by Nancy Martin
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“He’s alive,” Lexie said the following afternoon at her mother’s pool, where friends and family had gathered in the sunshine to celebrate our non-marriage. She set her cell phone down on the glass-topped table. “I just spoke with his nurse. Thank heaven he didn’t die. That would have been too horrible.”
Champagne had been poured. Hamburgers were ready to be grilled for lunch. Everyone had brought dishes to share. It was a modest non-wedding reception, but it was festive and lively. The children played in the pool while the adults sat at the umbrella table and shook their heads. We had been waiting for news of Gus’s condition and, after hearing he wasn’t going to die, we all shared sighs of relief.
“He’s young,” Emma said, helping herself to a pickle. “I’ve seen worse accidents with guys who fall off horses and get trampled. Betcha he makes a full recovery.”
“It’s going to take months,” I said. “Two compound fractures! A concussion. For heaven’s sake, he lost three teeth!”
“Who cares about a few broken bones?” Michael asked, back from lighting the gas grill. For the last eighteen hours, he hadn’t let me out of his sight. He had his arm around me again. “Hardwicke coulda been dead.”
Lexie tilted her hat back to study Michael with amusement. “Do you believe in the curse now, sweetie?”
“It’s kinda hard not to,” Michael said. “All along, I figured the curse was some kind of big, karmic coincidence—you know, nothing but bad timing. But he was publicly married to Nora for less than a minute before he took a header down those stairs.”
“So what are you going to do?” Lexie asked. “Live in sin forever?”
Michael shook his head. “We’re gonna get married, one way or another. I’m not going to be a low-rent baby daddy. We’ve got six weeks before the baby is born to figure something out.” He reached for my hand and kissed it. His eyes were bluer than the summer sky, filled with love but also determination. “Can we find an exorcist? Or maybe a voodoo warlock? Hell, I’ll go looking for Dumbledore, if that’s what it takes.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. “Maybe Libby will have some ideas. Where is she?”
“Late,” Emma reported. “But she’s coming. She’s bringing the ice cream.”
“And Nora,” Lexie said, “what happened with Boom Boom and Fred?”
After yesterday’s adventure, I felt revived following a good night’s sleep and a morning of doing nothing more than talking on the telephone. “I spoke with the police. After Bridget and I escaped from the theater, all three of them tried to make a run for the airport. But Boom Boom fell asleep in the cab, and the driver thought she had died, so he called the police, who came right away. Fred and Poppy were caught at the airport. As far as I know, they’re in custody until the police sort out everything.”
“Boom Boom really killed her own daughter?”
“I think she sees it differently. Jenny tried to poison her first, and Boom Boom felt she was acting in self-defense by substituting the wrong pills and causing Jenny’s heart attack. Then Fred killed the nurse to keep her quiet about Jenny’s death so the show could go on. But Poppy was the one who set the whole thing in motion when she discovered Jenny was going to contact all of Toodles’s children.”
“The children Toodles fathered with all those chorus girls?” Emma said. “They were adopted out?”
“Yes. Toodles wanted his children to go to families who were interested in music or theater, so he made sure they were all well placed. Jenny knew about them all—she may have helped get them into the kind of homes Toodles wanted for them. She was going to gather them all together for the opening of Bluebird of Happiness as a kind of publicity stunt. When Poppy told Boom Boom about the plan, Boom Boom decided to kill Jenny.”
Lexie said, “She probably guessed all those children would sue for a financial settlement of some kind—another reason for stopping Jenny from contacting all her half siblings.”
I said, “It will take a long time to make sense of it all.”
“What I want to know, Mick,” Emma said, “is where the hell you and Lexie have been these last several days.”
Lexie sighed. “I’m afraid it was all my fault. Sweetie,” she said to me, “I sincerely wish I could have told you everything. But the vow of secrecy was part of my release agreement. I promised to help gather evidence against some Wall Streeters who have been very naughty. Your groom provided a lot of the details we needed.”
I eyed Michael. “Details? What kind of details?”
When he shrugged modestly, Lexie said, “I had the financial expertise to know what kind of financial information the investigators wanted, but I didn’t have the . . . the right insight into the criminal mind to know where to look. So we put our heads together and got the job done.”
Michael said, “We were going to tell you all about it, but things fell into place faster than we thought they would. The cops wanted Lexie and me off the street while they did the takedown, which is why I almost missed the wedding. If everything fell apart, Lexie was going back in jail. For her sake, we wanted to be sure it all went according to the plan.”
“So you’re out for good?” I asked my friend. “You’re safe?”
“I may be asked to help in the future,” she admitted. “I intend to assist my former clients to regain as much of their losses as possible, but that will take time. And I might not be successful. But this—helping to bring down the criminals who cheat clients on a much broader scale—I can contribute there.”
“And you?” I asked Michael. “Are your duties finished?”
Lexie spoke when he hesitated. “He has a delightfully devious mind.” She patted his arm with affection. “I couldn’t have done it without you. I’m just dreadfully sorry it meant they had to drag you into custody this week. I did everything but dance on the table to get you released in time for your wedding.” To me, she said, “It was your state trooper friend who managed your groom’s timely release.”
Michael said, “I hate owing favors to the cops.”
To Michael, I said, “I thought you were money laundering. Or offshore gambling.”
He sipped champagne. “There are some intriguing ideas I’m still thinking about.”
“Legal?”
He winked at me. “In some countries.”
“I could tell your mother on you,” I said. “She might make you go straight.”
“Nah. She likes a bad boy as much as you do.”
Last night, after checking with the hospital to make sure Bridget would recover fully and was going home to bed with one of her boyfriends, I had asked Michael about his Batman underpants. He had laughed and said he thought we’d better start looking for superhero underwear for Noah.
Lexie asked, “And what happened with the local troublemakers you were helping the police with?”
Michael shrugged. “I don’t think they’re going to be much of a problem anymore.”
“The kids went to jail?”
“One will, but sometimes it’s easier to fight crime with . . . bigger crime.”
I guessed, “The Abruzzo family is back in business.”
“Not the whole family. I gave permission for some of the old rackets to start up again. My cousins will chase the kids back to playing hopscotch.”
“By intimidating them,” I said.
Michael flipped one hand back and forth, but finally said, “Yeah.”
Emma said, “And let me guess. Little Frankie is running the show.”
“A greatly reduced show,” Michael said. “He’d screw up something big, but he might make this work. I’ll give him time. Maybe he’ll go to jail or end up wandering around in a bathrobe pretending he’s crazy, but—well, we’ll see what he can do without getting a bunch of cousins arrested.”
Emma slugged beer and didn’t say anything. I wonder
ed if she had real feelings for Little Frankie. I feared she hoped he was Michael—a man she could trust if she overlooked a few liabilities. Or would Little Frankie become one of the men she discarded when she got bored?
“Speaking of legal,” Lexie said while Emma digested the idea of a new branch of the Abruzzo crime family, “Nora, what are you going to do about your marriage to Gus?”
“Cannoli is looking into what it will take to get a Paraguayan proxy annulled,” I said. “Gus wanted to help his family with their negotiations to buy a media company. If marrying me could help his father win over the other owners, Gus was willing to do it—for a short time. I’m sure he considered the marriage a joke, really.”
Emma and Michael exchanged skeptical glances.
“Who’s going to run the Intelligencer while he’s recuperating?” Lexie asked.
“They’re bringing back the previous editor from retirement—just for a few weeks.”
“And what about your promotion to the Lifestyle section?”
With Michael quietly watching, I said, “If I can do something worthwhile with it, I’d like to try. I don’t want the job if it’s going to be a constant fight against printing salacious things that hurt people or promoting hateful ideas. But I think I can make good things happen. Whether Gus comes back to work at the Intelligencer or not—that’s part of my decision, too. I don’t think I can work for him anymore.”
Lexie swooped down and gave me a kiss. “Sweetie, it’s all wonderful. If I can help you with your career plan, I’m happy to do it.”
“I want a job flexible enough that I can enjoy my family.” I gave Baby Girl a rub.
In a few short weeks, she’d be here. Baby Girl and her sister, too, along with Noah. Michael and I were going to have our hands full. Happily full. I looked forward to a couple of months of enjoying our new family before going back to work. It felt as if paradise was on our horizon at last.
If I’d been having misgivings about bringing new life into the world, I was feeling better about it now. Maybe I wasn’t going to be the perfect mother, but who could claim that distinction? Motherhood took all configurations now, and I would fit somewhere on the spectrum. I was newly committed to raising children who would be happy and kind. Who might contribute something good to the world. Who could contemplate beauty. Who would know the meaning of love.
Michael leaned over and gave me a warm kiss.
From the pool, Noah let out a squawk. Rawlins carried him to the edge of the pool, and the baby flung himself onto the terrace stones. Leaving a wet trail behind, he crawled across the terrace and grabbed Michael’s leg. He hauled himself upright to the delighted laughter of the rest of us, then held his arms up to be lifted. Michael obediently pulled the baby up onto his lap, dribbling pool water on both of us. Noah puckered up and insistently leaned toward me for a kiss. I gave him one back, and then he kissed Michael, too. He laughed in delight at his new trick.
I took Michael’s hand, and he squeezed mine in return. We had time to find a way to make Noah ours forever.
“Whoo-hoo!” Libby’s voice carried through the house. A moment later she burst through the French doors and came out onto the pool terrace, dragging Ox Oxenfeld behind her. She wore a pink wedding gown and carried a nosegay of matching flowers. The gown was all swoops of pink tulle and a neckline that plunged almost as low as the skirt was slit high. She was radiant.
“Libby, what have you done?” I cried.
She glowed with pleasure and curled her arm around Ox’s. “We’re married! Oxy proposed, and we decided not to wait. Isn’t it romantic?”
Emma and Lexie jumped up to congratulate the happy couple, but I remained seated at the table with Michael and Noah.
“Heaven help him,” Michael said, watching Ox. “That guy’s not going to survive the weekend.”
“But we’re going to find a way for you to survive for a long time,” I said.
“Right,” Michael replied. “Foiling the Blackbird curse—that’s my top priority. We’re going to have a long and happy life together, Nora Blackbird.”
