Chris Grabenstein

Ring Toss

Some men have a code they live by.

Other men? Not so much.

My partner, John Ceepak, has a very strict, very rigid moral code that guides every single decision he makes, all day, every day.

Me? I’m a little more loosey-goosey. Then again, I’m twenty-five, he’s pushing forty.

It’s the middle of July. We’re on the job with the Sea Haven Police Department, working the late shift on a Saturday night. In a Jersey shore resort town like ours, that usually means we’d be breaking up under-age beer blasts on the beach or making sure nobody speeds through our kid-packed ice cream zones.

This particular Saturday night, however, we’re working a tip on the Sea Haven Boardwalk. We’re there to bust the new owner/operator of The Lord Of The Rings Toss booth. Any connection to the wildly popular movie franchise is purely intentional, I’m sure, though not officially licensed or paid for. The old ring toss boss just hired some local sign painter to rip off Bilbo, Gandalf, and that Elf with the arrows and then bought a can of gold spray paint to spritz his plastic rings so they’d be the same color as Frodo’s.

But Copyright Infringement isn’t why we’re here.

Ceepak’s adopted stepson, T.J. Lapscynski-Ceepak (yeah, the kid’s name sounds like a disease with a telethon), used to work in this same boardwalk arcade a couple summers ago. Now he’s getting ready for college: the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His step-dad used to be an Army man before he became a cop — ending his career as an M.P. over in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Although Ceepak never attended the Army academy at West Point, he went ahead and adopted their cadet honor code as his personal credo: He will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.

Makes it hard for my partner to stroll past the brightly lit boardwalk amusements. Wheel Of Fortune, Basketball Hoops, Frog Bog, The Dog Pounder, Squirt-The-Clown, The Claw Crane. They’re all basically legalized cheats; a chance to spend fifty bucks to win your girlfriend a ten-dollar purple gorilla the size of a couch just so you can lug it around for her all night.

Me? I figure everybody knows the games along the boards are basically rip-offs. You play for laughs. Or to impress your date. Or because you hate clowns.

Like I said, my own code is a little less stringent than Ceepak’s.

“Six rings for one dollar,” says the scrawny guy working the ring toss booth. He’s wearing a head mic so we can all hear how bored he is with his job. Maybe his life. “Six rings for a buck, six rings to test you luck.”

“Look carefully at the bottles, Danny,” whispers Ceepak. “T.J. has advised me that the new management of this booth is engaging in what the New Jersey Legalized Games of Chance Control Commission would label deceptive, misleading, or fraudulent activity intended to reduce a customer’s chance of winning.”

Yep, here in the Garden State, we have an agency to regulate boardwalk games. The LGCCC. They also handle bingo and church raffles.

“Show your lady your stuff, win a Shrek filled with fluff.” The ring toss barker keeps droning on, unaware that he’s about to be busted. “Step right up, gents. Win a Scooby Doo for your cutie-poo. Take home a Tweetie for your sweetie.” I figure he has one of those rhyming dictionaries at home.

Behind him, I see 49 glass bottles arranged in a tight square. A few already have golden plastic rings looped around their necks.

“They do that to make it look like someone else has already won,” says Professor Ceepak.

I nod.

They also put the bottles very close to the front of the booth — to make it look soooo easy to win. Heck, you feel like you can just reach out and drop the ring right on top of a bottle. But you can’t.

And, even if you could, the plastic bracelet might bounce back off.

That’s because, according to our informant T.J., the joker running the ring toss enterprise this summer has slipped nearly invisible glass lips over 80 percent of the bottles, making it virtually impossible for the small rings to catch hold of the necks. Yep, young T.J. has been in the Ceepak household long enough to make his stepdad’s code his own. The young dude (who cut off all his dreadlocks, by the way, the night before his Annapolis interview) will not tolerate cheating. Or losing. I think he figured out the game was rigged when, last weekend, this booth broke his world-record winning streak (the kid can nail the nipple on a squeeze bottle of ketchup with an onion ring).

Ceepak pulls a summons out of the thigh pocket of his cargo shorts. There’s a three thousand dollar fine attached to rigging a boardwalk game of chance. I reflexively check my holster to make sure my Glock is still there. Three thousand dollar fines are never easily swallowed by carnies who, by law, can only charge one dollar per player per game.

We’re all set to step up and slap down our papers on the counter when both our radios start squawking.

“Unit A-12, 10–41. Mussel Beach Motel. See the man. Mr. Sean Ryan. Room 114.”

In Sea Haven, 10–41 means, “neighbor trouble.” In a motel, it usually means one room is making way too much noise and the “neighbors” are complaining.

Ceepak unclips the mic from his shoulder. “This is A-12. We’re on our way.”

He jams the summons back into his pants pocket.

A radio call trumps writing up a corrupt ring toss game every time.

The Mussel Beach Motel over on Beach Lane is owned and operated by the parents of one of my best friends since forever, Becca Adkinson. In fact, this week, Becca is running the place by herself: Her parents left our vacation paradise so they could go on a summer vacation of their own. Up to Canada. When you sell fun-in-the-sun, your idea of a break is a fireworks festival in Montreal.

We’re not flashing lights or wailing sirens but we have scooted over to Ocean Avenue so we can zip south a little faster. Along the way, we pass The Ice Cream Scoop Sloop, Cap’n Scrubby’s Car Wash, The Bagel Lagoon, and The Treasure Chest Gift Shoppe. What can I say? We’re a tourist town on an eighteen-mile long strip of sand and surf. I think the Chamber of Commerce only recognizes businesses with semi-nautical names.

The Mussel Beach Motel is a two-story, horseshoe-shaped stucco box with a sign out front advertising a Newly Refurbished Pool.

“They should change that sign,” says Ceepak as we pull into the parking lot.

He’s right. Becca’s dad fixed the cracks in the swimming pool a couple years ago so the sign is, basically, lying and Ceepak’s honor code extends to all aspects of life, billboards included.

“Officers!”

A bald man with horn-rimmed round glasses comes out of Room 114 windmilling his scrawny arms up over his head.

“Mr. Ryan?” says Ceepak.

“Yes. What took you so long? These people are ruining my vacation.”

In the distance, I can hear animated voices.

“Get outta my face!”

“No. You get outta this room!”

“Calm down, Connie.”

“Get out. Seriously.”

Sounds like an Italian family dinner after some Irish kid dating one of the daughters says Sinatra never really sang, he just sort of talked and snapped his fingers.

Hey, when I said it, I didn’t realize Barbara Baccia’s parents and brother and sisters were such freakish fans. Miss Baccia and I never dated again. Too bad. Her mom made great gravy. Gravy is what you and I would call spaghetti sauce.

“They’re on the second floor,” says Mr. Ryan, his voice shaky. I don’t think he’s used to dealing with confrontation. At his height (short) and weight (puny), I don’t blame him.

“Have you registered a complaint with the management?” asks Ceepak.

“Who? That blond bimbo in the office?”

Ceepak narrows his eyes. That “bimbo” is our mutual pal Becca who has been known to wear her bathing suit on the job because, well, she looks extremely good in it.

“Ohmigod. Did he call you guys?” It’s Becca. She comes out of the motel office wearing the terry cloth wrap she usually puts on after sunset. “Mr. Ryan, I told you I’d take care of it!”

“But you didn’t, did you? You should evict them.”

“Mr. Ryan?” This from Ceepak.

“Yes, sir?”

“Perhaps it would be best if you went back into your own room.”

My partner is a six-two tower of power who could probably bench press two Mr. Ryans with one arm so, when he makes the suggestion, Mr. Ryan quickly agrees and scurries back into his motel mole hole.

“It’s the DePinna family,” Becca says with a sigh, leading us over to the outdoor staircase leading up to the second floor. “There’s like twenty of them. Family reunion. Eight rooms. Checked in this afternoon. I think Mr. Ryan is ticked off because, well, he was supposed to check out today and then decided he wanted to stay but I couldn’t let him keep the room he’d been in because the DePinnas wanted a block all in a row, you know?”

“Sure,” I say. “Makes the family fights easier to organize.”

Becca shrugs. “What can I say? They’re Italian. They’re passionate.”

She’s probably right. It’s why operas are so loud.

“This is also like an engagement party,” says Becca.

“Come again?” says Ceepak.

“The youngest daughter, Connie, is getting married in September, so, you know, they’re all here, to show their love and support….”

“Get outta here, Donna!”

“Make me.”

“Shut up, tramp.”

Oh, yeah. You can just feel the love in the air tonight.

We reach the second floor, head up the balcony.

“Connie’s always been your freaking favorite!” I hear a woman holler as we pass Room 202.

“I think they’re in the parents’ room,” says Becca. “Room 210.”

Great. We have to listen to this family feud all the way down to the far end of the second floor balcony.

We pass a couple pudgy dark-haired boys sitting in lawn chairs outside their rooms, totally enjoying listening to their mothers scream at each other, shaking Doritos bags over their faces so they don’t miss a crumb.

“Donna’s right! Connie’s your baby so you spoil her! She always gets anything she wants.”

“Oh…my…gawd! I did not ask for it, Jackie. Seriously.”

“That’s enough!” says an angry older man. “You girls — apologize to your mother!”

“For what?”

“Saying those things you just said.”

“What, dad? Oh, you mean telling the truth?”

“Knock it off, Jackie!” shouts a woman who, it seems, has enough clout to get everybody else in the room to shut up. “Sit down Donna! Leave Connie alone. The youngest daughter gets the ring. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be. I was the youngest. My mother gave it to me when I got married. Connie’s my youngest. She’s getting married, she gets the ring. When the time comes, she’ll pass it on to her youngest daughter.”

“But, it’s a Tiffany diamond, mom!”

“So?”

And that’s when we knock on the door.

It swings open.

“What?” The woman on the other side’s hands go to her hips as she tilts her head sideways to let us know how annoyed she already is with us. She’s probably 30-something. Bronzed skin. Her upper arms look like they have their own personal trainers. Her face has that tough wife-of-the-Roman-emperor look. Her raven hair is thicker than a Troll Doll’s. “What?” She says it even more annoyed this time.

“Uh, well,” Becca stammers.

“We received a noise complaint,” says Ceepak.

The Roman empress gives my man the once over with her dark, angry eyes.

“You’re freaking kidding me.”

“No, ma’am. We would not be here otherwise. I’m officer Ceepak. This is my partner, officer Boyle.”

The woman spins around in a huff. “Can you freaking believe this? Someone called the freaking cops.”

“For what?” whines the other 30-something woman in the room. This one has a vague family resemblance to the woman at the door, except most of her facial features have been professionally smoothed out, her cheeks tightened up into bongo drum heads.

“For making too much noise,” I say.

“Noise?” says a white-haired woman in a white pants suit as she strides across the suite. She reminds me of Barbara Baccia’s mom, right after I made my Sinatra crack.

“The shouting and stuff.”

“Shouting?” Now she puts her hands on her hips and I figure that’s where her daughter, the one who looks like Caesar’s wife, learned how to do it. “We were having a family discussion.”

“Rather loudly,” says Ceepak. “We heard you down on the first floor.”

Now the young girl, the one who’s probably my age, gets up from the edge of the bed. Her eyes are a deep rich, brown — the color of chocolate chips after they melt. She’s wearing a two-piece tomato red bathing suit that hides only what the law requires it to hide, because like Becca, she has the taut, tan body to walk around in drip dry underwear 24-7. When she flashes me her dazzlingly white smile, I am hit with the same lightning bolt that knocked Michael Corleone for a loop in the original Godfather movie when he first set eyes on Apollonia while hiding out in Sicily.

“Danny?” whispers Becca.

Like I said, Becca and I have been friends since forever. When I fall in love at first sight — something that happens on a semi-regular basis with scantily clad, olive-skinned beach babes — she can usually tell.

“I’m sorry, officers,” the young girl gushes in a husky voice that fits her impossibly well-proportioned body even better than the bathing suit. “I guess our celebration went a little overboard. I’m Connie DePinna. I’m getting married!”

She wiggles her right hand. It sparkles.

“My mother like totally surprised us all and gave me the Galuppi family diamond.”

I hear Becca gulp. “That’s a Tiffany.”

“Yunh-hunh. Two carats.”

“Two point five,” says the mother.

“Uhm, would you like me to lock that up downstairs in the office safe?” Becca asks.

The bride-to-be giggles. “Of course not. I’m never going to take it off my finger.”

If only she’d kept her word.

All the DePinnas promise not to yell so loud the next time they have a family discussion. We send everybody back to their rooms.

The older ladies, Jackie and Donna, go all icy on their baby sister once we’re outside their parents’ motel suite.

“What time you guys want to hit the beach tomorrow?” Connie asks.

They don’t even answer, just clack away on their stiletto high heels.

“We’re still family, you guys!” Connie pouts at their backs.

Both sisters give her an over-the-shoulder, one-digit Jersey salute. It’s how we greet each other on the Turnpike and Parkway during our fits of road rage.

Abandoned by her seething siblings, Connie is left with Ceepak, Becca, and me. We escort her and “the Galuppi Family Diamond” all the way down the balcony to room 202.

“Oh…my…gawd. I can’t wait to show Billy!” Connie gushes, recovering nicely from being blackballed by her sisters. “The diamond is cut into a heart shape because a heart is like the universal symbol of love and junk.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to lock that in the safe?” asks Becca.

“Positive. It’s too amazingly beautiful to hide, don’t you think, Officer Boyle?” She wiggles her hand in front of her chest. I try to stay focused on the sparkly diamond instead of the perfectly tanned mountains in the background.

“You need to take extra precautions when vacationing with precious jewelry,” says Ceepak, always the overgrown Eagle Boy Scout. “Keep your door locked at all times. If you leave the room, take the ring with you. I’m certain the hotel maids here are honest, however professional jewel thieves familiarize themselves with cleaning crew schedules and procedures and….”

“Don’t worry, officer. Like I said — I’m never taking this freaking thing off my finger.”

“Then,” says Ceepak, “be aware that sand and concrete can easily scratch the precious metals in the band. Chlorine in the swimming pool can, likewise, weaken and discolor the gold….”

We reach room 202.

Connie opens the door.

“Yo,” says the young guy jiggling air conditioner controls inside the room, over near the thick drapes. “This thing is like still making noises. This hotel sucks.” He’s dressed in flip-flops, baggy shorts and no shirt so he can show off his chiseled chest and gold chain collection. He kicks the thru-wall a-c unit. Sheet metal shakes. The condenser thrums awake. “Hey, Connie — what was all the hollerin’ about?”

“Mom gave me the freaking diamond! The Galuppi!”

“For real?”

She struts over, jiggles her hand in front of his face.

“Whoa. Awesome.”

“Totally.”

Now the droopy-eyed dude spies the two cops and one hotel manager clustered in the doorway.

“Wazzup, dudes?”

“Oh,” says Connie. “Somebody called the cops. Said we were making too much noise.”

“For real?”

Ceepak steps forward. “Sir?”

“Yo?”

“Are you Miss DePinna’s fiancée?”

“Yeah,” says Connie. “This is Billy. He gave me this other ring!”

Now she shows us her left hand.

Geezo man.

Looks like Billy needs to land a better job. Experts on these things say you should drop two months salary when purchasing your beloved’s engagement ring. Judging by the tiny chip of glass on Connie’s ring finger, Billy clears maybe a buck fifty every four weeks.

“Perhaps,” Ceepak continues, “you can convince Miss DePinna to safeguard her valuables downstairs in the hotel safe.”

Connie giggles. “I already told you, officer….”

Billy wraps his arm around Connie, clutches her at the hip. “Don’t worry. I won’t let the DePinna family jewels out of my sight.”

“It’s the Galuppi diamond,” says Connie. “From my mother’s mother.”

Billy shrugs. “Whatever.”

“Will you be staying in this room with Miss DePinna?” asks Ceepak.

Billy laughs. “I wish.”

“My parents are soooo Catholic,” says Connie, lowering her eyes, hoping none of us are nuns. “They don’t believe in, you know, pre-marital relationships.”

“So they stuck me all the way down in Room 211. Right next to their freaking room!”

Which means Billy will have to sneak past the parental units if he intends on violating their blessed virgin daughter during the family reunion.

“I can look after my own valuables,” says Connie. “I don’t need Billy or the Sea Haven Police Department or the motel safe. I’m not a baby.”

“No,” says Billy, “but you’re my baby, baby.” He tugs her closer. She giggles again. I’m ready to hurl.

“Very well,” says Ceepak, checking his wristwatch. “Come on, Danny. We have a summons to serve.”

“Roger that,” I say, because it’s what Ceepak always says so I decide I might as well say it, too.

Ceepak gives Miss DePinna a two-finger salute off the brim of his cap. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss DePinna. However, I hope we are not called back to meet you or your family again.”

“Don’t worry, officer. My sisters are just upset. They’ll get over it. Blood is thicker than water. At the end of the day, we’re family.”

Ceepak just nods.

Then he, Becca and I head for the staircase.

“Thanks you guys,” says Becca.

“If there is a further disturbance….”

“There won’t be. I promise. I told my parents I could handle running the motel on my own and I can! Oh, is, uh, Jim working tonight?”

“Officer James Riggs?” says Ceepak.

“Yeah.”

Big Jim Riggs is the resident body builder on the Sea Haven police force. I don’t think he does steroids, but he sure has the kind of muscles you usually only see popping up on the cop stripper at a bachelorette party, the guy who does the lewd limbo with his nightstick. Becca, long a fan of the muscular male physique, and Big Jim have been “dating” on and off for a couple months.

“He, uh, stopped by for coffee this morning.”

Right. Coffee.

“He, you know, forgot his baseball hat.”

Ceepak nods. “We’ll be happy to run it by the house as Officer Riggs will need the regulation cap to maintain his professional appearance and to be in full compliance with Chief Baines’ all-officer dress code.”

“Right,” Becca mumbles. “It’s in the office.”

“Roger that.”

We clomp down the metal steps, squeeze past a few bumpers in the parking lot, and step into the motel office. The walls are decorated with a stuffed fish, a couple paint-by-number oil paintings of lighthouses, and a window air conditioner jammed through the wall because Mr. Adkinson didn’t want to buy a three-prong extension cord and put it in a window.

“Are they leaving?” This from Mr. Sean Ryan, who is standing in front of the swirled-blue fake marble counter. Apparently, he didn’t stay in his room like Ceepak suggested. “Did you evict them?”

“No, sir,” says Ceepak.

“I told you, Mr. Ryan,” says Becca, “the DePinnas booked my whole second floor for a full two weeks. It’s why I needed your room.”

“Rest assured, however,” says Ceepak, “that we have asked the DePinna family to keep any future ‘family discussions’ down to a dull roar.”

“But….” Ryan sputters. “I read the rules!”

Ceepak cocks an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“In the frame on the back of the door. It says loud and abusive noises are prohibited. Boisterous activities too! It’s right there with public urination….”

“Look, Mr. Ryan,” says Becca, kind of steamed up at her guest because I think she still needs to take a few Hospitality classes at the community college, “we cut all our guests a little slack in the summer. Everybody’s here on vacation, right? Didn’t I accommodate you, even though you didn’t have a reservation? You were a walk in….”

Ryan exhales loudly. “Fine. But, if those people….”

“If they cause another public disturbance,” says Ceepak, “we will be back.”

Ryan nods. Shoves his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants. “Okay. Thanks.” And he shuffles out the door.

Becca hands me Big Jim Riggs’ cop cap (totally avoiding making eye contact on the pass-off).

“Thanks, Danny boy,” she mumbles.

“No problem,” I mutter back.

Then Ceepak and I head back to our Crown Vic cruiser.

We need to go ruin the ring toss boss’s night.

The week clicks by like normal.

We write up people doing 45 in a 20. That’s shorthand for speeding like a maniac through a residential street clogged with kids lining up behind the Skipper Dipper ice cream truck, the one with the annoying dinky-donka-ding-ding music.

We clean up a few fender benders and issue a ticket for defiant trespass (without laughing) to this guy at the Schooner’s Landing shopping complex who was wearing inappropriate attire: a woman’s bikini top, a pair of extremely short jogging shorts, and a very snazzy feathered pillbox hat. Kids were pointing. Grannies were having heart attacks.

At roll call on Wednesday, Chief Baines passes out an FBI JAG (Jewelry and Gem) bulletin about a YACS (Yugoslavia, Albania, Croatia, and Serbia) gang that’s been running “smash and grab” operations in the Philadelphia area, smashing out jewelry store windows, grabbing thousands of dollars worth of gold and gemstones.

Half our visitors every summer hail from Philly, so it’s conceivable a herd of YACS could head down the shore. Conceivable but not very likely. Which is good news for Connie DePinna: A couple YACS see that Galuppi Family rock, they might haul her home in a sack to Sarajevo (I only memorize the names of foreign cities where they’ve had Olympics).

Thursday, we have a day off. But that doesn’t stop Ceepak from ticketing a car he sees parked in front of a fire hydrant on his walk home from the gym.

I call Becca to see if she wants to grab a burger over at the Rusty Scupper.

“I can’t,” she says. “These DePinnas are driving me crazy, Danny!”

“You want me to come over? I could wear my cop cap.”

“No. I want them to quit complaining.”

“About what?”

“Let’s see: the towels, the pool, the breakfast buffet, the beach badges they lost, the ice machines, which, by the way, they empty every night so they can fill up their coolers even though my dad has signs up asking people not to do that! They say they’re going to write a letter to the Better Business Bureau and trash the motel on-line. Tell the world the Mussel Beach Motel is a dump. Worst motel on the Jersey Shore.”

“I’m sure your mom and dad are gonna love that.”

“They’ll never let me run my own place.”

“What?”

“That’s the plan. My dad wants to expand. Buy a nother motel, put me in charge.”

I hear noise in the background.

“Hey! Stop that! Talk to you later, Danny Boy. One of the DePinna kids is trying to tip over my candy bar machine.”

So I spend the day with some other buds on the beach. Twenty-five is not too old to boogie board.

On Friday, Ceepak and I are back on days. There are no FBI bulletins to deal with, which is a good thing, because we get another 9-1-1 call from the Mussel Beach motel.

This time it’s Connie DePinna.

Somebody stole her ring.

“It was Donna. Or that witch Jackie. Maybe they’re in it together. Seriously.”

Ceepak, Becca, and I are in Room 202 with Connie DePinna and her mother. They’re both sitting on the edge of the bed. Becca is pacing behind us, back and forth in front of that clattering air conditioner. I can see a small dent where Billy kicked it last weekend.

Becca looks horrible. Like she hasn’t had time to wash her hair, sleep, or eat. She’s not even wearing a swimsuit. She’s in scruffy, baggy sweats. I can tell: she so wishes her parents hadn’t picked this week to head up to Quebec and turn the motel keys over to her.

“I swear! It was Donna and Jackie! Or their husbands!”

“You don’t know that, Connie,” says mom. Her pants suit is pink today.

“I do, too! They’ve been trying to break in and steal the ring all week!”

“How’s that?” asks Ceepak.

“There have been some…incidents,” says Becca. “I didn’t want to bother you guys again.”

Connie (who is dressed in a sensible black tank suit in mourning for her lost ring) flaps her hand toward the door. “Every night this week, ever since mom gave me the freaking diamond, somebody has been trying to break down that cheap, freaking door. I’d fall asleep, and boom — two or three in the morning, someone would be banging on it. One time, I swear, I heard this guy grunting and stuff, trying to jimmy up the window. That was probably Tony, Donna’s new husband. She probably put him up to it.”

I grin a little because I suspect it was actually, young Mr. Bill, her fiancée, who had slipped past Mr. amp; Mrs. DePinna’s door in the wee hours of the morning, eager for some, to borrow Connie’s term, “pre-marital relationships.”

“Last night,” says Connie, nearly hyperventilating, “I swear — I heard a crowbar.”

“And what does a crowbar sound like?” Ceepak asks without busting a gut like I would have.

“You know.” She does a quick vocal impersonation of a metal rod ripping into a metal doorframe. It involves a lot of “skreek-skreeks.”

“There was damage,” says Becca. “Claw marks up near the lock. Like somebody went at it with a hammer or, like she says, a crowbar.”

“We’re not paying for that!” says Mrs. DePinna. “You have no proof it was somebody in our party.”

“Did I ask you to pay for it?”

“No, but I heard how you just said what you said….”

Becca curls her lower lip and blows out a quick blast of air, enough to send her limp blonde bangs flying up over her eyebrows. She is completely wiped out. The puffy bags under her eyes are the size of marshmallows. “I should charge you, people. I haven’t had any sleep all week, what with this one ringing the front desk every night at two, three, four A.M.!”

“Oh, I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you,” says Connie sarcastically. “But that’s when my sisters or their husbands chose to try to break down my door.”

“It’s not your sisters,” screams her mother. “They didn’t take the ring!”

“Then who did?”

Now the mom is pointing at Becca. “One of her maids. They’re all Hispanics.”

That totally burns Becca’s bacon. “What?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know you’re hiring illegal immigrants, young lady.” The mom gets all patriotically snitty- like that nutjob on Fox. “I’m surprised your Mexican employees haven’t stolen everything out of all our rooms!”

“They’re hardworking, decent people,” says Becca practically shouting. I think the DePinna’s have officially worked her last nerve as my mother used to say whenever I, you know, worked her last nerve. “They’re better than you and your family, that’s for sure!”

Mrs. DePinna doesn’t like that. “The Better Business Bureau is going to hear about this! Today! I’m mailing that letter!”

“Fine!” snaps Becca. “I’ll give you the freaking stamp!”

“Don’t think I won’t!”

Ceepak stands.

“Enough,” he says. “Becca, please wait for us downstairs in the office. Mrs. DePinna, kindly return to your room and call your other daughters. Ms. DePinna, contact your fiancée. Please advise everyone that my partner and I will be coming around to ask them a few questions.”

“What?” says Connie. “When?”

“Now.”

“I have a manicure appointment.”

“Cancel it.”

The way Ceepak says that, I know we’re not leaving the Mussel Beach Motel until the ring is found or somebody confesses to stealing it.

Our interrogations begin with the bride-to-be.

“When did you notice your ring was missing,” says Ceepak.

“Like an hour ago.”

“Had you taken it off your finger?”

“Well, duh. My sisters are vicious old hags but I don’t think they’d chop my finger off to get at the diamond.”

“Of course. But, last Saturday, you told us you never intended to take the ring off.”

“Well, I didn’t mean never never. Rings can make your skin kind of skanky underneath, especially if you spend a ton of time in the pool, which, I have to. For my tan. I want to look good in my wedding dress. It’s white. You need a tan to wear white, especially a backless.”

“Where did you store the ring?”

She flicks her naked hand with the ring tan line toward the bedside table. “Usually in there. Next to the bible.”

“Was anything else missing?”

“From the drawer? Nope. The bible’s still there. The Yellow Pages. Billy’s condoms.”

She freezes.

Then, she tries to make us think she’s a cute Kewpie doll by crossing her legs, putting two fingers to her lips, and saying, “Oops.”

Ceepak is not susceptible to cute.

“Has your fiancée been a frequent visitor to your room during your time here at the motel?”

“Maybe. You won’t tell my parents, will you?”

“No. Unless they specifically ask me about it.”

Then he’ll tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because, so help him, God, Ceepak is a lot like George Washington with an axe in one hand and a slice of cherry pie in the other: He cannot tell a lie.

“Billy’s been down here a couple times.”

“Last night?”

“Yeah. After the thing with the crowbar. I was scared. I called the girl in the office and she came up with flashlight and all but couldn’t catch my sisters or their husbands in the act. This was like three A.M.”

“Go on.”

“Well, after she left, I still couldn’t sleep, so I texted Billy. He was down here in like ten seconds flat.”

“Were you wearing the diamond during your intimate encounter last night?”

“What?”

Ceepak sort of blushes. So I jump in. “Did you keep the ring on when, you know, you took everything else off?”

“That’s none of your freaking business.”

“Yes, ma’am, it is,” says Ceepak. “We need to establish when your ring might have been off your finger in order to pinpoint when it might have been stolen.

Connie looks down at the floor. “It pulled out Billy’s hair.”

“Come again?”

“The Galuppi. When I ran my hands through Billy’s hair when, you know, we were kissing and stuff, it got snagged. When I yanked it out, it ripped out a huge clump of hair.”

“So you took it off?”

“Yeah. Billy told me to.”

“Did you store it in the drawer?”

“I can’t remember. I was kind of caught up in the moment, you know?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I might’ve just tossed it on the top of the table. Yes. I remember, later, when, you know, Billy was…when we were…it was kind of taking forever….”

Ceepak nods to let her know he doesn’t need the graphic details on that part of the show.

“I guess I got a little bored and looked over to admire the ring cause it was right there on top of the table, sitting in front of the lamp, which has all those pretty seashells in the glass bottom there, and the moonlight was streaming through the crack in the curtains, I swear it was like I was looking at a jewelry ad in Modern Bride magazine.”

“And then Billy left?”

“I’m not sure. I fell asleep first.”

“But he had to head back to his room,” I toss in. “Before your parents woke up.”

“I guess. Yeah. He was gone when I woke up.”

Ceepak strokes his chin. Thinks. “Did you put the ring back on, first thing this morning?”

“Gosh,” says Connie. “Wow. I can’t remember. Guess I was still kind of sleepy. I put on my bathing suit, went down to the pool, did a couple laps. Went to the office for some coffee and one of those powdered doughnut holes they put out. A box from the grocery store. Very cheap buffet. They really shouldn’t call it a breakfast bar.”

“What happened next?”

“After the doughnut hole, I went back to the pool. Let one of the nieces paint my toenails. Read my Bride magazine some more.”

“When did you notice the ring wasn’t on your finger?”

“When my sister, Jackie came out to the pool with her kids. The boys were eating Doritos for breakfast, can you believe it? Doritos and Fanta Orange because it’s sort of like orange juice. Anyway, Jackie says, ‘So where are the Galuppi family jewels this morning?’ I look at my finger, see nothing but a white circle, nearly have a heart attack. I look up at the second floor. I see a maid pushing her cart right past my room and Donna’s husband Tommy lugging an ice chest down the staircase. The blonde girl from the office is carrying towels and junk up on the balcony. I see Billy come out of his room, yawning and stuff. Everybody is going about their totally normal business which makes me freak out! I say, ‘Oh my gawd, oh my gawd,’ kick away the niece working on my nails, almost slip on the stairs running up them in my bare feet, run to my room and….”

Her eyes widen.

“My door was ajar. It was open!”

“Had you locked it when you left?”

“I don’t know! I can’t remember. I had to go downstairs to get coffee because this hotel is so chintzy there’s no coffee makers in the room and Billy had brought a couple beers with him when he dropped by at 4 a.m. so I was kind of muzzy-headed this morning, you know what I mean?”

I can relate. One time, after a night of highly competitive beer pong, I left my apartment wearing one sneaker, one sandal, and one sock.

“I looked everywhere for the ring. I swear. The bedside table, the drawer, the dresser, on top of the TV. I even crawled under the bed!”

“And this was what time?” asks Ceepak.

“About an hour ago. I ran outside and started screaming, ‘Call 9-1-1, call 9-1-1.’”

Which, obviously, somebody did.

“So,” says Ceepak, “the ring went missing sometime between four A.M. when your fiancée requested that you remove it and eleven A.M. when you realized it was missing. A seven hour window. Tell me, does Billy have a key to your room?”

Connie nods. “They gave me two when I checked in. Don’t tell my parents. Please?”

“I will not volunteer any unsolicited information. Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“We need to talk to Billy.”

We sure do. Billy may not have enjoyed being upstaged by his mother-in-law to-be in the diamond department. Maybe he took the Galuppi diamond with him when he made his early morning escape so the engagement ring he gave his future wife wouldn’t look so ridiculously tiny for the rest of their married life. Either that, or he needed to finance his upcoming honeymoon.

There’s a small bar out back of the Mussel Beach motel. It’s actually a blue wedding tent attached to a shed where Becca’s dad keeps the booze. I remember Becca and I snuck in one winter when we were fourteen and played Piña Colada with the blenders.

It’s noon and the cranky bartender (Becca’s cousin Bernie) is serving beer to his only customer. Billy. He’s sitting in an aluminum patio chair with blue and white vinyl straps.

“Sir?” says Ceepak.

“Yeah?”

“We need to ask you a few questions.”

Billy gestures to the empty chairs circling his table. “It’s a free country, dudes.”

Ceepak and I sit.

“You guys need a drink?” asks bartender Bernie from inside the serving hut, which is like a double-wide garden shed.

“No thank you,” says Ceepak.

“Danny?”

“I’m good.” Hey, even my code says you don’t drink when you’re on the job; especially if the job includes carrying a loaded sidearm.

“Billy,” says Ceepak, “we know you were with Ms. DePinna last night.”

“Really?” He gets this cocky look on his face. “Which one?”

“Connie,” I say. “Your fiancée.”

Now he winks at me. “We ain’t married yet, bro.”

“Meaning what?” asks Ceepak.

“Meaning I may be engaged but I’m not dead!” He wheezes up a laugh. “Her sisters are pretty hot, too. So’s that chick at the front desk. Becky.”

“Becca,” I say.

“Friend of yours?”

“Yes,” says Ceepak.

“You should tell her to, you know, put some cucumbers on her eyes or something. Dude — she looks like she hasn’t slept in a week.”

Probably because she hasn’t.

Ceepak cuts to the chase. “When you snuck out of Ms. DePinna’s bedroom this morning at four A.M., did you take her diamond ring with you?”

“What? No way. I gave it to her.”

“We mean the other one,” I say.

“Oh. Right. Nah. I don’t wear much jewelry. Just the one ear ring.”

“You are aware, of course, of the diamond’s value?” says Ceepak.

“Sure I am. I bought it.”

I jump in again: “The other one!”

He shrugs. “Couple hundred bucks, I guess. Maybe a thousand.”

“Guess again,” says Ceepak.

“Really?”

Ceepak nods. “A similar heart-shaped diamond weighing two carats and of comparable color and clarity has a list price of $28,300 on the Tiffany web site.”

Ceepak. The man does his homework.

“Dude!” is all Billy says. Then he says it again. “Dude!”

Ceepak looks at me. “Danny?” He head-bobs left, indicating we should leave.

Because Billy is obviously way too dumb to realize that he snagged his hair on close to thirty thousand dollars last night.

Billy attacks the keys of his cell phone with blazing thumbs, no doubt texting all his dudes and brohs to let them know that, as soon as he’s married, he’s going to hock his wife’s heirloom and buy a new truck.

It’s time for Ceepak and me to talk to the sisters.

Donna and Jackie DePinna are parked poolside with their kids, about six of them, even though it seems like more because the dark-haired terrors are midget-sized maniacs who enjoy screaming, splashing all of Becca’s water out of the pool, and bopping each other on the butt with tubular floatation devices.

“Knock it off, Little Tony,” says Jackie.

“Is Tony your son?” asks Donna.

“Fine. You tell him.”

“He’s a boy. He needs to burn off energy.”

“Like your husband?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. But I saw how he was looking at that waitress last night.”

“What waitress?”

“At Pinky’s Shrimp. The one with the big bazoombas.”

Donna straightens up in her chair. “He doesn’t have to leave home if we wants to look at that.”

“He does if he wants to see real ones.”

A girl screams. Somebody chokes.

“Hey, little Tony! Cut that out. Don’t drown your cousin. Come over here and drown your aunt.”

Ceepak clears his throat. “Ladies?”

Jackie slides her ski-goggle-sized sunglasses down her nose, squints at us over the top of the frames. “What?”

“We need to ask you both a few questions.”

Donna coyly pulls her knees up to her chest. Her bathing suit top sloshes the way a waterbed does when you sit on it. “Are you two trying to find our baby sister’s ring?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Ceepak.

Jackie shakes her shaggy Troll hair. “Connie is so immature. She always loses everything.”

Ceepak turns to Donna. “Your sister mentioned that she saw your husband, Thomas….”

“Tommy. No one calls him Thomas, only his mother and only when she’s mad at him.”

“Like when he’s leering at eighteen year-old waitresses with enormous chumbawumbas,” snipes Jackie.

Donna twirls in her recliner. “Your husband’s no saint. He was staring at her rib bumpers, too!”

“Prove it.”

“What? You think I snapped pictures of him drooling in his shrimp basket?”

“Ladies?” Ceepak sounds like the referee at the Roller Derby. “Your sister Connie tells us she saw Tommy on the second floor terrace right before she discovered that her ring had gone missing. He was carrying an ice chest.”

“Because the ice machine upstairs was out of ice so he had to come down here and that machine was out of ice, too.”

“Our husbands both went fishing with our father,” says Jackie. “Like always, the men abandoned us. Went off to have their fun, left us here to deal with the mess.” She flicks her hands toward the assorted children. “So when exactly do we get our vacation, huh?”

“Mommy?” a girl screams from the pool.

“What?” Donna screams back.

“I think Joey pooped his pants.”

“So sniff his diaper.”

“Gross.”

“I didn’t poop,” hollers a boy in Sponge Bob water wings. “I just peed.”

Now Donna waves her hand dismissively. “He just peed.” No big deal.

I’m wondering how much chlorine Becca has to dump into her swimming pool on a daily basis to stop it from turning into a crystal blue community cesspool.

“Ladies?” says Ceepak, trying to regain their attention.

But then a girl with a headless baby doll starts screaming while this boy runs around the pool holding the hairy little plastic head in his hand.

“No running!” shouts Ceepak.

“Are you telling my children what to do?” snaps Jackie.

“The tile is wet. He could slip.”

Right on cue, the boy slips. Bangs his head on the concrete.

Now he’s bawling, too.

Ceepak snaps open a cargo pocket on his pants leg, whips out a miniature first aid kit. He rushes to the howling boy.

“Minor abrasion,” he announces, patting the wound with gauze. “Nothing serious.”

“Ooowww!” the boy bellows anyhow, turning on the waterworks.

I’m kneeling beside Ceepak. The girl with the headless doll is wailing up a storm and then the other girl, the one splashing like a paddle wheel in the pool, makes an announcement: “It is too poop! Joey pooped his pants!”

“Man,” I mumble. “It’s a good thing Mr. Ryan isn’t out here — he’d be calling in another complaint.”

Ceepak looks up from the kid’s minor cut. “Come again?”

“Ryan. The guy who called us out here the first time.”

Ceepak leans back. Sits on his heels. “Of course.”

He has this look in his eye. My mindless mumbling has, apparently, helped his big brain make some brilliant deduction. It’s why we make a good team. I mumble. He cracks the case.

But first he examines the boy’s head wound one last time. “The bleeding has been staunched. You should not require stitches. Have your mother affix this Band-aid and stay out of the pool for the remainder of the day.”

“Okay,” the kid says. “Can I swim in the ocean?”

“Negative. Come on, Danny. We need to talk to Becca.”

“About the ring?”

He shakes his head. “Mr. Ryan.

Becca hands Ceepak a sheet of paper.

“That’s a copy of his driver’s license. My dad makes me Xerox the license of whoever is charging the room to their credit card.”

“Might I borrow your fax machine?” says Ceepak.

“Sure. Where do you want to send it?”

Ceepak jots down a phone number on a Mussel Beach message pad. “Denise Diego. SHPD.”

Diego is the Sea Haven Police Department’s resident computer geek. She can search a data base like nobody’s business.

“Kindly include this message,” Ceepak says as he rips off the top sheet with the number on it and starts writing out a note full of instructions. “I’m asking her to run Mr. Ryan’s driver’s license through LEADS — the Law Enforcement Automated Data System — to ascertain if Sean Ryan is a known alias for any individual with a criminal record.”

“Alias?” I say. “Who do you think Ryan really is?”

“Someone else,” is all Ceepak offers because, I can tell, the hamster wheels inside his head are spinning like crazy. He hands Becca the note. She tapes it to the photocopy of the driver’s license, feeds the sheet into her fax machine, and punches in the number for the SHPD machine.

“When did Mr. Ryan check out?” Ceepak asks as the fax makes that Darth Vader static noise to signal that the connection has been made.

“First thing Sunday morning. I guess he was mad that we didn’t evict the DePinnas on Saturday night, like he wanted us to.”

“And when did he check in?”

“Last Friday,” says Becca. “Around one or two in the afternoon.”

“When we were with you last Saturday, you called Mr. Ryan a ‘walk-in.’”

“That’s right. He didn’t have a reservation, just showed up in the office. Fortunately, I had a vacancy. The people in 202 had to go home early. Their daughter back in Brooklyn was having a baby. Early.”

“Ryan was in Connie’s room!” I say. “202!”

“Precisely,” says Ceepak.

“Jim was with me when I asked Mr. Ryan to change rooms,” says Becca.

“Come again?”

“Jim. Officer Riggs.”

“He’d come by for coffee,” I add, wiggling my eyebrows up and down to let Becca know that I know what was really on the menu first thing Saturday morning.

She, of course, ignores my eyebrow waggles.

“Jim was in his police uniform,” she says, “because, well, later he had to go to work. With you guys. On the night shift.”

“Roger that,” says Ceepak.

“But, it was only like eleven in the morning, so he had a ton of time to kill. He hung out with me while I made my rounds.”

“Eleven o’clock is check-out time,” I say.

“Jim and I went up to 202 because Mr. Ryan hadn’t come down to the office. When he checked in, he originally told me he only needed the room for one night.”

Ceepak nods. “Then he apparently changed his mind.”

“Right. Said he had to meet some friends who had been delayed. So I offered him the room downstairs.”

“And when you made this request, you, more or less, had a police escort.”

“Yeah. Jim was right there. Looking big and tough in his uniform.”

Scary is probably a better adjective. The Gigantor body builder usually wears these wrap around sunglasses that hug the sides of his shaved scalp.

“Maybe that’s why Mr. Ryan didn’t give me any guff,” says Becca. “He just grabbed his bag and followed me down to the first floor.”

“One bag?”

“Yeah. A small one, too. Like a gym bag, you know?”

“Curious,” says Ceepak.

“Yeah. Usually, I have to help people lug all sorts of suitcases and ice chests up and down those steps.”

“Suggesting that Mr. Ryan was not here for the purposes of vacationing.”

“Guess not. Oh, this is weird: When he was checking out, he told me he needed to go back up to Room 202 to look for his electric razor which he forgot to pack when Jim and I ‘gave him the bum’s rush.’”

“Did you let him?”

“Of course not. The DePinna girl was in that room Sunday morning. I told him if the maids found his razor when they were cleaning, we’d work out a way to ship it to him. We always do that. You’d be surprised what people leave behind in motels. One time, I was cleaning rooms, found somebody’s dentures in a plastic party cup.”

“We need to talk to Connie DePinna again,” says Ceepak.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“We need her permission to search her room.”

“You think we can find her ring?”

“Perhaps. That or whatever Mr. Ryan left behind.”

“We’re looking for his electric shaver?”

“No, Danny. I suspect it was something much more valuable.”

We march out of the motel office.

Connie and Mrs. DePinna have joined the other females of their family poolside.

“Miss DePinna?”

“Yes?” says Connie.

“We’d like your permission to search your room.”

“Go ahead. I already tore the place apart.”

“Do you have the pass key, Becca?”

“Yeah.” She reaches into her pocket. Hands us the cardkey.

Then she gasps.

“What. Is. That?” She’s pointing at the pool and what looks like a bloated jelly fish made out of bright blue plastic decorated with cute yellow fish, red seashells, and green dolphins.

It’s floating on the surface of the water.

“Looks like little Joey’s swimming diaper,” says Mrs. DePinna, very nonchalantly. “You should probably get it out of the pool, Ms. Adkinson.”

Donna agrees. “It’s not very sanitary. Do you have a net or something?”

“It’s disgusting,” adds Jackie.

I can tell: Becca so wants the DePinnas to leave. But, she doesn’t say anything. She simply sighs and stomps off to retrieve the aluminum pole-and-net deal from the tool shed.

“We’re sending a letter,” says Mrs. DePinna. “To the BBB. This motel is repulsive.”

“The rooms smell,” adds Jackie.

“They were all out of chocolate-covered doughnuts in the lobby at ten.” This from Donna.

“And,” says Connie, “they really shouldn’t hire Mexican maids who steal diamond rings out of people’s rooms. I mean it.”

Mercifully, that’s when Ceepak’s cell phone rings.

“This is Ceepak. Go.”

He nods a few times. “Roger that. Thank you, Officer Diego.” He snaps his clamshell shut. Turns to Connie, who is slathering her skin with some kind of cocoa butter.

“Miss DePinna? We’re going upstairs to search your room now.”

“Whatever.” She’s too busy rubbing oil on her thighs to care.

We bound up the steps.

“What did Denise dig up?” I ask.

“Sean Ryan is a known alias for one John ‘The Jeweler’ Reynolds. He has major underworld connections and is often called in to verify the value of stolen gems prior to their resale.”

“He stole Connie’s ring?

“Doubtful, as he checked out several days ago and the ring only went missing this morning.”

“Oh. So what are we looking for?”

“Whatever else Mr. Reynolds left behind.”

We use the keycard Becca gave us and enter room 202.

“I’ll check the dresser and closet,” says Ceepak.

“I’ll check the air ducts,” I say because in the movies, that’s where the bad guys always hide stuff.

“Danny? There are no air ducts in this room. All the HVAC functions are supplied by that single unit under the window.”

The rattling air conditioner.

Ceepak and I both stare at it for a second.

“Well done, Danny!”

We rush over to it. Lift off the front panel.

There’s a small Nike duffel jammed in under the fan motor.

Ceepak pulls it out. Works open the top.

The black bag is filled with jewelry. Diamonds, emeralds, necklaces, rings, watches, brooches, bracelets — an entire display window full of sparkly stuff.

“That’s who was banging on the door at night,” says Ceepak. “Other members of Mr. Ryan’s crime ring. He told them he had to abandon the stash they had hired him to evaluate. They came here attempting to retrieve it. Most likely, this is from that string of robberies the FBI is investigating in Philadelphia.”

“The YACS?”

“Roger that.”

Geeze-o man. “They could’ve busted in and killed Connie!”

Ceepak nods. “Or Becca. When she came up with her flashlight and scared them off. Our friend was extremely lucky.”

“But, who stole Connie’s ring? You think one of the thugs casing the motel saw her flashing it around the pool, decided to steal it instead of picking up the drop bag?”

“It’s a possibility, Danny. We need to ask the DePinna women a few more questions. Try to determine if they noticed an unknown individual or individuals lurking around the motel this week.”

We head out the door.

That’s when Becca gets lucky again.

“I found it!” she shouts. She’s kneeling near the edge of the pool, her arm in the water, burrowing into one of the overflow drains. “I found it!”

Mrs. DePinna and her three daughters are up out of their lounge chairs. The kids swarm over, too.

When Becca’s hand comes out of the water, Ceepak and I are both nearly blinded by a laser-like glint — even though we’re still up on the second floor, leaning against the railing.

“This is the missing ring, right?” we hear Becca say to Mrs. DePinna.

“Yes!”

Connie grabs it. Slides it onto her finger.

“It must’ve slipped off this morning when I went swimming!”

Possible. The girl slathers on a lot of sun tail oil.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Connie hugs Becca.

“You’re welcome.”

“I suppose I owe you an apology,” says Mrs. DePinna.

“That’s okay. The ring has tremendous sentimental value. Everybody got emotional. I understand.”

“I’m tearing up that letter to the BBB!”

“Really?”

“Of course! This motel is marvelous. You’re marvelous. Who is your manager? I’d like to write a letter of commendation.”

“You don’t have to do that….”

“I insist!” says Mrs. DePinna, who now sounds like she wants to adopt Becca. “And, if there is every anything you need….”

“Well,” says Becca, “since you mentioned it….”

“What?”

“No. It’s not your problem.”

“What?”

“Well, somebody goofed and double booked your rooms. The O’Malley family is on their way…coming down from Metuchen….”

“But we’re here for another week….”

“I know. Like I said, it’s my problem. However, I could get you guys rooms over at the Sea Breeze.”

“Really?” says Donna, sounding impressed. “The Sea Breeze is a four-diamond resort.”

“I know. But my friend Eric is the manager and he owes me a favor and says he has all the rooms you guys need. He’ll even match the rate you’re paying here.”

“For a four-diamond resort?” says Mrs. DePinna.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, seeing how you helped us out….”

“Great!” Becca gushes. “The O’Malley’s will be here in like three hours. I’ll help you guys with your bags.”

“Does the Sea Breeze have a safe?” asks Connie.

Becca nods. “A huge one. Right behind the front desk.”

“Awesome!”

The DePinnas scurry away from the pool.

When they do, I can see the bright blue wad of a swimming diaper nestled in the net of Becca’s pool cleaning pole. She wants everybody to think she found the ring when she went diaper fishing.

I, however, have a different theory.

Ceepak takes the sack of jewelry back to headquarters. The FBI will probably give us both a medal.

With Ceepak’s permission, I hang at the motel. Make sure the DePinna Family Reunion packs up and takes its show over to the Sea Breeze, which is huge and has security guards who know how to handle unruly conventioneers who’ve had one too many umbrella drinks. They can probably handle the DePinnas, too.

When they’re all gone, and Becca’s looking semi-human again, I bop down Beach Lane to this veggie place to pick up a couple fruit smoothies and a freshly sliced organic cucumber.

“Thanks, Danny Boy,” Becca says, lying back on a poolside recliner, putting two cucumber slices over her eyes. Her whole body relaxes. “They’re gone. They’re really, really gone.”

She sips her smoothie through a straw.

“So,” I ask, “where are the O’Malleys? Stuck in traffic?”

“Oh. I forgot. They called while you were gone. Cancelled.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you gave it back.”

Becca peels a cucumber slice off one eye.

“What?”

“The Galuppi diamond. You tossed the ring into the pool so you could be a hero. Ask the DePinnas to leave.”

“Says who?”

“Me. You snatched the ring off Connie’s bedside table this morning when you were hauling around the fresh linens. You used your passkey. Went in. Found the ring.”

“Prove it.”

I shrug. “I don’t have to. I figure people lose things in motels all the time. When you find them, you return them. Right?”

“Always.”

“It’s like the motel proprietor’s code or something.”

“Yeah.” Becca sits up. “Are you going to tell Ceepak? You know he won’t lie or steal or tolerate people who do.”

I smile. “That’s his code. I’ve got my own.”

“Really?”

“It’s a little more loosey-goosey. And includes this one clause that overrides all the others.”

“What?”

“Friends are family.”

Becca grins. “Does that mean we have to start screaming at each other?”

“Nah. We’ll leave that to the DePinnas.”

Like I said, some guys have very rigid codes they live by.

Other guys are more like trees.

They know when to bend a little.

Content

Chris Grabenstein
Ring Toss