“It’s not necessary. I know a bunch of women with kids and most of them don’t have husbands. Not that I’m saying a husband isn’t a handy thing to have in a family.”
I grabbed my messenger bag and got out of the car. I still had the sick feeling in my stomach, and talking about husbands wasn’t helping. Sometimes I thought I might want one, but there were scary things attached to marriage. For instance, there were two men in my life, and I wasn’t prepared to choose one over the other. Not that it mattered, because neither of them wanted to marry me.
We walked to the door and rang the bell. Nutsy answered and sucked in air when he saw me.
“Oh crap,” he said.
“Long time no see,” I said, moving past him, into the living room.
“How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t hard. How’s Duncan doing?”
“He’s managing. It’s amazing that he didn’t die when he fell off the ledge.”
“I need to talk to both of you.”
“Duncan’s not real coherent right now. They gave him a sedative at the doctor’s office to get him through the ride back here.”
“He’s in a lot of pain?”
“When he moves around,” Nutsy said. “If he’s in his recliner and watching television, he feels pretty good.”
“Why did you take him out of Trenton? Surely the medical care he was getting there was as good as what he’s getting here.”
“It’s complicated,” Nutsy said. “It wasn’t safe for him to stay in the hospital.”
“You mean because he’s a felon?”
“No. That’s not it. I can’t talk about it. I especially can’t talk to you. You’re working for Plover. My mom told me. She heard it at bingo.”
“He thinks you stole his diamonds.”
“He knows I didn’t steal them.”
“Do you ever get dressed up in your clown suit anymore?” Lula asked.
“No,” Nutsy said to Lula. “The fun part about being a clown is having an audience. It’s about communication.”
“Like writing stories,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Nutsy said.
“I’ve read some of your stories,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “Even my mom hasn’t read my stories. I post them on my personal blog, and there are only twelve followers. It’s like a writers’ support group.”
“Is everyone in the group a writer? Even Duncan?”
“He writes poetry. How do you know about my writing? And Duncan?”
“It’s not important how I know. I stumbled on it by accident. What’s important is that Duncan needs to return to Trenton to get a new trial date. Right now, he’s considered a felon.”
“He can’t go back there. It’s too dangerous for him. I’m trying to fix things, but in the meantime, Duncan has to stay hidden.”
“Living with his brother isn’t exactly hidden.”
“It was the best I could come up with,” Nutsy said. “He needs help. His sister-in-law is a dental hygienist. I figure she’s good with medication, at least. In a couple weeks if everything goes right, Duncan should be able to travel. Then he could get better hidden until I can straighten things out. Hell, maybe in a couple weeks, there won’t be an issue anymore.”
“Do you want to tell me the issue?”
“I can’t,” Nutsy said.
“I bet it has something to do with a clown’s oath,” Lula said. “Like the hypocritic oath doctors take. Did you take a clown’s oath?”
“No,” Nutsy said. “There’s no clown oath that I know about.”
“That’s a shame,” Lula said. “It’s one of the oldest professions and seems like there should have been an oath.”
“Maybe Duncan can reschedule his court date using FaceTime,” Nutsy said.
Lula and I looked at each other. We’d never considered FaceTime or Zoom.
“You should call Vinnie,” Lula said to me. “This here could be a game changer. Everyone would reup if they could do it on FaceTime.”
I called Vinnie and got him at the breakfast table.
“Is it possible to write a bail bond any way other than physically bringing the FTA into court or the lockup?” I asked him.
“Like what?” he asked. “Maybe when he’s in the prison ward at the medical center.”
“How about by FaceTime or Zoom?”
“In my dreams,” he said. “Where are you? Fantasyland?”
I hung up. “Great idea, but no,” I said to Nutsy and Lula. “I need to bring him back to Trenton.”
“He’s not in any shape to travel,” Nutsy said. “Give me two weeks to see if I can fix things.”
“And after two weeks?”
“If he’s in good enough shape and it’s safe, I’ll turn him over to you.”
“And if he’s not in good shape or it’s not safe?”
“I don’t know. We’ll talk.”
“Why are you so protective of Duncan?”
“It was my fault that he tried to rob Plover’s. I’m responsible for all this mess.”
“You were involved?”
“Not directly, but I wrote the story that pushed him into doing something stupid.”
“The story about Duncan Dreary.”
“Yeah. I thought it was just a fun thing we were doing together. You know, turning Duncan Dreary into Duncan Dare. Okay, so I’m not the most perceptive dude. I didn’t see that Duncan was buying into the whole transformation thing. I guess I should have known. All those Pink Panther movies. He loved them. I mean, I like them too, but I don’t want to be David Niven as the phantom.”
“Did you have any advance warning? Did he talk about robbing a jewelry store like David Niven?”
“We had lots of story ideas about robbing jewelry stores, but they were just story ideas. At least I thought that’s what they were. I guess you never know what’s going on inside people. One of the things that appealed to me about Duncan was that he was calm. He was like vanilla custard. Cool. Smooth. No surprises. My head is always a mess. I do outrageous things. I’ve done them all my life. Duncan seemed so sane and content with his life. And now it turns out that he was as crazy on the inside as I am on the outside. And then one day he showed up at Plover’s.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I had no advance warning,” Nutsy said. “I went brain-dead. I froze. My first thought was that it was a joke. And then it got serious. He had a gun. Turned out it was a fake gun, but I didn’t know that. I mean, he didn’t wink at me or anything. He was totally Duncan Dare. It scared the crap out of me.”
“That’s because you’re really a clown at heart,” Lula said. “I bet you’re one of those happy clowns with a smiley face and a red nose that goes beep.”
“I didn’t have a red nose,” Nutsy said. “I was more of a contemporary mime.”
“A mime?” Lula said. “Like one of those French guys who pretend there’s a fake wall? No wonder you couldn’t get a job with a circus.”