Empty Ever After by Reed Farrel Coleman Read Free Book Online

Only in retrospect can I distinguish between the two. So there on the plane home, in seat 24C, I decided for the second time since 1978 to come clean.
    My resolve lasted the time it took to get to New York and have the wheels of the 737 hit the LaGuardia tarmac. When we touched down, I turned on my cell phone and found a long queue of messages. The first was a hang-up from Katy. The other four were from my brother Aaron, Sarah, Carmella Melendez, and Sheriff Vandervoort. All of them were looking for me on behalf of Katy and their tone ranged from desperate to angry. Something was wrong, but no one would say what exactly. When I tried Katy’s house and cell numbers, I got recordings. Now I was getting panicky. As a keeper of secrets, I was uncomfortable on the opposite side of the fence.
    Although the Boeing was half empty, it took an eternity to deplane. When I finally managed to free myself, I did something I hadn’t done for quite some time: I flashed tin.
    “Listen,” I said to a woman at the desk of the adjoining gate. “I need a quiet place to make some important calls.”
    “Follow me.”
    I was glad she took a closer look at my badge than at me. I was getting a little long in the tooth to be flashing a regular cop’s badge at anyone. Like an aging comedian taking stock of his act, I realized the time had come to retire that joke. The gag was on its last legs.
    “You can use this lounge, officer,” she said, fiddling with a keypad lock. “No one will bother you in here and if you want to use the phone, just hit nine for an outside line.”
    I thanked her and waited for her to close the door behind her before getting back to my cell phone.
    My first thought was to call Aaron, but it wasn’t my second. Just the judgmental tone of his voice was enough to set my teeth on edge and I’d heard hints of it in his message. I was an enigma and a bit of a disappointment to my big brother. He didn’t understand my being a cop in the first place and when I was forced to retire, he couldn’t comprehend my missing the job so much. There was a lot he didn’t understand about me. We were wired differently, Aaron and me. But the flash point between us for the last two decades was my stubborn refusal to leave my PI license in the sock drawer with the dust bunnies and the rest of my unrealized ambitions and accept my life as a wine merchant. That was always enough for him. It never was and would never be enough for me.
    I tried Katy’s numbers again to the same frustrating end. Again, I left messages. I hesitated to call Sarah before I knew anything. Trouble sucks,
but it sucks worse when you’re seven hundred miles away from it and you feel helpless. I didn’t want to add to her frustration. Carmella was out of the office and not answering her cell, so that left Sheriff Vandervoort. At least he’d left me his cell number.
    “Vandervoort.”
    “Sheriff, it’s Moe Prager. What’s going on?”
    “Where’ve you been, Mr. Prager?”
    “What the fuck does that matter? What’s going on with Katy?”
    “You better get up here.”
    “One more time, Sheriff, what’s going—”
    “Your ex-wife’s had a little trouble. She’s over at Mary Immaculate.”
    “Trouble! Is she hurt? What happened?”
    “No, she’s not hurt, not physically, anyway. We just had a little excitement and the doctors wanted to take a look at her.”
    “Sheriff, I’m an ex-cop and I respect other cops, but if you don’t start speaking English to me, I’m gonna—”
    “Mrs. Prager called us to her house and when we got there she was … unhinged and talking a little crazy. Maybe it was all the heartache from yesterday or—”
    “Crazy how?”
    “She said she got a call.”
    “A call. A call from who?”
    There was silence on the other end of the phone.
    “Sheriff!”
    “She said she got a call from her brother Patrick.”
     
    I’D BEEN TO the Mary Immaculate Medical Center only once, back in 1981. I was up in the Catskills looking