Fool's Journey Page 18

  “Shut up! Don’t you ever talk about my mother! She’s—”

  Eunice’s laugh rang out. “She’s nothing, Katie. She’s dead.”

  Deirdre froze. This can’t be real. I must still be dreaming. In a minute, my father will walk in.

  “You are a sight, Miss Katie. Why, the look on your face is priceless! Just like you were ten years old again.” Then Eunice’s smile died on her face and her voice became steely. “That cash you gave me wasn’t much, but it was enough to make a few friends and get a few favors. Lots of people at that fancy rest home make minimum wage, you know. A couple hundred goes a long way toward arranging special visiting hours.”

  She’s lying, Deirdre told herself. She has to be lying. Her father had enjoyed telling lies like that. You remember the neighbor’s little dog? I hit him with the car this morning, Katie. Poor little fellow—it took a long time to die.

  “She didn’t have much fight in her,” Eunice went on. “I just put the pillow over her face and held it down. She barely moaned. I snuffed her like a cigarette.” Eunice snapped her red-nailed fingers with a sharp click.

  Deirdre shook her head. Not true.

  “I gave you money,” she whispered. “I gave you what you wanted.”

  “Not enough, and not kindly.” She narrowed her eyes and looked Deirdre up and down. “So, I decided you weren’t worth the trouble, either one of you. Decided I might as well have it all. That means you’ll have to go, too.”

  “Not so easily, I won’t.” Deirdre stood mere feet from the drawer where she kept her gun and she began to edge toward it. “And not quietly.” Pitching forward, she reached the drawer and pulled it open. Empty. She caught her breath.

  “Looking for this?” Eunice removed the gun from her pocket and pointed it at Deirdre. “You think I’d forget about a thing like that? That nice Professor Willard told me all about you and your gun. He called me at my hotel last night to talk about you. I heard all about his clever little plan for you, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to interfere.”

  Deirdre took a deep breath. If she dropped to the floor, she might have a chance to get to the door and out into the darkness. She kept her eyes on her aunt and took a step farther into the room.

  “You think killing me will guarantee that the money will go to you?”

  “After you and your mother, I’m my brother’s only heir. Don’t think I didn’t check into this.”

  Deirdre glanced at the door—about ten feet.

  “Anyway, Katie, I've had my fun. Time to take care of you and leave the scene of the crime.” She pointed to a plastic bottle on the coffee table. "Sleeping pills from the kitchen counter, Katie. Just take the rest of these and before you know it none of this will matter."

  A deep ache rose up in Deirdre as she remembered all the times in her life she’d wished she were dead. The scenes came to her like illustrations in a book: the times her mother had been knocked senseless, the hours she spent dreading her father's cruelty, the long nights lying awake knowing that in the end, her act of vengeance against her father had stolen her mother away. A hundred bitter times. But not now.

  Not when she was in love.

  "Just take the pills," Eunice said, pointing the gun at Deirdre again. "I haven't got all night."

  XXXV.

  Manny groaned and tried to turn over on the cold, wet grass, but an enormous weight pressed him down. It was black as pitch and his head hurt like hell.

  “Don’t move, asshole,” a voice hissed at him. A woman’s voice.

  “Okay,” he croaked. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll say you’re not. How about you explain to me what you’re doing creeping around in the dark?”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  The weight on his neck and shoulders shifted a little and he was able to turn his head so that his face was out of the grass.

  “Don’t try anything, or I’ll hit you again. If you’ve hurt Deirdre” she muttered, ”I swear to God I’ll cut you nuts off and hang them on my porch for doorbells. Now tell me who the hell you are.”

  The piercing beam of a flashlight caught him between the eyes, but Manny relaxed slightly. Whoever this Amazon was, she was on his side.

  “I’m Manny Ruiz. I’m a friend of Deirdre’s.”

  There was a long pause. Then she said, “I’m going to take a look at your wallet. Don’t try anything.”

  Manny felt his wallet being tugged out of his back pocket and saw the flashlight beam dart away.

  “Shit!” She struggled to her feet. “You need a hand up?” she asked apologetically.

  He let her pull him to his feel. “I’m so sorry, Manny. I’m Panda Papadopoulous. I thought you were Deirdre’s stalker.”

  “I’ll say you did,” he grumbled, massaging the side of his head gingerly. “What did you hit me with?”

  “Baron Samedi. He’s the voodoo guardian of the cemeteries.” She shifted the flashlight’s beam and a skeleton figure wearing a top hat grinned back at him. “I bought him for Deirdre down in New Orleans, but—“

  “Shhh. Come on,” he said, taking her by the arm and leading her into the shadow of the house. He glanced up – the light was still on in Deirdre’s window, but he couldn’t see anything else. At least he knew that the silhouette he’d seen earlier hadn’t been Panda.

  “So what are you doing back here anyway?” she whispered. “I just pulled up a minute ago. Deirdre never returned any of my messages today and I was worried sick so I came on over. Then I saw you creeping around and I flipped.”

  “There’s someone upstairs with Deirdre,” he said softly. “Whoever it was hung up on me when I called.”

  “Freemont Willard?” she gasped.

  Manny shook his head. “He’s dead.”

  “Damn! I miss everything! I’m never going out of town again.”

  “Hush. I’m going to see if I can get that landlord to let us upstairs.”

  Panda nodded. “The door that’s nailed shut? Good idea.”

  “You stay here. I’m going to try to get to the front door without being seen.”

  He stepped out of the shadows and began to quietly cross the lawn. Then he heard the blast.

  Deirdre felt the pain before she heard the shot. She’d taken one step towards the door, but never even had a chance to run. As she slid to the floor, her back against the wall, she saw Eunice wipe the prints from the gun.

  Her blood was hot as it ran down her body, but it made her shiver. She wasn’t sure where she’d been hit. The pain emanated from her middle, but there was blood all over: on the floor, on her hands, even spattered on her face. She looked down to see the red flow streaming onto the floor. That’s me, she thought. I’m flowing away. The Dickinson poem rang in her head: My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun.

  Eunice looked down at Deirdre from what seemed a long distance. “Now look what you made me do,” she whispered. “I'll have to run for it. Be sure to say hello to your dad for me.”

  Manny changed directions mid-step and made for the stairs to Deirdre’s apartment. Pulling his cell from his belt and dialing 911, he shouted directions as he ran. When he rounded the corner, he found Panda struggling to pin a struggling woman to the side of the building. He raced past them and up the stairs to Deirdre.

  Deirdre was leaned against the wall, her eyes closed. At first glance, her hands seemed full of red rose petals and his immediate thought was How beautiful. He knelt at her side, as she opened her eyes and tried to smile.

  “I’m sorry, Manny,” she whispered. “We were going to have such fun. We were going to . . .”

  “It’s OK,” Manny said, cradling her. “Don’t try to talk. Help is coming.”

  “I’m a fool,” she gasped. “On a Fool’s Journey.” She tried to sit up in his arms, but he held her tight.

  Manny could feel her drifting away from him. “Hold on, hold on,” he cried desperately. “Please hold on.”

  “It’s almost too late. The angels are here.”
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  Her face was so pale it was almost translucent. He could hear the sirens coming closer and closer as they made their way up Queen Anne Hill, but his gut told him it was too late.

  “Don’t leave me, Deirdre. Keep holding my hand.”

  XXXVI.

  ¿Soy enferma?

  “No,” Rosa answered softly, patting Ana’s hand. “You’re not sick, niña.” Yawning drowsily, the little girl curled herself onto the couch in the waiting room and went back to sleep.

  Rosa had bundled the children up while they were still sleeping and taken them with her to the hospital as soon as Manny’s call had come. Only now did she realize that the angels she’d seen gathered at the apartment had come to take Deirdre, not protect her. The vision she’d seen of the crumpled body had not been Freemont Willard at all, but a forerunner of Deirdre’s fate. She shook her head. She’d never questioned her gift before, but now her heart asked God, If I must have the sight, why can it not be clear?

  They waited in a private room near the intensive care unit. It had been hours since Deirdre, hanging onto a thread of life, had been taken to surgery. Panda, one eye blackened, slept fitfully in a chair.

  Manny stood staring at a jigsaw puzzle that had been completed except for one piece. It seemed like everything was a symbol. Despite dread that washed through his body, his mind circled the small clues, the piece of the puzzle that would reveal the whole picture.

  There were traps in the universe, to be sure, and one had wrapped itself around Deirdre, using various agents with their own particular motives. Freemont Willard, Eunice Fisher—even perhaps the spirit of that long-dead poet, Diana Vibert, stretched her wraith-like fingers into the mix. But that didn’t explain everything. The incident that had started it all—the cutting of Deirdre’s hair in the market—remained unexplained.

  It didn’t fit with Willard’s words and actions. He wanted to conquer. He wanted to humiliate. How could it possibly have served his purpose to scare Deirdre first? And how would a man of his age accomplish it anyway? He might have hired someone, but surely that presented too much risk for exposure.

  And this aunt—she had only been able to find Deirdre through her mother, and that was after the incident at the Market. A piece of the puzzle was missing—or maybe there was more than one puzzle that he’d tried to assemble from the same pieces.

  The aroma of coffee announced morning in the ward. When Panda awoke, she took the children to the cafeteria to get breakfast. Manny sat down with his aunt and put his head in his hands. She didn’t offer him false comfort, just rubbed his back between the shoulder blades as she had when he was a child.

  A doctor still in his scrubs came into the room. “Mr. Ruiz?”

  Manny stood up and faced him.

  “You’re the boyfriend?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s out of surgery, still alive, but just barely. The bullet grazed the abdominal aorta, but it missed major organs. She lost a lot of blood, though, before we could patch her up. We’ll know more in a few hours.”

  “When can I see her?”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “You need to suit up, but I think you can take a peek at her when she’s out of recovery. Just for a few seconds, though.”

  “Do you like being dead?”

  Emily Dickinson was making polite conversation as she poured out chamomile tea from a china pot.

  “I don’t think I am dead,” Deirdre replied.

  Emily Dickinson pursed her lips and handed her the cup. She looked exactly like the famous portrait in the anthology: dressed entirely in white, sleek dark hair pulled back, prominent eyes, the ghost of a smile.

  In the distance there were other tables. Couples and small groups gathered around teapots and martini shakers. Some walked in pairs. This must be the Dead Poets’ Society, she thought, suppressing a giggle. She drifted among them, recognizing a few faces. Ginsberg was reassuring Will Shakespeare that the sonnet wasn’t really a dead form. Walt Whitman played awkward table tennis with Robert Browning as a grinning skeleton in a top hat kept score. When the ball went astray, an energetic spaniel chased after it.

  Why isn’t anyone writing, she wondered? Emily Dickinson reappeared at her side and whispered, “We don’t have anything left to say.”

  Manny stood by Deirdre’s bedside, an island amid tubes and wires. Her eyelids were fluttering and her lips moved slightly. Surely that must be a good sign. She was still terribly pale, though, and her skin was the texture of faded flowers. How, he raged, could his sweet, strong Deirdre be reduced to this frail mound?

  He had failed her. He had come into her life to protect her, and he had failed.

  There was no excuse, no defense. He wished he could take one of her hands in his, connect with what life she had left, but he had been warned not to touch her or even step too near.

  Then, what sounded like a sigh, as soft as a kitten mewing, escaped her lips. She was trying to say something, he knew, and that gave him hope.

  “That’s all the time we can give you,” a nurse said from behind him.

  “She’s trying to say something. I’m right here, Deirdre,” he said.

  “Sometimes it seems that way,” she told him gently. “When you want to hear something, sometimes you do.”

  “No. Just listen a minute.”

  The nurse nodded. Desperately he prayed he’d been right. Talk to me, Deirdre. I’m right here.

  In the background, the machines that surrounded her whirred and hummed. A steady beep kept pace with her heart. Manny watched the gentle rise and fall of her soft breathing. The nurse put a hand on his arm, but he shook it away.

  “You’ll have to go now, she whispered. “You can come back in a few hours if…” Her unfinished words hung in the air.

  If?

  Rage and sorrow caught in his throat. If he left, if he even blinked, he knew she would die. Ignoring the nurse, he dropped to his knees and his heart cried out for angels to hear his prayer.

  Rosa Ruiz watched Manny disappear into the intensive care unit. He looked to her as if he had become hollow. Her own heart was a mere husk as well, so empty a sigh could blow it away.

  From the nurses’ station came the buzz of conversation. They spoke as if she were invisible.

  “Dr. Whitney’s breaking rules again.”

  “You mean letting the boyfriend go back? He wouldn’t have if there were anyone else in the unit.”

  “He’d better watch it. One of these days some hard ass will complain.”

  “I know, but he’s a pushover for lovers. If he can, he tries to let them say goodbye.”

  Goodbye? Manny wasn’t going anywhere. Then she realized what they meant. Deirdre was going to die.

  She put her head in her hands, feeling more helpless than ever before. Why had she and Manny been sent into Deirdre’s life if it were only to come to this? Had Deirdre lived so deeply, so desperately, in the past that there was no room for a future? Some ghosts couldn’t be outrun, but Deirdre had done her best.

  Rosa shook her head. All that was left for her to do was pray. She fumbled in her bag for her old wooden rosary, the beads worn smooth from decades of petitions. She prayed in the old Latin she remembered from her girlhood. Ave Maria, gratia plena. Behind the ancient words her heart cried out: Holy Mother, keep our hearts from breaking.

  XXXVIII.

  Panda returned and shooed the children toward a pile of communal toys. A flutter of ragged worries swirled about her like imps in cinders.

  “Any change?”

  Mrs. Ruiz shook her head. “Manny’s in with her now.”

  “I should never have left her,” Panda said, dropping heavily onto a chair. “I knew she was in trouble and I left her anyway. And then – how stupid can I be? – I brought that hideous doll back.”

  “Don’t worry, Panda. That’s not what hurt her.”

  “I need to beat myself up, Mrs. Ruiz. Please don’t get in my way. Self-flagellation is my only way of dealing with this.”
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  Mrs. Ruiz patted her hand. “You can’t help with thoughts like that, Panda. Don’t let the sadness win.”

  A few minutes later, a young man walked into the waiting room, carrying a bunch of red carnations. Dressed in jeans and a rumpled flannel shirt, he slid into a chair and let his backpack drop to the floor.

  “Are you friends of Professor Kildeer?” he asked.

  “You’re one of her students?” Mrs. Ruiz asked.

  He nodded. “I’m Adam. I’m taking her Advanced Poetry.”

  “How did you know to come here?”

  “It was kind of weird. I was away for the weekend and didn’t get back until this morning. I ran into Professor Seymour on campus and she told me about Deirdre, so I got the flowers and came right over.”

  Mrs. Ruiz searched his face. There were no lies there. “Professor Seymour?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “I don’t know what she was doing there on a Sunday. I took a class from her a couple of terms ago, but I didn’t think she even knew my name.”

  Mrs. Ruiz leaned back against the sofa, turning the boy’s words over in her head. It couldn’t be, shouldn’t be. Manny had seen Bess Seymour’s body taken away to the morgue. The dead might call to the dead, but to urge the living to the living made her wonder if there was a thread of hope.

  “It’s nice of you to come,” Panda said. “I’m Panda.”

  “Hi. I feel really bad. The other students in my class weren’t nice to her, even though she tried hard.”

  Panda shrugged. “That’s kind of the way with teachers and students sometimes. Never the twain shall meet.”

  “It’s not just that.” He looked at them through the strands of his disheveled hair. “A while ago, someone I used to be friends with did something really mean to her. I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t rat him out.”

  Mrs. Ruiz leaned forward. “What did he do?”

  Adam grimaced. “It was a really stupid game. We were doing this thing on campus at night. We’d break into the professors’ offices – it was really easy – and we’d take one thing. Just something little. One of Professor Tracy’s pipes. Professor Willard’s stapler. It was just to see if we could do it.”