LITMIR.BIZ

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give it to you.”

      Paul had smiled. “Annie would give everything away if she could,” he said, and Tom smiled back, as though they shared a secret, as though they both had the privilege of knowing Annie’s true nature.

      He’d brought the ornament home and set it on top of the pine. It was a stylized stained glass angel in an oval frame with a light behind it. The angel’s silver-white robe had that look of liquid silk that was Annie’s trademark. How she was able to do that in glass he would never understand.

      The first time Olivia saw the angel, her face paled and a look of utter defeat came into her eyes. “Do you mind?” he’d asked her.

      “Of course not,” she said, with a truly admirable attempt at sincerity. “It’s lovely.”

      He heard Olivia’s car pull into the garage, directly below the dining room table. Paul felt the scowl grow on his face as the engine sputtered to a stop, and in a moment Olivia came in the front door, pulling her gray scarf from her neck. She glanced into the dining room and shook her head quickly, as if to rid her sleek brown hair of the clingy snowflakes.

      “Hi,” she said quietly. She took off her coat and hung it in the closet by the front door.

      Paul slouched in his chair and let his scowl speak for him, not liking himself much at that moment.

      “Why don’t you have the lights on?” Olivia asked. She hit the wall switch and Annie’s angel sprang to life, the silvery robe seeming to swirl in the glass.

      He didn’t answer, and Olivia moved to the table and sat down across from him. Sylvie, their gray Persian cat, leaped softly to her lap. “I’m sorry to be so late,” Olivia said, her white hands absently stroking Sylvie’s back. “We had a terrible case come in.”

      “Everything’s cold.”

      She glanced at the food, then back at him. Her eyes were beautiful. Green. Dark-lashed. A striking contrast to her white skin. “Paul,” she said, “the case that came in—it was Annie O’Neill.”

      He drew himself up straight in the chair. “What?” he said. “Why?”

      “She was working at the women’s shelter in Manteo tonight and she got in the middle of some gunfire.” “Is she all right?”

      Olivia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Paul. She died.”

      He stood up so quickly she jumped, and the silverware shivered on the table. “Is this some kind of sick joke?” he asked, although he knew Olivia was not the type for jokes, sick or otherwise.

      “The bullet went straight through her heart.”

      The glowing angel taunted him from high above Olivia’s head. “Please tell me you’re lying. Please, Olivia.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      She was so calm. So cool. He hated her just then. “Excuse me,” he said. He turned and started up the stairs, Olivia close on his heels. He pulled his suitcase from the hall closet and carried it into their bedroom, where he tossed it on the bed. Olivia hung back in the doorway as he pulled some of the neatly pressed clothes from his closet and threw them into the suitcase still on their hangers.

      “What are you doing?” Olivia asked.

      “I have to get out of here.” He felt trapped by her voice, by her presence. She could never understand.

      “Paul.” She took a step toward him and then seemed to think better of it, retreating once more to the doorway, gripping the jamb with her fingers. “This is crazy, Paul. You barely knew her. You were infatuated with her. That was your own word, remember? You said it was one-sided, that she was happily married. I met her husband tonight. I had to tell him …”

      Paul leaned toward her. “Shut up,” he said. She took a step back into the hall and he knew he had scared her. He was scaring himself. This was a new and alien Paul Macelli, not the person he’d been for the past thirty-nine years.

      Olivia clasped her hands in front of her, the fingers of her right hand playing with the diamond-studded wedding ring on her left. When she spoke this time, her voice was small. “You can talk about her if you like. I know I said I didn’t want to hear it anymore, but this is different. I’ll listen. Just please don’t leave, Paul. Please.” Her voice cracked and he winced. He wanted to put his hands over his ears to shut her out.

      He stepped into the bathroom and gathered up his toothbrush, his razor, the case for his eyeglasses. He walked back into the bedroom and dumped them on top of the clothes in the suitcase and zipped it closed. Then he looked up at Olivia. Her lips and cheeks were still red from the cold, her eyes blurry behind tears he had no desire to watch her spill. He looked past her, into the hall where he could see the faint light from the tree downstairs.

      “I’m sorry, Olivia.” He pushed past her, moving as quickly as he could, letting his shoes pound the hardwood stairs so he would not be able to hear her if she cried.

      He was usually cautious on the road, but tonight he drove recklessly. The few other cars on the long wide highway that ran the length of the Outer Banks crept along the slick road, but he bore down on the gas pedal of the gray Honda, feeling the car slip out of his control over and over again and not caring. He didn’t even slow down when he passed Annie’s studio in Kill Devil Hills, although he did look over. Sometimes the lights inside the studio would be on at night, creating a vivid montage of stained glass in the front windows. Tonight, though, the glass walls in the front of the building were black and opaque-looking, like pieces of slate.

      The snow silently battered his windshield, and he nearly missed the turn into the parking lot of the Beach Gazette. There was one other car—a blue station wagon—in the lot, and he wasn’t surprised to see it. Gabe Forrester, the Gazette’s police reporter, was already here, probably delighted to have a meaty story to liven up his job.

      Paul didn’t bother to stop in his own office before knocking on Gabe’s door. Gabe was just getting off the phone. “Macelli!” he said. “You look like hell, fella. What are you doing here this time of night?”

      “I heard about that murder over in Manteo and thought maybe I could help you out. Do a color piece on her.” He tensed, hoping that Gabe would look puzzled and tell him he had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe Olivia had made it up after all.

      “Yeah, a big one.” Gabe leaned back in his chair, his broad, square face sober. “Annie O’Neill. You probably don’t know her, being new here and all.”

      “I did a story on her in Seascape.”

      “That’s right. Well, you’re the perfect fella for the color stuff then, I guess.” He shook his head with a rueful smile. “She was one of a kind, I’ll say that. I have to call my wife to tell her and I keep putting it off. There’ll be one of the biggest funerals you’ve ever seen around here.” Gabe looked out the window. The snow was slowing down, the flakes small specks of glitter beneath the streetlight. “I don’t know how I’m gonna break it to my kids,” Gabe continued. “She was Jane’s softball coach last year and Jimmy’s den mother years ago. Crazy lady. Good heart, but a little wacky.” He pursed his thin lips, flattened his palms on the top of his desk. “Poor Alec. Do you know her husband, the vet over at the animal hospital in Kill Devil Hills?”

      Paul shook his head and sat down across the desk from Gabe because his knees were giving out. He rested his hands on his lap. “How did it happen?” he asked.

      Gabe sighed. “She was serving food to the women and kids over at that Battered Women’s Shelter in Manteo when this guy—” Gabe lifted a notepad from his desk and read the name “—Zachary Pointer, came in and started threatening his wife. He had a gun and he was aiming it at her, talking about how it was Christmas, how could she keep the kids from him on Christmas, et cetera, et cetera. Annie stepped between them to protect the wife. She talked to the guy, you know, trying to reason with him, and the bastard fired. That was

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