Page 41 of It's One of Us
Osley has never met a stranger. He’s so outgoing, Joey often has to drag him away from interactions. This is no different. She pops the horn with her thumb, laughs a little inside at the shocked, then pissed look he gives her. She gives him acome herewave, and Osley takes his sweet time about it. When he finally hits the door with his shoulder, the girl is holding his card, a dazed expression on her face. Half in love or can’t wait for him to shut up, who knows.
Joey likes working with him, most of the time. He’s shrewd, and loyal. He’s had her back for three years now, and they work well together. So long as she’s had her caffeine. Of which, at this moment, despite the two cups she had at Bender’s place, she is severely deficient.
“Why, in the name of all that’s holy, did you just interrupt my soliloquy? She was about to ask me to dinner.”
“It looked like she was about to barf on your boots. Gimme that coffee. Bender called. We gotta go back. Someone broke into his office. I’ve got an evidence team meeting us.”
“You’re so damn efficient, Moore.”
“Give me my coffee, Will, or I swear—”
He hands it to her, already doctored exactly as she likes. “Dark and sweet, like me,” Osley cracks.
“Don’t be a douche. We need to go.”
“You’re exceptionally grumpy today, lady. What the hell is up your butt?”
She doesn’t answer, because she doesn’t know, just has that awful, itchy feeling that they’re missing something. Shakes her head and takes a deep swallow, then puts the car in gear.
Back in Forest Hills, Park Bender stands on the porch of his house, waiting for them to pull up. He is talking to a blonde in pristine yoga clothes who stands on his sidewalk leading to the front porch, a neighbor, most likely. When he sees their car, he nods, and the neighbor shoots a glance their way and scoots off, back across the street, where she sets up a wary watch from her own porch.
“Do you trust this guy?” Osley asks as Joey expertly parallels between the cars on the street.
Joey thinks about it. “Right now, I see no reason not to. As far as we know, he hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s a terrible circumstance. I’m sure he’s been in shock since we rolled up the first time.”
“You just think he’s pretty.”
She flashes him a smile. “Contrary tosomepeople we know, I wait to make judgments until I’ve assembled all the facts.”
“Oh, youdothink he’s pretty,” Osley crows, and she can’t help it, she laughs as she gets out of the car. Osley isn’t wrong. Park Bender is pretty. Sensitive mouth, square jaw, unruly hair, tall and trim. But pretty boys aren’t her thing.Never date a man who’s better looking than you, her mother always used to say. It’s not the advice she takes so much as the knowledge that most gorgeous men are wrapped up in themselves and their egos, whether obvious or not. They have something to prove. Not to mention he has a stunner for a wife, though she’s as skittish as a deer.
“Thank you for coming back,” Bender says. Polite. Non-evasive. He seems troubled; she senses the tension running through him, his lips thin, knuckles white around a steaming fresh cup of coffee. She thinks longingly back to the now empty cup in the car’s holder. Never enough. It’s never enough. But she’s wired now; more and she’ll shoot off to the moon.
“No problem. Why don’t you show us what’s happened?”
They tromp into the back yard through a wrought iron side gate—“keyed, always kept locked, the only one who can get through is the mower, and he’s done for the season”—into a fenced-in area the size of a small parking lot. Grass, still lush and green, bisected by a gravel path interspersed with wide slate slabs that leads to a charming cedar-and-stone cottage. The scent of burning leaves fills the air, one of the neighbors doing a burn.
“I didn’t realize you had so much room back here,” Joey says.
“The lot goes back into the woods, all the way to the creek.”
“Fenced all around?”
“Yes. There’s barbed wire down by the creek. We converted the shed so I’d have a place to work when school was out.” At Joey’s glance toward the Bender house, which easily runs four thousand square feet, he stammers, “I need quiet and privacy. It’s...contractual.”
“I’ll take a look around,” Will says, taking off to the right. He disappears, and moments later, there’s a frantic susurrus as the host of sparrows who live behind the cottage take flight, zooming into the air.
Joey follows Bender into the very misnamed “shed”—the small cedar-and-stone cottage has tons of light, space, and natural wood. The desk is live-edge wood and built into the wall, the bookshelves are stuffed, and the Aeron chair is original Miller.
“Olivia designed it for me,” he says, ducking his head in humility at her raised brow. “She’s an amazing designer. You could give her a cardboard box and five bucks, and she’d make it look like Buckingham Palace. This was a falling-down donkey barn when we bought the place.”
Joey takes in the disturbance—the glass shards, the open safe, the pens and papers covered in coffee.
“What did they get?”
“Money. Paperwork. Passport and birth certificate.” A pause. “A gun.”
“Registered?” she asks.
