“Oh my God! So then what did you do?!”
John Biebe looked over his left shoulder and then the other, trying to hear what his wife was exclaiming, and wishing for once that she had put the conversation on the speaker phone. He knew that Tina was talking to Adalia Rabinovich, only because he had heard ‘Adalia! Hi – how are you?’ as the former moved between the dining room and the kitchen as she set the table for dinner. Every once in a while, John would hear Tina gasp or make some other comment indicating surprise or shock, and then there was the occasional ‘You’re kidding me,’ “You are friggin’ kidding me,’ ‘Oh...my...God,’ ‘Oh please,’ ‘Get out of here,’ and of course ‘So then what did you do,’ but he had no idea what was being said on the other end of the line. So naturally if the chat wasn’t too awfully private – and considering Tina wasn’t hiding away in her office and speaking in whispered tones – he didn’t see a reason why the speaker phone was not being utilized. He doubted either woman would see it that way, but the Alaskan figured that since he would eventually learn what it was all about, why not cut straight to it? The idea only made him chuckle as he poured a stream of thickening broth into the wok.
And keep Tina from giving me all the new Point gossip from her own lips? I wouldn’t interfere with that for all the...
“So are you finally alone?”
Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Tina reenter the kitchen, the cordless phone propped between her shoulder and her cheek, and as she grabbed the corkscrew from a utensil stand, he heard, “Adalia...hold on a second...Hold on...Thanks....” and then to him, “Beer or wine?”
“Huh? Oh...uh...what kind of wine?” he asked, constantly amazed at how she could juggle two conversations at one time.
“Shiraz and a cab. A Cab-Shiraz. It’s uh...It’s an Aussie Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon blend. I think you’ve tried that before, but...but I don’t think it was the same vintage.”
John shrugged, continuing to stir the dish in front of him while eyeing the contents of yet a second wok in which another dish was cooking. “I’ll try some, darlin’, but go ahead and get me a beer too...you know...just in case. You know how I am with wine.” He would drink it on occasion, but Tina was the one that preferred it.
“Okay....Sorry...I’m back. So are you finally alone?” Tina suddenly burst into the infectious laugh that was so familiar to all those that knew her. “Just you and Casey, huh?....Well, I just wish you had called. John or I...” and she again vanished into the dining room, but this time carrying a bottle of wine, a bottle of beer she had taken from the refrigerator, the combination corkscrew/bottle opener...and the phone was still there somewhere. Talk about multitasking!
‘John or I....’ Great. That’s exactly how I’d want to spend my Friday night – playing sheriff and psychologist again. And I barely know her – I’m not sure how much help I would have....
“Oh you have a good rest of the evening too,” he now heard Tina say as she returned to the kitchen. “I hope it’s more peaceful than what you’ve been through so far....”
I can’t wait to hear this one.
“Yeah...Yes, yes....I’ll see you...about nine? Is that still all right?....Great....Okay then....No...it was no problem. I’m glad you called....Okay....Okay....Bye now. Night.” Pushing the button to hang up she sighed and shook her head. “You are not going to believe this.”
“I was just thinking that you should have shared.”
“Shared? Oh! You mean put it on the speaker phone?” Moving behind her husband, Tina let her arms ease around John’s waist, and she casually leaned her head against his back. “Nah...I couldn’t do that. After all, what will we talk about over dinner?” she joked. “Mmm...that smells fantastic.” Standing tiptoe, she peered into the wok on the left front burner. “The dumplings ready?”
“I think so. Don’t want them overdone.” As she went to get a bowl for them, John asked, “So...Adalia having problems already?”
“Problems? Well...I’m not sure if you’d call it a problem yet or not but....Oh John! These...look...great! All these years and you’ve been hiding your dumpling making talents from me.”
“I still like to toss a surprise or two your way now and then,” he teased, winking at her. “If you’ll get those on the table...”
“Got it.”
“The sauce is right there on the stove too, if you want to grab that.”
“The...okay.”
“...the stir fry is almost...ready and...I’ll bring it and the rice out in a sec.”
Minutes later they were at the table, and while Tina poured the drinks, John filled their plates with the food, smiling -- and reddening -- as his wife gave her compliments.
"You haven't even tried it yet," he told her, laughing. "You have no idea how...You might not even like it."
"Well, so far so good. It looks great; it smells great..." Maneuvering her chopsticks, she dipped one dumpling in the sauce and then took a bite, her husband grinning broadly when an 'Mmmm' crossed her lips.
"So?" Not that he needed to ask.
"This...is...This is great! Oh my... Why didn't you tell me you knew how to make Chinese dumplings? I know, I know. You like to keep me on my toes. You like to keep me surprised...but these are too darn good for you not to make them all the time!"
He shrugged. "Thanks...but I can’t take all the credit for it, darlin’. Annabella taught me a long time ago.”
“She did?”
John nodded. “She gave a couple of foreign cuisine cooking classes during one of those weeks when you had to be in Louisville for something. I think you had another trial.”
“Ah...okay.”
“Oh and if you think that's good, wait until you try to cashew rice..."
"I'm going to."
"And the pork stir fry..."
"I will, I will, I promise."
“Anyway...you were away in Louisville and a few of the other regulars were away, and it was kind of lonely ‘round here, and Annabella – bless her heart – decided to throw something together and she said she thought, ‘Why not do some cooking classes?’ So there you go. I learned some Chinese recipes one day...German another....Hey...I think I could still whip up a pretty mean sauerbraten for you sometime.”
Tina laughed as she dabbed a napkin to her mouth. “I’m going to hold you to that! I went to a German cooking class one time and I love sauerbraten.”
“Oh we got real exotic in one lesson. She compared...um...Sephardic cooking to...uh...is it Ashkenazic?”
“Yep...Ashkenazic.”
“Well, we did that...and she got into comparing French cuisine with Italian of course...but then she mentioned doing Aussie and some of the guys said Aussie cooking was not foreign.”
“Well, not to them anyway.”
“Yeah...well...Zack and Bud said of course it was and they weren’t too sure about roasting kangaroos or koala bears on a spit...”
“No they didn’t.”
“Oh yes they did....So how’s the stir fry?”
“Stir fry’s fantastic.”
John briefly beamed, then continued: “So Terry said it was more than that...and only a barbarian would roast a little koala. Zack said something about disappearing schoolgirls on picnics...”
“Oh good grief! I didn’t even think he had seen that movie!”
“Well, it all kind of went to hell in a hand basket after that.”
“Oh no...but that kind of figures. Sometimes we can’t leave you boys alone,” she said, winking.
“And by that time, some of you had come home so the cooking classes were over. Kind of sorry they were though. Annabella always said she’d do it again because we all were having such a good time...”
“Until the disappearing schoolgirls and roasted koalas.”
“Until then, yeah...but...well...she just never got around to it.” The last sentence came close to nearly bringing the conversation to a complete low although that was never his intent, but his inflection and then the brief sadness in his wife’s eyes told him that the subject needed to be quickly adjusted. Clearing his throat, he said, “Anyway...I...uh...I still kept my recipe folder and...well...here you go.”
“I’m glad you did. This...This is really good, John. I’m going to let you cook even more than you do.”
“Hey...I love to cook, sweetheart, you know that...and...are you going to tell me what happened with Adalia?"
Tina nearly snorted as she took a sip of wine. "I was wondering how long it'd take you to ask."
"Well remember, you mentioned the speaker phone idea before I did..."
"Good grief," she laughed.
"But I figured I could wait." Now he raised an eyebrow and momentarily looked quite serious. "I should have asked: is it private? I mean...what she told you. Is it private?"
"Nope."
"Sort of figured that since you were offering my services. You would have had to let me in on it at some point if I was going to ride to her rescue. I don’t usually do law enforcement by osmosis."
"It really wouldn’t have been law enforcement, John...more...crowd control.”
“Crowd control? Okay...all of a sudden, I’m wondering if I’d need my riot gear.”
“No but...well...for one, she wanted to make sure she was doing the right thing...or had done the right thing."
"What about?"
Tina swallowed then asked, "You're not going to believe who showed up on her doorstep tonight?"
John shook his head as he drank from the beer stein. "Not Sid. Sid's not even around, but if he had been..." He paused. Everyone knew the answer to that. “Well, thank God he’s not. So...”
“So she’s having a quiet evening at home. It’s her Sabbath and I knew she wanted to take advantage of that since she’s still on some off time, and she’s getting ready to say prayers, the door bell rings...and there’s Dominic.”
“Dom? It’s Dom?”
“It’s Dom, yeah. So she invites him in and she says she explains what she was about to do and he was really sweet and seemed honestly fascinated by everything.”
John was still thinking over what he had just been told. “I don’t even know if Dom was around Annabella enough for that. That must have been pretty interesting, explaining Jewish Sabbath prayers to a young Catholic boy.”
“About as much as it was explaining them to another Irish Catholic Aussie boy.”
The Alaskan was about to take a bite of his stir fry, but he lowered the chopsticks as he asked, “Johnny Ryan?”
“She said Dom had barely taken a seat when the door bell rings again.”
“And there’s Johnny?” He nearly winced as images of Jack Nicholson in The Shining came to mind.
“Yep.”
“Holy...So okay...now she’s got Johnny and Dom there and...well...how did they do? I mean...it’s pretty obvious why they were there. Terry told me...” He paused. “Funny...I didn’t even give it much thought then.”
“What did Terry tell you?”
“Just that...well...the night you introduced Adalia to everybody, Dom and Johnny got back from their walkabout there during the poker game, so pretty much everybody was gone, especially Adalia.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Terry just said that they seemed to fall head over heels in love with her sight unseen...so he sort of wondered what they might do. He just said it in passing though and I laughed and...well...didn’t realize they’d actually do something about it.”
“Well...I asked Adalia how she was feeling with them showing up like that, I mean uninvited and all..and oh...oh...I haven’t even told you this. They brought her housewarming presents.”
“They did what?”
“They both brought housewarming presents. Little...uh...little gift baskets with food and...other stuff....You know, things to make her feel at home.”
“Great. We ought to start our own Welcome Wagon company.”
“Oh well...you haven’t heard the...this really gets better.”
“Do I really want to hear this?”
“Probably not. You’re never going to guess who showed up next?”
“I have a pretty good idea, considering how he was behaving at the Hotel the other day....It was Kim, wasn’t it?” Tina nodded and John sighed, visibly annoyed. “I was wondering how long it would take before he tried to....I didn’t like his attitude, darlin’, didn’t like it at all. I think the only thing that surprises me is that Johnny and Dom beat him to the punch tonight. Kim usually works a hell of a lot faster than that.”
“Well...you did interrupt him when he came over to the Hotel, if you count that as part of his ‘work.’”
“That’s a fact...and...this is what’s puzzling me, Tina. Does Adalia even know them?”
“I introduced her to everyone...well...come to think of it, Dom and Johnny weren’t there, were they? You said they were returning from their walkabout, so they missed it all. But...um...she did meet Kim – briefly...”
“And?”
“She was polite, that’s all. They really didn’t even talk...not that I gave them a chance to,” she sheepishly added. “I sort of guided her away to meet someone else. Maybe that was wrong.”
“Sweetheart...if someone’s about to get bitten by a snake...”
“John!” she laughed. “I probably didn’t react the right way, but Adalia didn’t seem to care all that much and she didn’t pay him any more attention than she did to...Oh...I didn’t even finish! So here’s Dominic...and then Johnny gets there...and then Kim shows up...and he’s carrying this huge gift basket...”
“Oh give me a break? Are you shitting me? Sorry,” he apologized, but Tina had heard him use that expression before and she simply chuckled. “Kim brings her a housewarming gift?”
“She can’t wait to show it to me. The basket’s in the shape of a little house and she said he filled it with all these gourmet items, and some wines that she wasn’t even sure she should accept.”
“That expensive, huh?”
“Oh yeah. There was one I’d never even heard of before. But anyway...Dom’s there...and Johnny’s there...and she says they all talk for a bit...”
“I’m surprised it hasn’t blown up by now.”
“Well, that’s the thing. She said that the bell rings again...”
“Ah damn...”
“She leaves the room...and when she came back with...”
“Let me guess: Arthur? And how much do you want to bet he was bringing her a gift basket?”
“Were you this perceptive when you were sheriff?”
“I was when the clues are this damn obvious,” he laughed. “So when she got back to the room...what now?”
“It was just that she had the feeling she had interrupted a fight....She said that nothing was going on at the moment...and uh...” Tina took a spoon and dipped another dumpling onto her plate. “...they all were sitting around with haloes over their heads, but...she said it...something wasn’t right. She could feel the tension in the air.”
“And I guess that’s where I would have come in? Having to go over to her house and break-up a fight between my brothers when I’m not even sure they should have been there in the first place!....That’s...Look...I’m thinking that Johnny and Dom...and Arthur’s motives were all innocent. At least I hope they were. They’ve never done anything that would make me think otherwise. They’re all still so young and...” He seemed at a loss momentarily, and it was for Tina to add:
“With the exception of Arthur and that brief relationship with Savannah...I know.”
“I figure they all saw an opportunity. Can’t say I blame them. All the years they’ve been here and....But Kim? Why’d Adalia even let him in the front door?”
“She said that if Dom and Johnny hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have.”
“Smart girl. Guess you warned her enough then.”
Tina used the edge of one chopstick to poke at her rice. “I suppose....You know...maybe you were right.”
“About what, darlin’?”
“Judging Kim too much because of him hanging around Sid.”
“I think Kim’s behavior has nothing to do with Sid, Tina. I know it’s the old ‘birds of a feather,’ but Kim’s his own man...and Kim knows what he likes...and Kim thinks he’s as good as Sid and better than the rest of us. I just don’t like the idea of him blind siding Adalia...”
“No...neither do I...and I’m not saying I thought he would try to attack her if she’d been alone.”
“I’m not either!”
“But I just remember you saying that maybe Kim gets lonely too.” She saw that John was staring, carefully listening to her. “And he has been here a long, long time and as far as we know, no one serious has ever come along for him...not in a companion mode I mean. I guess ‘cause he always comes across as so shallow we don’t think that maybe...well...maybe...”
“He’d like a steady relationship too?”
“Yeah...at least...that’s what I thought you were saying the other day in my office.”
“I think it was. Hell...I don’t know, Tina....I honestly don’t know. I’d try to talk to Kim and see where he’s coming from, but I’m sure he’d just go into his ‘who do you think you are analyzing me, Sheriff Biebe’ bull crap and never see that maybe I’m actually trying to give a damn. I think that’s probably what I was trying to say to you, sweetheart. I hate thinking we’ve shoved him away for so long that he mistrusts us as much as we mistrust him.”
“I suppose,” she sighed, absently picking up her wine glass as the chopsticks were eased across the plate. “Sid was the same. Hando too. I mean...most of us didn’t trust either of them, but Hando’s changed...Sid...okay...kind of,” and she giggled. “Maybe...but it’s sort of creepy thinking that Kim might be interested in Adalia for reasons that go beyond him just wanting to say he went to bed with her first.”
“Well, short of me asking him.”
“John! No! I...No...you...you don’t have to do that. In fact, Adalia asked me not to even let anyone know that all this happened...well...except for you. She knew I’d want to tell you. But...I think...I think she wants to try to handle this herself, without blowing it out of proportion, but she wanted to make sure....She wanted me to hear what happened so she could see if it sounded as if she handled it right.”
“So when did they finally leave?”
“About an hour before she called me. She went ahead and had her Sabbath dinner, but she said it was driving her crazy, not having anyone to tell. She was just very...She was just...unsure.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” John grunted. “Four men showing up on her doorstep and she barely knows any of them from Adam.”
“Yeah....Well, maybe...”
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“You’re wanting me to do something at the housewarming party, aren’t you?”
“Did I say...”
“Didn’t have to, darlin’....I know you too well.”
Tina rolled her eyes. “I was just going to ask that – if you get a chance I mean – would you sort of feel them all out...”
“Without them knowing that we know what happened tonight?”
“Exactly.”
“I think I can do that,” he promised, winking.
“Well, you’re subtle, John. Bud would just take them by the collar and demand to know what they were up to.”
“Hey...nothing wrong with being direct.”
“Well, that’s Bud’s kind of direct, not yours....I just want to make sure that they don’t suspect that Adalia....Well, if you can do that for me...for us...”
“I’ll take care of it – don’t worry....So...you’re heading over to the carriage house early then? I heard you tell her nine.”
“I’m going to help with the decorating and all. It’ll be fun. We haven’t had a housewarming in ages.”