River’s End

happened that night, and only two of them are still alive. One’s dying.”
    “And one was four years old, Noah. For pity’s sake.”
    “Yeah, and her testimony damned him. Tanner will talk to me. I’ll convince Olivia MacBride to talk to me. But you’re the one who strings them together. Are you going to talk to me?”
    “He’s still looking for glory. At the end, he’s still looking for glory, and he’ll twist what he tells you so that he gets it. The MacBride family deserves better.”
    “I thought I deserved your respect. But I guess we don’t always get what we deserve.” He got to his feet. “The cops’re here.”
    “Noah.” Frank stood, touched a hand to his son’s arm. “Let’s table this until we get what’s going on here with you straightened out. Then we’ll talk again.”
    “Fine.”
    “Noah.” Frank tightened his grip, accepted the look of anger in his son’s eyes. “Let’s get through one problem at a time.” He nodded toward the living area. “This is a pretty big one.”
    “Sure.” Noah resisted the nasty urge to shrug the hand away. “One problem at a time.”
    It was one tedious routine followed by another. Telling his story to the police, answering their questions, watching them look over what was left of his things was only the first. He called his insurance company, reported the loss, dealt with the curiosity of the neighbors who wandered down.
    Then he locked himself inside and wondered where to begin.
    It seemed most practical to start in the bedroom, to see if he had any clothes worth salvaging or if he’d walk around naked until he could get more. He managed to pick through, find enough for one mixed load and dumped it all together in the washing machine.
    He ordered a pizza, got out another beer and, sipping it, studied the living room. He wondered if it wouldn’t be better all around to just hire a crew to come in with shovels and haul the entire mess away.
    “Start from scratch, Brady,” he muttered. “It could be liberating.”
    He was still scoping it out when someone knocked on his door. Since it was too soon for the pizza, he considered ignoring it. But decided even another nosy neighbor was better than stewing in his own helpless disgust.
    “Hey, Noah, don’t you ever return phone calls? I’ve been . . . whoa, some party. Why wasn’t I invited?”
    Resigned, Noah closed the door behind his oldest friend. Mike Elmo had been part of his life since grade school. “It was a suiprise party.”
    “I bet.” Mike hooked his thumbs in the pockets of the Dockers he’d bought because the commercials had convinced him women couldn’t resist a guy wearing them and blinked out of eyes red rimmed from the contacts he couldn’t quite adjust to. “Man, this sucks.”
    “Want a beer?”
    “You bet. You get ripped off?”
    “Just ripped.” Noah took the path he’d already kicked clear into the kitchen. “Caryn’s a little irritated that I dumped her.”
    “Wow, she do this? Seriously twisted.” He shook his head, his chestnut-brown eyes soft and sad. “I told you.”
    Noah snorted and offered the beer. “You told me she was your lifetime fantasy woman and tried to pump me for every sexual detail.”
    “So my fantasy woman’s twisted. What’re you going to do?”
    “Drink this beer, eat some pizza and start cleaning it up.”
    “What kind of pizza?”
    “Pepperoni and mushroom.”
    “Then I can give you a hand.” Mike plopped his chunky butt on a torn cushion. “So do you think Caryn’d have sex with me now that you’ve split?”
    “Jesus, Mike.” Noah enjoyed his first laugh in hours. “Sure, I’ll even put in a good word for you.”
    “Cool. Rebound sex is very intense.” He stretched out his short legs, crossed his ankles. “Oh yeah, I get a lot of rebound sex. Guys like you shake a woman off, they’re prime for me.”
    “I sure do appreciate your support and sympathy during this difficult time.”
    “You can count on me.” He offered Noah his surprisingly sweet, puppy-dog smile out of his half-homely face. “Hey, it’s only stuff, and not really good stuff anyway. You go back to Ikea, or hit Pier I or something, and dump it all back in. Take you a few hours.”
    Because he’d been thinking the same thing about the bulk of his furniture, Noah scowled. “She broke my basketball trophy.”
    Mike straightened, and a look of utter horror whitened his face. “Not the MVP—not from the championship game of