Buried Innocence - A Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery - Book Thirteen (Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series) (9 page)

A ringing sound
from her purse stopped Mary mid-stride as she walked back down Main Street in
Galena. Stepping to the side, she glanced down to the small pocket on the
outside of her purse, specifically designed to hold her phone. Of course it was
empty. “Crap,” she muttered, opening her filled purse to begin the frantic
search. Guided by the ringing and the vibration, she was finally able to find
it beneath her billfold. Quickly swiping her finger across the front to answer
the call, she held the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“You forgot to put
your phone back in its little pocket, didn’t you?” Bradley
asked,
a smile in his voice.

Sighing, she
nodded. “Yeah, I was in a hurry, so I just dumped it into my purse.”

“And you’ve already
found it,” he replied. “I’m impressed.”

“Bradley,” she
said.

“Yes, Mary?”

“Shut up,” she
said, grinning into the phone.

“Before I shut up
can I tell you I got an address in Dubuque?” he asked.

“You got an address
for Liza’s parents?” she exclaimed. “That’s fantastic. What is it?”

Mary waited a
moment for Bradley to respond. “Bradley?” she urged.

“So here’s the
deal,” he finally said. “I’m taking the afternoon off, and I’ll meet you in
Galena. Then we will drive together to Dubuque and meet with this family.”

“But—” she began.

“No buts,” he
interrupted. “We have no idea
who
these people are and
what part they played in Liza’s death. It’s just too dangerous for you to go
there alone.”

He took a deep
breath and waited for her argument.

She thought about
it, thought about arguing that she was a professional and could handle things.
She thought about how many times as a Chicago police officer she’d knocked on
doors far more dangerous than this one potentially was. She thought about the
fact that she would have to wait for forty-five minutes before he could even
reach Galena. And then she thought about the pain and worry she’d seen in his
eyes that morning. He wasn’t questioning her abilities. He just needed to
protect her.

“Bradley,” she
finally said.

“Yes, Mary.”

“I’ll call Katie
and let her know we’ll be picking up Clarissa a little late today,” she said.

She heard him
release the breath he’d been holding. “Great,” he replied. “I’ll leave right
away.”

“And Bradley,” she
added.

“Yes?”

“Thank you for
coming with me.”

There was a slight
pause on his end. “Thank you for understanding why I needed to do it.”

She hung up the
phone with a smile in her heart and placed it, carefully, back in the outside
pocket of her purse.

“So, we’ve got
forty-five minutes to kill,” Mary said to Mike. “Pardon the pun. What should we
do?”

Mike glanced up the
street. “Well, Amelia’s been waving at you for the past five minutes,” he
replied. “Maybe she’ll have a suggestion.”

Hurrying down the
street, Mary met her friend in front of her shop. “Hi, what’s up?” Mary asked.

Holding one hand
behind her back, Amelia pulled a keychain from her pocket with her other hand
and held it out to Mary. “Donna stopped by and left this for you. It’s an extra
key,” she said. “She said if you were in town and wanted to stop by her
apartment to see if Liza was there, that would be fine with her.”

“Perfect,” Mary
said, taking the key. “I can go over there now. What great luck. And here my
horoscope told me my luck was going to be bad this week.”

“Well,” Amelia said
with a slight frown and pulling her other hand out from behind her back. “This
is for you, too. I found it on your car.”

Mary looked down at
the small piece of paper in Amelia’s hand. “A ticket?” she exclaimed. “I got a
parking ticket? Well, crap. I never get parking tickets.”

Mike cleared his
throat pointedly.

“Okay, I almost
never get parking tickets,” she amended.

He cleared this throat
one more time.

“Okay,” she sighed,
glancing at Mike. “I hardly ever get parking tickets outside of Freeport.”

Amelia giggled. “Do
you have your very own invisible conscience with you?”

Glancing at Mike
again, Mary grinned. “Yeah, give someone the title of guardian
angel,
and you can’t get away with much,” she teased. “Of
course, he is handy to have around when you get arrested.”

“You got arrested?”
Amelia gasped.

Shrugging, Mary
nodded. “Well, not officially. Mostly I got questioned.”

“About?” Amelia asked.

“I just happened to
mention that I knew someone was dead but no one else knew,” she explained.

“Well, I can see
why that might raise a few eyebrows,” Amelia replied, biting back a smile. “So,
how did you get off?”

“I had a little
inside information about the chief from my guardian angel,” she said. “So, once
she realized he was in the room with us, it wasn’t a far leap for her to
realize the dead guy spoke to me, too.”

“Really?”
Amelia asked, clearly not convinced.

“Okay,” Mary
sighed, rolling her eyes. “The fact that I was married to Bradley probably
helped more.
Professional courtesy and all that.”

“So, the ticket’s
for ten bucks,” Amelia teased, waving the paper under Mary’s nose. “You
gonna
fight it?”

Mary snatched the
ticket from Amelia and stuffed it in her purse. “No, I’ll pay it and consider
it a deal,” she said.

Amelia laughed.
“Maybe you can write it off as a business expense,” she teased.

“You’re not
helping,” Mary said.

Amelia shrugged.
“Hey, it was your horoscope, not mine,” she said.

“I like Amelia,”
Mike said, seated in the passenger seat as they drove up Main Street to Donna’s
apartment. “She’s got a great sense of humor.”

“Says the guy who
didn’t get the ticket,” Mary grumbled good-naturedly.

“Says the person
who didn’t get murdered,” Mike countered.

Mary glanced over
at him, relieved that he was grinning. “Okay, you win,” Mary admitted, pulling
up in front of Donna’s apartment. She looked up to the third floor windows,
hoping to see the little girl’s face there.

“I can’t see her,”
Mike said, peering in the same direction.

“I don’t see her
either,” Mary said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if she stayed away from
windows because she is afraid.”

He looked at her.
“Ready to walk up three flights of stairs?” he asked.

She nodded.
“Ready.”

A few minutes later
they were entering the small apartment. Mary closed the door behind her and
turned towards the small living room where Liza had been the last time she’d
seen her. The room was empty. “Liza,” Mary called softly.
“Liza,
its Mary.
Can you come out and speak with me?”

A soft light
appeared in the corner of the living room. It grew larger until it was the size
of the little girl, and finally, she came into focus a few feet away.

“Hi, Liza,” Mary
said with a smile. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. His name is Mike.”

The child looked up
at the angel and studied him. “I saw you last time,” she said. “You’re not like
the other ones.”

Mike squatted down
so he was closer to her height. “No, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m more like you.
I’m an angel.”

She studied him for
a few more minutes. “Are angels from God?” she asked.

He smiled and
nodded. “Yes, angels are from God.”

Her face darkened,
and she shook her head. “I don’t like you.”

“Why
not?”
Mary asked, surprised.

Liza turned to Mary
and pointed at Mike. “He’s bad. He hates little girls. He hurts little girls.”

Mike shook his
head. “No, sweetheart, I don’t hate little girls,” he said, keeping his voice
calm even though his heart was breaking for her. “I protect little girls.”

“No, you’re from
God, just like the bad man,” she said. “He was from God, too, and he hurt
little girls.”

“The
bad man?”
Mary asked.
“The one who adopted you?”

Liza nodded. “He
told the second mommy he was from God,” she said. “And then he took me and hurt
me.”

“He wasn’t from
God,” Mike said. “He might have said it, but he really wasn’t from God.”

She put her hands
over her ears. “You’re wrong,” she screamed at Mike. “You’re wrong. He was from
God. God took away my mommy and daddy. God took away my next mommy and daddy.
God gave me to the bad man. And the bad man from God hurt me. I hate God.”

“Sweetheart,” Mike
said, moving closer to her.

“No!” she screamed.
“Stay away from me.”

“Mike,” Mary said.

“Yeah, I know,”
Mike said, moving back and disappearing through the door.

Liza watched him
go, and then she slipped her hands from her ears. “Where did he go?” she asked.

“He knew he was
upsetting you,” Mary explained. “So he went outside so you wouldn’t be afraid
anymore.”

She paused for a
moment and stared at the door. Then she turned her little swollen eyes to Mary.
“Is he a bad man, too?” she asked.

Mary sat down on
the edge of the coffee table so she could be a little closer to the child. “No,
Mike is not a bad man,” she said. “He is a good man. He saved a little girl who
was about your age when a bad man was coming to get her.”

“He saved her?” she
asked.

Mary nodded. “Yes,
he did,” she replied. “He’s an angel and he protected her.”

A tiny, translucent
tear slipped down the pale cheek and glittered brightly as the little girl
slowly faded away. Her voice was sad and quivered as she asked her final
question before she disappeared. “Why didn’t God send an angel to save me?”

Mary opened the
door and found Mike on the other side, leaning against the wall. He was staring
off into space, and the sorrow on his face broke Mary’s heart. “She’s gone,”
she said softly. “Why don’t you come back inside?”

Pushing himself
away from the wall, he nodded once and floated in front of her into the apartment.
He didn’t meet her eyes but instead moved away from her to look out the window.
“She was really afraid of me,” he said softly.
“Not just
afraid, but terrified.
I’ve never seen a child so frightened.”

Mary closed the
door softly and leaned against it. “It wasn’t you, Mike. She wasn’t afraid of
you; she was terrified of memories of what happened to her, how she was
murdered,” Mary said. “But I don’t understand what she meant about him being
from God.”

Still staring out
the window, Mike shrugged. “Maybe he was one of those religious zealots who
justify abuse by twisting the words of God,” he said. “Maybe he quoted
scripture to her as he abused her.”

She watched him,
his back straight and his voice laced with anger. She knew that if he was still
a human he would be punching the wall to release some of the anger and
frustration. “We’ll find out, Mike,” she said. “We’ll find out
who
he is and what he did, and he’ll be punished.”

He sighed and
leaned forward, his head against the window frame. “I heard her,” he said, his
voice a mere whisper. “And I don’t know how to answer her question.”

“Which question?”
Mary asked.

He turned, and the
bleakness in his eyes almost frightened her. “Why didn’t God send an angel to
save her?” he
asked,
his voice thick with emotion.
“Why, Mary? Do you know the answer to that?”

She shook her head.
“No, I don’t,” she said, walking over to him. “I often ask myself that
question, too. Why did a beautiful little girl die of cancer? Why did the young
soldier get killed in an explosion? Why did the young mother die in a car
accident? What about all of those innocent victims who are shot every day in
the streets of our country? Why didn’t God step in and save them all?”

 
“And what do you do when you ask those
questions and don’t have an answer?” he asked.

She paused for a
moment to think about her answer. She met his eyes and then looked away,
through the window at the street below. “I can only remember a little bit about
when I died,” she said softly. “I remember that all the pain stopped. I
remember this intense feeling of peace and well-being. I moved forward, toward
this bright light that didn’t hurt my eyes. It felt warm and welcoming, like
coming back home after a long trip.”

She turned to him.
“Then I was given a choice,” she said. “I really wanted to continue. I really
wanted to go there to the light. But, for a quick instant, I saw my family in
the waiting room. I saw my father’s face, drawn and pale. I saw my mother
weeping in his arms. I saw Sean, his jaw clenched and his hands clamped
together to control his emotions. And I knew, no matter what I wanted, I needed
to go back.”

“What does this
have to do with Liza’s question?” he asked, moving away from the window and
walking across the room. “You were an adult. You had a choice. You got to go
back home.”

“Mike, when I was
coming back to earth, to my family,” Mary explained gently, tears forming in
her eyes, “I realized that it wasn’t home. Home was behind me. And even though
it broke my heart to come back, I knew someday I’d return.”

She took a deep
breath and wiped her eyes. “When I ask myself that question, how could God let
those people die? I remember that he didn’t let them die. He just brought them
home.”

He just stared at
her for a moment, silent tears slipping down his cheeks. “You’re right. I’d
forgotten how I felt. I was so concerned about getting back down here to help
you, asking for permission to be a guardian
angel, that I
really didn’t think about my surroundings,
” he said quietly. “But I
remember it felt like home when I finally crossed over.”

“I always wondered
how you found the strength to leave,” she said. “I never even made it all the
way to the light, and I didn’t want to return. But you were there.”

“I think it’s
different for an angel,” he replied thoughtfully. “We’re still linked to the
light, even though we’re here. I didn’t have to give up as much as you did.”

“I’m glad you’re
here, Mike,” she said. “You are the angel that God sent to help Liza.”

He looked
surprised, and then a small smile formed on his lips. “We need to find this guy
so Liza can finally go home,” he said.

“Yes, we do,” she
agreed, smiling back at him. “And we will.”