The Sixth Idea (4 page)

M
id-December, and Magozzi was sitting outside in a light jacket, looking at Grace MacBride's naked magnolia tree. Minnesotans were notoriously foolhardy when it came to maximizing their time outdoors, and although Grace wasn't a native, she'd learned to adapt to the weather. This fall she'd put up a partially enclosed patio area at the back of the house, with insulated windows and a radiant heating system beneath the stone floor. The open front of the patio was flanked with big propane heaters that kept the space surprisingly toasty.

A gentle snow continued to filter down from the sky where a half-moon was rising. It was the first snow of the season, and although the temperatures had been low enough to freeze a broomball rink, there hadn't been any bone chillers yet. When was the last time that happened in Minnesota?

Grace had put Christmas lights on the magnolia. Not that she
thought of them as Christmas lights, of course; just decorative twinkle lights that had forgotten their original intent.

Magozzi was born and raised a Catholic, and he'd always been a little disturbed by the pervasive array of downtown trees adorned with twinkle lights all year round. The decorative fad had tried to creep into the Minnesota landscape, and although restaurants and clubs jumped on the bandwagon, the state as a whole had been unable to fully embrace this particular trend. In the Midwest mind-set, Magozzi thought, Christmas lights meant something special, something rare you waited for all year. If you had them all the time, they lost their magic.

Just like fireworks. Used to be you waited all year for the Fourth of July. Now they blasted them off at concerts, store openings, and amusement parks almost every night so you could watch them from the Ferris wheel. No one noticed anymore. They'd become too common to be special, and Magozzi missed that.

“I'm getting really old.” Magozzi talked at the magnolia tree rather than at his male companion one Adirondack chair over. Males didn't look at each other when they talked in this part of the country, and that unspoken rule crossed species lines. Tonight Magozzi's companion was Charlie, Grace's dog, who woofed politely at Magozzi's words, but didn't look at him either. He knew the rules.

He heard the back door close, then Grace's footsteps, then smelled something delicious wafting out of the kitchen and into the night air. These were the familiar sounds and smells he associated with most of their time together over the past two years—the back door closing, Grace's boots on the three wooden steps down to the yard, Charlie's chewed-off tail thumping against the back of his very own
Adirondack chair as his mistress approached. And, of course, the aroma of spectacular food always simmering on Grace's stove. They were warm, happy memories, but for some reason they seemed to be receding into what had been, instead of punctuating what was. Even here, in the place that had always felt like home because Grace was in it, things were a little off-kilter.

For instance, occasionally, like tonight, Grace wore some sort of silky, billowing slacks that moved like water around her legs and drove Magozzi nuts. But tomorrow she might appear in her old signature outfit of black jeans and T-shirts and tall, stiff riding boots. Sometimes she carried her Sig in the shoulder harness, sometimes it was in the new belt holster. It was confusing and disturbing, as if she were trying to shed her old personality with articles of clothing and couldn't quite pull it off.

Magozzi didn't like change. What if she wasn't trying to shed parts of her old personality, but parts of her past? He was part of that past, and he wasn't sure he would belong in whatever present she was making for herself.

“You're awfully quiet,” she said, handing him a glass of wine. They tried a new one every Tuesday during their weekly dinner, and tonight's was some French stuff that had more syllables than most spelling bees.

“Charlie and I were bonding. Men don't talk or look at each other during the process.”

Grace settled into the chair to his left and took a tasting sip of her wine. “Tell me what you think of this one.”

Magozzi raised his brows. “Last week you told me I had the palate of a carrion eater. Tonight you're asking my opinion on wine?”

“I was being polite.” She tossed her head a little, and the moonlight got all tangled up in her hair. She'd let that short, scary, pixie cut grow out over the fall and early winter, and she wore it loose tonight, brushing her shoulders like a tease.

He took a small sip of the wine, then a larger one, wondering how those stupid tasters ever spit out something this good. “This stuff is killer. I could drink it with oatmeal.”

“I have something better in mind.”

“I can smell it.”

She sipped her wine and stared out at the falling snow. There were often comfortable silences between them, but tonight the silence seemed itchy and weird, at least to Magozzi. It was the emotional equivalent of an arthritis sufferer getting stiff joints before a rain.

“What is Monkeewrench working on?” he finally asked, cringing because it sounded like a lame, first-date line.

She looked at him, and her blue eyes sparked with interest. Maybe it hadn't been such a lame question after all. “Actually, while Annie and Roadrunner are trotting all over the globe cherry-picking new clients, Harley and I started a new corporate security project.”

Magozzi's brows lifted. “No more educational software?”

“We'll always do educational software, but this was a fresh challenge. We're enjoying it. And Annie and Roadrunner are enjoying being on the road. I think we all needed a change.”

As far as Magozzi was concerned, Grace MacBride had changed quite enough in the past year, thank you very much. She'd cut her hair, she'd run away to sail the Caribbean with another man, and even if it hadn't been a romantic relationship, she'd gone to someone
else to get what she needed, leaving Magozzi behind. And he was beginning to wonder if he would ever get over it.

And then she did something so out of character he almost jumped out of his chair: she reached over and put her hand on his.

Grace never touched him beyond the darkness of the bedroom, where touch was an inherent and unavoidable part of the process and therefore meaningless. It seemed ass-backwards to him, that touching in bed was almost incidental while touching out in the open, in the light of day, somehow seemed more profound. Not that it mattered. Being touched by Grace, no matter what the illumination, was pretty much all he cared about. But it was strange.

“You're touching me and we aren't having sex at the moment. This is weird, Grace.”

She shrugged and almost smiled. Her shoulders went up to her ears and down again just like normal people, but Grace didn't do that. Shrugs indicated uncertainty and she never experienced that. “Hormones, Magozzi. It happens.”

“Why didn't it ever happen before?”

“I was stronger then. What do you think of the patio?”

“I love the patio. I feel like I'm having an après ski glass of wine at a Swiss chalet. I can almost see the Alps right there, by your security fence.”

She rolled her eyes, but there was a faint smile on her lips. “Nice of you to say so, but this isn't exactly a Swiss chalet.”

And that was true. Grace's house was a tiny structure with a tiny yard in an average city neighborhood. She could afford a real Swiss chalet if she wanted one, but she'd chosen this piece of real estate
specifically for its size, because it had been easier to turn into an unbreachable fortress where she could shut herself in and shut everybody else out. “Do you ever think of moving, getting a different place?”

She shrugged. “I'm comfortable here.”

“Charlie wants a bigger yard, I can tell.”

“Charlie's agoraphobic.”

“You used to be agoraphobic, too. Animals take cues from their owners, change with them, you know.”

“And this from a man who's never owned an animal?”

“I might be watching too much cable TV. Do you know how many animal psychology shows are on now?”

Grace didn't giggle exactly—that would have been outrageous—but she was clearly amused. “What about you? Do you ever think of getting a different place?”

“I'm comfortable there,” he echoed her earlier comment, and suddenly whatever strange tension had been tightening the air around them eased.

“Come on, let's go eat.” She took his hand and led him into the house.

C
huck had only sketchy memories of driving back to the hotel after leaving the fire at Wally's house. One minute he was at the fire, talking to a Detective Hudson, the next he was walking through the lobby of the Chatham to the lounge. He told himself he wanted a beer, needed a beer, but the truth was, what he wanted and needed was human contact. You could live a solitary existence for most of your life, but when you really came up against it, sitting alone in a hotel room was a miserable prospect. It would be nice to prefer the company and solace of particular people, but if you didn't have that, a bartender was the next best thing.

“Good evening, sir. What can I get for you?”

“Beer, please. Whatever you recommend.”

The bartender expertly tapped a perfect pour into a frosted glass and watched Chuck lift it to his mouth with a hand that still hadn't stopped shaking. “Are you all right, sir?”

“I'm not sure. I lost a friend tonight.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe you can patch things up.”

“I don't think so. He's dead.”

“Oh my God, I'm so sorry.”

Chuck stared down through the perfect foam head of his beer and felt sick. “His name was Wally.”

The bartender noted Chuck's pasty face and his hunched posture and poured two fingers of amber liquid into two crystal lowballs. “This might go easier on your stomach than beer right now. To your friend Wally, sir.” He touched his glass to Chuck's.

“You're very kind.” Chuck downed his drink and set his glass on the bar, thinking that bartenders were actually quite brilliant. The scotch went down smoothly and settled like silk in his troubled stomach, much more soothing than beer.

When he tried to pay, the bartender refused, saying, “On the house, sir, with my sympathies.”

Chuck pressed his lips together and swallowed, wondering when people had become so nice, wondering if he'd missed that all these years.

After his second scotch with the sympathetic bartender, Chuck started to think he might actually be able to go to sleep—the unexpected infusion of alcohol in a body unused to it had calmed him a bit. And for a time, at least, he'd stopped dwelling on what had certainly been the worst day of his life. Even so, the circumstances surrounding Wally's unexpected death still tormented him. He was no detective, but you'd have to be an idiot not to see just how wrong the whole thing was, how unlikely it was that your house would blow
up from a gas leak just after you were attacked in a home invasion. Nobody had that kind of bad luck.

He finally pushed up out of his stool with a weary sigh, thanked the bartender again for his kindness, and discreetly tucked a twenty-dollar bill beneath his empty glass. It seemed like a ridiculously small price to pay for a sympathetic ear and a little companionship when he'd needed it most.

The hallways on the fourth floor were deserted and silent, until Chuck approached the last turn before the hall that led to his room and heard the whispers. They were urgent, hissing like angry snakes ready to strike, and they stopped him dead in the adjoining hallway.

“What if he's not back from the fire?”

Chuck felt his body freeze as his heart leaped forward. Who was that? How did they know about the fire?

“Then we wait,” another voice hissed. “Get me in his room, dammit, then go down to the lobby and cover that.”

Chuck heard the metallic clunk of a room door opening, muted whispers, and then brisk footfalls coming toward him. He looked around instinctively, frantically, for cover, because this was wrong, wrong, wrong, just like Wally's attack and his house explosion had been wrong. He saw a vending machine alcove just a few feet away, scrambled toward it, and crouched beside the ice maker, making himself as small as possible. On any other day, he wouldn't have had such an outlandishly paranoid reaction, but today wasn't like any other day. There were times when you knew you had to listen to that crazy inner voice that screamed duck and cover, and this was one of
them, even if he would be embarrassed about it later, because surely there was some rational explanation.

He got down on his hands and knees and peeked around the corner as the footsteps drew closer. He saw a male figure flash by, but not fast enough to keep him from seeing the gun in his hand. Jesus God, who were these men? Burglars?

They were waiting for you. With guns. Get the hell out of here.

But where was he going to go? One man was in his room, the other was waiting for him in the lobby.

And then he saw the fire stairwell.

He was breathing hard after running down the first flight of stairs. Good Lord. Ten steps? Twenty? One stinking floor from the fourth floor down to the third, and already his breath was gone and his heart was pounding. Jesus, he'd never make it.

He stopped and bent over, clutching the stitch in his side which had no business being there after such a short distance.
Breathe. Deep breaths, all the way to the bottom of your lungs, then exhale slowly. Yeah, right. Men with guns are after you, so gee, Chuck, just take a minute and imagine yourself in a hammock on a beach somewhere.

But oddly, taking that brief, ridiculous pause did one thing. He remembered that day he'd sat in front of the TV, weeping unashamedly as he watched the World Trade Center towers pancake into the ground with an odd grace, like gallant warships going down like ladies. Old people, burned people, wounded people trudging down as many as eighty flights of stairs, and he couldn't make one?

Remembering them made him feel small and ashamed, and quieted his fearful heart and panicked breathing. And then, clarity, and thought, the hallmarks of a charmed and relatively uneventful life.

You have choices.

There was one man in his room, one man guarding the lobby. Where should he go? A couple of floors down? All the way to ground level? Where was it safe?

The very acknowledgment of a choice panicked him all over again. What if he chose wrong?

It took less than five seconds to make a choice. The people in those crowded, crumbling stairwells never asked those questions. They went down, down to ground level without hesitation, because they didn't belong halfway up in the sky, they belonged on solid ground, where humanity was milling around, waiting to help them.

Strange, how calmly he descended the last three floors, and only for a moment did he hesitate at the ground floor. Now the choices were only two. Right, through the hotel, or outside.

He looked at the glowing red exit sign over the outside door and thought of it as a message just for him.

Those men were inside the hotel. He would go outside.