The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [30]
She felt in the jacket’s zipped pockets and in one of them she found an extremely large emerald on a thin chain.
Clark said, “Well, Annie, looks like your dad packed a rod and wore women’s jewelry.”
Sam told him to stop. “It’s no time to joke.”
Clark shrugged. “Tell me when.”
Sam took the emerald to the light. “Jesus Christ!” she said again.
Annie felt carefully around the lining of the jacket; then picking up a letter opener from the table, she ripped apart its frayed silk. Long expired credit cards, drivers’ licenses, passports, all with her father’s photo but with different names, fell out onto the hall carpet. Hundred-dollar bills fell out too, fifteen of them, loose.
“Looks real.” Clark felt the money.
Annie shuffled through a stack of business cards, all different.
Under a lamp’s light, Sam examined the green rectangular gem. “There’s no way this isn’t an emerald.” She showed the stone to Annie and Clark. “You think Kim’s theory could have been true? Somehow Jack dug up a bunch of precious stones in the yard?”
Annie sneered. No, it wasn’t true, no truer than her father’s endless promises to make her a queen.
Clark noted with a wry noise that it was no wonder Jack wanted his jacket back, but why had he waited so long to get in touch?
Feeling carefully inside the jacket’s lining, Annie found a folded sheet of notepaper from a Hotel Dorado in South Beach, Miami, Florida. On it was written 678STNX211. She made a derisive noise that was an unconscious imitation of Clark’s. “Dad wants whatever these numbers are to. It’s like a computer password, or bank account, or something. He was always writing numbers down; he could never remember them.”
Sam turned the pink baseball cap around, inside out, examining it. She pointed at the faded ink scribble inside the small hatband. “Hang on. I remember seeing something written in here too. Look.”
Annie examined the pale ink marks in the light: 362484070N. She was still studying the scribbled sequence when her cell phone rang.
She was surprised by the jolt she felt, like a scramble out of sleep, like a plane in a graveyard spiral, disoriented. The thought raced through her that someone on the phone was going to tell her that her father was dead.
But a familiar voice jumped in and out of static. “Babe? That you, A? A? Can you hear me?”
“Brad?…Brad?”
“Yeah, babe. Happy birthday.” It was her almost ex-husband Brad Hopper, who phoned her every few weeks, ostensibly to settle specifics about their divorce but actually to urge her to call it off.
“Brad. Can we talk later? You’re breaking up and I’m busy now.”
“You’re always busy, A.” He started quickly singing, “Happy birthday to you…”
“Brad—”
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…Guess what you’re getting as a present? Me. I’m on my way to Emerald.”
Chapter 10
No Time for Love
Outside the wind shrieked and there was more static in the connection. “You hear me, A?” He had always called her “A,” as if his saying “Annie” would waste her time. “So, what are you so busy with? Busy-ness, that was one of our problems.”
“‘Our problems,’ not my problem?” She muttered, “You must be in therapy.”
Brad laughed just a little too long to mean it. “Hey, that’s your buddy Georgette’s thing, not mine. What happened to your party tonight?”
“How’d you even know about it?”
“Georgette.”
Annie glared out the window in the direction of the Nickerson house, where more lights were now coming on. “Brad, I wish you’d stop calling Georgette or you’d marry her or something.”
“No, you don’t,” her almost-ex said with his oddly rapid Georgia accent. “You want you and me to get back together and that’s why, deep down, A, you don’t want a divorce.”
“Really?” She gave him her well-known raised eyebrow, knowing that although he couldn’t see it, he could sense it.
“Really,” he agreed. “That’s why the paperwork’s taking so long.”
She sighed. “The paperwork’s taking