aterovis_bm_reapthewhirlwind.p65

aterovis_bm_reapthewhirlwind.p65 Page 22

by Arlene Chance

  “Who else was with you?” Laura asked ever so casually.

  “What? I already said there was nobody else there. It was just me.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “For Christ’s sake, are you saying I’m a liar?”

  “Who was it, Blake?”

  “Get out. Leave me alone.”

  “Not until you tell me his name. If you didn’t see 250

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  anything, maybe he did.”

  “Nobody saw anything. Just please leave me alone.”

  “What are you scared of, Blake?”

  “I—I’m not scared.”

  “You know it wasn’t an accident, don’t you? What do you know?”

  “I don’t know anything. I’m calling security.” She snatched up the phone. I was getting nervous. It seemed like Laura was pushing too hard.

  “Just tell us who he was and we’ll go.”

  Blake slammed down the phone and spun around angrily. “I don’t know, okay? I never even got his name.

  I was high. I’d done some E. He was cute and sweet. He suggested we go somewhere quieter so we went out to the pool house in the back yard. Like he said, there was no one out there.”

  “What happened? How’d you find Joey?”

  “He wasn’t there when we went out. We went into the pool house and we were—you know, and all of a sudden, he says he hears voices. I wasn’t exactly paying attention, you know? I tell him to ignore them. I guess he does because he kept on. And then, after we’re done, we go back outside and there he is, like I told you, floating in the water.”

  “And what happened then? Where’d your friend go?”

  “I told you, I screamed. That’s when he took off. He just took one look at—at him in the water like that and he just took off running. Jumped right over the fence.

  He just left me there with a dead body.”

  “Poor baby,” Laura said with undisguised disgust.

  “You think I’m some kind of slut, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You do. I can tell. Your type always thinks you’re so 251

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  much better than me.”

  “My type? What type is that exactly?”

  This was quickly degenerating into a cat fight. We’d gotten what we came for; I thought it would be wise to get all of us out of there. Apparently, Aidan had the same idea. We each grabbed one of Laura’s elbows and started pulling her toward the door, which Blake had left open.

  “Look, thanks for talking to us,” I was saying, as if Laura had given her much choice.

  “Just get out and stay the hell away from me,” Blake snapped.

  We managed to get a sputtering Laura into the hall before Blake slammed the door. A couple other doors on the hall opened and a few heads popped out to see what all the fuss was about, reminding me of the prai-rie dogs at the zoo.

  I smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay.” The heads retreated back into their rooms.

  “Okay, I don’t think getting into a fight with the person you are questioning is an approved interrogation method,” I said.

  “She started it,” Laura sniffed. “Skank.”

  “At least we found out what we were looking for,”

  Aidan said helpfully.

  “Not really,” Laura said.

  “We know there was someone else with Joey.”

  “Do we? All we know is that Blake’s lover boy thought he heard some voices. We don’t even know his name or what he looks like.”

  “Actually, we might know what he looks like,” I said thoughtfully.

  “We do?” Aidan and Laura asked in unison.

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  “Caitlin and I were in the front yard when Blake screamed. We heard her and wondered what was going on. We were still there when the guy came over the fence. It has to be the same guy. I think I would know him if I saw him again.”

  “Great, so now what do we do? Ask for a line-up of all the guys who were at the party?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe Killian will have some ideas.”

  “In the meantime, we can all think about it and maybe we’ll come up with something,” Aidan suggested reasonably. “More importantly, though, we know that Blake is the one who sent you the necklace and the note.”

  His voice took on a smug sound with this last statement.

  “Oh really?” Laura said archly. “And just how do we know that?”

  “It’s elementary, my dear Watson.”

  “If you think you’re Sherlock Holmes, you got another think coming,” Laura growled warningly.

  “Look, just before Blake came in, I found this.” He produced a crumpled sheet of paper with four words written on it in bold block letters, just like ones I’d seen before.

  “IT WASN’T A ACCIDENT,” it read.

  I gasped.

  “Rough draft?” Aidan asked. “See how she used ‘a’

  instead of ‘an’? She wrote another one, correcting her grammar mistake, the one she sent to you.”

  “How considerate,” Laura said dryly.

  “Should we go back in and confront her with it?” I asked.

  “I don’t think now would be the best time,” Aidan 253

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  said, with a meaningful look in Laura’s direction.

  “Oh, so now it’s my fault, is that it?” she snapped.

  “I didn’t say that,” Aidan placated. “I just don’t think this would be the best time. For now, we should just go.”

  Laura waved us away irritably. I wondered what exactly her problem was. Aidan and I started toward the elevator, but Laura didn’t move.

  “You coming?” I called back to her.

  “I’ll take the stairs,” she said.

  The elevator arrived at that moment, so I just shrugged and stepped in. When the doors opened on the ground floor, I stepped out, almost running right into Caitlin.

  “Caitlin!” I exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have a friend in the building,” she said after an almost imperceptible pause. “What are you doing here?”

  “We just came from talking to Blake.”

  “Oh, you talked to her? Did you find anything out?”

  “Yes and no,” Aidan said.

  “We think she was probably in the pool house when Joey was being killed,” I explained, “but she was, um, otherwise occupied.”

  Caitlin’s blank look quickly changed to understanding as my meaning sunk in. “Does she know anything?”

  “The guy she was with may have heard voices, she’s not sure. I think he may have been the guy we saw, the one who jumped over the fence and told us Joey was dead.”

  “Really? What’s his name?”

  “We don’t know. That’s what we have to figure out 254

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  next.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Well, if I think of anything, I’ll call you. I’d better get going. My friend is waiting.”

  “Okay, see you, Caitlin.”

  “Bye, Will. Bye, Aidan.” ***

  I woke up the next morning, and for a few disoriented moments, I couldn’t remember where I was. Then I felt Aidan’s arms around me and it all came back to me. The night before I had started into my room out of habit before Aidan had caught my hand and drawn me into his. It made sense that I would move into his room since it was bigger, but I would miss my view of the river—though not the balcony and all its associated memories.

  I lay for a while just watching him sleep. I could lie like this forever, I thought, but the morning was wearing on and I had to get to work. I carefully slipped out of bed and I succeeded without waking him. I started the shower then went into my old bedroom to get my clothes. When I went back into the bathroom, I was startled to find Aidan waiting for me in the shower.

  Before I could say a word, he pulled me under the hot spray, boxers and all. He cut off my protest with a passionate kiss.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked while I caught my breath. He took the bar of soap and started to wash my bac
k.

  “I was going to after I took my shower.”

  “I woke up and you weren’t there.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said with another kiss. “I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Good,” he said as his soapy hands slid down my 255

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  sides.

  “Aidan, I have to go to work,” I protested faintly.

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “How does that make a difference? I still have to be there at the same—ooohhh,” the rest of my case was cut off by Aidan’s convincing counterargument. That morning I learned that fireworks go off even in the shower.

  ***

  Since Aidan did end up driving me to work, he had to pick me up too. After we left downtown, to my surprise, we didn’t head back to the apartment. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the marina. We might as well look for Joey’s dad.

  I’m really starting to get into this whole detective thing.

  It sounded like in the letter that his dad has a boat at the marina. I thought we could nose around.”

  “Nose around? Where’d you get that? What, are we rooting for truffles?”

  “Don’t be a smart ass.”

  We parked and walked around the marina for a few minutes looking for someone. The place seemed pretty deserted and most of the boats were covered in canvas for the winter. Finally, we found someone struggling to pull his canvas boat cover down far enough to snap it on.

  “Excuse me,” I called. “Do you know a Mr. Taylor who has a boat in this marina?”

  The man turned and eyed us suspiciously. He was an older man, rough and weathered by years in the ele-ments. I began to feel vaguely guilty under his gaze; for what, I didn’t know.

  “Nope, sorry,” he said finally. Then as we started 256

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  away, “Could you guys give me a hand here, mebbe?”

  “Sure,” we quickly agreed. We stepped onto his boat, named the Mildred Belle, and for the next few minutes helped him pull the cover taut enough to snap in place.

  “Thanks, I appreciate the help,” he said when we’d finished. “She’s named after my wife.”

  It took me a minute to realize he meant the boat. “She must have been very flattered,” I said uncertainly. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel having a boat named after me.

  I suppose it would be an honor.

  “She died two years ago, a year before I got this girl.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “She’d suffered for a long time. Cancer.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Luckily, Aidan stepped in. “My dad died of cancer, too,” he said. The two men stood in a companionable silence for a few moments, sharing a common grief.

  “You wouldn’t happen to mean Jack Taylor, would you?” he said finally.

  “Jack Taylor?” I said cautiously. I didn’t know if that was who I meant or not.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know, maybe ”

  He looked at me with renewed suspicion. “Why are you looking for him?”

  “He’s my best friend’s father.”

  “Well now, Jack’s boy jus’ died a few weeks back.”

  “That was him; Joey.”

  He nodded as if I’d spoken the secret password. “Jack was right broke up over that. I was here the day he heard tell about it. On the radio, no less! Helluva way to hear your boy is dead.”

  “Yes, sir, it is. I wanted to find him to tell him how 257

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  sorry I was.”

  “Well I’m sure he ain’t here today; it being winter and all.”

  “Well if you should happen to see him, could you tell him Will Keegan was trying to get in touch with him?”

  “Will Keegan you say? I’ll do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  He watched as we walked away. He was still standing on the dock staring after us as Aidan backed out of our parking space and drove away.

  “Another dead end,” I sighed.

  “Maybe not. Let’s wait and see.”

  “The longer we wait the longer the killer has to get away with murder.”

  “The killer hasn’t gotten away with anything yet. We still have a chance here, Will. Don’t give up.”

  “I’m not giving up. I just hate this feeling that we’re spinning our wheels while something awful is getting ready to happen.”

  “Nothing awful is going to happen. We’re going to get this guy.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  ***

  I left work early the next day to go with Caitlin to the doctor. It seemed like we sat in the waiting room forever while we waited to be called. Eventually, a nurse called Caitlin back, leaving me adrift in a sea of very large, very pregnant women. I could feel what little tes-tosterone I had being leached out of me as I sat. Just as I was about to break down and read Martha Stewart Living, the nurse stuck her head back into the waiting room. 258

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  “Mr. Keegan?” she said. “Caitlin has asked if you would come back. The doctor said it’s okay.”

  “Me? Come back there?” I squeaked.

  Several of the other mothers grinned and I heard one say, “He sounds just like my husband the first time I asked him to come back.”

  The nurse nodded encouragingly and I reluctantly followed her back. She led me into an examining room where Caitlin lay on a table, her stomach exposed and covered in what looked to me like Vaseline. Her doctor was sitting next to her holding a small device to Caitlin’s stomach. They were both staring intently at a monitor.

  They turned toward me as I came in and I immediately felt myself begin to blush. The doctor was a woman, and judging by her dark complexion and the red dot in the middle of her forehead, I guessed she was from India.“You are jes’ in time to see de baby,” the doctor said with a warm smile.

  “See the baby?” I repeated.

  “Yes, on the little TV here,” she pointed to the monitor.I looked at the screen but all I could see was static and undefined shapes and shadows. “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Right dere. Dat’s de head,” she said pointing, “and dat’s de arm. Oh, look, he’s waving!”

  “He?” Caitlin asked while I stared hard at the screen.

  “It’s too early to tell, I jes’ said he. It could be a she.”

  Slowly, while they talked, a tiny alien-like form began to appear before my eyes. It reminded me of those puzzles that were so popular when I was a kid; those geometric designs that if you stared at them long enough 259

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  hidden 3-D images slowly formed.

  A sense of awe swept over me as I stared at the image on the monitor. I was looking at a person that hadn’t even drawn its first breath yet. This tiny life was still being formed even while I watched. Its tiny organs were being shaped, its mind developing, and yet the gene patterns that would determine if it was right-handed or left-handed, blonde or brunette, blue-eyed or brown were already established. Wonder and amazement filled me, and a verse I remembered hearing in church ran through my mind: “For you have created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

  Caitlin and the doctor both stopped talking and turned to stare at me. I realized I had spoken the words aloud.

  “It’s from the Bible; Psalms,” I said self-consciously, as I blushed once again.

  “Listen to dis,” the doctor said. I was grateful for the distraction. She twisted a knob on the monitor and suddenly a sound filled the room. It was a fast-paced, wet-sounding rhythmic beating.

  “The heartbeat?” Caitlin asked.

  The doctor nodded.

  I stood for a moment as the sound washed over me.

  Then suddenly I couldn’t breathe. It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the examining room. I needed air; I needed out of that tiny room.

  “Excuse me,” I gasped and quickly let myself out of the room. Forcing myself not to run, I made my way outside where I stood gulping in the cold air. An overwhelming feeling of r
esponsibility had come over me in the examining room like I had never felt before. Some-260

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  how, none of this had seemed real until that moment.

  Even with the baby books it had seemed distant, almost imaginary, like I was playing let’s pretend.

  But it wasn’t pretend. Now I had seen the baby with my own eyes, heard its heartbeat with my own ears.

  The baby was real. And I had committed myself to raising that child. And in just a matter of months, it would be born and I’d be holding it in my arms. Would it be a girl or a boy? What would it call me? Daddy? The very thought took my breath away. But I’m not the father, I reminded myself. Joey is. And then a small voice whispered, but Joey’s dead.

  And then a new fear crept into my mind, closing my throat and filling me with a sense of loss like I had never known. What if Caitlin met someone else and fell in love? What if she got married? I’d be out of the picture for good. As scared as I was, I knew I wanted more than ever to be a part of this baby’s life.

  While I was still thinking about that, Caitlin came out.

  “Ready to go?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly.

  “What happened in there? One minute you’re fine, the next you’re spouting Bible verses and going all pale.”

  “It just kinda hit me all at once. I mean, this is really happening. That’s a real baby in there and I’m going to be at least partly responsible for it.”

  “Do you want to back out? Nothing is official yet. If you want out, now is the time.”

  “No, I don’t want out. In fact, I want to do this more than ever, now. I’ll try to find a lawyer tonight so we can start the legal stuff.”

  We walked to the car and got in.

  “You’re quite a guy, Mr. Keegan,” she said once we 261

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  were out on the road. “One of a kind in fact. Are you sure you’re not straight? We could run off to Vegas right now, get married by an Elvis impersonator.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think Aidan would be too happy about that.”

 

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