Alex Kava - The Soul Catcher

“This is starting to sound too easy. If Everett’s boys are involved in the murders, why would Everett allow them to be photographed?”

“Maybe he didn’t know they were.”

“How did Maggie manage to get these photos from Garrison?”

Tully shook his head, and Gwen could see a slight smile. “Not sure, and I don’t even want to know.”

Gwen laughed. “So I gather you already know my good friend quite well.”

“Let me just say that sometimes she’s a little more willing than I am to skip over procedure.”

“You’re a by-the-book kind of guy?”

“Yeah, I try to be. Something wrong with that?”

“I didn’t say there was.”

He looked over at her as if he expected more of an explanation, then he said, “It sounded like you wanted to attach a but to that.”

“No, not at all. I was just wondering how last night played into your rules-and-procedure book.”

He actually turned a slight shade of red and quickly looked away. Gwen followed his lead and looked in the other direction, out the window. Oh, smooth move, Patterson, she scolded herself. Who would ever guess she had a doctorate in psychology.

“I suppose we should talk about last night,” he finally said.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” she found herself saying, all the while thinking that yes, they did. What was wrong with her? “I just don’t want it to get in the way of us working together.”

God, how pathetic. Where did she come up with this stuff? She should stop and yet she found herself continuing. “It was simply the crisis.”

He was looking at her, waiting. She didn’t think she had to explain it to him, but obviously she would. “A crisis can often make people act in a way they might not normally act.”

“We weren’t in the middle of a crisis then.”

“No, of course not. It doesn’t have to be during the crisis. It’s the effect of the crisis.”

He went back to his computer and punched at a couple of keys to close a file he had just opened. Without looking up at her, he said, “Sounds like you’d rather we pretend it didn’t happen.”

She glanced at him, looking for some sign of what he wanted. But with the computer screen to distract him, he kept his eyes ahead, now watching the flight attendant’s serving cart coming down the aisle as if he couldn’t wait for his beverage and package of pretzels.

“Look, Tully, I have to admit-” She stopped herself, something only now occurring to her. “Should I be calling you R.J.? And what does R.J. stand for?”

He grimaced. Another wrong thing to say. Oh, she was definitely good at this.

“All my friends call me Tully.”

She waited, then realized that was all she was getting. So much for intimacy. Last night had been about sex and nothing more. Why did that suddenly surprise her? Wasn’t that all it had been to her? Thank God for Morrelli’s interruption.

“What were you going to admit?” he asked, looking over at her. “You started to say that you had to admit something?”

“Just that I had to admit I wasn’t quite sure what to call you. That’s all,” she said, while some inner voice told her what a good liar she was.

But how could she admit that last night had been surprising and incredible and then say, So let’s forget it, okay? She had managed to keep her life uncomplicated for years now. Seemed a shame to throw all that away for one surprisingly pleasant encounter.

“So we chalk it up to the crisis of the moment,” Tully said with a casual shrug, not able to hide just a hint of…a hint of what? Disappointment? Sarcasm?

“Yes. I think it’s best that we do that,” she told him.

She imagined Freud would have a perfect word for what she was doing, for what she was telling herself, for how she was handling this situation. Although she couldn’t quite imagine Freud actually saying the word “bullshit” out loud.

This time Maggie remembered to exit I-95 before she reached the turnpike. She ended up on Jefferson Davis Highway, and as she crossed the James River she realized she would probably need to do some backtracking to get to her mother’s. Two trips in two days-she should be able to do this without a hitch. After all, she had spent her adolescent years here until she left for good to go to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Yet this city had never felt like home. At that point in her life, no place on earth would have felt like home. No place, that is, without her father.

After his death, Maggie had never understood why her mother insisted they move from Green Bay to Richmond. Why wouldn’t they want to stay in their home surrounded by people who knew and loved them, comforted by the memories? Unless, of course, there had been an affair and gossip, rumors…No, it had to be a lie. She wouldn’t allow the thought, wouldn’t dignify it with…Except why had they moved? Had her mother ever given her a reason?

Kathleen O’Dell had plopped them down in the middle of a strange and unfamiliar place, a place she had never visited nor even heard of before. And her mother’s only explanation…What? What had it been? Something about a fresh start, a new beginning. Right. A fresh start after every failed suicide attempt. So many of them Maggie had stopped counting.

But here she was again, trying to rescue her mother once more.

She pulled up in front of her mother’s apartment building, driving around the huge white paneled truck that took up five prime parking spaces. Several men were loading the truck with furniture while a small gray-haired man propped open the apartment building’s security door. So much for security.

It wasn’t until Maggie walked up the front sidewalk and past the truck that she recognized the flowered love seat the men were shoving into the back. Immediately, she glanced up at her mother’s second-floor apartment and noticed all the curtains gone from the windows. The stab of panic caught her off guard.

“Excuse me.” She stopped the small gray-haired man who seemed to be supervising the move. “I recognize some of these items. What’s going on?”

“Mrs. O’Dell is selling out.”

“You mean moving out?”

“Well, I’m sure she’s moving someplace else, but no, I meant selling out.”

The confusion must have shown on her face, because he went on to explain, “I’m Frank Bartle.” He dug into his jacket pocket and handed her a business card. “Al and Frank’s Antiques and Secondhand Treasures. We’re down on Kirby. If you see something here you like, we’ll have it ready to sell next week.”

“But I don’t understand why she would sell everything. I guess I should go up and ask her myself, rather than bother you.”

“’Fraid you won’t be able to do that.”

“I promise I won’t get in your men’s way.” She smiled and started for the door.

“No, I just meant that she’s not there.”

Now Maggie felt a clammy chill. “Where is she?”

“Don’t know. I was gonna buy a few of her antiques. You know some trinkets, a few figurines and things like that. She gave me a call early this morning and asked if I wanted the whole lot.”

Maggie leaned against the doorjamb. “Where did she go?”

“Don’t know.”

“But she must have left you a forwarding address.”

“Nope.”

“What about payment?”

“I came over this morning. Gave her an estimate and then a check. She gave me a key. Said to hand it in to the landlady when we’re through.”

How could all this happen in less than twenty-four hours? And what had happened to make her mother do this? Or had she planned it and just didn’t tell Maggie? Yesterday there had been quite a few boxes packed and stacked. But why make a production of Thanksgiving dinner if she hadn’t planned on being here? What the hell was going on?