Dead Ball Read online

  Other Judith Arnold titles from Bell Bridge Books

  The April Tree

  Goodbye To All That

  Praise for Judith Arnold

  Judith Arnold is one of my favorite romance authors, and now she’s one of my favorite mystery authors with her debut cozy Dead Ball. Lainie Lovett is smart, sassy, and up to her shin guards in trouble when she offers evidence to the police during a murder investigation. Suddenly she’s the suspect! Don’t miss this mystery, or you’ll kick yourself for it!

  —Lorna Barrett, New York Times bestselling author of Not the Killing Type

  Dead Ball

  A Lainie Lovett Still Kicking Mystery

  by

  Judith Arnold

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-431-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-411-2

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2014 by Barbara Keiler writing as Judith Arnold

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites –BelleBooks.com and BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  Texture (manipulated) © Manczurov | Dreamstime.com

  Soccer ball (manipulated) © Laurent Renault | Dreamstime.com

  Background (manipulated) © Annnmei | Dreamstime.com

  Legs (manipulated) © Ivan Nakonechnyy | Dreamstime.com

  Iris © Jaguarwoman Designs

  :Ebde:01:

  Dedication

  To my sons, Fred and Greg. I love you!

  Chapter One

  THANKS TO A sprinkler snafu, Lainie Lovett wound up drinking a Dos Equis with lime in the lounge at Olde Towne Olé instead of dribbling a soccer ball.

  Five minutes into the Rockford Colonielles’ practice, the underground sprinkler system at Minuteman Field had unexpectedly turned on, the little sprinkler heads popping up through the lawn like curious metal groundhogs and spraying water in long silver arcs. The team could have handled the water; they played in the rain often enough. But those sprinkler heads were a peril. Trip over one and you could wind up wrecking an essential part of your anatomy.

  Within seconds of the sprinkler system’s activation, three team members had whipped out their cell phones and were talking to three different members of the town’s Parks & Rec Commission, who offered three distinct explanations for the malfunction. The team decided the most credible story came from the guy in charge of field maintenance. The sprinklers were on a timer, he’d explained, but Minuteman Field was in a neighborhood that had suffered a power outage earlier in the day when some ditz had driven her Infiniti SUV into a utility pole, and whoever was in charge of resetting the timer after the power came back on had screwed up.

  “I’m really sorry about this. It’ll get fixed tomorrow,” he’d promised. “Can you reschedule your practice? I’ll reserve the field for you.”

  Coach Thomaston had ordered everyone to return to Minuteman Field the following evening at six. Most of the women on the team had decided, since it was a school night, to go home and be mommies. Lainie liked to pretend she was done being a mommy, even if she wasn’t quite, and Angie and Sheila often swore they participated in Rockford’s Under-Fifty Women’s Soccer League specifically because the practices and games gave them an excuse to skip out on being mommies for a few hours a week. No way would they go home ahead of schedule.

  They were lucky to find a small round table unoccupied in the dimly lit lounge at Olde Towne Olé, Rockford’s version of a Mexican cantina. The décor consisted of a few sombreros tacked to the walls and strings of electric jalapenos draped from the ceiling like spicy green and yellow Christmas lights. Bad mariachi music blasted from speakers behind the bar. But given that Lainie, Angie, and Sheila were dressed in soccer practice attire—warm-ups and sweats—they couldn’t have gone to the Old Colonial Inn or Partie de Thé for a drink. Olde Towne Olé served margaritas, and Angie and Sheila loved margaritas. Lainie didn’t care for frothy, fruity drinks, but if her friends were happy, she was happy.

  “I can’t believe everyone else went home,” Angie said, shaking her head. “I mean, you’re sprung for the evening. Why go back to the slave quarters a minute earlier than you have to?”

  “Guilt,” Sheila said.

  “What kind of guilt?” Angie dipped a tortilla chip into the bowl of salsa the waiter had brought them. “Why on earth should they feel guilty? That makes no sense. I don’t feel guilty.”

  Angie was sleek and lanky and moved with languid grace—except when she was playing soccer. At games and scrimmages, she reminded Lainie of that cartoon Road Runner, zooming left and right, upfield and down before anyone figured out where she was. Sheila was the team’s goalie, tall and as solid as a concrete abutment, with reddish-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail and cheeks dotted with freckles. She had the face of a high school cheerleader, even if she was in her late thirties. It was not a face that revealed a particular acquaintance with guilt.

  “They feel guilty about the time they spend playing soccer instead of taking care of their families,” she explained. “Putting their own pleasure ahead of their kids’ homework—it’s practically sinful.” When she laughed, her ponytail swayed.

  “You think soccer is pleasure?” Lainie joked. “Soccer is Life. Capital L. Capital S, too.”

  “Soccer’s a lot more fun than going home and checking your kids’ homework.” Sheila grinned. “Nothing personal, Lainie.”

  Lainie was a fourth-grade teacher at Hopwell, one of Rockford’s three primary schools. “Parents shouldn’t check their kids’ homework,” she said. “Kids should check their own homework.”

  “Right. And everyone in the world should hold hands and sing ‘Give Peace a Chance,’” Angie retorted. “If you seriously believe parents aren’t checking their kids’ homework—hell, doing their kids’ homework—you’re living in a fantasy world. This is Rockford, Massachusetts. Everyone wants their kid to be the best student in class. They’ll knock themselves out to make sure their kid’s homework is perfect.”

  “If your kid blows his homework in fourth grade, he’ll never get into Harvard,” Sheila added with a wry smile.

  “I’ve got news for you, Sheila. Your kid blew his homework in fourth grade.” Lainie had had Sheila’s son Brendan as a student last year. He was a smart boy, but like every honest student she’d ever worked with, he’d messed up an assignment here and there. Students who never blew their homework were the ones she suspected of getting too much help from their parents.

  The blessing and the curse of living in the town where you taught school was that you knew everybody, and everybody knew you. Sooner or later, the offspring of friends, neighbors, and soccer teammates turned up in your class. The Parks and Rec commissioners, the folks across the street, and the people boring you to tears at the Annu
al Town Meeting by monopolizing the microphone for a half hour as they read some zoning change into the town record—if you didn’t teach their son or daughter, you worked with them at the PTO bake sale or the Spring Fling carnival. They swooped down on you while you were sniffing a cantaloupe at the supermarket to ask your views of the state-mandated achievement tests. They collared you in the parking lot outside Marino’s Bakery to tell you they were tired of paying high property taxes to fund your exorbitant salary. They phoned you at dinnertime, their voices aquiver, to ask if you thought their little darling had a prayer of getting into Harvard.

  And God forbid they saw you drinking a beer beneath a glittering chandelier of electric jalapenos at Olde Towne Olé. Surely, the teacher to whom they entrusted the education of their beloved child shouldn’t be drinking beer in public.

  The lack of privacy notwithstanding, Lainie loved her job. Fourth-graders were at a wonderful age to work with, because their hormones hadn’t yet kicked in. They were mature enough to be teachable but not so mature they were convinced they already knew everything. Fourth-graders could be reasoned with. They thought peanut butter oozing out from between two slices of bread was hilarious—“Look, my sandwich has diarrhea!”—and they were as comfortable with computers as Lainie’s generation had been with number two pencils. And they weren’t too self-conscious to play soccer, even if they lacked talent. They just threw themselves into the game the way they threw themselves into everything, not caring whether they looked silly doing it.

  If they blew their homework on occasion, big deal.

  Lainie sipped her beer and thought about soccer and about how she’d fallen in love with the sport in fourth grade and still hadn’t fallen out of love with it. In a few years, she’d be forced to leave the Under-Fifty League for the Senior Ladies League. The prospect depressed her.

  “What am I going to do if they kick me off the Colonielles?” she asked.

  Sheila and Angie looked startled. “Why would they do that?” Sheila asked.

  “I’m forty-seven. They’re going to make me play with the seniors.”

  “Yeah, that sucks,” Angie said. She was only a few years younger than Lainie, so the reality of being transferred to Seniors loomed not too far in her future. “But it’s the league rule. I guess they think it’s only fair.”

  “They don’t want older players taking advantage of the younger ones,” Sheila said dryly. “Brendan had to move up to the Under-Twelve League this year. I’m sure he’d be the team star if they’d let him stay in the Under-Ten League.”

  “Right. As if thirty-year-olds have anything to worry about if I stay in their league,” Lainie said, then shook her head. “Maybe they’re worried that I’ll have a heart attack and keel over.”

  “Not you, Lainie. You’re too healthy. Like Jack LaLanne with a uterus,” Angie assured her.

  “You guys are going to have to help me forge a new birth certificate. If I’m going to stay on the Colonielles, I’ve got to lose a few years.” Lainie tilted back her bottle and took a drink. As she lowered the bottle, she spotted a familiar figure across the gloomy expanse of the room. “Uh-oh,” she whispered.

  “What?” Angie asked as she and Sheila conspicuously twisted in their chairs to see what Lainie was looking at.

  “Don’t stare,” she ordered them. They turned back to her and huddled over the table. “It’s Patty Cavanagh’s husband—with someone who isn’t Patty.”

  Patty was a Colonielle. Lainie had met her husband a few times fourth-grade events at Hopwell a few years ago, when their son Sean had been in Lainie’s class. Arthur Cavanagh didn’t attend his wife’s soccer games. He was a busy man.

  Right now, he was busy with a woman with platinum hair and breasts as big as soccer balls. Given the snug fit of her blouse, Lainie could gauge their size from all the way across the room.

  “Oh, shit,” Angie murmured.

  “Too bad Patty decided not to have a drink with us,” Sheila said, glancing casually over her shoulder.

  “Can you imagine if she’d been here with us?” Angie shook her head. “I mean, Jesus. Would you want to see your husband having a drink with a woman like that in a restaurant bar? Right in town?”

  Lainie spied on the couple at the bar and searched for a benign explanation. “Maybe she’s his sister.”

  “She’s young enough to be his daughter,” Sheila argued.

  “Patty’s young enough to be his daughter, too,” Angie pointed out.

  “She is?” Lainie knew she was the oldest player on the Colonielles, but she considered the rest of the team her contemporaries. And Arthur Cavanagh couldn’t be much older than his mid-fifties, which made him her contemporary, too, more or less.

  “Do the math,” Angie said.

  Lainie did, and sighed. “All right, then. The woman with Arthur could be a business associate.”

  “His business is construction,” Sheila reminded her. “Does she look like a construction worker to you?”

  “She could be a client. Maybe he’s building a house for her.”

  “If he’s building anything for her, it’s a love nest,” Angie said.

  Arthur Cavanagh didn’t build love nests. He built subdivisions of bombastic slate-roofed, bay-windowed mansions with million-dollar price tags. Lainie wondered if the blond woman bestowing her coquettish smile on him as they sat on adjacent stools was old enough to afford a house in a Cavanagh subdivision. Sure she was, assuming she’d inherited a huge trust fund or won the lottery. Or had a sugar daddy who’d given her a blank check so she could buy a very big, expensive love nest.

  “If she’s a client,” Angie continued, “she’d be working with a real estate agent—not him. I don’t see any real estate agents chaperoning them.”

  “Maybe the real estate agent put them together,” Lainie theorized, “and right this very minute that woman is telling Arthur she wants pickled pine cabinets in the kitchen and skylights in the master bath.”

  “At Olde Towne Olé? They couldn’t discuss this in an office somewhere?” Angie snorted. “The trouble with you, Lainie, is that your husband lulled you into the false belief that all husbands are saints. They aren’t. Roger was one of a kind.”

  True enough. Roger had been, if not quite a saint, the epitome of decency. From the day he’d approached her after soccer practice at college and introduced himself, apparently not caring that she was sweaty and her hair was a mess and she had a smudge of mud on her chin, to the day at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute when she’d kissed his lips one final time and whispered that he could let go now, she’d be all right, he had never looked at another woman. Other women had looked at him, but he’d always been oblivious. “Really?” he’d say when she mentioned that this or that woman had been flirting with him at a party. “She was hitting on me? How could you tell?”

  “She kept brushing your arm with her boobs,” Lainie would say.

  “She did? Damn. I didn’t even notice.”

  Lainie peered across the taproom and noticed the blond woman brushing Arthur Cavanagh’s arm with her boobs. Arthur’s smile implied that he noticed. He was a handsome man with a full head of silver hair and the map of Ireland in his face, as her mother would put it. His business seemed to be doing well, if the carat weight of the eternity ring Patty insisted on wearing all the time, even at practices, was anything to judge by.

  Lainie’s husband had been good looking and successful, too, and the only breasts he’d ever paid attention to had been hers, even though they were more in the softball than the soccer ball category.

  Angie was right. Roger had distorted Lainie’s view of men. Two and a half years since his death, she was still operating under the apparent misconception that men were wonderful, because Roger had been wonderful.

  If body language was anything to judge by, Arthur Cavanagh’s companion seemed
to think he was wonderful, too. Lainie, on the other hand, was having her faith undermined. She liked to believe the best of people, but Arthur and his friend were turning Lainie into an atheist. She watched, her lips pursed and her forehead aching where a frown seized the muscles above her eyes, as Arthur stood, offered his hand to his companion, and helped her down from her stool. Her bosom heaved against his arm again as she edged out from between their stools. When they wove through the lounge, Lainie, Angie, and Sheila reflexively bowed their heads so he wouldn’t spot them.

  After staring at the bowl of tortilla chips long enough to have counted all the broken pieces, Lainie lifted her gaze. He was gone. “Did they leave, or did he take her into the dining room?” Sheila asked.

  “If he took her into the dining room, she’s a pretty cheap date,” Lainie observed. “I don’t think they’ve got an entrée here priced higher than fifteen bucks.”

  “The real question is, are we going to tell Patty about this?” Angie asked.

  “No,” Lainie said.

  “Of course,” Sheila answered simultaneously.

  “How can we tell her?” Lainie argued. “It’ll hurt her feelings.”

  “We wouldn’t be hurting her feelings,” Sheila said. “We’d be doing her a favor, alerting her to the fact that her husband is a dickhead.”

  “She may already know he’s a dickhead,” Angie pointed out. “The kind of money he pulls down, he can afford to be a dickhead. She probably knew that going in.”

  “Just because he makes a lot of money doesn’t mean he’s, well, a jerk.” Lainie couldn’t bring herself to say dickhead. She had nothing against the word, nothing against even the foulest language. But as a fourth-grade teacher, she’d gotten out of the habit of cursing. Say dickhead in private, and one day you might slip and say it in front of a class of impressionable students.

  “She obviously didn’t marry him for his trustworthiness,” Angie pointed out. “Patty Cavanagh may be a lot of things, but she isn’t stupid.”