Firefly (9 page)

Winnie laughed again.

"You'd better not call old Horace's concoctions 'medication' in Dr. Morgan's presence!  Come on.  You and me'll go wake him up and see what he has to say.  Don't worry," she said, turning toward the door and taking Julie's arm in a firm grasp.  "He won't bite, though he barks a lot."

Del Morgan's house was set back from the street down a short lane, just past the Olympia House Hotel and almost directly across Main Street from the late Dr. Opper's house and office. Unlike nearly all the other buildings in Plato, Morgan's house was built of adobe, not timber, and the dull brown color blended well with the dusty surroundings.  Flourishing vines shaded the west-facing porch; someone obviously watered and tended the plants carefully, for there were no others like them in Plato.  Even Julie's rows of petunias seemed pathetic in comparison, and she wondered, remembering the rosebush in the cemetery, if Morgan himself did all the watering and weeding.

The house seemed larger than its neighbors, too, but Julie noticed as she and Winnie walked up to it that it had only a partial second floor, with stairs leading up the outside to a roof-top patio.

"Mr. Morgan lives here?" Julie asked.  This was hardly the sort of place she had expected the derelict physician to inhabit.

"Used to belong to an old Mexican, Don Ricardo de Santañero.  When Dr. Morgan came in '71 or '72, Don Ricardo was his first patient.  He musta done something for the old guy, because when Don Ricardo died about a year later, he left everything to Dr. Morgan and Amy.  Had a regular will, all legal and proper, signed by lawyers and witnesses and everything."

The two women, one tall and slim and hesitant, the other short and round and bold, mounted the single step to the porch and faced a handsomely carved door with a rounded top, quite unlike anything Julie had ever seen before.  Winnie didn't knock; she pounded with her fists, both of them.  When no one answered, she simply turned the latch and walked in.

"Is that you, Winnie?"

Julie didn't enter the house, but Winnie had thrown the door open wide.  Peering in cautiously, Julie saw a dim foyer from which a railed staircase rose to a small balcony.  Del Morgan leaned over the banister, his body a shadow against a whitewashed wall.

"Yes, it's me," Winnie cheerfully replied.  "I brought Miss Hollstrom with me.  She was lookin' for you and I told her you were here.  She didn't want to come by herself, so I came with her."

"What the hell do you want now?" Morgan bellowed.  "Your daddy stub his toe or something?"

No man had ever made her feel so childish.  Her father filled her with a sense of guilt and inadequacy, but this man made her want to cry and run away.  Or scream.  Or hit something, preferably some part of his anatomy.  There he was, no doubt leering down at her from that balcony, ready to burst into laughter when she told him she'd come for his assistance in locating a headache powder.

"Well, what did you want me for?" he yelled again.

"My mother has a headache." She knew he probably hadn't heard her, for she'd kept her voice low, but the simple absurdity of the situation sent blood rushing to her cheeks.

"What?  Do you expect me to hear your little mousy squeaks all the way up here?"

Julie turned to Winnie in panic.

"Oh, Miss Upshaw, I'm so sorry I troubled you, but I really think I've made a mistake," she apologized in a voice as quiet as before. "I shouldn't have made you bother him, and I hope he won't--"

She was cut off when his booted footsteps pounded slowly down the stairs.

"Go on home, Winnie," he ordered quietly.  "I'll holler if I need you."

Still chuckling to herself, Winnie Upshaw skipped past Julie.  Julie wanted to follow her, but there was something so terrifying in the way Morgan looked at her that now she couldn't move in the opposite direction either.

He filled the doorway, one hand reaching up to the top of the rounded frame while he crossed one foot over the other so the toe of his boot rested right in the corner.  Sometime since Monday afternoon he had gotten a shave, but already the black stubble shaded his cheeks and chin and jaw again.

"Are you going to tell me what you came here and woke me up out of a sound sleep for?  It isn't often I actually sleep, and I really hate to be disturbed unless it's for a damned good reason.  You do have one, don't you?"

If he had been angry, Julie could have found the courage to run away from him, or even to tell him the truth.  But to have him stare at her, with his green eyes like river ice in the middle of winter, unnerved her.

"I told you before that my mother's health is not good.  She was under Dr. Opper's care and he had given her a headache remedy.  She has taken the last of it and wondered if you could help me go through his effects and possibly locate some more of this...compound."

"If I did, I'd probably throw it in Cold Creek here and hope it didn't kill the fish."

She didn't laugh.  He wished she would.  She had a nice mouth, not too wide, and the lips were a little thin, but he thought she might actually be pretty if she smiled.  And there went the glasses, sliding down her nose again.  She didn't seem to notice and just went on staring at him over the tops.

"Please, Dr. Morgan, I do not--"

"Don't call me that, Miss Hollstrom.  I let Winnie get away with it, but no one else."

A small spark of fire blazed in his eyes, but the ice quickly doused it and cold returned.

"I'm sorry.  But you don't understand my position.  My mother is a very sick woman.  If I can't find some way to relieve her suffering...."

She could not have put it into words, much less uttered those words to him.

He looked down at himself, at the faded denims, the dilapidated boots, the shirt that needed laundering and patching and two buttons replaced.  He had shaved yesterday, fully intending to go to Horace's funeral, but in the end he had chickened out and sat home.  Only when it was too late to go into the crowded church did he venture to the graveyard and there he had witnessed the desecration of the roses.  He hadn't been so filled with fury in almost six years.

"I'm sorry, Miss Hollstrom, but I can't help you.  You saw what happened the other day; that's what I've become, and I can't go back to what I was before.  Eventually there'll be another doctor in Plato, and your mother can get her headache medicine from him.  Now, go on home and brew her a nice cup of tea or some cold lemonade and for God's sake, leave me alone."

The ache in that gentle plea and the knowledge of what caused that ache helped Julie stand her ground.  She would have gone if he had raised his voice or if he had simply turned around and slammed the door, but she had known that same desperate pain herself, and for an even longer time.

"If you won't help my mother, would you at least keep your promise to Willy and get him his ice cream?"

The knot in his chest tightened.  He couldn't count the empty promises he had made and broken over the years and never given them a thought afterwards, but no one had ever called him to task for them, either.  He probably would have ignored them anyway, but somehow or other he just couldn't bring himself to ignore Julie Hollstrom.

"Not today, Miss Hollstrom.  I don't think I'd be very good company today.  How 'bout we meet tomorrow afternoon at McCrory's and have regular sundaes, all right?"

"It…it would be better if you just came to…to our house and took Willy," she stammered, turning her gaze downward again.  She would make sure Katharine was in attendance, so there was no quarrel with her father.

Morgan was about to tell her that he would be happy to, though he couldn't figure out why he would want to give her that kind of answer.  Before the first word was out of his mouth, however, a man on horseback turned off the main street and thundered recklessly down the narrow lane.  In the dust and with the sun in his unshaded eyes, Morgan couldn't identify the rider, but the man's furious ride boded ill news.

Julie coughed on the dust but still heard the stranger's impassioned plea.

"Del Morgan?  You probably don't know me; I'm Steve Baxter.  Bought the old Chernicky place north of here.  My wife's havin' a baby and Doc Opper's been keepin' an eye on her, so I come to town to tell him it's time, and they tell me he dropped dead yesterday."

"I can't help you, Baxter," Morgan croaked in a voice barely audible.  Under the bluish shadow of beard his face was white, and his eyes glazed, then glittered, and he blinked as though to hold back tears.

"You can't mean it?" Julie whispered to him.

He looked at her, at those eyes enormous with shock, at those lips he had thought too thin now parted in disbelief. She couldn't know what went through his mind now.  If she had, she wouldn't ask this of him.  But she didn't know, and she was asking.

"Is your wife alone?" he asked Baxter, the voice louder now but not any steadier.

"Grace Fulton's with her."

"Grace will take care of her.  She's got six kids of her own and delivered a helluva lot more, so she knows what to do." Oh, God, but he needed a drink now, and there wasn't a drop in the house.  Just as there hadn't been any last night when he'd been so furious about the roses and he didn't even have the money for a bottle at the Castle.

Why the hell did Opper have to die like that?

Morgan ran his fingers through his hair and tried to think.  Baxter wasn't the type of man to show fear, but he was plainly terrified.  Morgan couldn't send him away alone.

"Okay, Mr. Baxter, I want you to go back home.  I'll get my things together and ride out as soon as I can.  I know the place.  You go home and stay with your wife."

"I got your word you'll be there?" Baxter asked doubtfully.

"My word."

The man tipped his hat and wheeled the horse back down the lane, raising another massive cloud of dust.

Chapter Six

"Well, don't just stand there," Morgan told Julie.  "Go get Winnie and find out where the hell she hid my instruments. And tell Bert, that's her nephew, to go down to the livery and saddle a couple of horses, Sam for me and probably Woody'll do for you.  You ride much?"

She collected all her scattered thoughts and replaced her sliding spectacles.  Squaring her shoulders, she faced him with firm determination.

"Mr. Morgan, I will ask Miss Upshaw where she has hidden your instruments, whether in hell or anywhere else, and I will ask her nephew to hire a horse for you, but you certainly don't expect me to come with you!"

"Why not?" The normal color came back to his face, though his eyes still sparkled a bit too brightly.  He resumed that lazy stance in the doorway.  "You said yesterday you were, if I may quote you, prepared to see to my rehabilitation. Apparently you weren't very prepared at all or else you wish to do it from a polite and safe distance."

"I don't see how my accompanying you on an errand of mercy can…"

Though he didn't change his position, didn't come any closer to her, he lowered his voice almost to a whisper that seemed to pull her toward him against her will.

"Look, Julie, are you gonna help me or not?  Peg Baxter might very well die if you stand here arguing.  And you'd better tell your mother her headache is going to be around for a while.  We may not get back until sometime tomorrow."