Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (17 page)

I stared at the pictures and tried to make sense of what was in my hands. All those children. What did it mean?

I wasn’t paying attention as Emma got up from the piano bench and went snooping around the small, cluttered room. “There’s a big blue bottle of something over here. Looks medicinal. And, hey—there’s a little fridge.” Emma picked her way around the ottoman.
“Whoa. Somebody dropped a plate of cake. There’s icing all over the—Oh, my
God
!”

Emma backpedaled toward me, cursing a garbled streak.

I dropped the photographs in my hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Holy shit, holy shit! There’s a
dead
lady over there!” Emma did a dithery dance of horror beside me.

I pushed past Emma to look on the other side of the desk. On the floor in front of the small refrigerator lay a woman—Boom Boom’s nurse. I recognized her uniform and her braided hairdo. She lay sprawled on the floor much as Jenny had—one hand clutching her heart. She must have fallen as she was stricken. A plate, a fork and chunks of what was surely a piece of chocolate cake lay scattered around her.

In the next second, Emma and I were standing outside the folly, holding each other and jabbering with panic.

“We’ve got to call the police,” I said when my wits began to return.

“Screw that! I say we close the door and get the hell out of here. I don’t want to get caught at a crime scene.”

“Crime scene?”

“You don’t think she died of natural causes, do you?”

No, I didn’t think that. And the police weren’t going to, either.

With hands shaking so hard I could barely manage, I found my handbag and dug out the card from the state trooper who’d helped me last winter. Ricci picked up immediately, and when I identified myself, he listened to my story without interrupting. When I finished, he said curtly that he was close by and would arrive within a few minutes.

I ended the call with trembling fingers. Suddenly I felt horrible. Light-headed and nauseated. My knees turned to water. First Jenny, and now Boom Boom’s nurse. From far, far away, Emma called my name. But the gloom of the garden closed around me, and the scent
of rotting flowers became overwhelming. I felt the dark vegetation rush up around my face, and I could hardly breathe.

When I came around again, I was sprawled in a patio lounge chair and a blur of people moved around me.

Emma told me to breathe. She had a bottle of water, and she pushed it into my hands. “Drink this,” she ordered. “It’s from my truck, so it’s safe. It might be Poison Central around here.”

I sipped the water. Choked on it. Tried again but couldn’t swallow. My brain finally stopped spinning and I sat up unsteadily. The police had arrived, and the whirling lights from all three cars flashed around the patio, turning it into a bizarre carousel.

Over my head, Ricci spoke with Emma. Beneath his Mountie hat, I saw his hard expression, but I couldn’t hear his voice. Those dancing red lights were deafening. Which didn’t make sense.

Michael arrived like the cavalry charging into battle.

He shouldered Ricci aside and went down on one knee in front of me. He grabbed both of my hands. His tight grip pinched me back into full consciousness. His worried face swam into focus. The swelling around his eye where his mother had hit him looked worse than ever. He said, “You okay?”

“I think so. I fainted, that’s all.” I touched my belly and felt Baby Girl give a reassuring wriggle.

“What the hell is going on? Em?” He glared up at my sister. “Are you an idiot? You let Nora romp around in the dark like this?”

“We weren’t romping.” Emma’s harsh tone matched his. “Anyway, it was all her idea. I couldn’t stop her. Now I think she’s in shock.”

I realized I was wearing a blanket that must have come from the trunk of Ricci’s cruiser. I pushed my way out of it. “I know we shouldn’t have come,” I said, sounding maddeningly feeble. “I couldn’t get over the fence, and Emma saw my underwear but then—then we found the nurse. She’s dead. Just like Jenny. Except there’s cake on the floor. Is it my fault?”

Michael looked stymied. “Why would any of it be your fault?”

“I should have done something, I think. But I—I can’t seem to— Wait.” The first sensible thought shot up through my woolly brain. “Where’s Noah?”

“He’s at home,” Michael said gently. “Rawlins dropped by. So when Emma called, I asked him to babysit.”

I hadn’t been aware of Emma calling anyone. A lot had happened, and somehow I had checked out. I put my hand on Baby Girl again, and she gave me a reality-restoring kick. She was safe.

Reassured but still dizzy, I said, “We haven’t discussed appropriate babysitters. Rawlins is okay, but Michael, there’s a lot we haven’t talked about. Little things, maybe, but important to discuss sensibly, no yelling. Binkies, for instance. Should we let our child suck on a binky? And what about nursery schools? Even though that’s a few years away, we should definitely be thinking about nursery schools.”

Michael and Ricci exchanged a look and reached some kind of silent agreement.

“Noah’s fine,” Michael assured me, helping me to stand. “You, I’m not so sure about.”

With the blessing of the police, Michael took me out onto the driveway and helped me into another monster truck—this one cherry red with
NICKY’S TOWING SERVICE
printed on the side.

Inside, a hundred different lights glowed like the cockpit of a jetliner. I said, “Why do we need a tow truck?”

“It’s not a tow truck.” Michael started the engine with a high-octane roar. “It was previously owned by a towing company, that’s all. It can be fixed up any way we want it. It’s really . . . safe.”

I sank down into the passenger seat and realized I could not see over the dashboard. My feet barely touched the floor. I felt helpless and stupid and pregnant and sick. And ridiculous.

I burst into tears.

Michael reached across the great divide between us and put his arm across my shoulders. “This wasn’t your fault, Nora. You know that, right? The lady died, and you found her, that’s all. Let’s go to the hospital and get you checked out.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’m fine.”

“Let’s be sure.”

I cried for a while and my head got all jumbled again. Michael did his best to soothe me, but finally he gave up and let me cry it out.

Eventually I snuffled up my tears. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’d just like an ice cream cone.”

“Ice cream? Now?”

“Y-yes, please.”

With respect for my hormones, Michael drove, and I used a handkerchief to wipe off my runaway mascara. I knew I was muddled up, but focusing on ice cream seemed to settle my churning emotions. Finally, we pulled into a local shop, Greta’s Ice Cream Store. I had composed myself at last, and we went inside to the counter. I asked for a single scoop of butter pecan and studied the tin ceiling while a lady in a stained apron spooned my treat. She gave Michael’s black eye an uneasy look as she handed over my cone.

My father had often brought us to this ice cream shop. He bought us cones, and we always asked for a pint of Mama’s favorite flavor—pistachio—to take home to her. Why hadn’t she ever come along with us? I couldn’t remember. But thinking of her made my head flash with the pictures Jenny Tuttle had slashed and stabbed on her wall. Her feelings had been terrifyingly clear.

Maybe my mother had been an exasperating narcissist, and my sisters and I still had mixed emotions about her even now. Maybe all children did. But not all children allowed their emotions to fester and boil.

Michael pocketed his change and turned to me. “How about the hospital now?”

I took a restorative lick of ice cream and pulled myself together. “No, I’m fine. Much better, really. Let’s go home.”

We went outside into the warm evening, Michael twirling the truck keys on one finger and me with an ice cream cone in my hand.

In the glare of green-yellow neon light, I saw that three teenage boys had appeared since we’d pulled in. They sat on the hood of a dilapidated car with a faded peace-sign sticker half-peeled off its bumper. The boys were dressed in jeans and hooded sweatshirts, which even I could comprehend were the wrong clothes for the hot night. The stink of marijuana hung in the air. Their smirks were confident.

My heart skipped.

“Yo.” The ringleader jutted his chin at Michael. “You be Mick Abruzzo, right?”

Easing me past them with a firm, propelling hand on my back, Michael gave the kid a long look and didn’t answer.

“Hey,” the kid called again when we had nearly reached the truck. He slid off the hood of his car and swaggered after us. “Hey, man! Whassup? You scared of talkin’ to me?”

I was pretty sure the boy had been educated in the local school system, so his attempt at gang-speak was almost laughable. But his pimply buddies moseyed after him, the three of them making a wall of threatening young muscle. If alone, I’d have run back into the ice cream shop for help. Over my shoulder, I saw the counter lady rush out from behind her display to lock the front door. She turned off the lights.

Michael wasted no time boosting me up into the seat of the truck and closing the door behind me. Then he swung on the boys and moved toward them so fast that the threesome scattered like a
flock of startled birds. The ringleader reeled back for a second, then tried to stop Michael by kicking at his knee, karate-style. He missed but held his ground despite Michael’s looming size. Then the kid put his right hand on the belly of his sweatshirt.

The gesture was unmistakable. He had a gun.

I dropped my ice cream cone and seized my handbag. I groped inside it for my cell phone. I hit 911.

But not before Michael swung a slow, left-handed slap at the kid’s head. It connected—not hard enough to hurt the boy or even throw him off-balance. It only surprised him for a second, then made him angry. For an instant I thought Michael was in terrible trouble. The boy laughed rudely, puffing up his chest like a rooster. His hand dove under his shirt, going for the gun.

But Michael’s slap had been a diversion. As soon as the boy made the grab for his weapon, Michael’s right fist came out of nowhere and struck the kid under his jaw. The force of the blow blew the boy up and off his feet. Then he went down, out cold before he hit the ground. The gun skittered out of his limp hand onto the cracked asphalt. With his foot, Michael nudged the weapon under the rusty car, where it disappeared. Then he spun with athletic ease to face the other two boys.

They stood frozen for a heartbeat, expressions childishly astonished, before they turned in tandem and bolted into the darkness.

It was over in a nanosecond.

Michael turned around to me, face set so dangerously that if I hadn’t dropped my ice cream already, I’d have done it in that moment. I knew other people saw a frightening man when they looked at him, but I rarely did. Until now. Through the closed window, he snapped, “Call the cops.”

The dispatcher picked up my call just as he spoke the words. I talked to the dispatcher and gave her our location while opening the door to go to Michael. He resisted my instinct to get out of the
truck by gently pushing the door closed again. The violence had erupted out of him like an explosion—flashing one second and gone the next. His face was still, his eyes chilly. He wasn’t even out of breath.

But I was shaking harder than ever.

With a spray of gravel, the local constable arrived in a cruiser. He stepped out of his vehicle, took one look at the kid on the pavement and called for an ambulance. Then he pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt and headed for Michael.

M
ichael laced his fingers behind his head in an obviously well-practiced routine. He stood still as the cop approached him. For a horrible few minutes I was sure he was going to be arrested. That was all we needed now—an arrest for assault, even if he’d been the one who was threatened first.

But after a short conversation, the constable put the cuffs away. I watched from the truck, unable to hear their exchange. They stood and talked for a while longer over the sprawled-out teenager, who didn’t move a muscle. Michael tipped his head toward the old car, and the constable went over to retrieve the gun from underneath it.

A plainclothes cop arrived in an unmarked car next. The ambulance was right behind him. The EMTs were all business as they attended to the unconscious boy. I breathed easier when I saw him stir and groan as they loaded him onto a backboard and into the ambulance. Michael and the constable and the plainclothes officer watched, talking among themselves. The second cop went over to
the boys’ car, wrote down the license plate and scribbled in a notebook. Then he made some phone calls.

It was twenty minutes before Michael got back into the truck. By then, my ice cream was a puddle on the floor.

I indicated the mess at my feet. “I need more napkins.”

Michael sent a glower at the locked door of the ice cream shop. “I think the chickenshit proprietor has closed shop for the night.”

“She was scared,” I said. “But it’s a big mess. Maybe we should stop at a gas station to get some paper towels to—”

He was impatient, though. He started the engine. “It’s not our problem. The truck’s not ours.”

“Michael, those boys. The one that you— The one in the ambulance. Was he the one who shot at you before?”

“I doubt it. That one’s probably still in custody. This bunch must be part of the same gang, though.”

“So a whole group of kids wants to hurt you now? It’s a gang?”

He pulled the truck out of the parking lot and headed north. “More of a Cub Scout troop. You saw how the other two ran off like rabbits.” In the next moment, Michael sounded tired. “What I just did was really stupid, though.”

“Did you have a choice?”

“I didn’t think it through. I wanted rid of the gun, so I moved too fast. I should have talked him down or—or something. Now he’s just going to be pissed off, and that’s not good.”

“What else could you have done?”

“I was working on a gag for two of my lunkhead cousins to pull in a few days—ski masks and baseball bats and a laundry basket. It’s a classic, but I didn’t pull the trigger fast enough, so—”

“What’s the laundry basket for?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“It’s not for anything. Just show. It’s— Never mind. I should have sent them last night, but I didn’t, and now this.”

I had accepted the idea that Michael had been asked by the local police to help clean up the adolescent crime wave, but I hadn’t expected him to become a target. I found myself going cold all over. Not just from seeing a gun or how quickly Michael had disarmed the kid. But from how the violence that unnerved me didn’t seem to faze Michael in the slightest. If anything, he was calmer now than he’d been before it started.

He had done what had to be done as soon as he knew about the gun, but even now I was trembling like a sapling in a storm. What was wrong with me? How could I be a good mother if I reacted like a ninny in a crisis? What if I fainted when my baby needed me?

I was hardly aware of Michael driving toward the farm. My thoughts steamed and bubbled, and I grew more and more unnerved with every mile. A rush of nausea was suddenly in my throat.

“Stop the car,” I said, fearing I was going to be sick.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just stop the car!”

“Okay, okay.”

He pulled over, and I popped open the passenger door and landed on the sandy berm of the road. I took deep breaths and willed down my nausea. Holding the guardrail, I walked away, past the front of the vehicle. I stumbled out onto the road into the beam of the headlights.

“Nora!”

I barely heard his door slam or his footsteps behind me. Michael grabbed my arm and pulled me around into the glare of the headlights and the orange flash of his emergency lights. A steamy fog rose from under the truck like the breath of a dragon.

“What’s wrong?”

“Me,” I blurted out. “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Have this baby. You—you can handle it. Deep down, you can do anything. And what you don’t already know, you’re ready to learn. But me—I’m too afraid to do the things that have to be done.”

“What things?” He looked completely baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“Protecting us. Even if it’s wrong, you have the courage to do it anyway. But me—I’m thinking about consequences or—or—”

“Nora, you’ve had a bad day.” He tried to pull me close. “Let’s go get you checked out by a doctor. After that, you need to relax and have something to eat and—”

I pressed my face into his shoulder. “I don’t want to be a bad mother. Emma knew her deficiencies. She knew better than any of us. Some people just can’t do it. My own mother, for instance. And Boom Boom was a horrible mother. Penny, too. And Jenny Tuttle—she might have given a child away, maybe more than one, because she was afraid she’d be a bad mother, too.”

“You’re going a little gonzo,” Michael said with impossible calm. “We’re not giving our baby away.”

“No,” I agreed shakily. “No, but I’m scared.”

We were on a stretch of road that swooped in and out of the dark trees. Branches loomed over our heads, and I was aware of scudding clouds but no moon. We could hear the distant rush of the Delaware River, but I thought the sound of my panicked heart was even louder.

Michael’s hands were gentle on me, but he looked up at the sky as if hoping to find some answers there. He said, “Do you think anyone would notice if we moved to Iceland?”

“Iceland?”

He pulled me against his chest, and this time I let him do it. He said, “It looks pretty in all the pictures. We could soak in those hot springs. Maybe do some fishing. There’s fishing in Iceland, right?”

My unsteady laugh turned into a hiccough.

He said, “This has been a really weird night.”

I felt guilty for making a scene. I knew Michael was doing his very best for me. I hugged him then, filled with gratitude for his patience when I was clearly out of my mind.

“We’ll get some brochures about Iceland.” I lifted my head to look up at him. “I’m sorry. I’ve overdosed on estrogen, haven’t I?”

“You always seemed so sane compared to Bridget.” He started to smile. “But lately . . .”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. I managed a smile, too. “Let’s go home.”

When we were back in the giant SUV, I said, “About getting a new truck?”

“Yeah?”

“I want the bulletproof one.”

“You got it.”

Within a few minutes we were driving through the new security gate at the farm. When the electronic arm went down behind us, Michael headed up the lane that ran around the side of the house. He parked in the gravel lot between the back porch and the barn. Lately, we’d been working on fixing the barn up after last spring’s fire. The cleanup was over, but repairs were going slowly. In the shadow of the barn sat the little vintage sports car Rawlins was driving these days. And beside that was Bridget O’Halloran’s convertible.

I looked at it and said, “You said something about a weird night?”

Michael was gazing at her car as if it might explode any minute. “She came around asking me to hide her from the cops.”

“Is hiding her a good idea?”

“It’s a really stupid idea.”

“But you couldn’t say no?”

“She keeps reminding me how long it took for me to be born. Every time she tells the story, it gets a few hours longer.”

I got out of the truck. For a moment, I stood listening to the wind in the two-hundred-year-old oak trees. From out in the pasture, I heard the muffled whickers of Emma’s ponies as they settled down for the night. The evening breeze rustled in my garden, stirring up the scent of compost. My home was peaceful. But any minute I felt it was going to go
ka-blooey. We were teetering on the brink of destruction as long as Bridget O’Halloran was on the property.

Michael came around the truck and took my hand. In the dark, we couldn’t see the loose fieldstones or the sagging roof of the house. The peeling paint was hidden from view, and so were the missing roof tiles. The warm glow of a kitchen light shining through the wavy window glass looked deceptively welcoming—not as if my soon-to-be mother-in-law lay in wait for us.

But it was my seventeen-year-old nephew, Rawlins, who stepped out onto the porch. From the triangle of light that spilled from the kitchen, he called, “Can I be off duty now?”

Michael and I headed in his direction. Michael said, “Do you have a date or something?”

“Or something,” Rawlins said, controlling a grin. He already had his car keys in hand.

Michael pulled a couple of bills from his jeans and tucked them into the front pocket of the loose flannel shirt Rawlins wore over a thin T-shirt. “Just don’t take her to the ice cream shop. It’s closed tonight.”

I stretched up and gave my nephew a kiss on the cheek. I noticed he had shaved recently. He’d grown at least another inch since graduation, too, and his general teenage cleanliness had gone up a notch. “Are you dating Shawna again? Is she home from Harvard this summer?”

He shrugged. “We’re just hanging out. She says she’s committed to some dude from Atlanta. Except he’s spending the summer working at his dad’s Mercedes dealership.” Rawlins rolled his eyes at the idea of competing against a boy with access to as many Mercedes cars as he wanted.

Michael said, “She’s here at the moment. That’s in your favor.”

“Yeah, it is.” Rawlins sent Michael a comradely smile. “Uh, about an hour ago your mom grabbed a bottle of wine and went upstairs. She said she was tired from being on the run. Does that make any sense?”

“Too much.”

“Aunt Nora, I showed her the room Aunt Emma usually uses—the one at the end of the hall with the bathroom. Is that okay?”

“Perfect,” I said. “Thanks for taking care of Noah, too, Rawlins. We really appreciate your help.”

“He’s cute. And what’s a couple more hours of babysitting? My mom’s got me in indentured servitude.”

I patted his arm. Rawlins had grown up a lot in the last two years. Okay, he wasn’t perfect—but if not for his slip in safe-sex judgment, we wouldn’t be getting our second daughter in a few weeks.

I gave my nephew another kiss. “Thank you. Tell Shawna hi from me.”

“Sure thing.”

He jumped down off the porch and jogged lightly to his car. I waved good-bye, feeling sentimental. Michael held the kitchen door for me. Inside, we hesitated in the kitchen, listening for Bridget. If she intended to ambush us, we were ready.

But she didn’t make a grand entrance, so we breathed in relief.

I gave Michael a kiss and said I loved him.

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m going to go back outside to clean the ice cream out of the truck. And maybe move
her convertible into the barn. Why make things easy for the cops? Plus I’ve got some calls to make.”

Calls he didn’t want me to overhear.

Upstairs, the open windows were already clearing the heat out of the house. A breeze that blew through the cooling leaves of the oak trees was welcome indeed. I peeked into the room across the hall from ours to check on Noah. In a diaper and clean T-shirt, he was sleeping soundly in one of the cribs we had readied for the coming babies. He looked angelic with his thumb in his mouth. I leaned down to kiss him. He smelled of baby shampoo and talcum powder. Rawlins had taken good care of him. I covered Noah’s bare feet with a blanket, eased his thumb out of his mouth, and slipped from the room.

In the hall, I listened for Bridget again. There was no sound, though, and no light shining under her door. I concluded she was either an early-to-bed person or she was plotting something. I said a quick prayer for the first option.

I ran a bath, and while the tub filled I carefully hung up my dress on its padded hanger. After I’d climbed over a gate and landed in the dirt, my Pucci needed a trip to the dry cleaners. I dropped my so-called granny panties into the laundry hamper—with a grumble. As I pinned up my hair, I looked down into the backyard. Michael came out of the barn and began pacing around the garden in the dark, cell phone to his ear. I couldn’t hear his voice. I wondered if he was talking with the police. Or with his retaliation-minded cousins.

I soaked in a tub full of tepid water, breathing the refreshing scent of lemon and restorative herbs from a jar of bath salts Libby had given me. Trying to relax, I leafed through the pages of a novel, but the story couldn’t sidetrack my thoughts. When I heard Michael come inside downstairs, I tossed the book onto the floor and started thinking about Jenny Tuttle and the dead nurse until my
brain began to whirl all over again. Cake on the floor. Energy drinks stacked up. The blue bottles of something left behind. The hatred on the wall of photos Jenny had created.

My thoughts must have spun for a long time, because I finally realized the bathwater had grown cold. I put a wet washcloth to my face and tried to force down the tears that had risen in my throat. Could I have prevented the nurse’s death somehow? Had she been killed by the same someone who killed Jenny?

And even more puzzling: all those photos of children in Jenny’s drawer. What the heck was that all about?

I heard Michael on the stairs and hastily composed myself. He didn’t need to see me breaking down again. I pulled the plug and let the water run out of the tub while reaching for a bath sheet. I was shy about showing my enormous naked body these days, so I was out of the tub and wrapped in the towel by the time Michael poked his head into the bathroom.

“I brought you some dinner,” he said. “You want it in bed?”

“Thank you. That sounds wonderful.”

I brushed out my hair and slipped into one of Libby’s maternity nightgowns. It was yellow and low cut, short and frilly, with lace around the thighs and satin ribbons at the shoulders—her style, not mine, but I couldn’t afford to be choosy. At least it didn’t have some ridiculous words plastered on the front. Wearing it reminded me that I owed her an apology. I vowed I’d call her first thing in the morning.