aterovis_bm_reapthewhirlwind.p65 (29 page)

I tipped my head back so I could see his face in the candlelight. “We’re a happy ending, aren’t we?”

We were so close I could feel his heart beating while I waited for him to say something. Finally, he said, “I’d like to think we aren’t any kind of ending. We’re just 265

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beginning. We’ve got a lot of living left to do before we can have a happy ending.”

“What does that mean? You don’t think we’re going to make it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Just…I don’t feel as secure in our relationship as I’d like.”

“What do you mean? I thought we settled that whole thing with Joey.”

“It’s not Joey.”

“Then who? Not Caitlin still?”

“I—Will, are you sure you’re gay? I mean, are you sure you’re not going to fall in love with Caitlin and leave me? You’re so into this baby—”

“Aidan.”

“I’m afraid to give you all of me—”

“Aidan.”

“I’m so scared of getting hurt again—”

“Aidan! I’m here, with you. I’m making love to you.

I live with you. I love you. Not Caitlin. I only want you.

What can I do to convince you of that?”

“Marry me.”

“What?”

He sat up, keeping his eyes on mine. “Marry me. I was going to wait until I had a ring and do this right, but I just can’t wait. I want to spend the rest of life with you, Will. I want to grow old with you. I’m willing to accept whatever that means; raising this baby, always living in Joey’s shadow—but I need some sense of security. I need commitment.”

“You’re serious,” I said in amazement as I sat up next to him. “But it’s not legal in Maryland.”

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“We don’t need a sheet of paper from the State of Maryland to validate our commitment,” he said. “It can just be me and you, maybe our friends, but mainly just you and me, declaring our love and our promise to each other.”

I couldn’t believe we were even talking about this.

Marriage? I hadn’t even thought about it. I hadn’t thought of anything except finding Joey’s killer and the baby. Did I want to spend the rest of my life with Aidan?

Did I want to marry him?

“Yes,” I whispered aloud.

“What? Do you mean—”

I turned to face him. “Yes, I will marry you Aidan Scott. Yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

Yes, I want—”

He grabbed me and kissed me passionately, cutting off any further proclamations. I could feel his tears warm against my cheeks.

“Does this mean I have to change my name to Will Scott?” I asked when we came up for air.

He laughed and cried at the same time. “I don’t want you to change a thing, Will Keegan. I love you just the way you are.”

***

I was staring out the window when he came up behind me and wrapped his strong arms around me. I melted into his embrace with a contented sigh. After a 267

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few minutes of just enjoying his embrace, my mind wandered to thoughts of Caitlin and the baby.

“Did you say you could get Ilana’s phone number?”

I asked him.

“Sure. You want me to call Adam?”

“Please.”

His arms slipped reluctantly from around my waist as he went in search of the phone. I followed him out to the living room after a minute. He was talking on the phone, I assumed, to Adam. He jotted a number down on the paper and handed it to me after hanging up.

“There ya go,” he said. “I’m going to go take a shower while you call her.”

I picked up the phone and held it in my hand without dialing. I noticed my hand was shaking. I took a deep breath and quickly dialed the number before I could panic.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. I was just beginning to think that maybe her office was closed when a soft, cultured voice answered.

“Ilana Constantino’s office, Jennie speaking. How can I help you?”

I almost hung up but I caught myself just in time.

“Hello?” Jennie asked into the line.

“Um, yes,” I said quickly. “I’m calling for Ms.

Constantino please.”

“May I ask who is calling?”

“My name is Will Keegan. We met at Thanksgiving, at Adam Connelly’s house.”

“Hold just a minute.”

I sat listening to soft Muzak while I waited nervously.

Would she even remember me? I got my answer a moment later when her warm voice came on the line.

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“Will, it’s Ilana. How are you?”

“I’m good. I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me.”

She laughed. “How could I forget a guy like you?

What can I do for you?”

“Well, uh, I need to talk to you in person. Can I make an appointment?”

“Of course. Let me look at my schedule.” The line was silent for a few seconds except for the sound of rus-tling paper. “Is this afternoon too soon? I have an opening at 4:30.”

“That would be wonderful,” I said with relief.

“Good, I’ll see you then.”

We said goodbye and hung up. I was sitting in the living room still holding the phone when Aidan came back out from his shower. One look at the man I was now engaged to and all thoughts of nervousness about the baby flew right out of my head.

We decided to wait and tell everyone about our engagement at our next meeting on Friday night. Keeping quiet was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I felt like I would explode from my good news. I couldn’t stop grinning that day at work. Nikki kept asking what I was so happy about, but I just kept shaking my head and grinning until my cheeks ached.

When I came back from lunch, Nikki met me at the door.

“There’s someone here to see you,” she hissed loud enough to be heard all over the plaza.

I looked around but didn’t see anyone in the gallery.

“He’s in my office,” she explained. “He looks a little shady to me.”

My heart started racing. “Did he say who he was?”

“No. All he would say was that he needed to speak 269

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to you and you only.”

It had never occurred to me before that moment that I might be in danger myself. Now suddenly my mind was filled with terrifying questions. What if the killer decided I was a threat? What if he thought I knew more than I did? We hadn’t been subtle in our investigation so far. More often than not, we’d used a sledgehammer when a fly swatter would have sufficed.

“Stay by the door,” I said to Nikki. “If you hear anything suspicious get out and get help.”

Her eyes grew wide and she grabbed my wrist. “Will, are you involved with the Mafia?”

The tension broke as I tried not to laugh in her face. I almost succeeded.

“What Mafia? This is the Eastern Shore. The most organized crime family we have are redneck moonshiners.”

“That’s what they want you to believe,” she said ominously.

“I’m not involved with Al Capone or any other gang-sters,” I assured her.

I left Nikki standing anxiously by the door and walked back to her office. I knocked lightly as I opened the door. I figured I didn’t want to surprise whoever was waiting for me. I found a slightly familiar middle-aged man with a full beard and worn, but clean clothes waiting for me. Where had I seen him before?

“Hello?” I said uncertainly. “I’m Will Keegan. Are you looking for me?”

“Yes, yes I am. Your parents said I could find you here. I hope you don’t mind me barging in like this, interrupting your workday—”

“Wait—my parents?”

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“Yes. I didn’t know how else to find you.”

“Who are you?” I blurted out.

“I’m sorry. My name is John Taylor; folks call me Jack.

You talked to Mr. Dennis at the marina. You told him you wanted to talk to me about my son, Joey. He went to the marina office and got my number and called me.”

He wound to a sudden stop as if he had run out of words.

“You were at the funeral, in the back,” I said, suddenly remembering where I had seen him before.

“Yes,” he said in a broken voice. “I was there. I stayed in the back so Olivia, Joey’s mother, wouldn’t see me.

He didn’t want her to know that we were seeing each other again.”

“Why all the secrecy? Joey was eighteen; he could see whoever he wanted.”

“Olivia hates me, with good reason. I was a lousy husband and an even worse father. I- I was a different man then. I drank. All the time. I’m an alcoholic. I haven’t touched the stuff for three years, but once an addict always an addict. When Joey contacted me—I can’t tell you how happy I was. When I left them all those years ago, I thought I’d lost my son forever. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to get his letter. I thought—

I thought that maybe I was being offered a second chance with Joey. He’s the only child I ever had.

“I was living in Norfolk then, in Virginia. I quit my job and left the next day on my boat. We met a few times; I thought it was going well. Then, the last time I saw him, he was drunk, drunk out of his skull. I don’t know, something snapped inside me. I lost it. I yelled at him, told him didn’t he know how poisonous that stuff was?

Didn’t he remember how it had torn his family apart?

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“He got mad right back. Inherited his temper along with his weakness for the bottle from me, I guess. Told me I had no right to tell him what to do. Said I’d given up that right years ago when I walked out on him and his mother.” He choked up, fought back tears and won.

“He was right. What could I say? He left and, a few days later, I heard on the radio that he was gone. So much for second chances.”

I didn’t know what to say. His pain was almost pal-pable; the office suddenly seemed too small, too stuffy.

“Joey wasn’t himself those last weeks, Mr. Taylor,” I said at last. “When he started drinking, it changed him.

He was my best friend for eighteen years and I didn’t even know him at the end.”

“Tell me about him. Tell me about my boy, the boy I never got the chance to know.”

So I did. I took the rest of the afternoon off with Nikki’s blessing. Mr. Taylor, or Jack as he insisted on being called, and I sat in a café, drinking hot chocolate for me and coffee for him, as I told him everything I could think of about Joey. As I did, I began to get a clearer picture of Joey than I ever had before. How selfish he was and had always been, and how the drinking had just exacerbated an inherent trait. I tried to cover over as much of that as I could, only telling the positive side. I could tell how much it meant to him. I felt sorry for this sad, broken man. I knew in my gut that he hadn’t killed Joey, or at least not in cold blood. He may have started the slow process of self-destruction that Joey had been in, and he would live with that for the rest of his life. I felt confident that we could cross him off our list of suspects.

When I finally left Mr. Taylor, I had to drive straight 272

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to the upscale modern office building that housed Ilana Constantino’s law practice. I took the elevator to her floor and found the door with her name stenciled in gold lettering on frosted glass over the words “Family Law.” The foyer area screamed elegance and style, much like Ilana herself. She was standing behind the receptionist’s desk talking to her when I came in. Immediately her face lit up in a warm smile and she stepped out from behind the desk.

“Will, it’s good to see you again,” she said as she offered her hand. “Come on back to my office. Hold my calls please, Jennie.”

“Thanks so much for taking the time to see me so quickly, Ms. Constantino,” I said as she led me into a well-appointed office.

“Call me Ilana. And you sounded like it was important.”

“It is,” I said and quickly outlined the situation as succinctly as I could. She already knew a little about it since she had been at the Thanksgiving dinner. When I finished I sat back and waited for her response.

She thought for a minute, tapping one long manicured nail against her lips. “Let me see if I have this right,”

she said. “You would like me to draw up some docu-ments that give you legal rights to this baby, that isn’t yours, to make sure that Caitlin doesn’t skip out on you and take the baby with her.”

“Something like that,” I said halfheartedly.

“Well, I have to say that it’s just a bit unusual. Are you sure this is what you want to do? You understand that once it’s done you will be held just as responsible for this baby as if it were your own.”

“I know. It’s what I want to do.”

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“Then essentially what I’ll be doing is an adoption with a joint custody kind of thing. It will ensure that you will support the baby and, in turn, you will have access to the baby. Is Caitlin agreeable to this?”

“Yes, I think so. How much is all this going to cost?”

“Well, since you’re a friend I’m not going to charge you for my time. You’ll have to pay the various legal fees and so on, but I’ll let you know what that is when it’s all done.”

“Okay. How long will it take?”

“I’ll get right to work on it. I’ll call you in a few days.

You and Caitlin will have to come in and sign the paperwork.”

“Okay, I’ll call her and fill her in.”

“Good. You do that and I’ll be in touch.”

I left with a sense that everything was falling into place at last. Aidan and I were engaged and now the legal work for Caitlin and me was on the way. All we needed to do was find something concrete to take to the police and everything would be perfect. Well, except for my family. I hadn’t thought much about them lately. I tend to avoid thinking about things that are too painful, but Mr. Taylor’s mention of them earlier had brought them back into my mind full force. We’d always been a fairly close family even if my Dad hadn’t been around that much. And though I’d tried not to think about it or let it show, I really missed them. Maybe it was time to try and mend that broken relationship, I thought. I decided I would talk to Aidan about it the first chance I got.