by Susan Breen
“No.”
“It’s true. When I’m around, you can’t help but remember the past, and you’re young enough to move on. I think you should leave. Move away. Your career here is over. You’re going to need to make a new start.”
“I’m almost forty years old.”
She laughed. “I know that seems old to you, but it’s not. There are so many things you could do. I suspect you’ll have some money to help you. I was talking to Winifred’s daughter and she told me there was a bequest for you in the will. You could travel. You could see the world. You can take the time to figure out whatever you want to do.”
He wiped tears away from his own eyes. “I don’t want to leave you, Dove. I don’t want to leave Juliet.”
Maggie could hear Doc Steinberg’s voice in the hall. She’d be here soon.
“She would have wanted you to. She was so excited about the new life that was opening up in front of her. I suspect she would have flown away from both of us. She would have soared to some wonderful height, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Life isn’t about staying safe and living in the past. Life is about adventure and joy and love.”
He looked away from her. “I won’t leave you, Dove. I won’t leave you alone.”
“But I’m not alone,” she said, thinking of the parade of people running at her from the park, thinking of Joe Mangione, and Helen Blake and young Edgar, and Agnes, even Agnes, and Doc Steinberg, and all her friends from the church, and the guys at D’Amici’s deli, and even Walter Campbell. My dear.
“I’m surrounded by people I love,” she said. “And who love me.”
She gripped his hand. “Please, Peter. Take this opportunity. I’ve already lost one person who I loved more than life. I can’t bear to lose you. I can’t bear to see you so unhappy.”
He looked toward the river, which they could see from the hospital room. It looked so peaceful from here. Almost like a painting, with each small wave a tiny brushstroke.
He turned toward her then, his poor bloodshot eyes. “She broke up with me that night. At the party. I found her crying. Didn’t know what was wrong. She’d been so quiet the last few weeks. Not herself. She said that she loved me, but that we weren’t right for each other. We would make each other unhappy. That I would be bored by the life she hoped to live, that we were so different. I couldn’t take it. Had too much to drink and she was going to drive me home. I had to change her mind. We were arguing. She got to the light, and it turned red, and she stopped. Then it turned green, but I wouldn’t let her go. I wanted to talk more. There were no other cars around. I thought we were safe. I kissed her. I told her I would always love her. The light turned red.”
They both had tears pouring down their faces.
“She would have been safe,” he said, “if I hadn’t made her stop.”
So much guilt, she thought.
“Listen to me, you didn’t kill her. She didn’t do anything wrong either. There was an accident. It was a terrible thing. But it wasn’t your fault. You loved her and you loved me, and whatever guilt you have, you’ve long since paid for it. Please, Peter, please. It’s time to move on.”
He looked away from her. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, met his eyes.
“Please, Peter. Do this for me. Do it for Juliet. Live your life. Be happy. Promise.”
He nodded, and they were both weeping into tissues when Doc Steinberg swept into the room and told him he could go.
Chapter 41
Several weeks later, Maggie ran into Agnes at the attic sale, sorting. It was the big push of the church, a time when everyone in the community dropped off all the garbage in their attics, the church sorted it and sold it and raised money for charity. Maggie was in charge of the toy department, and Edgar had volunteered to help her, which meant he spent most of his time attacking her with a plastic sword, but she loved it. Maggie loved the whole sale. She loved imposing order on confusion. She had tons of plastic boxes and she was absorbed in putting Barbies in one box and soldiers in another.
Agnes was holding a dinosaur when she came into Maggie’s room. “For your department,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Maggie had a special section set aside for dinosaurs, and she put it there. She was trying to keep the meat eaters separate from the vegetarians, though that wasn’t working especially well because Edgar kept feeding them all into a giant plastic snake.
“How are you doing now that he’s left?” Agnes asked.
Peter had moved out as soon as he was released from the hospital. He’d left that very afternoon.
“I’ve had a note from him. He’s already in California. He thinks he has a job lined up working as a private security officer for some actor out there.”
Agnes looked a little softer, Maggie thought. Maybe because Maggie no longer thought her a murderer. Her hair wasn’t so severely blow-dried, her eyes didn’t look like they were going to pop out of her head. She was smiling, Maggie realized, and she had nice teeth.
“How’s Noelle?” Agnes asked.
Because Noelle had accompanied Peter out of town. Who knew? To go from Juliet to Noelle Bender.
“He’s taking care of her. He’s excited about the baby. I hope he has a pile of them. He’ll love being a father.”
Agnes began sorting through a pile of baseball cards. “Mind if I help?”
“Not at all. Many hands make light work,” Maggie quoted.
Agnes smiled. They worked companionably for a bit, sorting and sweeping and occasionally pulling Edgar out of a box.
“I hear they’ve extradited Frank Bowman to Texas.”
“He’s wanted for several murders,” Maggie said. She thought of those gray eyes, the way they changed when he looked at her.
“Agnes, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask. How did you all know to come for me that night? How did you know I was at the park?”
“Billy Kim told me.”
“Who?”
“The boy on the dirt bike.”
“But why would he tell you?”
Agnes blushed a little, looked quizzically at a dinosaur with a ruffle around his neck. “Because I paid him to follow you. Didn’t you notice he was always around?”
“Well, yes, but I thought it was just because we lived in a small village.”
“I had a feeling you’d be a target, and so I paid him to follow you. When he called me to say you were alone with Bowman, I told Walter Campbell. I had a bad feeling about him.”
“Why? He was always so charming.”
“Call it lesbian intuition,” Agnes said. “I didn’t buy his line.”
Maggie laughed. “You saved my life, then, Agnes Jorgenson. Thank you.”
She harrumphed and turned her attention back to her sorting, but Maggie knew she was pleased. She could feel vibrations of good feeling coming off her. Salvation came in many different forms, Maggie thought. You never knew where the most unlikely angels would be hiding. She supposed you just had to keep your eyes open. But who would have expected salvation to come in the form of Agnes Jorgenson?
“I have a proposition for you,” Agnes said.
“I don’t know,” Maggie said, automatically.
Agnes looked at her in that way she had all her life, analyzing and probing and then she barked with laughter. “Oh, get over yourself, Maggie Dove. Not that type of proposition.”
“Sorry.”
“The fact is,” Agnes said, “we work well together and I thought we might want to continue our association a bit longer.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I have all this money and I’m not doing anything with it, and I thought perhaps we could start up a sort of detective agency.”
Maggie laughed. “You want to do this on a regular basis?”
“Come, now. You can’t tell me it hasn’t been fun.”
“Agnes, my neighbor died. My best friend was murdered. I was almost killed.” But it was fun, Maggie thought. She had felt
more alive in these last few months than she had for a long time.
“And I thought we could ask Helen to join as well.”
“Helen?”
“You do know she’s with the CIA?”
“Helen Blake? Mother of this treasure?” Maggie said, as Edgar came barreling into her. He’d put on a construction helmet and was a superhero.
“One of their top Russian analysts,” Agnes said, “though she’s taken a few years off to take care of Edgar. To be perfectly honest I think she might do better hiring someone to take care of Edgar and go back to work.”
“How on earth do you know these things, Agnes?”
“I listen. You’d be amazed what you can find out if you listen.”
“Still,” Maggie said, looking out the window, at the pretty little village that lay in front of her, the beautiful old houses, the trees, the Hudson River rolling by, “I can’t imagine there’d be that much to do in a sleepy village like this.”
“No?” Agnes said. “I suspect you’d be surprised.”
Chapter 42
Some nights later, Maggie went down to the park again. She breathed in its sweet air and listened to the soft lullaby of the waves lapping up against the rocks and the distant thrum of cars on the Tappan Zee Bridge. Order, routine, safety. How lucky she was to be able to sit here again. How close she had come to losing everything, to throwing it all away. That would have been a sin, she thought. She had been blessed. She’d been saved.
She sat on her favorite bench, next to her little spruce, and took out a sandwich and a thermos full of tea. She’d brought a book with her. Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage. She figured if she was going to work as a detective she might as well learn from the best. She started to read, and got so far as the introduction of Miss Marple, when she heard a familiar sound. There was Billy Kim, on his dirt bike.
How he’d progressed. It seemed only yesterday he’d been crashing into a tree and now he was tearing around the park. Of course, he shouldn’t be tearing around the park. He would get into trouble. She expected that at any moment Walter Campbell would come lumbering by, but for now Billy was here. Jumping. Flying really. He’d found a bit of hill and he was jumping off it and soaring into the air. It was so dangerous. He could fall on his head. He could tumble into the river, and yet he seemed to be in control. Life was dangerous, life was uncertain, and yet, as he soared in front of her, Maggie felt swept up in the beauty of the movement.
Reckless angel.
Again and again he flew into the air, each time creeping closer to the Hudson, each time going higher, until he flew as high as he could, and at the highest moment, he flung out his legs so he was actually hovering in midair. She couldn’t help herself. She stood up and applauded. Who could not be touched by his youth and bravery and general insanity?
Then he got back to earth, landed safely, must have figured he’d pressed his luck as far as he could, because he turned in the direction of the exit. But first he rode past her, tipping backward on his bike as he went by, as though on a rearing stallion, and smiled, a huge grin, a pumpkin-faced grin, and he tipped his hand in a salute and roared off.
“Be safe,” she called after his roaring back.
“Thank you,” she said. Thank you for saving me. Thank you to Winifred, for being such a dear friend. Thank you to Peter, who was willing to give up his life for her, and to Walter Campbell, for protecting her. My dear. Thank you to Edgar, for making her young, and to his mother, for making her laugh, and to Agnes, for protecting her, and to her church, for nurturing her, and to her community, for cushioning her. To her husband, for loving her, and to her daughter. To Juliet. Who brought so much happiness into her life, so much joy. It would never go away, she realized. That love she would never lose.
Maggie felt something warm in her heart. Something crack and melt, that had been cold for so many years. She felt free. She felt content; she even felt excited about the future. With a heart full of hope, she headed home.
For Will, always
Acknowledgments
I have been blessed to be surrounded by many loving and wise people. Foremost is my agent, Paula Munier, who dragged this book out of me, assured me she’d sell it and did! To the miraculous editor Dana Isaacson, another treasure. Thank you to all the wonderful people at Random House Alibi. Then there were friends, associates and family too numerous to name, but I’ll try: Fran and Nancy Breen, Sarah Cox, Melinda Feinstein, Greg Fallis, Robin Freedman, Terry Gillen, Gotham Writers friend/bosses Kelly Caldwell, Dana Miller, and Alex Steele; Leslie Mack, Michael Neff and the New York Pitch Conference (the source of so many good things in my life), Kay O’Keefe, Dr. Abraham Mittelman, all the Murcotts and Bucks, Peggy Turchette, Dr. Joni Weinstock, my three young inspirations: Sarah Garcia, Jamie Murcott, and Rosie Singh. Then there are all the people I love in my little village of Irvington, New York, and at the Irvington Presbyterian Church, with a special shout out to my Sunday School students, the Board of Deacons, the IPC Book Club, and the Reverend David Harkness. Thanks to the Zelonys (Rob, Beth, Meghan, and Taylor), who kept me buoyant, and to my chicks and their loved ones: Tom Breen and Lucy Gellman, Kathy Breen and Alex Brennan, and Chris Breen and Claudia Russell. Finally, thanks and love to my husband, Brad, who shared this journey with me and carried me a good part of the way. (Also, thanks to two little cockapoos, Buster and Bailey, who sat at my feet as I wrote these pages.)
PHOTO: © EVE PRIME POPPY STUDIO
SUSAN BREEN’s debut novel The Fiction Class won a Washington Irving Book Award and was chosen by More magazine as a “can’t miss book.” Her stories and articles have appeared in many magazines, among them Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Best American Non-Required Reading, composejournal.com, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. She teaches at Gotham Writers in Manhattan and is on the faculty of the New York Pitch Conference and New York Writers Workshop. She’s also a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Susan lives with her husband, dogs, and cat in a small village on the Hudson River. There she teaches Sunday School and admires the oak tree on her front lawn. But all the rest of this story is fiction!
susanjbreen.com
@susanjbreen
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