The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [22]
Chapter 7
The Smiling Lieutenant
Racing the storm home to Pilgrim’s Rest in her convertible Porsche, Annie outdrove the memories that had unexpectedly jumped out at her because of Miami Detective Daniel Hart’s phone call.
Thunder rolled across the tobacco fields and a fat drop of rain splashed her knuckles as she downshifted to turn onto the gravel road that wound to the top of River Hill. Speeding up the drive, she parked efficiently in the open barn.
Above the porch of Pilgrim’s Rest a banner flapped loudly from the overhang, its letters spelling Happy Birthday Annie. 26!!!
Aunt Sam, tall and nutmeg-tan, ran onto the porch. The storm blew the door from her hand, slapping it against the house. Sam’s cropped hair was prematurely white now, but she still played tennis every day and she still looked trim in her shorts and purple T-shirt with the logo of her movie rental store Now Voyager across it. She was waving a FedEx envelope. Annie had the irrational feeling that her aunt was gesturing “Back up,” as if she were trying to warn her to turn around.
Clark’s Volvo drove slowly into view behind her. He backed into the barn beside the Porsche and emerged carrying the two large plant cones. “You win,” he called. “You beat me.”
Malpy ran into the yard from the side of the house and raced in circles around Annie. Wind blew back the Maltese’s white fur from his face.
Sam, running toward them, stopped suddenly. Then she shouted, “Phone,” turned around, and hurried back inside the house.
“Gonna let loose!” Clark yelled. As if to prove his point, rain poured suddenly down; a twisting gust yanked his hat off and spun it like a top across the yard. Dropping the cones, the long-legged doctor loped after it. Up on the porch steps, he shook his legs to unstick his rain-soaked khaki trousers. Behind him, his little white dog shook his short wet legs too.
“Hi Malpy.” Annie kissed the Maltese. “Teddy still bossing you around?”
Clark said, “Bosses everybody.” The Shih Tzu (who’d been chosen for Annie because they were the longest-lived of dogs) was now nearly twenty, blind, arthritic, self-important as ever; these days, Clark said, she never left the velvet poof in her pagoda except to reassert her supremacy over Malpy.
Annie stood with her uncle on the porch, looking out at the rain. On the horizon a black mass of clouds tinged with an eerie green twisted and swirled off to the east, like an old satin cloak dragged across the sky.
Clark rubbed water off his sandy hair. “Actually I got here only two minutes after you did. Just goes to show.”
“I had to pull off the road for a phone call. A weird cop from Miami, looking for Dad. I told him I had no idea.”
Clark nodded thoughtfully. “Why’d he call you?”
She shrugged. “Exactly.”
“You bring your cat?”
She told him that her friend Trevor was taking care of Amy Johnson back in Chesapeake Cove.
“That’s good.” Clark wiped his glasses on his shirt. “I just don’t see why you never ask that fellow down to meet us. Plenty of room at Pilgrim’s Rest.” Trevor, her condominium neighbor, was a single man her age.
“He wouldn’t take the time. Workaholic.”
Clark shrugged excessively and pointed at her.
“Don’t start,” she warned. She pointed at the house next door. “But Georgette would like Trevor.” Annie had been trying to fix up Georgette since high school.
Georgette now lived alone with a Siamese cat named Pitti Sing; her mother Kim had moved recently to a golf community in Southern Pines. Clark