No Way to Kill a Lady (9 page)

I realized I still had my press credentials around my neck. “Do you need a cab?” I assumed she hadn't seen the line of vehicles parked alongside the hotel rather than in plain sight. I turned to point. “They're over—­”

“No,” she said. “It's my sister.” She handed me a printed card with a woman's face on it. Half the text appeared to be in Arabic, the other half in English. Hastily, she said, “My sister is in Syria. Her husband won't let her come back to the United States to see our mother, who is ill. My sister was born here. So was I. But our parents encouraged us to marry men in our homeland. The Syrian government, though, won't help her come home. Can you help us?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “This isn't something I know anything about.”

The disappointment on her face was painful to see.

“Look,” I said, “maybe this isn't the right place for you to be tonight. The police are surely checking everyone for blocks, and if—­”

“Yes, they have chased me away already. They threatened to arrest me. But I must try, you see. My sister—­”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I have sisters, too.”

Hope bloomed on her round features. “Then you understand what I must do! That I must make a great effort.”

I felt a tug in my heart. “I wish I could help. But I have no idea what I could possibly accomplish.”

“The power of the press,” she said. “Maybe you could write something for us?”

“I'm not that kind of reporter.” I was beginning to feel helpless. “I'm just the social page. But here. Take my card—­”

From behind me, a male voice gave a shout, and the two of us turned to see a uniformed police officer marching toward us. He waved at the young woman and used an authoritative but almost fatherly voice. “Hey, didn't I say you should get out of here, young lady? Run along now. Stop making trouble and go home!”

I stood my ground. “I don't think she's making trouble.”

He wasn't belligerent, and he pulled an exasperated face, not an angry one. “Don't you start with me, too, honey. We've got our hands full here tonight. Just go home, will you? Scat!”

“It's all right,” my new friend said quietly. “Go. I don't want to get anyone else into a predicament.”

“Here,” I said, pressing my card into her hand. “Let's stay in touch.”

She accepted it eagerly.

The cop chivvied me down the block, and I reluctantly obeyed. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw her walking in the opposite direction. As I tucked the young woman's printed card into my bag and went looking for Reed, I acknowledged that there were women who had worse problems than inheriting big houses from their eccentric relatives.

I spotted Reed, and before he could get out from behind the driver's seat, I opened the rear door of the SUV myself. I frowned at the backseat. It might as well have been Mount Kilimanjaro—­insurmountable in my snug lace pants suit.

Reed abandoned the book he'd been reading and clambered out of the vehicle. He brought the milking stool to the rear passenger door. With a flourish, he plunked it onto the pavement. “There. Step up.”

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered, accepting his helping hand. “You couldn't have found another town car? What's the use of a vehicle if it takes a stepladder to get inside?”

“It's no ladder, it's just one little step.”

I put my foot on the wobbly wooden stool and endeavored to get myself up onto the seat. But suddenly we heard the rip of fabric. I felt a cool breeze and blushed at the thought of what Reed must have seen as I struggled the rest of the way onto the slippery leather seat.

“Dammit, Reed! This suit is worth a fortune!” I felt like wailing at the damage done to such a nice outfit.

“You just ate too much dinner,” he said, slamming the door on my further outrage.

By the time he got behind the wheel, I had gathered my dignity. “Drive around the block, will you, please? There's someone I'd like to find.”

He obeyed, and we trolled several blocks without any luck. By streetlight, I checked the card to look for her name and found it. Zareen Aboudi. An e-­mail address was listed below her name. At least I had a way of reaching her.

“Where to?” Reed asked when we gave up the search.

Lately, I'd been finishing off my work nights by stopping at a bar for drinks with friends—­anything to avoid going back to my house alone. But tonight I fastened my seat belt and decided to forget about my ripped seam. I could have it repaired by a seamstress, after all. I had something good waiting for me back at Blackbird Farm.

With my spirits rising, I said, “Home, please.”

I turned on my laptop in the backseat and wrote up a quick summary of my stop at Lynnette's lingerie store and the art gallery. The dinner took a longer time to write about, and I took care to do a good job. I could e-­mail my column from home.

When we arrived at the farm, Reed lowered his window and spoke to the men who were still camped out at the entrance to my driveway. I could smell their coffee, but they didn't lean into the vehicle to speak to me. Reed rolled up his window and drove to the house.

At the end of the driveway by the barn, I tucked my laptop into my bag and shouldered it, then pulled the bottle of wine out from under the backseat and slid to the ground as if on a sliding board. I wrapped my pashmina around my waist to hide the damage to my pants and bade Reed good night.

The ponies had gone off to sleep in the barn, I noticed, but the pig remained vigilant at the fence.

“Go to bed, Ralphie,” I told him.

He gave a forlorn grunt and stayed where he was, looking lonesome.

Letting myself in the back door, I found Emma eating a bowl of cereal in the kitchen while a gawky, very young man I didn't know knelt on the floor in front of her. I stopped short at the sight of him. I was used to discovering Emma alone with attractive men, but this one had a thicket of brown hair and puppy eyes that made him look as if he was barely out of school.

Emma waved to me with her spoon. “Hey, Sis. How was your night?”

I stared at the young man, who blinked placidly back at me, unimpressed by my Pakradooni suit. I said, “Fine, thanks. What's going on?”

My little sister took another mouthful of cereal and spoke around it. “Mick's working in the library. Some of his guys brought a computer and a bunch of stuff, so he's got a regular office going on in there. He looks like a captain of industry, sitting in Granddad's chair.”

“That's not what I mean. Who's this?”

“Oh. This is Duncan O'Keefe. He works at Thomasina Silk's barn. You know—­she specializes in Hanover jumpers, but she's got a pair of ponies ready for the international show at the van Vincent place next week. I think she's going to do really well.”

Duncan O'Keefe didn't look like a Hanover jumper to me. I shook his hand. “I'm Emma's sister Nora. How do you do?”

“Hello,” he said without getting up.

“Wouldn't you be more comfortable in a chair?”

“I'm proposing,” he said. “But Emma's not listening.”

“I'm not,” she agreed, and used her spoon to mash up her cereal.

Earnestly, Duncan explained, “She's having my baby. I want to marry her.”

“Wait—­you're pregnant with Duncan's baby? I thought—­”

“He thinks it's his,” she reported. “It's not.”

“Just in case,” Duncan said hastily, “I want to marry her.”

I gave Duncan O'Keefe a more careful examination. He wore a respectable flannel shirt and heavy khaki pants—­the kind suitable for horse work—­and an expensive pair of boots in good condition. He had shaved recently. His dark eyes had long fluffy lashes. He looked about eighteen.

In other words, he wasn't the usual kind of low-­down character I assumed Emma hung around with.

I said, “I don't suppose it would do any good for me to venture an opinion.”

“It wouldn't,” Emma said, crunching cereal.

“All righty, then. Good luck to you, Duncan.” I grabbed two glasses and a corkscrew from the pantry and headed for the hallway.

“Hey, uh,” Em said after me. “Take it easy on Mick, okay? He's having a rough night.”

I paused in the doorway, my arms full. “Trouble in the underworld?”

“If I had to guess, I'd say he's having a little trouble adjusting to the real world.”

We exchanged a glance, and I said, “Thanks.”

Outside my grandfather's library I found the shattered pieces of a cell phone scattered on the floor. I put the wine and glassware on the stairs and picked up the bits of the phone. Someone had thrown the phone against the wall, and I could guess who.

I knew the signs. Todd had thrown things, smashed things. Many a night I had quietly swept up shattered china, afraid the noise might trigger another rage—­or worse, a drug-­fueled tantrum that ended with him slamming out of the house to score more coke. The memory cut me like a knife. Todd had evolved into a violent man. But Michael . . . he'd had a violent past. He'd told me as much, although I'd seen very few manifestations of it. Until now.

Steeling myself, I dropped the pieces into a cut-­glass ashtray on the table. Then I eased into the oak-­paneled room.

It hadn't changed much since my grandfather's day—­bookshelves crowded with dusty volumes and leather chairs gathered close to a fireplace that often crackled warmly. But tonight the embers were dying, and Michael sat behind the desk, staring at a cell phone in his hand. Hardly the picture of frustrated fury. He looked more stunned than angry.

I leaned against the doorway for a long time, taking in the picture he made here and letting my heart steady at the sight of him engaged in his work. He had a stack of papers at his elbow, and his computer screen glowed. A bottle of beer had been forgotten on the desk. My painful memory of Todd's ugly behavior faded.

Lightly, I said, “Does the Department of Corrections have rules about what you do with your time while you're under house arrest?”

Michael snapped the phone shut and collected himself. “Hey, hi. Sorry. No, they don't. How was your night?”

“I met a secretary of state.” I went over to the desk and gave him a nuzzle. “How was yours?”

“Okay.”

“Emma said . . . Never mind. How about closing for business? Just for a few hours?”

“Sounds good,” he said, but he didn't get up.

I leaned down to give him a kiss, but felt distraction in his halfhearted response. I drew back and met his eye. “What's going on?”

“Nothing.” His gaze wandered back to his cell phone. A crease had appeared between his brows. “Sorry. I'm— I just— It's been a busy evening.”

I wondered what he'd been doing in my absence. His laptop computer was spinning a screen saver. He'd been on the phone for a long time, I guessed. “Are you searching for your embezzler?”

Michael mustered a half smile. “I know where he is now—­that's progress. And I'm buying and selling gasoline, trying to get the gas stations back on track.”

“And the men in my driveway? What's that all about?”

“Yeah, sorry.” Reluctantly, he admitted, “With my father and brother in jail for the time being, it seems like a good time for me to dismantle a few family rackets. Numbers, video gambling, that kind of thing. Nobody in the organization is happy about that.”

Dismantling sounded like good news to me. But the presence of guards stationed outside our door was unsettling.

A year ago, I had seen a newspaper story that included a family tree—­a chart of the hierarchy of the Abruzzo family with Michael's father—­Big Frankie—­at the top and perhaps thirty men arrayed at various levels beneath him. They had names like Petey Pop Pop and Road Kill, and instead of educational degrees listed after their names, the newspaper had included their indictments. Michael's name had floated out in the margin of the article. Now, I realized with an awful pang, with his father in jail, it would be Michael's name at the top of the chart.

Anxiety throbbed in my chest again. My voice came out softly. “Are we in danger?”

He put his hand on the small of my back to reassure me. “Not with the crew out there. They're my father's guys—­old school, taking it seriously, going to the mattresses. More than we need, but I don't like discouraging enthusiasm. Don't worry.”

“What will happen when you're finished . . . dismantling?”

“Everything will be great.”

Chances were, he was already thinking far ahead, and I had to trust that he was being smarter than everyone else. But, still, I worried. Gently, I touched a stubborn cowlick of his hair that needed to be trimmed by a more expert barber. “Are you ready to take a break?”

“Yeah, in a minute. How was your night?”

He hadn't been listening the first time he asked, so I said again, “I met a former secretary of state. She gave a wonderful speech. I learned a lot, in fact. The people I sat with talked about the situation in Iran, and then I met a woman whose sister can't get out of Syria. I got to thinking on the way home, I wish there was a way to help her. Do you think that's a crazy thing to do?”

He blinked. “What?”

I felt another twinge of concern. I'd thought he'd be eager to carry me upstairs for a hot night together. But clearly his mind was far, far away. “Michael . . .”

He snapped back to the present again and apologized sincerely. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. Look, maybe we better have a talk.”

My heart gave a real jerk of fear. There was definitely more to the family problems than he'd first let on. “What is it?”

He stood up and pulled me over to the leather sofa. “Let's sit down a minute.”

“I don't want to sit down. Sitting down means bad news.”

“Okay, so we'll stand. That phone call just now—­she—­” He stopped.