Authors: Linda Grimes
Thomas took me by both shoulders, from behind. “Calm down, Ciel.”
The nurse planted herself between me and the bed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now. All of you.”
Thomas jerked his head toward Harvey. “He stays.”
“Security should be posted
outside
the room—” the nurse tried drawing herself up authoritatively. That tends to be a big waste of time with Thomas.
“No buts. I’ll leave and take my sister, but Smith stays right by Laura.”
Okay. Thomas might not like Harvey, but he trusted him. Harvey acknowledged him with a nod, and I was pulled from the room by my brother’s very firm grip on my hand.
“Ciel…” Laura’s thready voice stopped me, and I looked back over my shoulder. “Thanks. For helping me.” Unless I was terribly mistaken, there was an apology in her eyes.
Chapter 10
Never, ever trust an ape. They’ll con you every time.
I was back at the lab with Molly, having been unceremoniously dumped there by Thomas after our visit with Laura. He’d been unforthcoming about his background with Laura, and—even more unforgivable from my point of view—unwilling to discuss why everybody but me seemed to think it wasn’t out of the question that Billy shot her. My stomach was twisted with worry.
Which meant I was a little distracted and not precisely paying attention when Molly locked me in James’s storage closet. I rattled the knob. When that proved useless, I banged on the door.
“Molly, you get back here and open this door at once. Do you hear me? I mean
now,
young lady!” I loaded it with as much menace as I dared, hoping a good infusion of “stern parent” would jolt her into obedience.
Apparently not.
“Molly. Come on, sweetie. Open up. I’ve changed my mind. You can keep playing your video game.” I waited, ear to the door, listening to see if my offer had any effect. Nada. So I gave in to bribe inflation and upped it. “
And
you can have some ice cream.”
There was a pause in the Wii racket, followed by the sound of the fridge opening and closing.
Crap.
Chalk one up for primate intelligence—she knew better than to trust me. She got her own damn ice cream.
Shortly after I relieved James of Molly-sitting, I had decided the mature thing to do would be to limit her game playing and junk eating. So much for my misguided attempt to show respect for Auntie Mo’s parenting preferences. I should’ve just parked myself nearby with a magazine, inserted some earplugs, and let the brat go cross-eyed and get a bellyache.
I looked at the painstakingly drawn letters on the note in my hand, a request from Molly. We were out of toilet paper, she’d written after popping in and out of the bathroom. (Well, actually she’d written “T P?” with a crooked question mark, but I’d extrapolated her meaning.) Stupid me hadn’t even checked to see if she was telling the truth. Who lies about a thing like that? James kept his supplies in this—I swallowed hard—tiny room, and so here I’d come. And here I was, stuck, the treacherous
snick
of the door locking behind me my first clue that I’d been had.
Not thinking about my claustrophobia worked well for about thirty seconds. Then I pounded on the door with both fists. If I’d had any fingernails to speak of, I’d have clawed it to splinters. Since I didn’t, I hyperventilated my way through a list of expletives the rational part of me hoped Molly had never had occasion to hear before, topping it off with, “
Damn it,
I’m going to blister your hairy little bottom if you don’t unlock this door right now!”
The door swung open. Billy caught my wrists on a downswing, a gleam in his eye and a wicked curve to his mouth. “Promise?” he said.
I yanked my hands free and threw myself into his arms, gulping air. He grabbed my ass and squeezed, and I was so happy to see him I didn’t even slug him for it. I kissed him before he could kiss me. Not nearly as good at it as he was, I wound up hitting the corner of his mouth and squooshing my nose into his cheek.
One of his hands deserted my butt and adjusted the tilt of my head. “Looking for this?” he whispered, and then did that thing he does with his tongue.
Bingo
.
After a moment he ended the kiss and said, “Unless you want me to push you back into the closet and shut the door behind us, I believe we’d better stop this and check on the chimp.”
“Orangutan,” I corrected dizzily, gathering myself.
He shrugged as he turned and headed across the lab to where Molly was enjoying her last seconds of video-gaming freedom. “I know, but it wasn’t alliterative.”
“Wait a minute—how did you get out? Thomas said there was no chance of that until tomorrow morning.”
“I know a judge who was kindly disposed to do me a favor.”
“You blackmailed a judge?” I said, appalled.
“Now, why do you automatically assume the worst? Maybe she just likes me.”
“Yeah, right. What do you have on her?”
“Nothing. Not one thing. She just happens to remain grateful that I’m not dating her daughter.” He grinned and tugged my hair.
“What’d you do? Intimate that you’d become her offspring’s prison pen pal if she didn’t help you out?” I said wryly.
“I never said that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t have to. So, are you totally off the hook? Are they going to concentrate on finding whoever really shot Laura? Who did, anyway? Do you know? Why didn’t you just tell—”
“Slow down, cuz. Allow me to ignore one question at a time.”
I grabbed his elbow and turned him to face me. “Billy—what’s going on?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again, his eyes going evasive on me. “Look, I just came by to say adios to you and the monkey. There’s something I have to do, and I may drop out of sight for a little while.”
I inhaled deeply, ready to launch into a protest. He placed a hand over my mouth.
“A
very
little while—and I didn’t want you to worry.”
Twisting my head away from him, I proceeded. “But you can’t do that.”
He raised one eyebrow. “No? Actually, I’m pretty good at it.” He pulled away and crossed the lab in long strides toward the video game noises.
I stuck to his heels by taking two steps for each of his. He gave Molly a quick hug and tickle, followed by a dire warning about what he would do to her if she ever locked me in a closet again, then handed her off to me. Words swarmed on my tongue, battering at my teeth to get out, but of course I couldn’t let them escape, not with little ears right there. So I put her down and told her she could go back to playing video games (with an internal apology to Auntie Mo), all the while gripping one of Billy’s arms so he couldn’t leave.
Once Molly was out of earshot, I gave Billy my sternest glare. “We’ve already been through this. If you think you’re shoving me over to the sidelines this time—”
“Wouldn’t dream of it—no,
honest
. I’m going to need your help. If James were here to stay with Molly, I’d take you with me right now. But he’s not. Molly’s safety has to come first.”
I reluctantly agreed. “Can’t you just tell me where you’ll be?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure where I’ll end up yet. Just take care of her for me, Ciel. I’ll be in touch when I can.”
* * *
It’s hard to stay mad at a baby animal, especially one who curls up in your arms, puckers up her rubbery monkey lips and kisses your cheek, then promptly falls sound asleep on your shoulder. I sat with her on the battered love seat, cradling her close to my heart while my mind spun with dire possibilities. What was Billy up to? Did he even know who had shot Laura? Did Laura know? Thomas and I had learned from speaking with the surgeon before we left the hospital that the bullet had entered her from the front, so she had to have been facing the shooter. If she did know, why wasn’t she saying?
Too antsy to stay still, I laid Molly on the love seat and tucked a tattered afghan around her. It was one Auntie Mo had made for James when she was in her knitting phase, a cousin to the one I had covered Laura with at Billy’s place earlier. We all had at least one (some of us several, I thought, thinking guiltily of the ones I had hidden away in my linen closet at home and dragged out only for Auntie Mo’s visits) made with joyous disregard for good taste by Mo’s loving hands. Fortunately, that particular phase ended before she got to constructing wearables. I think the prospect of making neck holes and sleeves pushed her into her next passion, ceramics, which we all found easier to deal with, even if the various ashtrays (none of us smoke) and vases were equally hideous. At least ceramic pieces broke eventually. Sure, maybe with a little help, but nothing unjustifiable.
I roamed the lab, pulling out my cell phone half a dozen times, and putting it back in my pocket when I couldn’t decide whom to call, or what to ask if I could decide. Not really expecting to connect, I gave Billy’s cell number a try.
His recorded voice responded after one ring. “Hello? Hello? You’ll have to speak up—I can’t hear you.… Well, if it’s important, I expect you’ll call back.”
Beeeeep.
Ha ha. Very funny, Billy.
I left a voice-mail message: “If you’re a no-show at the party I will
kill
you. Better yet, I will tell on you and let your mother kill you. But I’ll watch and offer suggestions.
Painful
suggestions. And … be careful, damn it.”
I hung up and paced some more, winding up in front of the refrigerator, looking for something that wasn’t total junk food, in case Molly woke up while I was eating. Had to set a good example.
Looked like my choice was between leftover vegan pizza and something in a casserole dish that had a piece of masking tape with “Return to Mom” written on it. I waffled. Mom’s would either be wonderfully delicious or spectacularly bad. She didn’t have much of a middle ground when it came to cooking. When she got creative in the kitchen, the flavors could either caress you like a long-lost lover, elevating you to gastronomic raptures, or they could blindside you, leaving you reaching for the nearest beverage with enough bite to resurface your tongue. Oddly, she couldn’t seem to tell the difference herself.
It was a gamble, but since the pizza looked stale enough to shatter if I dropped it, I decided to risk the casserole. Peeked under the tinfoil. Leaned over it, into the fridge. Sniffed cautiously.
“Don’t do it.”
I jerked upright, banging my head on the freezer compartment’s door. Spun around to find James studying me.
“Ow. Geez, don’t sneak up on me like that.” I rubbed my scalp vigorously, trying to dilute the pain.
His eyes smiled. “I wasn’t sneaking. You were merely too preoccupied to notice my arrival.”
“Huh. Well, you could at least update your fridge. Maybe get one that doesn’t attack.”
He shrugged. “Sorry, but I have better things to spend my grant money on. Besides, this refrigerator is perfectly adequate for my needs.”
“So is this one of Mom’s, um, more interesting recipes?”
“Yeah. I’ve been throwing it out one serving at a time, in case she comes and checks on it. She gets suspicious if the whole thing disappears too fast.”
I grinned and closed the fridge. “You always were the smart one. So, did you pass Billy on your way?”
“Billy’s out? When?”
“Just a little while ago. He popped in, said good-bye, and took off. Wouldn’t say where he’s going, only that he had to disappear for a while.”
“Oh, boy. Thomas is going to—”
The door to the lab crashed open, rattling beakers and test tubes, and wrenching the resident orang from her peaceful sleep directly into a tornadic frenzy.
“Where is he?” Thomas thundered. He has a moderately deep voice normally, but when he’s mad he can give Metatron a run for his money. That was him now—the Voice of God, in full wrath mode.
“Who?” I said, though I had a pretty good idea, and ducked out of his way, running after Molly. She was dragging the afghan behind her, scattering video game disks and empty soda cans as she spun her way through the alcove like the Tasmanian Devil. If she made it to the lab proper, James’s temper would be a match for Thomas’s, and two roaring brothers was more than I could handle.
“For God’s sake, Thomas, what are you yelling about?” James said, spreading his arms to block Molly.
“
Billy.
Where is he?” Thomas ignored the three of us and stalked through the lab, looking behind every freestanding counter and in every cabinet.
I grabbed the trailing end of the afghan and yanked it, pulling Molly, who refused to release it, toward me. “Will you just calm down for a second?” I said to Thomas. I was about to execute my brilliantly improvised plan of throwing the afghan over Molly’s head to catch her when something must’ve tipped her off. She sidestepped at the last second, clinging relentlessly to her security blanket, and circled me, cocooning my legs in hideously crafted yarn. I was on my ass in two seconds flat, eye to agitated eye with Molly, propping myself up with my hands on the floor behind me, one of them resting in a half-finished carton of Rocky Road.
“Argh!” I said. “
Stop!
Everybody just
stop
.”
Miraculously, they did.
Molly blinked, yawned, and crawled onto my lap. I sighed and patted her back. Since I’m nice, I used the hand not covered with Rocky Road.
“Now then,” I began. “Tell us what is going on, Thomas. Try to use your courtroom voice,” I added, earning a brotherly glare.
He took a deep breath. Lawyer-like reserve washed over him in a deceptive wave of calm. “Billy left his holding cell. Unofficially.”
“He told me the judge let him out,” I said, seeking to calm the troubled waters. Thomas probably didn’t know about the judge’s daughter.
“Yeah? Well, if he said that, he lied.”
“Actually, he didn’t so much
say
it. It was more like he implied it,” I said, thinking back to our conversation. Thomas wasn’t impressed by the distinction.
“Why would he leave before he made bail?” James said. “He knows it will only add to his trouble.”
“Only if someone finds out,” Thomas said.