Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (9 page)

It was an intimate smile, one that communicated a dozen
messages—how happy he was to see me, how pleased he was about the coming baby that would seal us together forever, how eager he was for our wedding in a week . . . and the night ahead of us. It made me warm inside, but I realized it was the look Gus hated. He’d told me so, and now here it was.

“Ready?” I said to Michael.

“Let’s go.”

“Good night,” I said to Gus.

Michael opened the passenger door and helped me up into the seat with a boost on my butt. Gus didn’t say a word.

I was still struggling with the unfamiliar seat belt when Michael got behind the wheel and closed his door. He helped me with the buckle. I looked out the windshield and saw Gus watching us, his face blank. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and went back into the hotel.

When the buckle clicked, Michael said, “How’s Baby Girl?”

“Michael,” I said, “there’s blood on your shirt. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong with your powers of observation, that’s for sure. How do you like this truck? I’m test-driving it.”

He put the huge SUV in gear and slid into traffic with the ease of a tank barging into a raging river.

“Can we afford to buy anything, let alone this monster?”

“It’s not a monster. And it’s a business expense. For Gas N Grub. The finances are loosening up now, so, yeah, we can afford it.”

Michael had been fighting his way back to solvency after one of his employees embezzled considerable money while he was in jail. To avoid going completely bust, he’d been forced to borrow capital from his infamous brother, Little Frankie—the brother best known for faking being dead to avoid prosecution for various crimes. The money had saved us from certain bankruptcy, but I was still nervous about how Little Frankie wanted to be repaid.

Sitting in the passenger seat, I felt as if we were riding in the lead
fire truck of a parade. “What is this thing, exactly? Gus said it looks like a Secret Service vehicle.”

“Close. It’s an Escalade. The governor ordered it—with bulletproof glass and body armor that’s supposed to resist rockets.” Michael couldn’t disguise his delight. “Except the state decided it was too expensive, even for the governor, so I’m giving it a try. We can get it at a discount.”

What kind of discount he meant, I didn’t want to know. “Do we need bulletproof glass?”

“No, but it’s cool, right?” Michael maneuvered the Escalade around a corner. “And check out how many kid safety seats we can put in the back.”

I looked into the yawning rear cavern of the SUV. He had already strapped one baby car seat in place. I said, “We’re having a family, not transporting a platoon.”

“It’s really safe,” he insisted. “It’ll survive a crash test with a train.”

“Are you thinking of crashing into a train?”

He shot me a grin as he pulled through an alley shortcut to reach our route out of the city. “No, but you never know if some old lady in a Prius is going to back into you at the grocery store.”

I really had no opinion about cars. But I could tally up a list of strikes against this Escalade. Its size seemed ridiculous. The gas mileage was probably budget busting. And I’d never learn to drive something this big. Of course, I was still trying to overcome a tendency to faint at inappropriate moments, so I was barred from even applying for a Pennsylvania driver’s license, but I had hopes of getting behind the wheel before our children needed transportation to school.

Michael had been researching various vehicles for weeks, making notes about crash tests and repair records. I knew he was looking for a car that would be perfect for our coming family.

He was glancing up at the rearview mirror and finally said, “Is somebody tailing you?”

“What?”

“Nobody’d tail me unless they had a death wish, so it must be you. There’s an old guy in a blue Honda behind us, and he’s made every turn I have. Use the side mirror. Who is he?”

All I could see in the side mirror was the blur of cars in traffic, but I could guess who was behind us. “Gus told another reporter to find out where Lexie is. I think he was following me earlier. He’s a very unpleasant person. What should we do?”

“You want me to lose him? Or break his face?”

“Michael—”

“I’m kidding. We’ll lose him.”

“I don’t want to be in a car chase!”

“Me neither. Here. Lucky break.”

On the next block, two city police officers on bicycles were stopped in the street, talking to another officer who sat in a cruiser that idled at the curb. Without concern for the cars behind us, Michael pulled up beside the police. He used a button to roll down the passenger window, and he leaned across the console to speak past me to the officers.

“Sir,” he said to a cop who looked to be about twenty years old. “See that old guy in the Honda behind us?”

Only one officer looked at the Honda. The other two kept their eyes trained on Michael.

Sounding impossibly harmless, Michael went on, “I don’t know who he is, but he’s been bothering my wife tonight.”

One of the bike officers came over to the Escalade and used a flashlight to look us over. When the light landed on my large belly, he turned it off and stepped back as if startled by my size.

Michael said, “Do you think he’s a weird sex offender or something?”

The bike officer nodded and said, “We’ll check it out.”

Playing along, I smiled brightly at him. “Thank you.”

Michael rolled up the window and pulled back into traffic. Behind us, the police waved the blue Honda over to the curb. The cruiser’s flashing lights came on, and I knew Mr. Hostetler was in for an evening of unpleasant questions.

Cheerful again, Michael said, “See? Much easier than a car chase.”

I didn’t have the energy to discuss his extensive understanding of tailing and losing bad guys, so I said, “Okay, whose blood is on your shirt? You hid it from the police just now, but I can see it plain as day.”

He gave up trying to stall. “Promise you won’t go crazy.”

“Have I ever gone crazy?”

“It’s my blood. I didn’t have time to go home to change.” When I didn’t respond, he glanced across at me. “Are you counting to ten?”

“Twenty.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. “What happened?”

“No sugarcoating—I get it. Okay, I got shot.”

“S
hot!” I cried.

“Winged,” he hastily corrected. “On the arm.”

He pulled up his shirtsleeve to show a bandage wrapped tightly around his forearm, just below his elbow. “It’s not serious. And it’s got nothing to do with your Blackbird curse, so don’t start—”

“What happened? Where were you? Is this why we need a bulletproof car?”

“I’m okay, everything’s okay. I was talking to a guy at the diner in New Hope. Just when we finished, some kid came at us with a Glock. Where the hell does a kid get a Glock, I’d like to know? What’s this world coming to?”

“That’s what concerns you?” I cried. “Where the gun came from? Just last week you told me to stay away from that diner. Why am I supposed to stay away, but you can waltz in there anytime you please?”

“I never waltz,” Michael said. “Me waltzing would be like a
dancing grizzly bear. I’m fine. See? It’s hardly a scratch. I went to the hospital, got a couple of stitches.”

“What about the other guy? The man who was with you?”

“He’s fine, too. The windows of the diner are a mess, that’s all. The shooter needs to spend some time at the range before he goes taking potshots at—”

“Michael! Do you hear yourself?”

“Sorry. I know you’re upset. But it was a chance thing.”

“If you went to a hospital, the doctor had to report a gunshot wound. What does that do to your parole?”

“Nothing. The guy I was with is a friend of my parole officer.”

I counted to twenty again. “Michael, what’s going on? Gus said you’re mixed up with petty drug dealers.”

“One thing about Hardwicke is his consistency,” Michael said. “All right, I said I’d explain it all tonight, so here it is: I agreed you and I could live at Blackbird Farm because I figured it was as safe as neighborhoods get. I thought things would get even quieter if I terminated all the Abruzzo operations in the area. So I put a bunch of guys out of business—which means nobody’s going to give me a free beer at the family reunion—”

“No sugarcoating,” I warned.

“Anyway,” he continued, “as soon as my cousins cleared out of town, we’ve suddenly got stupid kids robbing stores and selling dope, and you know how I hate dope. It can mess up a perfectly good neighborhood in a couple of weeks. So not only do we have a crime wave getting started, but it features a bunch of dimwits who think guns are cooler than skateboards. They are a hell of a lot more dangerous to the general public than my cousins taking a few bets on football games.”

I thought about Libby’s door handle. “Are these the people Gus saw you with in photographs?”

“Probably. I’d still like to know who took those pictures. Police or press?”

“What does it matter?”

“Because if it’s the cops, they’re flashing pictures around to reporters for reasons I’d like to know about. And if it’s the press, the cops probably don’t know they’re doing it, which is equally dangerous. I don’t like not knowing which problem it is because it means I have to work plans for both. How did Hardwicke get to see them?”

“I don’t know, and you’re changing the subject again. Why did you get shot? You were talking to one of these criminals?”

“I was winged, not shot. And the guy I was talking to is a cop. Believe me, I’m not happy about this.” He held up his arm as Exhibit A. “It’s going to put me out of the basketball league for a week or two.”

In the last several months, Michael’s weekly pickup basketball game at the local Y had grown into some kind of league of middle-aged men whose skills weren’t as sharp as their competitive spirits. Michael was considered the ringer in a team comprised of local doctors, a history professor and a fiftysomething chiropractor. Without Michael, the team could sink so low in the rankings they might never recover. Meanwhile, he pretended to be amused by the competition, but I could see he was every bit as bent on winning as his older teammates were.

I was happy knowing he associated with a chiropractor. Bad kids who carried Glocks—another story.

“Why were you talking to a police officer?”

“Well,” he said, and stopped.

“Michael?”

He kept his gaze on the road ahead. “You have to keep quiet about this, Nora. Not tell Hardwicke, I mean. They—the local cops—asked for my opinion.”

“Your opinion?”

“My advice,” he corrected.

“The police need advice from you?” I couldn’t keep the astonishment from my voice.

“Why is that so surprising? I run legitimate businesses in town. The fly-fishing store, the garage, the tattoo shop—”

“Don’t try to sell me on the idea that you’re the newest member of the Rotary Club. Less than a year ago you pleaded guilty to racketeering. Now you’re best friends with the local police?”

“Not best friends. They still hate me, and it’s mutual. But there are things I know how to do that small-community law enforcement doesn’t.”

That didn’t sound good to me. “Like what?”

“Like how to discourage—uh, extraneous crime. And this undercover cop wanted to, y’know, get some tips. Except after today he isn’t so undercover anymore. It’s kinda funny, isn’t it? The cops coming to me for help?”

“What kind of help?”

“Just talk,” he assured me. “I told them I’d think about ways to intimidate the kids out of business. I don’t want a drug trade going on in our backyard any more than they do. There’s probably a way to work it.”

I fell silent.
To work it.
I knew the phrase and what it meant. He loved to plot. Working the angles, playing one side against the other, toying with dangerous people to make them do what he wanted—that was Michael’s special gift. He was the grand master of figuring out a crime.

“I’ll be careful.” He glanced across at me and measured the level of my distress. He reached for my hand. “Nobody knows better than me how close I came to screwing up my life, Nora. Now I’ve got everything I ever wanted and a lot of stuff I never knew could be so great. I’m not going to risk any of it.”

“But—”

“I saw the kid coming at us, and I hit the deck almost before the gun went off. The shooter was more scared than anybody else. The cop drew his weapon, and the kid literally wet his pants. And me, I was already on the floor, hiding under a table. The whole thing was like a comedy routine, honest.”

I realized I was gripping his hand tightly enough to hurt him. I tried to relax.

“You make all of these horrible things sound so ordinary.”

“It wasn’t ordinary,” he admitted. “But it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. My arm is fine. I’ll be holding our daughters in a few weeks.”

I let him squeeze me into calm.

Finally, I noticed we weren’t on our way home. The headlights were lighting a highway I didn’t recognize. I looked around to get my bearings.

“Where are we going?”

Michael let me go and hit the gas again. “We’ve got an errand to run. Emma called me. You better try phoning her now. Maybe she can explain better than I can.”

I remembered the missed call I’d had from Emma. My younger sister, the most wayward of the Blackbird sisters, had spent the last few weeks on the edges of the show-jumping circuit, trying to restart her career as a rider of fine horses owned by very finicky owners. When I’d last heard from her, she was in Florida, working a short-term stint at a respected barn.

To Michael, I said, “Is she still in Florida? Is she in trouble? Or drinking again?”

“I don’t think so.”

I hit her number and listened to her phone ring.

All three of the Blackbird sisters had endured tragedy in our lives. Not long after our parents ran off with our trust funds and
started their grand tour of South American dance competitions, the three of us had lost our husbands. Mine was executed by his drug dealer, ending a long, horrifying nightmare of drug addiction and emotional abuse. Libby’s was shot trying to escape a murder charge. And Emma’s husband, Jake, an NFL quarterback who shared her love of fast living and hard parties, had died in a car accident, the cause of which still hadn’t been determined.

After our losses, Libby and I had gradually found ways to kick-start our lives again, but Emma had struggled. While pretending she was strong, she still went on alcoholic binges and dated all the wrong kinds of men. Her reckless behavior had culminated in a love child last year, and we still weren’t sure she had done the right thing for herself by surrendering the baby to his father. Worse yet, she had committed arson, and I thought her run to Florida was partly to avoid being questioned about the fire.

She didn’t answer her phone. I dialed again and listened to it ring. Where was she?

Finally Michael said, “Here we are.”

He pulled the big Escalade through a pair of stone gates and up the curving driveway of a Main Line mansion with a fountain spurting out front. Dramatic lighting illuminated the Palladian windows and an impressive front door. The expansive lawn and elaborate shrubbery were surely maintained by a landscaping service. The grass was as carefully trimmed as a golf course.

“Oh, dear,” I said when I realized where we were.

We might have had time to plan what to do next, except the front door swung open and light from the foyer chandelier spilled outside.

Hart Jones, a high-stakes stockbroker and the lover who had impregnated my wild little sister in an elevator, came out and stood on the front porch as Michael and I climbed out of the SUV.

Hart’s well-tended face was tense. “Hello, Nora. I’m sorry to drag you out so late.”

“Hi, Hart,” I said, coming around the front of the Escalade. “Is everything okay?”

His eyes widened when he saw me in the glare of the headlights. “Wow. You’re—I thought your due date was a few months away.”

“Seven weeks,” I said, managing a smile. “As you can guess, I can hardly wait.”

“You look wonderful. It suits you.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Hello, Abruzzo.”

Michael shook Hart’s hand. He kept his voice neutral. “Hello, Jones.”

Hart seemed too embarrassed to meet Michael’s eye, so he turned back to me. “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry about this. I’m at my wit’s end tonight.”

From the moment we’d arrived we could hear the baby screaming inside the house. The sound sent my blood pressure soaring, and it made Michael go tense with suppressed anger.

Before he could act on that, I said to Hart, “Can we help somehow?”

He glanced over his shoulder into the house but spoke to me. “It’s Penny. Her ankle acted up again, and she’s having trouble with the pain medication. It’s so hard to quit. The pills give her a lot of relief, but—we don’t function as a family very well when she’s taking so much. I think I’ve got her talked into going back to rehab. She needs help.”

Listening to him, I heard all the same words I’d used when I had uselessly tried to justify the drug behavior of my husband Todd. Making excuses. Placating. Shouldering part of the blame. Dodging, softening, hoping everything would turn out all right without anyone being forced to make hard choices.

Hart said, “She might go in the morning, she says. Or the next day. But Noah—he won’t sleep. He cries and cries, and it drives Penny crazy. He’s making everything worse for her. I admit I’m not very good with him, either. . . .”

I knew Hart’s preferred strategy when parenting problems arose. He went to his office to work. Or to hide.

Another sharp wail rose from inside the house, and we could hear Penny’s infuriated voice snap in response.

Michael moved to cut past Hart, but I held him back. If we played it wrong, we could escalate a difficult situation.

Gently, I said, “What can we do to help, Hart?”

“Can you take him—Noah? For the weekend, just long enough for me to drive Penny to the facility.” Thinking on his feet, he changed his mind. “Or maybe for the week? While she gets settled? That way I could— There’s an important deal on my desk. If I could get it squared away—”

Michael started to say something, and I knew what words were in his mouth. Hart and Penny couldn’t go on treating Noah like a football, passing him off to us when he became inconvenient. Several times during the past few months, we had taken Noah off their hands, against our better judgment. Each time his visits seemed to stretch longer and longer, and when it came time to give him back, the pain was more difficult to bear.

Maybe we were enabling, I thought. Maybe we should have pushed Hart and Penny to solve their own problems. But we couldn’t do it, not when Noah was the one who suffered. It was Noah who mattered most to us.

So I said quickly, “Of course we’ll take him. We’re happy to do it.”

Hart said, “You’ve got other things on your mind, I’m sure.” He indicated my pregnant belly. “But if you have a few days to spare, it would mean a lot.”

“Of course,” I said again.

From the grand foyer, the sound of Noah’s crying came closer, and Penny appeared. She was very thin, and her hair was scrunched into an unflattering ponytail. Her face, bare of makeup, looked tight and angry. Gone was her patrician beauty. Her skin looked blotchy. Dark circles smudged the flesh beneath her hard eyes. Her jaw tightened when she saw us standing on her doorstep.

In her arms, Noah writhed and shrieked. He tried to throw himself away from his adoptive mother, but she gripped him even harder. Her hands were white with tension. The baby’s shirt was sopping wet with tears and drool.

“Hey,” Michael said.

He wasn’t speaking to Penny.

Noah’s little head twisted around at the sound of Michael’s voice. He let out another scream, but the emotion behind it was different. With hot tears streaming down his chubby cheeks, he flung his arms imploringly in Michael’s direction.

Something ugly twisted in Penny’s face. Rapidly, she paced forward and almost threw the baby at Michael.

Who easily scooped him up. The little boy instantly molded himself against Michael’s chest, and his crying changed to an exhausted moan.

“Take him,” Penny snapped. “Get him out of my sight. He’s not my son. He hates me. I never want to see him again!”

She spun around and ran back into the house. We saw her flee up the curved staircase and disappear. On the second floor, a door slammed.