Night Shift
Page 58

“I like you,” Quinn said directly. “And I have a suspicion that in private, you work magic that we don’t even imagine.”
Fiji smiled. “You’re right. I do. No double entendre.”
“You’re not going to give me a hint about Olivia? About your problems?”
“Nope. Not mine to tell.”
“So I’ll have to approach Olivia herself.” He shook his head.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” she said. She stood, which was a pretty clear signal for him to leave.
He loped back to the hotel, not quite suppressing a smile. The kiss had been rewarding. It’s been too long since I had a good companion, Quinn thought.
Diederik was on the brink of going out on his own.
In view of that realization, his kiss with Fiji took on a much more interesting cast.
 
 
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Olivia said, “Telling him I’m married is sure to flush them out.”
“And that’s what you want?” Lemuel was reading the translation Christine had worked so hard on. He knew what Olivia was telling him was important to her (and therefore to him) personally, but he was pretty sure the text was even more important. At least, in the Midnight universe, and just at this moment.
“I’m tired of this underhand game. I want to know who the players are and who’s backing them.” Olivia was exercising as she talked, and the flexing of her limber body was doing nothing to aid Lemuel’s concentration. Since she’d slept extra during the day, she had cleared a space for stretching in the herd of chairs occupying the pawnshop’s center. Lemuel watched from the high stool behind the counter, the handwritten translation before him.
He tore his gaze from the papers to look at Olivia. “If your father has tracked you down to watch you, he’s done nothing to make you think he will harm you. The Reeds are acting on his behalf? They haven’t raised a finger against you. In the past three years, there’s been many a time they could have acted against you.”
Olivia paused in her squats. “Okay, I concede that.”
“The more serious threat, if I’m understanding you correctly, is that your father’s right-hand man is watching you separately and unknown to your father.”
She nodded vigorously as she began doing lunges. “He was responsible for the man who tried to grab me when I was breaking into the Goldthorpe house.”
“Yes, you heard him say the name over his . . . walkie-talkie?”
“Cell phone. Yes, I did.”
“So he seems bent on capturing you. However, we haven’t seen his agents here.”
“One of them is responsible for the hotel.”
“But which one?”
“My dad owns the company that renovated the hotel. Manfred traced it back, and back, until he got to the source. Of course, he didn’t know that the president of the company was my dad, whose name is Nicholas Wicklow.”
This was the first time that Lemuel had heard her father’s name. “Thanks for trusting me with it,” he said. “I wondered if you would.”
“My real name,” she said, with air of someone doing a very necessary but distasteful task, “is Melanie Horton Wicklow.”
“No, that’s your birth name,” Lemuel said. “Your real name is Olivia Charity.”
She smiled at him, and his heart felt at ease. “Though she always made me call her Mother, my stepmother’s name was Tiffany, and I hope she never rests in peace.”
“What about your real mother—your biological mother, as they say now?”
“I didn’t know her very well. Her name was Cara,” Olivia said. “From the pictures, I look like her. Maybe another reason for Mo— Tiffany to do what she did.”
“But you’re uncertain about your father’s knowledge of her abuse.”
“I waver back and forth,” Olivia said, almost reluctantly. “Now I feel he didn’t. But I also think you don’t know something like that if you aren’t paying attention.”
“Yes,” Lemuel agreed.
Olivia sat on the floor cross-legged bent forward and stood on her hands, her legs still crossed. Lemuel eyed her with admiration and a touch of exasperation. “Woman,” he said, “we have to talk.”
“I thought we were.”
“We have to talk about another topic, as interesting as I find this rare conversation about your family.”
Olivia rolled back into a sitting stance and looked up at him, her eyebrows raised in query. “What is it, Lemuel?”
“We must call the town together,” he said. “I think we are about to be killed.”
Her phone rang.
“Olivia,” said Manfred. “We have to have a town meeting. Sylvester’s forty-eight hours are up.”
 
 
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The ground floor of Midnight Pawn was far larger than it appeared from the outside. The bare boards of the old floor creaked as the people of Midnight assembled and chose seats. Part of the fun of gathering in the pawnshop was trying out the eccentric assembly of chairs that had accumulated over the years.
But those coming into the pawnshop were somber, in no mood for fun. Bobo descended from his apartment as rumpled as if he’d already gone to bed, though it was only nine o’clock. When Fiji arrived, she looked exasperated. She’d been in the middle of practicing something, Lemuel deduced, from the stained bib apron still covering her T-shirt and jeans. Also, she smelled like sage.
Manfred entered and took a seat, but he didn’t greet anyone. He sat staring down at his hands as if he had something very much on his mind. Diederik left work to run over to the meeting. He smelled of Marina Desoto. Quinn came with him. No one objected to his presence. It seemed right.
Chuy and Joe sat side by side, holding hands, Lemuel noticed. It was unusual for them to display affection in public.
Olivia had told Lemuel more than once that she didn’t understand how he could be so tolerant of other people’s sex lives and reticent about his own with her. Lemuel thought, I have always liked privacy for myself. And his strongest emotions were personal emotions, saved to be savored between himself and one other person.
With no fanfare or tentativeness, Sylvester Ravenwing slid silently through the door and took his seat among them. He sat by Manfred. Ravenwing nodded to Lemuel. They had met once, both out on a stormy night. Lemuel didn’t challenge the newcomer’s right to be at the meeting. He was definitely a Midnighter. Chuy and Joe, however, stared at Sylvester Ravenwing with some suspicion.