“Thank you,” the woman said, then bent and kissed Michael’s cheek. Smiling once more at him, she left the ice cream parlor.
“I don’t want to know,” Emily said as she finished her ice cream. “I don’t want any explanations of a word you said or what you knew. I don’t want to know anything. Do you understand me?” She said the last while glaring at him.
“Perfectly,” he said, smiling.
Emily stood. “Look, I think this has gone far enough. It’s obvious that you’re not hurt from the accident and I have a lot of work piled up at home, so I think I should leave.”
“You aren’t going to help me find out who I am?”
Her lips pursed. “I think you know very well who you are and it seems that a lot of other people also know. I don’t like being the object of your little jest.”
“Just minutes ago you were glad that wasn’t my family, that I wasn’t going to desert you to spend the weekend alone and—”
“Clairvoyant!” she snapped at him. “I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to figure it out. Do you work at one of those psychic hotlines? Do you tell people that the love of their life is just around the corner?” Grabbing her handbag, she turned to leave, but he caught her arm.
“Emily, I haven’t told you one lie. Well, except maybe a few that you made me tell you. But the basics are true. I really don’t have a home, don’t have anywhere to spend tonight.”
“You have cash and credit cards and I’ve seen you use them.”
“I learned by watching others.” He put his hand on her arm. “Emily, I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and I need help. All I know for sure is that my life is connected to yours and I need you if I am to complete my task.”
“I’ve got to go,” she said, suddenly wanting to get away from him as fast as possible. She liked her life as it was and she had a feeling that if she spent even ten more minutes in this man’s company, her life would change in a way that she didn’t want it to. “It has been very nice meeting you and I thank you for…for the dress,” she said hesitantly, then before he could say another word she ran from the ice cream parlor.
And she didn’t stop running until she got back to the inn.
“Miss Todd,” the young woman behind the desk said. “I have a package for you.”
Emily’s first thought was, He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have sent something to her so quickly. Even an angel—Stop that! she ordered herself. Stop that now! He is not an angel; he is merely a very strange man. A strange man with strange powers.
She took the express package from the woman, thanked her, then went to her room. It wasn’t until she was inside that she saw that the waybill said the package was from Donald.
“Dear Donald,” she said aloud. Dear, plain Donald, who was a local celebrity because he was on TV. Dear Donald who spent his weekend at the site of a fire. At the moment, a fire seemed so very normal compared to a man who knew a woman’s husband’s name without ever being told. And knew that a child liked music and said that he had known the child for a long, long time.
She tore into the package and withdrew a flat white box. Inside was a gorgeous black silk teddy. Holding the lovely thing in her hands, she thought how she had never felt such softness, much less owned something like this.
With trembling hands, she read the card. “Please notice that the label says it’s hand-washable,” was written in Donald’s handwriting. “Your practicality and my sense of the absurd. May they always work together. I love you. Again, I’m sorry about the weekend. Watch the five o’clock news tonight. I’m on…With you.”
The note brought tears to her eyes. Just when she was sure that Donald was the most vain, selfish man alive, he did something like this. Holding the silk to her face, she fell on the bed and cried a bit from missing him, and from something else that she couldn’t understand. She wished she didn’t hear the voice of her friend Irene in her mind asking pointedly, “But is this really a gift for you or for Donald?”
“That odious man,” she said aloud, thinking of the dark-haired Michael. Since she had nearly run over him her life had been turned upside down, and she knew that the only way she was going to get herself back to the way she should be was to get rid of him.
Grabbing her suitcase off the rack in the closet, she began to throw her things into it. She had to leave now, right this minute. The sooner she put this town behind her and went home, the sooner her life would get back to normal.
But as she was packing, she glanced at her watch. It was already 3:00 P.M., and if she left now she’d miss the five o’clock broadcast, miss seeing whatever her dear, beloved Donald wanted to show her. But what if he came to the room? What if he again tried to get her involved in whatever strangeness that was his life?
But somehow she knew he wouldn’t. She’d not known Michael Chamberlain for even twenty-four hours, but she sensed that he had great pride. He wouldn’t come to her again, wouldn’t try to force himself on her.
Good, she thought, as she put the last of her clothes in her suitcase. Emily didn’t like driving at night, but she’d leave immediately after the broadcast, because although maybe Michael didn’t plan to bother her, she was very aware that she felt that she was leaving behind a helpless kitten.
Ridiculous! she said to herself, then looked at her watch. Ten after three. Less than two hours to go. Piece of cake. She’d…. What would she do for these two hours? She hadn’t seen the craft fair, something she’d been longing to see, but if she went outside she might see him. And she knew that if she looked into those big, dark eyes, she’d succumb. She’d promise to help him do whatever it was he thought he had to do.
She looked at her watch. Twelve minutes after three. If she saw him she’d probably even try to help him figure out whatever it was that Archangel Michael wanted him to do, she thought with a little laugh. Yes, that was good. Thinking of the ridiculous things he’d told her would help her keep her perspective. Were all the angels named Michael? she should have asked. Or did escapees from mental institutions name themselves that?
She looked at her watch. Fourteen minutes after three. I think I’ll go out. I think I should buy Donald a gift. With her mouth set, she left the room.
Chapter 4
HER ARMS LOADED DOWN WITH BAGS FULL OF GIFTS, Emily ran into her room at one minute to five. “Perfect!” she said, dropping her bags as she turned on the TV. Donald didn’t usually do the weekend news, so she was dying to find out what he was up to. She was calmer now that she’d been out and hadn’t so much as seen a trace of the odd man who had entered her life last night. And she was glad he was gone. Now she could think about her real life, the one that didn’t have even one wing-wearing person in it, she thought with a smile.
The broadcast came on. She was greeted by the sight of Donald and immediately relaxed. How well she knew his blond good looks, knew the twinkle in his blue eyes. They’d been going together for five years now, engaged for nearly a year, and they’d had some wonderful times together.
Watching him now, he didn’t look real. He was dressed perfectly, his hair sprayed into place, and he was as remote as though he were computer-generated. Many times when he was wearing old sweats that hadn’t been washed in weeks and he had a three-day stubble on his chin, she’d asked, “Is this Mr. News?” teasing him about the name the station had coined for him. “Is this the man who is being groomed to be the next governor?”
She loved the way he’d grin at her and tell her to get him another beer. “I don’t think the First Lady fetches beer,” she’d say, then Donald would leap on her and start tickling her, and quite often one thing would lead to another and they’d end up in—
Emily hadn’t been aware that her reverie had taken up nearly the entire thirty-minute broadcast, but now she came out of it—because there on the screen was a video of her! She was wearing her evening gown and she was walking up to the podium to accept her award of special merit from the National Library Ass
ociation.
“And now we come to our Angel of the Week,” Donald was saying. “Miss Emily Jane Todd was honored last night for her selfless devotion to the cause of donating reading matter to disadvantaged children in Appalachia. Miss Todd purchases children’s books with her meager salary as a small-town librarian, then spends her weekends driving into the mountains and giving the books to children who can barely afford food, much less a ‘banquet for the mind,’ as this reporter knows Miss Todd calls her gifts.”
Smiling into the camera, he lifted a little gold statue of an angel that she knew the station gave out every Saturday. “Something to boost the ratings on a weekend,” Donald had told her when they’d first started the award program. “So here’s an angel for you, Emily,” he said.
“And now, for something a little less uplifting, but certainly as unearthly,” Donald said, still smiling. “We have just heard that the FBI has lost the body of one of the most notorious killers this century has ever known.”
Emily was about to turn off the TV when, to her shock, an out-of-focus picture of Michael appeared behind Donald’s head. She sat back down on the end of the bed and watched.
“Michael Chamberlain, a suspected killer with organized crime connections, has been wanted by the FBI for more than ten years, but the man has rarely been seen, much less caught. As far as anyone knows, this is the only photograph ever taken of the notorious alleged killer. When a man was brought in for questioning on a domestic charge, a visiting FBI agent identified the man as one of the top-ten-most-wanted criminals and ordered him held for questioning. Seems that Chamberlain may know where all the bodies are hidden.”
Here, Donald paused for effect. He always hated doing the weekend news because he said it was little more than a comedy routine. No one wanted to hear serious news on the weekend, so the newscaster had to be a clown on Saturday and Sunday in order to get the ratings up. The last segment was always played for laughs.
Donald continued. “Even though Chamberlain was put into a private cell with a twenty-four-hour armed guard while he awaited the arrival of the Big Boys, in the morning he was found dead, his chest full of bullet holes, and one round in his head. He was immediately pronounced D.O.A. by the coroner.”
At this point Donald looked down at his papers for a moment, then back up at the camera with a bit of a smile. Emily knew that smile well: he used it on her when he thought she’d done something dumb but was being too polite to tell her so.
“But it seems that the FBI has lost the body,” Donald said. “Even though Chamberlain was very definitely dead, it seems that he stole some clothes and walked out, and there is again a warrant for his arrest.”
Donald’s smile broadened. “Should anyone see this man, uh, walking about, please contact the FBI. Or perhaps your local mortuary.”
Folding his hands over the papers on his desk, Donald smiled into the camera. “And that’s it for the news tonight, the end of our tales of angels and zombies. This is Donald Stewart wishing you the best, and I’ll see you on Monday.”
For a moment Emily was too stunned to move. The man she’d run into with her car might be odd, but he was no killer.
Suddenly so many things began to whirl about in her head: the headache Michael said he had, his disorientation and—She sat up straighter. And his use of a credit card.
She grabbed the telephone, called the TV station and hoped she caught Donald before he left. Holding her breath, she listened to the rings, then had to wait while someone went to try to find him.
Maybe he knows something, she thought as she waited, for Donald wasn’t just another pretty face on TV—he was a top-notch investigative journalist and he knew a lot of people. More than that, he knew a lot of secrets. Emily had used her access to the documents of the world to help him research some astonishing stories.
“Hey Muffin!” he said when he picked up the phone. “Did I make it up to you? You’re the prettiest angel—”
“Donald,” she said, cutting him off. “My nose is itching.”
Immediately, he quit laughing. “What about?”
“The last story you did, on the man who was killed in his cell. There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
Donald’s voice lowered, and she knew he was making sure no one was listening. “I don’t know. The story was handed to me to read. Let me make a few calls. Give me your number and I’ll get back to you.”
She did, then hung up.
Her “evil detector”—that’s what her father had called her nose, because a couple of times her itchy nose had saved her family’s lives. Like the time she was six and she and her brother were going on a Ferris wheel with their father. But Emily had started screaming, saying her nose was itching and they couldn’t go on the ride. Her brother had been angry, but her father was amused, so he’d agreed to wait until the next run of the ride. But there was no next run—the Ferris wheel broke a gear minutes later and four people were killed and several injured. After that, the family listened when Emily said her nose itched.
When her family told Donald the stories, he hadn’t laughed at them as her other boyfriends had but had asked her to warn him any time she needed to scratch. A mere three months later she’d told him. They went to a party where Emily was introduced to a man considered by all to be a great guy. He owned the television station that had just hired Donald as news anchor, and Donald adored the man. But Emily said the man made her nose itch, so Donald did some investigating and found out that the man was up to his neck in land scandals. He was arrested six months later, but by then Donald was out and clean. And the day of the arrest, Donald broke the story, scooping all the other news media. It was his first big story and it established his reputation as a hard-hitting journalist and not just a handsome newsreader.
Emily was a nervous wreck while she waited for Donald to call back, fidgeting, pacing. When the phone rang, she pounced on it.
“I owe you roses.”
“Yellow ones,” she answered quickly. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
“They may have arrested the wrong man. His name is Michael Chamberlain, all right, but now they’re not sure he’s a hit man.”
“So why wasn’t he released?”
“After the FBI had leaked it to the press that they’d finally caught this notorious criminal? Not likely. They were going to put him in jail until the case died down, then release him.”
“So who shot him?”
“Take your pick. Could have been the FBI, who didn’t want anyone to hear of their mistake. Or maybe it was the Mafia who wanted this guy dead to take the heat off the real killer. Or his wife.”
“His wife?”
“Yeah. I hear that’s the reason he was arrested in the first place. His wife was holding a gun to his head screaming she was going to kill him when a neighbor called the cops.”
“What for?”
“What for what?”
“Why was his wife trying to kill him?” She could hear the laughter in Donald’s voice.
“I’m no authority on marriage, but my guess would be infidelity. What’s your guess?”
Emily was not in the mood for joviality. “So you’re telling me three people want to kill this man, who may or may not be wanted for murder?”
“Well, when you count all the FBI, all the Mafia, which includes a hit man who’d like some pressure taken off himself, plus an irate wife, I’d say that adds up to more than three people. Personally, my money’s on the wife. She’ll find him first. If the poor schmo is alive, all he has to do is use his credit card once and he’s dead. Anybody with a modem will know where he is.”
“So if this man’s not guilty, how does he clear his name?”
Donald was silent for a moment. “Emily, do you know something?”
“What could I know?” Even to herself, her laugh sounded insincere. “Really, Donald.” Her voice was rising. “How could you ask such a question? I’m just a simple little librarian, remember?”
“Yeah, and I’m
going to do local news all my life. Emily, what the hell are you up to?”
She took a deep breath. She wasn’t good at lying. “I think I saw this man today. Here in a store.” She could risk that because if Donald was right—and he usually was—soon everyone would know that Michael Chamberlain had been shopping in the same remote town where Emily had spent the weekend.
“Call the police!” Donald said vehemently. “Emily, no one knows for sure this man isn’t the killer. He’s slippery; he’s a liar; at the very least he’s a con artist. Emily! He could well be a cold-blooded killer. Emily, are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” she said, but her mind was elsewhere. It had been hours since Michael had used that credit card.
“I want you to call the police,” Donald said firmly. “Now. Do you understand me? Don’t take the time to go to the police, call them. Then I want you to get out of there. Now! Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, perfectly. But, Donald, what will happen to this man?”
“He’s dead, Em. A walking dead man. Whoever tried to kill him in jail will come back and finish the job. That is, if someone else doesn’t get to him first. Lord! Emmie, I want you out of there now. If that man is there it will be known in minutes, and that town just may turn into a bloodbath.”
Abruptly, he paused and his voice changed. “I have to go.”
“You’re going to call the FBI, aren’t you?” she said frantically.
“If he’s innocent maybe the FBI can save him.”
“They’ll never get here in time.”
“Emily,” Donald said, his voice full of warning.
“Okay, I’m going. I’m packed anyway. I’ll call you when I get—”
“Em!” He cut her off. “What happened with that man you hit with the car?”
“Oh him,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “He was fine. No injuries. He went home to his family when he realized I wasn’t rich.”
There was a long pause from Donald. “When you get back we’re going to have a long talk.”