The Hitwoman and the Family Jewels (13 page)

“I don’t need that.” I lifted my chin defiantly, not wanting him to think I was a crybaby.

“God’s in here,” he said.

“Take me home!” God yelled. “Feed me crickets!”

I grabbed the box from Patrick.

“Earthquake!” God shouted.

I stared down at him through the opening in the cardboard. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t played stowaway,” I reminded him sternly. “So quit your bellyaching.”

“It’s a lizard, Mags,” Patrick raising his eyebrows, reminded me, climbing into the driver’s seat.

I got into the car. “I know that.”

“Sometimes, the way you talk to animals, it’s like you think they can understand you,” Patrick said, his concern for my mental health evident.

“Of course they don’t understand me.” The forced laugh I made sounded more like the caw of a dying crow than genuine amusement.

“Smooth,” God mocked.

“You could take the cat,” I said to Patrick. “She likes you and cats can be left alone for long periods of time.”

“I don’t need a cat,” Patrick said, pulling out of the parking lot.

“I know you don’t
need
one,” I wheedled, “but she could use a home.”

“Where to?” Patrick asked, effectively ending the cat conversation. “The B&B or the hospital?”

“God’s food is at my apartment.” I told him.

“The hospital,” God demanded imperiously. “I want to see Katie.”

Sighing I told Patrick, “But I don’t think he’ll starve if we go to the hospital first.”

“Okay.”

“You really don’t have to play chauffer for me all day,” I said. “If you drop me off at the B&B I can get my car.”

“No can do,” he said.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, Griswald wants someone on you 24/7.” Pulling to a stop at a red light, he gently touched my bruised cheek. “For another, Kowalski is still out there. Besides,” he joked, “I’m on the clock and am getting paid time-and-a-half to babysit you.” He returned his attention back to the road as the light turned green.

I relaxed into my seat feeling protected.

“Have you told him about the rats yet?” God asked as though he sensed I was growing complacent.

I shuddered at the memory of the dead rats that had been nailed to the front door of my apartment weeks earlier.

“Cold?” Patrick asked.

“Just a chill,” I choked out.

He glanced at me worriedly, then focused on his driving.

“So you haven’t told him?” God prompted.

I shook my head slightly, hoping Patrick wouldn’t notice my communication with the lizard.

“You should. It might be an important clue,” the lizard said knowingly. “He can do a better job protecting you if he has all the facts.”

I frowned, knowing he was right. I took a deep breath, and blurted out, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“So weeks ago you come home and there are dead rats nailed to your door and you didn’t think to mention it?” Patrick asked, stalking across the visitors’ parking lot of the hospital.

I chased after him, trying not to jostle the tissue box. “You were away. You’d taken Daria,” I said defensively reminding him of the road trip he’d taken with his college-aged daughter so that she could be with her mother.

“And you didn’t think to mention it when I got back?”

“It was only one time.”

Coming to an abrupt halt, he spun around. I careened into him and would have fallen over if he hadn’t grabbed my arms to keep me upright. He glared down at me with more than a hint of anger in his gaze. He shook me, as though he wanted to shake some sense into me.

“Careful!” God yelped.

“What else haven’t you told me, Mags? What else are you hiding?”

“I’m not
hiding
anything.” I twisted free of his grip and continued walking toward the hospital entrance. “It’s just that not everything in my life is your business.”

“Tell him about the phone call,” God urged.

Patrick fell into step beside me. “I get that you need your privacy, but when somebody nails dead rats to your door, you should tell me,” he said with forced calmness.

“Tell him,” God prodded.

“Well then.” I stopped at a crosswalk to let a delivery van speed by before crossing the road to the hospital entrance. “You’re probably going to say I should have told you about the phone call too.”

“What phone call?” Patrick asked, now eerily calm.

I started across the crosswalk. “Some guy called my house phone.”

“The one you keep under the bed?” Patrick asked.

My cheeks burned as I remembered the time we’d rolled around in that bed. “Yes. He called and said, ‘
We want the jewels. Tell the rat we want the jewels and if we don’t get ’em, his family is gonna pay.’
and then he hung up.”

I’d crossed the road before I realized Patrick was no longer beside me. I turned back and saw that he was still on the other side of the road, staring into the distance.

“He’s probably counting to ten,” I muttered.

“I said you should have told him at the time,” God reminded me.

Patrick crossed the road. “When did you get the call?”

“A couple of weeks ago. Right after you got back.”

“On your home phone?”

I nodded.

“I’ll look into getting the incoming calls traced.”

My cellphone buzzed.

I thrust the tissue box at Patrick, so I could get the phone out of my pocket. “Hold him.”

I glanced at the display.

My heart stuttered.

I started to shake.

“Who is it?” Patrick asked worriedly.

“The hospital,” I said, taking off for Katie’s room at a dead run.

I was barely aware of God screaming, “Ow! Ow! Slow down!” as I raced through the hospital with Patrick, carrying the lizard-in-a-box, on my heels.

Flying past the nurses’ station I ignored them calling out to me.

Rounding the corner, I barreled into Katie’s room at top speed.

I was barely able to stop when I saw the blood streaked across the floor. I looked to Katie’s bed and found it empty. Her monitors were overturned, the visitor’s chair was on its side, and Aunt Susan’s afghan lay on the ground. There had been a struggle.

A cold sense of dread overtook me as I realized that US Marshal Weller hadn’t been standing guard in the doorway.

In an instant I’d known what had happened. Paul had gotten to Katie. He’d hurt her. Maybe he’d killed her.

I’d lost Katie too.

My heart stopped.

I fell to my knees and screamed.

It was a scream straight from my soul. A scream so intense it tore up the inside of my throat, leaving the flesh raw.

And then I was crying.

Great heaving sobs that shook my whole body, threatening to tear me apart.

“Mags,” Patrick yelled as though from a great distance. He knelt down pulling me against him.

“No!” I shrieked. Turning all my pain and anger on him, I lashed out, slapping his face, pummeling his chest. “You said she’d be safe! You said she’d be protected.”

“Maggie stop it!” God yelled.

I ignored him, continuing to beat on Patrick who made no move to stop me. “You promised,” I wailed. “I hate you!”

His stoic acceptance of my attack angered me even more.

“It’s not his fault,” God called out.

“I’m going to kill you!” I howled, wrapping my hands around his throat.

“Stop it!” a woman screamed, close to my ear. “Stop it, Maggie!”

I ignored her too, intent on hurting Patrick.

Suddenly my scalp burned and my head snapped back. The woman was yanking my hair, pulling me off Patrick.

Grabbing her wrist with both hands I struggled to free myself.

“She’s okay,” the woman insisted breathlessly. “Katie is okay.”

Trying to make sense of her words, I twisted to get a better look at my assailant.

She looked back at me with eyes that were both familiar and unrecognizable. “She’s safe, Maggie.”

All the fight left me and I slumped to the ground. Resting my cheek on the tile floor, I stared at the blood.

Releasing her grip on my hair, she knelt in front of me. “She’s safe.”

I looked up at her, convinced that I was in shock and hallucinating.

“Breathe, Maggie,” she urged.

“And don’t start screaming again,” God suggested, walking into my line of vision. Grabbing my chin, he pulled himself up onto my face. “You scared me half to death. Who is this woman who had the good sense to pull you off Patrick before you seriously hurt the poor man?”

“Marlene?” I whispered, not sure I could trust my own eyes.

She nodded. “Can you sit up?”

She helped me move into a sitting position.

God scrambled over my face, climbing on top of my head.

Raising a trembling hand, I reached out to touch my younger sister, something I hadn’t done in years. Her cheek was soft, and warm, and real beneath my fingers. She looked so much older than I remembered, so much harder, so much sadder.

The image of her as a teenager, tugging on my sleeve at the carnival, asking me if I’d seen her twin, Darlene, danced before my eyes. I’d ignored her plea, more worried that our mother was about to get herself in trouble, but it had been Darlene who’d needed my help. It was Darlene who’d ended up dead. It was Darlene I’d failed to protect.

Familiar guilt clawed at my gut. My failure to protect her twin had resulted in alienation from my surviving little sister. Seeing her watch me with such concern, the guilt was too much to bear.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She glanced over my shoulder and then returned her gaze to mine. “I don’t think any permanent harm has been done.”

I shook my head. “It was my fault.”

“No one’s blaming you,” she said gently.

“
You
blame me.” Tears clogged my throat making it difficult to force out the words I’d been waiting to say for years. “You blame me and you’re right, it was my fault. If I’d been watching, but I wasn’t…”

“What are you talking about?” Marlene asked.

“It’s my fault Darlene’s dead.”

Shocked that I’d said the words aloud, Marlene stared at me.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the condemnation in her eyes.

“What?” she asked, wanting me to repeat it.

It wasn’t any easier to say a second time. “It’s my fault Darlene’s dead and I’m sorry.”

“You think I blame you?” she asked incredulously.

Nodding, I opened my eyes.

“I thought
you
blamed
me
,” she confessed on a whisper. “All this time, I thought…”

It was my turn to stare at her.

“Now’s when you hug and make up,” God coached in a whisper.

Marlene stared at the top of my head. “You have a lizard in your hair.”

“He’s Katie’s,” I explained, throwing myself at her, wrapping her in the tightest hug imaginable. “I don’t blame you. I’ve
never
blamed you.”

“I screwed up, Maggie.” Her voice was strung taut with self-recrimination.

“We all screw up,” I told her. “Then we move on.”

“And screw up differently,” God opined.

Marlene pulled back, eyeing the squeaking reptile on my scalp with something close to disgust. “Speaking of screw-ups, have you seen Dad?”

“You mean since he escaped from prison?” I asked.

She laughed. “Yes.”

“I haven’t seen him. Have you?”

“No, but he called me.”

“What did he want?” I asked curiously, wondering how he’d known how to get in touch with her, but deciding it wasn’t the time to ask.

“He wanted me to come here. He wanted me to see you. He wanted me to answer a question.” She looked at me expectantly.

I stared at her, still struggling with the idea that she’d been out of my life for years, but that he’d been able to contact her within hours of escaping from prison.

“What’s the question?” she prompted.

“I’m supposed to ask you where the treasure chest is. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

She thought about it for a long moment. “He always used that stupid voice, you know the one that sounded foreign, when he said
the treasure chest is in the Marlene,
but I never knew what he meant.”

I smiled at her imitation of Dad’s silly voice.

“Perhaps it’s a riddle,” God opined.

“Does it always squeak like that?” Marlene asked, frowning at the lizard.

“It’s a
he
, not an
it
,” I hurried to explain. “And his name is Godzilla, but he prefers God for short.”

“Not too pretentious,” she mocked.

“Katie named him,” I explained.

“Katie’s in the next room,” Marlene said. “You should go see her.”

Standing, she reached down to help me to my feet.

“But the blood?” I asked, surveying the chaotic scene.

“Not hers,” she said, pulling me upright.

I wobbled unsteadily, weak. “What happened?”

“I wasn’t here. All I know is that she’s been moved to the room next door. C’mon. You can see her for yourself.”

Turning slowly, I saw that Patrick was watching us from the doorway. Angry red welts ran down his face from where I’d clawed at him. His expression, as he stared at us, was unreadable, but a muscle twitched in his jaw, signaling his tension.

“I’m so sorry.” The words were inadequate. My attack had been unforgivable.

The apology hung between us for a long uncomfortable moment. I had the distinct impression that I’d broken something between us that wouldn’t be easily repaired.

He raised his arm, holding something out to me. “It was in the corner. You should give it to her.”

Realizing he held out Katie’s stuffed dinosaur, Dino, I stepped forward to take it from him. “Thank you.”

He nodded. “I have to figure out what happened here.”

“The Fed got his ass kicked by a broad,” a male voice said. Delveccio stepped around the corner.

I swallowed nervously. If Patrick’s expression was unreadable, Delveccio’s was an open book. He looked pissed.

“Vinnie says it was the same broad who was skulking around yesterday,” the mobster continued looking at me pointedly.

“Aunt Leslie?” I asked, bewildered.

“The high maintenance one,” Delveccio clarified.