The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [99]
Weaving quickly through traffic, Annie urged herself to take a wry Claudette look at the last few days. So what if—as seemed quite possible—this lunatic misadventure did not provide her with her real mother’s real name? Be fair, what had been lost from her life that had been there yesterday morning? She’d missed a birthday party, that’s all, and she had never really liked her birthday parties anyhow, not after the one when her father had carried her around a roomful of adult strangers who had laughed too loudly too close to her face and had smelled of alcohol.
So what? Her family, her friends, would all still be there in Emerald when she returned from Miami. Meanwhile, wasn’t it a revelation that she could spend three whole hours with Brad Hopper, whom she was divorcing, without crying her eyes out or wanting to murder him? Wasn’t it in fact pleasant that here she was in Miami skating along beside the white beach and blue sea? As Clark joked when she fell off her bike once, “Try again. Life goes on. Don’t you believe in re-cycling?”
Maybe when this was over, she could just sit in Emerald for a while, visiting with Sam and Clark, with D. K., with Georgette and other friends she hadn’t seen for ages. She could take the time to let life go on.
Pulling down her Navy cap, Annie ducked her head and doubled her speed. As she skated into a neighborhood of shady streets, she found herself on a familiar block; pastel stucco houses with tall skinny palms and wide twisted banyans lined a curving flat avenue. When her cell phone sang at her, she sat on the curb to answer it. She heard a female voice she didn’t recognize.
“Is this Lt. Anne Goode?”
“This is Annie Goode, yes? Who is this please?”
The woman had a low smoky voice. “You’re Jack Peregrine’s daughter? In Emerald, North Carolina?”
Annie was so surprised she answered the question. “Yes, but I’m in Miami now. Who is this?”
“Don’t let Jack drag you into something that can get you both in real trouble.” The call abruptly ended.
“What the hell?” Annie said aloud. On her cell phone the incoming call was listed as “Private.” Who had it been? Some enemy of her father’s, or some friend? Someone who wanted to steal the courier case, or to whom the case actually belonged? Was it the same person who had arranged to have Jack Peregrine beaten bloody in the Royal Coach Motel? If so, why warn Annie? She would ask Trevor if there were some way to discover the number for a “Private” incoming call.
Looking across the intersection, she recognized the low pink stucco building with its logo in frosted glass—a sun on a horizon line. She’d unknowingly made her way back to “Golden Days,” the extended care facility for “active living,” where earlier Miss Napp had called security on her.
Suddenly she heard a car braking and then the violent screech of skidding tires. She spun around in time to see a pedestrian walk right into the path of a slow-moving large white sedan. The car’s front fender hit the man and he rolled off the hood like a doll made of rags. His cloth knapsack flew into the air. He lay motionless in the gutter.
Out of the big car scooted a tan elderly woman, whose hair and slacks and sleeveless nylon sweater were as pink as her Oldsmobile was white. With a groan the woman bent down to her victim. Quickly, Annie skated across the street and knelt beside the prostrate man. “Don’t move him,” Annie said to the woman.
“I didn’t! Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so.” There was no blood on the man and Annie could feel him breathing. Then his eyelid fluttered and one large rather sweet black eye blinked at her.
The woman grabbed her arm. “He’s dead.”
Gently Annie lifted the victim’s eyelid with her fingers; a round black eye stared curiously back at her. She turned to the terrified driver. “He’s not dead.”
The prostrate victim was a slender disheveled Hispanic man, not much older than Annie herself, with long rich black hair, come