The Beginning (54 page)

“You've got to be making that up. The nurse this morning was very sweet when she poked me with a needle. And it wasn't in the rear end, thank God. Listen, Dr. Breaker, it's already four o'clock in the afternoon. I've been counting sheep since nine o'clock this morning. I'm fine. My head hurts just a bit, but nothing else, not even the cut on my head. Please, Dr. Breaker, I want to go home.”

“Let's talk about it a bit more,” he said, backing away from the bed.

She swung her legs over and sat up. “I need some clothes, Dr. Breaker.”

“Keep your socks on. I've got clothes for you, Sherlock. Ned told me you'd probably demand to take off.”

She looked down at her bare foot. “I don't even have any socks, just this flimsy hospital gown that's open in the back.”

Savich grinned at her. “Well, Ned, shall I take her off your hands?”

“She's yours, Savich. She'll be fine. She needs another day taking it easy and these pills for any pain.” He handed Savich the bottle of pills.

“Good-bye, Agent Sherlock. That's a weird name. If I were you, I'd have it changed. How about Jane Sherlock?”

“That wasn't funny, Ned,” Savich said, but Dr. Breaker was chuckling. “I've never before had the chance to say that. It's an old joke, you know.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I know.”

“Heard it, huh?”

“I've heard all of them. Thank you, Dr. Breaker. Dillon, give me my clothes and see Dr. Breaker out.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Savich stayed out until she opened the door. He was talking to Agent Crammer, a ruddy-faced, barrel-chested young man who had a degree in accounting from the University of Pennsylvania.

She eyed them. When Savich looked up, he took in her outfit and grinned. “Not bad, huh? You won't be arrested by the fashion police.”

He'd brought her a dark green silk blouse and a pair of blue jeans, a blue blazer and a pair of low-heeled boots that she'd only worn one time. She liked the outfit but would never have picked it out. It made her look too—

“You look real sharp, Agent Sherlock,” Crammer said.

“Yeah,” Savich added, “real sharp. Cute even.”

“A Special Agent shouldn't look anything but competent and trustworthy. I'll go home and change.”

“With that bandage on your head, you're not going to make it into the competence hall of fame. Best settle for cute. At least it's only a big Band-Aid now.”

“I want to go home.”

“Crammer, thanks for keeping watch.”

They made her ride downstairs in a wheelchair.

“You ready?”

She stared at a sexy red Porsche. “That's yours?”

“Yes, it's mine.”

“How do you fit into it?”

Whatever he'd expected her to say, evidently that wasn't it, because he chuckled. “I fit,” he said only and opened the door for her.

He did fit. “This is wonderful. Douglas drives a black 1990 Porsche911. Every time I drove that dratted car, I got a speeding ticket.”

“They do that to you if you don't watch it. Now, Sherlock, you aren't going home yet.”

“I have to go home. I have plants to water—”

“Quinlan will water your plants. He's magic with plants. He'll probably even sing to them. Sally says she expects those African violets of his to try to get into bed with them. Don't worry about your plants.”

“Where do you want me to go? A safe house?”

“No. You're coming home with me.”

“No one followed us, and yes, I saw you looking too. Forget the baddies for the moment. What do you think of my humble abode?”

“I forgot about anybody following us the moment I stepped in here. I've never seen anything quite like it.” She raised her face and splayed her fingers in front of her. “It's filled with light.”

It wasn't a simple two-story open town house. There were soaring pale-beamed ceilings with huge skylights, all the walls painted a soft cream. The furnishings were beige, gold, and a dozen shades of brown. The oak floors were dotted with Persian carpets, the colors soft, mellow, old. A winding oak stairway covered with a running Tabriz carpet in multiple blues went up the stairs. There was a richly carved wooden oak railing running the perimeter of the landing.

“Dillon,” she said slowly, turning to look at him for the first time since she'd stepped into this magic place, “my house is to this as a stable is to Versailles. This place is incredible; I've never seen anything like it. You have unplumbed depths. Oh dear, I'm not feeling so good.”

She wasn't nauseous, thank goodness, but she did collapse into one of his big, soft, buttery brown leather chairs, close her eyes, and swallow several times. He put her feet on a matching leather hassock.

“You need to eat. No, you need to rest. But first I'll get you some water. How about some saltine crackers? My aunt Faye always fed saltines to my pregnant female relatives. What do you think?”

She cocked open an eye. She sighed and swallowed again. “Maybe a saltine wouldn't be a bad idea.”

He covered her with a rich gold chenille afghan, tucking it around her feet on the leather hassock, and took off to the kitchen. She hadn't seen the kitchen. She wondered if its ceiling went up two stories like the rest of the house.

After she ate a saltine and drank some water, she said, “I think the FBI pays you too much money. You could open this place to the public and charge admission.”

“I'm poor, Sherlock. I inherited this house and a bit on the side from my grandmother. She was an artist—watercolors and acrylics.”

“Was she a professional? What was her name?”

“Sarah Elliott.”

She stared at him, one eyebrow arched, chewing another saltine cracker. “You're kidding,” she said finally. “You're telling me
the
Sarah Elliott was your grandmother?”

“Yes, my mother's mom. A great old lady. She died five years ago when she was eighty-four. I remember she told me it was time for her to go because the arthritis had gotten really bad in her hands. She couldn't hold her paintbrushes anymore. I told her that her talent wasn't in her hands, it was in her mind. I told her to stop bitching and to hold the paintbrushes between her teeth.” He paused a moment, smiling toward a painting of an orchid just beginning to bloom. “I thought at first that she would slug me, then she started laughing. She had this really deep, full laugh. She lived for another year, holding the paintbrushes between her dentures.” He would never forget the first time he'd seen her with that paintbrush sticking out of her mouth, smiling when she saw him, nearly dropping the brush. It had been one of the happiest moments of his life.

“And you were Sarah Elliott's favorite grandchild? That's why she left you this beautiful house in the middle of Georgetown?”

“Well, she was worried since I'd chosen the FBI and computer shenanigans for a career.”

“Shenanigans? I like that. But what exactly was she worried about?” She pulled the afghan higher up on her chest. A headache was slowly building behind her left ear. She hated it. Even her arm ached where Marlin Jones had knifed her weeks before.

“She was afraid that my artistic side would stultify, what with the demands of my job and with my constant computer fiddling.”

“Ah, so this place is to inspire you? Get you in touch with your artistic genes?”

“Yes. You look green, Sherlock. I think it's time you took a nap. Do you have to puke?”

“Not really. May I stay here for a while? It's very comfortable. I'm a bit on the thready side.”

“No wonder,” he said, and watched her head loll to the side. She was out. The chair was oversized, so he wasn't worried that she'd wake up stiff as a pretzel. He unfolded another afghan over her, one his mother had knitted, this one so soft it spilled through the fingers. He stroked it as he gently tucked it around her shoulders. She'd French-braided her hair, but it really wasn't long enough, and so red curls stuck up here and there, curled around her face. The big Band-Aid looked absurd plastered over the shaved spot on her temple, faintly pathetic really, since she was so pale.

All she needed was a little rest. She'd be fine. He lightly stroked his fingertips over her eyebrows.

He saw she had a spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose.

She didn't have any freckles anywhere else. And he'd looked. He hadn't meant to, but he had. He really liked the freckles on her nose.

No doubt about it. He was in deep trouble.

 

SHE
woke up to the smell of garlic, onion, and tomatoes. Her mouth started watering even before her brain fully registered food. Her stomach growled. She felt fine, no more nausea.

“Good, you're awake.”

“What are you cooking?”

“Penne pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, onions, and garlic. And some garlic toast. You're drooling, Sherlock. You've got an appetite, I hope.”

“I could eat this afghan.”

“Not that one, please. It's my favorite. The nurses told me you hadn't eaten much all day. Time to stuff yourself. First, here's a couple of pills for you to take.”

She took them without asking what they were.

“No wine. How about some cider?”

He put a tray over her legs and watched her take her first bite of Savich pesto pasta. She closed her eyes as she slowly, very slowly, chewed, and chewed some more until there was nothing left in her mouth but the lingering burst of pesto and garlic. She licked her lips. Finally, she opened her eyes, stared at him for a very long time, then said, “You'll make a fantastic husband, Dillon. I've never tasted anything so delicious in my life.”

“It's my mom's recipe. She taught me how to make the pasta when I was eighteen and headed off to MIT. She'd told me she'd heard the only thing they ate up there was Boston beans. She said guys and beans didn't mix well so I needed to know how to make something else. You really like it better than the pizza you devoured a couple of nights ago?”

“Goodness, it was just two nights ago, wasn't it? It seems like a decade. Actually, I like it better than anything I can ever remember eating. Do you make pizza too?”

“Sure. You want some for breakfast?”

“You cook it anytime you want, I'll consume it.” They didn't say anything more for a good seven minutes. Savich's tray was on the coffee table, close enough to keep a good eye on her. She stopped halfway through and stared down at the rest of her pasta. He thought she was going to cry. “It's so good. There's no more room.”

“If you get hungry later, we can heat it up.”

She was fiddling with her fork, building little structures with the pasta, watching the emerging patterns with great concentration. She didn't look up as she said, “I didn't know there were men like you.”

He studied his fingernails, saw a hangnail on his thumb, and frowned. He didn't look up either, said, “What does that mean?”

“Well, you live in a beautiful house, and I can't see a speck of mess or dust. In other words, you're not a pig. But that's extraneous stuff, important, sure, but not a deal breaker. You have a big heart, Dillon. And you're a great cook.”

“Sherlock, I've lived alone for four years. Man cannot live by pizza at Dizzy Dan's alone. Also, I don't like squalor. There are lots of men like me. Quinlan, for example. Ask Sally, she'll say his heart is bigger than the Montana sky.”

“What do you mean you lived alone for four years? You didn't live alone before that?”

“Your FBI training in action. Very good. I was married once upon a time.”

“Somehow I can't see you married. You seem so self-sufficient. Are you divorced?”

“No, Claire didn't divorce me. She died of leukemia.”

“I'm sorry, Dillon.”

“It's been even more than four years now. I'm sorry that Claire never got to live in this wonderful house. She died three months before my grandmother.”

“How long were you together?”

“Four years. She was only twenty-seven when she died. It was strange what happened. She'd read that old book by Erich Segal—
Love Story
. She was diagnosed with leukemia weeks later. There was a certain irony in that, I suppose, only I didn't recognize it for a very long time. I've watched the movie several times over the years. Claire's death wasn't serene and poignantly tragic like the young wife's death in the movie or the book, believe me. She fought with everything in her. It wasn't enough. Nothing was enough.”

He hadn't spoken of Claire this much since her death. It rocked him. He rose abruptly and walked over to the fireplace, leaned his shoulders against the mantel.

“I'm sorry.”

“Yes.”

“Do you still miss her?”

He looked toward one of his grandmother's paintings, given to him on his graduation from MIT, an acrylic of a bent old man haggling in a French market, in the small village near Cannes where his grandmother had lived for several years back in the sixties. Then he looked at Lacey, his expression faintly puzzled. “It's odd, but you know, I can't quite picture Claire's face in my mind anymore. It's all blurry and faded, like a very old photograph. I know the pain is there, but it's soft now, far away, and I can't really grasp it. Yes, I miss her. Sometimes I'll still look up from reading a book and start to say something to her, or expect her to yell at me when I go nuts over a football play. She was an ice skater. Very good, but she never made the cut to the Olympics.”

“That's how Belinda is now to me. At first I never wanted the pain to lessen, but it did anyway, without my permission. It's almost as if Belinda wanted me to let her go. When I see a photo of her now, it seems like she was someone I knew and loved in another place, another time, maybe the person who loved her was another me as well. Sometimes when I'm in a crowd, I think I hear her call out to me. She's never there, of course.”

He swallowed, feeling tears of bittersweet memory he hadn't felt in years. Maybe the tears were for both of them.

Her eyes were clear and calm as she said, “You know, I'd fight too. Never would I go quietly into that good night, just sort of winking out and isn't that too bad, and wasn't she a nice person? No, I'd be kicking and yelling all the way.”

He laughed, then immediately sobered. Guilt because he'd spoken about Claire, then laughed? Suddenly, he laughed again. “I would too. Thanks, Sherlock.”

She smiled at him. “My head doesn't hurt anymore. One of those magic pills?”

“Yeah. Now, would you like to watch the news while I clean up the kitchen?”

“No dessert?”

“You didn't clean your plate and you're demanding dessert?”

“Dessert's for a completely different stomach compartment, and my dessert compartment is empty. I know I smelled cheesecake.”

She ate his New York cheesecake while he cleaned up the dishes. She watched the national news. More trouble with North Korea. More trouble in Iraq. Then, suddenly, there was Big John Bullock, Marlin Jones's lawyer, full of bluff and good nature for the reporters, flinging out answers as they pursued him from the Boston courthouse to his huge black limousine.

“Will Marlin Jones go to trial?”

“No comment.”

“Is Marlin crazy?”

“You know the ruling.” He rolled his eyes and shrugged his massive shoulders.

“Will you plead him not guilty?”

“No comment.”

“Is it true you told everyone that he had a bad childhood, a mother who beat him up, and an uncle who sexually abused him?”

“Public records are public records.”

“But there's a confession.”

“It won't be admissible. The cops and the FBI made him confess.”

“But what about that FBI agent? Your client knocked her cold and took her to that warehouse to kill her. They've got everything on tape and on film.”

Big John gave an explosive wave of his arms. “Pure and simple entrapment. There wasn't a thought of killing her in his mind.”

“I heard he even knifed the agent.”

Big John just shook his head. “No more. Just remember, it was entrapment. It was all a setup. It won't be admissible, you'll see.”

And one woman newscaster said, “Oh, so you're saying if he'd killed the FBI agent then it wouldn't have been entrapment?”