Saint Just removed his quizzing glass, stuck it in his pocket. «Don't look so sad, Left-tenant . We are not passing out of your life forever. It is a visit only.»
Sterling, who had been helping Socks load luggage into the SUV, said, «I'm so looking forward to flight. Another new adventure.»
Saint Just counted to three before Wendell picked up on Sterling's verbal slip and asked, «New? But you flew over here, right?»
Maggie quickly stepped in front of Sterling. «Boat. They came by boat.» She spread her arms. «Big boat.»
«Oh, I don't think so, Maggie,» Sterling, always truth-ful, if not always astute, said, poking his head out from behind her. «I don't think I like boats. Socks took me on a boat tour around Manhattan, and I was quite queasy by the time we were done.»
«But, then, how did you—?»
«I believe that's obvious. We walked,» Saint Just slipped in quickly. «Steve, dear friend, would you be so kind as to move away from the car door, so that Sterling may settle himself. You do wish to settle yourself, don't you, Sterling?»
«Um… I might want to go upstairs one last time. Maggie tells me that with all the increased traffic that is prevalent around American holidays, and all of that, it could be several hours before we reach her parents' home, and I…»
«Yes, thank you, Sterling. I believe we understand,» Saint Just said. Socks told him he could use the restroom in the lobby, and Sterling ran back into the building. «How lovely,» Saint Just went on, «now you two can prolong your farewells. Will you kiss her again, Wendell? It's very affecting to observe.»
«Alex, knock it off,» Maggie said in a near-growl, then took hold of Wendell's arm at the elbow and steered him a good twenty paces down the sidewalk.
«You're really cruising for a bruising, you know that?» Socks said, shaking his head. «That guy carries a gold shield and a gun.»
«Yes, I tremble in my boots just thinking about that. Truthfully, Socks, have you ever seen such an ineffectual lover?»
«And that pisses you off?»
«On the contrary. It pleases me to the top of my bent— that's the highest branch of a tree, Socks, figuratively. And it never hurts to remind Maggie of that fact—of both of those facts. Ah, here's Sterling again, and all zipped and buttoned, which can only be considered fortunate for the ladies, as well as for the rest of us. Socks, good friend, take care, and feel free to mount a raid on the kitchen pantry when you sneak in to watch movies on my plasma television machine.»
«I wasn't going to… I wouldn't do that. Ah, damn, Alex—how did you know?»
«He knows everything,» Sterling said as he opened the back door and climbed onto the high seat. «Don't you, Saint Just?»
«I do my possible, yes, thank you. Socks, you'll assist Maggie into the vehicle, if you please?» Saint Just then climbed into the front passenger seat, carefully belting himself in without wrinkling his sport coat. He did not much care for handing the reins to Maggie, and had already made a mental note to pursue a license to drive vehicles. «I may not know everything, but I know Maggie is dreading this visit with her family more than an appointment with a tooth drawer. It is our duty, Sterling, to keep her in good spirits and, most probably, away from sharp, pointed objects. Are you up to the task?»
«You know I'll offer myself as a supporting prop, and all of that. But do you really think—?»
The driver-side door opened, then slammed. «Let's get this dog and pony show on the road, okay?» Maggie said, holding the key to the right too long, so that the ignition screamed. «Oh, yeah, this is going to be a real fun trip.»
«As long as you're happy, my dear.» Saint Just smiled as Sterling whimpered in the backseat.
It wasn't, Maggie knew, that you physically couldn't go home again. It was that sometimes you just didn't want to, at least not to the Kelly Family home. The closer the SUV got to Ocean City, the tighter the knot in Maggie's stomach became and the more her head pounded.
Not that her passengers noticed. Sterling was happily watching Shrek on the pull-down screen for the backseat, and Saint Just had, probably only to spite her, put on earphones and was listening to the soundtrack from the musical Jekyll and Hyde , saying he might as well have his melodrama with violin accompaniment.
Which had been a crack at her lousy mood.
«Okay, heads up,» she said, giving Saint Just a poke in the ribs. «I've got to get around this circle, so you look right and I'll look left. Sterling—cross your fingers.»
Ignoring the honking horn behind her, Maggie nervously eased her way into one of New Jersey's infamous traffic circles, one foot poised over the brake, then gunned it when Saint Just gave her the all clear.
«Very neatly executed, my dear, even if that truck driver did seem to have taken exception,» Saint Just said, removing the headphones. «By that pinched white line around your lovely mouth, may I assume we're very nearly at our destination?»
The Ninth Street bridge was just ahead of them now, the bridge that would take them onto the island and to her doom. Hey, if Saint Just wanted melodramatic, she'd give him melodramatic. «Okay, now listen up. We're late—»
«Yes. I keep wondering, as you've made the journey from Manhattan to Ocean City in the past, how you could possibly have taken three incorrect turns.»
«Don't push, Alex. I've got a lot on my mind. We're late, so that means everyone else is already there. That means Erin, along with her husband, Gavin the Neurosurgeon, all praise Gavin. Maureen lives here, so we know she's already at the house, probably kissing Mom's backside and scoring Brownie points, as usual. Tate? God knows. If there's still a red carpet on the front walk, he hasn't shown up yet.»
«Sibling affection is so moving, isn't it, Sterling?» Saint Just drawled, extracting his quizzing glass from his pocket and draping the black grosgrain ribbon around his neck. «But to recap? Erin is the oldest, Tate is the only son, and Maureen is the baby of the family. Leaving you… ?»
«Can we all say middle-child syndrome?» Maggie said, turning right onto Wesley Avenue. «Doctor Bob says that's what made me an overachiever, so I really shouldn't complain. Now, I'll introduce my parents as Alicia and Evan, but don't call them that, not unless they ask you to. Call them Mr. and Mrs. Kelly. And maybe bow.»
«Alicia Tate Evans, your very first nom de plume, Tate being your mother's maiden name, as I recall. Attempting to curry favor, were you?»
Maggie wanted to be angry, but she was too truthful to keep from smiling. «You got it, ace. And you'll be happy to know that grand gesture went over like a lead balloon. How dare I put their names on the covers of unforgiveable smut? To tell you the truth, I was kind of relieved when my historical-romance career went belly-up and I could pick another name.»
«One with lots of Os, because Os look good on a book cover. Yes, I remember. And you have my sympathy, Maggie, truly you do, but it's for only three days. Surely you can manage three days. And your parents will be just as happy to see our backs, I'm sure. As the esteemed Guido Cavalcanti wrote, and as you had me repeat in one of our books, 'A guest, like a fish, has an unpleasant odor after three days.' «
«Oh, good, now I'm a flounder. Thanks, Alex.» She pulled the SUV toward the curb in front of a large, three-storied, apricot-colored stucco beach house on the land side of the beach-front street. «Here we are. Home sweet home, at least for the last five years. Tate bought it for them.»
«How generous of him.»
«Oh, don't worry, the deed's in his name. But, yeah, it was a nice thing to do. I shouldn't always look for ulterior motives.» Maggie, with some reluctance, turned off the ignition. «One more time—you're friends of mine from England. You don't live in my same building, you never lived in my condo, and we are not romantically involved. Clear?»
«How will you explain the coincidence of our names?»
«I won't have to. Nobody in my family reads my books. Last time I sent Mom one, she sent it back, said the family is still waiting for me to write a real book.» She grinned a
t Saint Just. «So they won't know you from spit. How's that for a shot in your consequence, my lord?»
Maggie had been both right and wrong about her family. Maureen was most certainly a sycophant, embarrassingly eager to please, but Erin and her neurosurgeon husband had opted at the last minute for Thanksgiving in the Bahamas, a happy event that allowed Saint Just and Sterling to each have his own bedroom for the duration.
Tate, Saint Just had decided, was that most objectionable of creatures: stupefyingly boring. He spent most of his time with his cell-phone earpiece attached to his head and the rest of his time making snide remarks about effete, East Coast, left-wing liberals.
Which meant that Maggie spent a lot of her time on the front porch, with her father, as the woman seemed to have morphed into a timid mouse the moment they'd crossed the threshold Wednesday afternoon.
Saint Just, his hands thrust deep in his slacks pockets, walked the beach, his head down, reliving the high spots— actually the low points—of the past three days.
Maggie's opening comment, very badly timed, inquiring whether there was a wake going on in the house, led to Maureen dragging her from table to table, explaining that the multitude of flowers had all come from Tate: «He told Mom he has so much to be thankful for. Isn't that sweet? Look, this one's an actual magnolia tree. Isn't that something?»
Maggie's floral offering, ordered via the Internet, had been at last tracked down, located in the second-floor guest bathroom.
That had been the beginning, but there seemed still to be enough room left to go downhill from there. Saint Just shook his head, remembering…
They were giants, the Kellys were, or at least Tate and Maureen were. Upon meeting them, Saint Just had for a moment thought he might be able to comfort Maggie with the idea she may have been a changling. But that thought had evaporated when the patriarch of the clan, Evan Kelly, entered the room; not very tall, rather thin, and with a rather haunted look about him, he appeared much like a puppy grown used to daily beatings.
And then there was Mrs. Kelly, mother to these giants and to Maggie.
Saint Just heard her. One was always hearing Mrs. Kelly. One simply didn't see her, which had been made clear by the bellow from the first-floor master bedroom just as Maureen was reciting the affecting contents of Tate's card from the potted magnolia tree in the dining room.
«Margaret? Is that you, Margaret? About time you showed up! And look what you're responsible for this time. Come here, look! Last-minute guests. How could you just spring them on me like that? I told your father you always find a way to make a shambles of everything, and you've done it again. I had to put the extra leaf in the table, for your friends , and now my back's gone out, and I'm stuck in this bed like some invalid. Come in here! Be some use for a change. Help me to the bathroom.»
It had been amazing, and quite the eye-opener, to watch as both Maggie and her father reacted to the woman's voice. They seemed to shrink in place, the pair of them.
Maggie had headed down the hallway, and Saint Just had barely been able to hear her mumbled greeting. He did, however, have very little difficulty hearing Mrs. Kelly say, «My God, Margaret, you're fat . How could you let yourself go like that?»
Nearly every hour on the hour, sometimes again on the half hour, Alicia Kelly would bellow, and someone would pay the price. Maureen seemed to do so gladly, with a smile that possibly owed something to the vial of small pink pills she kept in her pocket, and Tate was somehow excused.
But Maggie and her father were very definitely the woman's main whipping boys.
And it explained so much. Why Maggie backed away from loud voices, angry confrontations, and people who presented themselves as so very sure of themselves. Why she was so sure she was always in the wrong. Why physically imposing or large people seemed to turn her in on herself, leach all the spirit out of her. Why she'd been visiting Doctor Bob once a week for nearly five years, with no end in sight.
Obviously, the famous Doctor Bob hadn't been able to rid Maggie of her childhood memories, or trauma, or whatever people like Doctor Bob called such things, leaving it up to Saint Just to put some starch into the poor girl's backbone.
He had no idea how to accomplish that feat, however.
«Alex! Wait up!»
Saint Just halted, turned to see Maggie running across the sand, her hair and skirt blowing in the wind, her sea-green cashmere sweater hugging her lithe curves, her feet bare on the cold sand. Yes, she had become slightly more rounded in the past six weeks, but he liked her with fewer sharp edges. Her dark copper, chin-length hair, with its exquisite highlights, begged to be touched.
And happiness, lately so lacking in her Irish green eyes, shone from her now.
He could pen an ode to her beauty. She was fresh and sparkling, totally unaffected, and unaware of her impact on the male of the species. Not that terribly small, but in this land of Kelly Giants, a veritable Pocket Venus.
«Maggie,» he said as she fell into step beside him. «Is your presence here in the way of a companionable stroll with a friend, or am I serving as a bolt-hole?»
«Both, I guess. Dad and I had another nice talk earlier— I actually feel like I'm starting to know him a little bit. He's afraid of Mom. He didn't say it, but he is. And yet, he loves her very much. Strange,» she said, pushing her hair out of her face as she smiled up at him. «Oh, and I just told Tate to shove it.»
«I beg your pardon?»
«I told him off, Alex,» she said, dancing ahead of him into the last little wavelet to roll up onto the beach. «Oh, cold! And I'm so hot .» A shoe in each hand, she spun around in a circle, her head back, spinning round and round, until she lost her balance, and Saint Just caught her.
«I'd say you were a tad in your altitudes, except that it hasn't quite gone noon and you rarely drink.»
«I'm drunk on life, Alex! I told him off !»
«Really. And what, pray tell, prompted this confrontation?»
She sobered and stepped away from him. «You did, Alex. I couldn't stand the look in your eyes every time Mom yelled and I went running like some Pavlov dog. And I could see that muscle working in your jaw whenever Tate started on one of his damn lectures. I'd had enough. I mean, not coming home? Avoiding them? That's not the answer. I had something to say, and I finally said it. I'm a big girl now, all grown up, and I've got to stop reacting like some intimidated child.»
«Remarkable,» Saint Just said, longing to take her in his arms. She looked so free , so very liberated. He'd been very worried she'd suffer a backward slide, reach for the solace of Dame Nicotine while upset, but she hadn't. She'd gone on the offensive. «Would that I could have been there, my dear.»
«No, no. This one I had to do on my own.» She narrowed her eyes. «And I was brilliant . Oh, yes. B-r-i-double-l- brilliant! I tell you, I sliced him into a million pieces, and he's so thick he didn't even realize it until he tried to walk and came apart like a string of paper dolls. I think I want to go back, take on Maureen, tell her it's time she stopped being a mouse and got a life. You know, while I'm on a roll.»
«Oh, I really don't think so,» Saint Just said, pulling her arm through his and heading them both off down the beach. «One victory a day should be sufficient. And my congratulations. Your brother is a bit of a twit. Not enough to expend my energy on, but certainly no one who should be able to cow my own dear Maggie.»
«And I was good,'» Maggie said, leaning her head against his shoulder. Then, suddenly, she sobered, this being-high-on-life business obviously a tad transitory. «Oh, boy, now I've got to go back, and Maureen will have run tattling to Mom, and all hell's going to break loose. Quick, drown me.»
«I have a better suggestion, if you don't mind. You and Sterling and I could drive up the coast, to Atlantic City. I understand the trip is no more than eight miles and there are baccarat tables in every casino. Much akin to faro, I believe, or at least close enough as makes no matter.»
And that's how it came to pass that after turning in the
rental SUV at Philadelphia International Airport, Saint Just embarked upon his first airplane ride with a six-figure cashier's check tucked in his pocket.
He left behind a small thank-you gift for his hostess, a five-carat diamond tennis braclet hidden inside a long velvet box tied with a silver ribbon.
It was silly, a petty revenge, but he doubted that Tate's floral excess looked quite so good to Mrs. Kelly anymore. Of course, if Maggie ever found out he'd put her name on the card, the entire world would not be large enough for him to hide in—but as duels were frowned upon, and punching the arrogant fool's lights out would only upset everyone needlessly, thoroughly trumping the man's magnolia would have to suffice.
We're on a booh, we're on a hook. The plane goes up, the hook comes out, it attaches to the line, and we're on the hook until we land. It's just a big bus, no, an old trolley car. And we're on a hook…
«Maggie? Do you intend to release that death grip you have on the arms of your seat and open your eyes? We've been in the air for at least five hours. I don't think anything untoward is going to happen.»
«Don't bother me, Alex, I'm meditating,» she said, opening her eyes only slightly, not moving her head as she shifted her gaze toward him. «And don't look out there. I never look out there. If I look out, and down, then the plane will drop. I'm holding this thing up with sheer willpower, and you should be damn grateful. Stop it! How can you keep looking out there?»
«It's elementary, actually. I turn my head toward the window, and I look . But you're correct. There's nothing much in the way of a view, save the clouds below us. I once partook in a balloon ascension in Hyde Park, as you know, but that was tame indeed when compared to modern jet flight.»
He leaned across her and spoke to Sterling, whose seat was on the other side of the aisle. «Enjoying yourself, Sterling?»
Sterling's grin was heartwarmingly naive, in Maggie's opinion, clearly that of a man who didn't understand the dangers of flight. «Oh, yes, Saint Just. Have you made use of the facilities? You really should. Completely fascinating… although one does wonder where everything, um, goes .»
High Heels and Homicide mkm-4 Page 4