Sister Angel (4 page)

“Our daughter is in college,” Constance said, settling herself into a chair near Angel’s. “She wants to be a biologist. What will you major in?”

Angel continued to watch the show. “I don’t know.”

“That’s the best way to enter, I think. Leave it open until you’ve tried out various fields. Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t think it hurts to wait until you’re older. Have you always been afraid of cats?”

“I’m not afraid of cats.”

“Mechanical ones, I meant. It was rather cute, like a stuffed toy that can move.”

Angel pushed a button on the remote control, got a black-and-white movie with Myrna Loy.

“It really isn’t very different from the windup toys that kids play with when they’re young.”

Angel pushed the button again, then again.

“Actually, what you’re doing now with that control is pretty much how the cat works, I think. You give a signal and it does something that it’s been programmed to do.”

The stations were flicking past faster and faster.

“It wasn’t aiming at you, you know. You just happened to be closest to it.”

Flick, flick. They were back to the original game show. Angel turned up the volume.

“Angel, there are people who can help you. These things
don’t usually get better by themselves. You don’t have to be so afraid.”

Angel jumped up and glared at Constance. “Leave me alone! I’m not afraid of a stupid cat!” She ran from the room.

Gloomily, Constance turned off the set and followed the
girl. When she reached the foyer, it was in time to see Charlie leading Angel back into the house, his arm about her protectively.

“Take it easy,” he was saying. “No one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Come on, let’s have something to drink. Who was chasing you, anyway?”

“She wants to hurt me,” Angel said breathlessly, her face
pressed against his side. “She won’t leave me alone.”

“Who, honey? Just tell me who.”

Angel nodded at Constance, who was standing at the hallway entrance, and pointed. “Her,” she said.

When Charlie looked at Constance, his face was set in hard lines. This is how
they
must have felt, Constance thought distantly. By
they
, she meant the ones he interrogated, the ones he suspected, the ones he intended to stop one way or another, the ones he hated.

Before either could say anything, Amos came running down the stairs. “Time to go home, Sister Angel,” he said cheerfully. “Lessons to do. Sister Wanda is resting now. We’ll come back later.”

There was a glint in his eyes that looked like satisfaction,
or possibly even contempt.

In their room a few minutes later, Charlie told her what he had found out. “His name is Andrew Donovan, half a dozen pinches but never a conviction. Petty stuff. Con games, most of them, the chicken-drop switch, stuff like that. And for the last few years, he’s been with a carnival,
a magic act. Long black hair, full black beard. It played in
Bridgeport last summer, but no one would recognize him now.”

She shook her head. It made no sense at all. This was
not like any con game she had heard of. And why had he
warned her to get Charlie out of here?

“Don’t shake your head,” Charlie said brusquely. “It all fits. He killed Vernon, split, came back when things quieted
down. And now he’s working his way into the house. What
more could you ask for?”

She told him about the picture album. Vernon could have met him at the carnival. “But why did he kill Vernon? Petty con men don’t murder as a rule.”

“So Vernon found out something about him. What difference does it make? Even if he didn’t do it, he’s a con artist, and with the background of a magic show, mind reading and all, the rest of it’s easy. This is what Wanda needs to help her give him the bum’s rush.”

“She won’t be convinced.”

“I’ve got what they wanted. We’re finished here. I want you to take the car back home this afternoon. I’ll be along in a few days.”

He was looking out their window at the lake, his back to her. The rain had stopped and a feeble sun was lighting the
clouds that lingered.

“Charlie, this is what we have to talk about. What’s wrong with you? What’s happened to you?”

He looked at her with an expression so miserable that she wanted to go to him, hold him hard. “I don’t know. I have to be alone for a while. I have to be alone so I can think something through.”

“Vernon became obsessed with someone else all at once,” she said slowly. “I think that was the ghost he wanted to talk about that night. Who is it, Charlie?”

He had averted his face, did not answer.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“I’ll find her. That’s why I have to stay after you go home. I have to find her, find out how real this is, what I can do about it.” His voice was strained and harsh.

Like Vernon, she thought. Just like Vernon. “You didn’t get any sleep last night,” she said. “Why don’t you nap now before dinner?”

Outside their room, she looked up and down the hallway and said under her breath, “You can’t have him! Ghost, ghoul, whatever you are, you can’t have him!”

Gretchen met her in the lower hallway. “Telephone for Charlie. Is he in your room?”

“He’s sleeping. I’ll take it.” She took it in the living room.

“Constance? Hey, how’re you? It’s Tony.”

“Fine, Tony. What a nice surprise to have you here. How is Frances?” They chatted another moment or two before he came to the point.

“You want to give Charlie a message? It’s about that other set of prints on the glass. She’s Angela Schnabel, a runaway from Philadelphia juvenile court, but hell, she’s going to be eighteen in a few months, and she’s clean. No one’s going to haul her back now.”

“Juvenile court? For what?”

“Nothing. Abandoned by her mother. She was a ward of the court in a disturbed children’s home and split.”

She paced the living room for several minutes, then sat down and called Philadelphia information and got two numbers—one of a colleague who had worked with her several times and another of a child psychologist she knew by reputation.

At first, her friend protested that the information she wanted was not available. Constance talked hard for the next few minutes, hung up, called the child psychologist and talked even harder to her, then called her friend back.

“Dr. Walker will intercede for you,” she said forcefully.
“She has influence at the detention center. Just get over there, Vanessa, will you, for crying out loud?”

Vanessa grumbled, but she would do it and call back as soon as she had anything to tell.

Constance was still waiting when Gretchen joined her for
a drink. Close on her heels was Charlie, who looked as if he had not slept.

“Cheers,” Gretchen said, and upended her martini glass. “She’s giving us all the old heave-ho, I’m afraid. She’ll be down to tell us officially that we’re invited to leave at the
first opportunity. That cat/ghost act last night was the last
straw.”

“Amos called her Sister Wanda today. I was afraid he had won,” Constance said morosely.

“Maybe what I have to tell her will change her mind,” Charlie said.

“I doubt it.” Wanda entered the room. She looked poised and calm, as if making up her mind had been a panacea.
“Brother Amos already told me about his past. He went
through a conversion last fall as real as that which changed
the life of Saul of Tarsus.”

“You know about his little mind-reading act with the carnival?”

She nodded. “Everything. And he really does communi
cate in ways not available to the rest of us. He said Constance knows that now.” She looked inquiringly at Constance, who nodded.

“He knows things he shouldn’t.”

“See? I’ve invited him and Sister Angel to come stay
here, but not until my other guests have departed,” she said
without a trace of embarrassment. “They will join us tonight for a short while, then move in to keep me company tomorrow. Will that be convenient?”

Charlie poured a martini for her. She accepted it and
sank into one of the overstuffed chairs, picked up her cig
arettes, and lighted one. “He also said that you, Charlie, should leave here tonight. Whatever it was that haunted Vernon has now transferred its attention to you. You’re in danger.”

“Vernon hasn’t told you anything about that ghost yet?” Charlie’s voice held a trace of mockery and there was the
hard surface over his eyes that Constance had hoped would
never reappear.

“Not yet,” Wanda admitted. “But he will eventually. Last night was the first time he has shown such displeasure.
That was directed primarily at you, Charlie, because you’re
here under false pretenses. You’re the one who wanted to play with the cat, and you threaten Amos.”

Charlie laughed. “You told him about us?”

“No. I don’t break my word. I’ve told him nothing.” She stubbed out the cigarette and lighted another. “There’s no need to tell him anything. He knows.”

Why didn’t Vanessa call back? Constance looked again at her watch.

“Come down to my place in New York for just a few days,” Gretchen was urging Wanda. “There’s nothing you have to do here all that fast.”

“I can’t.”

Gretchen turned to Constance. “You aren’t even trying to
talk reason to her!”

Call, damn you, Constance thought at Vanessa in Philadelphia. “When do you expect Amos and Angel tonight?”

“Around nine-thirty. I asked him if he would drop in for just a few minutes. Maybe I won’t need a pill if he talks to me soon before I go to bed.”

When dinner was ready, they all poked at their food
without real interest. The call for Constance came midway
through the meal.

When she returned to the dining room, Wanda was re
garding Charlie. “That’s exactly how Vernon acted,” she said. “That same kind of absent look, pale, taut…”

Charlie stood up, stalked from the room, with Constance right behind him.

She nearly pushed him into the television room and closed the door. It was almost nine-thirty.

“I know who it is,” Charlie said grimly. “She’s scared to
death. She needs help desperately.”

“I know she does. There’s no time now, Charlie. Please trust me. Go along with me for the next hour. Whatever you start to think, please trust me!”

“If you do anything to hurt her…”

“You know I won’t hurt her.”

He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “What are you up to? Who called?”

“I can’t tell you. You’re too open to her.”

“We shouldn’t have come here. We can leave now, forget
all this. Maybe that’s what we should do, just get the hell out of here.”

“We can’t. You can’t. It’s too late for that.” She looked at her watch. “It’s time. He’ll go upstairs with Wanda. Angel is going to have dessert with us. Let’s go back now. And, Charlie, don’t interfere. Promise!”

He shook his head. “I can’t promise that.”

“All right. But you do trust me, you know. You can’t stop trusting me now.”

Almost all day,
she
had been with him, gone briefly now
and again, but then back even stronger—whispering in his
ear, sitting on his lap, lying with him, moving with him, caressing him with her warm hands that were touches of elec
tricity. When he paused at the dining room door, she was
seated at the table with cake before her, her fork halted in
midair. She looked directly at him. He saw her across the room and he felt her in his arms, her warm breath on his
neck, her laughter in his ear. Her incredible violet eyes, he
thought, unable to look away until she lowered her gaze.
Then he moved, resumed his seat, stared at her. Wanda had
left.

“Good evening, Angel,” Constance said briskly. “It’s time that we all began telling the truth around here, don’t you think? First of all, Charlie is a detective. He used to work for the police in New York; now he’s freelance.”

He started to rise, relaxed again.
She
didn’t care. In his mind, he was holding her, the way he had held her when
the cat moved, hard, tightly, securely, with her face pressed
against him.

Gretchen was regarding Constance as if she had gone mad.

“We were hired,” Constance went on, very businesslike,
almost brusque in her speech, “to investigate Amos and his
claim that there are ghosts in this house.”

Charlie closed his eyes. Again it was all right. He moved in a slow waltz with her, both of them naked, warm against each other. If he looked at Constance, he would see an old, rather ugly woman, he knew. He did not want to see
that. He kept his eyes closed and felt the lithe body against
him.