Jennifer Crusie - GETTING RID OF BRADLEY

“What’s wrong with the mop?” Zack asked.

“He’s not a mop. That’s Heisenburg and… Never mind. Am I under arrest for beating you up?”

“You did not beat me up, lady. The only reason you hit me at all is that I wasn’t defending myself because I didn’t want to hurt you.” Zack looked down at Heisenburg. “Is he sick?”

“No,” she said. “It’s a dog joke. It’s the only one he knows.”

“A dog joke.”

“Yes. You feed him the setup, and then he does the punch line. Like a knock-knock joke.”

“You taught this dog a joke?”

“No.” She looked down at the mop with pride. “He thought it up on his own.”

Zack looked around the spotless vestibule and through the open door. The next room was spacious, with high ceilings and hardwood floors covered with worn Oriental rugs. It was Ml of sunlight and comfortable, threadbare, overstuffed furniture, and he could hear a fire crackling cheerfully somewhere close. He looked at the woebegone brunette gazing down at her three dogs, and at the two dogs gazing back adoringly. And finally he looked at the third dog, Heisenburg, waiting patiently on his back for his setup line.

If this woman was a crook, he was Queen of the May. He grinned at her so suddenly that she blinked. “You’re not a criminal, are you?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“Not unless you arrest me for mugging you. I deserve it. I know I deserve it. But you scared me.” She frowned. “Why did you drag me into that alley?”

“We need to talk.” Zack held out his hand. “I’m Detective Zachery Warren.”

She took his hand and shook it. “I’m Lucy Savage, and I’m really sorry I beat you up. Your lip looks awful.”

“You didn’t beat me up. Would you feed this dog his line so we can go sit down?”

“Oh, no!” Lucy said, with so much enthusiasm that Zack looked to see what was wrong. “Dead dog?”

Heisenburg rolled over and jumped to his feet and barked.

Zack looked at Lucy. “That’s a dog joke?”

“What did you expect? ‘That was no lady, that was my wife’?”

“I don’t know,” Zack said, confused. “Can we go sit down? My foot is killing me.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions before I explain about the alley,” Zack began when he was finally sitting on the rose-colored love seat across from the blazing fireplace in the living room. So far, he’d turned down coffee, tea, soft drinks, aspirin, and ice for his foot from Lucy, and affectionate approaches from Heisenberg, who wanted to sit in his lap. Now he was anxious to cut to the chase and get some answers before one of the other dogs began a soft shoe or tried to sell him magazines.

“Sure,” Lucy said. “Whatever.”

She was sitting next to him in a big, ugly olive-green chair that didn’t seem to go with the rest of the house, and she looked swallowed up by it somehow, her knees higher than her waist, her shoulders bowing in a little like folded angel wings.

“Are you all right?” Zack said. “You seem… depressed.”

“I went to court to get divorced today, and my ex-husband stood me up. Then my sister decided to change my Me. Then a drug dealer tried to mug me, so I beat him up, and I thought, at last, I’m doing something right, and then he turned out to be a cop. You.” She blinked. “I’m having a bad day. I’ll get over it.”

“You didn’t beat me up. I wasn’t even trying to defend myself.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Zack gave up. “Tell me about Bradley. Everything you know.”

“Bradley?” Lucy sat back, confused. “That’s what you said on the street. Why do you want to know about my ex-husband?”

“If he’s the man we’re looking for, he embezzled a million and a half in government bonds from the bank where he worked.”

Lucy’s mouth dropped open and she sat up straight. “He embezzled from his bank?”

“Banks are the best places to embezzle from,” Zack said. “They usually have the most money. Now, when and where did you meet him?”

“He picked me up at the library,” Lucy said, still dazed from his announcement. “I was working on some lesson plans, and I looked up, and there he was, and he asked if he could sit down, and he talked to me and bought me a juice from the vending machines, and then he walked me to my car, and two months later we were married.”

“That fast?” Zack said, writing everything down.

“Well, I had my reasons.” Lucy sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. “They were the wrong reasons, but I didn’t know that then.”

Zack wasn’t listening. This could be it. The dates matched. He looked over at Lucy, sitting lost in an ugly green chair, and he felt a sudden protectiveness for her that was totally out of character for him. The poor helpless kid was just an innocent bystander. That rat Bradley…

Bradley.

Zack started to tap his notebook again. “And exactly when did you meet him?”

“And besides,” Lucy went on, still lost in her own train of thought, “there was the second law of thermonuclear dynamics.”

“I’m sure there was. When did you meet him?”

Lucy came back to earth. “Sorry. We got married June first. We met in the middle of March.”

“And you got divorced in February.” Zack looked up from his notebook. “Any particular reason? Did he begin acting suspiciously? Did you find more money in your checking account than you could account for? Any…”

“It was the blonde,” Lucy said.

“Oh.” Zack winced for her. “Another woman? Sorry.”

“Girl, really. Very young. Maybe twenty.”

“That could be his wife,” Zack said.

“His wife?” Lucy said faintly.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry to drop it on you like that. He was married.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

“Bianca Bradley. Also blonde and young, twenty-four. He must have a thing for blondes.” Zack looked at Lucy’s impossible black hair and looked back as his notebook. “So…”

“That’s funny,” Lucy said. “Her maiden name was the same as his Christian name.”

“No, her maiden name is Bergman. She…”

“Where did the Bradley come from?”

“What Bradley?” Zack said.

“Her last name.”

“When she married John Bradley,” Zack said, his patience wearing thin. “The same John Bradley you married.”

“I didn’t marry John Bradley.” Lucy sat up straight. “I married Bradley Porter. I don’t believe this. You’ve been asking me questions about the wrong Bradley. What’s going on?”

“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Lucy said. “I mean, first you grab me in an alley-”

“Listen.” Zack fixed his eyes her. “ John Talbot Bradley is six-five and weighs about two hundred pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes, and he’s in very good physical condition. He used to be a high-school phys-ed teacher. Does he sound like your ex-husband?”

Lucy opened her mouth and Zack held up his hand. “Think about it before you answer. I know it sounds dumb, but think about it.”

Lucy shook her head. “No. Bradley’s blond and good-looking and a little out of shape. I bought him sweats once so he could run with me, and he told me that physical exertion was for people who didn’t use their minds. The height is close. But his eyes are gray.”

Zack began to slap his notebook with his pencil. “He still might be able to pull it off. You met him in March and that’s when John Bradley went missing in California.”

Lucy shook her head again. “Then definitely not I met him in March, but he’d already been branch manager of his bank for a year.”

“Branch manager of a bank?” Zack stopped frowning. “Two Bradleys, two banks. And then the phone tip and the diner. There’s got to be a connection here. All my instincts tell me there’s a connection.”

“All my logic tells me there isn’t,” Lucy said. “Your logic is wrong,” Zack said absently. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why were you in that diner today?”

“I told you, I was at the courthouse…”

“Were you supposed to meet Bradley at the diner?”

“Not exactly. I was supposed to meet Bradley at the courthouse. But he’d sent me a note, asking me to have lunch with him at the diner after the hearing, and then when he didn’t show up at the courthouse and my sister Tina wanted to talk, I suggested the diner, just in case he’d be there.”

“So you went to the diner to meet Bradley.”

“No,” Lucy said patiently. “I wasn’t even sure he’d be there. But Tina insisted on lunch so she could convince me to become spontaneous and irresponsible, and I picked the diner just in case he might be there. And then thanks to her, I beat up a cop.”

“You did not beat up a cop. I told you, I wasn’t fighting back.” Zack leaned forward until he was almost touching her, his blue eyes blazing into hers. “Now, listen. Concentrate.”

Lucy blinked at the heat in his gaze. “Okay,” she said, trying to remember what they’d been talking about. He was doing something to her brain, scrambling her thoughts. I bet he’s murder on cell phones, she thought, and then dragged her attention back to what he was saying.

“My partner and I were there because a woman called and told us that Bradley was going to be there,” Zack said, speaking very clearly as if he thought she was slightly backward. “That is all she said. ‘Bradley’s going to be at Harvey ’s Diner on Second at one.’ Now, could that have been your sister?”

Lucy pulled back a little so she could think. “My sister would love to see Bradley arrested and shot, but even she wouldn’t call and tell you he was going to be there if there wasn’t any reason for you to arrest him. Trust me, Tina does not think that Bradley is involved in a crime. And neither do I. And neither do you. You’re just annoyed because your instincts failed you.”