Christmas Angel (19 page)

Angel half listened as she leafed through the pages, sipping on her chamomile tea and lunching on a piece of bread spread with a butter made from peanuts. She was beginning to lose heart she’d ever find the photo of the man who’d attacked her, or that she’d ever make sense of the odd visions and dreams starting to work their way into her mind. She thought, too, about how her hair and face looked, hoping they would appear as nice when she got ready for the evening, and it flitted through her mind whether Shado would even notice.

“Marshal, you got to come quick. It’s Miss Kitty. She’s up and disappeared.” She glanced at the television and leaned forward to turn up the volume.

“That’s a mite strange. I just saw her this morning. She didn’t mention she’d planned any trips,” Marshal Dillon replied, as he sifted through some new wanted posters.

“She’s plumb gone. I got me a bad feeling about it.”

“Go down to the saloon and see if you can find out who remembers seeing her last.”

“What if no one remembers, Marshal? What we going to do?”

“I don’t know, but I do know we’ll find her. If I have to search the whole blame county, we’ll find her.”

Angel’s memory shimmered, watery images coming forth in her brain. She stared at the television, but in her mind, it was no longer Marshal Dillon, but the voice of Sheriff Jake Sloan who spoke.

“I’m going to find her. No matter how long it takes or how far I have to go.”

She stood on the porch listening to him, watching helplessly as he dangled the necklace that once belonged to his true love, Miss Lillian. She’d disappeared overnight, without a trace. Rumors had spread like wildfire in town. People said she’d run off with a wealthy gent from New York. But there had to be another explanation. Angel had seen how happy the two of them were together in their secret affair. Miss Lillian wouldn’t have left the sheriff without explanation.

Angel jerked awake from the vision, her heart pounding against her chest. She blinked and suddenly, as though a dam had broken in her mind, she began to see a bigger picture of who she was and piece together the events leading up to her head injury. With crystal clarity, she remembered the kind man who pushed open the door, the man who’d given her his boss’s fur coat. There was the night she met Shado on the sidewalk, and how he saved her from certain death not once, but twice in one evening. And she saw in startling detail the events the night of the murder, remembering the massive hulk of a man who stood at an open door to one of the hotel rooms.

She’d opened her mouth to ask if she could be of assistance when a gunshot rang out and a scream flew from inside her instead. Instinct caused her to turn and try to run, but too late. The man had grabbed her arm and dragged her back near the room. Held captive in his grip, she’d struggled as she’d watched another man, his face obscured by the partially closed door, clean off the gun and place it in the dead man’s hand. Her efforts to struggle free were futile, and while the two men deliberated in rushed terms whether to take her or kill her, Shado had burst through a door and she’d bitten the man’s arm. She’d felt a thud on the side of her head, and the world had gone black.

A million images rushed her brain. The search for Billy, a man who wrote music that touched her heart, wanting to meet a man who could love a woman with the same emotional depth as written in his songs. It reminded her of Sheriff Jake and Miss Lillian.
Sheriff Jake and Miss Lillian?

Hazy thoughts between past and present, fact and fantasy, clouded her mind, and she shook her head, glancing down at the mug shot book in her lap. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she stared mesmerized at the man looking up at her from the pages. It was the man from the Imperial.
The man who attacked her.
She reached for a pad of “sticky notes” Shado had given her to mark pages with familiar looking pictures.

She pushed the necklace aside to grab the notes, and her hand and brain stopped at the same moment. Her eyes locked onto the red stone. Could it be? It looked identical to the necklace Sheriff Jake held in her memory. How was that possible? What was happening? Once her memory returned, would she awaken somewhere else—some place she should’ve been all along? Confused and frightened, she hastily marked the page and scooped up the necklace. She needed to talk with someone about the strange things in her head. She thought of Rosalee. If for no other reason, she had to tell someone else the things going on inside her brain and hear there was a rational explanation for it all. She hurried across the hall and pounded frantically on the door. “Miss Brisbee?”

After a moment, the door opened and instantly the old woman drew her inside. “What is it, child? You’re as white as a sheet.”

Angel’s gaze darted to an elderly woman seated in the chair by the front window. “My apologies. I had no idea you had a guest.”

“Posh. Come on in. It’s quite all right, dear girl. Let me fetch you a nice cup of tea to settle your nerves.” She led Angel to a chair she pulled up to join the other two.

“I drink mine with a splash of Jack Daniels,” the stranger replied with a smile.

“Perhaps I should come back another time.” Angel stood to leave, but Miss Brisbee caught her elbow.

“There now, rest assured whatever you have to say will be kept perfectly safe. Why, Mrs. Sloan and I have been friends since I can’t remember when. Where did we meet?” The elderly woman toddled to the kitchen and returned shortly with another cup.

“A fundraiser event for the library, no doubt,” the old woman remarked.

Sloan?
Angel’s legs grew rubbery, and she eased into the chair.
An odd coincidence. Perhaps a distant relation?
The two women chattered, oblivious to Angel’s perplexed state. She stared in fascination, studying Miss Brisbee’s guest, looking for a hint of something familiar.

The older woman lifted her teacup, poised to drink from it when she caught Angel’s blatant scrutiny. She saw it then, the flash of a remarkable woman she once knew, a woman who stood up to a gunslinger without fear.
Was she going mad?
Angel swallowed, doing the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t go changing…” she began. The song left her mouth, wobbly and weak, through a sob that clogged her throat. How many times had she leaned against the piano and sung along with Miss Lillian as she played the song? How many times had she dreamt of meeting a man who could love so deeply?

The teacup slipped from the woman’s fingers, bounced off the table, and landed with a thud on Rosalee’s heavy wool hooked rug.

“Miss…Lillian?” The implications of what she was saying made her reticent to continue. But if they were true—memories of another time, another place flashed through her head—carrying buckets of water up the stairs to fill a bathtub, the smell of linens on washday, hanging clothes on the line and talking with…
Josie
. She knew a girl named Josie. The refined-looking woman reached for the cup, the plight of age causing her to struggle with bending. Angel dropped to her knee, picked up the cup and saucer, and handed them to her.

There was confusion etched on her wrinkled face, and then a glint of recognition. “Is that you, Angel Marie?” She looked at her with curious disbelief.

Tears began to blur her vision. She wasn’t mad. She didn’t understand many things, but at last she didn’t feel so terribly alone.

Miss Lillian reached up and touched Angel’s cheek with fingers bent with age. “How can it be? My sweet girl—after all this time?”

“Tell me you’re real.” Tears spilled over, running down her cheeks as she pulled the woman into her embrace. “Tell me I’m not dreaming this.” She breathed in the scent of Miss Lillian’s cologne, lavender and lemons, as though it were only yesterday. They parted, but gripped each other’s arms.

“How?” the woman uttered.

She shook her head. “I don’t remember everything yet. I remember taking piano lessons from a man who came to town. And….” She pulled out the necklace. “I recognized this in a memory I had. I was talking to Sheriff Jake while he twirled it in his hand.” Her voice quieted. “He was brokenhearted when you left.

Why’d you leave him like that?”

The old woman’s eyes widened. She took the heavy gem and stared at it as though it were a living, breathing thing. “Where did you get this?” She ignored her previous query.

“Lilly?” Miss Brisbee interrupted. “Would someone explain to me what’s going on?”

“Just a moment, Rosie.” Lillian turned to Angel. I need to know where you got this necklace.”

“From Shado.” She looked from one woman to the other. “He bought it with the dress. There was a slip inside the box listing the seller, Timeless Passion—

Burt Fesuvius, Purveyor of Time.”

Rosalee sat in stunned silence, hands clasped on her lap. She, herself, was walking through it moment-by-moment; afraid she’d awaken and discover it was only a dream.

“Burt.” Lillian spoke with tenderness in her voice. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in years. He must have known you were here.”

Angel frowned, thinking the old woman must be confused. “Who must have known I was here?” Shado had made it clear her whereabouts were being kept strictly confidential.

“Why, Burt, of course. Does this man—Shado—does he realize what it is?”

She shrugged. “He left before I woke this morning. I don’t know.”

The old woman smiled. “There’s good reason why you were brought here, my dear.”

That much she understood. “Yes, to find Billy, the man in the music we used to sing. Do you remember?”

“The memories have faded, my dear, but the necklace has rekindled what I once sought.” Lillian looked at her. “And Billy. Have you found him?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I was accidentally witness to a murder. A man hit me on the head, and I’ve only recently begun to regain some of my memories.”

She glanced at Rosalee. “The book you gave me about the Sweet Magnolia—”

“
Tales of the Sweet Magnolia
.” She chuckled quietly. “This is becoming quite interesting.”

“The passages seemed so real to me. I didn’t understand why. And then I found my name listed in the back of the book with the other residents of the house.” Angel looked at the woman who’d befriended her years before, or was it only a few days? “I don’t see how. It’s impossible. I haven’t aged a day.”

Lillian sighed and got a faraway look in her eye. “I used to think it was a dream, until Jake found me.”

Angel’s heart leapt. “Sheriff Jake found you? How?”

She looked at the gem. “He brought this back to me, and I remember him talking about a man he’d spoken to—someone by the name of Burt.”

“Is it magic, then?” She dropped her gaze to the necklace. “Does it have special powers enabling a person to travel from one place to another? Does this happen with great frequency these days? Is it possible for me to go back to the Magnolia, to my old life?”

Her old friend regarded her before she spoke. “For a time, Jake and I feared we would lose each other again. But we finally came to realize it wasn’t the necklace itself that held the magic.” She lifted her wrinkled hand to her chest. “It’s what was inside. Beyond the human eye, and perhaps we will never fully understand it. But once you find your heart’s desire, is it important to understand why or how it came to be, or if you even deserve such happiness? Or should we learn to accept with graciousness the precious gift given to us?” She curled the chain in her fist and held the gem to her breast. “Jake…you remember him as Sheriff Jake…and I were married for many years. There were difficulties, but he was my friend and lover, the breath of my soul. We were meant to be together, and not even time could separate such a love. Once we realized this, we didn’t need it any more, I was going to place it in the auction when the library closed. Jake must have found it and returned it to Burt who by then had opened an antique store not terribly far from here.”

“Timeless Passions,” Angel said quietly, still processing all she’d heard.

“I don’t know. Jake knew I was going to sell it. He didn’t want me to touch it again. Skeptical in some ways, perhaps, that we might lose one another again. He told me he’d returned it to Burt for safekeeping.” Her eyes glistened with the memory. “Somehow, Burt must have heard the secrets of your heart and quite probably those of your young man.”

“He isn’t… that is, we aren’t.”

“Do not underestimate the power of love, Angel,” Rosalee commented.

Though confused why she’d been brought here, Angel was relieved to hear Sheriff Jake and Miss Lillian were finally together. “And the sheriff? How is he now?”

She smiled and darted a glance at Miss Brisbee. “He spent his life as a detective. A good one. We had two children—a boy and a girl, named Nathanial and Ruby.”

Angel recognized the names immediately, staring at Miss Lillian in wonder.

She continued, “I always felt the names meant something, though by the time we had the children, our memories of the past had begun to seem like old photographs in a book instead of reality.” Miss Lillian kept a steady gaze on Angel. “You see, the longer you stay in one place, the place your heart truly calls home, the more those memories of your past life begin to fade.”

Angel shook her head, sensing she had no control and she was floating in time—floundering with no more notion of where she belonged than a man in the moon. “But how do I know what my heart wants? How do I know this is where