Getting Rid of Bradley Read online

  “How very broad-minded of you,” Lucy said, and fed a nacho to Einstein on the sly.

  “Speaking of types, how did you end up with Bradley?”

  “Well, I had decided to get married because of the second law of thermonuclear dynamics.” Lucy kept her voice brisk to keep herself from getting emotional. “And about that time, he picked me up in the library at the university. I considered it a sign.”

  “It wasn’t” Zack picked up another nacho, gazed at it proudly, and then ate it.

  “I thought I was going to end up a crazy old lady living with my dog.”

  “Dogs,” Zack corrected.

  “I only had Einstein then. Maxwell and Heisenberg showed up after we moved in. Well, actually, I found Maxwell down on Fourteenth Street

  across from the Music Hall, but it was the same principle.” Lucy looked over at Zack. He was staring into the fire so she slipped Heisenberg a nacho. Maxwell noticed and quietly padded around the love seat to her side.

  “So you got married to keep from being a crazy old lady?” Zack shook his head. “It would never have happened, but I guess I can see your point. What I still don’t understand is, why Bradley?”

  “He was there. It seemed right.” She shrugged and slipped Maxwell a nacho.

  “It was wrong,” Zack said sternly, and then he looked from his empty plate to hers. “Do you want the rest of your nachos?”

  Lucy passed her plate over, and the dogs followed silently to sit in front of Zack.

  “Listen, I just fed you guys a whole bowl full of dog food, so I know you’re not starving. Cut it out” They sat and stared and he said, “Okay, one each. One. That’s all.”

  Lucy watched him feeding her dogs nachos and felt a wave of heat roll over her. She was one sick puppy. She’d been having hot flashes ever since she’d first seen him in the restaurant, and now he was turning her on by being nice to her dogs. She’d been divorced two days, and already she was lusting after a hyperkinetic dog feeder.

  The phone rang, startling her, but Zack reached over and snagged the receiver off the piecrust table before she could get up and answer it.

  “Hello?” He looked puzzled. “They hung up,” he said, doing the same. “Who would hang up if a man answered?”

  “Well, not Tina,” Lucy said. “She’d give you the third degree. Not my parents, they wouldn’t notice. Not my friends, they’d want all the dirt about you.”

  “How about Bradley?”

  “Bradley doesn’t call here.”

  “Ever?”

  “I’ve only talked to him once since the blonde. He called the same day, but I was still pretty upset then, so I told him I never wanted to hear from him again. And he asked me to please not tell Tina he’d called, and I was so disgusted, I hung up. Oh, and there was one other time. I saw him at the lawyer’s the day we signed the papers. He said hello. And he sent me the note. That’s it.”

  Zack frowned. “That’s weird. What’s wrong with Mm?”

  “Nothing. He’s happy with his blonde.”

  “When I find Bradley,” Zack said, “I hope he resists arrest.”

  “You can’t arrest Bradley. You don’t know that he’s done anything wrong.” Lucy stood and picked up Zack’s plate from the floor.

  “Oh, yes, I do,” Zack said. “Even if he didn’t shoot the blonde, he’s a rat. And I, for one, am going to make sure he’s sorry.” Then he popped the last of the nachos into his mouth, got up, and followed Lucy out to the kitchen.

  Anthony came over to see the yearbook, and they searched the downstairs until eleven that night and found nothing except Bradley’s note to Lucy, asking her to lunch.

  “He doesn’t sound too damn apologetic,” Zack said. “Listen to this. ‘Please meet me at the diner on Second Street

  , so that I can explain to you why you’ve acted hastily.’ And you were going to meet him?” He narrowed his gaze at her. “You must still be hung up on him.”

  “Of course not,” Lucy said. “I don’t want him back. I just want to understand what happened. And anyway, that’s just Bradley’s way. He’d never admit that he was wrong. Just the fact that he wrote and asked me to meet him is amazing. Bradley never asked for anything in his life. He always assumed people would do what he wanted, and usually they did. He was very...authoritative.” Lucy took back the note and read it again. “Poor Bradley. He must have been really upset. He even wrote, ‘Please.’”

  “I don’t like Bradley,” Zack said.

  “Actually, neither do I,” Lucy said.

  “Good. Hold that thought,” Zack said.

  WHEN ANTHONY LEFT AND Lucy went upstairs to take her shower, Zack enjoyed the fire, the dogs, and one last beer. This is nice, he thought, stretching his legs in front of the fire. This is comfortable. This is...

  He stopped in the middle of a sip of beer.

  This was a lot like what Anthony had been talking about in the diner the other day.

  He put the bottle down to consider. Anthony had offered him two impossibilities as protection for Lucy, knowing he’d reject them and volunteer.

  He’d been set up.

  “I’ll kill him,” he said to the dogs, and Heisenberg flopped over on his back.

  Well, it was no problem. He’d just call Anthony tomorrow and tell him to send over a replacement. Zack picked up his beer to drain it. Not Eliot, of course. He was too old and too slow.

  And not Junior, either, because...

  Zack stopped again, the bottle halfway to his mouth. There was nothing wrong with Junior. He was young and strong and quick, and he would do a terrific job of protecting Lucy.

  Right here in her house.

  In fact, Junior could be sitting right where Zack was by tomorrow night. All Zack had to do was call Anthony.

  Hell.

  He got up and stomped to the kitchen to throw his bottle in the recycling box, whistling to the dogs as he went, and two of them went trotting past him as he opened the back door.

  Maxwell and Einstein. Zack looked around for Heisenberg, and then remembered. “Oh, for crying out loud, dead dog,” he said, and heard the thump as Heisenberg rolled over and the click of his toenails on the hardwood floor.

  “Thank you for joining us,” Zack said and closed the door behind him.

  WHEN HE CLIMBED THE stairs later, he met Lucy at the top, wrapped in a floor-length white terry-cloth robe big enough to cover a couch. Her hair was in loose, damp, greenish ringlets, and she looked vaguely like a cover on a science-fiction book he’d once read.

  “I was going down to let the dogs out.” She stepped back from the top of the stairs.

  “I already did. All present and accounted for.”

  The three dogs had padded up the stairs by that time and sat watching them quietly. “Bed,” Lucy said, and Heisenberg swerved into her bedroom while Einstein and Maxwell went up another flight to Zack’s room. “Oh, I forgot.” She hesitated. “They sleep on your bed.”

  “No,” Zack said. “Maxwell, maybe, but Einstein, no. There won’t be room for me.”

  “It’s a big bed,” Lucy said, but she called Einstein back down and held her bedroom door for him. “I did buy beds for all of them. They just didn’t like them. They’d rather sleep with me.”

  They’re no dummies, Zack thought.

  “I put clean towels out for you,” Lucy went on. “In the bathroom. Do you need anything else?”

  You, Zack thought. She looked like a bulky mummy in her robe, and her hair was green, and he wanted her. It was crazy. He needed a shower. A cold one. “Thanks,” he said. “Good night.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He turned toward the bathroom door, and then decided he’d been too abrupt, but when he turned back, her bedroom door was closing and she was gone.

  Good. Because the last thing he needed was to get involved with Lucy Savage and her three dogs. Even though all his instincts were for it. He shook his head and went to take a cold shower.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Zack took Lu