Jubilee's Journey (The Wyattsville Series) (37 page)

Olivia’s lips curled. “Well, then, Jubilee is welcome to stay here.”

“Here?” The shock in Mahoney’s voice was apparent.

She nodded. “It’s the most sensible solution. You see how well the children get along, and I’ve already fixed up a little nook where she can—”

“Olivia, stop right there. I can’t leave Jubilee with you. If she’s not with family, she has to be turned over to the child welfare department. It’s the law.”

“Nonsense,” Olivia argued. “This is exactly the same situation we had with Ethan Allen, and there was no law that said I couldn’t keep him.”

“It isn’t the same. Ethan Allen was related to you.” 

“Not really,” Olivia said. “I’d never even heard of the boy before he showed up here. I was almost a total stranger.”

“His grandfather was your husband, so there was a legal relationship.”

“Well, that just doesn’t make sense. If Anita doesn’t want the child and I’m willing to take her…”

Although Mahoney could easily sympathize with the situation as it now stood, he had a responsibility to abide by what the law mandated. There might be a certain amount of give and take, but it only stretched so far. Move beyond that point, and something would snap.

They spent close to twenty minutes going back and forth, arguing the fine points of what could or could not be considered a legal relationship. In the end, Olivia had to accept that she had no ground to stand on.

“I’ve given Anita a few days to rethink what she wants to do,” Mahoney said. “Until then Jubilee can stay here.”

A few days seemed like such a small amount of time. They’d already had thirteen days together, and now there were just a few more.
How sad,
Olivia thought. She counted the hours Ethan Allen would have to spend with Jubilee—how many more poker games he’d let her win, how many peanut butter sandwiches… Then she caught something that shed a new light on the situation.

“I thought my bringing Jubilee with me might change Anita’s way of thinking,” Mahoney said. “The girl is her sister’s child, so she’s got to feel something.”

Olivia’s face brightened. She knew she’d found the opportunity she’d been looking for. “That’s a wonderful idea,” she replied.

The Awakening

O
n Wednesday morning Carmella Klaussner did exactly as she had been doing for the past two weeks. She climbed out of bed, went down on her knees, and prayed. “Please, God, save my Sidney. Make today the day he opens his eyes.”

Those were the same words she repeated every morning, but each day she added something, an extra pledge or promise that might entice God to answer her prayer.

“Return my Sidney to me,” she said, “and from this day forth I’ll care for the orphans and provide shelter for the homeless.”

Carmella offered those pledges with an open heart and paid no heed to the fact that Wyattsville had no orphans, no homeless, and no soup kitchen in need of food. The Saint Peter’s Thrift Shop was the only thing Wyattsville had to offer when it came to charitable organizations.

It was on the sixth day that Carmella had begun adding an extra request to each and every prayer. It was the same every time. Once she’d pleaded for Sidney’s life and vowed to do good deeds she added, “And, Father, in the name of all that’s righteous and merciful, punish those who did this to my Sidney.” On several occasions she detailed the punishment she deemed most appropriate. At times when she was feeling benevolent the punishment was simply living with the guilt of their sins, but when she was angriest it was death.

Three days earlier Carmella watched the detectives take the boy from the hospital in handcuffs and felt God was at long last answering her prayers. But that was three days ago, and since then nothing else had changed. The respirator still whooshed air in and out of Sidney’s lungs, the monitors continued to count his heartbeats.  Yet Sidney’s eyes remained closed.

On Monday when the
Wyattsville Daily
announced Paul’s arrest, Carmella bought two copies of the newspaper. She kept one copy at home to serve as a reminder of answered prayers. The second copy she took to the hospital so when Sidney awoke she could prove to him justice had been served.

But two weeks of hoping and praying had taken its toll on Carmella, and she felt weary as a woman who’d given birth to quintuplets. When the alarm buzzed at six-thirty Wednesday morning, she simply could not pull herself from the bed. Carmella silenced the alarm and buried the clock in the bottom drawer of the nightstand.

When Sidney Klaussner’s eyes fluttered open, he was alone in the room. Groggy and dazed, he tried to remember when he had fallen asleep. Then he heard the machines and felt the weight of tape against his forearm. Slowly he began to realize this was not home. He was not lying in his own comfortable bed. He was lying on something that moved. He could feel the pressure of swells rising and falling beneath him. He tried to call out, and only an indistinguishable grunt came from his lips. Fear grabbed Sidney by the throat, and when he lifted his hand to his face he felt the tube. That’s when his heart began pounding against his chest, hammering to be free of whatever prison this was.

Barbara Walsh was on duty Wednesday morning, and when Sidney’s heart monitor beeped its warning she went flying into his room.

“Good Lord, you’re awake!”

Within minutes Sidney’s room was crowded with nurses and doctors.

In the frenzy of explaining to Sidney that he’d been shot and was now in the hospital, no one thought to telephone Carmella.

Twenty minutes after he opened his eyes, Carmella pushed the entrance button for the ICU ward and spotted a number of nurses coming and going from Sidney’s room.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed and took off running. Circling around an orderly she’d never before met, Carmella pushed her way into the room. Before she could squeeze past the crowd of nurses hovering over the bed, she realized the respirator was no longer whooshing.

“Sidneeeeeey!” she screamed and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

When she came to, Carmella was sitting in the chair on the far side of Sidney’s room and Barbara Walsh was holding a cool cloth to her head.

“You fainted,” Barbara explained. “Nothing’s wrong. It was simply the stress of all you’ve been through and the shock of…” Her words droned on, but Carmella heard nothing else. She was looking at Sidney and trying to believe that what she was seeing was not another dream but the actual answer to all her prayers.

Sidney was sitting up and the tracheostomy tube that had been taped to his face was gone. He was neither smiling nor frowning but had a look of confusion stretched the full width of his face. Carmella waved Barbara off, then rose and wobbled across the room to stand beside the bed.

“Oh, Sidney,” she said, “you have no idea how worried I’ve been.”

“Worried?” he repeated quizzically.

She nodded. “I thought you might never wake up. I thought—” 

Still not fully comprehending the situation, Sidney said, “I was asleep.”

Carmella leaned over and allowed the full weight of her bosom to settle on his chest. For several minutes she remained in that position, her body blending with his, her finger tracing the edge of his face, her lips whispering how terrified she’d been at the thought of losing him. When a spasm grabbed hold of her lower back, she stood and lifted his hand into hers.

One by one she kissed his fingertips; then she held his hand to her chest and placed it in a spot where he could feel her heartbeat. “I love you, Sidney,” she said. “Love you more than life itself. If you were to die, I’d surely follow you to the grave.”

Sidney wrinkled his brow and asked, “How long was I asleep?”

“Asleep? You weren’t asleep, you were in a coma.”

“Coma?”

“Yes. After they removed the bullets—”

“What bullets?”

“You were shot. Don’t you remember?”

Her question went without an answer, and with each new revelation Sidney appeared more and more confused.

Carmella began at the beginning. She talked of how it had been a perfectly normal Wednesday morning; they’d had breakfast together and he’d gone off to open the store.

“An hour later,” she said, “I got a call saying you’d been shot.” She told him of the horror she’d felt as the ambulance sped crosstown toward the hospital. “I didn’t know if you’d live or die.”

Sidney gave a slight smile. “I’m too ornery to die,” he said. “Seems you’d know that.”

As she continued to tell the story, bits and pieces became familiar to Sidney. Not the whole picture, just tiny snippets. He remembered Martha Tillinger walking into the store and asking where the cake mixes were but little beyond that.

Before Carmella got to the part about Sidney shooting one of the would-be robbers, Barbara Walsh, who’d been in and out of the room numerous times, pulled her aside and suggested she switch to another subject. “When a person’s been through such a trauma, it’s not a good thing to keep reminding them of it.”

Carmella, who wanted nothing more than her husband’s return to health, did as suggested. She began talking about how she couldn’t wait for Sidney to come home.

“We’ll take a vacation,” she said. “Maybe drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains, or maybe spend a few weeks in Ocean City. Agnes Shapiro went there and she said it’s wonderful. Lots to do…”

As the minutes of the day ticked by, Carmella rambled on. She spoke of vacations, planting spring flowers, Crystal Otto’s new baby, and dozens of other things. From time to time Sidney smiled, but most of the time he just listened, his face expressionless. When he dozed off, Carmella kept watch over him. She waited for each rise and fall of his chest to make certain his breath was steady and even. Long after the final visitor’s bell had chimed, Carmella was still sitting beside Sidney.

The Final Shot

T
om Wilson was the newest detective on the Pittsburgh police force. He was full of energy and enthusiasm, and after spending five years as a beat cop he knew what life on the street was like. He didn’t just know what it was like; he was determined to make it better. While Charlie, his partner and a twenty-year veteran on the squad, was ready to write off Butch Wheeler’s murder as something that was justified anyway, Tom was not. He spent two weeks gathering evidence, pulling together the ballistic reports, and talking to everyone who’d ever known Butch. When the finger of guilt pointed to Hurt McAdams, Tom began interviewing everyone who had ever known Hurt, including the elderly Kubick who lived next door to the house where Hurt grew up.

“Sure I seen him,” Kubick said. “He came looking for his daddy.”

“How long ago?” Tom asked.

“A week, two maybe.”

Kubick explained that George McAdams had moved off to some place in Florida, but by now he had no notion of where that someplace might be.

“You tell that to Hurt?” Tom asked.

Kubick nodded.

Tom’s next visit was to the Camp Hill Correctional Institute. After that Tom knew his hunch was right. There was no longer any question about it. Hurt McAdams was the one who put a bullet in Butch Wheeler’s head.

That evening an All-Points Bulletin went out. It said Hurt McAdams was armed and dangerous. The bulletin said McAdams was most likely seeking shelter in Florida with his father. The whereabouts of the father were unknown.

When the bulletin arrived in Miami Beach, it sat buried beneath a stack of other killers, kidnappers, and wife-beaters, all supposedly headed south.