Thirteen

We stared at each other for a long moment. “What are you doing here?” Preston Burke asked me.

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line, Preston?” I asked.

He looked positively stunned, standing in the sunshine outside my house. He squinted up at me, trying to make sense of it all. “Isn’t this Abigail Stein’s house?”

So that was it. He’d looked up Abby’s address somewhere, maybe in the state’s lawyer’s directory, and come down here to do whatever mischief he’d planned for this visit. He hadn’t expected anyone, least of all me, to be here while he left her his flaming bag of dog poop, or toilet papered her tree.

The one thing I had to do now was convince the man he’d made a mistake. I wanted to be sure he never came looking for Abby again.

“This is my house,” I said, honestly enough.

“Then, why did the reverse phone book list this as Abigail Stein’s house?” Burke wasn’t challenging me. He was asking a sincere question.

“I couldn’t begin to tell you,” I said, which was also true. At least, I couldn’t begin to tell him if I wanted to protect my wife.

He sat down on the front steps, and I thought he was going to cry. “How am I going to find Abigail Stein?” Burke said, seemingly in despair.

“Why are you looking for Ms. Stein?” I asked, as innocently as I could muster. “I heard the charges against you had been dropped. I assume your business with her is done.”

Burke did a double take Soupy Sales would have envied. “Oh, it is,” he said. “I’m not here in a professional capacity.”

“You’re here on an amateur basis?”

“No, you don’t understand.” The understatement of the week. “I’m looking for Abigail Stein on personal business.” He sucked in his breath, screwing up his courage. “I’m in love with her.”

I’m ashamed of myself, but I do recall letting out a laugh. “You’re. . . in love with Abigail Stein?”

“Is that so amusing?”

I walked down and sat next to him. “I’m sorry, Preston. You have to understand. Abigail Stein is my wife.”

To truly empathize with the look in Burke’s eyes, you have to know what it is to be in love with Abby. To have aspired to someone so close to perfection, and then have the rug pulled out from under you. . . it’s a feeling I hope never to actually have myself.

“Your wife?”

“Yes,” I told him. “We’ve been married for fourteen years. We have a twelve-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter.” I actually reached into my jacket for my wallet, and showed him pictures of my children. This, to a man I was pretty sure five minutes ago was a dangerous maniac.

“Oh, my. . .” Preston Burke was coming apart at the seams, and I felt awful for him. “All that time when she was working on my case, the only thing that got me through was thinking, ‘once this is over, I’ll go and I’ll ask her out.’ And now. . .”

It occurred to me that he should have seen Abby’s wedding ring during all those visits, but some people are less observant than, let’s say, eighty percent of the population. “I understand how you feel,” I told him. “I’m sorry. I got to her fifteen years before you did.”

“I thought you said fourteen.” Ah. Now it was becoming even clearer. Preston Burke was, in all probability, an adult Asperger’s Syndrome patient, and he didn’t even know it. It happens all the time, and after you’ve lived with it for a while, you can spot them a block and a half away.

“We dated for a year before we got married, Preston.”

“How come she’s not Abigail Tucker?” Burke was trying to trip me up, prove that Abby wasn’t really my wife.

“Not all women change their names when they get married.”

He absorbed that. It was all coming down on Burke at once, but he was used to readjusting his expectations. He stood up. “What happened to your window?” he asked.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Until very recently, I thought he had happened to my window. “Somebody threw a rock through it,” I told him.

“Why?”

“I have no idea,” I answered honestly.

He walked over and examined the tic-tac-toe pattern of the window. It looked like we had been playing Hollywood Squares in our front window, and somebody had thrown a rock through Paul Lynde and Charley Weaver.

“You have somebody look at this yet?” Burke asked.

“Yeah,” I said, bewildered.

“How much they charging you for it?” It was my turn to stare at him for a while.

“They quoted us two thousand.” I didn’t want to tell him, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to.

Burke looked like his head would explode. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open like a wide “O.” “Two thousand dollars to fix this window?” he gasped.

“No, two thousand dollars to replace the window. The guy said it couldn’t be repaired.” I was talking to a six-year-old.

“The guy lied. This window is easily repairable. I could do it for four hundred.” No, Burke was talking to a six-year-old. “You could?” (Really, Daddy? It just needs new batteries?) “Sure. Didn’t your wife tell you? I’m a contractor. That’s how

I make my living. This, here, is maybe a one-day job. Four hundred, including materials.”

“Three hundred,” I said. “You’re in love with the owner of the window.”

“Five hundred,” he countered. “She’s married, to you.”

“Split the difference,” I said magnanimously. “Four hundred.”

“Deal.” We shook hands.

Preston examined the window and made some measurements with my tape measure. He kept talking to himself and nodding, since apparently he agreed with what he was saying. I walked over when he appeared to be finished.

“When do you think you could do it?” I asked.

“I’m not working now,” he said. “Too many people still think I’m a serial killer. I can start this afternoon and finish tomorrow.”

“You’re a fine human being, Preston,” I said. This was not how I expected this conversation to end up.

“Just one thing.” Uh-oh. Here came the catch.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not from the Bar Association. Who are you, really?”

I let out my breath and told him the whole story. Burke seemed shocked that we suspected him.

“You thought it was me?” I was personally offending him. I think he was considering raising the price of the repair again.

“Well, there was that letter and. . . look, Preston, that’s over now. And I just have one question to ask you.”

“Name it.”

“You’re not really Waldrick Malone, are you?”

Preston Burke smiled. And shook his head.