by Mary McBride
He was in no rush to tell her his sad little story, although he had come to the conclusion that it was indeed time for her to know the truth. From various comments she’d made, especially on the drive today, he thought she had a really mistaken impression of his marriage. Well, hell. So had he until it was over.
It wasn’t easy knowing where to begin, but when Shelby’s warm body moved closer to his and she spread her hand over his heart and pressed her lips to his shoulder, he somehow found the words.
“In the beginning,” he said, “Julie was my lifeline. We were just kids, but wanting to stay with her gave me the courage to tell my mother I’d had enough of traipsing all over the country. And the Traverses, her parents, were good to me. It felt like I had a family for the first time in my life.”
Shelby made a soft little sound. She probably knew better than to make an actual comment, for fear she’d ruin his momentum.
“We got married the summer after we graduated from high school,” he said, almost leaving it there, but then deciding he cared enough for this woman to not hold anything back, no matter how it reflected on his character. For better or for worse. “She was pregnant, so that hurried things up a little. Well, a lot.”
“Did you have a big wedding?” she asked.
“The whole nine yards. The church. The white dress. The bridesmaids. My mother didn’t come, but she sent us a check that covered a weekend honeymoon at a cottage on Lake Michigan, which was where Julie miscarried.”
“Oh, Mick.”
“Save your tears, kiddo. She was thrilled. It meant that all her plans for college and med school were back on track. And I have to admit I was pretty relieved myself. We were just kids ourselves, and nowhere near ready for a responsibility like that.”
“Then what happened?” She kissed his shoulder again. Mick boiled the ensuing eight years down to a couple sentences about how they’d scraped for scholarships and part-time jobs in college while living in Julie’s parents’ basement, and how he’d finally dropped out in favor of the Police Academy, not to mention a bit of privacy in a place of their own.
And then, mostly because he was just so damned tired of talking about Julie, he cut to the chase. “Those last couple of years it seemed like we never had any time to spend together. We had a nice place on Rush Street, but she started a new residency and I started working under-cover, and we were hardly ever home at the same time. I was ready for kids. She wasn’t. Plus...”
He started wishing he’d never gotten into this in such detail.
“Plus what?” Shelby asked.
Shit. Acknowledging this to himself was one thing, but saying it out loud was something else.
“Plus, Julie seemed to be embarrassed by my job. Our deal originally had been for her to go to med school, and then to help finance me through law school. Only when we finally had some money, I didn’t want to quit the force. I liked my fucking job. I liked being on the street. No, I loved it, and she just couldn’t seem to understand that. To her it was comparable to working in the sewer.”
Trying to tone down the harsh resentment in his voice, he took in a deep breath, then said, “And then two years ago she died.”
“What about the suit?” Shelby asked.
“What?”
“You were going to tell me about the suit. Why you hate it.”
“I wore it to her funeral,” he said.
“Well, no wonder you have such bad feelings about it, Mick. And so many sad associations.”
“Sad? No, not sad,” he said. “Try mad.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He filled his lungs with another shot of air, let it out slowly, and proceeded to tell her the story he’d never told anyone else. And as he told her, he felt as if he were living through it, dying through it, all over again.
He could almost smell the flowers in the funeral parlor. His were a spray of white and pink lilies directly in front of the closed bronze casket. The florist had asked him if he wanted a ribbon with “Beloved Wife” in gold lettering, and Mick had almost puked on the poor old guy. No. No gold letters. The flowers, her favorites, were expressive enough.
It was hard to feel bereaved and numb and angry at Julie for clinging to her purse instead of her life all at the same time, so he probably looked like a zombie in his navy blue Armani suit. He barely recognized people as they reached for his hand and expressed their condolences.
At some point, he’d been staring vacantly across the room when a man in a similar blue suit stared back at him, then slowly made his way toward the casket and Mick. The closer the guy came, the more Mick realized there were tears in his eyes and his expression more grief-stricken than somber.
He extended his hand to Mick and introduced himself. “Dr. Solomon Fellows. We haven’t met yet, but I can tell from your expression that you know who I am.”
Mick didn’t know what the fuck his expression had communicated or who the fuck this guy was, but he stood there as the stranger droned on.
“I gather Julie told you, Mick. We didn’t plan for it to happen, you know. It just did.” He paused to gaze at the coffin, then cleared his throat and said, “Christ, I miss her. The baby was a boy. Did she tell you that?”
Mick had mumbled something. He didn’t know what. He hardly heard his own words for the thundering inside his head.
“No question that the child was mine,” Solomon Fellows said. “The amnio results came in last week. Julie and I thought we could take care of things—the divorce, our marriage—next month in Las Vegas.” His gaze strayed to the casket again, and his voice broke. “But now... They’re both gone. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Mick didn’t know what he’d do either until he found himself drawing back his fist and smashing it into Solomon Fellows’s nose. The good doctor took out the spray of lilies and two other huge bouquets on his way to the carpet. Whatever transpired after that, Mick didn’t know because he walked out.
“My next lucid thought,” he said now, concluding the whole shitty tale, “was three or four days later when I woke up in the Eleventh District’s drunk tank, still wearing the goddamned suit.”
“Aw, Mick.”
That was all Shelby said. Just a soft “Aw, Mick,” her breath warming his skin as she moved even closer to him.
Then, as they lay there in the golden, flickering candlelight, Mick felt every muscle in his body melt with relaxation and every nerve unwind and smooth out. And damned if he didn’t feel something shift inside his chest, some kind of weight that he hadn’t even known was there. He turned his head to rub his cheek against Shelby’s forehead, so grateful for her presence beside him.
Her soft, quiet presence. Maybe it should have surprised him that Ms. Simon, the High Priestess of Help and Advice, the Monarch of Meddlers, considered a whispered “Aw, Mick” sufficient commentary on his plight. If she’d wanted to discuss it at length, if she’d wanted to discuss it at all, Mick wasn’t sure that he could’ve refrained from snarling at her or shouting shut up.
But her silence didn’t come as a surprise somehow, and it pleased him that she seemed to sense his mood, and seemed to know that all he needed right now was to hold her close.
Mick blinked. All he needed? That didn’t say much about his sensitivity to her needs, did it? The heaviness in his chest came back, even more oppressive now, and he wondered about all the opportunities he might have missed with Julie. As he had for the past two years, he wondered what he’d done wrong.
“Shelby?” he whispered.
“Hm.”
“If you want to talk about all this, it’s okay with me.” She edged her leg over his and pressed the rest of her body harder against him. “I just want to hold you,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m better than I’ve been in a long, long time,” he said.
He could feel her lips curl into a smile against his shoulder just before she said, “I’m here if you want to talk about it more.”
�
�Maybe tomorrow,” he said as he was thinking probably never. All that misery and pain seemed truly behind him now.
The next morning Shelby woke before Mick. The pillar candles were still flickering and she was still in his arms, as she had been all night long. No wonder she’d slept so well.
Asleep, he looked so peaceful and relaxed. For a moment it seemed that their roles were reversed, and that she was protecting him. It was a good thing Julie was dead, Shelby thought, because otherwise she’d have to hunt the woman down and strangle her for the hurt she’d inflicted on Mick. Ms. Simon, in her wisdom, always said there were two sides to every story, but in this case she didn’t give a rat’s ass about Doctor Julie’s version.
How could she not have wanted to have children with this man? He was bright and strong and funny and loyal and far more sensitive than Shelby ever had imagined.
She closed her eyes and sighed.
Dear Ms. Simon,
How will I know if this one is The One?
Signed,
Hopeful at Heart Lake
Dear Hopeful,
He is. Ms Simon says so.
In her mother’s absence, Shelby took it upon herself to feed the two men in her care.
It turned out badly.
The shopping part of it was fun, though. Mick pushed the cart along the aisles of the grocery store in Mecklin while Shelby consulted her list, agonized over one type of cream versus another, wished she’d brought a ruler to measure the thickness of the pork chops, and discovered that she knew absolutely nothing about onions. Who knew there were so many varieties?
And who knew that among Callahan’s many talents was a pretty good working knowledge of wine? The store’s selection wasn’t vast, but he seemed absurdly happy with a California pinot noir. When he confessed that he’d boned up on the subject of wine in order to please his wife, it was all Shelby could do to stifle an indignant snort. She vowed once again to be careful about those reactions. The man had loved his wife, after all, for a long, long time, and even after her betrayal, he refrained from speaking ill of her. Mick’s gallantry made Shelby love him all the more.
Well... She respected him for his restraint. She was still waffling on the love thing.
After they came home and put the groceries away, with no one in the house to hinder them, and dinner still hours away, they raced upstairs to make love again. And again.
Shelby decided she was a lot better in the bedroom than she was in the kitchen. Her mother’s pork chop with onion cream sauce was one of her father’s favorites, but Shelby’s version was nothing like Linda’s even though she followed the recipe step by careful step.
“How long did you cook these pork chops, honey?” her father asked from his seat at the head of the table.
She was still sawing hers as she replied, “An hour and a half. Just like the recipe said.”
“The sauce is great,” Mick said.
“Oh, good.” She hadn’t sampled it yet because she was still trying to cut her first bite of pork.
“Great wine,” her father said.
Shelby didn’t comment because at last she was chewing the entrée that she’d slaved over.
“It’s a little fruitier than I usually like in a pinot noir,” Mick said, contemplating the pale liquid, “but not too bad.”
“Nice and dry,” Harry said.
Speaking of dry, Shelby thought morosely. She put her fork down and lifted her napkin to discreetly get rid of the chewed over chunk of meat in her mouth, then gulped down half the wine in her glass, and asked as cheerfully as she could, “Who’s up for a grilled cheese sandwich?”
“Sounds good, honey,” her father said, putting down his knife and fork with what appeared to be monumental relief.
Mick, bless his heart, insisted on finishing what was on his plate, but didn’t put up much of a fight when Shelby grabbed it out from under his nose and took it into the kitchen.
She looked at her mother’s recipe card again. “Well, no wonder,” she exclaimed.
“What?” Mick asked while he scraped their plates into the trash can.
“I was supposed to cook the chops for half an hour, not an hour and a half.”
“So, next time you’ll know.”
“Next time I’ll order out,” she said.
The phone rang just then, and Shelby picked it up and answered with a crisp “Simon residence.” After a moment of silence, she said, “Hello?” And then somewhere in the silence, she heard somebody breathing. Or didn’t hear it exactly, but sensed it. A presence on the other end of the line. How creepy was that!
“Hello.” This time she didn’t say it like a polite greeting. It came out more as an accusation.
All of a sudden, Mick was standing beside her. “Who is it?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Hang up,” he said.
“But...”
“Hang the fuck up, Shelby.”
She did.
Mick was glowering at the telephone now. It was an ancient rotary device, harvest gold, and nearly as big as and as obsolete as a bread box. The thing had sat on its little wrought-iron stand in the kitchen for as long as Shelby could remember. It had never been threatening, though. Not until this evening.
“No Caller ID on this damned thing,” he muttered. “What about the extension in my mother’s office?” They raced up to the third floor to discover that the call had come from a pay phone with a Chicago area code. Mick placed a call to his office while Shelby went back to the kitchen to put together a second dinner.
“The pay phone was at O’Hare,” he said when he joined her after a few minutes.
“O’Hare!” Shelby exclaimed. She pictured the airport, once the busiest in the country, and still a welter of travelers nearly twenty-four hours a day. “Well, that narrows it down to about ten thousand possible suspects.”
“Yep. No sense even checking for prints in a case like that. If the calls keep coming, I’ll see what I can do about putting a trace on your line. But, you know . . .” He came up with a tiny, hopeful grin. “Maybe it was just a fluke, Shelby.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What are the odds of that, Lieutenant Callahan? Tell me that. What are the odds of some tired, confused traveler wandering through O’Hare, picking up a pay phone, and dialing these ten digits by mistake?”
With each word, Shelby heard her own voice begin to tremble more as it climbed into higher and higher registers. The call hadn’t been a mistake or “just a fluke.” It was deliberate. She had felt the malice across several hundred miles. She could still feel it.
Mick wrapped her in his arms. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I promise you.”
A few days ago, Shelby would have been eager to believe that. But now she wasn’t quite so sure.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It rained the following day, one of those chilly all day deals that usually depressed the hell out of Mick, but not this time. He built a crackling fire in the fireplace beneath the watchful eye of Shelby’s great-great-grandfather’s portrait. He whipped up a pot of hot chocolate from scratch, impressing Shelby with another one of his hidden talents. He sat next to her on the big Victorian sofa in front of the fire, sharing an enormous Linda Purl designed afghan, reading his Grant biography while Shelby dinked around on her laptop.
“This is nice,” he said, probably for the tenth time. It was just that whenever he looked up from his book and took in the fire and the rain on the windowpanes and Shelby beside him, a palpable feeling of contentment would course through him and he’d have to acknowledge it out loud. It was better than nice. It was heaven. He wished he could think of a way to prolong this day for the next forty or fifty years.
The phone had only rung once so far today, but the sound nearly paralyzed Shelby. Mick answered it, relieved to hear Linda Simon’s voice and happy to know that she’d be returning earlier than expected from her trip. He promised to pass the news along to Harry, who was somewhere out on the lake, fishing.
>
“Is everything all right there?” Linda had asked. “Everything’s great,” he lied.
The call the night before worried him a lot more than he’d let on to Shelby. If there was still an aura of coincidence about the letter bombs, the death of the chemistry student at Northwestern, and that of Derek McKay, Mick had a bad feeling about the phone call. While the other incidents had been aimed around Shelby, the call had been directed right at her. It wasn’t good news. And the fact that the call was made at a pay phone at O’Hare was a pretty good indication that they were dealing with somebody who put some thought into his malicious business and wasn’t anxious to get caught.
Mick found himself staring into the flames, wondering not only who but why? Shelby had wracked her brain again and again, but hadn’t been able to come up with a reason somebody might want to kill her. Without any sort of motive, the investigation was pretty much dead in the water. And Mick had to suspect everybody.
He closed his book and reached for Shelby’s hand. “It’d be nice to get away to someplace warm and sunny, wouldn’t it? What do you say we fly down to Cancun for the weekend? We could leave tomorrow. Does that sound good?”
“It sounds great, except my sister’s coming back for the Masque tomorrow night. Remember? I told you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I forgot. Well, Saturday, then.”
“I hate to leave when she’ll only be here a few days. Maybe next weekend?”
“Yeah. Okay. Maybe next weekend.”
He had a sinking feeling that would be too late.
Linda arrived at dinnertime with an enormous bucket of extra crispy fried chicken plus all the trimmings that she’d picked up on her drive from the airport in Grand Rapids. God, it was good to be back. She felt as if she’d been away three months instead of just three days.
In her absence, not only had dismal weather settled in at Heart Lake, but Harry had acquired the beginnings of a cold, while her daughter and Mick Callahan seemed to have acquired the appearance of two people with a distinct case of the hots.
“Her lieutenant is a wine connoisseur,” Harry said when Linda commented on the two of them after she joined him out in the carriage house for an espresso after their fried chicken dinner.
