by Nancy Martin
Michael picked out a packet of strawberry jam for my toast and skimmed it across the table to me. But when I tried to open the packet, I discovered my hands were trembling. He put down his fork, reached over and took the packet back. He opened it and carefully spread the jam on my toast for me.
As if trying to get his mind around the impossible, Tierney asked, “Are you two married?”
“Not yet,” Michael said.
“You act like you’re married.”
I looked across the table at Michael. My hero. My love. The man with the broken face and the heart of a lion.
But then I thought of what Tierney’s idea of a marriage must be and I laughed.
Michael did, too.
“So what’s next?” he finally asked me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Tierney needs to stay out of sight for a little while. Until we learn more about his—his father’s—Hoyt’s death.”
Michael didn’t acknowledge the confusion about which of Tierney’s fathers I meant. He said, “Out of sight of the cops, you mean. That’s my specialty.”
Chapter Sixteen
“One of your specialties,” I said. “You have many. Where do you think Tierney could go?”
Michael took no offense at my wry tone and made short work of my omelet. “Not your place,” he said between bites. “Rawlins says there was some action there last night. Paramedics and cops.”
“The police were there, too?”
“Yeah, they were very interested in your parents until somebody remembered about you getting kidnapped. So they forgot about them and started on you. And there’s an APB out on him.” He hooked his thumb at Tierney. “Cops probably have a license plate now, too, so I wouldn’t go driving around in his car today.”
“What can we do?”
He gave me a long look. “You mean, outside the limits of the law?”
“Yes,” I said steadily. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“That sounds like a change of heart.”
“Are we going to argue about it now, or do you have some suggestions?”
Michael said to Tierney, “You have a girlfriend?”
Tierney was eyeing his breakfast again, trying to decide if he could stomach it or not. “Not at the moment, no.”
“That must make your life easier.” To me, Michael said, “I have a couple of extra license plates in my trunk. We’ll swap. I’ll take the two of you in my car. Delmar can ditch the other one.”
Tierney looked up from his plate. “Ditch my car? It’s an airport rental. I’m already broke. If I have to pay for a car, I’m sunk.”
Michael shrugged. “So we’ll return it to the airport, no sweat.”
“Where can we go?” I asked.
He wolfed the last of the omelet, thinking. Letting the criminal part of his mind explore the possibilities.
Two minutes later, he sat back. “Hot day like this? You want to blend into a big crowd? You go to the shore.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “We’ll buy some beer, one of those big umbrellas for you to sit under. Build a sand castle, maybe, and take a nice long nap in the sun. Later on, we’ll have some clams or something.”
“I can’t go to the beach. Libby’s kids, my job—”
“Call in sick. We’ll take the kids with us.”
“My father’s in the hospital.”
Michael shrugged again. “Best place for him.”
Tierney said, “If we go back to the house, won’t somebody call the police? Or maybe they’re watching the house right now. I’ll be arrested.”
Michael wasn’t deterred. “So we leave now, buy some towels and sunscreen along the way. No big deal.”
A day at the beach. It sounded heavenly to me. But I shook my head. “I can’t go. It’s impossible to buy a bathing suit on the spur of the moment.”
To Tierney, Michael said, “You should see her at the shore. Cute little pink dress, a picture hat with polka-dot ribbons, a big straw purse full of girl stuff. And it all matches. She makes it into a production, but it’s worth it. She’s dynamite in a bathing suit, too. And watching her put that lotion stuff on her legs makes me want to howl.”
His delight was infectious, and Tierney smiled uncertainly.
I said, “That’s my brother you’re talking to.”
The waitress slapped the check down on the table, and Michael picked it up. He went to the register while I gathered up my phone and tucked it into my handbag, then dug out my sunglasses. I stood up.
Hesitating at the table, Tierney glanced up at me. “Nora, I…”
I knew what he wanted to say. He’d confided in me about Hoyt, and it had been a frightening admission that now, somehow, felt cleansing. But he still had doubts. I could see the turmoil in his face.
“It’s okay,” I soothed.
He smiled warily. “Okay.” He glanced at Michael. “I can trust him? He’s a scary guy.”
“You can trust him.” I put on my sunglasses and shouldered my bag. “If you want to avoid the police, he’s your man.”
In the parking lot, Delmar accepted the keys to Tierney’s car.
Michael told him, “Wipe down the interior. Don’t forget the buttons on the radio.”
Delmar nodded.
I said, “The backseat, too.”
Michael sent me a look with a raised eyebrow. Tierney’s expression was that of a teenager who’d been caught by an overprotective father.
Delmar said, “What about you, boss?”
Michael clapped him on the shoulder to send him on his way. “I’ll be in touch.”
Leaving Delmar to the task of erasing all fingerprints from Tierney’s rental, the three of us climbed into Michael’s muscle car. When he started the engine, the rumble under the hood sounded like a jet plane.
On the road, Michael engaged Tierney in a discussion of sports—the universal language of men. I wondered how Tierney had learned such a skill. From Hoyt?
But then I fell asleep with my head on Michael’s shoulder.
I woke when we arrived at Michael’s home. It was a secluded, modest A-frame house—a weekend getaway he’d bought from some New Yorkers and made into a bachelor pad for himself—a stone’s throw from some of the best fishing on the Delaware River. A pair of faded Adirondack chairs sat on the deck overlooking the quietly rushing water. Someone had left an empty beer bottle on the railing. Morning sunlight glinted off the river like a million diamond facets.
I stayed in the car while Michael took Tierney into the house and presumably gave him directions for a quick escape should the police come knocking.
When Michael came outside again, he was carrying something large and unwieldy in his arms. I focused and realized it was a person.
“Oh, my God!” I scrambled out of the car. “Is she hurt?”
“Just hungover, I think.” Michael hefted Emma as easily as if she were a pizza box.
My little sister lolled in his arms—oblivious or unconscious, I couldn’t be sure. The white pallor of her face frightened me.
Without benefit of her coating of warm chocolate, Emma’s boneless body looked thinner than ever—no longer sexy, but downright skinny. She still wore the faded T-shirt that advertised the Delaware Fly Fishing Company, over a pair of unzipped jeans. She had lost one of her flip-flops. Her toes were dirty.
My heart lurched at the sight of her.
She groaned. “Kill me. Put me out of my misery.”
Michael said, “Help me get her into the backseat.”
I opened the door and held the seat while Michael managed to thread my little sister into the car. Together we got her stretched out and buckled in.
Smoothing her hair back from her face, I looked at Emma and said, “Oh, Em. You haven’t done something terrible, have you?”
She gave a slobbery moan. “Not yet.”
Michael said, “If she gets sick in my car, you’re cleaning up the mess. She’s been sick for a week.”
“Two,” Emma croaked. “But who’s
counting?”
“It’s time somebody else looked after her. Don’t look so worried. Under your roof, you can work your sisterly magic.”
Emma squinted up at me. “You told him, I suppose?”
“Told me what?” Michael asked.
Emma groaned and rolled over to mash her face into the upholstery.
Michael looked at me. “What am I supposed to know?”
“You can’t be this idiotic.”
“What do you mean?”
“Michael,” I said, “she’s pregnant.”
The astonished expression on his face could have been comical under different circumstances.
Then he blinked and said, “No shit. Who’s the father?”
“What do you mean, who’s the father?”
Michael began laughing. He put his hand on the roof of the car and leaned in. “What did you do, Em? Eat him afterwards like some kind of spider?”
“Leave me alone,” she muttered, clutching her stomach.
I said, “You really don’t know who the father is?”
Michael swung around to look at me, still amused and surprised. “Why would I?”
I’m not entirely clear about what happened next. I remember a dazzling display of stars in front of my eyes and the earth rushing up to my face. And the next thing, I was sprawled out on the front seat of the car, with the sound of Emma retching behind me.
“Oh, hell,” Michael said. “I just had this car cleaned.”
In a little while, I was sitting upright, and he climbed into the car behind the wheel. He closed the door, but before starting the engine, he reached across and grabbed my wrist.
“About last night,” he said. “Just so you know, I don’t think I can ever go through that again.”
He pulled me close and kissed me. Long, hard and desperately. My own heart skipped and thudded against his, and the lump in my throat throbbed. He hadn’t betrayed me. He’d been helping my sister give up drinking.
When he released me at last and we could breathe again, I touched his face and wished I could smooth away the lines of worry around his eyes. “I’m sorry. It happened very fast.”
“I figured you were mad at me. But then Rawlins didn’t answer his phone, either.”
“And you knew I was in trouble.”
“For you, business as usual.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured again.
He hugged me close and spoke into my hair. “It took so damn long to get to you.”
“I’m okay.”
From the backseat, Emma moaned, “If I hadn’t puked my guts out already this morning, you two would make me sick.”
We ignored her, but smiled at each other. To Michael, I said, “Tierney isn’t dangerous.”
Michael cocked an eyebrow. “You sure about that? Did he push his father off Lexie’s balcony?”
“No. And anyway, Hoyt wasn’t his father. Daddy is. And there’s more.”
I indicated Michael should start the car, and he did. While the noise of the engine kept my voice from reaching Emma, I told him what I knew. Although I hadn’t asked Tierney’s permission, I spilled the whole story. How Hoyt had been a strange kind of father to Tierney. How he’d fooled the world.
Michael interrupted once, saying, “Wait, wasn’t there some famous jazz musician? A guy who turned out to be a woman?”
“I don’t know. But Tierney’s really weirded out by it.”
“No shit.” Michael stared out the windshield, thunderstruck. “That’s the kind of thing that could really screw with a guy’s head.”
“If there was ever a person who needed some counseling, it’s Tierney.” I sighed. “My brother. How strange is it that I have a brother now? And Daddy? Did he know Hoyt was a woman when he agreed to father their child?”
Michael shook his head. “You’ve got one wild family, Nora Blackbird.”
Pondering the new development in my family tree, Michael drove us up the river, across the bridge into Pennsylvania and over to Blackbird Farm. The time on my watch read only a few minutes after nine, but it felt as if I’d been gone for days.
A silver Rolls-Royce sat sparkling in the driveway.
Looking at it, Michael whistled, long and low.
We got out into the dappled sunshine, and Michael wrestled Emma out of the backseat.
As he carried her up the stone sidewalk, she groaned. “I need ginger ale.”
To me, Michael said, “It’s the only thing that settles her stomach. I bought a case yesterday. It’s in the trunk.”
I dug the car keys out of his hip pocket and opened the trunk. The cans of ginger ale were warm to the touch, but they would have to do.
Henry Fineman was snoring in the hammock strung between two oak trees. His hands were arranged peacefully on his chest. He wore his hiking clothes, but he had taken off his sandals, and they were neatly placed on the grass under the hammock.
Toby burst out from under my peonies and ran over to Michael, leaping up to sniff his burden. Emma was the spaniel’s favorite person, and he whined and yelped to see her. I hadn’t seen the dog so energized since the moment my sister left the farm.
Michael put Emma into one of the Adirondack chairs by the hammock and tucked a pillow under her head. She gave another groan when Toby scrambled into her lap and licked her face. She tried to push him away, but she was too weak. Eventually the dog laid his head against her chest and sighed.
In her Spider-Man pajamas, Lucy sat on the steps of the back porch, keeping an eagle eye on Henry Fineman and holding a bow and arrow with a rubber tip.
I kissed the top of her uncombed head. “Good morning, Luce. Have you had breakfast yet?”
“I’m working on it.” She glared, unwavering, at Henry.
“Is Grandma here?”
“Nope. She’s at the hospital with Grandpa.”
“Rawlins?”
“Sleeping,” she reported.
“The twins?”
“Making fireworks in the barn.”
Michael and I exchanged a look.
“I’ll go check,” he said, and went back down the steps. “If I don’t come back, send a SWAT team.”
I put my hand on the door handle, and Lucy said, “Be careful. My mom’s in there.”
I pushed inside and discovered my sister Libby wearing a frilly apron and making coffee. She had cleaned the kitchen, mopped the floor and rearranged my canisters. Her revived domesticity could mean only one thing.
I said, “Did you marry someone?”
“Nora!” Libby cried musically. “How delightful to see—good heavens, you look like you’ve been hit by a bus!”
“Thanks.” I was fully aware that my wrinkle-free Furstenberg dress had been challenged to the max. My hair felt like a curly mess under my hand, and I knew I didn’t have a shred of makeup left. I suspected I still had the imprint of Tierney’s car upholstery on my cheek.
Libby, on the other hand, wore silver sandals and a lavender skort with a T-shirt printed with the words EVE WAS FRAMED, written in letters made of cartoon serpents. She had tied the lacy strings of the apron fetchingly over her bottom. On her hip, Maximus drooled happily, delighted to be in his mother’s arm again.
He pulled his binky out of his mouth and announced his mother’s return triumphantly. “Da!”
I said, “You didn’t answer me. What happened during your sojourn at the Ritz-Carlton? Or did you go directly to the honeymoon phase?”
Libby continued to putter around my kitchen, whipping up a batch of pancakes, if I was any judge of batter. She had also picked more strawberries, and the first crop of blueberries had clearly come in, because a small bowl sat beside the sink.
My sister’s face lit up as if I’d plugged her into a light socket. “Oh, Nora, I can’t wait to tell you everything! Jacque is adorable! So giving! So in touch with his feelings!”
“Jacque?”
“Jacque Petite!”
Stunned, I said, “That’s who ran over you with his car? Jacque
Petite, the chocolate guy? The star of the Chocolate Festival?”
I had seen his picture at the festival, and of course I knew him from his show on the Food Channel. But imagining my sister with the happy chocolate man was beyond me.
For a moment.
Then it made perfect sense.
Libby dimpled. “He can’t very well be the star of the festival if he hasn’t left the Ritz-Carlton for days.”
“Is that his Rolls outside?”
“Yes. He let me borrow it!”
“What’s the catch?”
“Catch? Whatever do you mean?”
I grabbed a coffee cup from the cupboard. The last thing I wanted to discuss this morning was the quadratic equation that was my sister’s love life. “You always find a man who’s in touch with his feelings, but he turns out to be even more in touch with scamming you or stealing from you or—”
“How can you say such a thing? He’s Jacque Petite!”
“Remember Sam?” I asked. “The fireman?”
Libby flushed as she snatched the coffee cup from my hands. “The coffee’s not ready yet. Sam was delightful except for the candle obsession. I can’t concentrate on sexual satisfaction if I’m constantly worried the curtains might catch fire. But Jacque is totally different! He adores me. He says we’re on the same astral plane. Why are you so cranky this morning?”
“Nobody told you? While you were exploring astral planes with the chocolate king, I was kidnapped last night.”
“Oh, that!” Libby waved off my ordeal with the cup. “I knew that was only a misunderstanding. I explained it all to the police.”
“The police were here?”
“Yes, of course the police were here. Thank heaven Rawlins had the presence of mind to telephone them last night. And then me. I’ve been here for hours, by the way. I rushed out of the city the instant Rawlins phoned. Otherwise it would have been complete chaos at this house. I hardly think I can trust you to look after my children anymore, Nora. Next time, I’ll think twice about asking you.”
“You won’t need to ask. I’ll be busy.”
She looked wounded. “Even if you were slightly kidnapped, you don’t have to be rude. Not when I’m so deliriously happy.”
She bit her lip. With exactly the same expression in his big eyes, Maximus gazed reproachfully at me, too.