Angel Among Us (16 page)

Holy crap. I had never heard Maggie sound so mean before. She sounded like she was going to rip off his head and breathe fire down his neck. I think she meant every word of it.

Calvano had watched the interchange without speaking. He raised a finger in the air and said to the waitress with exaggerated politeness, ‘Check, please.'

The waitress approached warily, proffering the slip of paper. Without even looking at it, Calvano gave her a ten and told her to keep the change. That locked in her loyalty.

As Calvano and Maggie scrambled from the booth and headed out the door, the waitress bent over Skip Bostwick and surveyed his injuries.

‘You're gonna have to get up off the floor,' she finally said, with a snap of her gum. ‘You're in my way, you're drippin' blood on the floor and I've got customers to serve. If you want a booth, there's a five dollar minimum.'

M
aggie had offered to drop Calvano off at home, but once she reached his apartment, neither one of them wanted to stop talking about Calvano's punch.

‘Does your hand hurt?' Maggie asked.

‘Hell yeah, my hand hurts,' Calvano complained. He examined his knuckles. ‘It's none of my business, Gunn, but I just got to ask – how did you end up married to that guy?'

The question bothered Maggie. For a moment, she did not answer. But when Calvano started to apologize for asking, she interrupted him. ‘No, it's OK. It's a fair question. I just hate admitting it when I make a mistake.' She stared out the front of the windshield, deciding how to explain. Before long, night would give way to dawn. They had nearly worked through the night. ‘The best way to explain it is to say I was overcome by a temporary madness.'

Calvano laughed. ‘That's the first time I've heard love described that way, but it fits.'

‘I'm not sure it was love exactly,' Maggie admitted. ‘But the truth is even more pathetic. He was the guy that everyone wanted. We went through the Academy together. There was a huge class of women that year because of some new EEOC guidelines. Everyone was crazy over him. Skip wasn't so full of himself back then. I'd known him since I was a kid, so I had the edge. Our fathers were friends from when they were both on the Wilmington force so we would visit their family a couple times a year and sometimes even share a beach house in the summer. Skip and I were just buddies growing up, but that year, when we started the Academy, everything changed.'

She seemed ashamed of what she was about to say and Calvano gave her room to collect her thoughts. ‘I'm listening,' was all he said.

‘Skip was still really insecure, I guess. I can't think of any other reason why he would pay me so much attention. But he already knew me, and maybe all the other women coming after him as hard as they were scared him. I'm not sure. Trust me, I was no prize.' She smiled. ‘I had the best times of any woman in the class and my scores on the range were off the charts, but that was the extent of my attraction.'

‘Don't say that, Gunn,' Calvano told her. ‘Never sell yourself short. It just opens the door for jerks like him to do the same thing.'

Maggie smiled her gratitude. ‘He swept me off my feet. I admit it. He'd gone from being geeky the last time I saw him to being, well, you know what he looks like now. Television handsome. I fell for his outside. I didn't understand his inside had changed, too. The kid I used to sit with on the dunes and talk to for hours at a time was gone. But we were already married when I realized he had turned out to be incredibly self-centered and ambitious. That the only person he would ever be capable of loving was himself.' She shook her head, disgusted at herself. ‘Honestly, Adrian, I was so competitive. I know this sounds horrible, but I think I just married him so that the other women couldn't. I'm not sure I ever felt that much for him. God knows, it was easy to walk away from him once I figured it out. I'm not sure I
can
feel a lot for someone. I'm not sure I have that left in me after days like this one.'

Calvano was nodding his head. ‘I've gone out with women for even worse reasons, trust me. This job takes a lot out of you, Gunn. We can look for one million excuses not to fall in love and then, when we do, against all of our best intentions, we look for something else to call it. We've done a lot of dangerous things to get our shields, but sometimes I think letting ourselves have a private life feels like the most dangerous of all.'

Maggie looked surprised. ‘That was pretty perceptive, Adrian. Have you been watching
Oprah
re-runs again?'

The mood was broken. Calvano punched Maggie on the shoulder and climbed out of the car, leaning in for a final parting shot. ‘Do what I do, Gunn. Just go out with so many of them, no one ever has a chance to stick.'

Maggie sat in the darkness for a moment before she pulled away. When she did, I knew that they would not talk of this conversation again.

The next morning proved me right. She picked him up as if their talk the night before had never happened. A few hours of sleep had done them both good. Both Maggie and Calvano looked as if they might survive the week after all.

They arrived at the station house before either Gonzales or the media showed, checked in with their other teams and left after Calvano looked in on Aldo Flores. He came away with the information that Aldo had indeed worked at the Delmonte House with Rodrigo and that Aldo's wife had taken the bus out there several times at lunch. That meant anyone at the house could have had contact with both her and Arcelia Gallagher. Now they were on their way to the mansion again.

Calvano was in a subdued mood after his visit with Aldo Flores. ‘That poor bastard. He has no idea what's happening to him. I had to pull another prisoner over to translate and I'm not sure I got everything, but he pretty much thinks his world has collapsed around him. He's convinced he's going to be shipped to some deportation center next.'

‘I hate to tell you, but he probably is,' Maggie said.

‘It doesn't seem fair. The guy just wants a decent life.'

‘Tell that to your congressman,' Maggie suggested. ‘And don't count on Gonzales to back you on it.'

‘Yeah, what's up with that?' Calvano asked. ‘He hates Enrique Romero for being more important than him and he hates Aldo Flores for being less important than him. You think he'd be a little more sympathetic.'

‘Since when has the city mouse ever wanted to hang with the country mouse?' Maggie asked. She pulled up in front of the gate of the Delmonte House, pressed a button and waited several centuries until the old butler buzzed them in. When she reached the top of the circular driveway in front of the mansion, she pulled to a halt. The three of us sat in the car, staring at the house. I know they were thinking about ghosts haunting the halls and wondering what freaky reception awaited them this time. I enjoyed the irony of being the ghost in the back seat, less than two feet away, worrying about the same thing. But I was also thinking of the unhappiness I had felt so acutely in the house on our prior visit – all the despair and the bleakness and that horrible moment when I had experienced the feeling of being attacked with a sword.

Something very bad had happened in that house and moments of it still lingered. I wondered what it had to do with Arcelia Gallagher, if anything.

‘What's our approach?' Calvano asked Maggie. ‘You think Romero is back from Hollywood yet?'

‘You know what I think?' Maggie said. ‘I think the husband is never coming back from Hollywood. I think he's gotten as much good publicity from his marriage as he can and he's going to run as far away as possible, as fast as he can, from the bad publicity that's left.'

Calvano thought it over. ‘So, let's go after the butler?' he suggested. ‘Let's see what we can get out of him. The guy owes us a favor. We were easy on him and we left his wife alone. Maybe he knows more than he's telling?'

Maggie nodded her approval. ‘That's a good approach. Though I feel certain we won't get anything from him that he isn't fully prepared to give.'

‘Maybe the butler did it?' Calvano suggested hopefully.

‘Not this one,' Maggie said. ‘The only thing he's hiding is his wife's condition. And wouldn't you rather live here than in some state-run nursing home?'

‘I'm not so sure about that,' Calvano said. He checked his gun and climbed out of the car. ‘This place gives me the creeps.'

‘Me, too,' I wanted to say, but my thoughts were distracted by what I saw in an upper window staring down at us. It was a lopsided face with the right cheek off-kilter, where it had been augmented too far toward the hairline. The eyes were stretched so tight they did not look like they could close and the corners of the swollen lips drooped down, as if the mouth was melting. I realized with a start that the face belonged to the girl once called ‘the most beautiful person in the world.' Dakota Wylie was watching us, her face bare of bandages, scarves and sunglasses, revealed for what it was. Ruined. She was staring down at Calvano.

Maggie and Calvano were juggling cups of coffee and keys, too busy to notice what I had seen. They were also too busy to notice the amazing morning coalescing around us – but I could not ignore it. It was moments like these, when I see what others overlook, that I feel most alive. And I cannot seem to pass these moments by. Dew still gleamed on the new shoots of grass and the flowers were opening to the sun above. Birds flew from lawn to lawn in search of food for their young. The breeze sweeping in from the surrounding fields smelled of green.

I turned my back on the mansion, with all of its unhappiness, and visited the edge of the lawn, unable to resist an immense bed of flowers rioting next to new roses that were just beginning to bud. I looked out over a sloping lawn surrounding a marble statue of a woman dressed in Grecian robes. She was looking pensively down at granite waters swirling about her feet. Her face reminded me of the missing woman, Arcelia Gallagher. It seemed so tranquil, yet also as if it were hiding a hint of sadness.

As I stood there, thinking of her, wondering if she was still alive, the wind shifted and I realized that I felt
her
– I felt Arcelia Gallagher as surely as if she had been standing right beside me. I was certain of it. It was her essence, her unique combination of joy at being alive tinged with sorrow at the past. It was her smell, her being, her smile and her beauty all wrapped up into one feeling, a feeling that washed over me as surely as the sunshine spilling through the trees from above.

She was near and she was alive. I knew it with every fiber of my being.

I looked around and saw no one, not even the gardener, tending to the lawn. Behind me, Maggie and Calvano were trudging to the front door, preparing to get what they could out of the elderly butler. I moved over the lawn and the flower beds, searching to see if she was there somewhere. Nothing. I searched some more. Nothing still. Eventually, I turned back to the house, ready to follow Maggie and Calvano inside, my confidence starting to erode. Perhaps I had just imagined it? Perhaps the statue had triggered a memory of her so acute that I felt as if I were in her presence? Perhaps I only hoped that she was still alive.

The butler had opened the door with resignation and ungraciously welcomed Maggie and Calvano inside. Their politeness did not soften him, but he gestured for them to follow and tromped resolutely toward the kitchen. We formed a curious parade through the halls. The old butler, once king of a long-lost era and now an old man, Maggie and Calvano, burdened with their failure to find any leads, and me, an aimless ghost who lived neither here nor there and who glanced around fearfully, afraid of another ghost I could not see.

The house seemed particularly empty that morning. Their footsteps echoed in the hall and the air smelled dusty and dry. It was in the stillness that I felt someone watching us. I looked around but saw no one. But the heat of that gaze was almost palpable and I knew that someone – or something – was spying on our parade.

As we neared the end of the long hallway, the bright lights of the kitchen called to us. I could smell fruit cooking on the stove and felt something, perhaps happiness, perhaps contentment, sending out tendrils of welcome. The old butler quickened his step and seemed almost to flee to its warm embrace.

There was someone behind me. I felt it.

I whirled around and found nothing there.

I turned back toward the kitchen and there it was again: a brush against my back, a breath down my neck, the barest of touches from another being.

I turned around again and, this time, heard laughter. I looked at the others. Maggie and Calvano did not seem to have noticed. With a glance over my shoulder, I caught up with them. Whatever lived in this house, it was trying to make contact with
me.

The kitchen was warm and steamy. Pots bubbled and boiled on the stove, sending fragrant wisps into the air. Sunlight poured through the French windows, transforming it into a whole different room compared to how it felt at night. Every countertop was scrupulously clean and gleamed in the sunlight. The floor was immaculate white tile. An old oak table took up a corner of the kitchen and the butler's wife sat at one end of it, green beans spread out in front of her. She methodically snapped one in half, pulled off the string and deposited what was left into a bowl. She was humming and her eyes sparkled as she looked up at the newcomers, smiling.

I realized with a start that she was looking at me. Her eyes were dark and intense. I did not remember them looking like that before. Could she really see me? I raised my right arm. She raised hers, mimicking me. I cocked an eyebrow. She cocked hers. I smiled and she smiled back.

No one else had noticed our exchange. Maggie and Calvano were telling the butler about their lack of progress in the case and the old man's wife had been forgotten.