The rules of nitroglycerin are simple. If one tiny tab under your tongue doesn’t make your chest pain go away in a few minutes, you throw another little white pebble into your mouth. The instructions don’t tell you to pray, but if you’re still caressing that minuscule brown bottle after those first few minutes of center-of-your-world, center-of-your-chest agony, then it’s likely you’ve already made contact with whatever version of God that you consider might be the most influential.
I was sitting, leaning up against Holly’s garage, when I popped the second nitro. As a general rule, standing and nitroglycerin go together about like beer and chocolate. Not too well. That’s why I was sitting.
I started thinking about Simon. That freaked me out.
As a way of distracting myself while I waited for the second nitro to kick in and the pain under my ribs to ease, I refocused on Holly’s house. Artie was at the kitchen sink. I didn’t take him for a roll-up-his-sleeves, get-his-hands-dirty kind of guy.
But no Holly. Still no Holly.
My head was pounding. After the flush and the disorientation, the next side effect of nitro is the headache. An ice-cream brain freeze and a big bass drum. It’s that kind of thing, and it comes on instantly.
Artie walked away from the window. One of Holly’s sisters took his place at the sink.
Holly?
I phoned Carmen.
“Any sign of her yet?”
“Sam, where the hell are you?”
“Behind the house.”
“You don’t sound too good.”
“A little indigestion.”
“How can you have indigestion? You haven’t eaten anything.”
“It was probably that energy bar thing you gave me. My body’s not accustomed to healthy crap like that. Any sign of Holly?”
I heard a car door open, then slam shut. I turned my head and spied the Cherokee, but I could only see the front end from where I was sitting.
“No,” she said. “Nobody’s gone in or out of that house.” Her tone announced that she was pissed off.
I could hear her walking. First the sounds came through the earpiece of the phone, then gradually I could hear her footfalls through my other ear, the one that was uncovered. The steps grew louder, more determined. Finally, Carmen emerged above me. God, she was tall.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” she said.
“No, no. It’s getting better. I swear. The nitro’s working. It is.”
Was it? I couldn’t tell. The pain wasn’t gone. But I could almost breathe without gasping. That had to be a good sign.
I didn’t want to get into another ambulance. Not on Thanksgiving. Not in South Bend.
She squatted beside me, adopting a posture that I knew I couldn’t have managed after a year of dieting and daily yoga sessions.
She touched my face. “You’re clammy.”
“No, I’m Sammy.”
She slapped me. A true little love pat.
“If you die out here after you talk me out of calling an ambulance, I swear I’ll come to your funeral and piss on your grave.”
“I’d love to see the surveillance tape on that.”
She slapped me again.
The pain was easing. It was. The knife was out from below my ribs.
“I’m good,” I said. “Just a little angina. Doc said I might have some angina every once in a while. That’s what the nitro’s for.” The doc hadn’t said that, but it sounded like something a doc might say.
She stared at me as though she didn’t believe a word out of my mouth.
“I have a feeling Holly’s not alone,” I said.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m serious. I think he might be in there. Sterling.”
“Why?” Her solitary word was a simple question, but given its inflection, it was also a statement. The statement was“Don’t be an asshole. Not with me.”
Not now.
I explained about watching the kitchen window and about my phone call to the house.
“Okay, how would he have gotten in?” she asked. Her inflection? I recognized it. It was the one I used to employ with Simon when he was younger and he blamed mishaps around the house on his imaginary friend, Tank.
“Maybe he went in when everybody arrived, you know? He snuck in the back door when the family was at the front. Isn’t that possible?”
“Anything’s possible.”
Carmen was staring at me, not at the house. She thought my sneaking-in-the-back-door scenario was about as likely as Gibbs going to Wal-Mart to buy her winter wardrobe.
“Or Holly might have let him in,” I added.
“What?” she said. The tenor had changed. It was more like: Now you’re saying something interesting. Tell me.
“She likes danger-risk might be a better word. We know that, right? Sexually speaking, Holly Malone likes risk. That was the whole thing with Sterling in the first place.”
Carmen nodded. She completed my thought as though we’d been partnering for years, not hours. “And doing it with an accused murderer while her family is gathering for Thanksgiving…”
I visualized Artie’s disapproving eyes. “Yeah, that sounds risky enough. That would qualify.”
“How long since you’ve seen her?”
“Ten, twelve minutes.”
We were both staring at the house. My eyes were plastered on the window wells that led to the basement. That’s where I figured they’d be, Holly and Sterling. In some room down there. For some reason I decided that it was the laundry room. An image of Holly propped up on the dryer began to develop in my consciousness until I shooed it away like some aggravating insect.
But like a yellowjacket in late summer, it came right back.
I was ready to move, to go inside the house, but I wanted Carmen to arrive at the same conclusion herself. While I waited for her to come around, I hit a speed-dial number on my phone. Lucy. “Hey, Luce. I just have a second. The feds ever find Brian Miles?… No?… Thanks… Yeah, fine. Seriously. I’ll call you in a bit.” I hung up. “Miles is still missing.”
Carmen nodded as though she expected the news. “You think they’re together? Sterling and Miles?”
“Can’t rule it out.”
She said, “What about the car? Maybe they’re doing it in the car. Have you checked the garage?” She nodded at the wall I was leaning against.
I felt stupid. I was so focused on the basement that I hadn’t even considered the detached garage. And no, I hadn’t checked the garage. I shook my head in response to Carmen’s question, suddenly not wanting to risk having my voice carry through the bricks.
“Shall we?” she whispered.
I stood. My balance problems were gone. My headache wasn’t.
Carmen hopped the three-foot fence as though it were the height of a curb. I stepped over using a more conventional scissors maneuver. Carmen’s revolver was in her hand when she got to the side door of the garage. I pulled my gun, too.
I don’t like my handgun. Some cops do. Some don’t. I’ve never felt right with the damn thing in my hand. I’m a pretty good shot; that’s not it. It’s something more intrinsic that I’ve never understood. I’m more comfortable with a rifle or a shotgun pressed against my shoulder.
Carmen, on the other hand, held her Smith amp; Wesson with the comfort of a good cook holding her favorite knife over an onion. No ambivalence there at all.
Holly’s vehicle was a late-nineties GM sedan. Through the hazy glass pane in the side door, I couldn’t have identified whether it was a Pontiac or a Chevy or an Olds if my life depended on it. I could tell that it didn’t seem to be moving-moving, as in rocking side to side.
Carmen turned the doorknob and entered the narrow garage in a single fluid motion that reminded me of a ballroom dance move. I was right behind her. Despite my adrenaline surge, I was thinking that I wouldn’t want to be screwing in that car and have us burst into the garage with our guns drawn.
It could change a person’s view of sex forever.
We covered the perimeter of the little rectangular space and the interior of the car in seconds and came to the same conclusion at the exact same time: The garage wasn’t Holly’s love nest.
“Okay,” Carmen said. “I’m convinced. Let’s go ruin a lot of people’s Thanksgiving supper.”