Free The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) by Nathan Walpow Page A

just waiting for Ronnie to get her cute little ass out of there to find out what I’d been covering up all this time.
    “Oh, yeah, right,” Ronnie said, “You
bastard
.” She ran to the door, flung it open, slammed it shut behind her. I followed, opened it again, ran outside in time to see her disappear into her Miata and peel away into the rain. She’d gotten the muffler fixed.
    I stood there getting soaked until it was time to face the music.

Eleven
    “You’ve been off since I came back from San Francisco.”
    “I have?”
    “Don’t act dumb,” Gina said. “I hate when you act dumb. Tell me what happened.”
    “I kept meaning to tell you. I just never found the right—”
    “Tell me what happened, please.”
    How to put it? As simply as possible. “The morning after that party—and I have to preface this by saying I have absolutely no memory of what happened after I blacked out on the lawn—I woke up in bed with Ronnie.”
    I could see her processing the information. Trying to fit it into her reality. Deciding she needed more.
    “We were naked,” I said.
    “You shithead.”
    I almost added “except for a sock.” Decided we could do without that detail.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “Like I said, I was going to, but I was afraid to, and then I thought I’d wait until I figured out what really happened, and Ronnie was in Hawaii …” It sounded feeble even to me.
    “I don’t care what happened,” she said.
    “You don’t?”
    “Oh, on some level I do, I mean, yeah, I’d like to know if my husband is screwing our next-door neighbor, but you know what? I know if you did that, there’d be a decent enough reason. Like you were under the influence of some kind of drug. Which you clearly were, since you don’t remember anything. Unless you’re lying about that. And I don’t think you are. Are you?”
    “No. I don’t remember a thing.”
    She pulled out one of the dining room chairs and sat in it and stared at the vase full of tired flowers sitting on the table. She got up again, picked up the vase, dumped the flowers, ran water in the vase. Then she leaned against the sink. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
    “I was afraid.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of what it might do to our marriage.”
    “You think a roll in the hay with Ronnie’s worse for our marriage then you not telling me about it?”
    “I never thought about it that way.”
    “Before we got involved—when we were just friends—would you have told me?”
    “Of course. We told each other everything.”
    “So why is now different?”
    “Because it might change things.”
    “Jesus.” She looked in the sink, at the vase, then at me.“Go away.”
    “You want me to leave? You want to split up?”
    “I want you out of my sight.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Just go.”
    I watched her, some part of me clinging to the hope that she’d take pity, hold out her arms, say all was forgiven.
    There wasn’t a chance.
    I went outside.
     
    Next door at the Clement house, the sprinklers were going. They came on every night, rain or shine, a little after midnight. They’d run for twenty minutes and shut themselves off. Depending on the wind they’d sometimes get my truck or Gina’s Volvo wet. Bill Clement would apologize profusely and swear he was going to get them fixed. I didn’t think he ever would, and I didn’t care.
    On the other side, at the house occupied by Ronnie and her cousin Theta, there were two cars in the driveway. Ronnie’d come back after an hour and run inside. I didn’t think she saw me lurking in the shadows on my front porch. The rain was still coming down hard then, though it had stopped since.
    Lights were on in there. I could go over and try to make things right. Or at least see if she could come up with a clue or two about what had happened that night.
    Instead I sat in one of the wicker chairs and thought about Dennis Lennox. And once I started thinking about him, I realized what I should have