“Just what do you think she’s going to do when I tell her I’m a Witch?” I tried to play the only card I had left.
“Not much, Kemosabe,” my friend replied. “She’s quite a bit more open than most folks. Hell, we’re fuckin’ Indians, think about it.”
“Yeah, and you’re the biggest skeptic I know. So what’s your excuse?”
“You don’t wanna know,” he grumbled then shifted back to the original focus. “Besides, doesn’t matter. She already knows about it. I’ve told her about the two of ya’.”
Felicity had taken the business card from Ben as I sat there in silence, mulling over exactly how much I despised being backed into a corner. I felt a small spark of defiance deep inside, but I was going down fast. I still desperately needed something to cling to-some kind of life preserver that would keep me afloat long enough to give me a fighting chance.
I allowed my stare to fall on the surface of the desk before me and the answer became instantly clear. Deliberately, I reached across and picked up the notepad, which had been the center of our earlier discussion. Slowly, I peeled off a pair of the pages and tossed them back on the blotter in front of Ben.
“Now, here’s my deal,” I submitted carefully. “I go talk to your sister, and you have the crime lab compare the handwriting on those papers with Paige Lawson’s.”
“Row…” He began shaking his head as a furrow formed across his brow.
“I’m not asking much, Ben.” I held fast. “Just find out if it’s her handwriting and let me know one way or the other. That’s it.”
“Okay.” He finally nodded but still kept a frown plastered to his face. “Okay, but I don’t know what it’s gonna get ya’.”
“A place to start” was all I said.
*****
“So are you mad at me?” Felicity asked, her voice somber as she guided her Jeep down an exit ramp and off the highway.
Our trip from police headquarters thus far had been made in almost total silence. The reason was not so much because either of us were angry, but because there was simply too much to think about. The extent of our conversation to this point had been my asking whether we should swing by to pick up my truck. In truth, I actually had no idea where I’d left it, plus all I really wanted to do right now was sleep. I wasn’t disappointed in the least when she told me that task had already been handled.
It was approaching mid-day, and the sky was still heavily overcast with a flat-bottomed stratum of grey clouds. A misty rain had begun to fall at some point while I was still being held captive by the hospital, and it hadn’t yet subsided. Winter’s chill was sharp in the air, even with the official start of the season still a few days away. The temperature was staying a few steps ahead of the magical point where precipitation solidifies, effectively making the difference between the landscape being a “winter wonderland” and “wintry blah.” Depending on your tastes, it was the kind of day that either made you feel great to be alive or depressed you into a mood that begged to be slept off like a bad drunk. Since I was already lacking in the sleep department, I was being pushed toward the latter with hardly any resistance.
“Not really,” I replied. “Although, I wish you’d said something about all this earlier. Then maybe I wouldn’t have wasted so much energy trying to keep you from finding out.”
“Why didn’t you want me to know anyway?”
“It wasn’t something you needed to worry about,” I answered. “You have enough to do without taking on my problems.”
“Row,” she admonished, “we’ve had this talk before.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but you get a little overprotective at times.”
“Aye, and just what is it you’d call what you’re doing then?” A slight hint of her normally veiled Irish brogue seeped into the question, audibly announcing her growing fatigue.
“Yes… I’m being overprotective too,” I returned. “But that’s nothing new.”
“And it’s something new from me then?”
“I didn’t say that.”
We were only a few blocks from home when she gave a quick downshift and turned the Jeep into a parking lot of what appeared to have once been a multi-tenant strip mall but was now occupied by only a single business. Hooking past a light standard, she serpentined through the lot then pulled into a space before the entrance of Arch Color Labs. She shifted into neutral then set the parking brake before switching off the engine.
“What are you saying then?” she asked as she peered at me, her green eyes searching for a hidden answer. “Are you saying it’s okay for you but not for me?”
“Like you said,” I sighed. “We’ve had this talk before, and obviously we’ve never resolved it, or we wouldn’t be having it again now. We’re both just too stubborn, I suppose.”
“Aye,” she agreed softly, “I suppose we are.”
We regarded each other quietly for a moment, neither of us certain where to take the conversation next. I finally motioned at the storefront and broke the lull.
“This doesn’t look much like our house.”
“Sorry, I forgot to tell you.” She gave her head a quick shake. “I need to drop off a batch job for a client.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” I shook my head as the realization overtook me. I hadn’t really thought about how my escapades might have affected her, and this detour drove the point home. “You’d probably already have this done if it weren’t for me throwing you off schedule.”
“It’s no problem,” she returned.
“Maybe not,” I echoed, “but I still feel bad about it.”
“You do? Good, then my mission is accomplished,” she told me with a sly grin.
“I just walked right into a waiting guilt trip, didn’t I?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded as she rummaged behind my seat and withdrew a heavy-gauge envelope. “You can wait here if you want. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“You sure?” I asked. “I know how long your ‘few minutes’ can be sometimes.”
“I’m sure. I just need to drop this off.”
“Okay.”
True to her word, Felicity was in and out in less than five minutes but then spent another ten beneath the awning in front of the lobby chatting with a wiry young man. I couldn’t blame her for the delay though because he had followed her out the door, talking nonstop except for quick lulls to light a cigarette. He’d been through two already and was heading quickly toward finishing off a third.
It was almost amusing to watch my wife as she maintained a constant distance between herself and the rambling chain smoker. What wasn’t amusing was the fact that every time he took a puff, I had to stop myself from getting out of the vehicle and bumming one from him. It did, however, serve as a reminder as to just how much she despised smoking, and that helped steel my resolve to fight the craving.
She finally managed to get away and flashed him a smile and a quick wave as she climbed into the Jeep.
“Friend of yours?” I asked as she buckled herself in.
“Oh, that’s just Harold. Nice enough guy but Gods! He smokes like a fiend.”
“I noticed.” I nodded, trying not to let on that I was within inches of joining him in the act, then cryptically changed the subject by asking, “So how about you?”
“How about me, what?” She furrowed her eyebrows as she shook her head in confusion. “I don’t smoke.”
“What? Oh, no, not that,” I replied. “Sorry, I meant what we were talking about earlier. Are you mad at me?”
“Oh, that.” She nodded as she cast a glance back over her shoulder then backed the Jeep out of the parking space. “I was,” she answered, chewing at her lower lip, “but I’m getting over it.”
“How long before you think you’ll be completely over it?” I asked.
“Aye, that’s going to depend on you.”
*****
My truck was parked nose first beyond the gated fence that hemmed in our back yard. Felicity pulled her vehicl
e up to the chain-link barrier and popped the stick into neutral.
We sat in silence for a long moment, simply listening to the world continuing about its business around us. The Doppler-affected sound of tires against wet pavement grew in the distance, achieved its peak as they made their way past us, and then faded into oblivion on the opposite side. The Jeep’s engine idled softly in the background. The on-again, off-again mechanical whirr of the windshield wipers kept time in a widely spaced rhythm, setting a languid tempo that kept you waiting expectantly for the next beat. In a half bare tree next to us, a raven punctuated all of it with a trio of forlorn caws, leaving the moment to hang in the moist air before falling silent once again.
Even with the heater running, the damp chill was working its way into my bones. On top of that, I was still dying for a cigarette and didn’t have any of the nicotine gum with me that had thus far been my only barrier between abstinence and re-kindling the habit.
“So you think maybe we should go inside?” I asked.
“I’d love to, but I have a shoot to do and I’ve already rescheduled it once,” my wife told me. “I’d rather not lose the account.”
“Supermodels?” I asked jokingly.
“Sure,” she replied, her own tenor lightened somewhat. “Super new models of anodized cookware for a catalog. Want to come along?”
“I think I’ll pass.” I gave her a weak grin.
“I thought you might.”
“Actually, I could really use some sleep.”
“That makes the two of us,” she returned. “But I’ll have to wait for mine.”
“Sorry,” I apologized for something I could do nothing about.
“Maybe yours should too, then…” she added, voice trailing off at the end.
“Why? Jealous?”
“No.” She shook her head to punctuate the reply. “I just don’t want you wandering again. And since I won’t be here…”
“I see.” I nodded. “I’ll try to stay in one place until you get back. Deal?”
“Aye.”
“Okay. Since I don’t have my keys, any chance you could unlock the house for me before you go?”
“Oh,” she replied, “Ben said he’d have them put your keys in the mailbox.”
“Good enough.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss then unlatched my door.
“Row,” Felicity called after me as I climbed out. “Speaking of deals…”
I turned back to see there was still a hint of concern in her eyes. Her hand was extended toward me, and in it was the business card Ben had given her.
“Promise me you’ll call for an appointment.” She made the statement more as a gentle command than a request.
I’d almost escaped, for another few hours at least. I should have known better though, as this was something she perceived as far too important to wait. I sighed heavily and nodded as I reached back in and took the card from her. She was correct, I’d made a deal with both of them, and my own principles wouldn’t allow me to back out.
“Promise,” she softly demanded again.
“I promise,” I told her.
I stood in the driveway and watched her back out then followed with my eyes as she headed off down the street in the direction of Highway 40. When she was no longer in sight, I made my way along the flagstone walkway and then climbed the stairs to our front porch.
*****
My keys had been exactly where Ben had said they would be. After retrieving them I had unlocked the door and tripped my way across the room as our English setter and Australian cattle dog expressed their great relief that someone had finally come home after being gone, in their doggish perception of time, forever. I punched in my alarm code and followed with a second series of key presses. A prerecorded female voice issued from the panel announcing that it had switched from the away mode to the stay-at-home setting. Basically, switching off the motion sensors but resetting and rearming the doors and windows.
I’d never really thought all that much about the household alarm system. It was something we had really only used whenever we were out of the house, and then only to protect “stuff.” It had always been there for the express purpose of guarding our possessions. These days, however, it had served yet another purpose. Protecting us.
In the month following the incident on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, I’d had the system upgraded. Every window in the house had been equipped with sensors and cell technology had been added to avoid the alarm being disabled by simply cutting the phone lines. There were additional motion detectors and even secondary panels added to main rooms to allow for quick access to panic buttons. It all seemed so terribly paranoid to me at times, and Felicity had definitely thought it to be overkill, which she had told me in no uncertain terms. But I did it anyway. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I knew that Eldon Andrew Porter was still out there no matter what anyone else believed, and I had no doubt that he would eventually be coming for me.
Now that I was inside and secure, my first order of business was to go in search of a piece of nicotine gum. I hadn’t even tried to hide my withdrawal-like symptoms from Felicity since I had at one time been a smoker. Of course, I’d recently discovered that I hadn’t succeeded in hiding anything else anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered. At any rate, I didn’t have to get the gum from a secreted stash. However, I did have to remember where I’d last put it. Once I found the box and quelled the immediate crisis level desire for a cigarette, I set about finding anything I possibly could do in order to waste time.
After a round of behind the ear scratches for the boisterous canines I disabled the back door sensor long enough to let them out-then back in once they’d discovered that the weather was not what they’d expected. Our three felines, Emily, Dickens, and Salinger, were nowhere to be seen, so I simply filled their food bowls and moved on to something else.
There were a few dishes in the sink, left over from the night before, so I took my time washing, drying, and putting them away. I could have simply loaded them into the dishwasher, but that wouldn’t have taken near as long.
I thumbed through the mail that had occupied the box along with my keys, discarding several pieces of poorly targeted direct market advertising in the process. After extracting those items pertinent to my consulting business, I tossed the remainder into the basket next to the front door.
Before starting up the stairs to my office, I took a moment to listen to the messages on our personal answering machine. Two hang-ups and one quick hello from a friend who was inquiring about what to bring to the Yule ritual we’d planned for a few days hence. I started to jot a note down as a reminder to call him but found that the notepad, which normally lived by the phone, had apparently gone AWOL. A quick search through my pockets for a scrap to write on rewarded me with two things-the pad containing the repetitious morbid rhyme and the business card of Doctor Helen Storm.
I rubbed my bearded chin absently with the back of my free hand while I stared at the simple calling card. I’d very consciously been putting this moment off, but I’d made a promise, and there definitely wasn’t anything pressing at the moment that should keep me from making the call. Nothing I hadn’t purposely produced for that very reason at least.
With a resigned sigh I snatched up the handset and punched in the phone number from the upper right corner of the card. Even in my tired fog, my mind began calculating, and I latched on to the idea that it was probably going to be at least a week or two before she’d be able to get me in. That might very well give me enough time to prove I was correct about Paige Lawson, although even I wasn’t entirely sure what I was being correct about.
After six rings the phone was answered by a pre-recorded message announcing that I had reached Metro Counseling and that the offices were currently closed for lunch. I felt a wave of relief as the voice continued on, telling me that if this were an emergency I should call the doctor’s exchange, otherwise I should leave a message and someone would get back to me as soon as possible.<
br />
Following the high-pitched tone at the end of the message I began to speak, “My name is Rowan Gant and I need to see about making an appointment with Doctor Storm. My number is…”
I was cut off by a burst of squelchy feedback, combined with the fumbling knocks of someone rushing to pick up the phone. A female voice barely overrode the squeal, telling me to hold on for a second. Various warbles and clicks followed then fell quiet as the person at the other end managed to stifle the recorder.
“I am very sorry about that, Mister Gant,” the woman’s soothing voice apologized. “This is Helen Storm. Benjamin told me I should be expecting your call.”
My earlier relief turned to instant surrender when she told me that she wanted to see me late tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER 4
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
What’s that spell?
Dead I am!
Louder!
Dead I am!
One more time!
DEAD I AM!
I awoke in darkness.
I really wasn’t all that surprised. Nightmares and darkness tend to go hand in hand. I’d grown relatively used to the cycle by now.
The bizarre Seussian chant was still echoing inside my head with a frighteningly excited edge to its morose verbiage. I laid completely still, letting the imagined sound fade to crisp silence, only to have the quiet replaced by a low, repetitious rumble. I slowly turned my head and found myself face to face with one of our resident felines. The paws outstretched to touch me and incessant purring, as my shoulder was being kneaded, led me to believe it was most likely Dickens, since this was the norm for him.
The familiarity of my surroundings was a relief. For once, I wasn’t at a loss for the how’s, where’s or why’s of my situation; and, I also wasn’t forced to deal with the nauseating sense of violation I had come to know so well. I knew exactly where I was-safely tucked in my bed, more or less under a blanket, with one arm hugging a pillow against the side of my head. My other arm, however, had gone thoroughly numb from the uncomfortable angle it was crooked into beneath my body. I shifted the appendage, and circulation instantly took hold full force. I winced as an astronomical number of pinpricks began traversing up and down its length.
Perfect Trust argi-3 Page 7
