A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,3

a little dreamy. “That Mustang was a great car,” he said.

I decided to pretend he hadn’t spoken. “Anyway, she’s not the reason I wanted to go tonight,” I protested as I pulled into the parking lot of the luxurious Vacation Inn of Carteret, New Jersey. “I hadn’t thought once of her before you mentioned her name right now.”

“Sure,” said Mahoney. “You just knew she liked me better, anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

We got out of the car after I parked, which made sense. If we’d gotten out before I’d parked, the car might very well have run over our feet and hurt us, and possibly destroyed property at the Inn. It’s important to follow certain procedures.

I led the way toward the door marked “Banquet Room,” which was sure to be an overstatement. And about 20 feet from the door, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Mahoney, who came close to barreling into me and causing permanent damage, slammed on his heels. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelped.

“I can’t go in. Let’s go to the movies or something. This was a bad idea.”

He laughed. “It’ll be fun! We haven’t seen these people in twenty-five years!” he said.

“Yeah, and we didn’t. . .”

“Why, Aaron Tucker,” purred a voice behind me that was laced with sex and nostalgia. “I hear you solve mysteries.”

Mahoney and I both spun around and muttered something in the tradition of Jackie Gleason’s classic “homina, homina, homina.”

Stephanie Jacobs, in a dress covering considerably less than a down parka would, stood maybe five feet away.

She smiled a satisfied smile that indicated she knew exactly what effect her voice would have on us. On me, really, since she wasn’t looking at Mahoney at all. Her deep blue eyes bored into me, and I’m pretty sure left a hole in the back of my head. Stephanie looked just as good as she had at 18, which was entirely unfair of her.

Maybe I hadn’t come just to see Friedman, Wharton and. . . what’s-their-names, after all.

Chapter

Three

It took me a few moments to regain the power of speech, and a few more to look Stephanie in the eye, something her plunging neckline wasn’t helping me achieve.

“I don’t solve mysteries,” I said when English once again became my primary language. “I’m a soldier on the bottom rung of the literary battleground.” It sounded good at the time. I have no idea what it meant, since battlegrounds don’t generally have rungs, but there was no time to think of that.

“That’s not what I heard,” she said, still not taking her eyes off me. I thought Mahoney might begin doing the tarantella behind my back just to get her attention. “I heard you found out who killed some woman in your town a while back.”

Well, therein lies a tale. And one I have told elsewhere, so I’ll spare you the details. I decided, in this case, to be modest.

“Oh, I was just working on a story and got lucky,” I said.

“You were lucky I was backing you up,” grumbled Mahoney, “or you might not be here today.”

His booming voice finally penetrated Stephanie’s radar screen, and she turned to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t have a name tag, and I’m embarrassed, but I can’t remember. . .”

“Come on inside,” I said, gesturing toward the door. “Let’s see who we can remember without name tags.”

I didn’t hold out my arm, but she took it anyway, and as we walked inside, Mahoney gave me the same look arsenic would give you if it had eyes.

Inside was a table with “Hello My Name Is” name tags, next to which was tastefully arranged an array of pictures from the football highlights of Bloomfield High School’s team for my graduation year (meaning three pictures, one for each of our victories against nine losses). Mahoney and I walked past the table, having decided ahead of time to forego the stupid tags and let people guess who we were. Stephanie stopped and carefully found hers, then tried to find an artful place to attach it to her dress. It took a while, but she managed.

I was across the room by the time she had assembled herself, but I did take some amusement in the looks our male classmates gave Stephanie as she made her way around the dining room. The nametag gave them a legitimate excuse to look where they wanted to look, which I believe was exactly the effect Stephanie had desired. But before I could make my way back to her, I felt