As Dog Is My Witness Another Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,3

roast beef we’re having for dinner.

Ethan looked up from the couch. “Did I get something, too?”

I turned to Abby. “This he hears,” I said. She smiled widely and put her arms around me. A hug from Abby is worth traveling 3,000 miles, too, but for different reasons.

“Welcome home,” she said. For a few moments, I felt quite welcome indeed. Then, of course, I had to let go and resume the non-hugging part of my life, which in my opinion is vastly inferior to the hugging part. Then again, if you were hugging all the time, it would be difficult to ride a bicycle.

“Have you eaten?” Abby asked.

“You’re such a Jewish lady.”

“Nonetheless.”

“They gave us something on the plane, but I’m not sure what it was, or what time zone I was in at the time. I didn’t eat it, anyway.”

“So you’ve had about 25 Diet Cokes and you’re loaded with caffeine?” Abby stood marveling at how I managed to survive four days without her dietary supervision. Luckily, God had invented the cellphone.

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Come in the kitchen. I’ve got some chicken left over from dinner.”

As I followed my wife toward the kitchen, Leah took hold of my hand. “Daddy . . . She looked up at me with big expressive eyes, and I thought I saw a tear welling up in one of them. I knelt.

“What’s the matter, baby girl?”

“Aren’t you going to give me my present?” Her lip actually quivered.

I waved a hand at her as I stood up, ever so creakily. “Go through the bag,” I told her. “Just don’t destroy any of my stuff.”

“Yay!”

Ethan looked over and considered joining in the hunt for gifts. Luckily for him, the leprechaun movie went to commercial. He rushed around the couch to help his sister plunder through my luggage. My underwear flew in various directions as I walked to the kitchen.

Abby was taking a plate out of the oven with a potholder. She set it down on a ceramic tile with an Al Hirshfeld caricature of Groucho Marx on it—I had bought it when I was in college, and it had somehow survived. I could see the plate held oven-fried chicken and a baked potato with some broccoli hidden in it. My wife looked after me well.

“You were ready for me,” I said.

“Watch out, the plate’s hot,” she said, turning perfectly into the next set of embraces I’d planned for her.

“So are you,” I said.

“Eat. You’ll need your strength for later, unless the jet lag’s gotten you.” She smiled and walked to the dishwasher.

“Remember, I gained three hours. My body thinks it’s late in the afternoon right now. By eleven o’clock, I’ll be at the height of my energy.” She pretended to look horrified. At least, I think she was pretending.

She sat next to me at the table. “So you didn’t get the option yet, huh?”

“Keep in mind that ‘yet’ is the operative word in that sentence,” I told her.

“Still, you flew out there for four days . . .

“To get to the point where I understand what Glenn wants, and once I give it to him, I’ll get the option. It’s a question of weeks—a couple of weeks probably.” The chicken wasn’t the least bit dry. It was crunchy and flavorful. If I had cooked it, you could have used it for a game of shuffleboard.

“It’s not a sure thing, though, is it? I mean, we do kind of need the money, Aaron.” Abby had a point. When a pipe had burst, we’d had to tear out and replace all the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom, and though our semi-resident contractor Preston Burke had been sympathetic, he didn’t forget to give us a bill. Owning a home is more fun than human beings should be allowed to have.

“It’s close to a sure thing,” I said through potato. I was hungry, and Abby is about as fine a chef as I’ve ever met. It’s one of the many ways in which my wife is perfection personified. “I’ll make some changes—not really big ones, either—and send it to Glenn, and he’ll pony up the cash. Believe me, I’ve been through this before. He wouldn’t have flown me out there if he didn’t think he could sell it.”

Abby raised an eyebrow as she thought a moment. “I’d feel better,” she said, “if I knew a check was in the mail.”

“So would I, but what could I do?” I asked. “Dazzle him with my non-existent reputation and flash the Writer’s Guild