Angels Burning (19 page)

Tug doesn't say anything.

“Do you want him to be okay?” I ask.

“He killed Camio.”

“Who told you that?”

“Everyone.”

“Who's everyone?”

He reaches a hand to his head to adjust the hat that isn't there. He doesn't answer me.

“Will you talk to me tomorrow?”

“What is there to talk about? I shot him. Everybody saw me do it.”

There doesn't seem to be any anger left in him. He sounds defeated and resigned to his fate.

“I don't think you wanted to do it.”

“What's that supposed to mean? You think I was hypnotized?”

“I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

He flips over on his other side, turning his back to me.

A muffled, “No, you won't,” comes from the heap of baggy clothes covering little more than skin and bones.

“I'll take that as a yes. Get some sleep.”

BY THE TIME
I make it home to my house it's almost two in the morning. Champ is asleep on my couch with the TV on. Mason is asleep on the bed in the guest room on top of the covers. It's a warm night, but I find a light blanket and put it over him.

I need to shut down my brain. This is one of those times when I wish I was a drinker or that I wasn't afraid of chemical sedation. I don't think a chapter of a novel or a
New York Times
crossword puzzle is going to do it for me tonight, but I'm wrong.

I settle into my bed after a hot shower, slip on my glasses, pick up my book, and fall asleep instantly.

In my dreams I'm wearing an even louder dress than the one I had on earlier along with a pair of bright red cowboy boots, a sombrero trimmed in a rainbow array of pom-poms, and two pearl-handled revolvers strapped in a silver-studded holster. A shiny gold star proclaiming me the “Sheriff of Mexico” glitters next to my impressive youthful cleavage (the stuff I had before things started going south). I'm in a shoot-out with a gang of young boys whose leader is a woman with a wolf 's head.

I'm in the middle of the dream, holed up in a seedy cantina, down to my last bullet, when I'm awakened by a small voice and a large yank on my arm.

My eyes fly open. My reading light is on but the sun is shining brightly now. Sometime during the night I rolled over on top of my book. My glasses are miraculously still on my face. I take them off and rub at the bridge of my nose.

“Aunt Dove! Aunt Dove!”

It takes me a moment to remember where I am and the identity of this little person. He's still in the same clothes he arrived in yesterday, even the glaring orange socks. His Trapper Keeper is securely under one arm.

“What is it, Mason?”

“My dad's gone.”

I sit up straighter. My whole body aches.

“What do you mean ‘gone'?”

“He's gone. The car's gone and all our stuff.”

I reach out and stroke his buzz cut while glancing at my bedside clock. It's 7:23 a.m.

“He's probably running an errand or maybe getting some doughnuts for breakfast,” I try to assure him but a sick feeling begins to spread through me.

He shakes his head.

“No. That's not it. He's gone.”

“Has he ever left you with someone before?”

“No, but I've always known he's been preparing for this.”

“What's this?”

“The big drop.”

I hear the Velcro rip. He opens the binder and pulls something out of one of the folders.

“He left this.”

He hands me an envelope. I fumble my glasses back onto my face so Mason won't see me tear up. I don't have to open it to know it's full of tens and twenties.

I STAND IN FRONT
of my bathroom mirror examining my Morning Old Face or MOF as I've come to think of it. It's a syndrome I've identified that occurs when I first wake up and my face looks much older than it is. My color is bad. I have dark circles under my eyes. My cheeks sag. The lines on my forehead pop out. Later in the day I improve, but until then I wish I could wear a Cinderella false face. I actually priced them at Walmart last Halloween. They're only a couple of bucks. The ones with hair are a little more.

When we were kids, Grandma was always telling us she was “about to have a come apart.” It was one of the few regional expressions from her own childhood in Georgia she retained after marrying my grandfather, a Pennsylvania boy who was stationed at Fort Benning before and after World War II.

Neely and I used to dig each other with our elbows and snicker as we imagined Grandma literally coming apart, limbs dropping all over the kitchen, hair falling out, eyeballs hitting the linoleum and rolling under the refrigerator.

I've always known what those words were supposed to mean, but today I believe they truly describe me. I've dealt with a lot of stress and high-pressure situations throughout my life but too much has happened in too short a period of time, and I have too much to fix and solve and protect today. I don't feel like I can cope. I want to crawl back into bed
with my MOF, and a cream-filled Zuchelli doughnut, and watch bad TV.

But I can't. For starters, I have an abandoned little boy downstairs eating non-fake Cinnamon Toast Crunch who happens to be a nephew I never knew I had.

I also have dozens of missed calls on my cell, including one from the mayor and another from the president of the town council reminding me that I'm obligated to give a full account of any shootings at the next meeting. They only require this so they can hear the gory details firsthand and then dole it out one gossipy spoonful at a time to their friends and families.

Before I go back to the station and begin the endless paperwork and media song and dance resulting from last night's shooting, I'm going to swing by and see Grandma. She has this ability to help me conquer my problems without ever providing any useful answers to them. I also want to tell her about Champ and Mason. And I also want to pump her for information about the Trulys.

It occurred to me when Miranda was slandering my mother and me and mentioned her friendship with my grandmother who had refused to claim me that my grandmother who not only claimed me but practically raised me was a player in all this, too. She's lived in Buchanan since arriving here at the age of twenty already pregnant with the baby who would be too pretty for sandboxes and strained spinach. Miranda Truly is probably ten years younger, but they would know each other or certainly know of each other. Between Grandma and her circle of friends at the home, I can find out more about the Truly family in the time it takes to drink a pot of coffee than Nolan and his databases could ever uncover.

I put on one of my most serious summer suits, since I'll be giving interviews: a pale gray skirt and jacket with a tiny pink pinstripe. I usually wear an old broken-in pair of gray faux-leather pumps with a reasonable heel but as I stand in front of my shoe shelves today feeling overwhelmed and insecure, my hand seems to have a mind of its own and reaches for my new four-inch stiletto, blush suede, peep-toes. I'll be taller than just about every man I come in contact with today, and if that doesn't intimidate them, my fabulousness will.

I make Mason take a shower and change his clothes while I return phone calls. I begin by calling the hospital. Zane's still in ICU. There's been no change in his condition.

Champ remembered to leave Mason's clothes and belongings behind when he took off in his car this morning. The boy has a suitcase and a duffel bag. He won't let me look in either of them. I agreed as long as he promised me he had no animals or weapons.

“You look nice, Aunt Dove,” he tells me as we meet near my front door.

He's changed into a pair of bright blue soccer shorts with a silver stripe down the sides, a yellow Guns N' Roses T-shirt, and another pair of orange socks he promises are clean.

“Do you know who Guns N' Roses are?” I ask him.

“Dad likes them,” he replies.

He scrunches up his face, grabs an imaginary mike, and launches into an Axl Rose falsetto.

“ ‘Welcome to the jungle. We got fun and games . . . ,” he shrieks.

“Okay. You've convinced me.”

“I like their name,” he says. “I like it when things go together that shouldn't go together.”

“Like your socks and everything else in your wardrobe?”

He gives me an almost pitying look.

“Orange goes with everything.”

I have no choice but to take him to Neely's. He says he can stay by himself, but I'm not comfortable with an unsupervised nine-year-old hanging out in my house. I don't tell her we're coming. She had a rough night, too. I decide it's better to tell her what Champ has done in person and then dump his offspring on her. If I called her first, she'd say no, and if I showed up anyway, she'd send Smoke out with a note attached to his collar.

It's another beautiful day. Low eighties. Dry. Not a cloud in the sky. Our Junes are usually a mishmash of rainy, frustratingly cold days interspersed with bouts of freakish heat and humidity so high the air is almost drinkable. Boots with a parka over cutoffs and a tube top is common attire
for a summer cookout around here. The weather's been almost too nice. People are being lulled into a false sense of Santa Monica perfection that's going to end badly for them when the temperature suddenly drops into the fifties and it pours for a week straight.

Neely's dogs come trotting out of the woods to greet us, tongues lolling, tails waving. They don't make a sound, but the trees all around us are filled with chirping birds and chattering squirrels jumping from branch to branch.

“Have they ever killed anybody?” Mason asks before getting out of the car.

“Of course not. Didn't you play with them yesterday?”

He nods.

“Then you know they're very friendly, very well-trained dogs.”

“Yeah, but they look like they kill people all the time.”

“Well, they don't.”

“But they could.”

“But they don't. Are you afraid of them?”

“No. But I might need someone killed someday.”

This conversation is starting to concern me. I'm reminded again how little I know about him and his life with his father.

“Like who?”

“I don't know.”

He turns away from me.

“A bad guy,” he says, and opens the door.

Kriss, Kross, and Owen descend on him. They love kids and don't get to be around many. Maybe stays back. I wonder if he can sense telepathically that something terrible has happened to his buddy Tug and he's not feeling social. I'm sure he knew when Tug was here yesterday that he was a wreck.

Smoke waits for Neely, who comes strolling down the gravel drive with her hands in her jeans pockets.

“I'm glad you're okay,” she says to me.

“I'm fine.”

“Zane?”

“Too early to tell. Still unconscious. You want to tell me who's paying for Sandra?”

“I have some money stashed away.”

“On top of what we pay for Grandma's home, you can afford Sandra? You realize there's no way Tug isn't going to jail for this unless Sandra is given the opportunity to razzle-dazzle a courtroom with a bunch of extreme emotional disturbance rigamarole, and those billable hours are going to add up to the cost of a house.”

“Rigamarole?” she repeats with an amused cock of her head.

“I'm serious, Neely.”

“Don't worry about me. I'm not going to do anything stupid.”

“Hi, Aunt Neely,” Mason calls out, waving from among a forest of swaying tails.

“Hi, Mason.”

She waves back and says to me, “What's he doing here?”

“I need you to watch him.”

“Where's Champ? Oh no. Don't tell me he thinks he's going to use us for babysitters all the time if he moves back here. I mean, Mason's a cute kid—”

I hold up my hand to cut her off.

“Sit down. I have something to tell you.”

“Sit where?”

She gestures all around her at the trees, the gravel parking lot, the kennels behind her office.

I take a deep breath and blurt out, “Champ left.”

“What do you mean he left?”

“He's gone. His stuff. His car.”

I take the envelope of cash out of my purse.

She stares hard at it. I try to figure out what she's thinking and can't. I'm surprised when she finally looks back up at me and is obviously angry.

“He's become his dad. He's the Envelope now.”

“That's not fair,” I instinctively rush to my brother's defense. “Champ didn't abandon his son. He's been with him for nine years.”

“And that makes it okay? What is the age where walking away from
your kid is acceptable? Disowning him from birth is bad, but nine is okay?”

“We don't know he's abandoned him.”

“What about his mother?”

“Dead,” I tell her.

This gets no reaction from her. I know she won't ask for more information. She finds details annoying. She brushes them away on her quest for the big picture like raindrops from a windshield.

She plunges her hands back into her pockets and peers up at the blue sky through the treetops, shaking her head.

“I knew something was wrong. It was too weird for him to show up all of a sudden after all these years. He came here on purpose to dump his kid on us.”

“We don't know that.”

“Yes, we do.”

The heat in her voice is unusual for her. Smoke cocks his head. His black eyes set in his white wolfish face have been fixated on her during our entire conversation.

“Listen to yourself,” she chastises me. “You'd never defend this kind of behavior in anyone else. Stop making excuses for him. Something bad happened to him a long time ago. Something incredibly bad. But it doesn't give him a free pass to be selfish for the rest of his life.”