The Shadow Box (30 page)

This was done, Doyle explained, to make the ownership harder to trace in the unlikely event that these shadows of
Michael's actually existed. These hunters and killers. This
man with no face from his dreams.

“Then why go to that trouble,” Michael had asked him,
“if you don't believe it?”

“Do
you?
Do you still?”

”I don't know. I suppose not.”

“Well, when you make up your mind, we'll tell the
world that you're now an Edgartown innkeeper.”

“No,” Michael said quietly. “No, let's not tell the
world.”

This was going to be his life. All the pain of the life
he had before, all the crime and crud of New York
City . . . these seemed more distant than ever, far to the
west of an Edgartown sunset.

The Taylor House was heavily booked already.

It was booked to capacity, in fact, from Memorial Day
weekend through the second week of August and there
was even a waiting list for the Fourth of July weekend.
Given the number of ghost groupies who had taken rooms,
it struck Michael as dishonest to say nothing about the
starlings. He told Harold what Megan had said.

“I'd keep that to myself,” was Harold's advice. “They
won't believe you nohow.”

“But they're birds. They'll
sound
like birds.”

“Michael . . . they sounded like birds right along. But
what folks chose to hear was children.”

He supposed.

People doubt or believe according to their needs. Megan
said that as well and who was he to argue? If someone
had told him just three months ago that he was going to
be an innkeeper . . . and that next he'd fall in love with
a loony psychic
...

But it was all happening.

He had even made love to Megan.

That happened after three solid days of being together.

She had slept through the night on his sitting room floor.
The next morning he fixed a breakfast so big that they
both felt a need to walk it off. They walked the length of Lighthouse Beach. By the time they turned back she was
holding his hand.

Later, she took him out for a sail. They didn't really
talk much, at least not about themselves. It was mostly
about boats and about movies they'd seen. With a bit of
gentle urging, she stayed the next night in one of his guest
rooms. It pleased him that she didn't bolt her door.

But he wouldn't have knocked. He wouldn't have
pushed it at all. He wanted her, no question. He wanted
her, he supposed, from the first time he saw her from the
deck of the ferry. But he also wanted it to be good and
right. Like Megan, he was afraid of what might happen if
it wasn't.

It was Megan who picked the time and place.

The moment, when it came, was on her boat. He had asked her to have dinner with him on shore. She said she
wanted to shower first. Megan seemed to shower at least
three times a day. She told him to crack a beer and wait for her on deck.

It struck him after a while that she was using too much
water. Short showers are the rule on a boat. Wet down,
suds up, rinse off. He asked her if she was all right. She
came to the hatch, dripping wet, wrapped in a beach towel.
She looked up at him, took a big deep breath, and said that she was ready to try if he was.

They never did get to dinner. And it was wonderful. In
its way.

He might have guessed, he supposed, that when the moment came, she would want it to be in her own space.
A boat can be like a womb. But a boat is also a place
where sail bags have to be dragged off the berth and where
you crack your head climbing in and where the wake of
a passing power boat causes you to fall on your- ass while
you're trying to kick off your pants.

And of course she was terribly nervous. At least in the
beginning. So he asked if they could just lie close, hold
each other, without worrying too much about making
things happen. She said that sounded like a good idea. At that, she jumped up, dragging a blanket with her and stuck a cassette of Pink Floyd's
Dark Side of the Moon
into her
tape deck. If that was her idea of mood music, thought Fall
o
n, he might have stumbled onto one source, at least, of her problem.

The blanket fell away while she was doing this. She
felt his eyes on her and moved to cover herself. But she
stopped in mid-reach. She let him look and he whispered,
“Thank you.” She really did have a marvelous body. And
had worked at keeping it that way. He felt badly out of
shape in comparison.

At last she climbed back in and warmed herself
against him.

“I'm ready,” she told him.

He grumbled.

She said, ''Uh-oh. What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. It's just so nice. Being here with you.”

We say, “Dinner is ready.” We ask the cleaner if our
shirts are ready. When we're tacking our boat, we say
“Ready about.” But we don't jump under the covers and
say, “I'm ready” unless we expect cash to be left on
the end table. This was not the time, however, to offer
a critique.

They did make love. It was actually more of a practice
session. She was considerably tense but it was wonderful
all the same because it was with Megan. He could not
imagine a place in the world where he would rather be.
Or anyone, not even Bronwyn, with whom he would rather
be. They made love twice. The only thing was
...
she
would still stop and
listen
at the damndest times.

But he'd learned that it's best not to bring up that sub
ject. He'd asked, during one of their walks, how someone
becomes a Megan. He wasn't prying. Just curious. Like, was she born with it? A head injury, maybe?
A
bad trip on drugs? At that she closed up like a vault. Not
now, though. This was a whole new Megan.

“Michael?” She brushed her fingers across his chest.

“U
m
. . . ?”

“This is all for me so far. I mean, you're doing
everything.’'

“Me? I thought you were.”

She bit his shoulder.

“Megan . . . trust me. You have nothing to feel self-
conscious about.”

“Okay, but what do you like?”

“We're doing it.”

”I mean
...
I know there are things men like. If you'll
show me how, I'll try to do them for you.”

“Are you serious?”

”I tried to tell you. This has never been my sport.”

“I've got news. You're a natural.”

“You're a liar but you're sweet.”

“Okay, you want the truth?”

“Kind of.”

“You're only good with me. With anyone else, you might as well be a haddock.”

She laughed aloud. She laughed
each time she thought of it.

“Back to your offer, You're saying you'll do my favor
ite thing. No matter how weird?”

“Ah . . . how weird is weird?”

“You holding my hand. Me falling asleep with you
holding my hand. That's my favorite thing.”

That made a tear well up. But she wasn't sad this time.
This was going to be okay.

Chapter 20

F
at Julie
was getting worried.

He had still heard nothing from Moon. Nor, he thought,
had Doyle. But Doyle was so pissed off at him—for set
ting Moon off—that he probably won't call if he does.

Julie had known about the fire within hours. Some
friends of friends, from the docks at Port Everglades, had flown up to check out the house for him. That night, they
faxed him the clippings from the morning paper. There,
on page one, was a helicopter shot. The house was gutted.
An inset showed the dead man, as yet unidentified. Just a
smashed-up lump, framed by a metal lounge chair whose
plastic had melted out from under him.

Two days later they faxed him the police report. The corpse had been tentatively identified as one Ayub Ras-
poor Ghentner, a.k.a. Walter Ghentner, a guard in the em
ploy of a private security firm.

From the way Moon worked him over, Julie had to
assume that Moon now knew everything that Walter could
tell him. And that Moon now had a hit list.