One Fool At Least (17 page)

Slider shrugged. “Both of them, taking turns, I guess. But they never do it at night. They’re busy with the bar at night now. You can get in to the apartment through a back way, so no one will even see you. I appreciate this.”

“What does the diary look like?” I asked.

“It’s about this big.” Slider held his hands to the approximate dimensions, maybe five by seven. “The cover is made of tin. I always thought it was really cool. I asked what was in it, and he said ‘dreams’. I figured he had ideas for the restaurant in it, stuff like that.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

Jack and I made our way back to the Jeep. We hopped in, and I slid toward Jack. “Pat and Libby are more like newlyweds than we are. I say we have a contest.”

He laughed, his hands shaping my hair. “You sure you want to do this? We can go back to our place and do something else. Four times, the way you like it.”

“Very funny. And can’t we do both?”

“Hmmph,” he said, and drove toward the road.

* *

Finn’s apartment was above the bar; in the darkness we spotted the staircase that connected it with ground level. “Lots of stairs,” I whispered.

“I’ll take your crutches,” Jack said. “You’ll be better off holding the rail and hopping. Just land quietly,” he said, his eyes darting toward the corner of the building.

We were parked on a road behind the bar rather than in the front parking lot. Even patrons wouldn’t be wandering back here. It was very dark and lonely behind Flanagan’s, although we caught a slight glow from the neon sign on the front.

Jack went first; he waited for me at the top with my crutches, and I took my time, keeping the weight off my foot. It was warmer tonight, but a gentle breeze cooled me as I huffed and puffed my way up. I reached Jack with a triumphant smile. He caught me to him and kissed me quickly. “Try the key,” I said.

Jack had the door open in a moment, and we slipped inside. He closed the blinds on the back window before he turned on the light. “Hopefully no one would notice any cracks of light,” he said softly. “We don’t intend to be here long, right?”

“Right,” I said. I glanced around the apartment. It would be a cozy space, filled with the right furniture and accessories. A little kitchen, in which we were standing, then a fairly large main room, with generous front picture windows. He would have had an amazing view of The Felines. I could barely see anything now, just the hint of a darkness against darkness.

“I’ll take the bedroom,” Jack said. “Why don’t you look around in here?” He gestured to the kitchen. “It looks mostly empty, so it should be the easiest to search.”

I nodded. He disappeared into the dark hallway.

The kitchen had little appliances; a tiny stove flanked by a counter and a refrigerator, a little table and bench that sat flush with the wall, another table with a microwave on top and several drawers beneath. I searched the cabinets; for the most part they were empty, except for the occasional dish or utensil that had obviously been rejected. I felt along the top and sides of each one, and they yielded nothing. I looked inside the refrigerator, which had been turned off. I hunted through the drawers beneath the microwave, then looked inside it. I felt under the table and behind the stove as far as I could reach. I saw a broom in one corner. I crouched awkwardly, leaning against the stove, and pushed the broom handle underneath, then pulled it out. I unearthed significant amounts of dust, as well as a pad of post-it notes and two refrigerator magnets. One of them was a clip magnet, which had a phone number written on it. Below was a note someone had scrawled—Finn, I assumed—that said, “Discuss Daddy’s windfall.” I took this and stuck it in my pocket. I attached the magnets to the refrigerator, where a few others already sat, holding nothing, looking lonely.

A sudden crash, outrageously loud, had me jolting upright, my heart slamming around in my chest. Jack appeared at my side. “Let’s go,” he breathed, and we headed for the door. I wasn’t about to ask questions when I was still on the verge of heart failure.

Jack peeked out the door, then beckoned me through. He took my crutches. I made much quicker work of hopping down than of hopping up; the only challenge was to keep from peeing in my pants.

At the bottom of the stairs I heard voices; I sent a terrified look to Jack, and he yanked me into the dark cave underneath the porch. I had images of spiders in my hair as he lifted me into the womb of blackness, clutching my crutches in his other hand.

A moment later the voices became figures, and they were climbing the stairs. “I’m telling you, it came from Finn’s place. And I don’t know how anyone could get in there.” It was the voice of Aidan Flanagan, and it didn’t sound at all friendly or approachable now.

“I told you, that one day there was that cat that wandered in.” That was Colleen, sounding uncertain.

“But you got the cat out, right?” Aidan said. “So why would we think it was a cat, Coll?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not messing around.” I heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked; I wanted to cry out, but Jack’s hand squeezed mine tightly, warning me.

The two of them disappeared into the apartment. I didn’t know how much time we had, but Jack seemed to think it was enough. He pushed me out and I started toward the back road, crutching for all I was worth. Jack was next to me, gliding effortlessly, his hand on my back, hurrying me. We blended in with the darkness soon enough, and when we reached our car we opened the doors silently and eased in.

“God,” I said. “It’s like when I was a kid, playing hide and go seek. I always had to pee the instant I hid. The suspense killed me.”

“Shh,” Jack said, trying to see the stairs. “Here they come. I can’t tell what they’re saying, or if they found anything.”

“Can they see us?” I whispered.

“No, not if we can barely see them. Oh, I take that back. Shit.”

In an instant Jack had started the engine and barreled down the road. I stifled a scream of pure terror. Aidan had a gun. Enough people had been shot, I thought, for one honeymoon.

Only when we were a mile away did Jack pull over to a dark shoulder and look at me. I was staring at the pines that lined the road, bending in a slight wind. “You okay?” he asked.

I forced a smile. “The heart rate is slowing. What the hell did you break in there?”

Jack looked rueful. “I thought I felt something behind his dresser. It had this attached mirror. I was trying to pull out whatever it was, and I guess someone had already loosened the mirror for moving. The whole damn thing fell. Some spy, huh?”

“So what was it?”

“What was what?” he asked, checking the rearview.

“What was it that you felt behind the dresser? Anything?”

“Oh,” Jack said, pulling back on the road. “Just this.” He pulled something out of his windbreaker and tossed it to me.

I looked into my lap and saw Finn’s tin notebook, just before our car was illuminated by flashing red lights.

Jack swore under
his breath and said “Hide it.”

I shoved the notebook into my purse and moved toward Jack. “We’ll just say we wanted to take a romantic drive,” I said. “We’ll say we were making out on the side of the road.”

“Right,” Jack said.

We were back on the shoulder, waiting for the officer who walked toward us in the blue and red strobe of his Mars light. It was eerie, but somehow it wasn’t as frightening as standing under the porch and listening to Aidan Flanagan’s voice.

To my surprise, Chief Roy Hendricks appeared at Jack’s window. “Evening,” he said. Our windows were down.

“Good evening, Chief,” said Jack.

“Hi, Chief Hendricks,” I piped brightly.

He peered more closely. “I know you folks?” he asked.

“We met at the restaurant today. At Monaghan’s,” I said, trying to sound like someone dumb enough to make that mistake.

“Flanagan’s,” Jack corrected me, with just the right amount of indulgent lover in his voice.

“Oh, right. Remember? We happened to be there when that tall man, that Ardmore, was shot. Jack and Madeline Shea.”

“You’ve also been working with the highway patrol regarding Madeline’s kidnapping,” Jack said.

“Right. What brings you folks out tonight?” he asked.

“I asked Jack to take me for a drive. I wanted to see the stars. There seem to be so many more here. Back in Chicagoland, we can barely see them at all, and we forget to look up half the time anyway. It’s different here,” I babbled.

“See any shooting stars?” he asked.

Jack spoke before I could. “A couple. Not as many tonight as we generally do. I was a little disappointed for Maddy.”

“You all have car trouble?” he asked, looking at me and smoothing his mustache. “I saw you pulled over.”

I batted my lashes. “I asked Jack to pull over. I got a little overexcited. It’s our honeymoon, and—I just wanted to—you know. I didn’t want to wait until we got home.”

Chief Hendricks took this in without a glimmer of a smile. “We had a break-in back in town. Were you in town at all?”

Jack nodded. “We drove through, maybe about forty-five minutes ago. Just making up our route as we went along.”

“See anything unusual?”

Jack and I pretended to think about this. I said, “I have to confess, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything but Jack and the sky.” I made my voice sound quite dreamy.

Hendricks started to look a little nauseous. I was guessing he wasn’t the romantic type. “You recovering all right from your incident, Mrs. Shea?” he asked.

Jack’s jaw tightened. “She will be when you arrest Damian Wilde.”

That
Hendricks found funny. He chuckled, toeing the ground with his boot. “Mr. Shea, Damian Wilde wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Jack shook his head in disbelief. “No, but he’d be able to pay someone to hurt a fly. It was in his best interests to arrange a kidnapping. It just didn’t go as he planned. He put way too much confidence in those codgers.”

Hendricks adjusted his utility belt, maybe to remind us of his gun. “With all respect, we’re not going to believe the lies of those two old farts against the word of Damian Wilde.”

Jack glared at him for a moment. “If that’s all, Chief?” he said coldly.

Hendricks looked at him, then looked at me. Eventually he stepped back from the car. “You all have a good evening, and a good vacation. You let us take care of the investigation. Have a good night now,” he said.

Jack drove away, not bothering to wait until Hendricks returned to his car. “Prick,” he said.

“God, Jack, I can’t take too many more surprises.”

“We’ll be home soon.” His jaw was set again. He was getting that look in his eye, the one he’d had when he punched Wilde’s face. Then again, it was a pretty sexy look, I thought, edging closer.

“Want to take another bath tonight?” I asked silkily.

His dimple appeared. “Sounds nice.”

When we pulled into our driveway, I was convinced we would face no more stresses that evening. When two silhouettes appeared at our window, I screamed.

Slider’s voice said, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. We heard the car, so we ran down. How did it go?” he asked. He and Molly were illuminated only by the distant glow of Pat’s landscape lights.

I reached down to my purse, retrieved the notebook, and handed it to Slider and Molly. “Jack found it,” I said. “Behind Finn’s dresser. But he broke the mirror, and the cavalry was after us.”

“Meaning Aidan and Colleen,” Jack said. “Aidan had a gun. Maddy and I had to run like fugitives.”

“Oh, God,” Molly said. “Are you okay? Do they know it was you? Are we in trouble?”

I laughed, opening my door. “I think we’re okay.”

Slider was peering at the notebook in the dark. “God, after all that, I hope this has something in it. Something that will help.”

Jack slammed his door and walked around the jeep to help me out. “Get some sleep, you two,” he said. “We’ll sort through this tomorrow.”

“
Son of a bitch
!” yelled a voice in the darkness. “Son of a bitch, I knew you were all a bunch of goddam liars!”

Slider grabbed Molly and pulled her close to him, his head whipping back and forth to try and locate the speaker. Then he seemed to understand something, and his face, even in the darkness, registered pain. “Damn,” he said under his breath.

Angelo Cardini materialized next to our Jeep, weaving slightly. From a distance of ten feet I could smell the liquor on his breath. “So, here is my son, safe and sound with the Sheas, just like I knew all along.”

Slider shook his head, looking at his father. “The Sheas didn’t know where I was, Dad. I just came back today,” he lied. “I asked them not to call you.”

Cardini looked confused. “Why the hell not? You can’t let your old man know you’re safe and sound? You can’t do me that courtesy? I’m over at the house, sitting on your bed, wondering where you are, looking at your damn baseball cards—” Cardini’s voice broke with convincing emotion. Drunken emotion, though.

“Dad, it’s a long story, okay?”

Cardini looked at him. “I’ve been worried. Worried for a month.”

Slider shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to worry you. I guess I thought—you wouldn’t notice that much.”

Cardini had the grace to look guilty. “I’m trying to get the drinking under control. I was sober all day yesterday.”

Even in the semi-darkness I could tell that Slider was embarrassed for his father. Love in families was difficult enough, I thought, without the complications of addiction. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Dad,” Slider said.

“I suppose you’re staying here, then? With them?” he asked, sounding like a jealous child.

“Yeah, Dad. I’ll come and see you tomorrow, and I’ll explain everything, okay? But you should be sober when we talk. So I need you to go sleep it off and then have some coffee in the morning, and I’ll come and see you.”

“Fine,” Cardini said. He hesitated, wanting to say more, wanting to inflict pain with words. Obviously none sprang to mind, so he repeated, “Fine.” He stalked off into the darkness, and we heard the distant sound of a car door slamming.

“He shouldn’t be driving,” Molly said.