What she wanted to do was climb into the bed with him, rest her head on his chest, and feel the reassuring aliveness of him. Instead, she glanced at the shriveled man in the bed next to his and then quietly pulled the curtain closed for some modicum of privacy. As she turned back to Charlie, he opened his eyes, gazing directly at her like he’d known she was there the whole time. He smiled at her, his lips slightly lopsided. There was a bright purple bruise on his left temple that would turn nasty in the next few days, but beyond that, he looked unhurt.
“I’m so glad you’re all right!” she blurted out, her voice sounding strange and high-pitched. For just a moment she thought she might cry out of sheer relief. She rushed to the bed and kissed Charlie as passionately yet delicately as possible, wary of his injury and everything he’d been through in the past twenty-four hours.
He groaned in pain anyway.
“Sorry,” she said, her fingertips hovering over his temple before lowering to touch his unblemished cheek.
He smiled and winced slightly, closing his eyes briefly before saying, “No, it’s okay. I appreciate the enthusiasm.”
Vivian blushed and straightened up. She never lacked for enthusiasm. “Are you really all right?” she asked. She didn’t like seeing him this way, so helpless.
“Well, I have a splitting headache, but the doctor tells me I’ll live,” he said, his deep voice husky from the gas inhalation.
“Thank God.” Vivian sighed, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, he was frowning at her in that familiar way.
“You didn’t listen to me, Viv,” he said.
Vivian blinked.
“I told you to stay home yesterday,” he said, his voice stern. “And you went to the station anyway.”
“Yes, well, I… They needed me,” Vivian sputtered, feeling guilty at how inane that sounded. She’d put herself in such danger for the sake of her silly career. Flustered, she sat in the chair by Charlie’s bed and tugged at one of her gloves. She winced as she heard the fabric tear along one of the fragile seams.
“Thank you,” he said in a voice almost too low for her to hear.
Vivian looked up, confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Thank you for being stubborn and contrary and self-absorbed…and for saving my life,” he answered. He closed his bloodshot eyes briefly, and then they opened and fixed on hers.
Vivian opened her mouth to reply, but her throat felt tight.
“I… Well, you’re welcome,” she said finally, the words completely inadequate. She waved one hand dismissively. “I don’t even want to think about what might have happened if I…”
“What did happen exactly?” he asked, his brow furrowed over his dark blond eyebrows. “I’m a little cloudy on the details of my near demise.”
“The police haven’t told you?”
“Just bits and pieces,” he said. “And frankly, what they did tell me doesn’t make much sense.”
“Well,” Vivian started and then realized she didn’t really know how to begin. It was still a muddle in her own mind. “It was that note you got at the house yesterday that started everything, wasn’t it?”
“The one that arrived after you nearly clocked me with the vase of flowers, you mean,” Charlie said, one corner of his mouth curling. “Yes, it said that Mr. Hart wanted to see me in my office and that I should tell no one.”
“But that message wasn’t really from Mr. Hart. It was from Peggy.”
Charlie touched his forehead lightly with the tips of his fingers and winced. “I went to my office and waited, but Mr. Hart didn’t show.” Disappointment showed on his handsome face for an instant and then was gone. “There was a folder on my desk. My folder from the orphanage…the one Sister Bernadine had told me was burned in that fire. I started to leaf through it, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital.”
“Peggy was waiting for you in your office. She knocked you out and opened the gas line,” Vivian said. “And if she hadn’t been so proud to tell me about it afterward, you would have…well, you would have…” She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “She left a fake suicide note with you, Charlie. It said you had killed Marjorie. She wanted to pin the whole thing on you.”
“How do you know all this?”
Vivian bowed her head. “Peggy told me.”
“She told you?”
Vivian nodded. “After you left yesterday afternoon, Peggy called me to fill in last minute on Murder & Mayhem. I know you told me to stay at home, but she told me Joe McGreevey was frantic and that he asked for me specifically. You don’t refuse Joe McGreevey,” Vivian said with an apologetic shrug.
“And you never turn down an opportunity to make your mark,” Charlie said, crossing his arms.
Vivian smiled wanly. “Yes, and Peggy knew that too,” she said. “I’m fairly certain now, of course, that Peggy lured me to the station to keep me from interfering in her real plan.”
“Of offing me,” he said.
Vivian swallowed and nodded. She thought of Peggy’s secondary goal of getting Vivian to spar with Frances. She felt her color begin to rise at the very idea and decided that was a detail Charlie didn’t need to know—not now anyway.
“I went to Mr. Hart’s office before the show and found him there alone. He was drunk and rambling on about Orson Welles and his own sick wife and how awful he felt about what he’d done to Marjorie so long ago…”
Charlie blanched and turned his face to the window.
“He called her Effie,” Vivian continued. “What he’d done to Effie… How he’d loved her and thought he’d taken care of everything. I didn’t make the connection immediately, but that was the name in the Bible in Marjorie’s apartment: Euphemia Juergens. Marjorie had been Effie Juergens.”
Charlie’s fixed his gaze on the window. “How did you see that?”
Vivian glanced down at her hands. “I took it after you left her bedroom. The look on your face told me there was something important about it.”
Charlie stared at her for a long moment and then smiled wryly. “You really aren’t the flibbertigibbet I thought you were.” But then the smile faded, and his attention shifted back to the grime-smeared window. “And Effie, as we both know now, was the woman who gave birth to me. I had seen the name in the files in Mr. Hart’s home study a few weeks ago. It was the same file I found on my desk yesterday. Evidently, Peggy had seen that file too and had connected the dots long before I had. I didn’t connect the name with Marjorie until I found that Bible in her apartment.”
“You’ve been to Mr. Hart’s home? Seen his files?” Vivian asked.
Charlie shrugged. “I snooped around.”
Vivian placed her hand lightly on top of Charlie’s. “So you’ve known since we were in her apartment that Marjorie was your mother?” she asked quietly.
Charlie nodded.
“You could’ve told me.”
“It wasn’t related to your threatening letters. Well, I didn’t think it was related.”
Vivian felt a stab of shame. None of this had ever been about her.
“You could’ve told me anyway.” She paused. “So then you knew this whole time that Mr. Hart was your father?”
“I started digging into my adoption after my mother died a few years ago. I’d known I was adopted, of course, but I knew it would have hurt her for me to be so interested in finding a birth mother that hadn’t wanted me—you know, when she so obviously had. I’ve been to the foundling home maybe a dozen times since then. The first ten times or so, Sister Bernadine told me the standard line—all files prior to 1930 had conveniently been destroyed in a fire. Then something happened on the eleventh visit.”
“What was that?”
“Well, she started to aggressively discourage me from digging any further. Tried to make me feel guilty for even wanting to know about my birth par
ents. It was then that I knew I was on to something and that that something had to be pretty big. I looked into the workings of the home, the board of directors. I found out that Mr. Hart was on that board. As luck would have it, I’d already been doing some detective work for him, so it was easy enough to snoop around his home office, and that’s where I found my file.”
“There wasn’t any luck involved. Mr. Hart knew who you were the whole time. He’d hired you for those jobs and suggested you as the special consultant to The Darkness Knows so he could meet you, see what you were like,” she said.
Charlie looked down at the sheet covering him. Then he jerked his head sharply back up at her. His eyes blazed. “Then why did he deny everything when I confronted him at the masquerade?”
Vivian searched for an answer but couldn’t come up with anything that made any sense.
So Charlie had confronted Mr. Hart at the masquerade. And Peggy had been listening. No wonder the dialogue in last night’s script had sounded so familiar, Vivian thought. Now she realized it matched a conversation she and Frances had had days earlier almost word for word. Peggy had been listening, all right. She always had been.
He pursed his lips. “How did you get Peggy to spill all of this anyway? How did you even know to ask?”
“Well, it was sort of an accident… I did the show, and after my character was bumped off, I had some time to think. It was then that I noticed that the Os on the new pages of my script matched the Os I’d seen on the threatening letter I’d received. And I thought those Os matched what I remembered about the typewriter I’d used as Mr. Hart’s secretary for two years. So I went up to test it to make sure. That’s when Peggy showed up and assumed I knew more than I did.” Vivian looked down at her hands, remembering the feeling of fear and panic when Peggy drew the gun. “She trapped me in a rehearsal room to confront me, and the only way out was for me to keep her talking.”
“And she spilled the whole story just like that?”
Vivian shrugged. “I think she really enjoyed telling someone. She said I was the only one who knew everything. I suspected that Mr. Hart had helped her, but now I think she did this all on her own. She thinks she’s exceptionally clever.”
“Not clever enough,” he said, grimacing. “How did you get out of it?”
“I screamed,” Vivian said, deciding to give Charlie the abridged version of events. “I saw a shadow go past the door behind Peggy. When I screamed, that person came back, flung open the door, and knocked the gun right out of Peggy’s hand. That person turned out to be Imogene, of course. She always comes through in a pinch.”
Charlie smiled and shook his head in disbelief.
“I know. Just like a script for The Darkness Knows, isn’t it?”
They smiled at each other.
“Have you spoken with Mr. Hart?” Vivian asked.
“No, and I don’t expect to. He made it perfectly clear the night of the masquerade that he wants nothing to do with me.”
“Maybe he’s changed his mind.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Frankly, I’m not sure I want anything to do with him. He doesn’t have the most upstanding character. Not to mention that his daughter tried to kill me.”
“Several times,” Vivian added unnecessarily.
Charlie gave her a withering look, and then his expression softened. “Listen, Viv, thank you again for what you did for me.”
“Well,” Vivian said, suddenly growing shy, “I’d like to keep you around.” She placed her hand lightly on top of Charlie’s. She squeezed it, and he flipped his hand over and squeezed hers back.
“By the way, I believe you still owe me for services rendered,” he said.
Vivian glanced sharply at him. “Services rendered?” she said indignantly. “I saved your life, mister. Besides, I don’t recall ever coming to terms on your fee.”
“Still, a debt is a debt.” Charlie gazed seriously at her for a moment, then broke into a smile—or as much of one as he could muster. “But I’m sure we can work out some sort of a payment system.”
Vivian felt her palms go sweaty at the suggestive tone in his husky voice. Before she could respond, there was a knock on the door.
Graham burst into the room. Vivian pulled her hand away from Charlie’s. She hadn’t told Graham about what had happened between her and Charlie yet, and she didn’t want him to find out like this.
“Chick!” Graham exclaimed, unable to hide the shock of seeing the detective laid up in bed. “Hell of a thing that happened to you,” he said, frowning. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’ve been better,” Charlie said.
Graham shook his head. “Peggy,” he said in a low voice. “Who would’ve guessed she’d do something like that?” He looked at Vivian and Charlie expectantly.
Charlie touched the garish purple bruise at his temple gingerly.
“Well, I’m glad to see you’re on the mend,” Graham boomed. “And I hear that’s all due to our little Viv here.” Graham placed both of his hands on Vivian’s shoulders and squeezed a bit too hard.
Charlie closed his eyes for a moment. “Indeed,” he said, smirking. “She’d make quite a private detective.”
Graham laughed at this a little too readily, and Vivian shot him an irritated look over her shoulder, which he failed to notice. Instead, he glanced down at his wristwatch, and his brown eyes widened.
“Viv,” he said. “We’d better hurry.”
“Hurry?” Charlie said.
“To the station,” Graham said.
Charlie’s eyes shifted back to Vivian. “You got your job back?”
Vivian glanced toward the window, but the blind was drawn and left her nothing to focus on. So her eyes flicked to the floor, and she shrugged one shoulder. “Well, no,” she said, her voice strained. She hadn’t. But now that his daughter had been arrested for murder and was stewing behind bars in the Cook County Jail, Mr. Hart would likely take a leave of absence from the station to withdraw from the scandal. Vivian knew she had a better chance of pleading her case with Mr. Langley, who would certainly take over leadership of the station. And if that didn’t work, well, then she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t have a Plan B yet, but she’d think of something. WCHI wasn’t the only station in town.
“Just a formality,” Graham said with confidence. “We’re heading in there now to talk some sense into Langley. Anyone in their right mind would see that letting Viv go would be a huge mistake.”
Vivian’s eyes moved to Charlie and held his gaze briefly before she glanced away again.
“I mean it,” Graham continued, giving her shoulder another squeeze. “I’ll walk if he doesn’t bring Viv back on board.”
Vivian looked sharply up at Graham. He’d walk? She didn’t know if that was the truth or just bluster for Charlie’s benefit. Very likely bluster, she thought, but she appreciated the sentiment. She smiled at Graham, but the truth was that she wasn’t as thrilled about this turn of events as she should be. Yesterday, Lorna Lafferty had meant the world to her; today, Charlie Haverman did.
She opened her mouth to explain everything to Graham—everything that had happened between her and Charlie in such a short time. Then she snapped it shut. Because she couldn’t do that, could she? She needed Graham on her side to get back onto The Darkness Knows. Everything had happened so fast. She’d been on a date with Graham just a few days ago, a date that had ended in a kiss. She had no idea how Graham thought their relationship stood. He might truly care for her, and she couldn’t afford to alienate him with the truth. Not now.
“Right. We should go,” Vivian said, standing. “You need your rest.”
“Ready, doll?” Graham asked, taking Vivian’s arm in his.
“I, uh…I suppose I am,” she said.
Charlie’s eyes were closed, his head sunk back onto the pillow. Maybe he’d already dri
fted off. Still, Vivian took a step forward and leaned down toward him, hoping she sounded as sincere as she felt. “I hope you feel better very soon,” she said quietly. It seemed inadequate, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Actually, she could think of plenty of things to say. The problem was finding the courage to say them.
Charlie’s eyes opened a crack, red-rimmed but still a lovely shade of blue green.
“I guess I’ll see you around,” he said. “You have my card. Call me when you need me.”
When she needed him, she thought. Not if.
Vivian smiled and nodded. Charlie understood the bind she was in, she thought. She’d make this up to him when she wasn’t in such a hurry. She brushed her fingers quickly over his hand as she backed away from the bed. Then she turned, took a deep breath, and put on a brave—but properly reserved—face for the reporters lingering outside. Chicago hadn’t seen this kind of front-page material in years, and Vivian was determined to make the most of it. If she didn’t get her job back with The Darkness Knows, then at least she’d get her picture above the fold of the papers today. All the papers. And then, by God, she’d catch on somewhere. Because she was too damn determined to let things end here—not when everything was just beginning.
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The Darkness Knows Page 27