Angel With an Attitude

by Carly Bishop

  “Yes. I was told that the woman I should contact was an INS agent. I was told that she knew where to find my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, who only managed to come to this country two years ago, and do not have green cards. I thought they would be deported and thrown into prison in Mexico. I was told that if I offered this woman other information, she would turn a blind eye to my…to my family.”

  “What other information?” Angelo asked.

  “I didn’t know. This…I was told the information would be delivered to me, and that I could hand it over to the INS woman. That I shouldn’t worry. But when the time came, I had nothing. I sent her away. What else could I do?” She gave a keening cry, her hands tightly clasped between her knees. “What else could I do?” She clamped her teeth together, jutting her chin resentfully, as angry now as she was scared. “What kind of INS agent comes to your door with a baby in her arms, can you tell me that, señor?”

  Angelo drew a deep breath. “No kind of agent I know, Pilar, comes to your door with a baby in her arms.”

  “Then this was all a lie?” she demanded.

  “You were tricked,” Isobel answered. “Are your grandchildren all right? Have you heard from them?”

  “Yes. But Paco, who is in your jails for driving the car where the shooting came from.” Her face pinched tightly. “They tricked him, too. Tricked him good, but he would rather lose his life than break the silence and condemn his friends and family.”

  “Was there no way you could tell all of this to the police?” Isobel asked, her heart aching for the old Hispanic woman who had done well enough for herself and learned the language, only to have her grandchildren threatened and tricked and jailed.

  “For what? Paco would say I am old and loco. And if they believed me, I would go to jail as well. I am the one who asked the baby’s mother to come here,” she finally admitted. “I am the one.”

  “Pilar,” Angelo coaxed gently, “we may be able to help you, but our hands are tied unless you tell us which one of these people came to you and tricked you into this terrible scheme.”

  The old woman straightened, and though the scrawny wattle beneath her chin quivered, she pointed to Kelsey Candless St. John. “This one. She is with child, no?”

  FOR THE SAKE of appearances, they visited Father Ramon Sifuentes in the small study of the battered church where Isobel had sought safety. When they left, the cleric was under the impression that they had spent a couple of hours, rather than only a few minutes, visiting together.

  The drive back to the Candless compound stretched interminably. The Los Angeles traffic could not have been worse. Isobel changed Seth and nursed him to sleep before she could even begin to think about the implications of what Pilar Sanchez had told them.

  Angelo had the radio tuned to a music station that was playing an Argentine prelude on the classical guitar. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, caught up between the music and the driving. Even fully human, he could focus on half a dozen things at once.

  She lifted the sleeping baby to her shoulder and patted his back. “What are you thinking?”

  He waited until the end of the prelude. He knew the piece was nearly done, and he needed a moment to construct a lie. His head was full of images now, like slivers of half-remembered nightmares. Ever since the moment when Pilar Sanchez had pointed an accusing finger at Kelsey St. John, he’d known the rot had seeped farther and deeper into the Candless family than he had imagined. From Ian to his sons to his daughter.

  Patrice Candless would have done the world a huge favor if she had taken her little pearl-handled gun and shot the son of a bitch before he could poison all of his children.

  She hadn’t.

  The images in his head, though, had only to do with Iso. He saw her as if lit by a strobe in the dark of a movie house, turning her head, jerk by tiny jerk, until she saw a thing that made her cry out, saw the thing and looked to Angelo. She knew he couldn’t save her. He saw her cry out again, screaming out how she loved him, how she would love him unto eternity, how she must do the thing that would end her life, how she turned, how, degree by degree, she exposed her back to protect the baby, how she slumped like a rag doll collapsing to the floor…

  How the blood seeped out the hole where the bullet tore into her body.

  The images blurred in his mind. He couldn’t see where or when, couldn’t see how the fractured images began. All he knew was that he was witnessing Isobel’s death. And so when she asked what it was he was thinking about, he had to lie.

  He lowered the volume on the radio and looked at her. “I miss this, Iso. I miss music. Concerts. You know there was such an incredible explosion of musical genius after the Renaissance. After we…after we died. The instruments, the composers.”

  She smiled, and he knew he had succeeded in his lie. He couldn’t have carried a tune in a basket himself, but Angelo de Medici in any age was a sucker for a passionate piece of music. And so she believed him, didn’t see that his human heart was on the verge of exploding in his fear that the vision reflected the future. That it would come true.

  “I meant about Pilar, silly. About Kelsey.”

  “I know.” He embellished on the lie. “But there are so many things I want to do with you. Places I want to take you. You haven’t really lived until you’ve heard Beethoven’s Fifth played under the stars in the Vail valley.”

  “Maybe we can even go there and live.”

  He darted a look at her. He couldn’t breathe.

  “How’s that for faith in us, de Medici?”

  Inside himself he died a thousand mortal deaths. She had come to believe, to accept that what he said was true, to have faith in his promises that he would not let her die, that what was between them would never end in this or any lifetime, that they would be together forever, even when this was done. And now this eerie sensation, this foreboding he couldn’t fathom, a sudden bolt of alarm, like a lightning strike from a clear blue sky.

  If the images were true, and not his half-human consciousness throwing irrational dread into the mix of emotions, Isobel had come to believe just in time to have her “ever after” stripped from her again.

  He thought their bond only went one way, that he could know so easily what she was thinking, but she saw the sudden and alien fear in him. “Angelo…What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m a little surprised.” He made it sound as if, all things being equal, he should have known Kelsey was deeply involved, and that he was troubled by this apparent failure.

  “Good old Kelsey is right there in the thick of things.”

  He could feel her eyes on him, feel her doubt that he was telling her the truth. He made an impenetrable vault of his mind, blocking her, making her remember that angels cannot lie.

  What did it mean, that he was lying to her now, when angels could not lie, except in the interests of justice in the case of an Avenging Angel. What did it mean?

  He returned to the subject of Kelsey’s involvement. “I was trying to figure out if St. John knows this and was just feeding us a line of bull, or if it’s even possible he doesn’t know.”

  Against her instincts, he knew, Isobel accepted his lies, believing this was what was on his mind. “I don’t think St. John knows. If I were Kelsey, I sure wouldn’t tell him. Who else would?”

  “No one, before the deed was done. But once Gina was dead, it would have eased their guilty hearts to make sure the attorney in the family knew exactly what had gone on.”

  He turned onto the road leading to the guard house and waited until the gates had been opened. Driving through, he gestured acknowledgment to the guard, then drove the BMW to its assigned space in the Candless garages. The sun would sink into the watery horizon in another half hour.

  He went around the car and helped Isobel out, reaching, like any fully human father might, for the diaper bag and discarded blanket on the back seat.

  Flashing again on the specter of Isobel’s death, he longed for mortal ignoran
ce, for an ordinary life, for such oddly comforting drudgery as a human father knows. He didn’t want to believe Isobel would die. He couldn’t. But the images kept flying at him, and he took them for a warning. He had never in his five hundred years been more alert, more wary. Or more deeply afraid.

  The front door was opened to them by the housekeeper, Helena, but otherwise they saw no one on their way to the nursery suite. Isobel placed Seth on his tummy in the crib and reached above him to wind up the music box in the mobile of clowns. Angelo put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder, and they stood together over the slumbering baby for a long moment.

  She turned to him then, circling his waist with her arms. “I want this for us, Angelo. I want it so much.”

  Struck again with the depth of her acceptance, that they would have this because he had promised her that they would, he held her tight. His throat tightened, and his groin, and he knew if he was ever, ever to keep his promise, it would be because he behaved now like the bodyguard he was supposed to be, and not a mortal male swamped with mortal desires, mortal longings.

  Mortal ineptitudes.

  He trembled in his body and breathed deeply, inhaling the essence of her one last time. The moment of ultimate truth was coming, he knew, coming fast now, and he would not be caught off guard, necking with Isobel as he had in that palace courtyard five hundred years ago, touching her, exciting them both to the point where he no longer smelled danger when sensing the threat was all that he was about.

  He separated from her and guided her out into the light of the playroom. “I need to listen to the tapes, Iso.”

  She touched a finger to her lips and held it out to him, and he did the same. Their fingers met, and curled together, embracing in a clandestine, secret sort of kiss they had conjured together centuries before. Isobel took up a book of children’s poetry and sat down on the sofa. Across from her, he took the easy chair where he usually listened to the audiotapes of each conversation that had gone on in the household that day.

  He punched into the cell phone the set of seventeen numbers necessary to access the tapes by remote instructions, opted for the highest transmission speed, and then sat listening as tape after tape cued up. Halfway through, he began focusing with greater intensity, trebling his concentration. He watched Isobel look up from the book of children’s poetry, so finely attuned to every nuance of his body language that she knew what he was hearing was what they had awaited so long.

  “What is it?”

  He held up a hand to her, indicating she should wait. At the end of the tape, he keyed in several more numbers, signaling the playback equipment to rewind. At the beginning of the conversation, he slowed the playback, put the cell phone down and caused it to act as a speakerphone.

  “Here it is, Iso. Finally. The Feds have not heard it yet, but they will.”

  A voice stamp identified the recording. “St. John residence, study of Emory St. John, tape number 151.”

  There were a couple of moments when movement into and about the room could be heard, but no voices. Then a knock came at a door.

  “Come in.” St. John’s voice.

  “We have to talk. Now.” Conrad’s voice, followed by Kelsey’s agreement.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know what you’re doing about this

  mess, Sinjin. What the hell’s going on? What is it with the old man and the nanny?”

  “What am I doing? I’m pedaling as fast as I bloody can trying to establish some damage control. What are you doing?”

  “Look—” Conrad began.

  “No, you look,” Sinjin interrupted. “Your father now suspects that you, the three of you, maybe all of us, conspired to bribe Gina Sellers, rather than Gina Sellers ever trying to extort us. Your father is all over me about this illegal-alien business.” He swore. “Even the freaking nanny knows you all had a motive for murder, so what do you think your father suspects?”

  Conrad matched his brother-in-law for expletives. “If you had a clue, Sinjin, what it’s like for the old man to be all over you, you’d know why the hell I started down this road.”

  “I warned you—”

  “Oh yeah. You warned me. But I’m the one who had to cut labor costs. I had no other choice but to start importing cheap labor.”

  “No choice.” Sinjin’s voice oozed deep sarcasm.

  “You arrogant ass! You think it isn’t what goes on in the real world? You think every other clothing manufacturer out there isn’t ass-deep in illegals? Think again. And while you’re at it, think again about murder, Sinjin. I didn’t do it, Kelsey didn’t do it, Harrison hasn’t got the cojones to take out a flea, and Bruce—”

  “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk cojones,” Harrison interrupted angrily. “If you had the brains God gave a brick, you’d be dangerous.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Kelsey cried. “We can’t be fighting among ourselves. Not now. What’s done is done.”

  Isobel looked at Angelo. He nodded.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” she asked excitedly. “The Feds have Conrad on tape admitting to having imported illegal alien labor.”

  Angelo paused the playback with phone cues. “This is it, Iso. This is exactly what they want.” He let hope seep into him, through every cell in his mortal body. He could get Isobel out of here now, out of danger, out of any scenario where the fragmented images of her foreshadowed death might become reality.

  “Is there more?”

  “Like a confession to the murder of Gina Sellers?” He grinned. The relief inside him was so thick, so overwhelming he couldn’t help it. He would get her out of here now, and she wasn’t going to die. “No. But very nearly. Listen to this.”

  He punched a couple of numbers on the cell phone and the tape picked up with Kelsey’s angry interruption.

  “Stop it, both of you. We can’t be fighting among ourselves. Not now. What’s done is done.”

  “What are you talking about, Kelsey?” St. John demanded. “’Not now.’ What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” she snapped. “Just—nothing. Let it go, will you? If just once you would stand up and be a man and do what had to be done, Sinjin,” she hissed, “then—oh, what the hell. It doesn’t matter. Some of us do what has to be done, and some of us sit around wringing our hands about it. I’m warning you, if you don’t get my father off our cases and find a way to get rid of that bastard brat and his nanny, I will leave you. I swear I will.”

  “Holy mother, you did it, didn’t you?”

  “Take a chill, Sinjin,” Harrison spat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You set Gina Sellers up to be murdered didn’t you?” St. John’s strangled voice swore vilely, plainly shocked. “Didn’t you?”

  “Let go of me!” Kelsey cried out.

  “Get your hands off my sister, Sinjin,” Conrad threatened, “or I swear I’ll take you out where you stand.”

  “Get out of my house,” Sinjin snarled. “All of you. Get out of my house.”

  “I’m leaving, Sinjin,” Kelsey taunted. “But don’t ever forget. This is not, and never has been, your house.”

  A door slammed, and all that was left was the sound of Emory St. John sinking into his chair.

  Angelo turned off the phone. Isobel wrapped her arms about her waist. She looked pale to him, suddenly more fragile than he knew her to be. “Should you call them, the INS,” she asked, “and let them know what’s on this tape?”

  “They will have heard it by morning, Iso.” He wanted to make her feel better, to see the end in sight beyond the ugliness on that tape. “We’ll be out of here in less than twenty-four hours. Twelve, maybe.”

  “I’m not going without Seth.”

  “We’ve got enough here to make a decent case for removing him from this estate.”

  “But that will take longer, won’t it?”

  He looked at her. “If we do it legally, yes.”

  She lowered her gaze
from his and swallowed. “I want it done right, Angelo. It has to be done right so that I can have him for all time. So we can have him.”

  “Then we’ll stay until it’s done legally.” He half expected the quivering sensation, the same foreboding, the images of her death to assault him, but none of that happened.

  She shivered hard, but straightened, nodding her agreement. “Would you…would you mind terribly staying the night with me, in my bed with me?”

  Touched deeply in his soul, Angelo nodded. But in his heart of hearts he feared Isobel was hedging her bets against the possibility that if he didn’t lie with her this night, he never would again.

  HE MADE LOVE TO HER for hours on end, hours more precious to her than all the treasures laid up in heaven or on earth. But when she fell asleep, the nightmares began.

  Her mind replayed over and over the scene in the palace courtyard, and every time—every time—the face of Angelo’s brother mocked her, his head thrown back filling the jasmine-scented night air with his maniacal laughter.

  She struggled up from the depths of her anguished dream repeatedly. Angelo held her close, soothed her, stroked her forehead with his lips, but whenever she fell asleep again, the same dream would begin anew.

  The treachery, the betrayal of his brother, his own flesh and blood haunted her. What was it? Why? Why this night?

  But then, near dawn—she knew the time because with her maternal ear she heard Seth’s first halfwaking, half-sleeping morning cries—the dream changed, and it was Seth who consumed her dreams…and not Seth. He looked as he always looked, so sweet, so loving, so full of himself—like Angelo in that way, with his attitude full-blown. The dream made no sense, of course. She would call out to Seth, and though he was not of an age to respond, she knew he should.

  In her dream, she knew he should. But maybe she was mistaken. Maybe he was the wrong baby, or she was the wrong mother or the wrong father…

  And then he began to fade from her sight, as if he were on some kind of evil magic carpet transporting him away from her. She called out to him and he began to cry. He reached for her, but she couldn’t reach him no matter what she did, how fast she ran.