He’d have to face the past again, what he’d caused, then run away from. He stopped walking.
Sonnie carried on.
The distance between them widened.
She felt herself getting farther from him with each step. Tears stung her eyes—and made her mad. She had no right to draw him into her troubles in the first place, and no right to want him so. And she had no right to insult him for his kindness.
She stopped and bowed her head, turned back—stared at him.
Damn him anyway; he was smiling at her. Not one of his dazzling, color-your-heart-happy smiles, but a smile stripped of any pretense. What she’d said had hurt him; it had actually made him hear what he didn’t want to hear—that while he was following her, he was avoiding himself.
“I’m not ready,” he said, and despite the distance between them she heard him clearly. “My turn will come. For opening all the cupboards. But not now. If I did it now I’d die under everything that fell out. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you play games. You pretend to be something you’re not. You are not a simple man, Chris Talon.”
How did a man live with so much wanting? How did a man who had vowed never to need another soul as he’d once…How did a man forget his vows and allow himself to fall for a woman he’d probably never be able to have?
When she started back toward him, he couldn’t even stand where he was. His feet helped close the space between them, and there was no way he could have done anything else but go to her.
“Are you here because you’re bored and you need something to be interested in?” she said.
“Oh, no.”
“Why then?”
He ran the fingertips of one hand down her bare arm. “I’m here because I want to be with you. You’re a very complicated lady, and I want to know everything about you. And I want to help you. You’re not the hysterical type, but you’re working so hard to hold yourself together. Something caused that, and I want to find out what it was. Or who it was.”
“There could be eyes on the other side of every window on this street, Chris. Maybe I should carry on and see Ena because she needs someone. Later I’ll tell you what she says.”
His fingers hovered over the back of her hand. He’d never known such a need to be able to reach for someone and feel her. “Later? When you’ve run for cover again?”
Was that what she intended, even without thinking what she’d do next? “I don’t know where I should go—where I should be. I was grateful to be at Roy and Bo’s again last night, but it isn’t right for me to take advantage of them.” An urge to cry all but overwhelmed her. She breathed through her mouth and struggled for composure. “I am dangerous. I’m sure of that now. Otherwise why would a man I didn’t even know die in a freak fire in my house? Other than as a nodding acquaintance, I had no idea who he was.”
“That freak fire was started. I don’t know how yet, but I will, and so will you. How could the fact that a disturbed man became fixated on you make you dangerous?”
What did it matter who watched them? She walked into him, clasped his shoulders, and buried her face in his chest.
She made him feel peace in his heart, and happiness, and at the same time she wounded him so deeply he felt disoriented. Her need was huge, yet she fought not to need at all—not to need him. But she wanted him. He wasn’t fooling himself about Sonnie’s feelings; she was at war and he was both ally and enemy.
“Hey, hey, kid, what say we stop asking ourselves all the questions for now?” He would not let her drive him away. “We could just take things an hour at a time. How about that?”
She moved her face and he felt dampness soak through his cotton shirt. She cried. When had her body become familiar? Her scent familiar? The texture of her hair against his palm familiar?
“Okay,” she mumbled. “An hour at a time. But you can’t pull the big-man act on me.”
He almost laughed. “Big-man act? Me?”
“Yes, you. If an hour comes when I decide I’ve got to make you go away, you’ll go.” She raised her face, her unforgettable face, and said, “I won’t want to. It’ll be because it’s the way it has to be. Promise.”
Sonnie saw his struggle. She saw how he sorted through responses that would allow him an escape. “I promise I’ll respect your opinion,” he said, and she analyzed exactly what he meant.
“There, you have your promise. I want to get you out of the sun. You’re too fair for this heat.” He hadn’t lied, only given her a promise that wasn’t exactly the one she’d requested.
Truman Avenue looked as it always looked. Stucco houses gleamed startlingly white or pink beneath the sun’s rays, and the vegetation looked lush despite a layer of dust that had gathered on leaves and flowers. Lawns had begun to turn crisp. A good rain—and that rain was rarely far away—would wash away the dust and green the lawns again.
The one difference in the landscape was the presence of a cop who shaded himself beneath Sonnie’s poinciana tree, and managed a prizewinning bored demeanor.
Holding Sonnie’s hand, Chris turned sharply at Ena’s driveway. He assessed a house that had started as a cigar maker’s three-room abode, but which had been built onto over the years. The result was a whimsical concoction of wood and stucco, of gingerbread moldings over doors, and cutout wooden shutters at the upper-story windows. Ena grew cacti in an endless assortment of old cookie jars, cachepots, brass pots, sawed-off plastic milk bottles, and even a discarded round sink she’d sunk into the earth near the stoop.
“What time is it?” Sonnie asked.
He saw her studying windows covered by closed blinds—every window in the house as far as Chris could see. “Eleven,” he told her. “Maybe her air-conditioning doesn’t work so well, so she’s trying to shut out the heat.”
“Maybe.” Sonnie didn’t think so. Ena seemed almost to bloom on sweltering days. “She could be mourning.”
Chris mounted the front steps, but the door opened before he could knock, and Ena looked out at them. Her face crumpled and she turned her back. Chris glanced at Sonnie for guidance, but she was already hurrying up the steps and taking Ena in her arms. “Come on,” she said. “We’re here now. It’s okay, Ena. We’ll help you with this.”
Ena let herself be led into the house, but she said, “It’s nicer on the back porch. I’ve got iced tea in the icebox.”
“You go out,” Chris said. “I’ll bring the tea.”
Chaos abounded in Ena’s kitchen. Charming chaos, it was true, but overwhelming to Chris, who spent his days streamlining his life and getting rid of anything he didn’t absolutely need.
Cats were Ena’s theme. Ceramic cats. Pewter cats. Papier-mâché cats painted unlikely colors. Kitchen spoons with cats on their handles and stored in a crock shaped like a marmalade cat with a big grin. Stuffed furry cats. Cats dressed up in Halloween costumes. Already a cat or two sporting red velvet Christmas caps.
Chris focused on the refrigerator and found the iced tea—in a large jug painted with green cats. The discovery of glasses that were free of any decoration was a relief. He carted his haul out to the back porch where Ena—still sniffling—sat with her feet up on a swing. Sonnie had taken a place on a sagging wicker couch draped with a floral sheet. He put the jug and glasses on a metal table stamped Cinzano, and sat beside Sonnie.
She looked significantly at Ena, who fluttered a bamboo fan before her face and occasionally wiped her eyes on a white-spotted red handkerchief.
“I’ll pour,” Sonnie said. She wanted to do something, anything. Ena’s abject misery wasn’t something she’d been prepared to face. “You need to drink plenty when it’s like this, Ena.”
Ena flapped the handkerchief and offered a watery and wan smile. But she accepted a glass and drank thirstily.
“The police were here?” Chris said.
Sonnie glared at him. Men could be insensitive—even sensitive men like Chris.
He shrugged and drank some tea.
�
��They’ve been all over the place,” Ena said. “Poking and prying. I told them I’d show them whatever they wanted to see, but they had one of those warrants and they ignored me.”
“Bastards,” Chris said. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, ladies. I get angry when I see bullheadedness.” The moments when he didn’t quite recognize himself were getting closer together.
“Thank you,” Ena said. “I was wrong about you when I first saw you. I thought you were one of those awful biker types. Molls, and those terrible rally things when they all get naked together—or the women, anyway. I saw that in the paper.”
Chris’s mind went blank.
He was finally struck silent, Sonnie thought, and smiled sweetly at him. “Imagine anyone thinking things like that about a shy man like you,” she said. “Εna, Chris would probably run the other way if he saw naked people hanging out together.”
“Sturgis,” Ena cried. “That’s it. Sturgis. North Dakota, or South Dakota, or somewhere. And the women take off their shirts for some sort of contest. What kind of contest that would be, I can’t imagine.”
“A contest I wouldn’t win,” Sonnie said softly, offering Chris a mischievous grin.
He attempted a scowl but grinned back just the same. “I wouldn’t know anything about those things,” he said. “I don’t get out much.”
“Tattoos, too,” Ena said. “Obscene, some of them.”
Chris had been waiting for that. He’d also been waiting for Sonnie to mention the little monstrosity he’d acquired as part of his tough disguise. The more time that passed before she did ask, the better. He wasn’t prepared to tell her his entire history yet—might never be.
“Ena,” Sonnie said gently, “would you tell us about Edward? I saw him only a few times. Didn’t even meet him, really, just saw him close enough to wave. He seemed such a nice man.”
“I think he was a nice man.” The woman’s tone toughened and she sounded defensive. “The police told me off for renting to him without knowing more about him. But he said he knew a cousin of mine in Miami. That’s where I’m from. Not that I’ve spoken to her—my cousin—since we were in our twenties. I never liked her. But she’s family and that counts for something.”
“Yes,” Chris said, and felt the sinking sensation that came with the conviction that he was dealing with a difficult witness. “I expect the police here have made arrangements to speak with your cousin.”
Ena drank more tea and her expression became closed. “I don’t know where she’s living. I told them that. They got angry with me again. Said I wasn’t cooperating, but how could I tell them what I don’t know?”
“But Edward knew her? He’d seen her recently enough to give her as a reference?”
“Well…it wasn’t exactly like that. He’d met Janice some years back and they’d gotten into a conversation about the Keys. She told him she had a cousin down here. Said since it’s a small place he should be able to find Ena Fishbine if he needed to, and that Ι used to let rooms. Though, now that I think about it, how she knew that I can’t imagine.”
“Janice Fishbine,” Chris said. “And you think she’s still in Miami.”
“Fishbine’s my married name,” Ena said, and sniffed. “There’s still a Mr. Fishbine but I couldn’t say where he is at the moment. And I’m sure I don’t care. But he’ll be hugging a bottle, I can tell you that. I don’t know what Janice’s last name would be. Edward mentioned she was married, but I never thought to ask her name. Wasn’t interested.”
This was great. All roads leading to nowhere. He would risk a more direct approach. “Do you suppose we could look at Edward’s room, Εna?”
She frowned at him and pursed her heavily painted mouth. “The police have turned it upside down. Don’t ask me why. There’s nothing in there but all that magic stuff.”
Sonnie blinked and caught Chris’s glance before it slid away. “Edward was into magic?” she said, and once more felt vaguely nauseated. “What did he do for a living?”
Ena’s chin rose. “He paid his rent regular. I’m not a nosy type. I don’t believe in poking around in other people’s business. He was a very good magician. All he needed was a break.”
“So he didn’t find much work,” Chris said. “That’s tough.”
“Oh, he found work okay. Just not real regular and not any that paid a lot. But be paid me in cash and he paid me the minute he was paid. And the fun I had when he did tricks for me! He could do anything. Make things disappear. Swallow swords and lighted torches. He wanted to cut me in half only I wouldn’t let him.” She giggled. “I was afraid he would forget how to put me back together again.”
“You liked him,” Sonnie said, wishing she could read Chris’s impassive expression.
“Yes, I did. He talked about doing magic for children in the hospital. A good heart, he had. Even if he did have those pictures the police made such a fuss over.”
Chris’s impassivity slipped a little, but he recovered quickly. “What kind of pictures?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose they were like the ones on his walls. I did mention them to him once, but he laughed and said they were a joke.”
“Did the police take them all?”
“Not the ones on the wall,” Ena said.
Chris got up. “You don’t have to move, but it might help us understand a bit more if I took a look. Just tell me where to go.”
Her expression shutting down, Ena got up and said, “I’ll take you. But you’ll have to be quick because I was told not to let anyone near that room. Not that I care what those nasty people say. Don’t care a bit about what happened to Edward, they don’t. I’m going to bury him, you know. They can’t find any family or anyone at all who knew him. So I’ll put him in the ground. Come along.”
Reluctantly Sonnie followed them into the stuffy house and up a dark flight of stairs. A second flight rose to the attic floor, where a large space with sloping ceilings had been turned into a bedroom and living room combined.
“His bathroom’s a floor down,” Ena said. “But he doesn’t mind. Didn’t mind.” She sighed. “See what a mess they’ve made?”
Assuming Edward had been a tidy man, the police certainly had made a mess. Every visible drawer had been emptied. A trunk pushed into a dormer window stood open to reveal many items that must be part of Edward’s magic supplies. Bedding was strewn.
Hooks lined two walls. Brightly colored silk scarves hung there, and capes, whips, hoops, lengths of cord in different thicknesses, and braces of rubber birds. Jumbled on a table were several top hats, a jeweled turban, silver-tipped canes, boxes of playing cards, ropes of glittering beads, and a profusion of items so tangled Sonnie couldn’t identify them. Looking at the trappings, she experienced some of the mystery of childhood encounters with magicians.
Chris wasn’t examining the glitter. Rather he stood before an array of photographic posters, each one displaying a scantily dressed or naked woman contorted into what seemed a painful pose. Real knives, each one driven into the genital area, helped spear the pictures to the wall.
Sonnie shuddered.
Chris didn’t miss her reaction. He didn’t want her here, but getting her out of the room might cause Ena to order them both away. As it was he saw how the woman looked frequently and nervously toward the stairs.
“Did the police say they’d taken everything they needed?” he asked her.
“They didn’t say they hadn’t,” Ena said. “We mustn’t stay long in case they come back. They can get mean, y’know.”
“I know,” he said. “The photographs they took away—they were photographs, weren’t they?—did they look like these on the walls?”
“Some of them, I think.” She shrugged. “People have their funny sides. So he liked nasty photographs. There could be worse things.”
Like lying in wait for a woman and planning to do who knew what to her when he got her alone? He held his tongue and went back to studying the posters. “Did he know these women?”
“How should I know? I wouldn’t think so. They obviously aren’t very nice.”
“Edward must have thought so, too. Why would he stick knives in them otherwise?” Because he hated women. Chris had dealt with his share of perverts. Some never acted out their fantasies. Others did….
“He said they needed to be punished,” Ena said, but her confidence had fractured and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “That’s why he put knives in the pictures like that. He was really a very moral man.”
“Oh, yeah,” Chris said solemnly.
Sonnie’s palms sweated. Evil lived in this space.
Ena sighed. “He used to have little Wimpy jump through those hoops. It was so funny to watch. Do you know why Edward called him Wimpy?”
Sonnie had forgotten the tiny dog. “No.”
“Because he loves hamburger. Like Wimpy in Popeye. Edward always bought him hamburger. Jump through one of those hoops when Edward set fire to it, Wimpy would. Just as long as he could see the hamburger on the other side.”
Slowly Sonnie turned to Chris and found him studying her hard. He shook his head slightly, obviously warning her to save what was on her mind until they were alone.
She nodded. “Chris and I had better get along. But I plan to move back into the house just as soon as I can. Could be as soon as tomorrow. I’ve already found a contractor who says he can close up the outside in a few hours and make sure I’m secure. He can take his time redoing the inside.” She would not allow herself to be frightened away from her own home.
“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” Ena told her with tears in her eyes. “I feel we’ve become friends. We’ve shared a lot. I’ll be here for you. All you have to do is call. And I’ll check on you every day.”
Sonnie managed not to wince. “Ι’m sure I’ll settle in quickly.” She went to the stairs and started down. When she halted, Ena bumped into her and laughed. “Sorry,” Sonnie said. “I forgot all about that dear little dog. Where is he? You didn’t…Well, you didn’t get rid of him, did you?”
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