Authors: Kate Rothwell

Somebody Wonderful (13 page)

BOOK: Somebody Wonderful

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She must get struck with travel lust every few weeks. She would never stay put when adventure beckoned—no matter that she claimed she’d rather have a cup of tea. And what on earth did she want with him? Other than the obvious, of course.

He did not dare to ask.

Instead he waited.

Ch
apter 12

One week passed.

Caught up in a delirious passion of laughter and sex, the likes of which he had never in his life imagined, Mick did not dare mention that deadline Timona had given herself.

Now Mick feared what he’d thought he wanted: Timona vanishing from his world.

They had quickly fallen into something like a routine. When Mick worked the day shift, Timmy walked out with him, even at dawn.

Then she turned toward the part of New York he didn’t enter. She talked to other photographers, met up with old friends, and was delighted to finalleet a famous photographer she’d been corresponding with, a Mr. Jackson.

She mentioned her days’ activities to him when they shared the evening meal she bought or he made. They ate and talked like friends, though sometimes they were naked in bed as they shared the meal. They seemed unable to keep from touching one another. And rarely waited till proper bedtime to make love.

She talked of pictures, she described her friends, she even talked of her past, but she never spoke of the future.

Every moment he expected Timmy to lean towards him and announce, “This is my last kiss for you, Mick McCann. We did have a boatload of fun, didn’t we?”

When he walked home from work at the end of the day, he wondered if he would find her or her note saying good-bye for she was off to Turkey or Brazil or Minnesota.

She was so thoroughly out of place in his humdrum, tatty existence he had trouble thinking of her as one of his own kind. Even if he hadn’t known of her travels, she appeared to him a wondrous, bright-colored bird of paradise come to perch among a bunch of sparrows. Amazing that no one else in his life seemed to see that Miss Cooper did not fit.

The neighbors obviously must talk about the delicious scandal of her: the unmarried woman in Mr. McCann’s bed. Yet Mick came home from work one afternoon and was amused to find Timmy earnestly talking with Mrs. O’Neal, the most easily scandalized woman in the neighborhood. Even that judgmental woman could not hold out against Timmy’s charm.

She eventually won over the two unbendingly shy creatures in his life, a dog and a boy.

Every couple of days Mick fed some of the kids from the alley. They went out to dinner at Miggie’s diner, a cheaper and more dubious establishment than Colsun’s. Timmy agreed to go there only because Eddy, the boy from the alley, felt comfortable at Miggie’s. Tonight only Eddy lingered near the front stoop waiting for an invitation for food.

Timmy pushed the gray, nameless “Meat Special” around on her plate. Mick remembered some of the meals she’d described eating in South America.

“Strikes me as odd you don’t like old Miggie’s fare, but you’ve munched down bugs.”

She put down her fork with the bent tines. “Ah, but the bugs were fresh and had been prepared by a woman who knew what she was doing.”

Mick chuckled. “So tell me, what amazing things happened today?”

“I think Botty almost let me pat him today.”

Shy Eddy opened his mouth in her presence for the first time. “I bet ya you can’t. Botty only lets Mr. Mick touch him.” He murmured the words, probably figuring she wasn’t listening. She was, though.

“You’re on,” Timmy said at once. “How about I get one week to try?” She flashed a brief, wicked smile at Mick.

Abashed that an adult other than Mick actually talked to him, Eddy shrank down in his chair. He turned pale and whispered, “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. I was just fooling and didn’t mean a real bet you see—”

Timmy calmly continued, “If I win the bet, you must either go to school for three mornings or let me play teacher for that long. I dearly enjoy playing teacher, as poor Henry and Sarey Tucker can tell you.”

“An’ if I win?” said Eddy at last.

“A whole pie. Any flavor. And for you alone to eat.”

Less than two days later, as she read and Mick quietly played music, she looked up from her book to give him a triumphant smile and said, “Look.”

She appeared ridiculously proud of herself and directed her gaze down to show him why she looked like the cat that swallowed the canary.

Her hand rested on Botty’s head.

“Ah, poor Eddy,” said Mick. “No pie for him.”

Within two days, the dog even glumly allowed her to pull him onto her lap.

Another week passed.

Mick still waited for her to take flight, but neither of them brought up the subject. She never mentioned leaving his flat. And she didn’t ask him to follow her to better apartment.

Sometimes when they lay together or he kissed her, or she smiled at him, or she said something outrageous, he imagined never enjoying that particular pleasure again. At those moments he believed he would follow her wherever she asked him to go. India, Australia, Fifth Avenue—he’d trail right along after her.

Other times, usually as he walked the quiet part of his beat, he wondered if he’d lost all sense of pride to imagine himself happily reduced to nothing more than a rich girl’s playmate.

The worst moments came when he understood what he’d done—turned her sense of indebtedness to his own advantage. Eventually she’d wake up and see that she’d fallen into that old trap. He almost squirmed with shame when he imagined the moment the scales fell from her eyes and she realized her “rescuer” had used her gratitude for his own selfish desire.

But she did not go, or even talk about leaving. Mick managed to forget she would eventually move on. He even began to think of her as his own.

Until part of her real life barged into his flat, uninvited.

Chapt
er 13

When Mick worked the night shift for the first time after Timmy came into his life, he collapsed into bed at five in the morning next to the sleeping Timmy, who was delighted to wake up and greet him properly.

He fell asleep. When he woke up in the afternoon, Timmy was gone. He remembered she said was going to see someone off on a train to Colorado. Mick yawned, rolled over and nearly suffered a heart attack. He looked up into the face of a well dressed stranger who stood close to the bed, watching him.

The brown-haired man was about thirty-five. He had a slender, well-proportioned figure of middle height, and wore the dark suit, gold watch chain and fob, and full but neatly trimmed mustache of a businessman. The handsome, though expressionless, face stared down at Mick. There was nothing startling or threatening about the man, until Mick looked into his eyes, and saw they were pure emerald green and as cold as a day in February.

Between one breath and the next, something shifted in the stranger’s face, and the peculiar notion Mick had that the man had no soul seemed daft. Yet Mick had seen those eyes, and understood he beheld a dangerous human. He’d met others like him, and knew enough to be apprehensive. He squinted at the card the man handed him. And then back at the man.

Lord God.

“So you are Timona’s Griffin, then?”

“And you are Michael McCann. Mick to your friends.”

Mick nodded and waited.

Calverson walked to the only chair in the room and sat down. He glanced around. Mick wited for a remark, but Griffin Calverson showed no reaction to the shabbiness.

The man must be a marvelous poker player.

Mick glanced to where Botty slept peacefully under the bureau. Some watchdog.

Calverson said, “I hear from impeccable sources that my sister cares about you, Officer McCann.”

“She believes she has a care, but I am not of—” Mick began.

“Timona, unlike myself, is quite passionate. She is loyal to a fault. If she thinks she cares about you, I believe her.” The voice was smooth, cultured, and held only a small promise of violence that lay not far from the surface.

Jesus, this one might be a right lunatic. Didn’t do to show hesitation with that sort of man.

Mick frowned. “I asked her, and she said ‘no’ to marriage with me. I will not be intimidated into marrying anyone, Mr. Calverson, if that is what you are about.”

If Mick were Timona’s brother, naturally that’s exactly what he’d be doing. Marriage is what any normal brother would demand. But he suspected all bets were off with this lot.

He was right.

“Good, I am glad to know you’re not easily intimidated,” said Griffin heartily, and his eyes looked almost human. “I don’t care what you do as long as you are honest. Or as honest as you coppers can be. Leave Timona if you feel you must. She is old enough and I daresay tough enough to take care of her own emotional claptrap.

“But if I find out you leave her pregnant, or you are in it for her money, or you are involved in some other dishonest scheme that will affect my sister, I will hunt you down. I will cut off your testicles and force you to eat them.”

Mick did not doubt it.

Griffin got up, walked over to him, bent down and stared into Mick’s face. “I may not be a daily presence in her life, but I care deeply about my sister’s welfare. I beg of you, for your own sake, do not forget that.”

Mick flinched away from him and gave a groan of disgust. “Christ, what a clan you must be. How did so sweet a woman as Timmy end up with a brother like you?”

Griffin Calverson straightened up and actually laughed, an unexpectedly merry, infectious sound. At least he shared that trait with his sister. “You’ll do, Mr. McCann. I have not seen her for some time and I forgot what a good judge of character my sister usually is. I think I’ll trust you. For now.”

Well, at least the man with the cold eyes didn’t say anything obnoxious about Mick’s nationality or his pitiful room.

And standing in the middle of the room, Calverson actually went so far as to explain his presence.

“I don’t usually meddle in her affairs but I received a telegram saying she was in a ‘situation.’ I am relieved to find that it is merely that she’s wandered away and found herself a lover.”

Calverson pulled the gold watch from his waistcoat. He appeared to be finished with his strange interview.

Mick said, “Timona didn’t wander. She was kidnapped, Calverson. She managed to escape on her own.”

The watch snapped shut. The eyes instantly went hard again. “Tell me about it.”

“No. I think it better if I let her tell you.”

Griffin nodded his approval. “You’ll do indeed.”

He walked to the door. “My address is on

Mick grunted. “Why ever not?”

The edges of Calverson’s mouth almost quirked into a smile. The green eyes were nearly warm. “She’ll give me holy hell.”

After Calverson left, Mick sat on his bed and rubbed his face with both hands. He felt ill. Kind Timona, who had a care for all she met, had that man as a brother? There were advantages, he supposed—for instance, now he fully understood how she’d gotten out of the bordello intact.

Feet stamping on the stairs woke him from his reverie.

The door burst open. She ought to learn to knock, he thought, fretting over what he could say to her about her brother. But it was Henry who stood there.

“I think Pa is gone, Mr. Mick. I- I think he’s dead.” Henry burst into tears and flung himself at Mick. After a few minutes of rocking and soothing Henry, Mick walked upstairs holding the big ten-year-old on his hip as if the boy were a toddler.

Jenny sat in a corner, white as paper. Poor Tucker’s eyes stared at nothing. Mick put down Henry and crossed over to close the man’s eyes. He drew a blanket over Tuck’s head.

“No!” shrieked Jenny, and Mick knew he had a job on his hands. He sent Henry and Petey for Rob and Sarey to go after Dr. O’Toole. Too bad he couldn’t shove them all out of the room.

Jenny looked up. “Mick, you’re getting the doctor? You think he can help?”

Mick crouched by the woman and took both her hands in his. Slowly and distinctly he said, “I’m fetching the doctor for a death certificate, Jenny. Tucker is gone.”

She shrieked and shrieked again. The baby started wailing too.

So Mick grabbed the baby and Meggie, the three-year-old. He shouted over his shoulder, though he doubted she heard him. “We will be downstairs, Jenny. I will come up when the doctor gets here.”

No need for the kids to see their Mam like this. He hauled them down to his room. They played a game which featured Mick the bear trying to eat Meggie. The baby watched and gurgled his approval. The sweet sound blended with Botty’s growl.

Mick heard the clock toll and realized he was supposed to be at work again within the hour. Mrs. Kelly next door would be home soon enough to care for the small kids.

The light, quick step and rustle of a woman’s dress wasn’t Mrs. Kelly. Timona spoke quietly from the open door. “The children out front are wildly excited because someone has died. Tucker?”

Mick met her worried gaze and nodded.

“Oh, no. Poor Jenny.”

His heart yearned toward Timona.

He stood up, with Meggie still clutching him around the neck, and pulled Timmy into his arms and held her tight. Meggie swung around Mick’s neck and thrust herself between them with a happy shout. The baby on the bed began to cry.

Jenny refused to prepare Tucker for burial, so Mick and Rob did the job rather than pay the undertaker’s assistant. While they worked on Tucker, Timona took Jenny o to buy food for a wake to be held in Colsun’s restaurant. Colsun said he was willing to hold a wake, but he would not supply the food.

“Thank goodness for that. It’s rotten food.” Timona said. Mick didn’t argue, though he thought the food was not so bad. Price was good, anyway.

“I imagine Jenny will agree to take part if we simply call it a party,” Timona went on.

Mick and she sat side by side on the bed. He picked up her hand and absently played with it. Such elegant little fingers, even when stained dark with strange photographic chemicals.

“Whatever the wake is called, I don’t like you paying for it,” he grumbled.

“Mick, pray do not start with that now. It is for the Tuckers.”

“I don’t like it.” He drew her pinkie to his mouth and kissed it.

She pushed her head against him. “Would you rather use your money? From the drawer?”

“I don’t like that, either.” He smiled down at her wryly. “Seems I don’t like much of anything don’t it? But I do damn-all to stop any of it. I don’t like the way you will sleep with me, but you don’t see me kicking your sweet body out of the bed.”

She grinned back at him, unoffended as always. “Buck up laddie. We’ll get through this and then you can be as miserable and cantankerous as you like later on.”

He blinked and laughed. “Do you know, I believe that sounds like the sort of malarkey I’d offer up.”

“Where do you suppose I learned it?”

The wake, held two days later, was well attended by the neighborhood. Lester Tucker wasn’t Irish, but his neighbors decided he deserved a proper wake. The promise of free drink and food brought out a number of people Mick rarely saw, but he spent the wake watching Timmy.

He drank a mug of beer and watched her hand out ham sandwiches. She grew solemn and nodded thoughtfully, as someone recalled a story about the late Les Tucker.

Mick leaned against a wall, Tuck and Jenny’s sleeping baby a sweet weight on his shoulder. He watched Timmy throw back her head and laugh as a drunken man told her a meandering story about the time Lester insisted on balancing a broom on his nose while standing in the middle of the street.

Timmy got on with them all like a house on fire.

The baby woke, and Mick handed him off to Jenny.

A few minutes later, Mick spotted Timmy hugging Rob. In the safety of her arms, the boy broke down and cried for his father.

Eventually Timmy looked over at Mick. She smiled and he felt his usual response. His groin grew heavy, his heart grew light—torn in half. Poleaxed with lust.

She turned towards him, watched him watch her for a moment, and her eyes suddenly narrowed, speculative. She strolled over to him and leaned her head against his chest for a moment.

He slid his hands around her waist. Oh, he was so glad she didn’t lace up those perfect curves with a heavy corset. He buried his face in her hair. She usually used a fancy French bar of soap, but she’d grabbed his soap that evening. He felt another wave of lust when he caught a whiff of her spice under his own boringly familiar scent—as if she’d purposefully marked herself as his. Just to be saying something, he mumbled, “You lied to me, Timmy.”
She pulled away to look into his eyes, a mix of apprehension and puzzlement in her. His heart lurched. Had he been so condemning of her early on that she might still worry he would hurt her?

He tried to reassure her with a grin and said, “You said this was your first. But how many Irish wakes have you been to?”

Timmy’s eyes lost the fearful look, and she even laughed. “None, truly. But this is the sort of party I understand. No need to memorize how to properly address people.”

Across the room, Colsun waved a hand at her.

“He wants to break open another keg, I suppose,” Timmy said. “I’d best go speak to him.”

She skirted her graceful way through the crowded room. Mick watched her. What a lovely neat back she had, and under the silly bustle such a rear end and legs as he previously could only dreamed of. The sight of her attracted his gaze like the sun drew a sunflower.

At the wake of his good friend, the late Lester Tucker, all Mick could think about was getting Timona into his room and into his bed and himself into her. He tried to conjure up Daisy for a moment, just to test out the idea. Had he ever felt anything like passionate need for Daisy?

Never for her, or any other woman. Not the way he had from the first morning Timona lay in his bed with him. Before then. From the moment she lay across his lap to get her poor head stitched up.

His craving for her didn’t abate after they made love; the hunger increased. For the whole of her. He was that greedy for her laugh, her silliness, and her cheery, calm self.

Mick recalled two nights earlier, when he was on patrol on a quiet gas-lit street at two in the morning. He had covered his mouth as he yawned and had caught a whiff of her on his fingertips. He’d nearly forgotten what he was about as he fought off the urge to run back to his bed to make sure she was still there.

He couldn’t find Timmy in the crowd for a few minutes, then spotted her listening gravely to the widow from the first floor, who’d drunk enough to be maudlin about her dead husband, whom everyone knew she hated. Timmy listened and nodded.

Maybe Miss Calverson, that rare—no, unique—woman, was on to it days ago, something he was only now understanding because he was too stuck in the rut of what people should or should not be.

He wanted to explain it to her, tell her how right she was, but he couldn’t find the correct words. A few minutes later, she walked past him. “Timmy!” he called to her. “Oh, Timmy, I want you.”

“What can I do for you, Mick? I’m busy carting out this box of rubbish. Unless you want the job?”

She looked into his face and he held his breath. He might as well have been hit on the back of the head with a blackjack, for all the dizzying power of her.

He’d never thought of himself as a slow learner, but how long had it taken him to figure this out?

He’d long known he was a besotted fool for her, but this was something more. Perhaps he hadn’t caught on because he’d fought hard against it from the start. With no luck, because he had been changed forever. “Sure an’ I’ll take out the rubbish. But what I mean is I want you. In general,” he added lamely.

The words, pathetic though they sounded to him, must have been right, for she dropped the wooden box with a clatter. Her face bloomed with the sweetest smile he had yet seen on it. He lost track of where they stood as she looked at him and he watched her face.
="1

She walked straight into his arms.

The box of garbage stood in the middle of the floor for the rest of the night.

They went back to his flat and made love against the wall, then on the chair, then in the horrible bed.

Jim thumped on the wall. “Mick, I’m glad you’re getting some. It’s about bloody time,” came his weary shout. “But could you two pipe down a bit?”

Timmy got the fit of the giggles and had to stuff a blanket into her mouth. Botty growled.

Mick could barely drag himself to work before dawn the next morning. Timmy didn’t even stir as he made ready and left.

On patrol, Mick caught a glimpse the man with yellow hair again, this time in a large crowd waiting at the corner for traffic to pass. His beat had changed, yet there was the man. Once again, Mick didn’t bother to show he’d spotted him. No point in putting the man on his guard; by now Mick assumed he was only paid to watch and not take action.

It was a long, hard day. Pay packet day in the neighborhoods usually were: The bars were full. He came back that evening with a sore nose acquired when he didn’t duck fast enough breaking up a pool hall fight. At least his nose wasn’t broken again.

He found a note from Timmy.

Mick, you forgot to inform me that my brother visited you. I hope he was not unpleasant. I found his card whilst straightening up, and am going to visit him today. I would have cooked something for you like a proper housewife, but I am a terrible cook. Did I ever mention that failing? One more thing: I hope it does not make you nervous to read this, but I truly do care for you. T.

He stared down at her handwriting, the neat sloping script of a well educated woman. It had been a while since he remembered she was
the
Timona, but the spiking, elegant handwriting brought it back.

She’d left her brother’s calling card on top of the note. Mick fingered the card for a moment, wondering if she wanted him to follow her. He decided he was too tired and collapsed across the bed without even taking his uniform off.

When he woke the next morning, his head in a fog, she still wasn’t back. The bed felt far too empty. He looked out the window at the church tower clock. Hell, only half an hour until he was supposed to report at the station.

Someone thumped at the door. “Mr. Mick?” It was Eddy, the neglected kid that Mick, and now Timona, fed most often. “My kitten is sick.”

The sick tabby probably had worms. Mick suspected the pale and peaky Ed did too, and made a note to himself to stop by the druggist’s.

By the time he looked up at the clock again, he knew he’d be late for roll call.

The buzz around the station house was a murder discovered at five that morning. Double-Punch Jack of the Lucky Flower was found beaten to death outside his own whorehouse.

“Coroner’s office says the man was beaten, but might have been a heart attack. Whatever it was, one of the girls finally got her own back,” Bairre said as he tucked his day-stick into his beltt w paid a fearful lot to stay in business, but I say thank heaven. That place was too dreadful, eh? Remember the naked boy we found dead outside there, three years ago?”

Mick smothered a yawn. “No, wasn’t on the force then, but I’m not surprised to hear about the boy.”

A boy. Hell.

He sat down heavily on a chair by the door and rubbed his forehead with his palm.

“You all right then, Mick?” Bairre asked.

“I’m well. See you later.”

Mick sat and his fingers drummed the helmet on his lap for a minute or two. Then Mick stood up and found a superior officer.

“Sergeant, with your permission,” he said, “I’ll be checking on a tip someone gave me about the shop thefts on Lexington. I’ll be back on beat soon.”

The sergeant would have been surprised to see Mick swing himself onto the horse-drawn streetcar going the opposite direction.

It took a minute or two to gather the courage he needed to push past the two brass-buttoned, stern doormen standing guard at the entrance to the Fifth Avenue Hotel who stepped in front of the wide glass door to stop him going in.

“Police business,” he growled and gave them a bit of a shove as he went past. Huh. Their polished boots and the silver braid festooning their uniforms could blind a person, but the men themselves were purely decorative. The fact should have fortified Mick. It didn’t, of course.

Mick could face a crowd of drunken rowdies without fear. This world of opulence, however, was beyond his ken and gave him a dire attack of nerves. It didn’t help him much when he fetched up the memory of hearing the mirrors alone had cost $60,000 when the place was built a couple of decades earlier.

A clerk with slicked-back hair, wearing what Mick suspected was full formal evening wear stood behind the gleaming front desk. He obviously also did not like the sight of a cop in the lobby. The clerk scowled hurried out to waylay Mick.

“Excuse me, officer,” he hissed. “We prefer the police use the side or back entrance. We do not want our guests to be disturbed unnecessarily.”

The spectacle of all the shining marble floors, thick carpets, chandeliers, and huge potted palm trees had already pushed Mick far into what he thought of as his Irish galoot-just-off-the-farm state of mind. Saints, he hated being reminded he was a inferior rustic. He took off his helmet and scowled right back at the overdressed hotelier.

“Need to see Griffin Calverson.”

The clerk looked shocked. “Mr. Calverson? The gentleman is too . . .”

A shriek of joy interrupted the polished clerk’s indignant answer.

“Mick! Oh, Mick! I saw the uniform and hoped it was you.” Timona Calverson breezed in through the front door, and then rushed across the wide lobby and threw herself into his arms. Despite Mick’s gloom, he couldn’t help appreciating the moment.

Over her shoulder his eyes met those of the dumbstruck clerk.

Mick gave him a wink.

After planting a long, obviously lustful kiss right on his mouth, Timmy tucked her arm into Mick’s and, ignoring the discreetly goggling crowd and the flabbergasted clerk, walked him towards the elevator.

“Oh, I’m delighted to see you, Mick. I want to tell you that Griffin was actually impressed by you. He never likes my friends. Poor Blenheim is positively afraf him.”

“I need to talk to him,” said Mick, still unsettled by the hotel’s opulence and now, on top of that, her apparent ease with it. “Is that where we’re headed?”

“Yes, we’ll take the lift.” She strolled into the strange gilded boxy cage of an elevator. He gingerly stepped in after her.

She inched close to him. “I wanted to get back to you last night, but I grew so tired, I fell asleep here in Griff’s suite.” She grinned. “Can’t imagine why I was so tired.”

She looked at him so outrageously Mick wanted to haul her into his arms at the same time he wanted to apologize to the back of the elevator operator. He jumped when the elevator shuddered to a stop.

A maid opened the door to the suite and led them into another room where Griffin sat on a wide, overstuffed couch, drinking coffee and reading the paper. He appeared unsurprised to see Mick.

Mick wished he could adopt that blank face, but his own jaw had dropped. Perhaps permanently.

In his time as a policeman, he had seen the scenes of murder. He had witnessed mothers trying to sell their babies. He had seen—and stopped—men from beating each other or their own families to pulp. But nothing he had witnessed in his wide experience in the stews had prepared him for this display of a place in which a single person slept and ate and lived. Not even the lobby downstairs hinted at it.

He’d seen plenty of public majesty in this city. Anyone walking past Grand Central Depot would feel awe at the huge brick building. But, saints, Mick had never seen such a place for a man, just one man, to inhabit.

Even Botham’s house, that huge old stone pile in Ireland, did not come close to this magnificence.

The elegant, wide open rooms of the hotel shocked him to his core. Thick Turkish carpets were arranged on polished marble or wooden parquet floors. Huge arched windows framed views of the city and were in turn framed by yards of brocade cloth.

Mountains of fresh flowers in displays larger than a man, carved wood panels polished so bright he could see his face reflected in the walls, a piano, rooms large enough to fit his entire floor of four flats, tall enough to house a double-decker bus. Mick stood near a wall and, mesmerized, ran a finger over the richly colored wallpaper only to discover it was actually silk cloth covering the walls. The rooms’ fresh scent of flowers and lemon and beeswax polish held no stale trace of previous meals or unwashed tenants.

Mick had stumbled into a private luxury he had never in his life seen nor yet even imagined.

And Mick had to turn himself into a police officer because Mick the man swooned inside him, passed out in a state of shock. Maybe a chunk of him had died when he walked into the rooms.

“Mr. Calverson,” he said stiffly. “Might I have a word?” He turned wretched eyes to Timmy who watched him, puzzled. “Excuse me, I need to talk to Mr. Calverson alone.”

She helped him regain some of himself by being entirely herself. Instead of gasping and demanding to know what was wrong, she merely rolled her eyes. “Mick, you silly,” she said cheerfully. “Of course you can. I’ll skip along to the other room where I stashed my new camera. I can’t wait to show it you.”

Griffin waited until the maid closed the double doors behind Timona.

“Sit down,” he said to Mick, and nodded to the maid who poured out a cup of coffee and silently set the bone china cup and saucer on the table beside Mick.

“Something to eat, Mick?”

Mick perched on the edge of the gilded chair.

“No. No food. Thanks.”

Calverson nodded, and the maid silently left the room. Mick didn’t want the coffee, but took a sip anyway. Jesus. No wonder Timmy made faces at the coffee at Colsun’s. This tasted of heaven. He put the cup down and cleared his throat. “So. Sir. The Lucky Flower. That’s the house where Timmy—Miss Calverson—was taken. Am I right?”

Griffin fingered his mustache for a moment before answering.

“Yes.”

“God above. Ah, you work fast, Mr. Calverson. She probably gave you a description of the man and the place, what? Yesterday, midday?”

Griffin drained his coffee. He put down the cup and slowly, deliberately folded up the newspaper that lay next to him. He leaned back into the sofa. The hard green eyes in the bland face examined Mick, who refused to look away or flinch.

“I must say I am surprised that you didn’t check into it yourself, Mick,” he said at last, very softly.

“No, you are not. You know all about the damned Lucky Flower and the damned police department.”

“I did not mean as a policeman. I meant as my sister’s . . . friend.”

“I couldn’t at that.” he said bluntly. “I wasn’t entirely certain where she had been taken. Mind you, I suspected. But even had I known for sure, I don’t know what I coulda done. I’m right sure I don’t have what it takes to march in and kill even that lowlife in cold blood. And unless I had killed Mr. Two-Punch Jack, once I messed with him, I’d be dead meself. And the department wouldn’t lift a finger to keep me alive.”

Griffin’s eyebrows raised. “I like your candor. You impress me, Mick.”

“I wish I could say the feeling was mutual.”

There was nothing more to be said. Mick stood up.

“I should tell you that I was surprised Mr. Jack died of his wounds.” Griffin paused. “I am not displeased, you understand.”

Mick sighed. ”I won’t mourn the rotter. For what it’s worth, I’ll go further than you, and say I am right glad he is dead.” His mouth quirked into an ironic smile. “And I am sure you pay even more than he did, so I know it’s no use telling my superiors what I know. But . . . ah, hell. I don’t even know why I am here.”

“To see my sister’s new camera?”

“No. I’m on duty. Give her my regrets.” He looked at Griffin closely, not that the man’s face revealed a thought or emotion. “Does she know what you’ve done?”

“Of course not. I summoned an associate about the job while she was out hunting for a camera. I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to her.”

Mick snorted. “She’s no idiot, Calverson.”

“No, she is not, but I don’t think she’s as clearheaded about her brother as you are.”

“Aye, Calverson. Yes, it would break her heart if she knew what a wicked devil you are.”

BOOK: Somebody Wonderful

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