Free Highway 61 by David Housewright Page A

bikes—everything seemed to be in its proper place, and that’s what I told the cops. I didn’t mention that the wheel carrier on the back of my Jeep Cherokee had been swung open and then closed, but not latched.
    “What were they after, I wonder,” Sigford said.
    “I have no idea,” I told him.
    “Sure you’re not holding out on me, McKenzie?”
    “Why would I do that?”
    “Force of habit.”

 
    SIX
    Nina Truhler lounged behind her desk, her feet on the blotter, eating donuts. Her office, if you could call it that, was located just off the downstairs bar at the jazz club that she had named after her daughter. It was small and cramped and filled with enough cartons and boxes that it resembled a storage closet. The only thing that suggested someone actually spent time there was the twelve-inch-high trophy—a gold figure with sword extended mounted on a marble stand—that Erica had won at the St. Paul Academy Invitational Fencing Tournament last year and given her mother. I sat in the only other chair in the room. I was eating a donut as well.
    “These are amazing,” Nina said. She was licking brown sugar off her fingers as she spoke.
    “Ambrosia,” I said.
    “At least one good thing has come of your helping Jason.”
    “Two. The donuts—”
    “And?”
    “I scored a few points with Erica.”
    “Rickie has always liked you.”
    “I’m not altogether sure that’s true. I’m the guy courting her mother. How could she possibly approve of that?”
    “Good question. Clearly you’re not good enough for me.”
    “All my friends who have met you say that I outkicked my coverage.”
    “I don’t know what that means, but I like the sound of it.”
    Nina smiled around a mouthful of donut, her pale blue eyes bright and shiny, and glanced up toward the ceiling. Even after all the years I’ve known her, there are still ways she can sit, stand, turn, move, run her hand through her jet black hair, ways she can cock her head, that make me feel suddenly flushed and light-headed. Even the way she chewed her donut made me aware of just how much I adored this woman. If it hadn’t been for Jason Truhler we might have married long ago. Her experiences with him had soured Nina on the institution of marriage, leaving us in a committed relationship, yet living on different sides of the city, together but apart.
    Nina swallowed her donut and reached back into the white carton.
    “We should save a few for Rickie,” she said.
    “Sounds like a plan.”
    “I’m sorry about the way I reacted when you said you were helping Jason.”
    “I understand. No need to apologize.”
    “I never told you much about our relationship.”
    “You told me enough.”
    “He was very abusive. Not physically abusive. It would have been easier, I think, to deal with that. Instead, he had a way of making me do things I didn’t want to do, of making all of our problems seem like they were my fault, of—he had a way of making me feel small. That was the worst of it. He made me feel like I was so much less than everyone else.”
    “The two of you did a good job raising Erica, though. Anyway, that’s what Jason said.”
    “He’s wrong. Rickie didn’t get nearly as much time and attention from either of us as she should have. Jason was never around except on holidays and the occasional weekend when he could tear himself away from his bimbos. Me? I spent more time building and running this place than I ever did with her. I had to prove that I wasn’t small, you see. Rickie suffered because of it. She grew up despite us.”
    “I don’t believe that’s true. I bet Erica doesn’t, either.”
    “Rickie treats me like a dense, dull old woman who just happens to pay the bills. We get along, I suppose, but we’re not as close as we should be. She keeps a lot to herself. It kills me that she doesn’t take me into her confidence.”
    “Doesn’t every mother say that about her daughter?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “She’s a good