Free SSC (2011) The Road to Hell by Paul Levine

turns out the way you think.”
    She turned away from me, either to express her displeasure or to show off her profile. “And what did you think, Jake, that I’d be doing brain surgery now? I just count my blessings that I’m not dancing tabletops in one of those dives near the airport.”
    In the distance, a police siren sang against the wind. “Maybe I’m just jealous that you’re with Nicky, and this is the way I show it.”
    “ You? Jealous?” She laughed a throaty laugh, her breasts bouncing. “Since when? You never cared. You never once said you loved me, not even when it was just the two of us. We were close, Jake, or don’t you remember?”
    “ I remember everything,” I said. “The Germans wore gray. You wore blue, and I missed the boat.”
    “ The boat?”
    “ The one to Grand Cayman—others too, I imagine. I never could keep up with you.”
    She turned back to me and brought an elbow down into my stomach. Not hard, but not soft either. I let out a whoosh . “Jeez, what’s that for?”
    “ You jerk! You big, dumb jock jerk! You never asked me to stay. You think I wouldn’t have stayed? You never cared!”
    “ Who says I didn’t care?”
    “ Me! I say it. You didn’t care.”
    “ I cared,” I said softly.
    “ Then you’re a double dumb jerk for never saying so.”
    * * *
    Gina sat on the edge of the bed, craning her long neck and blowing cigarette smoke into the air. She’d been quitting smoking ever since we met, probably longer. Self-discipline was not her strong suit. It took her another half hour to tell me the rest of the story.
    She had put on what she called her sweet face and served Peter Tupton a pitcher of mimosas to loosen him up. Nicky lent him a swimsuit, and before you knew it, there he was frolicking in the pool with a couple of Junior Leaguers from Old Cutler Road.
    “ Is there a Mrs. Tupton?” I asked. Without a wife and kids, the value of the wrongful-death case would plummet.
    “ There is, but he didn’t bring her,” Gina told me.
    “ Why not? Were they separated?” An impending marital split could limit the damages, too.
    “ Tupton said something about Sunday being her day to spend at Mercy hospital. She’s a volunteer with child cancer patients.”
    Oh shit. When the surviving spouse is an angel, tack another digit onto the verdict form.
    “ Any little Tuptettes?”
    “ No. They’d been married a couple of years. No kids yet.”
    Be thankful for small blessings.
    “ How’d he get into the wine cellar?”
    She exhaled a puff into the draft of the ceiling fan. “Beats me. When he first arrived, Nicky gave him a tour of the house, including the cellar, which isn’t a cellar at all or it’d be under five feet of water. It’s a custom-built room off the kitchen. Lots of insulation, custom wood shelving, a couple thousand bottles. He must have come back into the house from the pool. Maybe the jerkoff wanted to steal a Château Pétrus 1961. Or maybe he was looking for a place to pee.”
    I was trying to figure it out, but it made no sense. There was plenty to drink outside, where it was also warm, and tummy-tucked women in bikinis lounged poolside. “Why would he wander into a freezing room soaking wet, settle down, and drink two bottles of champagne? Did he lock himself in?”
    “ Impossible,” she answered, tossing me the hand again. “The bolt slides open from the inside. Apparently, he didn’t want to leave.”
    Or couldn’t , I thought.
    The rain had stopped, and the wind had died. Outside the window, the late-afternoon sun peeked from behind the clouds, slanting shadows of a palm frond across the room. In the chinaberry tree, a mockingbird with white wing patches was yawking and cackling. Mimus polyglottos , Doc Charlie Riggs called him, using the bird’s Latin name. Mimic of many tongues. My mocker is a bachelor. They’re the ones who sing the songs. Maybe that’s what I was doing, too.
    “ Who was the last person to see Tupton alive?” I