She walked until she was hopefully tired enough to sleep once more. She returned to the hotel and decided to try Marcus first on his home phone. To her surprise, Fay answered the phone. “How you keeping, honey?”
“Fine. Where’s Marcus?”
“Off doing man things, I ’spect. Where are you?”
“New York. Isn’t it a little late for you to be over cleaning?”
“Deacon felt like one or the other of us ought to keep an eye on him and the place.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, so far as we know. But things are heating up, that’s for certain.”
“Is Marcus in danger?”
“Honey, there’s danger in breathing. But ’round here he’s safe as anybody can be. We’ve got a lotsa years behind us, learning how to deal with folks wanting to mess up our neighborhood. Now what about you?”
“I’m still here.”
She huffed softly. “Child, what I said the other day, it wasn’t ’cause I wanted answers. I just wanted to know if you were asking these questions yourself.”
“I am now. I can’t stop.” Once more, the air seemed to compress about her. “Just tell Marcus I called.”
The Angus Barn was a bastion of Old Raleigh, stationed off Highway 70 in what once had been rolling pastureland. Now the only remaining old forest belonged to Umstead Park. To its south encroached industrial parkland and the Raleigh-Durham Airport. North and east and west was just more residential sprawl. When it was first built, the Angus Barn was as close as Raleigh came to big-city cuisine, with steaks known statewide for quality and size. Nowadays its patrons sought a semi-clubby atmosphere where families let kids run about the plank flooring, the adults visited from table to table, and locals pretended their little hometown had never grown into the stranger it now was.
As Marcus stood in the doorway waiting for Dale, he spotted Rachel Sears leading a very young rendition of herself out of the restaurant. The diminutive judge was dressed in cream and lavender. “Debbie, can you say hello to Mr. Glenwood?”
While the child possessed her mother’s intense gaze, her eyes were still unafflicted. “Are you another lousy lawyer?”
“Debbie, shush.”
“I sure am.”
“Mommy doesn’t like you.”
“Marcus is one of the good ones, honey.” The judge’s glance became scathing. “Most of the time.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Shame on you.” She held to a musical tone for her daughter’s sake. “Putting me in a position where I had to search for some way not to give in to that man.”
“I know.”
She lifted her daughter up to where Debbie’s face nestled in close to her own. “Are you meeting someone?”
“Dale Steadman. He’s late.”
“It wouldn’t be proper for me to wait around and greet him.” She waved to where her husband was extricating himself from a table full of good old boys on a steak and scotch binge. She swept her hair back in a practiced manner, and seemed perplexed as to what to say. “I hope you have a nice evening.”
Marcus nodded a hello to her husband and decided he had no choice but to venture a single comment. “Something tells me we’re not seeing the full story in this case.”
She took her husband’s arm, then showed Marcus the first hint of approval since their confrontation. “Maybe that’s why I’m glad you’re still on the job.”
Marcus stepped to the porch’s far end, drew out his cell phone, and checked for messages. There were none. He then called his home, intending to do the same. Fay answered his phone with “Glenwood residence.”
“Have you been there all day?”
“The boys spelled me for a while. Why didn’t you let Deacon come with you, you had somewhere to go after dark?”
“Go home, Fay. I’m fine. The house will be fine.”
“Time you understood something, Marcus. You can’t handle all things life sends your way alone.”
“I realize that.”
“Nosir, you do not. You shape the words with your mouth all right. But you don’t swallow them down. You don’t want anybody to hear you say the words, I need something.”
“Has anybody called?”
“Kirsten did a while back. And you ain’t getting off so easy. You ever think maybe you ought to let her hear you say those words?”
“She knows I need her.”
“Sure she does. But you still got to let her hear you say it yourself. Know why? Cause till that happens, you’ll always be able to class her wisdom as a little something extra, ’stead of making all the difference in the world.”
He turned from a jolly crowd entering the restaurant. “Nobody else called?”
Fay gave a dissatisfied harrumph over his response. “Your business phone rang a while back. But I didn’t bother with it.”
“Thank you, Fay. Now please go home.”
She hung up on him. Marcus cradled the phone to his chest, staring out at the muggy dusk. Traffic roared up and down the Durham highway, oblivious to the fact that the old black woman had managed to rock his world yet again.
He dialed his office phone and coded in the voice mail instructions. He listened to Dale announce his arrival in New York, then hung up. His hands dropped to his side. He stared at the sunset-drenched horizon, and said quietly, “Something is very wrong here.”
CHAPTER 34
Normally Erin fed off tension. Early in her career she had learned to channel all energy, particularly the negative and disharmonious, into a greater brilliance upon the stage. It was a secret seldom mentioned and never shared, that lights and the camera’s eye feasted upon whatever created a greater craving in the viewer. For Erin, calamity was merely more fuel for the fire. But this only worked when she was in control.
She made an utter mess of removing her makeup. Nor could she call someone else. The makeup woman was a typical New York hag, all greedy eyes and gossiping tongue, who would dearly love to know Erin could not stop her hands from shaking or her chest from heaving tight little gasps. The gown’s cloth hooks drove her borderline insane before she finally gripped the two top edges and ripped them all out. Erin swiped away the worst of the smeared eyeliner, then donned her Yves St. Laurent day dress and her Hermès overwrap and heels. She checked her reflection and gave her lips another quick jab, brushed some fury out of her hair, and faced the door as she would an adversary.
“I am a star,” she quietly declared. And she knew it was so.
The backstage area was a rat’s warren, ill designed and windowless. All the Lincoln Center nonpublic areas were a horror. Water seeped down cracked walls and puddled around live wires. Wallpaper draped like last year’s marquees. The buildings showed their crumbling flaws nowhere so well as backstage.
Where the dressing rooms joined with the main hall leading to the guard and the stage exit, Erin faltered. What if Dale was still waiting for her outside the main stage door? There in front of the fans waiting to beg for a moment of the diva’s time, with the photographers and the tourists and the reporters, all eager to see the disastrous second act-she couldn’t face him. Not like that.
Eyes were on her now, she could feel them like snakes coiling to strike. Thankfully, she had taken time to charm the young guard manning the stage-door booth. Erin flipped the silk shawl higher upon her frame like a countess arranging her cloak. The guard watched her with the careful gaze of one who knew Erin Brandt had her moods, and that he should speak only when she addressed him first. Then he noticed her smile and rose to his feet. It was good to know the magic worked, even in her present wounded state.