One Fool At Least (The Madeline Mann Mysteries) Page 17

  Soon there were police officers around us, their pads out, taking statements. Pat spoke brusquely and briefly and then got into a police car with Molly; the officer said it would be quicker than an ambulance. They sped off while Mike, Slider and I sat slumped in shock on the sidewalk.

  I rubbed my face wearily. My legs had that terrible wet noodle feeling. My cell phone rang and I heard Jack’s voice. “Baby, what’s going on?” he asked, half furious and half frightened. “I finally got here after some stupid road block only to find the main street blocked off. They won’t let me in, but I’m sensing you’re in there, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. But I’m fine, we’re all fine. I’ll come down to you when I get my strength back—”

  ”Wait. He says I can go in now. Hang on.”

  Jack hung up and soon he was moving toward me; this whole vacation seemed to be a series of tense situations followed up by the relief, the joy, of Jack. I managed to get up and move into his arms. I must have been clinging like a burr, because I was eventually conscious of his fingers peeling my hands away.

  “Babe. Let me talk to these guys,” he said.

  I nodded, and Jack patted Mike on the shoulder. “You okay?” he asked.

  “He saved my life! He’s a goddam soldier,” Slider said with admiration. He got up, some of his animation regained. “He pushed us all to safety before he secured his own position.”

  Slider seemed to admire military metaphors, but I had to agree with his assessment.

  “Hey,” Mike said. “I feel something. Touch my leg, Aunt Madeline.”

  “Which one?”

  “This one.” He pointed to his left leg. “Touch it.”

  I leaned in and poked tentatively at Mike’s leg, just at the knee. “I felt that!” he said. “I felt it! I thought I felt it when you sat on my lap, but I wasn’t sure!”

  Ridiculously, I felt mildly insulted by this, as though Mike had just called me fat. But then I joined in the general rejoicing. Slider leaned over and gave Mike a hug across his shoulders, his face expressing true happiness. “That is so awesome, man!” he said.

  I thought the drama might be winding down, but then Libby appeared, holding a bag that said “The Yarn Barn.”

  “What happened?” she asked, her face pale.

  We all looked at each other. I had the crazy impulse to laugh, but I held it in when I remembered Molly. “What didn’t?” Mike quipped.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Somehow, back at the house, we all ended up in Jack’s and my place; Molly was back with us and tucked on the couch with a blanket. Libby hovered near her, but had gone to the main house long enough to get a few tubs of ice cream, which she’d used to make sundaes for everyone. Libby was a feeder in times of stress, and I found that I heartily approved of her methods. We sat scraping our bowls with spoons and debating what would happen now with David Kirk.

  “They’re questioning Colleen right now. One of Hendricks’ men told me she doesn’t seem to know a thing. She kept asking what was going on,” Pat said, shaking his head. “She always seemed like a nice kid.”

  “Where were you?” I asked. “I tried to find you, Libby, Mike—you were all gone.”

  Pat turned a bit red. “I found Libby in The Yarn Barn. She was talking to Melly Jemison, who blabs a mile a minute, and I just couldn’t get a word in edgewise, plus what I wanted to say I couldn’t say in front of Melly. So I waited—too long, I’m sorry to say, and then I decided to come back, and that’s when I found you all, squashed together around the wheelchair like that, with poor Moll hanging over Slider’s shoulder.” His face darkened. “Kirk’s got a lot to pay for. I’d like to find him myself.”

  He looked at his daughter, who smiled gamely at him and gave him a thumbs-up, although she lay rather weakly on the couch.

  “But what is Kirk thinking?” I asked.

  “He wants the money,” Slider said. “He told me, while he was holding a tazer on me. He said that he needed to get me somewhere far away and then kill me. Molly had stopped at the DVD rental place and I was hoping she wasn’t going to come in at all.” Slider’s Adam’s apple moved hugely as he thought about the near misses. “He told me Finn had made a will giving big chunks of the money to his two brothers—the brothers he hadn’t known about until recently. Kirk was pissed. He said it left Aidan and Colleen in the cold.”

  “That means you’re still in danger,” Molly said in a small voice. “You’re in danger until he’s caught!”

  “And so is Ardmore,” I said reflectively; I looked at Jack, who had an odd expression on his face.

  “But it doesn’t matter anymore,” Pat said firmly. “The jig is up. The cops know who killed Finn, they just have to find him. He won’t be trying to kill anyone else.”

  “He will, though,” said my husband, still looking at me. “He’ll be thinking of his wife. He was thinking of his wife all the time, if he said it was Colleen he was angry for. Whether he goes to jail for one murder or three, he wants that money for her.”

  “But can she even collect? Can she take money that was the result of a crime?” I asked.

  “Why not, if she’s not involved?”

  Libby began collecting empty ice cream dishes. “It’s so sad,” she said. “Colleen told me once that when they were little they had money, but then their father lost his job. So Finn and his siblings grew up relatively poor. They obviously all resented it. And Finn was all about money, once he had it.” She sounded as though she pitied the man who had pinned her against the wall of his office and threatened to turn her son over to the police. Then I thought of the poem in Finn’s notebook–the poem about parents, and the way they affect your lives. I thought of my parents, how good they were, and of Jack’s parents, and Libby and Pat. So many good people doing good things for their children. But then there were people like Angelo Cardini.

  Even Cardini loved his son, though. As did Damian Wilde. He loved his son so much that he was willing to have me kidnapped, in his desperation to protect Ardmore from anything—even from prosecution for murder, if that became necessary. Even if it meant that one of his sons had killed another of his sons.

  I suddenly felt extremely tired. “Will Hendricks offer police protection?” I asked.

  Pat shrugged. “I guess I should make some calls. It would at least be nice to have a car here tonight.”

  Jack put a hand on Slider’s shoulder. “Where are you staying tonight, Son?”

  Slider looked lost for a moment, but only for a moment, before Pat and Molly said in unison, “With us.”

  “But nowhere near you,” Pat said briskly, still holding his daughter. “You’re welcome to stay in the downstairs guestroom, Slider,” he said. “And you might want to notify your dad of what’s been going on.”

  Slider slapped his head. “I was supposed to go see him after my errands downtown! I forgot all about it.”

  I laughed. “You were a little distracted, Slider.”

  Libby sighed. “This has been such a crazy week. Maddy, Jack, you’ll never believe us when we tell you this is normally a restful place, a beautiful place!”

  Jack smiled at her. “Sure we will. Maddy told me she’s really enjoying her honeymoon. She’s a woman who craves a little excitement once in a while.”

  “It will all settle down now, anyway,” I said. “Jack and I are going to do some sightseeing tomorrow.”

  *

  Later, much later, Jack and I were back in our little haven. “Someone up there just does not want us to go hiking,” Jack said lightly, his hand massaging my back.

  I sat with my eyes closed, obvious as a cat in my desire for petting. “Lower,” I said. “Ah.”

  “Is our whole life going to be this unpredictable?” Jack asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is that okay with you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Not the violence, but the unpredictability. That’s okay, because I’ll have you. What does it really matter, as long as I have you?”

/>   He smiled. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Want to go to bed?” I asked, trying to move so that his hand touched me somewhere naughty.

  “I suppose so. That seems to be the only place I can keep you safe, Madeline. Right there in bed.”

  “Yeah,” I said, getting excited. “Let’s go be real, real safe. Oh, shoot!”

  “What?”

  “I never called Fritz. He was helping me, back there in the alley.”

  “Figures,” said Jack, unbuttoning my shirt.

  “Just let me call him. I don’t want him to worry.”

  I dialed my brother while Jack did things to my neck with his tongue. “Uh. Hey—Fritz?”

  “Madman, where the hell have you been? I actually avoided going out because my crazy sister was once again in danger. I think it’s some kind of disease with you, Madeline.”

  I knew Fritz was relieved, very much so, not only because of his tone but because he used my real name. “I’m okay,” I said. “The guy came back, and he had a gun, and he even fired the gun, but he didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Well gee. That’s great. I wonder if you could ever get involved with something that didn’t involve guns.”

  I could hear my brother Gerhard murmuring angrily in the background. Apparently they’d been discussing me. I heard Gerhard threatening to tell my mother.

  “No!” I yelled. “Do not tell Mom. I will tell her what I need to tell her when I get home.”

  “It’s going to be hard, Madman. We’re going there for dinner tonight.”

  “Really? What’s she making?” I asked, momentarily distracted by thoughts of food. I realized I hadn’t eaten in quite some time. Jack’s hands were working away at the clasp of my bra. “Anyway, I have to go. Thanks for your help, Fritz. You actually helped me save Molly and Slider.”

  “Yeah, well.” Fritz was running out of conversation. “Don’t get killed, Madman. Tell Jack to stop leaving you alone.”

  “Okay,” I said. I clicked off, looked into Jack’s eyes, and dropped the phone so that he could pull off my clothes.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next day went by without anything horrifying happening. I felt myself relaxing, bit by bit, as Jack and I finally enjoyed time without interruptions. We had breakfast together; we went into town and bought some postcards to send home. Jack drove me up into the mountains, to a scenic overlook. Grand Blue lay beneath us in gradually receding forested hills, and the sky was large, vivid blue and heartbreaking. I felt homesick for the place even while I stood there, breathing mountain air. Jack put his arm around me and gave me the silence that the moment demanded. I felt, for the first time, the extreme rightness of my decision to marry Jack, and because Jack had been born and bred here, I knew that I would always think of one when I thought of the other: Jack and Montana.

  Later we sat on the hood of our car. I jotted some postcards to people at home: my parents, my brothers (assuring them that I was, at that moment, still alive), my boss, Bill Thorpe; our landlord, Mr. Altschul; my bridesmaids, my friend Sally. I told them all what a lovely place this was, but I knew I couldn’t convey the majesty of Montana to them, or the sheer individuality of the place. Even my digital camera couldn’t capture it. The screen was just too small.

  While I jotted away, Jack strummed his guitar. I hadn’t heard it yet, what with the kidnapping and attempted murders and such, and it was a lovely accompaniment to our idyll. He was playing “Wayfaring Stranger.” I scanned the lovely layered horizon and felt for a moment that I was suspended in time: a mountain woman, a woman who faced hard work and a lonely life, a woman who could no more be separated from the landscape surrounding her than she could determine her own fate….

  “I like it here, Jack.”

  Jack’s head came up from his instrument so that he could dimple at me. “I’m glad, Maddy. I’m glad we’re here, right here, and you’re happy again.”

  “This place—it’s like traveling in time. And to the center of yourself.”

  “Exactly,” Jack said.

  I nodded, sighing, breathing in the air that I wouldn’t be able to take back to Webley. “Are you going to want to move here someday?”

  Jack looked surprised. “I never thought I could get you to leave the Mann clan, so I never really considered it. I stick to my woman.”

  “I wouldn’t want to leave them. Or my job. But Webley will look so dull after this. So ugly, almost.”

  “Webley’s a pretty little town.”

  “But it’s going to look so—flat.”

  “Yeah.” Jack was strumming again. This time it was “Don’t Fence Me In.”

  I put my postcards in a little velcro pack that I’d put around my waist. “Where do you think David Kirk is hiding? In the mountains?”

  “Maybe. He can’t have had much of a plan. I don’t think he counted on getting caught, at least not the way he did. God only knows how he thought he’d brazen out the disappearances of Molly and Slider.”

  I shivered. I was sitting in the sun, but it was cool up here on the mountain. “At first I thought I’d been really unlucky. You know—falling off the plane, and the Bruders and all that. But we’ve been lucky, haven’t we? Everything could have ended so differently.”

  My husband looked at me and then set his guitar aside. He moved toward me, his gym shoes crunching over a bed of pinecones, needles, little sticks and branches. He pulled me into his arms and I burrowed my face into his neck. He held me like that, easy and warm, in the sunlight on a mountain in Montana, and I knew that I’d remember it when we were old.

  *

  David Kirk was missing the next day, as well. We Sheas tended to blame Chief Hendricks, who hadn’t really come through for us in any way since we’d been out here. At least we all knew who killed Finn, though, which meant that Slider was off the hook. As the days passed, we all felt a bit less worried, too, although the Sheas were keeping their eye on Slider, and everywhere he went he had someone accompanying him.

  Slider had spent some time with his father, but under Pat and Libby’s watchful eye; they’d invited Angelo over for some civilized conversation. They even shared a meal. Angelo was still defensive, but Pat felt he was making an effort, and he was pleased.

  Jack and I drove to Great Falls to meet with his parents. On the way I noted a major distinction between Montana and Illinois. Webley, for example, was littered with buildings and billboards and signs and public wastebaskets and all sorts of things. The color of the sky on any average day would have to be described as “bland.” In Montana, there was just space, space and true scenery, the sort of view that gave me butterflies that were usually a sign of dread but I think now were some sort of harbinger of joy. The sky, for our entire journey, was a blue that I’d never seen before, not even in the jumbo crayon box.

  Jack had noted all of my gradual revelations about this place, and he often gave me the silence to ponder it in. By the time we reached his parents and the beautiful city of Great Falls (which had a smaller population than did Webley), I felt I had almost come to terms with the place. It was like a new lover—full of possibility, but still frightening at times.

  Jack’s parents took us on a tour of the city, and allowed us ample picture-taking at the Missouri River, where I lingered at Black Eagle Falls. Something here, too, made me think of the past; perhaps it was the vastness of the view, which offered that generous sense of eternity. So much of the world, it seemed, didn’t understand what Montana still did, what Montana was preserving.

  I learned for the first time about Charles Russell, the cowboy artist who had called Great Falls his home. Robert Shea said he would like to buy us a Russell print as a wedding present; Jack and I chose one that depicted cowboys working their lassos against a mountain landscape; it captured the colors that I would come to connect with Montana—the blue of the mountains contrasted with the gold of the prairie grass.

  We drove to Jack’s parents’ home, exhausted from sightseeing. Jack’s mother, devastate
d by the tone our honeymoon had taken, had reacted in a way similar to Libby’s—except her focus wasn’t on food, but on presents. She presented us with wrapped boxes, things she’d been buying all week in anticipation of our visit: clothing for me, really lovely things, and toys for Jack, including a carrying case for his laptop, on which he normally compiled his grades.

  While we were eating a pizza dinner together, she said, “Oh, I just remembered something I got for you,” and disappeared.

  “Mom,” Jack said gently. “We have to take all of this back on the plane. I don’t even know if they’ll allow—”

  But she came back in with a very small package, wrapped in gold foil. She handed it to me. I smiled gratefully and peeled back the paper to find a little travel journal.

  “I thought you could keep a record of your honeymoon,” she said. “But maybe just start with today.” Her face expressed her wish to erase our recent past, to smooth things over for her boy and his new wife.

  “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Jack and I can take turns making entries.”

  She and her husband beamed at us, pleased by this simple gesture. I felt the need, suddenly, to alleviate their concern.

  “You should know,” I said, “that I’m glad to be here, no matter what. It’s a beautiful place. A magical place.”

  This was a genuine remark, but it obviously earned me some major points with Jack’s parents, and even with Jack himself. We chatted then about what Jack and I had done the day before, how lovely and solitary the mountains were, how beautiful the summer weather had been.

  When we left I felt I had forged a special bond with Jack’s parents, especially when, on the way out, I whispered to his father, “Thanks for helping me get on the plane.”

  Robert Shea patted my back in a fatherly way and said, “You were fine, Darlin.”

  *

  On Thursday, five days after our plane had landed in Montana, Jack and I were sitting in our kitchen, eating cereal together and looking at each other’s faces. I found it odd that I had known Jack for almost three years, but marrying him and leaving my home turf had served to make him somehow brand new and fascinating. I think he felt the same about me. I couldn’t seem to get enough of his features, his hair, his posture, his walk. My hands would linger on his arms, his shoulders, wherever they happened to land in a casual embrace. I felt oddly proprietorial, something I’d never really felt before, and it was invigorating. Perhaps it was the mountain air.