Parker And The Gypsy

  Sara shivered as she felt herself being pulled farther into the dark world of Xavier Storm. Deep into his soul, a wasteland where there was...nothing. Only an emptiness as bleak as looking on the face of death itself.

  An image came to her, a terrible vision of Storm sitting behind an expensive mahogany desk, papers scattered about, a gun held in his shaking hands as he sought for the courage to pull the trigger.

  Her startled gaze flew to his face, and suddenly the tall, proud man before her began to dwindle, smaller and smaller, changing shape to become a little boy clutching a ragged dog—lost, scared and alone. Forever alone.

  Sara’s fingers tightened around Storm’s. As the face of the boy melted back into the man’s gaunt features, Sara gazed up at him, her eyes blurred with tears.

  “John Patrick,” she whispered. “Welcome home.”

  The electricity had been turned off at the Pine Top Inn after Mamie had frightened off the last batch of workmen and Elaine Jorgensen had had trouble finding another crew. But Sara always seemed able to come up with a supply of candles.

  She lit several in the cobweb-festooned dining room, the candlelight reflecting a soft glow on Sara’s face. Whatever happened to him as a result of this crazy night’s work, Mike thought, it would be worth it just to have the shine back in her eyes. Even if he ended up doing life.

  Did people get life for kidnapping in New Jersey? Mike wondered uneasily. In his case, Storm would probably demand the death penalty.

  Mike glanced to where he now had the casino king handcuffed to a chair, the tycoon’s eye swelling to match his lip. Storm had made rather violent objections to being escorted into the inn.

  Or should Mike say John Patrick?

  “I still can hardly believe it,” Mike muttered to Sara. “That that bastard Storm could turn out to be that cute little kid in all Mamie’s pictures.”

  “Why?” Sara asked. “Because you dislike Mr. Storm so much, you were sure he had to be some kind of desperate villain or murderer?”

  “Yeah. Partly that, and well....” Mike rubbed the bridge of his nose and confessed sheepishly. “This case has been so strange from the very beginning, so many coincidences between Mamie’s story and my own mother’s...that there was a moment when I wondered...I almost feared John Patrick might turn out to be me.”

  “Oh, Michael.” Sara laid her hand gently on his cheek.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said briskly. “I’m not disappointed or anything. I’d rather think my mother is at peace instead of off haunting somewhere. But this leaves us with a big problem, angel. What are we going to do about him?”

  “I don’t know,” Sara said, her gaze tracking ruefully toward their sullen prisoner.

  “I mean I was kind of counting on you picking out some incriminating evidence from Storm’s brain so we could haul his butt off to the police. Instead, I’m afraid it’s going to be the other way around.”

  Mike’s eyes roved around the eerily silent inn. “I never thought I’d be looking to a ghost for rescue, but you don’t suppose Mamie could put in a good word for us.”

  Sara fretted her lower lip. “I don’t think Mamie is here, Michael. I’m not sensing her presence at all.”

  “What! I thought you said she couldn’t go anywhere else.”

  “I didn’t think that she could,” Sara lowered her eyes and said in a small voice. “But after we had our quarrel, I came out here to see her one last time. I told her you’d quit the case and didn’t think John Patrick could be found. I—I am afraid she may have given up and gone away.”

  “Oh, great! The woman haunts this blasted old inn for years and she picks tonight of all nights to turn in her ghost union card.” Mike groaned, raking his hand back through his hair, realizing the full desperation of the situation they were in. The situation he had put Sara in.

  “We’re in big trouble here, angel,” he said, wearing a path in the dust-covered floor. “Storm is going see us both fried for this. Mamie’s little son Johnny has grown up to be a real vindictive man.”

  “He’s grown up to be a very troubled man,” Sara said softly. “I know why Mamie was so worried about him. His soul is ashes, Michael. I had this vision of him sitting at his desk the other night. He—he was trying to work up the courage to kill himself.”

  “Storm?” Mike cast a startled glance toward where his prisoner sat lost in the shadows of the dining room. “I thought he’d be rich enough to live forever.”

  “He’s the poorest man I’ve ever met.”

  Mike continued to eye Storm doubtfully. “Well, whether that’s true or not, I guess all we can do is try to get the guy to admit that he’s John Patrick. It’s the only chance we’ve got.

  He strode over to where Storm lounged in his chair, trying to maintain a pose of impatient boredom. But the casino king’s eyes flicked around the inn walls and Mike caught a glimpse of emotions he knew all too well.

  The ragged look of a man confronted by his past, raked over by a thousand painful memories. Mike had never expected that it would be possible that he’d feel a twinge of sympathy for Storm. But he did and it irritated him.

  “All right,” Mike said, planting himself in front of the man. “You might as well come clean. If Sara says you’re John Patrick, then that’s who you are.”

  Storm affected a yawn. “I guess I should be grateful she doesn’t think I’m the White Rabbit.”

  “Please, Mr. Storm.” Sara crept up to stand beside Mike. “I mean...John. Your mother has been worried about you.”

  “My mother is currently sunning herself on the Riviera,” Storm drawled. “And she never worried about me a day in her life.”

  “I mean your real mother. Mamie Patrick.”

  Storm’s lips thinned. “Never heard of her.”

  “Yeah?” Mike asked. “And I suppose you don’t recognize her, either.”

  Mike pulled Mamie’s little jewel case out of his trench coat pocket and plunked in on the table before Storm. He spread out the photographs, drawing particular attention to the one of Mamie with her son hiding behind her skirts.

  Something flickered briefly in Storm’s eyes. Then he hunched one shoulder. “A rather dreary little collection. If you’re going to bore me with family photographs, Parker, don’t you have anything more interesting?”

  “How about this?” Mike produced Sparky and plunked him down on the table. It was a desperate ploy and Mike didn’t really expect it to have any more effect than the pictures.

  But Storm looked stunned and then mumbled, “It—it’s Blinkey.”

  “Blinkey?” Mike said. “What the hell kind of name is that for a dog?”

  “Michael, shh!” Sara cautioned, gesturing toward Storm. An odd change shifted over the man’s hard features, a softer light stealing into his intense eyes as he regarded the stuffed toy.

  “Where—where did you find this?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Right where you hid it so long ago. Beneath the floorboard in your mother’s closet. Don’t you remember?” Sara prompted when Storm hesitated. “You were afraid the toy was going to be thrown away by the man who came to take you away from the inn. You called him the gray man. You were afraid of him.”

  Storm compressed his lips, lapsing into stony silence, refusing to say anything more.

  Mike heaved a long sigh. “There’s only one thing to do. We’ve got to get Mamie back here, Sara. Can’t you hold a séance or something?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she whispered, casting a nervous look at Storm. “I guess I can try to call her.”

  Picking up a candle, Sara paced to the center of the room, the tiny flame casting an eerie glow up over Sara’s solemn features.

  “Mamie?” she said tentatively. “Mamie, please. We’ve found your son for you.”

  Storm squirmed in his chair, glaring up at Mike. “What the hell are you trying to do here, Parker? This—this is really sick, even for you.”

  “Just be quiet and wait,” Mike snapped.

 
Sara drifted around the room, holding the candle up, peering hopefully into every shadow. “Mamie, John Patrick is here now and—and he needs you desperately.”

  Storm became more agitated, tugging uselessly at the cuffs binding him to the chair. “Damn it, Parker! All right, the bloody woman was my mother. She sold me off when I was five years old. Are you satisfied? Now can we end this farce?”

  Sara turned back to Storm, looking horrified. “Sold you off? Who told you such a terrible thing?”

  “My stepmother did,” Storm said with a bitter twist of his lips. “She never let me forget it. Eloise was always too happy to remind me of how my father, Alexander, got some stupid backwoods girl pregnant. When he later discovered that he couldn’t father any more children to carry on his name, he tracked down Mamie Patrick and bought back his son.”

  “Damn!” Mike exchanged a startled glance with Sara. “So the mysterious gray man wasn’t anyone from child welfare, but John Patrick’s own father.”

  “Perhaps he was, but the rest of what Eloise Storm said isn’t true.” Sara turned gently back to Storm. “Don’t you see? When your father did finally return to claim you, he couldn’t have bought you from Mamie because she was already dead by then.”

  “It makes no difference now.” Storm’s brief flare of anger died, the dull light creeping back into his eyes. “Now I’ve told what you wanted to know. Why don’t you just let me out of here? There’s going to be a lot of investment brokers and bankers distressed by my absence.”

  But no one else. Storm’s sense of isolation, of being unloved was as apparent as if he’d spoken it aloud. It was an odd feeling to Mike—being able to get so tight inside the guy’s skin.

  Maybe because it was right where he had been himself. Before Sara. Hardly knowing what he was doing or why, Mike found himself stalking over to the steps leading up from the lobby and bellowing, “All right, Mamie. Damn it, get down here now or there’s gonna be hell to pay. Enough of these tricks. You wanted me to find your kid and I got him here. If you don’t show up, I’m gonna start making so many spook cracks, your ears will burn.”

  Mike’s words rang up the stairs, echoing to silence.

  “That’s it, Parker,” Storm said tersely. “This is your last chance. Let me go now and I’ll forget—”

  Storm’s words were drowned out by the sudden slamming of a door. The door to the dining room began to bang violently open and closed. The chandelier shook and trembled.

  Mike caught his breath, a sudden blast of cold air striking his chest, shoving him back from the stairs.

  “Mike,” Sara cried, clutching at his hand to steady him.

  The chilling wind tore through the room, all but extinguishing the candles. In the next instant, a blinding white light appeared on the stairs.

  Mike squinted, clinging to Sara. He shielded his eyes with one hand, frozen with disbelief. In the middle of the glow, he could see a form emerging, delicate, almost transparent. The form of a wistful young woman wearing a pleated skirt and soft sweater, her dark hair drawn up in a ponytail.

  “Mamie,” Mike said in hushed tones.

  The apparition paused at the foot of the stairs and raised one hand beckoning. Mike was so mesmerized he would have stumbled forward to follow, but Sara held him back.

  “No, Michael. It isn’t either of us she wants.” She nodded toward where Storm sat, looking as dumbstruck as though he’d turned to stone.

  There was a chink of metal and the handcuffs that held him to the chair came miraculously undone, falling to the floor. Rubbing his wrists, he stood up slowly. When the ghost beckoned again, he moved like a man in a trance, brushing past Sara and Mike without appearing to see them.

  Storm trailed after the spirit of Mamie Patrick, and the pair of them vanished into the darkness at the top of the stairs. Silence settled over the room once more and Mike Parker finally remembered to breathe.

  He glanced down to find Sara looking as awestruck as he felt.

  “You know,” Mike confessed, swallowing hard, “until the moment Mamie actually appeared, I—I still wasn’t sure I believed she was real.”

  “Neither was I,” Sara said with a tremulous smile. Flinging her arms around Mike, she buried her face in his shoulder.

  It was one of the strangest, most wonderful nights Mike thought he’d ever spent. Sitting on one of the dusty settees in the lobby with Sara cradled in his arms, waiting for Xavier Storm to finish meeting with the ghost upstairs.

  He’d heard of men experiencing an apocryphal moment in their lives, but of course he’d never believed in such a thing. Funny what it had taken to fling the doors of his mind wide open to any possibility, any sense of wonder. The appearance of a ghost, his old enemy Storm and a certain gypsy lady.

  Mike gazed down tenderly to where Sara was curled up against his chest. He dropped a kiss on top of her golden head and murmured, “I love you, Sara.”

  She’d fallen asleep and didn’t hear him, but that was okay. He’d have plenty of time to tell her. For the moment, it was enough for him just to realize. it, to feel something in his heart besides the emptiness and doubt that had been there for so long. Mike drew Sara closer against him. Resting his head on top of hers, he closed his eyes....

  The next time he opened them, he was surprised to see the soft light of morning spilling across the inn floor. He stirred, wincing at the stiffness in his back and neck. His movement, slight as it was, disturbed Sara. She sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

  “Goodness. What—what time is it?” she mumbled.

  What time was it? For a moment, Mike wasn’t even sure where he was. Then memories of the night before came flooding back to him.

  The ghost of Mamie Patrick. Storm... Storm? Mike straightened, glancing quickly around him, but there was still no sign of the casino king.

  Mike bolted to his feet, a moment of raw panic setting in. What if Storm had crept out and gone for the police after all? Or worse still, what if Mamie had decided to put her kid out of his misery and take him with her? How were Mike and Sara ever going to explain away Storm’s dead body?

  But before he could alarm Sara with any of these possibilities, Mike heard a light step on the stairs. Spinning around, he saw Storm descending to the lobby and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  He studied Storm critically, not quite sure what he expected to see. His hair turned white or a glazed look to his eyes. But the casino king appeared remarkably calm for a man who’d just spent the night in the company of his dead mother.

  “Good morning,” Storm said softly with only a trace of his old irony.

  “Good morning,” Sara replied, but Mike didn’t feel up to any social amenities. There were at least a dozen questions he wanted to put to Storm about what had happened last night. But Storm strode right up to Sara and took her hand.

  Mike had never seen Storm at a loss for words, but the tycoon hesitated before saying, “For the past few weeks, I’ve been cursing you, Miss Holyfield, without even knowing who you were. Only knowing you were the person responsible for dredging up things I wanted to forget. Now I just want you to know that...that I’m grateful to you for...for helping her to find me.”

  “You’re welcome, John,” Sara said, smiling shyly up at him. “But you have Michael to thank for getting you here last night.”

  “Yes,” Storm said dryly, touching his bruised eye. “Thanks a lot, Parker.”

  “No problem.” Mike grinned. “Just as long as you show your gratitude by not sending for the cops.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t send for the cops if you don’t send for the press. I’ve seen enough of my private life splashed across the tabloids over recent years.”

  “Of course we wouldn’t,” Sara said. “That wasn’t what this was all about.”

  “Thank you.” Storm carried Sara’s hand to his lips. Not one of his usual smooth gestures, but something more genuine. “I take it that I’m now free to leave?”

  The last question was add
ressed more to Mike. He stepped aside, sweeping Storm toward the door with a mock gallant bow. As the man left the inn, Mike hastened after him, following him to his car.

  “Here’s your keys, Storm,” he said. “And I thought you’d probably want to have this, too.” He held out the small box containing Mamie’s cache of treasures and photographs.

  Storm looked at the small case for a moment. Then he accepted it, a softened look coming into his eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “And...you better have this, too.” Mike was embarrassed to find that it cost him a pang as he handed over the ragged stuffed dog.

  Storm looked equally embarrassed and gruff about receiving it, but he tucked the dog along with the box carefully inside his car. He started to slide into the front seat of the Jaguar himself when he paused.

  His eyes flicked uncertainly to Mike and then he blurted out, “For what it’s worth, Parker, I never slept with your wife. Her real lover was a lounge lizard who worked at my casino.”

  Mike stared at him. “Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me that before?”

  “You never gave me the chance. Besides, I’m used to people thinking the worst of me. I rarely stoop to defend myself.”

  Mike was shaken to discover how well he understood Storm’s attitude. It was so close to his own.

  “Well, thanks for setting things straight,” Mike said. “But whatever happened with Darcy, it’s not important anymore.”

  “I would imagine it isn’t,” Storm replied. “You’re a very fortunate man, Parker, to have found someone like Miss Holyfield. A woman you can love enough to risk everything for.”

  A pensive look crossed Storm’s face. If it had been anyone else besides the mighty casino king, Mike would have said the man appeared damned wistful.

  Storm made another movement to leave, but this time it was Mike who stopped him. “Listen, I know it’s none of my business, Storm, but something like we all experienced here last night doesn’t happen every day. Your mother...Mamie. Did she say anything? What did she want from you?”