The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [24]
The porch door slapped again, loudly, flung against the house by the strong wind. Clark pulled it shut. “Sam and Georgette have been working on your party for a week. But we better cancel. This could be the big one. A real twister.”
“That’s what you always say.” Annie pulled her aunt closer. “Okay, Sam, what’s the problem? Something’s wrong with you, and it’s not my birthday party getting rained out. What’s this about?”
Frowning, Sam put her hands on Annie’s shoulders. “It’s Jack.”
“What’s he done now?”
“He wants you to come to St. Louis right away, Annie. He’s dying.”
Chapter 8
The Man from Yesterday
The storm had darkened the sky and in the hall Annie had to turn on a light. Carefully she read the small grubby wrinkled sheet of writing paper that was all there was in the FedEx envelope. Its letterhead showed a gold sun either rising or setting on a gold horizon line. Below the sun was an address: Golden Days Center for Active Living on Ficus Avenue in Miami, Florida. The penciled handwriting slanting up across the note was unsteady and smeared.
Annie,
Meet me in St. Louis where we stayed before. Fly the King. Crucial. Sam says she kept my flight jacket. I need it. Did you hang onto your pink cap? Bring it. I hear you’re brilliant and beautiful. Always were. If something happens to me, remember, Queen, King, Sam. I love you. Come fast.
Dad (Jack Peregrine)
PS Lindbergh
Nothing else was written under PS. Instead, pinned to the paper by the minuscule hook of a fuzzy dry fishing fly was a small key. A key to what, she had no idea, although it looked like a file cabinet or maybe a lawnmower key.
For a long time, Annie stood there in the hall of the house, turning the letter in her hands, caught between rage and distress. A dozen helium Happy Birthday! balloons floated on the ceiling.
Wet through, Clark and Sam returned from the yard, where they’d done what they could to protect their gardens from the storm—stake the hollyhocks, secure the cone protectors over the roses, wrap the peonies and shrubs and borders. Malpy shook rain at Teddy, who growled at him.
Sam, running a towel through her short hair, watched Annie.
Her niece held out the FedEx. “And this was it?”
Sam dried her arms. “No…Well, yesterday Jack calls and tells me he’s dying and to give you this FedEx that was coming today…I guess I must have told him you always come home on your birthday.”
“Good God, Sam, how much do you talk to Dad? According to this Sergeant Hart, he had my goddamn new cell-phone number written on the back of a photo.” Annie jerked loose her white Navy shirt.
“Sit down, you’re upset,” Sam told her.
“I sure am.”
Sam looked defensive. “I don’t talk to him much. Not all that much. Lately twice a month, he calls.”
“Twice a month?”
“Lately. He just asks me how you are, then he hangs up.” Sam took Jack’s letter from her niece, studied it. “But yesterday, out of the blue, he calls, says how he’s really sick, asks me if you still fly the King of the Sky. Then today this FedEx comes. He says he’s dying, but well, you know Jack.”
“Not very well.” Annie shrugged.
“All I can hope is,” sighed Sam, “he’s lying. He usually is. That’s all I can hope.”
“What’s the fraud they’re after him for?” asked Clark, returning downstairs in dry shorts and T-shirt.
“False pretenses,” said Annie. “Ha-ha.”
“And a Miami detective called you about it?”
She summarized her conversation with the pleasant-voiced Detective Hart about the gold relic, the Queen of the Sea.
Sam gave a sympathetic squeeze to her niece’s arm. “Cuba thinks Jack’s got something that’s real?”
“Stupid Cuba,” Clark muttered. “Sam, you ought to change out of those wet clothes.”
Sam hushed him. “Don’t be a doctor. The other thing is—this guy’s been calling all afternoon—”
“Sergeant Hart?” asked Annie.
“No. Rafael Rook. A weird-talking guy. He’s in Miami too. He says Jack’s really ‘going fast.’”
Annie raised her eyebrow in a way she’d copied from old Claudette Colbert movies. “Jack was always going fast. With Jack, it was always the back of that