Muldoon smiled at that. “I’m ready,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve gone into plenty of dark places, seen some pretty crazy things.”
Joan nodded. “I guess it’s just…hard when it’s your own brother, you know?”
His smile faded. “Yeah,” he said. “I can imagine. But I’ll be right beside you.”
He was actually serious when he said things like that. It made her want to cry. She gave him a bright smile and patted him on the knee. “Thanks, SuperSEAL. Let’s get this over with.”
Joan’s brother Don was a pack rat.
His living room was stacked with books and magazines. Completely stacked in some places. As in from the hardwood floor right up to the stucco-patterned ceiling.
It was dark, too, despite the bright morning sunshine outside. All the shades were pulled down and the curtains were tightly closed.
After fetching an envelope of Don’s medication that her grandfather had left for her in the mailbox, Joan had unlocked the door—a daunting task, since there were about a dozen different locks mounted there, and a half dozen different keys were needed to open them. After she unfastened the last of them, Muldoon stepped past her and went in first.
“Hey, Don, it’s me. Joanie,” she called out as she closed the door behind her.
The house was silent.
“Ah, this old house,” Joan said, flipping her keys over and over, one finger stuck through the central ring. The keys jingled until they hit the palm of her hand with a smack. “My mother bought this house right after I left for college. My parents split up that same year, and Mom and Donny came out to San Diego because my grandparents lived nearby. Of course, they were my dad’s parents—my mom’s folks died before I was born—but my mom was closer to them than my dad seemed to be, and—” She went into the kitchen. Jingle, smack. “Donny, are you in here?”
Muldoon followed, but each time he got close enough to grab her keys, she moved out of reach.
“They moved in and fixed the place up. Well, she fixed the place up while Donny discovered Internet stock trading and made a fortune.” Jingle, smack. She went down the hall and again he followed. “But then she got sick and went into the hospital…Well, I guess she was actually sick for quite a while. Stage four Hodgkin’s disease doesn’t just appear, like, whammo—one day you’re fine, the next you’ve got it. So I really should say that she found out how sick she was. This house was her last project—I guess that’s why Don didn’t want to sell the place and move in with my grandparents after she…Well. You know.”
Jingle, smack. Jingle, smack.
She stopped outside a closed door. “I’m pretty sure he’s in here. Sandbagged in, so to speak. Ready to repel an alien invasion. Donny DaCosta. In the closet. With his laptop and a funny foil-covered hat. Did you ever play Clue? Donny and I used to play Clue all the time when I was little.” Jingle—
Muldoon caught the keys, then gently took the ring off her finger. He pocketed them, then laced his fingers with hers so that she was holding his hand instead.
“When did your mother die?” he asked.
“It was a long time ago,” she said, looking down at their hands. “Twelve years. I was twenty.” She looked up at him. “I’m okay, you know. At least, I should be. I paid enough for the therapy.”
He smiled because she’d made a joke in an attempt to keep things light, and because she expected him to smile. “I think most people don’t ever stop missing their mothers. It must be twice as hard for you to come here since this was her house.”
She again tried to joke her way through it. “Yeah, well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
“Sometimes what doesn’t kill you just plain sucks.”
Joan laughed at that, but when she glanced up at him again, the look in her eyes took him by surprise. This was Joan without the crusty outer layer. A softer Joan. A vulnerable Joan. A Joan that completely took his breath away.
“I hate being here,” she said softly. “Thanks for coming with me. Thanks for…” She squeezed his hand.
It was his big chance. Muldoon recognized it as a perfect opportunity to tell her he was smitten. To admit that he didn’t think of her as any kind of a sister. Shoot, to grab her and kiss her.
But he was too busy standing there dumbstruck, like an idiot, gazing into her eyes.
She released his hand as she turned back to the door, squared her shoulders, and opened it. And the moment was gone. Joan the warrior was back, charging ahead.
“Donny, it’s me.”
The bedroom was dark, so she turned on the light. Stacks of clothes covered every surface, even half of the bed. Joan’s brother had made his bedroom into the world’s biggest walk-in closet.
“Who’s there? Who’s out there?” A gruff male voice came from the far corner of the room, from behind the closed closet door.
“It’s Joan, you big dope. Open up.”
With a hand on her arm Muldoon stopped her from going toward the door. When she’d first described her brother, he’d imagined a pencil-necked, bespectacled, timid sort of man. But that voice he’d just heard came out of an ogre. Sure, the ogre happened to live in a walk-in closet, but…“There’s no chance your brother is armed, is there?”
“God, no,” she said.
“Joanie?” her brother growled.
“Yep, Don. It’s me.”
Muldoon didn’t let her go. “You’re sure?”
“He’s not dangerous,” she told him. “Honest. I wouldn’t have let you come here if I thought for one second that he was. The worst that’s going to happen is you might get sprayed with Alien Be Gone, and I’ll pay your dry cleaning bill and buy you dinner a few times next week, because God only knows what he actually puts in those spray bottles of his because it sure as hell smells like rabbit urine. That’s one childhood odor I’ll never forget.” She turned to the door, raised her voice. “Can I come in?”
“Joanie, is that really you?”
“Yes, it is, and I’m coming in. Here I come. I’m turning the knob and—Whoa, baby, change your socks recently?” She turned and made a face at Muldoon that her brother couldn’t see. “I brought my friend Mike to meet you, but he might want to wait outside, because, Jesus God, Donny, it stinks like feet in here.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Muldoon told her, following her into the closet. He’d smelled odors far worse than that of an unwashed man. “Hi, Don, I’m Mike.”
“A Navy SEAL.” Don DaCosta had Joan’s brown eyes and a slightly similarly shaped face, but that’s where the resemblance ended. He was a big man, as his voice had implied, with quite a bit of extra heft to him. It was hard to tell how tall he was, because he was sitting down. He was wearing what looked to be some kind of magician’s or witch’s cape with a silvery lining—something from a Halloween costume—as well as a fedora completely covered in shiny aluminum foil. He had about a week’s worth of beard growing on his pasty face and wore olive drab pants and a T-shirt that he definitely hadn’t changed in many, many days. He turned to look up at Joan in wonder, with eyes that were rimmed with red. “You brought a Navy SEAL for me, to guard me while I’m sleeping?”
“Oh, honey, I’m afraid neither of us can stay for very—”
Muldoon interrupted her with a touch, his fingers briefly pressing her arm. “When’s the last time you slept?” he asked, lowering himself to the floor so that he was on Don’s level.
Don rocked slightly. “Oh, no. If I sleep, they’ll get in here.”
Jeez, was it possible Joan’s brother hadn’t slept since the last time he changed his clothes? Muldoon knew that had to be the case. “You must be pretty tired, huh?”
“My grandfather was a Navy SEAL.”
Joan looked pointedly at Muldoon, shaking her head no, then sat down next to her brother. “D’you see that program about Navy SEALs that was on the Discovery Channel last week, Don?”
“You think I’m making it up,” he said, turning to look at her with ex
hausted eyes. “But I’m not.”
“If Gramps were a SEAL, don’t you think he might’ve mentioned it to me at least once?” she countered.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Joan opened her mouth as if she were about to argue, but then closed it, briefly closing her eyes for a moment, too. Muldoon knew exactly what she was thinking. It wasn’t important to be right. When she opened her eyes, she leaned over and patted Muldoon’s leg. “Well, you were right about Mike. He’s a Navy SEAL, too.”
“You know, you live right next door to one of my teammates,” Muldoon told him.
“Really?” Joan said. “Who?”
“Sam Starrett.”
“No kidding. Right next door?” Joan turned back to Don. “That should make you feel pretty safe, huh?”
Don rocked. “They don’t go into his house. They stay on his driveway or in his garage. I’ve seen them. They come over here, too, pretending to be the mailman. Or Mary Lou.”
“Mary Lou?” she asked.
Muldoon answered. “Sam’s wife.”
“But I know better,” Don continued. “They want my house, so they can watch him. But I won’t let them in.” He looked at his sister, alarm in his eyes. “Did you lock the door behind you?”
“Yes, I did,” she said.
He rocked harder, starting to work himself into a lather. “Are you sure? You’re absolutely sure?”
“How about if I go check?” Muldoon said.
Joan nodded at him as she reached for her brother’s hand. “Donny, it’s all right,” he heard her say as he pushed himself to his feet and slipped out of the closet. “You’re safe. I promise. Mike’s here, right? He’s not going to let anything bad happen. He promises me that all the time.”
The house was eerily silent as he made his way back to the front door and threw the half dozen or so extra bolts that Joan hadn’t bothered to lock after coming in.
A clock ticked in the living room from its place on an end table alongside a standing photograph of a young, dark-haired woman with a chubby-cheeked toddler laughing in her arms and a big-eyed, pinch-faced boy standing solemnly at her side.
The woman—Joan’s mother, had to be—was kneeling beside the boy—Don. Her other arm was around him, and her attention was focused on him, despite the much younger child on her hip.
Don DaCosta’s mental illness had, no doubt, not been a whole lot of fun for anyone.
Muldoon went back down the hall, back into the bedroom. He knocked softly on the closet door.
Joan opened it and stepped outside, trouble in her eyes.
“Don’s willing to take the medication—except for the fact that he’s afraid it will make him fall asleep,” she reported. “Apparently his experience with meds is that they usually make him drowsy.”
“He looks like he’s at the point now where just about any change in his state will put him to sleep,” Muldoon told her. “He’s probably starving and needs to go to the bathroom, too, but he’s afraid if he’s any less uncomfortable…” He could relate. He’d been in that place a time or two while on recon. “Look, is the grandfather he’s talking about the one who lives nearby?”
“Has to be. We never knew my mom’s parents,” Joan told him. She sat down on the edge of Don’s bed. “What are you thinking?”
“Call him,” Muldoon told her. “See if he can get over here within the next few hours and plan to stay maybe even overnight. If he can do that, I can stay and, you know, stand guard so to speak until he gets here. That way Don can take the pill and get some sleep.”
She was already shaking her head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Yeah,” Muldoon said. “I know. But you’re not asking. Just call him, all right? And if he really wasn’t a frogman—that’s what the SEALs would have been called back when he probably served—tell him to keep it to himself. Between the two of us, we can let your brother get a solid night’s sleep, which might help calm him down.”
Joan took out her cell phone and dialed. “You know,” she said, “I’m beginning to understand exactly why all of the admirals’ wives want to have sex with you.”
Hey, hold that thought, Muldoon was just about to say, but she held up one finger, then spoke into her phone.
“Yeah, Gramma, it’s Joan. Sorry I’m calling so early, but I’m over here with Donny, and…Yeah. Yeah. I know. He’s going to be okay, though. I promise. Listen, is Gramps around?”
Vince didn’t have time to do more than shake the young man’s hand before Joan hustled Lt. Mike Muldoon back into his truck.
“He’s got to be back on base in twenty minutes,” she gave as the explanation, but he knew better. Despite the “This is my friend” introduction, Joanie liked this man, and thus couldn’t deal with the idea of introducing him to her extended family.
Yes, he knew the girl well. Took after her grandmother, God help them all—particularly Lieutenant Muldoon, poor guy.
Joan looked good. A lot more energized than he would have thought considering she’d spent most of the morning in Don’s little airless hidey-hole. She had a new hairdo that made her look really pretty—and a lot like her mother.
“I’ll call you soon,” she promised, after giving both him and Charlie a quick hug and kiss.
Charlie went inside to check on Don while Vince spent a few minutes inspecting the flowering shrubs he’d put in on the side of the house three months ago. This batch was going to survive. Of course, it would help if they’d get just a little more rain.
“Mr. DaCosta.”
He turned to see a young woman stepping out of the kitchen door of the house next door. She was wearing some kind of restaurant uniform and carried a child—a little girl from the looks of the ribbons and curls—in her arms.
“I’m Mary Lou Starrett.” She introduced herself in that same thick southern accent he’d noticed on the phone. He moved closer, because she was hard to understand. “I’m the one who called you. How’s Donny?”
She was ridiculously young, hardly old enough to leave her own mother, let alone be one.
“Well, it’s too soon to say that he’s back on his medication, since he’s only had one dose, but he has had that one. It’s a start,” he told her. “Thanks so much for looking out for him.”
“It’s no trouble,” she told him. “He’s a friend.” Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled. “An unusual friend, but…he’s a good guy. I feel badly for not calling you as soon as I noticed he was acting strangely—more strangely than usual, I should probably say.”
“It shouldn’t have to fall on you,” Vince told her. “We call Don every day, but he only wants us to visit once a week. I’d suspected he’d gone off his meds, but I didn’t try to push it because disrupting his schedule sometimes makes things worse. Sometimes he just goes into a decline and comes back out on his own. I guess we were just doing a lot of wishful thinking.”
She opened the door of her car and put the baby into a car seat in the back, and he completely lost her reply.
“What’s that?” he said.
She straightened up, smoothing down her shirt from where her daughter had grabbed hold of it. “I said, that’s understandable. I have to get to work, but please don’t hesitate to call me anytime—even for little things, like…what to get him for Christmas.”
Vince had to smile at that. “Well, thanks, but that’s an easy one. Stock in an aluminum foil company.”
She laughed as she got into her car and said something that he didn’t catch.
“What’s that?” he asked, bending down to look into the passenger window.
“I said, it was nice meeting you. You have a nice day, now, Mr. DaCosta.”
“You, too, dear,” he said, stepping away from the car so she could back out of her driveway.
It was nahce meeting yew. Vince had to laugh. Of course. That was who this Mary Lou had reminded him of. Sally Slaggerty. Whatever little southern town Mary Lou had come from, he would bet big bucks that it wasn�
�t too far from wherever Sally had been born more than eighty years ago.
Sally Slaggerty, who’d lived upstairs from Charlotte and Edna Fletcher, who’d entertained GIs and sailors in an intimate fashion on damn close to a nightly basis.
Vince grew to dislike poor Sally pretty quickly, because whenever she came home in the evening, gentleman du jour in tow, Charlotte would make a fast exit from his room.
But then there was that one time.
It was late—close to midnight—when ol’ Sal got home. Vince had been lying there in the dark for about an hour, thinking about how Charlie had smiled as he’d made his first triumphant trip down the hall to the bathroom just a few hours earlier, when suddenly Sally’s radio went on.
He’d learned a hell of a lot about sexual relations over the week or so he’d been there. He’d learned that some men did the deed as if they were running the twenty-yard dash and trying to break the world record for speed. Others—and they tended to be the repeat performers, invited back for two or three nights until they shipped out—kept the bedsprings squeaking and Sally moaning for close to an hour at a time.
An hour could be unbelievably long when there wasn’t much else to do but listen—with the knowledge that Charlotte Fletcher was in the next room over, listening to the very same sounds.
Vince would lie there in that bed—her bed—and try not to remember that night that he’d found himself beneath the bed, with Charlie beneath him. He’d try not to remember the way she’d held him as he’d cried, or how sweet she’d smelled, or how soft her lips had felt as she’d kissed his forehead.
That night, Vince tried to focus on the fact that his trip to the bathroom had been a triumph. He was feeling much stronger. It wouldn’t be long before he was up and out of bed for good. Which put him that much closer to the meeting Charlotte had set up for him with Senator Howard. It was still some time away, but he wanted to go in there looking strong and capable.
He’d barely recognized his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he was so pale and wan.
Into the Night Page 18
