five-year-old doing shopping on the Internet? He shook his head at himself. He shouldn’t have expected Sean to stick to the zillion games and puzzles and books they’d put on his iPad. Sean had cottoned to what Wi-Fi was and what it meant. But a muscle shirt? What was that all about?
“A muscle shirt, Sean?” Sherlock asked as she sliced a bit of banana onto his cereal. “To impress Marty?”
Sean looked up at his mom. “It would make my muscles look bigger, that’s what Marty says. She told me if we put our allowances together, we could buy one on eBay, but the only one we found is nineteen dollars. So far we’ve got eleven dollars and thirty-five cents.” Sean took a bite of Cheerios, spooned up a banana, shoved it in, and frowned. “I think the one we found is too big for me.”
“A muscle shirt needs to fit nice and tight, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Marty said when we get enough money, we should buy it for you instead, Papa. I told her we could save the money by Christmas. I think she’s trying to kiss up to you because she wants to marry me.”
Savich, who’d been thinking about Venus and the family meeting the previous night, tried to look solemn, since it wouldn’t do to laugh. He studied Sean’s serious little face, his intense dark eyes, and he marveled at how his boy could bring him back instantly to the real world.
But Sherlock didn’t hold back—she spurted out a laugh, grinning like a bandit at Savich. “Hey, big boy, how would you feel about that?”
“Which?” Savich asked. “The muscle shirt or Marty being our daughter-in-law?”
“Marty’s already a given, so the muscle shirt. I suggest black, Sean, that’d be good. I could show your papa off at the gym.”
Sean looked confused, then his face scrunched up. “I just don’t know, Papa, maybe I should tell Emma about the muscle shirt, too.” He fell silent, stirring his soggy Cheerios around, then grinned, his eyes shining. “Emma gets a really big allowance, so she could put in more money, so maybe we could get it before Christmas.” Then he sighed. “But Marty might get mad, and then I couldn’t play Flying Monks with her.” Again, that intense look. “What would you do, Papa?”
Savich looked thoughtfully into his cereal bowl, then at his son. “You want me to be honest, Sean?”
Sean nodded, all his attention on his father, as was Sherlock’s.
“I’d wait for a girl just like your mama. Then I’d beg her to marry me and stay with me forever. And the best thing? I’d only have to worry about one wife. We’d have plenty of time for Flying Monks.”
Sean turned his father’s dark eyes to his mother’s face, and slowly nodded. “Maybe that’d be okay. You’re pretty nice, Mama.”
“Thank you, Sean,” Sherlock said. She felt such a burst of love she thought she’d float to the kitchen ceiling.
Savich’s cell rang out It’s Time by Imagine Dragons. “Savich.” For Sean’s benefit, he walked into the hall to take it, and when he returned, he drew a deep breath, and said in as emotionless a voice as he could manage, “That was Venus. Reporters are camped out in front of the mansion again and the neighbors are screaming at the police for not doing anything. Venus’s number is ringing off the hook.
“She also said the shooting yesterday is front and center in the National Enquirer, not a big deal in itself, since everyone else is already covering it, but the Enquirer got every single juicy detail, the arsenic poisoning, our names, our meeting with the family last night. Everything.”
“But how?”
“Venus’s driver, MacPherson, left her a letter, apologizing but saying they paid him a great deal of money for his story and he has a sick kid to take care of. He resigned. They put his picture on the front page, along with Venus’s.”
Sherlock paused a moment. “Venus must be disappointed, but it doesn’t change the fact that MacPherson saved her life yesterday. I suppose a father afraid for his child will do what he thinks he has to. What’s wrong with MacPherson’s child?”
“She didn’t know. She said MacPherson had never brought it up and his letter didn’t say.”
“But does it really matter? I mean bits and pieces of what happened are all over the news. You don’t suppose she might offer him his job back, do you?”
He shrugged. “She might consider it too big a betrayal. If she