I’ll explain all after I get Connor’s stuff.”

Her face softened. She kissed Connor’s cheek. “Did you have fun?” she asked him.

“Tat! Diego!”

“Add a four-course snack and that pretty much sums it up,” I said.

I ejected the DVD and returned Diego, vroom-vroom, blankie, and a sippy cup to Connor’s backpack. I kept my carved Buddha.

I walked Stephanie and Connor outside, mentally working out how to explain the delegation with their block of cash. But I was spared by Connor’s huge yawn.

“Oops. Time to get this little guy home for his nap. Thanks again, Ten. You were a lifesaver.” Stephanie leaned in, Connor balanced on one hip, for a nice, long three-way hug.

Thus giving Julie, who picked that exact moment to arrive in Martha’s minivan, an eyeful and a half.

Then it was my turn to stare. Julie opened the back of the minivan, and reappeared weighed down by the saddest-faced dog I’d ever seen. His muzzle appeared flattened, as if someone tried to iron out his wrinkles by mistake. White head, except for a circular tan patch over one eye, and a pair of upright ears, like cones. The downturned mouth was the polar opposite of a smile. I heard Tank hiss from behind and above me on the deck.

This wasn’t a triangle, this was a hexagon from hell.

¡Rescaté me!

“Stephanie, this is Julie. Julie, Stephanie. Also, Connor.”

“Papa!” Connor chose to announce for the first time today, patting my arm. Julie took in Connor’s Asian features. Her eyes narrowed.

Stephanie handed Connor off to me like a football and walked over to Julie. She made a fist with her right hand.

Now what?

“And who’s this handsome fellow?” Stephanie asked. She offered her curled knuckles to the dog for a sniff. Apparently, he was too overwhelmed to respond. I could relate.

“This is Homer,” Julie said.

C
HAPTER
26

“It’s not what you think,” I called over my shoulder to the kitchen. I’d persuaded Julie to put Homer on a leash, sent Stephanie and Connor away with a promise to call, and was on my hands and knees, about to check under the living-room sofa for my disgruntled cat.

Tank wasn’t there either. I sighed. He’d show his face again when he was good and ready, and not before.

“What if I’m not thinking what you think I’m thinking?” Julie’s voice replied.

I gave up trying to untangle the sentence and returned to the kitchen.

Julie had claimed the kitchen stool, a twinkle in her eye, and Homer hanging off both ends of her lap. I moved to stand by the window.

“I’m just relieved,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out why you weren’t calling me back. Come to find out you thought Homer here was my one-and-only.” She nuzzled the top of the dog’s head. “No offense, Homer. You come close.”

I studied the competition in more detail.

His solid body was short and squat. His pink muzzle appeared badly squashed, wide black nostrils aiming north, and his mouth curved downward, the opposite of smiling. The brown eye patch gave him a slightly rakish look, to balance out the scowl.

“What is Homer?”

“He’s a rescue dog. I got him from a shelter, back in Chicago.”

“No, I mean what kind of dog?”

Julie scratched behind an upright ear. Homer opened his mouth and his tongue lolled with pleasure. The change was startling—like sunshine breaking through dense cloud cover, carrying with it a promise of joy.

“He’s an English Bulldog. When I got him last year, he was ten pounds thinner, but I soon took care of that.” Under Julie’s steady ear-ministrations, Homer had started to drool. “I got Homer for protection. You know, with me being a single woman again.”

Homer looked more likely to hold the burglar’s flashlight between his teeth than scare him off, but I held my tongue. I also stayed where I was, by the window overlooking the deck. Truth was, I’d been uncomfortable around dogs ever since a mangy Dorje Yidam stray removed a small chunk of my left calf when I was ten. According to Tibetan legends, the wild dogs that inevitably roamed the periphery of Buddhist monasteries were reincarnated monks who’d broken their vows in a past life. Mine was apparently a lapsed vegetarian, and I still had a scar on my leg the size of a 50-cent piece to prove it.

I focused on the other part of Julie’s sentence, the “single woman” part.

Dog in her lap or not, Julie felt too far away. I moved to the kitchen counter and leaned against it, a little awkwardly. The uneven tempo of my pulse belied the casual tone of my voice.

“So what happened? With that guy, I mean. Your boyfriend?”

Julie set Homer on the floor. He flattened like a rug, his two back legs sticking out behind him, as if his hip joints were made of elastic. He laid his wrinkled head on his paws and went straight to sleep. Julie met my eyes.

“Alcoholism happened,” she said.

“Ah.”

“I went to a few of those meetings, you know.”

“You’re an alcoholic?”

“No. Because I was living with one. They like to say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.”

“Expectations. I know a lot about that.”

“I should have known better. He’d only been sober for nine months when he returned to his old job as a sommelier. He swore it would work, that he’d stick to just sniffing the wine. He said he could base his choices and descriptions on aroma alone. But he stopped going to his meetings. He was too busy, he said. Then sniffing became swishing and spitting. Swishing and spitting became swishing and swallowing, and pretty soon, he was off to the races. He lost me after about a year. He lost his job six months after that.” Julie’s eyes filled. “Such a waste, you know? He’s a really good guy, just with a really bad drinking problem.”

I refrained from commenting. My heart was too happy to be here with Julie, to have her in my kitchen again, to bother judging her ex.

“An alcoholic can’t ever give another person the intimacy they crave, or the love they deserve. The alcohol, the ism itself, comes between them and everything else. For me, it was like trying to reach someone barricaded behind a wall.”

My mother, her once beautiful features puffy with wine and drained of inner light, floated like a ghost across my heart.

“What about you, Ten? Any girlfriends?”

I thought about Heather, her own struggle with food as self-medication, and for the first time made the connection. “I had a remarkably parallel experience,” I said. “Great woman. Unresolved addiction stuff. She’s doing much better now, but it’s been over between us for more than a year.”

“And Stephanie? I’m guessing Connor isn’t your love child, at least. Martha couldn’t have kept that a secret for long.”

“Stephanie’s a professional friend. I was watching her son as a favor. She’s been a big help with the Sasha situation.”

Julie shook her head. “God. For a moment I’d put that madness out of my head. Bill and the Mila woman? I’m still in shock, you know?” She made a face. “I have to confess, when Bill showed up this afternoon, I skedaddled. I couldn’t face the fireworks.”

“I know what you mean.”

“But Ten, whatever you said to Martha this morning, she was a different woman when I got home with the twins. She’d washed her hair, put on makeup, and was wearing a pair of jeans she hasn’t worn in years. She was positively sassy! And don’t think Bill didn’t notice, either, when he arrived with his tail between his legs. So I’m not ruling anything out.”

Tank brushed against my right ankle. I scooped him up, so he could observe Homer from the safe haven of my arms. “Tank, meet Homer,” I said. “Homer’s from Chicago. Okay. Let’s see if you two can be friends.”

I placed Tank on the ground and he immediately strolled over to the sleeping bulldog to inspect, whiskers and tail on high alert. For better or worse, Tank’s curiosity has always trumped any primal fear-mechanisms. Homer raised his square head off of his paws, with some effort. He executed a sniff or two of his own.

The two animals apparently found each other worthy of co-existence because Homer collapsed again, zoning out, and Tank lay down beside him, after giving me an inscrutable look. Soon Tank, too, closed his eyes.

I was attacked by a sudden yawn. I moved away from the counter. “I’ll tell you one thing about two-year-olds, they’re more exhausting than working the graveyard shift. I need a nap.”