Maggy's Child (21 page)

“It was—very sudden. A heart attack.
Tia
Gloria was with him, but there was nothing she could do. They were eating supper on the balcony, talking and watching the sunset, and—he just keeled over. He was dead before they got him to the hospital.”

“It must have been hard on you. I know how you loved him.”

“Yes.” Maggy took a deep breath and willed herself not to cry. She never did anymore, for her father. Her sorrow at his loss was with her still and would be for the rest of her life. But it had been tempered over time by loving memories and by the sure knowledge that he was happier reunited with her mother than he ever had been since Mary’s death. Nick’s presence brought Jorge’s memory back sharply, and suddenly the pain of her loss was new again. Jorge had loved Nick almost as a son in the days when. Nick and Magdalena were inseparable.

But if she cried, Nick would comfort her, and she could not bear his touch.

“Is your mother—how is your mother?”

“Fine. She lives in Detroit now, with husband number four. Link and I spent this past Thanksgiving with her. Rob, her new husband, isn’t too bad. He treats her good, and she’s happy.”

“I’m glad.”

Her father had built a tiny dock just for
The Lady Dancer
. Approaching it, Maggy eased back on the throttle until the boat was just barely moving through the water. With years of practice behind her, it was the work of only a few minutes to sidle in next to the dock, secure the rope, and cut the engine.

“Come on,” she said without looking at Nick. With a nimble leap she was on the dock before he could reply or, as she feared, touch her.

“Looks like she has company,” Nick observed, clambering after her, his gaze fixed on the half dozen or so cars that were parked in the gravel driveway that curved around behind the house.

Glancing up at the tiny, faint light just visible through one of the octagonal windows—the rest of the house was in complete darkness—Maggy nodded, unsurprised.

“She’s probably having a séance.”

“Oh.” Though Maggy’s statement undoubtedly would have given a stranger pause, Nick took it in stride. He had once known
Tia
Gloria, self-proclaimed seer, mystic, and psychic, well. “She still get ten bucks a head?”

“No.” Maggy was already stepping off the dock and heading up the pebble-strewn beach toward the stairs that led to the front door. “She retired when she moved in with
Papi
. This must be a group of her friends.”

“Fantastic.”

Maggy ignored this unenthusiastic mutter and swiftly climbed the stairs.

“What do we do, knock? They’ll probably think we’re
spooks.” Nick was two steps behind her as she reached the balcony. It ran all the way around the house and the front door opened off it.

“I have a key.” Maggy reached in her pocket and produced it. “Shhh. We don’t want to interrupt if they’re in the middle of something.”

Making as little noise as possible, Maggy unlocked the door and motioned for Nick to precede her into the small kitchen. It was utterly dark except for the moonlight wafting in behind them, because the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the living room was shut. A faint whitish glow showed beneath that door.

“I feel like a cat burglar,” Nick whispered as Maggy closed the front door behind them. With the moonlight cut off, the darkness was almost impenetrable. A burning smell permeated the kitchen, causing Maggy to wrinkle her nose.

Sepulchral music began to play in the other room.

“Calling the spirits … I’m calling the spirits …” A high-pitched, moaning voice that Maggy recognized only with difficulty as belonging to
Tia
Gloria was just audible through the closed kitchen door. “I’m calling the spirit of one dearly departed, one beloved by a still-living entity present in this room. I’m calling the spirit of Alice Kannapel. Alice Kannapel, speak to your niece!”

This dramatic pronouncement produced dead silence except for the rolling music. Even Maggy, in the act of tiptoeing to the pantry to flick on the tiny light that hung from the ceiling there, was affected. She paused, listening, before she caught herself, mentally shook her head at her own gullibility, and continued with what she was doing.

“Glory, glory, glory …”a hoarse croak of a voice suddenly warbled from somewhere nearby. Maggy jumped, whirling, but could see nothing except Nick’s large bulk not far behind her, apparently frozen in place by the same sound. Heart pounding in reaction, Maggy swallowed and fumbled for the light switch.

“What in hell …?” growled Nick, no longer rooted to the spot. She could feel him looming behind her, protectively close. Where was that light switch? She groped for it as hysterical laughter bubbled inside her.

“… Lord God Almighty …” The hymn gained strength.

“Do you hear that?”

“It was Aunt Alice’s favorite hymn!”

“And the smell!”

“Sulfur!”

“Gloria, by golly, I think you may have finally done it! You’ve got in touch with a real spirit at last!”

“What are you talking about, you foolish old man? I always get in touch with real spirits!” The jumble of excited voices from the other room coincided with Maggy’s discovery of the light switch.

“… God in three persons …”

The light, a tiny yellow bulb with no more wattage than a single candle, sprang to life. Its glow was just enough to reveal the singer—and Nick’s face.

He was staring at her, face pale, eyes wide, as the ghostly hymn filled the little house from a source not three feet behind his back.

“… Blessed Trinity!” This triumphant conclusion, the sheer volume of which could have rattled the rafters if there had been any to rattle, immediately dissolved into a degenerate cackle of laughter.

Nick was already swinging around when Maggy said, with soft hilarity, “Look behind you.”

He did, saw the large, wrought-iron cage and the parrot in it pacing its perch, head bobbing, green-and-yellow feathers ruffled, and muttered something explosive under his breath.

“Hello, Horatio.” Maggy, grinning widely, slipped around Nick toward the cage.

“Damned bird. I should have guessed.” Nick stuck his
hands in his pockets, his expression self-conscious as the tips of his ears took on just the slightest tinge of red.

“There’s a light in the kitchen!”

“Someone’s in there!”

“It’s Aunt Alice!”

“More likely a burglar.”

“Do you smell that? Could it be—the scent of the netherworld?”

“Smells more like something burning to me.”

The voices from the other room were punctuated by the sounds of chairs scraping over the floor as the occupants apparently rose with haste. The music was abruptly cut off. Footsteps pounded toward the kitchen door.

Maggy had no time to do more than exchange a look with Nick before the door swung open. A group consisting of a single elderly gentleman brandishing a silver-headed cane and five sixtyish ladies, one armed with a furled umbrella and another with a tall brass candlestick, which she waved threateningly in the air, confronted them. For a moment no one moved.

Then, “Magdalena!” came a placid voice from the back of the group, and the knot of potential gladiators parted to let
Tia
Gloria through. Her plump form clad in a purple silk tunic and pants embellished by silvery crescent moons, blond hair piled high in a neo-beehive atop her head,
Tia
Gloria sailed across the kitchen, arms thrown wide to embrace Maggy. Maggy, despite being nearly suffocated by a cloud of Chloe perfume, returned the shorter woman’s hug with enthusiasm. Though no bonds of blood bound them, ties of the heart did. For most of Maggy’s childhood, she had thought of Gloria as a close family friend. It was only when Gloria moved into this house with Maggy’s father that she had realized the truth: of course they had been lovers for years. Dearly as Jorge had loved his wife, his sexual needs had not died with her. Gloria had met those needs. Jorge had been fond of Gloria,
but Gloria had loved him deeply. Her one goal in life had been to persuade him to make her wife number two.

Jorge had died before her single-minded persistence could prevail. Afterward, at Maggy’s insistence, Gloria had stayed on in the house. Though nearly a decade had passed, she had never, to Maggy’s knowledge, had another boyfriend.

“You got my message,”
Tia
Gloria said, drawing back from the embrace to beam at Maggy. Anyone listening might have been forgiven for supposing that she was referring to a phone call, or a letter. Maggy knew better.
Tia
Gloria meant a psychic message, which she had sent and had expected Maggy to receive. With her long experience of Gloria’s eccentricities, Maggy merely nodded.

“Your father was here, and he left a note for you. Now, where did I put it?” Gloria glanced around with a perplexed expression, as if she expected the note to materialize out of thin air. Maggy, catching a glimpse of Nick’s face out of the corner of her eye, could not help smiling. It had been a long time since he had seen
Tia
Gloria. Clearly he had forgotten her penchant for the paranormal.

“That smell …” One woman sniffed the air.

“My cookies are burning!” another wailed, rushing toward the stove.

“Told you it wasn’t the netherworld,” the gentleman said to a third.

“Hmmph!” this woman replied, while the second one opened the oven door and, fanning away smoke, pulled a tray of nearly black cookies to safety.

“So much for tea and cookies,” the gentleman grumbled.

“We can still have tea,” his conversational partner said with dignity and turned her shoulder on the wet-blanket gentleman.

Tia
Gloria watched this byplay with only mild interest before her attention returned to Maggy.

“You brought me a visitor, I see. I’ve been expecting you to. You remember a couple of months back when I told you that a tall, dark, handsome gentleman would soon be entering your life? This fellow certainly is that, isn’t he? And you brought him to see me, just as they said you would. The spirits are never wrong.” She broke off to study Nick. “My land, is it really—Nick? Nick King, is that you?”
Tia
Gloria’s eyes widened, her mouth dropped, and she flew to envelop him in a hug.

“It’s really me,
Tia
,” Nick said, hugging her back.
Tia
Gloria looked absurdly small and plump when enveloped by Nick’s six feet two inches of solid muscle. She giggled as she strained up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek, then left a red lipstick smear in the five-o’clock shadow that darkened his jaw and had to wipe it off with her hand.

“I haven’t seen you for—how long? Years. Years! You bad boy! Jorge missed you, and Magdalena’s needed you! Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there.”

“Have you said hello to Horatio?”

“I said something to the stupid bird.”

“Don’t call him that,”
Tia
Gloria chided. “You’ll hurt his feelings. He’s very sensitive.”

“Bad boy! Bad boy!” The indictment came from the bird. Maggy looked around with everyone else to see Horatio clutching the bars at the front of his cage, the pupils of his orange eyes rapidly shrinking and dilating, shrinking and dilating as they fixed on Nick. His beak thrust through the bars, and he seemed to be fumbling with the latch on his cage.

“Horatio remembers you!”
Tia
Gloria said with delight. “Here, let me let him out.”

“No!” Nick visibly recoiled.

Maggy had to laugh as
Tia
Gloria glanced at him in surprise. “Oh, that’s right, you always were afraid of him,
weren’t you? But you’re a grown man now.” Her voice reproved him. “He won’t hurt you. Will you, Horatio?”

“Bad boy,” Horatio said, working at the latch. “Bad, bad boy.”

“You shouldn’t have thrown a ball at his cage,” Maggy murmured wickedly to Nick. The glare Nick bestowed on her in reply should have wilted her on the spot. Instead it made her grin.

“W
ell, I won’t let him out then, if you’d rather I wouldn’t,”
Tia
Gloria said comfortably. “Besides, he can open his cage himself if he’s of a mind to. Come in, Nick, come in, Magdalena, and sit down! The cookies may be burned, but I have some coffee cake in the pantry, and Lois here makes wonderful green tea.” She nodded at one of the other women. “Oh, I haven’t introduced you. My friends, this is Magdalena. Jorge’s daughter.” She turned to Maggy. “They’ve heard me talk about you for years, it’s nice they finally get a chance to meet you and see for themselves that you’re not a figment of a crazy old woman’s imagination.” Gesturing at Nick, who stood beside Maggy, she added, “And this is Nick King. Remember, I told you about Nick?” She exchanged a significant look with her cronies.

“Oh, yes!” the women chorused, and from the collective expressions on their faces Maggy had to wonder just what
Tia
Gloria had told them. They looked at Nick as if the mere sight of him was enough to make them swoon.

“This is Lois Branson, Renee Sharer, Betty Nichols, Harvey Nichols, and Dottie Hagan.”

Everyone nodded and made polite murmurs. Though Maggy would have resisted if given the opportunity to do so, she was not given the opportunity:
Tia
Gloria took her arm and Nick’s and propelled them toward the living room by main force.