the kiss, as far as I was concerned.
It wasn’t until I’d had a few minutes to think it over that I realized the implications of what I’d seen.
I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t paranoid—well, yes, I was, but for perfectly good reasons I now knew—and I wasn’t wrong. I was, however, terrified. I didn’t know why Tony should come back to bother with me. If I had a fortune in gold and was heading to the Caribbean, if I had literally gotten away with murder, why would I ever come back?
The plane leveled out and Brian woke up; he was frowning. “That was strange.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“You want to tell me what was going on?”
Okay, so we weren’t on the same page as far as what actually was strange. “I told you. I saw Tony Markham. In the airport. I had to try and catch him.”
“How could it be him? How would he know you’d be there, at that moment? Just like he couldn’t have known where we were staying to send the flowers—”
“It was him.”
His frown deepened and fixed. “Say it was Tony—”
“Brian, I know what I saw! I tried to wake you, so you could see him, too.”
“You forget; I’ve never met the man in person. Pictures and stories only. Say it was Tony. What would you have done if you’d caught him?”
The question took me aback. It was as reasonable as it was unexpected. “I don’t know. I had to follow him, at least. I probably would have caused a scene, and that would have gotten the cops to investigate, for instance.”
“You almost missed our plane.” Okay, so Brian wasn’t convinced.
“I didn’t. I wasn’t even the last person on board.”
“Emma, you went tearing off after…wait. Do you remember what happened after your grandfather died?”
“Grampa Boyce?” I knew what he was getting at, but wanted him to say it out loud.
“No, your father’s father. Oscar. Do you remember what happened?”
“Remind me.” I pulled out my backpack and began looking for the papers I’d put aside. Brian might slow down if he saw I had work; he wouldn’t if it was just pleasure reading.
“You kept seeing him everywhere. You told me you’d see him on the street, in traffic, at the library. I don’t know what the psychological phenomenon is, if you’ve just got someone on your mind or you’ve got a wish looking to be ful-filled, but I think you’re looking for Tony where he isn’t.”
My grandfather, Oscar Fielding, was one of the dearest people in the world to me. My first and best instructor in archaeology, he literally made me what I am today. And if that includes a certain talent for archaeology, then it also includes a reinforced Fielding stubbornness, too.
Brian sighed. “I think you’re just looking for trouble. I’m worried about you, Em.”
“I’m worried about me, too!” I slapped my papers down on the flimsy tray. “It was Tony! He…dammit, he blew a kiss at me!”
Brian fiddled with the catch on his tray table. “There’s no evidence—”
I could have killed Brian for discounting me so readily. Nothing could have driven me crazier. “I saw him with my own eyes!”
“Is there any problem here?”
We looked up. The cabin attendant sternly regarded us; our argument had risen above the vibration and noise of the engines and we were drawing attention to ourselves.
“No. I’m sorry,” I said. I looked at Brian. “There’s no problem.”
He put on his headphones, cranked the CD player up, and closed his eyes.
Three hours is a very long time to try not to talk to someone.
Monday morning I saw a blue-chino-covered butt sticking out from behind the refrigerator door. It was several sizes too large to be Brian’s, and I absolutely would have forbidden the crack of doom I saw lurking below where the waist-band should have been.
“Who the hell are you?” I said, marching into the kitchen.
Whoever it was started and smacked his head against the inside of the refrigerator. “Aw, jeez! Now look what you made me do. Bump my head.”
The butt backed out and a man unfolded himself from my refrigerator. Shaped like a pear—perhaps a bowling pin would have been more accurate—the guy was maybe fifty. His black hair was longish and unevenly cut so that elflocks stuck out from under his paint store gimme cap. Hooded sweatshirt in navy blue, work boots spattered with every color in the Sherwin-Williams rainbow.
He was chewing on an unlit cigar, one that was unraveled at the end, so that it looked as if it had