Whiskey Island (38 page)

Since Niccolo had entered her life, that had changed. And he’d frightened her. She knew that, too, although admitting it galled her. She was filled with courage on every other front, but not this one. She was stuck with loving Casey and Peggy, and to a lesser degree the rest of the Donaghue clan. That couldn’t be helped. But loving a man who could love her back? That was a choice.

She was dangerously close to obsessing about Niccolo, and as she took her coffee cup into the kitchen, she realized she had to go home. She dressed for the weather and went out to start Charity.

She was driving down Niccolo’s street before she realized she’d made her choice, after all.

She parked in front of his house, but before she could get out, the door of the house to the west of his opened and Niccolo stepped out. A woman with a stiff pyramid of blond hair and a black spandex bodysuit followed as far as the porch, hugging her well-endowed figure against the cold.

Niccolo leaned against the woman’s porch rail, deep in conversation. The porch was nothing more than a narrow, tacked-on shelter from the snow, and the woman stood close enough that the warm fog of her breath made a wreath around his head.

The conversation went on long enough that the woman began to hop from one foot to the other to stay warm. Niccolo backed away at last and descended the steps, turning for a brief wave before he started home. Megan knew the exact instant when he caught sight of Charity. His steps slowed, and some fraction of a smile lit his face before it died.

His neighbor had disappeared inside by the time Megan got out of the car. She didn’t mince words. “I thought I’d come for the rest of our conversation. Bad time?”

“My phone went dead. I was trying to call you from Cindy’s house.”

Megan felt a silly sort of relief. “You must have just missed me. I was on my way here.”

“It worked out. She just tried to sell me her house.”

Megan’s gaze flicked back to the house in question. It was marred by the dilapidated porch, gray asbestos shingles and broken windows patched with duct tape. At first glance it didn’t offer much more than four-foot icicles dripping from the eaves and twenty-foot evergreens that would never be green again.

“Italianate,” he said, before she could. “Not that anyone could tell at a glance. The inside’s been divided and subdivided with cheap paneling, but the bones are good. Peel off the shingles, take down the porch, and who knows what’s waiting out here?”

“You’re not considering it?”

“Yeah, I am.” He sounded surprised. “It’s the eyesore on this block. If I fix it up, my house is worth more. And I have a houseful of kids who are going to be at loose ends pretty soon. Here’s a whole new project to tackle.”

“Of course, if you buy it, the neighbor has to move….”

“One way or the other she’s going to Vegas. She wants to be a showgirl.”

“Will she get a job?”

“She’ll get a job, all right. I’m not making any bets about what kind.”

Megan was growing cold, and he hadn’t invited her inside. “What did you want to tell me, Nick?”

“Why don’t you come in? We can talk better in the kitchen.”

She wanted to see what he’d done since the last time she was here, and she knew, from the way he started up his walk without waiting for an answer, that his explanation was going to take some time.

Inside, she was greeted by the sharp tang of fresh paint and the blare of a radio. The entryway was almost finished now, requiring a coat of paint over the primer, and an area rug, but little more. She followed him through the hall, noting how much had been accomplished. He stopped, opened a door and poked his head inside the room. The music got instantly louder. “Say hello to Megan, boys.”

She heard a shouted chorus of voices, and she poked her head in beside Niccolo’s. The room was a startling green, a bold choice for a small space, but lovely nonetheless. She said hello to the boys she knew and got a shouted introduction to Pete. They shouted a few more pleasantries, then Niccolo edged her back and closed the door again.

She waved her hand in front of her face. “The paint fumes will kill them.”

“They have all the windows half-open. You didn’t notice? Given the choice between freezing and turning down the music, they chose the cold. I’ll close up when they’re gone or the paint will never dry.”

She followed him into the kitchen. He was dressed in paint-spattered jeans and one of a seemingly inexhaustible number of plain white T-shirts under unbuttoned plaid flannel.

He looked terrific. When they weren’t together, she forgot how appealing he was. She forgot, too, how hard it was to ignore that appeal, how connected it was to some part of her that had, until now, seemed unimportant.

“Coffee?” He was making it as he asked.

An answer wasn’t needed. He worked in silence, and she let him. He knew why she was here, and she could wait.

Minutes later she had a steaming cup of cappuccino in front of her. She tried it without sugar and found it surprisingly palatable. He settled across the table from her with his espresso.

“How have you been?” he asked.

She shrugged. It seemed answer enough. “Did you hear something new about Rooney?”

“I went back to the place I took you to. There was a man there, and we had a conversation. I think he might well be your father.”

She digested that, wondering exactly how she was supposed to feel. “Can you describe him?”

“Not very well. He looked to be in his sixties. He was shrouded in layers of clothing. Unkempt, dirty, but clean shaven. Living a hermit’s life extinguishes everything that makes a man unique.”

She listened as he continued, recounting the conversation. “I think he only shows himself when it’s cloudy,” Niccolo finished. “He claimed that the stars watch and listen, and he claims he’s protecting something from, or maybe
for,
them.”

“But he answered to Rooney?”

“He turned when I said his name, but when I asked him, he said he had no name, that the stars had taken it away.”

“Crazy as a loon.” It didn’t sound as casual as she’d hoped it might. She heard something almost like tears forming at the edges of each word. She cleared her throat. “Did he limp, Nick? When he walked away?”

He frowned. “Yes, he did. I think he was wearing overshoes, or something similar, and I put it off to them not fitting properly.”

“Rooney was in a car accident before he married my mother, and one leg was never quite right. The limp got worse as he got older. Not bad enough to keep him from getting around, just enough to be noticeable.”

“He told me he had hidden the things I’d found. The snapshot of you and your sisters, the drawing.”

“It’s probably him,” she conceded.

“I think we can go down there on the next cloudy night and have a chance of finding him. I’m going to take supplies and leave them, even if I don’t see him.” He paused. “I think it’s going to be cloudy tonight.”

“You already have things for him?”

“I’ve packed up two boxes.”

“If he was a dog, we could call the Animal Protection League and ask them to rescue him. Why isn’t there a Human Protection League?”

“I don’t know exactly how to put this, but it seems to me your father’s a man with a mission. He’s there for a reason, and he would be distraught if someone just hauled him away.”

“Surely you’re not saying he’s in his right mind and knows what’s best?”

He cupped his espresso in his large hands, as if the tiny cup could warm him. “Megan, this isn’t an easy situation with easy answers. It’s a tug of war between your father’s right to live the life he chooses and society’s responsibility to protect its weakest citizens. The best solution would be to convince Rooney to come out of the cold on his own.”

“Use logic on a man who thinks the stars are watching his every move?”

“We don’t know if it will work until we give it a real try. But jumping him and dragging him off to a hospital for treatment probably isn’t even a legal option.”

She remembered the dinner conversation with Jon and silently conceded the point.

“I know you’re upset. You have a right to be.” He paused. “It would be easier just to send someone with experience to deal with him.”

“Do you think that’s what this is about? That I don’t care enough about my own father, that I want to wash my hands of the whole situation?” The tears were gone, replaced by a fresh spurt of anger.

“Yes. I think that’s part of what this is about.”

She opened her mouth to deny it but couldn’t.

“I also think it’s a very normal, very human response,” he said gently. “It’s another burden. You’ve already carried more than your share, and most of them were heaped on you by Rooney. So if you’re resentful that he’s back, who could blame you?”

“I could.” She swallowed, and the anger disappeared. “I should be a better person.”

“Shouldn’t we all.”

He was being kind, and somehow that made it worse. “Is this where you absolve me of my sins and tell me God forgives me?”

“No, this is where you stop confusing my concern for you with what I used to do. And this is where you decide whether you’re going to let me be part of this struggle over Rooney or tell me to get lost. Because I’m willing to do either.”

She fell silent, ashamed and raw. She wanted his arms around her, and she wanted to shove him away. He knew it, and he was giving her the choice. “Don’t you want to get lost?” she asked at last. “Because if you do, I don’t blame you. I’ve been awful to you, Nick. I’m afraid.”

“I know. So am I. I spent years training for everything but this.”

Suddenly they were no longer talking about Rooney. They were talking about them. Together. And she didn’t want to pretend she didn’t understand. She looked down at the table. “I’m no good at relationships. I don’t even want to be.”

“Yes, you are. You have a host of people who adore you.”

“That’s because I take care of them. How could they not love me? But you don’t need anybody to take care of you.”

“Good thing. You’ve done enough of it. You’re about to break apart under the load. Let me help you take care of your father.”

“You’ve taken care of too many people.”

“We’ve both done it alone until now. Maybe it’s time that changed.”

She hadn’t been looking at him. Now she did. The tone of their conversation had been subdued, almost polite. She saw what his voice hadn’t shown her. She thought that she had walked the extra mile to reach this place, but she saw how far he’d had to come to meet her.

“I don’t come with a guarantee.” She stretched out her hand, stroking the back of his with her fingertips. “I’m not sure what I want, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be sure how to get it.”

“I’m just asking you not to shut me out because you’re afraid. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

He smiled, a slow, heart-stopping smile. “Do you think you have a corner on confusion?”

She was poised to answer when a telephone rang. For a moment she couldn’t figure out why the ringing sounded so close, then she realized it was coming from her coat pocket. “I’m sorry.” She pulled out her cell phone and extended the antenna.

He sat back in his chair. “If I’d had one of those, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

She smiled. She wasn’t smiling by the time she hung up. “That was Casey.”

“Bad news?” He’d obviously read it in her expression.

“She was at the park with Jon when he got a call. They’ve found the body of a man out on Whiskey Island, about half a mile from the construction site where they’ve been having problems. From the way he’s dressed and his belongings, the police are guessing he was homeless. Casey’s afraid it might be Rooney.”

24

C
asey had taken Ashley back to the saloon, but Jon was at the site where the body had been found when Megan and Niccolo arrived. Niccolo had insisted on coming, since he’d recently seen the man they thought might be Rooney and could at least make that identification.

Whether Megan might be able to identify her father was questionable. Even if the years had been kind to him, he would not be the man she remembered. And it was unlikely the years had been kind.

Niccolo parked where Jon had told him to and got out to open Megan’s door. By the time he rounded the car she was already heading toward two police officers huddled at the edge of a lunar wasteland of scraped earth and snowcapped ore hills. When they saw Niccolo and Megan, one officer, the taller of the two, approached them.

“Police business. You need to move on.”

“Jon Kovats asked us to come,” Megan said. “The man you found might be my father.”

The cop’s engraved scowl deepened, as if he disapproved but knew better than to protest. He sighed and pointed around the nearest hill. “That way. And it’s not pretty. You sure you want to do this right here?”

“I’m sure.”

He stepped aside, and Niccolo took Megan’s arm. “He’s right, you know,” he said when they were out of earshot. “You could do this later at the morgue.”

“Why do people think death is easier if a body’s lying on clean white sheets?”

“It’s more that you’d have time to prepare yourself.”

“And to worry.”

He was just as glad to get this over with, too. He squeezed her arm. “Let me have a look first.”

“We’ll do it together.”

He supposed that was all the compromise he would get. He wondered if, somewhere deep inside, Megan hoped this would be Rooney, that the mystery would finally be solved and her father could be put to rest. If she didn’t, she wasn’t human.

They turned just past the hill and started toward a group of people, most of them in police uniform. Jon saw them coming and peeled off from the cluster, starting forward to intercept them.

“You’re sure you’re up to this, Megan?” he asked without preliminary.

“I am.”

Niccolo didn’t release her arm. There was no way he was going to let her do this alone. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“From what we know, nothing sinister. We’ll have more information after an autopsy, but there’s no reason to suspect he died of anything except natural causes. It might have been a heart attack or stroke, or maybe the poor guy just had too much to drink, fell asleep and froze to death.”