She was trying to be serious, but it wouldn't work with that nightgown on. When she turned too quickly the flannel would snap against my knees. I feared burns. She smoothed herself out in front of me and said, "When in doubt, wallop first. A motto to live by, especially when forced with that kind of a situation."
"Which I hope never to find myself in again."
"I think all the major parties involved feel that same way."
"Especially Teddy. If only he'd walloped first." Even in shadow, her beauty carried through, the set of her lips so clear, and her voice giving her so much substance here in the night. "You don't really think it's him, do you?"
"I'm not sure. What was done to his face bothers me. Why would a millionaire's son hide? And if it's not him, then who is it?"
"It's not your problem, and you really don't need to make it your problem."
"I already did that when I didn't listen to whatever Crummler would have told me."
"Maybe he wouldn't have said anything. Maybe there was nothing to say." She took my face in her hands and I took hers in mine, and we looked like some couple in a Fellini film where they talk into each other's noses. "Is it possible we can put this on the back burner for tonight?"
"We'll take it completely off the stove."
"The things you do for me."
"Damn straight," I said. I hoped she didn't mean that we should talk about the flower shop/bookstore idea all over again.
She didn't.
Dawn broke unevenly. A lot of red light, but it was cold again. I wished I had some flannel pajamas. Jesus was still looking at me. I lay staring at the ceiling for about two hours, until Katie lifted her head from my chest and put it back and then pulled it away. Large drops of sweat suddenly rose and began to drip down her ashen forehead.
She whimpered, "Oh hell."
I held on for a second, not wanting to be parted just then. I started to sweat, too. She knew more about this from being a woman, and more still from having been in medical school before deciding she'd rather open a shop and let me steal tulips. Her color drained further, as if somebody with a huge eraser was working down her face inch by inch. I'd been assured this was completely natural, but I still didn't know what to do most of the time, sitting around helplessly while she suffered.
Katie scampered from the bed and nearly didn't make it to the bathroom in time. Her words had a muted echo. "Oh, yuck." I stepped beside her in time to see her legs fall out from under her as she retched and slid against the freezing tile floor. I wrapped her into my arms until she finished.
"It's okay," she said, trying to smile. "Don't look like that. This is normal, really. I don't know why they call it morning sickness, a woman feels ill almost all the time the first three months." I carried her back to the bed and wet her face, breasts, and belly down with a cool wash cloth. At a couple of points she giggled and the hard knot of guilt and stress in my skull loosened a bit.
"You're going to stick around now, aren't you?" she said. "You'll skip going back to the city?"
"I have some things to clear up, but I'll be back in two or three days."
Her jade eyes filled with an irritated charge, and the silence hit like a physical force. She wanted to know why I'd leave Manhattan to return to Felicity Grove in order to get involved with murder, but hesitated when it came to finding housing and happiness with a woman I loved and a child on the way.
That silence followed us while we showered and dressed and got ready for her to drive me to the airport. I was famished, but didn't want to mention food in case she still felt a bit queasy. Her cheeks had the rich pink gleam of stoked anger, even as we made our way down the staircase and past the Leones' living room, where the luscious aroma of breakfast wafted throughout the house. My stomach made one huge gurgling noise that startled me as much as if I'd sat on a cat.
Mr. Leone waved to us as we walked out. "You're not staying for breakfast? Come in, come in here, what, are you pazzo making me go in there and eat all that by myself? Hey, did that schifo crazy caretaker ever find you?"
I stopped short in the doorway and Katie plowed into my back. She let out a loud whuff.
I said, "What?"
They kept their television turned mostly to the Italian cable stations. You could hear Cella Luna playing at late hours, all kinds of weird Italian soap operas where the main characters shrieked and wept and tried to bite each others' ears, then threw themselves down on altars at church. Bowling trophies and photos of stern-faced men and women lined the rosewood shelves. The religious icons weren't kept in a corner down here, but spread out on every horizontal surface you could see, with the walls covered by some truly beautiful paintings of scenes from the bible, giving the room a vaguely funeral-home feel to it.
"He came here a couple nights ago looking for you. I told him you two went to that restaurant, what is it called, Frank's Bistro? How can you eat at a place called Frank's Bistro I have no idea. I went once, tried their frutti di mare and it tasted like they boxed and mailed the fish over from Genoa, fourth class, on a slow boat, took maybe two months to get here. Tell me you didn't have that, please, couldn't be anything worse. Hey, I already told you, come in here, want some pasta fagioli? Just made it yesterday. It's good even for breakfast, hot or cold. Jonny, tell this girl she's got to eat. She's too skinny and looks pale to me all the time." His wife shouted something in Italian from the kitchen, and his eyes got very wide. He said, "You forget the basil and she goes for the cleaver, scusi," and wandered off.
"Crummler was looking for me," I whispered.
"Call Lowell."
"Anna was right. He needed my help."
"Listen to me. It still doesn't have to be your problem. Call Lowell, notify the police. If Crummler really needed help he would have told the sheriff."
"Maybe he couldn't for some reason."
We were still stuck in the doorway, the screen open with leaves swirling in a circular drift around our feet. A white Mercedes limousine idled at the curb, with a shine so thick you could have thrown buckets of gravel on the hood and never dented the coat of wax. Both front doors opened, and two men climbed out and stood rigid, waiting and staring.
"Now what?" Katie asked.
"I think I can guess."
An Asian woman stepped up the walk and took a long bead on me. Her straight, shining black hair fell longer than any I'd ever seen before, down beyond her waist in a perfect crest. The rising wind hadn't dislodged a strand. She wore only a tightly fitted, sleeveless red dress, and I saw the slight rise of goose bumps on the back of her arms as she approached.
"Mr. Harnes would like to speak with you." I expected an Asian sing-song cadence but there was only an Ivy League thickness of voice and manner. She added with a note of demand and finality. "Now, please."
Katie kept the quiet fume going and said, "Go do what you have to do."
"I'll be back in a few minutes."
Except for the curiously dead gaze of the woman, she was the most exotic lady who'd ever stepped foot into Felicity Grove, and looked like she could teach a man the secret sensual pleasures of the Orient even if he were on the rack. If she had been one of the kids in Thailand forced into sweatshop factory work at the age of six, then somehow it had paid off for her.
"That won't be necessary. Please allow us to drive you to the airport."
Katie asked her, "You want to tell me how you happen to know where he's going?"
"Please." There was no query or room for discussion in the woman's tone. She simply stared, her lips not notched so much as a millimeter toward a smile or frown. Her face seemed fabricated from cloth or plastic, smoother than flesh should be. I didn't spot a single line in her skin, not around her eyes, not at the edges of her mouth, not even between her eyebrows where we all get a furrow.