Brooding Angel

by Marie Ferrarella

  Clancy looked away from him, toward the window. She knew that it faced the harbor, but all she could see was the sky. The sailboats were hidden from her. She wanted to see them. She wanted to be able to get up and walk over to the window and look out.

  She wanted her life back.

  Clancy dug her fists into the mattress, trying to raise herself up enough so that she could see.

  Mitch stopped kneading the muscle. “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see if the boats are there,” she answered stubbornly.

  He raised his head slightly and looked out. “They’re there.”

  “I want to see for myself.”

  Beneath the insistence, he heard the mounting hysteria. Mitch moved the blanket aside the rest of the way and picked her up in his arms. It felt as if she belonged there. He pushed the thought away. Without a word, he took the few steps to the window.

  Reflexes had her threading her arms around his neck even as she wanted to push him away. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Shut up, Clancy, and let someone do something for you.” He was getting very tired of having to fight over every single thing he did. He wasn’t looking for gratitude, but he could live without this constant battle.

  Clancy blinked back the beginning of a tear and fell silent as she looked out. The sea was calm today and the harbor was dotted with recreational boats.

  More than anything, she wished for other times, when Mitch’s arms around her could have meant something.

  Chapter Six

  The silence that greeted each of his statements was beginning to grate on McAffee’s nerves. Though Mitch had never been gregarious, there were few times that McAffee could remember his being this quiet. Maybe it was just the spate of summer heat, but it irritated McAffee more than usual not to be included in Mitch’s confidence.

  “Mitch, I know you’re not big on sharing, but what’s eating you?”

  Mitch frowned as he glanced toward his partner. He waited until he’d turned the corner toward Rodeo Drive before answering. “Not that it is, but what makes you think anything’s eating me?”

  McAffee laughed shortly. “You usually grunt when I talk to you. I’ve been talking for fifteen minutes straight and you haven’t made a sound.”

  McAffee was right; he’d hardly heard a word. His partner’s voice had faded to a dull buzz as Mitch tried to sort things out in his head. His mouth curved slightly. “Maybe you’re just getting to be a brilliant conversationalist.”

  That would be the day. “I’ve never known you to fling bull around before.”

  Mitch scanned the area as he guided the squad car through the thick traffic. The bizarre and the mundane mingled on both sides of the street. Business as usual. “Yeah, well, it happens to the best of us.”

  They’d had a third call this morning—another burglary involving stolen artwork. Newspapers were referring to the elusive burglar as the “Art Lover.” The latest burglary had taken place at the home of a vacationing producer. The maid had noticed that a Remington was conspicuously absent when she went to dust the frame. It had taken Mitch and McAffee over forty minutes to calm her down.

  It was the same M.O. as the other two burglaries: drugged dog, artwork stolen. Jewelry untouched. McAffee had noticed a pensive look enter Mitch’s eyes as he examined the site. And there’d been something else. McAffee had a feeling Mitch knew more than he was telling.

  And it annoyed the hell out of him.

  “It’s the burglaries, isn’t it?”

  Mitch lifted a shoulder and let it drop carelessly. “They’re on my mind, yes. I get paid to worry about things like that.”

  Because the day had been relatively uneventful, he recounted what they knew, looking for a kernel that would lead him in any direction other than the one he was leaning toward. “The guy’s smooth. There’s no trail to follow. No prints. The security system is always bypassed, which means that he knows his way around electronics.” His father’s favorite hobby, he recalled. Sam Mitchell had always been fascinated by the advances in technology. “The cash isn’t traceable and nobody’s reported seeing the paintings.” He knew how that worked, too. Sam used buyers who were out of the country. Never the same dealer twice. “Not that I figure they will.”

  The rich deserved to be protected just like the poor, McAffee thought, although he felt the rich could afford to lose a little more. “Think he’ll hit again?”

  Mitch thought about his father. Sam Mitchell was careful, but he was vain. There was nothing the man enjoyed more than outsmarting the local authorities. One of the most prominent memories Mitch retained from his childhood was seeing the flush of pride that crossed his father’s face as he stroked the container that held his latest purloined treasure.

  It was at that moment that Mitch had realized his father didn’t do it just “to put clothes on their backs,” as he’d boasted. He did it for the excitement, for the thrill it brought.

  “Yeah, I think he’ll hit again.” Mitch chewed on the inside of his lip, thinking. The captain was aware that his father had been a professional burglar, but no one else at the precinct knew. It wasn’t the kind of thing a man advertised.

  Mitch thought of LaRue. LaRue was the type of man who made you want to take a shower after talking to him, but he was a good snitch. He lived on the streets. A slight, nervous man with long, mousy hair, LaRue had access to an information network that just might give Mitch the kind of details he needed to know. For a price.

  But then, there was always a price to pay, he thought, his mind briefly digressing to Clancy, to the way he had felt leaving her. The helpless way he had felt, holding her in his arms after the accident, as if she were a broken, bleeding sparrow.

  Mitch shut out the images. She had no place in the squad car. No place in his life, really, once this was resolved. Once his debt was paid.

  It was time, he decided, to put out feelers to see if he could track down his father’s whereabouts. The last he’d heard, Sam had been in Florida, but things changed. No one knew that better than he.

  He had very little to offer LaRue other than a description and a number of aliases, and he was sure his father had picked up some new ones in the last ten years.

  Since it was obvious that Mitch wasn’t going to say anything further on the art burglaries, McAffee offered him another subject. “So how’s she doing?”

  Mitch slanted a look toward his partner. He was grinning. Mitch’s own expression was two degrees past solemn and on its way to dangerous. “She?”

  The look worked on suspects. It hardly fazed McAffee. “The woman you saved.”

  Mitch turned his eyes forward as he changed lanes. The cars around him on the crowded streets still managed to give him a wide berth. There were advantages to driving a black and white. “What makes you think I know?”

  “Damn it, Mitch, aren’t you ever going to loosen up a little?”

  Rather than answer, Mitch merely spared him a dark look.

  “My wife saw you going into her room at the hospital. Alicia’s a nurse at Queen of Angels.” McAffee released an exasperated breath as he stared out the window. “I’ve only told you that a half-dozen times. She was rotated to the third floor a week and a half ago, just a couple of days before they brought that accident victim in.” Alicia had been very animated about the details of the case once she realized that Mitch had been involved in saving the woman. “She told me that the patient was pretty banged up.”

  “Is that the medical term for it?” Mitch’s voice was a monotone.

  McAffee sighed. “No, that’s my term for it. Alicia says the woman—”

  “Clancy,” Mitch supplied quietly.

  “Clancy,” McAffee repeated, pleased that Mitch was offering even this scrap of information, “is pretty depressed. What I can’t figure out is what makes you her personal welcoming committee.”

  Mitch had said about as much as he was planning to on the subject. “You keep working on it, partner.”

  The w
oman on the corner was wearing a skirt short enough to qualify as a handkerchief. McAffee noted that Mitch looked right past her. The man had no pulse, he mused. “You know, I did a little research on your last partner. He asked to be transferred. Must have been your winsome personality.”

  Just a smattering of a smile flirted with the hard, set lines of Mitch’s mouth. “Must have.”

  McAffee crossed his arms over his chest and slid back in the seat. “I can find out a different way, you know, if you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Why?” Mitch didn’t see why it should matter one way or the other to McAffee. “Why do you want to know?” He didn’t ask him questions about his wife. Everything he knew about McAffee had been volunteered. He figured that was the way it should be. And he didn’t feel like volunteering.

  His answer was simple. “I don’t like not knowing things. Alicia says that’s what makes me a good cop.”

  He was kidding, but Mitch detected the underlying hint of pride in his voice. McAffee was a good cop, but that didn’t mean he had to tell him that. “Your wife doesn’t have very high standards, does she?”

  McAffee shrugged. “Guess not. She asked me to invite you over to dinner. Again.” Not that either one of them expected Mitch to accept. By now it was just a formality McAffee went through to placate his wife and satisfy his own sense of hopeful camaraderie.

  Mitch laughed softly. Maybe there was no harm in admitting his connection to Clancy, even though it was no one’s business but his own. “I went out with her a few times.” It was an understatement, but it would do.

  Stunned, McAffee paused a moment as the car in front of them narrowly avoided hitting a dog that had darted out into traffic. He craned his neck to make certain the animal had managed to make it to safety. Satisfied, he looked at Mitch. “I take it you mean Clancy and not Alicia.”

  Mitch wondered why people even kept a dog in the crowded city. It didn’t seem fair to the animal. “Yeah, I mean Clancy.” A fragment of a conversation floated back to him. “Didn’t you mention that your wife was a physical therapist?”

  It showed how much of what he said registered. “No, that’s my brother-in-law.”

  Mitch nodded and fell into a thoughtful silence again. Knowing the subject was closed, McAffee began talking about the Dodgers’ chances of closing in on the pennant. He did it more to entertain himself than to get an answer from Mitch.

  * * *

  It had felt strange watching the hospital grow smaller in Cynthia’s rearview mirror.

  Just the slightest layer of her smothering depression peeled away as Clancy took in her first lungful of clean air. Optimism was still completely beyond her scope, but this was decidedly better. She had begun to feel as if she’d been buried alive in that hospital, despite how kind everyone was to her.

  Maybe because everyone had been so kind to her. Kind the way people were to someone harboring a dreadful disease from which she would never recover.

  It felt better, sitting beside Cynthia, listening to her talk about Julie’s F in math and the sinful price of tutors these days. She could almost forget for the briefest fraction of a moment that everything wasn’t the way it normally was.

  Almost.

  Except for the wheelchair that sat like an iron sentinel in the rear of Cynthia’s car, banging against the back of her seat each time they took a turn. And the schedule the nurse had pressed into Clancy’s hand, outlining the different days and times the home nurses and therapists would be arriving.

  Her life was going to be crowded with an endless procession of medical personnel, none of whom would be able to do anything. They’d come and prod and measure and push. At least for a while, until the insurance benefits ran out and they gave up pretending that they could make a difference.

  The way Mitch had stopped pretending.

  He hadn’t come to say goodbye, even when she had told him she would be leaving. She’d been certain that he would appear at the hospital just before she left. She’d continued anticipating his appearance until Cynthia’s blue car had pulled away from the hospital entrance.

  It was for the best. She didn’t need him poking around in her life, stirring up old feelings she’d sworn to herself were gone.

  And yet...

  And yet there was this vague, nagging disappointment at having been abandoned. The same disappointment that had eaten away at her when he had disappeared out of her life the first time.

  Things were different now, she reminded herself bitterly. A whole lot different.

  The empty feeling began to mushroom within her again, though Clancy attempted to keep it at bay for Cynthia’s sake. Her friend was trying really hard to make her feel optimistic about the future. She hadn’t realized yet that there was no future. Not for Clancy.

  Cynthia had barely brought the car to a halt within the carport reserved for Clancy’s car before she was out, circling to the rear of the car.

  “We’ll have you mobile in a minute,” she promised, struggling to pull the wheelchair out of the back seat. Scooting it around to the passenger side, Cynthia hesitated for a moment, not knowing exactly how to help Clancy out of the car and into the wheelchair.

  “I’ll do it,” Clancy snapped. Instant regret came on the heels of her frustration. “I’m sorry. I’m a little edgy.”

  Cynthia was the mother of a teenager and a preteen. She was more than accustomed to mood swings and apologies. She nodded. “We’ll do it together.”

  She offered Clancy her hands. Clancy gripped her forearms instead. Struggling, she managed to get herself into the chair. It had been a great deal easier when the male nurse had helped her into the car.

  Get used to it. This is what life’s going to be like from now on, Clancy.

  Cynthia quickly pushed her into the apartment, grateful that Clancy lived on the ground floor. “Here we are—home.” She made the unnecessary announcement as she pushed the wheelchair through the doorway.

  She turned to close the door, then looked at Clancy. It wasn’t difficult to read the expression on her face. She laid a hand on Clancy’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “It always feels a little strange, coming home from the hospital,” she said softly. “When I had Julie, I felt like a stranger in my own house for the first twenty-four hours.” Her voice was firm, confident. She was, Clancy thought, much the way she had been. Before the accident. “You’ll get over it.”

  “Sure.” Still embarrassed by her short temper, Clancy flushed. “Listen, I hate taking you away from your family.”

  It had required some fancy finagling on the home front to bring this about. But Cynthia really cared about Clancy. “Think of it as saving me. Joe thought we should redo the backyard during my vacation. Now he’s going to have to do it all himself,” she crowed happily.

  Any further commentary on Joe and his lack of a green thumb was curtailed by a knock on the door. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  Clancy fervently hoped that the visiting home nurses and therapists hadn’t decided to change their schedules and begin early. She didn’t feel up to seeing anyone except for Cynthia. She shook her head. “No.”

  “I’ll get rid of them.” Cynthia looked through the peephole and realized that she wasn’t going to be able to live up to her promise. “It’s a policeman.”

  The small flutter of happiness that Mitch hadn’t just dropped out of her life vied with annoyance for the same reason. But maybe it wasn’t him.

  “Tall?”

  Cynthia nodded in reply.

  “Dark hair, worn a little long?”

  Another nod, this time with more feeling.

  Clancy sighed. It was Mitch. A whole array of feelings spilled into one another like the contents of an upended tray. “Rock-hard body? Looks like he posed for the Sierra Madres?”

  Cynthia turned away from the peephole. There was a slight trace of envy in her eyes. “You know him.”

  Clancy merely nodded in response, her expression giving nothing away. “Yes, I know hi
m.”

  “Lucky you.” Cynthia unlocked the door. If she had known him, she would have thought of herself as very fortunate.

  It was on the tip of Clancy’s tongue to tell Cynthia not to open the door. She really wasn’t up to seeing Mitch yet. Perhaps not ever. She was back on her own home ground and she still felt like a stranger, as if nothing around her really belonged to her. It was as if everything that came before had happened to someone else with her name, her face.

  It wasn’t her life anymore.

  She wanted to get a piece of her identity back before she saw anyone she knew again. Especially Mitch.

  But her mental debate was made moot as Cynthia opened the door, admitting him.

  * * *

  Mitch noticed the other woman’s presence only peripherally. His eyes lightly skimmed over Clancy before he spoke. She was sitting in the wheelchair as if it were a piece of hot metal that would brand her permanently if she were to relax against it.

  As usual, he skipped any sort of a greeting. “Just wanted to see if you needed anything.”

  That, Cynthia thought, was a loaded question. She leaned forward to catch his eye and put her hand out. “Hi, I’m Cynthia Harris. I’m staying with Clancy for a few days.”

  He nodded. “She mentioned you. Alexander Mitchell.” His manner was succinct, professional, neither friendly nor cold. He shook Cynthia’s hand, but his eyes were on Clancy. “I stopped by the hospital, but they told me you’d been discharged.”

  Since he hadn’t appeared when she was leaving, Clancy had assumed that his show of concern was over. After all, the man had other things to occupy his time than a woman he had once walked out on. “And here I thought I could make a clean getaway.”

  If her sarcastic tone fazed him, he didn’t show it. “I just wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

  Her temper was on a short chain, ready to break free at the slightest provocation.

  “No, everything isn’t all right, but you already know that.” She saw Cynthia looking at her, her mouth open in surprise, but she didn’t care if she sounded like a petulant, self-pitying shrew. She had a right. She’d returned to her old life and it didn’t fit. “And I’m not going to do any exercises today. I’m too tired.”