No Way to Kill a Lady (10 page)

“Oh, God.” My imagination was suddenly jammed with awful possibilities, and the room didn't have enough oxygen. “It's something terrible, isn't it?”

“There's this girl,” Michael said. “She wrote me a letter a week ago, and when I got out today, she decided she wanted to see me. I'm still getting used to the whole idea, but—­”

“Slow down,” I said. “What are you talking about? A woman contacted you while you were in jail? You mean, a prison correspondence thing?”

“I—­”

“Now there's a crazy person who's decided to be in love with you?”

“No, no, no. She's completely normal.”

“Who is she?” I asked, panic rising. “A friend? An old lover?”

“She's my daughter,” Michael said.

For a second, I couldn't comprehend. My whole brain froze while I absorbed the bombshell. I sat down hard on the sofa.

Michael stayed on his feet before me, but he ran one hand over his hair in bewilderment. “I didn't know she existed until last week. Yeah, that sounds lame and stupid, but she's the daughter of a girl I knew back in, like, high school. We went out a few times before I went to jail for stealing motorcycles. Then I got locked up, and I just—­hell, I forgot about her. I never thought about what might have happened to her or if—­”

“You have a daughter,” I said.

“I know, it's crazy, right?” He looked as dazed as I felt.

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen. Get this. She's in the army.”

“The army?” I knew I was sounding stupid, but the core of the matter was hard to accept.

“Yeah, serving her country, be all you can be, you know?” Michael began to pace aimlessly. “Her mom died a month ago, so she's home on leave for a while. Back from Afghanistan. Can you believe it?”

“Afghanistan.”

“She drives convoy trucks. While she was home, she decided to figure out what happened to me. So she tracked me down. We talked on the phone earlier today, then again just now. She's a little emotional. Hell, I guess I am, too.”

“Her mother is dead? Your old girlfriend?”

“She wasn't a girlfriend. Just somebody I knew.”

“You must have cared about her.”

“I was sixteen. What do sixteen-­year-­olds care about?”

“You slept with her!”

“We had sex in a car a couple of times, Nora. I hardly remember her.” He stopped pacing and squinted into the murky distance of memory. “I think she used to wear an old fur coat to school. Drove the nuns crazy. Or maybe that was somebody else.”

“Michael,” I said, gathering my wits at last, “whatever you say to this girl on the phone, do not say her mother was meaningless to you.”

“Right,” he said. “Good thinking. Anything else?”

“Give me a minute,” I said. “I'm trying to get my brain around the idea of you having a daughter.”

“That makes two of us,” he said, and we both contemplated for a moment.

“The other thing is,” he went on, his voice heavy, “she's just figuring out who I am.”

“You mean—­?”

“Yeah. Not just some guy her mother knew.”

“You're Big Frankie's son,” I said.

Locating her father wasn't the big headline, I realized. Michael's daughter had also discovered her daddy belonged to a family of notorious mobsters. I could only imagine her reaction. A girl's fantasy probably ran to waking up and finding herself with a doting handsome prince for a dad or maybe a dashing tycoon who could grant her every wish. Instead of a dream come true, she'd found a crime family with a sordid history. No wonder Michael was doubly shaken.

His phone rang, and I jumped.

He pulled me to my feet. “It's probably her again. She hung up on me a few minutes ago,” he said. “I better talk to her. Run some hot water into that bathtub of yours. I'll be up in a few minutes.”

But he didn't come. I stripped off my black lace suit and hung it carefully in the closet. I took my bath and tried to read in the tub. But Michael didn't come upstairs. Alone in bed, I stared at the ceiling for a long time, thinking about Michael's idea of family and how a teenage daughter might fit into the picture.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
didn't know when he came upstairs, but I was aware that Michael tossed and turned most of the night—­on his side of the bed. He finally fell deeply asleep about the time I woke for the day. To the sound of early-­morning rain pattering against my leaky roof, I slipped out of bed and pulled on jeans and a warm sweater. As I dressed quietly, I tried not to look at the electronic monitor around Michael's ankle.

But I couldn't help watching him sleep for a moment. In the days before he went to jail, I had felt him withdrawing. He pulled everything inside himself—­not just his emotions, but his opinions, his sense of humor, as many outward signs of his personality as he could tamp down. I could only guess what he'd been through while imprisoned—­the people he associated with, the lack of privacy and free will.

Now he was home . . . and he'd been hit with a whammy. A daughter.

What was he feeling? The smashed cell phone, the man he'd punched in my kitchen—­surely these were signs that there was much more turmoil going on in his head than he wanted me to know.

How was I to help him through this?

I slipped out of the bedroom and carefully closed the door behind me. I leaned my head against the door and let myself have a maudlin moment of self-­pity. I'd always hoped Michael and I could start a family together. As a couple, we could have experienced all the miraculous steps along the way. But now that he already had a child with someone else—­no matter who or how long ago—­had another door been shut for me?

Downstairs, I found Emma in the same place as the night before—­eating cereal in the kitchen. She was watching
Sesame Street
with the sound off. Judging by the condition of her boots, I guessed she'd already been out in the barn feeding ponies. Toby lay attentively at her feet.

“Whoa,” she said, taking a look at my face. “Why aren't you upstairs taking advantage of the just-­released prisoner?”

“Let's go to the grocery store,” I snapped. “I need chocolate.”

She heard my tone and dumped her bowl in the sink. “I gotta pee first.”

As we blasted past Checkpoint Charlie at the end of the driveway, two of Michael's minions tipped their invisible hats. The other one spat on the gravel. Across the road sat a state trooper in an unmarked car. Keeping an eye out for escaping prisoners, I supposed. Nobody was going to get in or out of Blackbird Farm without being noticed.

In Emma's ancient pickup truck, speeding along the road to New Hope, I ate an apple for breakfast. Toby sat between us, panting happily, while I took out my frustration on the fruit.

Emma glanced uneasily at me a couple of times and finally started talking. “I've got nine kids coming for pony class on Saturday. It's a four-­week introductory class for beginners.”

“Um.”

“The kids will be around for a couple of hours. I'll teach 'em how to saddle and mount and maybe trot around the paddock a few times. Nothing too strenuous. Mostly, I thought it would be a good way to get my name spread around among the parents, you know? So I can build up to more classes with more students in the spring.”

“That's nice.” I slumped in my seat, my mind far away.

“I mean, it could be a good living for me. Some of the other barns have quit teaching preteens because the kids are a pain in the butt, but that's where the real money is. So I thought I'd give it a shot. That is, if you don't mind me using the farm.”

“Right,” I said.

“And I talked to Shirley van Vincent, like you asked. She said Madeleine helped bring Pippi here from Moscow back in the day when that kinda stuff didn't happen much. I got to thinking, maybe Madeleine did the same thing for Shirley, too—­before Shirley married up. I mean, Shirley's German accent? She's not the Main Line heiress you'd expect van Vincent would want on his arm, right? Shirley's a dirt-­under-­her-­fingernails girl, if you ask me. So how'd she end up in this neck of the woods? It's a little puzzling.”

“Okay.”

“You know she's hosting the big coach-­and-­driving show next week. You've been invited to the opening shindig, right? It's going to be a big deal. Competitors from all over the world. Maybe there will be somebody we can ask.”

“Uh-­huh.”

“Have you heard one word I've said?” Emma finally exploded. “What the hell's going on? You should be bouncing off the walls with joy to have the Love Machine home again, but you're acting like—­like—­I don't know what, but it's weird. What's happening?”

“A lot of stuff.” I threw my apple core out the window. I told her about Michael's newfound daughter. To her credit, Emma didn't drive into a tree when she heard the news.

“Holy shit! I knew something big was going down. I assumed it was a big disturbance in the Abruzzo force. Does the kid know what kind of family she just walked into?”

“I think she figured it out fast. Thing is, Michael didn't come up to bed until I was asleep.”

Emma nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, it would take something this big to put his light saber on the fritz. Too bad you missed out on the great first-­night sex.”

“It certainly wasn't the night I expected to spend with him.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Don't get me wrong. Sure, there's nothing I want more than making love for hours after he's been gone so long. But I'm truly concerned about Michael. About his state of mind. He was a little off when he first got home, but now this complication has made things worse. And he's not talking. At least, not to me. Did he say anything to you last night?”

“Sorry. I was busy.”

I shot her a look. “Oh, right. With your young gentleman caller. Should we be making wedding plans?”

“Nope.” Emma rolled down her window as if she suddenly needed some air. Her short hair blew around her head in a
whoosh
. “Duncan's a nice kid. But I don't want to be tying his shoes and opening his juice boxes all my life, you know?”

I almost brought up Hart Jones at that moment. The father of Emma's baby had been a verboten subject these last few weeks.

But Emma said, “Forget about me. I'm feeling sorry for Mick.”

“Me, too,” I admitted, my spirits sinking lower. “I shouldn't expect him to be his normal self right away. He needs time to decompress, I guess.”

“Yeah, the surprise daughter must be a kick in the gut. And jail can't be a picnic, even for him. He looks like he spent the whole time lifting weights. I mean—­hubba hubba. But do you think he had to fight his way through a bunch of crazy convicts to be the top dog? Or is that haircut the worst of his punishment?”

“I don't know,” I said. I searched for the right word to describe how Michael had acted last night, and I came up with one that surprised me. He had been . . . troubled. Which was so far out of character he might as well have been orbiting Mars.

“Give him some time to get over the prison stay,” Emma said. “He's bound to be a little spooked for a while. He'll snap out of it.”

I doubted he was going to snap out of sudden fatherhood, however. All at once, Michael had a lot of issues to handle.

We arrived at the New Hope Super Fresh market. Emma whipped her pickup into a parking space, and we left Toby in the truck with the windows rolled down a few inches.

Just inside the store entrance, there was a line of people waiting to buy lottery tickets, so we skirted around them through the newsstand department. I saw a stack of newspapers with Aunt Madeleine's photo on the front page. I grabbed a copy. The photo was forty years old and showed her at her most glamorous. An obituary—­longer than the previously published terse announcement of her death—­took up a long column.

“Slow news day.” Emma peered over my shoulder.

Below Madeleine's picture was another photo—­this one of Quintain's battlements looking pitiful. The accompanying article included a braying headline:
BODY IN THE BELFRY!

“There's no belfry in that house,” Emma said with scorn. “Don't newspapers have copy editors anymore?”

The caption under the photo said: “House of ill repute.”

A photo of Michael and me—­the one taken from the helicopter—­appeared under the fold. The picture made it look as if he was abducting me. I tossed the newspaper into my shopping cart. We could read the articles at home.

Emma headed for the bathroom, and I set off rolling the cart down the first aisle to choose an assortment of healthy fruits and vegetables, then proceeded to the fish counter. Emma caught up with me as we passed the bakery, where I noticed a gawky young man loading a white box with doughnuts. He caught sight of Emma, and his head nearly swiveled off his shoulders as he watched her stride past. Another young admirer, I supposed.

After deciding to pass on fish, I headed for the olive oil section and spent several minutes choosing the varieties Michael preferred. He enjoyed cooking, so I made another circuit around the store to buy all his favorite ingredients. Now that he was home again, we'd have home-­cooked meals instead of all the salads and prepared dinners I tended to consume if left to my own choices. Win-­win for everyone.

I managed to steer Emma away from the sugared-­cereal aisle, but we lingered in the chocolate department to make our selections with care. Eventually we headed for the checkout. There, I scanned our purchases and prayed my bank account could withstand such a hit.

The young man from the bakery had been waiting for us beside the self-­checkout line. He had a freckled face and adorably prominent ears. In one hand he balanced the box of doughnuts. In the other, he held a single red rose, clearly purchased from the refrigerated cooler by the registers. He was even younger than Emma's visitor last night. His sweatshirt featured a local community college.

“Emma?” he said hesitantly.

My sister paused in the act of piling broccoli on the conveyor belt and finally noticed him. “Oh. Brian. How you doing?”

He blushed to the tips of his very large ears. “Emma, you're—­I mean, I didn't know you were—­I— You look beautiful.”

“Yeah, well, I've been thinner,” she cracked.

“No, I mean it. There's nothing more beautiful than a woman in your condition.”

“Thanks, kid, but there are days when I'd be a hell of a lot happier if I could see my feet.”

“I want you to know that I'll make things right. I'll marry you.” He extended the rose to her. “We can be a family.”

Emma eyed the rose as if it might have poisoned thorns. “That's a real nice offer, Brian. I appreciate it. But I can handle this on my own.”

“I—­I want to do the right thing,” he insisted. “I'll give you anything you want—­a home for you and—­and our child. Everything.”

Emma ignored the rose. Instead, she lifted the lid on the bakery box and picked out a doughnut with orange sprinkles. “This'll do just fine, Brian.”

“But—­”

“It's not your kid.” She chomped into the doughnut. “But thanks just the same.”

Disappointed, Brian took his rose and his doughnuts and disappeared.

“That was a very sweet offer,” I said.

“Sure,” agreed my little sister. “I never turn down a doughnut.”

“Em—­”

“Don't start,” she said, her voice suddenly shaky.

She grabbed the bags and pushed past me, striding out to the truck so quickly I couldn't see her face. I followed, biting my tongue. She also needed time, I knew.

But for a woman in Emma's situation, time was running short.

In the front seat of the truck, Toby was barking and dashing from one window to the other. Normally, he was content to wait for us, but today he was frantic.

“Take it easy,” Emma said to the dog through the glass, but he didn't heed her.

As we loaded the bags into the truck's bed, a white Crown Victoria suddenly pulled into an adjacent space. A roly-­poly man with a balding head got out of the vehicle.

He marched over and said, “Nora Blackbird?”

I was surprised, but polite. “Yes?”

He stood several inches shorter than me. A cute fringe of white hair curled around the equator of his round head, but a not-­so-­cute bristle rambled down the back of his wrinkled neck. I guessed his age at eighty-­plus. He flashed a badge at me, then dropped it quickly back into his pocket. “You're under arrest.”

The next thing I knew, he snapped a handcuff down on my wrist and pushed me toward his car. Toby's barking went up an octave, and the dog threw himself against the passenger window.

“Hey!” Emma turned, her arms still full of grocery bags. “What the hell are you doing, Grandpa?”

“Hold on a second,” I objected.

“Get in the car,” he commanded, holding both my hands behind my back and fastening the handcuffs tight.

For as small as he was, he had all the right moves. I couldn't wriggle out of his control. I was also a little afraid to fight too hard. He was so old I feared I might hurt him.

In a heartbeat, he'd bent my head and shoved me into the backseat of his car. I sprawled across the seat, unable to catch my balance.

“Just a damn minute!” Emma came after us. “What the hell's going on?”

The old man slammed the door. I struggled to sit up, hearing the two of them yell at each other outside the car. In another moment, though, he got behind the wheel, started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot so fast I tumbled back against the seat. I caught a glimpse of my sister dashing around to the driver's side of her truck. She scrambled behind the wheel and tried to start her engine. But I could hear it grinding. Her truck wouldn't start. Then I lost sight of her.

My arresting officer spun his car onto the street and accelerated fast, putting a city block between us and the grocery store before I could manage to sit up. I looked around and suddenly wondered if maybe he wasn't a police officer at all. His car had an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—­Yankee Candle, coconut bay fragrance. His keys were clipped to a key chain that featured a smiley shamrock over the Notre Dame logo.