Strangers (8 page)

“I’m not going to be able to sleep for a while, Joe. I think I’ll do some work on Father Domingo’s memoirs.”

Joe was not pleased. He had already suggested that she should go to bed. Twice.

She knew she wasn’t going to be able to rest until she told him about Detective Overstreet’s proposition. There was no point in putting it off any longer.

“We have a new client, Joe.”

“See,” he said, pulling her closer. “I told you not to worry so much about getting business. We do good work, and people will want to hire us.”

Faye was charmed by Joe’s Pollyanna-ish view of the corporate world.

Joe was, however, businessman enough to want to know whose hand held the cash. “So who’s the new client?”

“The St. Augustine Police Department.”

Wrinkles appeared on Joe’s smooth forehead. Faye reached up to smooth them away.

“What do they want?” Joe’s voice usually sounded so calm, so…so different than it did right now. “If it’s a dangerous job, I want you to turn it down. We’ll be fine.”

“Joe. We’ve worked for the police before. Remember? Sheriff Mike asked me to look at some broken china one time, hoping I could tell him whether somebody had been digging illegally. That’s not dangerous work, but it does pay well.”

She omitted the work they’d done for the police in New Orleans, which had been inarguably dangerous and had nearly gotten them both killed.

Joe wasn’t going to be mollified so easily. “The main thing I want to know is this: Will this work put you cross-wise with some dangerous criminal?”

“I don’t think so.” Faye decided to try humor as a negotiating strategy. “Maybe it’ll put
you
cross-wise with some dangerous criminal.”

“Well, that would be okay.”

Faye didn’t think so, but she saw no point in picking a fight. “Nobody’s getting cross-wise with any criminals. The police just want me to look at some artifacts they found in Glynis’ car. According to a note they found, she’d brought them to work with her that day, because she wanted to show them to me. She wanted me to tell her whether any laws had been broken when they were dug up. My job…
our
job as a company…would have been to answer that question. Now that Glynis has gone missing, the artifacts are secondary. The police want my input on whether those artifacts might somehow be related to her disappearance.”

She left out the fact that the musket balls and the crucifix and the rosary beads had been soaked in blood. And she also left out the fact that all the blood had not belonged to Glynis.

Would the lab eventually be able to tease out the identities of the two people who had lost blood in Dunkirk Manor’s parking lot that morning? Detective Overstreet had said that the DNA tests would take some time, but the test for blood typing couldn’t be any quicker.

The preliminary results were back and they had been clear-cut: the smears of blood found on Glynis’ driver seat were A-positive, just like Glynis’ blood. There are a lot of people walking around the world with A-positive blood but, given the circumstances, Detective Overstreet expected DNA testing to confirm that these smears did come from Glynis herself.

The blood that saturated the package of artifacts, though—this blood was B-positive. So were the traces of blood on the celt. And the blood that had soaked into the soil outside Glynis’ driver door…well, there had been a lot of it and the samples had all come back B-positive. This didn’t mean that there wasn’t some amount of A-positive blood there, but it didn’t show up in the two samples collected. Lots and lots of B-positive blood did.

Detective Overstreet had said simply, “It looks like somebody bled out here.”

The person who might have bled to death on that spot had carried B-positive blood in his or her veins.

Faye didn’t tell Joe these things. He was her business partner and they’d work through this case together, by the light of day. Tonight, he was her husband, and he didn’t need to go to bed thinking about sordid details that had nothing to do with their marriage. Joe had a tender soul and there had been times when she forgot that she needed to pick and choose what she told him. From here on out, she planned to do better.

He’d pulled her close for a moment and said, “It’s good that we’re getting some business. I guess. I’ll be outside.”

Chapter Nine

Joe never argued with Faye, not when it could possibly be avoided. And arguing usually can be avoided between two people willing to talk things through. Still, he had his ways of expressing himself. When Joe was mad, he could generally find a way to let Faye know about it.

Sometimes, when he said, “I’ll be outside,” he just meant that he’d be out enjoying the night air. Other times, he meant he needed some time to meditate beside a roaring campfire. Built with the proper wood and made more fragrant with the addition of just the right herbs, a campfire could make the world feel like a more hospitable place.

Joe got a lot of comfort out of the old Creek ways, but he was pretty sure there were ordinances against campfires within the St. Augustine city limits. And he wasn’t free to chop down a small tree here on the grounds of Dunkirk Manor whenever he ran short of firewood, either.

Ceremonial herbs? He didn’t see any of those growing in the mansion’s formal and well-manicured flower beds, and he doubted Suzanne would appreciate it if he pilfered stalks from the rare salvias in the butterfly garden she tended so fervently. The woman spent so much time in Dunkirk Manor’s gardens that he was pretty sure she’d notice if individual leaves were missing. Joe knew better than to come between a woman and her obsession.

There was only one traditional herb readily available here in the city, and it made Faye speechless with frustration when he bought it. Tobacco smoking was an age-old spiritual practice in the Americas, and Joe indulged on occasion, but only for ceremonial purposes.

His “ceremonial purposes” excuse for smoking never failed to make Faye laugh herself silly. He’d smoked a couple of times a month since he was twelve and wasn’t hooked yet. Joe figured addiction just wasn’t in his nature.

Faye said he was being stupid. Yes, tobacco was an age-old tradition, but so was dying young, until the advent of modern medicine. Why did he want to risk addiction and blacken his lungs and maybe die young, for no good reason?

Now that the baby was coming, she could bludgeon him with the dire effects of second-hand smoke, like low birth weight and asthma and crib death. These arguments were moot, since he only smoked alone at night under the open stars.

In the past, he’d used Faye’s age to excuse the risk in his mind. She was nine years older, and he didn’t care to outlive her, so what would it hurt if his occasional cigarettes shaved a few years off his life expectancy? If something happened to Faye, his plan had been to start smoking around the clock and see how fast he could choke himself to death.

Now there was the baby to consider. He wanted to be around to see his child grow up. Beyond that, he wanted to see his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. Once he figured children and family into the picture, he had all the reasons in the world to try to live as long as possible. Long life and cigarettes—those two things didn’t really belong in the same sentence, much less the same life.

There was no good reason for Joe to be lighting the cancer stick in his hand, but he was doing it. Why?

Because he was pissed off at Faye, and this was the best way to let her know it.

If she wanted to abuse her over-stressed pregnant body by sitting in a straight chair all night, hunched over a dusty old book, then she could just go ahead. In the meantime, he’d show her what he thought of that by standing out here and puffing on a cigarette he didn’t even want.

***

Within an hour, Joe saw the light go off in their room, and he knew that Faye had done the sensible thing and quit working. She’d made her point by refusing to listen to reason when he wanted her to go to bed. He’d made his point by smoking a cigarette, which had been stupid but it was done and he couldn’t take it back.

It was time to get rid of these clothes and brush his teeth, so that the lingering tobacco odor didn’t disturb Faye’s sleep. It was time to go to bed. It was time for peace.

Joe had the eyes of a great horned owl. He could see perfectly well by the light of a quarter moon. He leaned against the trunk of a massive magnolia tree and listened to an armadillo move through the bushes in the far corner of the garden. The bushes’ glossy leaves reflected the moonlight and Joe could track the armadillo’s location by their movement.

By contrast to the quiet rustling of the armadillo, Suzanne’s headlong rush across the back porch was as loud as a fighter jet. The kitchen door slammed shut, and her dainty sandals clattered on the flagstone walk.

Joe could see Suzanne clearly in the reflected moonlight, struggling with the door of a garden shed standing between the gravel drive and the manor’s kitchen. She first grasped the handle with both hands and pulled hard, proof that she was familiar with the door and knew how heavy it was before she even tried it. Nothing happened. Suzanne just kept pulling.

Again and again, she yanked on the door with enough force to make its old wrought-iron hinges creak, but nothing happened. Joe could see her hunched-over shoulders shake, and he knew she was weeping. He took a step out of the magnolia’s shadow toward her. There was no way he could open a door that was obviously locked, but he could certainly escort a distraught lady into the house, where her husband would give her the comfort she needed.

Fortunately, the radar of the long-married was working, and Daniel stepped out of the same kitchen door that had just slammed behind his wife. He rushed to her side, saying, “Baby, it’s locked, and it’s gonna stay locked.”

Between sobs, Suzanne said, “But…I need my
place
.”

“It’s not a good place for you. If you need to cry, you can do it in the house. You’ve been spending too much time out here.” He pulled her to him and started walking, forcing her away from the locked door.

“But I
don’t
just come out here to cry. I’m not so lonely out here, Daniel. It just melts away. Sometimes…” and the sobs began to shake her again. “…sometimes I don’t feel alone at all. I think she’s here, too. Sometimes…”

“Baby, Annie’s gone. You’ve got to stay in the real world. Stay with me.”

Daniel walked his wife in the house. Or maybe he just walked her body in the house. Joe had the feeling that Suzanne herself stayed behind, wishing she could just go in the garden shed and close the door behind her.

***

People said cigarettes helped them think, but Joe thought that was a load of crap. Joe thought cigarettes were an excuse to let the mind go blank…which made it way easier to ignore the looming specter of lung cancer.

So Joe’s mind had been comfortably blank since he finished his cigarette. The nicotine couldn’t wipe away his worry over Faye, but it had allowed him to think of something else. Then, a couple of puffs later, it allowed him to stop thinking altogether.

He was picking up the root beer can he used as an ash tray, preparing to go inside and face a woman who was mad at him for smoking, when his mind woke up and asked him why Daniel had picked tonight to lock the garden shed. Suzanne seemed to have been going there for a long time, maybe years. The only thing different about today was that two people were missing.

He reached for his phone and dialed the phone in their room, because he knew that Dunkirk Manor’s great concrete bulk rendered Faye’s cell worthless. Quietly, he said, “Faye. Get your detective friend on the phone.”

***

Joe sat on the damp grass and watched the stars wheel overhead. Faye had seriously suggested that she should join him in this vigil.

He didn’t often use a deep, forbidding, manly tone of voice with her—mostly because it didn’t work—but he hadn’t been able to help himself tonight. No, she wasn’t going to torture her overworked body by sitting on the cold ground. No, she wasn’t going to risk herself and his unborn child by sitting outside in the open, waiting for the police to come check this shed for an imprisoned woman, or worse. Just no.

Faye wasn’t completely unreasonable, so she had agreed to his terms. She would call Detective Overstreet. She would then call Joe back and tell him what Overstreet had said. He knew that nothing he could say would keep her from peering out their tiny window, but he knew that it pointed the wrong direction. She’d be looking across the back garden in the direction of the river. The garden shed was on the other side of the house, near the gravel drive to the employee parking lot.

The tiniest edge of panic had entered her voice, and that was so unlike Faye. “Glynis could be in that shed, Joe. We can’t just leave her in there. She could be hurt.”

“You know Overstreet said not to do anything until he gets here, and it’s gonna take him awhile to get a search warrant. I’ll just sit here and watch. If somebody opens the shed door and Glynis is in there, I won’t let them take her away or…hurt her. You know that. But if they don’t, we need to sit tight.”

“Overstreet said he searched the shed this morning and it was empty. Nothing but a dirt floor and yard trash. If she’s in there now, where was she this morning?”

Daniel and Suzanne certainly hadn’t acted like they had anything to hide while the police were searching the house. They’d welcomed them, begging for help finding their friend Glynis.

Joe shifted his weight, so that his legs wouldn’t stiffen. A lifetime of woodcraft had taught him to keep his body useful at all times. “Suzanne and Daniel are going to feel a lot different when the police come to their door at three in the morning. Overstreet needs his warrant. While he gets it, I’ll be out here, making sure nobody goes in that shed and nobody comes out of it.” Then he said something loving but futile. “Baby, if you can’t get some sleep, will you at least lie down and rest? I’ll call you if anything changes.”

She snorted. He had heard her snort before. He thought the sound was adorable. “I’d rather eat dirt than lay here and think of what Glynis might be suffering. Father Domingo’s journal will keep me company.”

Joe didn’t even argue with her.

“And Joe…” Faye sounded oddly like a little girl, not like herself at all. “Would it be safe for you to go over to the shed and talk to her? Maybe she can hear you through the door, even if she can’t talk back. Can you go tell her that we’re getting her some help and that you’re there, waiting with her?”

Yes, he certainly could do that, and he was ashamed that he hadn’t already thought of it. So, though he’d seen no sign of anyone watching, Joe had used all his woods skills to creep silently from shadow to shadow until he sat here, with the shed shielding him from even the moon’s faint light.

He’d tapped lightly on the shed’s wooden siding and murmured Glynis’ name quietly, getting no response. He did that periodically, adding comforting words like, “The police are coming to help me get you out,” or sometimes just, “It’s going to be okay, Glynis.”

He leaned his head on the siding and kept it there, knowing that he could sense faint vibrations through his skull that he’d never hear with his ears. He heard nothing. He felt nothing.

If she was in there, she wasn’t talking. Or she couldn’t.

***

The baby was so active inside her that Faye knew she wouldn’t have slept this night, even if she’d known Glynis was safe. Joe was outside, hoping to help bring the missing woman home, but that meant that his side of the bed was empty. This fact, too, would have robbed Faye of a good night’s sleep.

How fortunate it was that Father Domingo had written his thoughts down, all those centuries ago, and left a piece of himself to keep Faye company through this dark night. And how appropriate it was that Father Domingo had written stories that left Faye in no doubt that he had spent many lonely, dark nights himself.