Maggy's Child (24 page)

Where was Magdalena?

Nick controlled an urge to stride up to the door, hammer on it, and demand an answer. Discretion was the better part of valor, as he’d once heard someone say.

Lips compressing into a hard line, he turned on his heel, walked back around the house to the woods, and headed down and across the road toward the graveled turnaround where he’d left his car.

Thank God for car phones.

Link was sitting in the driver’s seat of the lipstick-red Corvette, smoking a cigarette and staring out over the gray expanse of the river. A few months before, person or persons unknown had tried their damnedest to blow Nick away. Nick had his suspicions about who was behind the attack, but with nothing concrete to back them up, all he could do was watch his back and hope they wouldn’t try again. Since then, Link had designated himself as his brother’s keeper and hardly let him out of his sight. Link took his self-imposed duties so seriously that Nick sometimes considered himself lucky to be able to go to the bathroom alone.

It was a minor miracle that Link had considered him safe enough with Magdalena to take himself off last night.

Such protectiveness, while funny at first, had grown
damned irritating with the passage of time. But Link would not be dissuaded by anything short of a baseball bat to the head. He couldn’t even be shamed out of it. Link’s standard reply when someone kidded him about this excessive display of brotherly love was, who would authorize the paychecks if Nick bit the big one?

As the taunts were invariably made by one or another of the small circle of Nick’s employees, that tended to work pretty well as a means of shutting the perpetrator up.

“Took you long enough,” Link grunted, barely looking around as Nick let himself in the passenger side. Nick, knowing his brother as he did, wasn’t fooled: Link had been well aware of his approach since he had first emerged from the woods. His senses, never dull, had been honed by the years he’d spent in prison, as had his ability to defend himself—and his brother if necessary—against all comers. That sleepy-eyed pose of his was an act.

Nick said nothing, just reached for the small cellular phone that rested on the console between the two bucket seats and started punching in the number.

“You and Magdalena kiss and make up?” Link was watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“Didn’t see her.”

“What? You’ve been up there for almost three hours! What the hell have you been doing, if you didn’t see her?”

“Waiting.”

“God save me from true love,” Link muttered in disgust as the phone began to ring in Nick’s ear.

“Forrest residence.” The voice on the other end was a woman’s, but definitely not Magdalena’s. The housekeeper, most likely.

“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Forrest, please.”

“The elder or the younger?”

“The younger.”

“She’s not available to come to the phone right now.”

That caught him unprepared. Nick frowned. “She’s there, isn’t she? Why can’t she come to the phone? Is she all right?”

The woman’s tone grew frosty. “I’ll be glad to take a message.”

“No message,” Nick practically ground out the words and pushed the disconnect button.

Link chuckled. “Magdalena don’t want to talk to you, hmmm? Too bad, lover boy.”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Nick fought the urge to shove the phone down his brother’s throat. Two things stopped him: the first was that he really was extremely fond of Link despite his obnoxious ways; the second was that he was not entirely sure that his brother couldn’t kick his ass.

“Grumpy, are we?” Link was still grinning as he turned the key in the ignition and put the car in reverse. “What you need is food, little brother. Didn’t somebody once say that man can’t live by love alone?”

“I think it was bread alone, and whoever said it didn’t know you,” Nick growled.

Link only chuckled again and headed for the nearest waffle house to assuage his enormous appetite. Nick was convinced that his brother ate twice as much and twice as slowly as usual just to aggravate him.

He called Magdalena twice more during the course of the day, only to be given the same response by the same housekeeper. The younger Mrs. Forrest was not available to come to the phone. The last time he left a message, requesting that Mrs. Forrest call Mr. King, and gave the housekeeper his number.

She didn’t call. He waited until almost midnight before he was sure she wasn’t going to, and then, when he went to bed, he couldn’t sleep. Even in his dreams, anger and worry wrestled each other for the upper hand. Was she deliberately avoiding him, or had something happened to her? By the next morning he was as touchy as a bull
elephant deprived of its mate, and chewing his nails with concern.

“Gettin’ up at the crack of dawn to visit your ladylove is wearin’ kinda thin, little brother.” Link looked almost as disgruntled as Nick felt as they pulled into the graveled turnaround at six fifteen the following morning.

“Nobody asked you to come. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Without me, you’d probably get your ass blown off.” Link swung the car around so that it faced the way they had come, and then slid the transmission into park. “Whoever tried to kill you back in January’s still out there, you know.”

“That was in Syracuse,” Nick said dismissively, though he knew even better than Link did that the danger had almost certainly not passed.

“You think they can’t buy bullets in Louisville?”

Ignoring Link’s sarcasm, Nick got out of the car.

“Why don’t you go feed your face or something?” he said, leaning in to scowl at his brother. “I may be a while.”

“Like I don’t already know that.” Link crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his head back against the leather headrest, for all the world as if he meant to take a nap. “Just take your time, Romeo. I’ll be here.”

Nick slammed the door so hard it made Link’s head bounce, for which he was very meanly glad.

This time he waited only two hours. As he climbed back into the car, he gave Link a look that dared him to say a word and picked up the phone.

Same housekeeper, same message. Again he left his number, and again Magdalena didn’t call him.

He already knew she wasn’t going to show up on Tuesday morning before he went, and he was right. Even Link, reading murder in his face when he slammed back into the car at just a few minutes past eight, wisely confined
himself to driving rather than talking as he headed toward his favorite waffle house.

It was shortly after one o’clock, and they were headed from a prospective purchase on the Indiana waterfront toward a business meeting in downtown Louisville when Nick swore out loud and snatched up the phone again.

He shot Link a look that dared him to say a word as he punched in Magdalena’s number for what must have been the dozenth time in three days. As always, the housekeeper answered, her words exactly the same: Mrs. Forrest the younger was still unavailable to come to the phone, but if he liked she’d be glad to take a message. Nick saw red. If the housekeeper wanted a message, then he’d damned well give her one.

“You go tell Mrs. Forrest the younger that Nick King is on the line again. Tell her that if she doesn’t get on this phone within five minutes and speak to me, I’m going to be up there to pay a goddamn personal call on her five minutes after that. Can you give her that message?”

There was a pause.

“Please wait,” the voice said grimly, and then there was silence at the other end.

“That’s a hell of a message to give to a housekeeper.” Link’s expression was reproving. “You forget about the husband, or what?”

“I wish I could forget about the bastard,” Nick said through gritted teeth. “I can’t.”

“That’s a sweet setup she has up there. A mansion complete with chauffeur, housekeeper, the works. Have you ever thought that maybe Magdalena don’t want to give it all up for you?”

“What makes you think I’m asking her to?”

“I know you, Nicky boy,”

Nick scowled into the phone, though no one was on the other end. “Something’s wrong up there. I can feel it.”

“Maybe her husband’s mad ’cause you’re after her like
a fly after honey.” Link’s voice was dry. “If I was her husband, that would do it for me.”

“Are you telling me you think I should lay off?” Nick transferred his scowl to his brother, who held up a placating hand.

“Hey, man, chill out, we’re blood, remember? I know what you two had—once. But that was a long time ago. I ain’t heard nothin’ that makes me think Forrest forced her to marry him. She did it of her own free will. What I’m sayin’ is, maybe you should respect that. If she keeps tellin’ you she wants you to get lost, maybe you should believe her. Maybe you should let her alone.”

“Screw that. She only did it for the money.”

“Maybe she wants to stay with him for the money, too.” Link’s tone was gentle, as it always was when he broke what he considered to be unpalatable truths to his kid brother. That was the tone he’d used when he told Nick that the reason they had different last names was because they had two different fathers. That was the tone he’d used when he told Nick he was going to jail, maybe for a long time. That was the tone he’d used when he told Nick that Magdalena was gone for good and advised him to get on with his life without her.

Nick heard that tone and winced before he thrust the recollections from his mind.

“Something’s wrong up there,” he repeated stubbornly, just as Magdalena spoke into the phone.

“Nick?”

There was no mistaking that it was she. Nick released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He had been starting to toy with the idea that she might even be dead, that Forrest might have killed her in a rage, and the whole tribe of them up there might be involved in concealing the crime. Where the notion had come from he couldn’t be sure—probably from that damned message
Tia
Gloria had given her—but he could have sworn that something bad had happened to her. He’d felt it every
time he’d thought of her, as if he had ESP or something, and not being able to see or speak to her for three fricking days had made the feeling worse. Now that he actually had her on the phone, the feeling was subsiding a little, but while it had lasted the sensation had been downright eerie. Shades of
Tia
Gloria’s spook fest, he’d thought more than once, and hoped like hell that looniness wasn’t contagious.

Maybe Magdalena had just been avoiding him after all. Instead of bothering him, as it should have done, the idea was a blessed relief.

“Magdalena! Long time no see.” His voice was artificially affable.

“What on earth did you say to Louella? She was outraged.”

“I told her that if she didn’t let me speak to you, I’d be up there in person five minutes after she hung up the phone.”

He heard her quick indrawing of breath and wondered.

“You can’t do that.” Her words were swift, urgent. He got the impression that they tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“Why can’t I?”

“Lyle wouldn’t like it.” She was in control of herself again, but there was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on in her tone. He couldn’t describe what it was, but he didn’t like it.

“To hell with Lyle,” he said cheerfully and listened hard.

She laughed, a brittle, three-note sound that was unmistakably bitter agreement. Nick felt his ears prick up like a hound’s.

“You didn’t walk the dogs this morning. Or yesterday, or Sunday either.”

“How do you know?”

“How do you think I know? I stood out there in your damned woods for three hours with rain trickling down
my neck on Sunday. Monday I froze my ass. At least today it’s sunny.”

“It wasn’t raining Sunday.”

“It was at six thirty in the morning.”

“Oh.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry you waited for nothing. The truth is, I won’t be walking the dogs again for a while. I’m in bed with the flu.”

“You’re in bed with the flu?” Disbelief made it a question. The ugly suspicions that had been flickering inside him almost since he had first laid eyes on her again were strengthening with every beat of his pulse. “Actually in bed?”

“Yes. I’m speaking to you from the phone on my night table.”

“You’ve never been in bed with the flu in your life.” He spoke with absolute certainty. This was a girl who had never slowed down through chicken pox, measles, mumps. He’d seen her get her head split open by a glass light fixture that gave up its tenuous grip on a hall ceiling just as she passed beneath it, lose a pint of blood in the process and get fifteen stitches for her trouble, and go out to play kickball in the street later that same afternoon. There wasn’t a flu bug in the world that could keep her in bed for three days.

“Well, I am now.” She sounded cross.

“Right.” Nick tried another approach. “So when do you expect to be out walking the dogs again? I mean, can you set a date to it? Then I won’t have to hang around your woods every morning twiddling my thumbs.”

There was a brief pause. “Nick …”

“Hmmm?”

“I don’t want you hanging around the woods. I—don’t want to see you anymore.”

“Why not?” He wasn’t hurt or angry, because it was more or less what he was expecting.

“You know why not.”

“Maybe you better spell it out for me. Sometimes I can be a little dense.”

“You know why not,” she repeated, sounding cross again.

“Are you brushing me off, Magdalena?” he asked.

“If you want to call it that.” Her voice was wintry.

“You’re going to have to do it in person.”

“What?”

“You heard me. If you want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to tell me so in person. I’ll be at your front door in twenty minutes. You can tell me to go straight to hell, if that’s what you want. And you know what? If you tell me to my face, I’ll go.”

“Nick …” There was panic in her voice. “I don’t want you here.
I do not want you here
. Can’t you accept that?”

“Why not, Magdalena? What are you afraid of? Lyle?” he asked, his voice soft with perception, and again he was rewarded by that sharp indrawing of her breath. And he knew. It was as simple as that. He knew.