Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.
Author's Note: A sequel to "Tempus Fugit", set one year later.
Comfort Food
by L.M. Lewis
He knew he was early. He'd considered parking around the corner and killing a few minutes reading a chapter in his torts textbook, but why ruin the beginning of a perfectly beautiful weekend? Besides, Frank had mentioned some weird noise that Claudia's Chevy was making.
Mark still liked the occasional diversion of an odd noise or two. It kept him in practice. So he parked in front of Frank Harper's home and climbed out of the Coyote. Frank wasn't there yet, of course, and Hardcastle was coming with him, if things went as planned. Claudia's car was in the drive, though. He strolled up to the door and knocked.
He heard movements within, and a moment later she was peering through the curtains—a good, cautious, cop's wife, even though she was expecting company. A smile and a little wave, then the curtain fell back and there was some fussing with the lock—a nice, sensible deadbolt.
"You're early," she said, but it was a cheerful complaint between old friends, and the door was opened wide.
"Sorry," he said, and scooted past her. He was immediately assailed by the aroma of dinner. He inhaled deeply. "Can't be too early; smells like it's done."
"Oh, nah, that?" She made a casual gesture toward the kitchen. "It's pot roast. It's got almost an hour to go."
"I'm gonna have to go outside, then, otherwise I'll be drooling on your carpet." He sniffed again and grinned. "Anyway, Frank said there was something rattling around in your car and maybe I could take a look."
She was giving him a dubious once-over. "In that get-up?"
He looked down at himself, still wearing his chinos and a shirt with a collar.
"I can roll my sleeves up."
"No," she shook her head decidedly, "I don't invite people over to dinner and then make 'em fix my car."
"Not even if they like fixing cars?" he asked wistfully.
"Nope. I'll get you a beer. I've still got some potatoes to peel. Keep me company."
He followed her into the kitchen where the smells were even more enticing and the pot next to the sink was half filled. She opened the fridge and bent in to reach for something. "Here," she said, passing a long-necked brown bottle over to him.
He stared down in something approaching amazement. "Utica Club? Where the hell do you get that around here?"
"My sister sends it. Kind of a joke. It was too classy for us back in Queens."
"Oh," he cracked the cap, "Shultz and Dooley, I loved 'em. You gotta wonder about beer ads that appealed to a six-year-old."
"You were six? Damn." Claudia frowned. "I was in high school." She shook her head and picked up the paring knife. "I'm old enough to have been your baby-sitter. Anyway," she gestured toward the oven, "I mostly use it for the pot roast."
"Seriously?" He took a swig, swallowed, and smiled. "I gotta get that recipe."
"It won't be the same with that stuff you guys drink."
She turned back to the sink and picked up a potato. Mark settled back, feeling slightly guilty. "Anything I can do to help?" He asked it knowing in advance she'd say no.
"Nah, it's all under control."
"It always is." Mark eased back against the kitchen chair. "Thanks," he added.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. "For what?"
"For having us over like this."
"We like having you over—and I'd been meaning to invite you."
"Yeah, but I did the inviting myself, and it was nice of you to say yes." He contemplated the bottle before him on the table, turning it slowly. "It's just seems like it's kind of a rough day for him. I don't know why he goes and hangs out with his old cronies every year like that." He shook his head, picked the bottle up, and took another swig.
"It's an anniversary thing," Claudia said with a shrug, cutting the last of the potatoes into quarters and dropping them into the pot. She looked back at him again, thoughtfully. "It's an anniversary for you, too, isn't it? Don't you ever think about it?"
Mark put the beer down, precisely centered on its previous wet ring. "Not that much, no." Actually, he did, a lot, but at the time it had all been happening, the days had been blurred together by grief and stress. He hardly remembered anymore which had been the night when he walked out of Men's Central and climbed into Hardcastle's GMC for the first time. It usually only occurred to him after the fact, like it had a year ago.
"But anyway," he said firmly, "it's not the same. For me it was a beginning. I wasn't giving up my whole career—twenty years on the bench and all that."
She'd transferred the pot to the stove and turned the burner on. She cast another quick look back at him, laden with disbelief. "You had a career, too, didn't you? Not twenty years, but—"
There was a short, almost explosive laugh from Mark, and then he shook his head ruefully. "Nah . . . uh-uh—that was going nowhere fast. Maybe I didn't see it then, but even without the prison time, things weren't going my way. And that last break with Flip—I've thought about it some. Even if Cody hadn't been a complete crook, what are the odds that a big company like his would've wanted me as their poster boy?"
There was no answer from Claudia. Mark sighed. "Maybe I would've gotten a race or two—the warm-up stuff before they hit the big circuit. That would have been for Flip's sake, and after that the corporate boys would've stepped in and made sure they had somebody clean as a whistle to front for their new model."
He smiled half-wistfully and took another swig. "Just a pipe dream," he said quietly. "And even legit repo requires bonding."
"But you've had some races since—"
"Ohh, let's not talk about Denco. And the other one was just a last minute fill-in from a friend—a fluke, really." He tilted the bottle back slightly and pondered it again. "But Hardcastle--that was different; he just walked away from it all. He had this crazy idea and he went out there and did it."
Claudia frowned at him, then opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle for herself. She still hadn't said anything, even after she'd opened it and sat down across from him at the table, but it was obvious that she wanted to. Her now uncertain expression was enough to provoke a "What?" from McCormick.
There was no immediate answer, but after a moment she cocked her head and said, "I never met J.J. Beale."
Mark considered the non sequitur briefly, not quite sure what to do with it.
Claudia let him puzzle with it and took a drink from her bottle. She swallowed and, after a considering pause, said, "It's a little too sweet and fizzy for me . . . works great with pot roast, though. You'll see."
Mark smiled, but it didn't quite erase the questioning expression.
"Beale," she said "that was scary."
"Yeah," Mark agreed with a nod.
"No, I mean the first time."
"I thought he just tore outta there—took the 'Vette and ran."
"He took the 'Vette, two shotguns and a .45," Claudia said soberly. "And Milt, well, I've never seen him so angry." She paused again, as though she weren't sure if she should proceed, but that was quickly pushed to the side. "He came here that night, straight to Frank. They sat here—but it was a while before we could get him to sit at all."
"Yeah, well, the guy had run off with his car—"
Claudia shook her head sharply. "Not the car . . . well, maybe a little—but it was the guns. His guns, and he'd trusted this guy, and the guy had turned out to be a total putz. Now he was out there on the street with guns—Milt's guns."
Mark gave that some thought. He blinked once.
"—So of course he had to go after him," Claudia sighed. "He was responsible, see?"
Mark nodded.
"And Frank wouldn't let him go alone. Half-way across the country. APBs, hot leads, cold leads. It took a couple weeks."
"But they got him, in the end, and nobody was shot, right?"
"Right . . . just lucky, though. That's what Frank said. And after that, well, Milt went back to the bench and we thought maybe he was over this reform thing of his."
"But he wasn't, huh?"
"Well, he didn't talk about it much, but Mattie Groves said something to Frank, that summer some time—maybe August—that he'd gotten a warning from the judicial council. Anything more like what happened with Beale and he was looking at a violation of the code of ethics—something about judicial impropriety."
Mark frowned. "Where the hell's the impropriety in that? All he did was give the guy a chance. It was Beale who gave him the fast shuffle." He shook his head in disgust and muttered, "Impropriety."
Claudia shrugged once and said, "I dunno, all I know is they were leaning on him, and not just about that. Everything he did was getting scrutinized. The bar keeps track of stuff, too."
Mark nodded.
"And if you're, well . . . "
"A donkey sometimes."
"I was gonna say 'stubborn'—"
"Like a donkey." Mark grinned lightly.
Claudia smiled back. "Yeah, like that." Her smile faded a little "I think he knew he'd have to change a hell of a lot to keep them happy. So it seems like maybe he decided to walk away from it while he still could say he hadn't made any compromises."
Mark nodded again. His grin was gone. "But the parting shot—"
"Yeah, that. I think taking you with him might have been his way of flipping the rest of them the bird."
"But I was a long shot—he said that."
"Yeah, and if you hadn't paid out . . ." She shook her head. "He had a lot riding on you . . . but you did—pay off, I mean."
Mark eased back in his chair. He tapped the side of his bottle for a moment and then fixed Claudia with a questioning look. "I don't know if all that makes me feel better or worse. You're saying he partly quit on account of me—or at least taking custody of me was the nail in the coffin."
"Nah, believe me, that deal was done even before you stole the damn car, Mark, and, besides, you couldn't have paid off any bigger." She was smiling again. "He never talks about it when you're around, huh?"
Mark shook his head and took another nervous swig from the bottle.
"'Course not," she said, scratching the side of her nose. She rose, crossed over to the stove, and checked under the lid of the pot, poking one of the potatoes with a fork and then lowering the heat slightly.
"You want me to set the table?" Mark asked, still with a touch of edginess.
Claudia glanced down at her watch. "Uh-uh, that'll give it all away. We should wait till they're here." She lifted a serving platter and bowl down from the shelf above the stove. "Anyway," she added, with an air of certitude, "you did everything you could have done—even stuff he never asked or expected . . . Frank told me, ya know."
"Told you what?"
"When you came to him and asked him to cosign on your loan—the money to start law school."
"Well," Mark felt his brow furrowed slightly; he tried to relax, "I suppose he had to—a loan and everything."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Mark—it wasn't 'cause he was worried about the money, dammit. He was so excited. And he couldn't tell Milt, 'cause you'd made him promise, but he had to tell somebody." She grinned. "Frank doesn't get excited too easy. It's not a cop thing, ya know?"
"It's not a Frank thing, anyway." Mark grinned back at her. "But it was okay, I guess. There's gotta be some kind of special dispensation for spilling secrets when you're married, right?"
"You better believe it, kiddo." She sat down again and grabbed her bottle by the neck. "Too late for a toast?" she asked cheerfully. "To big payoffs on long odds."
"To that," he said, tapping his bottle against hers. "And to getting a chance to say 'nyaah' to the judicial committee and the bar."
Another tap and then a slightly more concerned look.
"But maybe we'll just keep the 'nyaah' part to ourselves until I've passed the moral character determination."
Claudia smiled and said, "I can keep a secret—cross my heart." She made the requisite movement.
They both looked up, startled by the sound of Hardcastle's truck in the drive.
"There you go, right on time." She got up, turned the burner off under the potatoes and reached for some potholders.
"Wait a sec," Mark was on his feet, too. "This part I can do—just drain 'em, right? Brute lifting—no brains required."
She gestured to the sink. "Get this right and I'll let you mash 'em, too."
They could hear the front door opening and Hardcastle's familiar voice. "—he never mentioned anything about heading over here—"
Frank shrugged nonchalantly as they entered the kitchen. He turned to his wife to give her a hug and a quick buss. "My car wouldn't start," a quick jerk of his chin in Hardcastle's direction, "Milt gave me a lift home."
"Well, perfect timing," Claudia announced. "And Mark came by to take a look at the Chevy—good thing I made plenty."
Mark was leaning back from the cloud of steam coming up from the sink. "Pot roast," he said.
Hardcastle sniffed, his frown lost in a sudden smile of sheer olfactory pleasure. He suppressed that and gave Frank a sideward suspicious glance. "Just a coincidence, huh?"
"Looks that way." Frank smiled blandly.
"Now can I set the table?" Mark grinned as he put the pot back on the stove.
Claudia rolled her eyes.
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Author's Postscript: It's the anniversary waltz, which has become a bit of a tradition. This marks four years and 130 stories for me. Many thanks, betas, readers, and kind reviewers.
If you want to catch up on your Shultz and Dooley ads, you can find them at youtube under, what else, "shultz and dooley". It's state of the art 1960's advertising.