A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,64

out television reporters and granting interviews. She made her 15 minutes of fame last more than twice that long.

It wasn’t a difficult thing to get Lucille Purell Watkins’s phone number from directory assistance. These days, you just dial 411 and James Earl Jones will tell you anybody’s phone number, so long as you’re a Verizon customer. Except his own. Maybe Verizon wants us to believe that 411 is James Earl Jones’ phone number.

Lucille wasn’t home, but miracle of miracles, she did have an answering machine, one that played “The Yellow Rose of Texas” while she instructed me to “go ahead and leave a message.” So I went ahead and left one.

I had nothing left to do except run down the parents of the usual suspects I’d taken out of the “Find-A-Friend” directory, and that was just a millimeter above nothing. But I had only a day and a half left, and I’d stupidly promised Anne I’d have something for her before the Board of Education meeting Thursday night. Sometimes, being gallant is overrated.

Trying my best to gather enthusiasm, I checked the clock. Two hours before the kids got home—plenty of time to see at least two parents. Why call ahead?

I got the list from my reporter’s notebook, put on my denim jacket, and headed out the door.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, gazing into the lovely garbage-bag-and-cardboard patch I’d made from the remains of my front window, was Preston Burke.

Chapter

Thirteen

We stared at each other for a long moment. “What are you doing here?” Preston Burke asked me.

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line, Preston?” I asked.

He looked positively stunned, standing in the sunshine outside my house. He squinted up at me, trying to make sense of it all. “Isn’t this Abigail Stein’s house?”

So that was it. He’d looked up Abby’s address somewhere, maybe in the state’s lawyer’s directory, and come down here to do whatever mischief he’d planned for this visit. He hadn’t expected anyone, least of all me, to be here while he left her his flaming bag of dog poop, or toilet papered her tree.

The one thing I had to do now was convince the man he’d made a mistake. I wanted to be sure he never came looking for Abby again.

“This is my house,” I said, honestly enough.

“Then, why did the reverse phone book list this as Abigail Stein’s house?” Burke wasn’t challenging me. He was asking a sincere question.

“I couldn’t begin to tell you,” I said, which was also true. At least, I couldn’t begin to tell him if I wanted to protect my wife.

He sat down on the front steps, and I thought he was going to cry. “How am I going to find Abigail Stein?” Burke said, seemingly in despair.

“Why are you looking for Ms. Stein?” I asked, as innocently as I could muster. “I heard the charges against you had been dropped. I assume your business with her is done.”

Burke did a double take Soupy Sales would have envied. “Oh, it is,” he said. “I’m not here in a professional capacity.”

“You’re here on an amateur basis?”

“No, you don’t understand.” The understatement of the week. “I’m looking for Abigail Stein on personal business.” He sucked in his breath, screwing up his courage. “I’m in love with her.”

I’m ashamed of myself, but I do recall letting out a laugh. “You’re. . . in love with Abigail Stein?”

“Is that so amusing?”

I walked down and sat next to him. “I’m sorry, Preston. You have to understand. Abigail Stein is my wife.”

To truly empathize with the look in Burke’s eyes, you have to know what it is to be in love with Abby. To have aspired to someone so close to perfection, and then have the rug pulled out from under you. . . it’s a feeling I hope never to actually have myself.

“Your wife?”

“Yes,” I told him. “We’ve been married for fourteen years. We have a twelve-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter.” I actually reached into my jacket for my wallet, and showed him pictures of my children. This, to a man I was pretty sure five minutes ago was a dangerous maniac.

“Oh, my. . .” Preston Burke was coming apart at the seams, and I felt awful for him. “All that time when she was working on my case, the only thing that got me through was thinking, ‘once this is over, I’ll go and I’ll ask her out.’ And now. . .”

It occurred to me that he should have seen Abby’s wedding