Angel Sleuth (32 page)

Kaitlin felt both irritated and flattered. Irritated that Mary Jane could so easily dump her son on someone else to raise and flattered that she chose Kaitlin for this important role.

“Don’t get your bustle in a rustle. If you’ll have me, I’ll be here Monday through Thursday. The band only plays gigs on weekends. What do you say?”

Before Kaitlin could answer, Mary Jane stopped her. “Give me that pool cue and watch me. Mac, didn’t you teach her anything?” Mary Jane, with the keen eye and instinct of a sheep-herding dog, picked Kaitlin’s ball out of the remaining pack, tapped the side pocket, and banked it off the cushion. “Like that. See? We’ll have to agree on money and the like,” she said. She made the shot easily.

“Of course,” Kaitlin said. She picked up her cue, took aim at her ball to make a shot similar to the one Mary Jane had just demonstrated. She missed.

“You’d better say yes. You need all the help I can give you if you want to learn this game.”

Later, when Mac was talking with the guys at the bar, Kaitlin and Mary Jane remained leaning against the pool table.

“What’s bugging you, honey?” asked Mary Jane. “I can tell you’re glad to have Jeremy live with you, but somehow I get the sense you’re not so certain about me.”

“Mac doesn’t know you told me you were a guardian angel.”

“Nope. I don’t tell many folks, you know. And Mac, well, he’s the suspicious type, like your friend Jim. Neither of them would believe me. I guess you don’t either?”

“Cut the crap, Mary Jane. You’re nothing more than a roady band manager.”

Mary Jane leaned forward and smiled at Kaitlin. “The manager job is a cover. My assignment is the lead singer.”

“But you’ll be here part of the time. Don’t guardian angels work full time, night and day?”

“Of course they do. Haven’t you ever heard of job sharing?”

“What?”

“You know, when two people share the same position.”

Kaitlin’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.

“We’re a very with it organization. We even have our own affirmative action program.”

“I guess everyone thinks angels are white and male.”

“Once they were. Not so much anymore.”

Kaitlin sighed. “I wish you did miracles.”

“Why?”

“So I’d know for certain. You could be an angel or you could be a psychopath.”

“Does it matter?”

“I like you either way, but it does matter. To me, it matters.”

Mary Jane smiled that aggravating, enigmatic smile of hers. “How about a game?” she said.

After Mary Jane broke and missed a bank shot, a difficult one—Kaitlin could tell she wasn’t faking failure—Kaitlin found herself in a similar situation. Her only shot was the three in the corner pocket, but it meant she had to bank the shot off the cushion, a skill she had never managed, not before tonight and clearly not earlier tonight.

“Maybe I should just shoot randomly and mix them up a bit more. I’ll never make that. You saw me when I tried this shot before,” she said to Mary Jane.

“You never know. Try it,” was Mary Jane’s advice.

“Okay then.”

As she lined up her shot, Mac wandered over from the bar, bringing with him Kenny and a few of the guys. Now she was really nervous. She stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth, held her breath, her fingers tight and damp on the stick. She tried to stroke the ball firmly, but instead she trembled in her delivery and gave the cue a jerky tap. It hit the far cushion and rolled back toward the three which lay nestled against the cushion slightly right of the pocket. Had she hit it too hard? Too soft? Would it tap the side of the three and drop it in? Or miss completely? Or worse, hit the three hard enough to send it away from the pocket.

The cue ball gave the three a gentle kiss, then lost momentum, and the three barely wiggled. Oh yeah, she knew it.
A lousy shot.

Kaitlin felt Mary Jane at her back leaning over her shoulder. She heard her take in a short, sharp gasp, then quickly exhale, her warm breath tickling Kaitlin’s earlobe as it passed her neck and seemed to travel toward the three on the table, causing it to quiver. Or was that her imagination? To her eyes it was as if the two balls were communicating with one another, as if a spark jumped from the cue ball to the three, as if the three caught the energy and… The three gave a tremble on the green felt, then slipped softly into the pocket.

“What the…?” said Kaitlin. She looked around the table and saw her own astonishment reflected in everyone’s eyes. The crowd clapped.

“Surely if anyone needed a miracle, it was you,” whispered Mary Jane in her ear.

THE END