Double Shot Read Online Free Page B

previous month, I hadn’t seen either one of them for over fourteen years. But they had doted on Arch when he was a newborn. It hurt not to see someone for a long time. I had liked the Kerrs, and had felt a pang to hear Albert had died of cancer while serving as the priest for a small Anglican congregation in Qatar, of all places. Still, Albert’s lovely wife — widow — Holly had called me to do this event.
We had been close to both the Kerrs and Vikarioses when Albert, Ted, and the Jerk had worked together, Holly had reminded me.
I had gritted my teeth and promised Holly we would have a lovely lunch. And whether we had an anonymous attacker, a herd of mice, or a four-figure cost overrun, I was going to finish this luncheon, by golly. I took a deep breath, which was not a good idea.
Had anyone else noticed that the Roundhouse smelled like a pine forest? I stepped out from the corner and tried to avoid looking at the Jerk, who had around his new girlfriend. Girlfriend, shcmirlfriend, my main question was whether anyone was sniffing the air and making faces. The scent, Organic Pine, could have been called The Woods You’ll Never Get Out Of. It certainly smelled like denser forest than anything Hansel and Gretel had dealt with. Okay, Liz and Arch had gone too wild with their enthusiastic spraying. They’d coated the kitchen with the stuff, emptied a can each into the refrigerators, and squirted the fragrance into every corner of the old restaurant.
I blinked at Cecelia Brisbane, who was seated close by. Her wide body spilled over the chair seat as she hunched over the table, her thick glasses perched on the edge of her bulbous nose. She was taking notes, for God’s sake! If she made fun of the Roundhouse’s pine odor in her next column, I’d tell her to be grateful the folks hadn’t inhaled what had preceded it.
I focused on the rest of the guests. Gray-haired, squirrel-faced Nan Watkins, a longtime ob-gyn nurse at
Southwest
Hospital
, nodded to me and gave a thumbs-up. I was doing her retirement party this week, so it was a good thing she was enjoying the lunch. In fact, all of the guests looked satisfied — at least with the food, if not with Ted Vikarios’s droning on. I’d been gratified by the way they’d slurped down Julian’s herb-topped chilled asparagus soup. After that, the mourners had dug into our quickly assembled assiettes de charcuterie. Amazing how a long church service can stimulate the appetite.
And speaking of church, God, and things we were thankful for, I’d also been grateful to the Almighty that Liz had been able to muster Arch our earlier than I’d requested. Looking over at Arch, now quietly filling water glasses at a far table, I was filled with pride. At fifteen, my son was finally getting taller. His shoulders were broadening, he’d cut his toast-brown hair short, and he’d traded in his thick tortoiseshell glasses for thin wire-rimmed specs.
But there was another change in Arch. Toward the end of the school year, I’d finally had enough of my son’s self-centeredness and obsession with having stuff. I’d barely been able to deal with a stream of demands for an electric guitar, a high-tech cell phone, a new computer, and other paraphernalia. Worse, his annoying behavior was increasingly expressing itself as verbal abuse directed at yours truly. I’d lived in denial for all those years with the Jerk, I said to myself one particularly sleepless night, was I going to do the same with Arch?
I was not. No matter whose “fault” his behavior was — I blamed the brats at
Elk
Park
Preparatory School
, Arch blamed me — I decided to pull him out of EPP. Unfortunately, there was no Episcopal high school in the Denver area. So I told Arch he could go away to military school (I was bluffing) or he could attend the
Christian
Brothers
Catholic
High School
, not far from the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. After much yelling and door slamming, he chose the Brothers.
Once Arch had