Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery by R.M. Wild (top 100 novels of all time .TXT) 📕

exit sign. “It’s not. An old boyfriend bought it for me. I’ve never worn it.”

He examined the lineup as if they were suspects at the police station. “So which of these did you choose for a night with the Ken Doll?”

“Obviously, there’s a gap in the middle.”

“I’ll say,” he said.

I pointed to the bed. “No, the middle of the bed. You happy?”

Mettle shrugged. “Personally, I would have gone with the last one. That way, if you get something stuck in your teeth, you’ve got some backup floss.”

By now the phone had stopped ringing. “Call it again, will you?”

He called the number and the granny shorts lit up in blue. In my haste, I must have accidentally left the phone behind.

“There you go,” he said. He went to pick up my underwear.

“Put them down, what are you doing?”

“Relax, Casket. Obviously, you can choose the right undies for your date with Mr. Plastic, but you’re too frazzled to take the proper safety precautions, so I’m going to load a tracking app on here so this never happens again. Capeesh?”

“I guess.”

He handed me the phone so I could enter my password. “Mark my words, you’ll thank me one day.”

19

After the thumb-stressed exhaustion of installing the tracking app on my phone, Mettle said he didn’t have the energy to drive right back to his “bunghole” of an apartment south of Bangor, so he relit the faintly glowing wicks at the kitchen table and took the cold chicken breast out of the oven and carved it into grossly uneven slices.

“I need the extra protein,” he said.

Then he poured two glasses of cheap wine.

I eyed the red liquid.

“I shouldn’t.”

“This bottle cost me seven bucks, Casket.”

“You saw what happened to me last time.”

“I don’t drink alone,” he said as a matter of fact.

But before I had a chance to apologize, he poured both glasses down the drain. “I get it. My dad had a drinking problem. Every time the game was on, a case of Coors would disappear. He never left any for me.” Then he turned around, smiled, and raised an empty glass to the cobwebs in the cabinets. “To Herrick’s chin.”

“Indeed.”

He delivered the plates of chicken to the table.

“No sides?” I asked.

“Sides are all carbs,” he said. He had to pull the chair three feet away from the table to fit his massive body anywhere remotely close to the edge. He stuffed his mouth and said, “So read any good things lately?”

I ate slowly, a holdover from past dates where I didn’t want to look like a pig. I got the feeling in Mettle’s presence I would always be a skimpy eater. “Things?”

“You know, those things with pages.”

“Books?”

“I guess.”

“No. You?”

Already finished eating, he pushed his plate aside. “Since I’m suspended, I thought I’d read that Russian Dolls-Toy this afternoon.”

“Tolstoy?”

“It’s pretty good.”

My students would often pull something similar. Amused, I said, “Oh yeah? Which part did you like the most?”

His face scrunched. “The part when Anna tries to get on the train.”

“You mean Anna Karenina?

“Yes, that was her name.”

“And what was the name of the book?”

“I read so many books I can’t remember.”

“I see,” I said. Obviously, he had spent two minutes looking up a summary to impress me, but I decided not to embarrass him. There was always a delicate line between teaching and humiliating. “That’s one of my favorites too.”

He grinned and got up and took both our plates to the sink. “We’ve got an early morning tomorrow. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sleep on the couch tonight.”

I didn’t bother telling him that ever since the spread in Marie Claire, the couch had become a public couch. He might as well have slept in a bus station. In fact, some mornings when I was vacuuming, I’d find a whole evidence locker of curly hairs between the cushions.

“Suit yourself,” I said.

He headed into the living room and plopped onto the couch and sprawled out. “Goodnight, Casket. Don’t let the red bugs bite.”

“Very funny,” I said. I went upstairs and locked myself in the safety of my bedroom. I listened hard for a few minutes. I could have sworn I heard him breathing, but it must have been my imagination.

I was so tired I couldn’t remember falling asleep.

The next morning, when I came back downstairs, Mettle had already vacated the couch. I made myself a mug of tea and went to the window and watched as he did some kind of caveman routine in the backyard.

With a log over his shoulders like a giant yoke, he did lunges and other exercises guaranteed to make sitting on the toilet the next day really painful. If I were him, I would have just waited until my suspension was up and done my sweating in the comfort of the great indoors.

But one had to hand it to Matt Mettle; he was dedicated to his workouts. That was one of the things that always bugged me about the heroes in the movies; no one got a body like his without putting in the hours.

On the other hand, if only he’d spend half as much time dedicated to police work, we might have a few more leads in my sister’s case.

When he came back inside, he was sweating despite the morning cold. His legs were wobbly, his thighs pulsing, and he had to hold onto the wall for support.

Tucked under his free arm was a bundle of clothing. I eyed the change of clothes as suspiciously as if he had come for the night armed with a toothbrush.

“You mind if I take a shower?” he said.

I felt like I was trapped in a scenario for a bad porno. “It’s upstairs.”

Mettle waddled past the living room and grabbed the stair railing for support.

“You going to make it?”

“I’ll be okay. I gave the quads Vietnam this morning. You gotta show your body who’s boss.”

I watched him labor to pull himself up the stairs. It looked like he was making a summit attempt after three days of mountain