Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

to come home
.
I knew Sharon would like an opportunity to paint Ellen
Abbott as a sensationalistic ratings whore. I knew regal
Sharon with her twenty years in journalism, her interviews
with Arafat and Sarkozy and Obama, would be offended by
the very idea of Ellen Abbott. I am (was) a journalist, I know
the drill, and so when I said those words – 
the Ellen Abbott
effect –
I recognized Sharon’s mouth twitch, the delicately
raised eyebrows, the lightening of her whole visage. It was
the look when you realize: 
I got my angle
.
At the end of the interview, Sharon took both my hands
in hers – cool, a bit callused, I’d read she was an avid
golfer – and wished me well. ‘I will be keeping a close eye
on you, my friend,’ she said, and then she was kissing Go
on the cheek and swishing away from us, the back of her
dress a battlefield of stickpins to keep the material in front
from slouching.
‘You fucking did that perfectly,’ Go pronounced as she
headed to the door. ‘You seem totally different than before.
In charge but not cocky. Even your jaw is less … dickish.’
‘I unclefted my chin.’
‘Almost, yeah. See you back home.’ She actually gave
me a go-champ punch to the shoulder.

---

me a go-champ punch to the shoulder.
I followed the Sharon Schieber interview with two
quickies – one cable and one network. Tomorrow the
Schieber interview would air, and then the others would roll
out, a domino of apologetics and remorse. I was taking
control. I was no longer going to settle for being the
possibly guilty husband or the emotionally removed
husband or the heartlessly cheating husband. I was the guy
everyone knew – the guy many men (and women) have
been: 
I cheated, I feel like shit, I will do what needs to be
done to fix the situation because I am a real man
.
‘We are in decent shape,’ Tanner pronounced as we
wrapped up. ‘The thing with Andie, it won’t be as awful as it
might have been, thanks to the interview with Sharon. We
just need to stay ahead of everything else from now on.’
Go phoned, and I picked up. Her voice was thin and
high.
‘The cops are here with a warrant for the woodshed …
they’re at Dad’s house too. They’re … I’m scared.’
Go was in the kitchen smoking a cigarette when we arrived,
and judging from the overflow in the kitschy ’70s ashtray,
she was on her second pack. An awkward, shoulderless
kid with a crew cut and a police officer’s uniform sat next to
her on one of the bar stools.
‘This is Tyler,’ she said. ‘He grew up in Tennessee, he
has a horse named Custard—’
‘Custer,’ Tyler said.
‘Custer, and he’s allergic to peanuts. Not the horse but
Tyler. Oh, and he has a torn labrum, which is the same
injury baseball pitchers get, but he’s not sure how he got it.’

---

She took a drag on the cigarette. Her eyes watered. ‘He’s
been here a long time.’
Tyler tried to give me a tough look, ended up watching
his well-shined shoes.
Boney appeared through the sliding glass doors at the
back of the house. ‘Big day, boys,’ she said. ‘Wish you’d
bothered letting us know, Nick, that you have a girlfriend.
Would have saved us all a lot of time.’
‘We’re happy to discuss that, as well as the contents of
the shed, both of which we were on our way to tell you
about,’ Tanner said. ‘Frankly, if you had given us the
courtesy of telling us about Andie, a lot of pain could have
been forestalled. But you needed the press conference, you
had to have the publicity. How disgusting, to put that girl up
there like that.’
‘Right,’ Boney said. ‘So, the woodshed. You all want to
come with me?’ She turned her back on us, leading the way
over the patchy end-of-summer grass to the woodshed. A
cobweb trailed from her hair like a wedding veil. She
motioned impatiently when she saw me not following.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Not gonna bite you.’
The woodshed was lit up by several portable lights,
making it look even more ominous.
‘When’s the last time you been in here, Nick?’
‘I came in here very recently, when my wife’s treasure
hunt led me here. But it’s not my stuff, and I did not touch
anything—’
Tanner cut me off: ‘My client and I have an explosive
new theory—’ Tanner began, then caught himself. The
phony TV-speak was so incredibly awful and inappropriate,
we all cringed.

---

‘Oh, explosive, how exciting,’ Boney said.
‘We were about to inform you—’
‘Really? What convenient timing,’ she said. ‘Stay there,
please.’ The door hung loose on its hinges, a broken lock
dangling to the side. Gilpin was inside, cataloging the
goods.
‘These the golf clubs you don’t play with?’ Gilpin said,
jostling the glinting irons.
‘None of this is mine – none of this was put there by
me.’
‘That’s funny, because everything in here corresponds
with purchases made on the credit cards that aren’t yours
either,’ Boney snapped. ‘This is, like, what do they call it, a
man cave? A man cave in the making, just waiting for the
wife to go away for good. Got yourself some nice pastimes,
Nick.’ She pulled out three large cardboard boxes and set
them at my feet.
‘What’s this?’
Boney opened them with fingertip disgust despite her
gloved hands. Inside were dozens of porn DVDs, flesh of all
colors and sizes on display on the covers.
Gilpin chuckled. ‘I gotta hand it to you, Nick, I mean, a
man has his needs—’
‘Men are highly visual, that’s what my ex always said
when I caught him,’ Boney said.
‘Men are highly visual, but Nick, this shit made me
blush,’ Gilpin said. ‘It made me a little sick, too, some of it,
and I don’t get sick too easy.’ He spread out a few of the
DVDs like an ugly deck of cards. Most of the titles implied
vi o le nce :