Chapter 8

Picture this—

A man so lonely, so numb to his own pain, he couldn't even tell when his heart was breaking anymore; a man who had had his happiness torn from him, carried away in the night, never to be seen again. A man now so cold and removed from the world, he denied himself the right to ever be happy again.

I didn't know Stu Whitmore, hadn't even spoken to him yet, but if I knew one thing it was this: I wasn't gonna let Stu Whitmore become the man I was.

He had found his happiness.

He had fallen in love.

Nobody had the right to take that from him now.

The knock at the door was curt. Unlike the last time Miss Whitmore visited, this time I was awake. In fact, I hadn't slept at all. Holden Hart had been playin' over and over in my mind like a broken gramophone record. I had run a bath in the dead of night and lain there until the water went cold around me. I'd patched up the gash on my cheek. I'd stitched up the tear on the back of my collar from the bullet… I'd taught myself to sew a long time ago. It's one of the rules of self-sufficiency. Cook for yourself, darn your socks, stitch your shirts. Don't matter how badly you do it, so long as you know how. I was wearing that shirt now, with the freshly stitched collar, when I answered the door.

"Miss Whitmore, please come in." I gestured to my desk and closed the door.

She entered, wearing the same clothes she had worn last time. Or maybe they were different clothes, just the same color and style. "I trust you have some information for me. Pertaining to my husband's… activities."

"Please, sit down."

"Actually, I'd rather stand."

I could see she was anxious. So was I, in a way.

We stood facing each other beside my desk. I took a deep breath. "Miss Whitmore. Your husband isn't having an affair."

She looked at me, confused.

I swallowed hard and added, "He's in love."

With a swipe faster than a batter in a ballgame, Miss Whitmore slapped me across the face, hard. She hit my patched-up gash, and I winced, touching my finger to my cheek to make certain she hadn't reopened the wound.

"How dare you?" She scowled. "Whatever it is, it's not love. Do you know a name? Do you have photographs? Are they too explicit? Who is she?"

My silence was apparently enough to lead her to her next question.

"What are you not telling me? Is it a man? Is my husband having an affair with another man?"

"I hate to be the one to tell you, but this is not a simple fling, Miss Whitmore. They're in—"

I could kinda see the second slap coming. I asked myself if I was doing the right thing, telling her the cold, hard facts in such a cold, hard way. Normally, it didn't bother me. But then again, normally, I wouldn't have gone so far as to make the point that her husband was in love. But I had seen Stu Whitmore's smile, I'd watched his swagger. There was no denying the man was head-over-heels in love. So why deny Miss Whitmore the truth? Why deny her the chance to get over it and move on with her own life?

Apparently, Miss Whitmore wasn't exactly on the same page as me.

She swung another slap at me.

This time I pulled my face back, missing the swipe by an inch. She looked madder than a drunk with an empty bottle. "I want his name."

I lied. "I don't know it."

She eyed me suspiciously. "I think you do."

I said nothing.

Miss Whitmore reached into her handbag and pulled out a small wad of cash. "Well then, it seems I'll be keeping this. Please regard my down payment as full payment. Unless you'd like to reconsider that last question. What's his name?"

I looked at the money, then looked at the furious glint in her eye. No good could come of that anger. "Full payment it is, then."

Jamming the money back into her handbag, Miss Whitmore headed for the door and opened it herself. "I'd like to say thank you for your assistance in this matter, Mr. Baxter… but to lie would be to sin."

With that, she left my office apartment, slamming the door so hard behind her that one of the rusty old pipes in my bathroom sprang a leak. I fixed the problem with a wrench. But as I did so, I couldn't help but think that Stu Whitmore's problems weren't quite so fixable.

I paced for the rest of the day. I pored over the question of whether to approach Stu Whitmore or not as I poured a gin into a tumbler and rubbed ice on my forehead to try and stave off the heat. The streets of Wilde City had started to fry on what had to be the hottest day of the summer. The electricity shut down sometime after noon, and my fan whirred to a halt. I heard sirens in the streets as a fire broke out down the street, no doubt a tripped wire from the power outage. I went to the window and saw a woman on the pavement faint from the heat, caught by a passerby before she hit the cement. When the city baked like this, a storm was bound to break.

I left the office apartment just after sunset, when the heat of the day backed away to let something even more potent pass through. As the ominous black clouds of an almighty thunderstorm appeared on the far horizon, I made my way toward 7732 East 15th Street. The Whitmore residence.

Sure, it was a risk turning up.

What if she answered the door?

But the answer to that was outweighed by my next question:

What if she'd done something terrible to her husband?

I'd never before interfered with a case once all was said and done. I'd never crossed the line to make certain a tragedy didn't unfold after I'd taken my money and run. But I kept thinking about Madame Chang's words. It wasn't my job to destroy love. It was my job to give love hope to live on.

If only I could make that the case with my own life.

As I turned onto East 15th Street, I looked toward the house where the Whitmore's lived and happened to catch Stu leaving the premises. I hid behind a tree and watched as he left the house, locked the door—

—then looked down to see something on his front doormat.

I craned my neck and saw it was a note.

He picked it up.

He opened it and read it.

He looked up and down the street, his expression one of concern, anger, fear.

I ducked behind the tree for a moment, then looked back cautiously to see him tuck the note into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He descended the steps of his house and began walking along the pavement in my direction. He was no longer the content, lovelorn man I had seen before. He was distracted. His step brisk.

I decided tonight was not the time to confront him about my investigations.

No, tonight was the time to investigate further.

As Stu Whitmore approached quickly, I stepped out from behind the tree, head down, and walked toward him at the same pace until—

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said as I plowed straight into him. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

"That's okay," was all Stu Whitmore said as he kept moving, not once looking back. He didn't try to pick a fight. He didn't even grumble.

And he didn't notice I had slipped the note out of his pocket.

As he disappeared around the corner, I opened it and read it under the streetlamp.

Meet me at St. Agatha's cemetery. Midnight tonight.

I stuffed the note into my jacket pocket. A rumble of approaching thunder echoed in the distance. Yep, it was gonna storm in Wilde City tonight.

Walking through the city that night was like walking through a world of black and white. With every second block still blacked out from the power outage, it was as if I traveled from day to night with each block, walking a straight line from one illuminated street corner, then into darkness and back again, on my determined way to St. Agatha's.

I had no idea what awaited me in the graveyard of my own past—a place that haunted me—but I knew Stu Whitmore would be there. And whoever had written that note.

I crossed a street and stepped onto the pavement of a blackened block. The headlamps of passing cars were the only things to light my way until one particular set of lights veered toward me, casting my shadow long and ghostly along the pavement.

I turned to see Hart's Lincoln limo pull up just behind me.

I stopped.

I waited for Hart to step out, unsure of what to say to him. I ain't so good at apologies, but when it came to the man who was swiftly stealing my heart, I was willing to learn.

But it wasn't Hart who got out of the car.

"Lucy," I said to the Logan twin as she stepped onto the pavement.

"Actually, it's Lois."

So maybe I hadn't quite got the twins sorted out yet. Perhaps I never would.

"Sorry, Lois. Is Mr. Hart in the car?"

"No," she said, walking up to me. "But he'd like you to be. He'd like you to be his guest at the club tonight."

She slid her arm through mine and began to escort me back to the limo.

"I'm sorry, I can't. I have another… I have to go."

A flicker of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a slow roll of thunder.

Lois smiled. "At least let me give you a lift to wherever you're going. I think there's a storm coming."

I graciously took her arm off mine and stepped backward. "I'm okay, thanks. Please give my regards to Mr. Hart. Perhaps we'll catch up again someday."

As another crack of thunder broke the sky, I quickly turned and hurried away. I didn't have time to deal with my feelings for Holden Hart tonight. I could barely manage the thought of returning to Hell's Bells for the first time in more than twenty years. It took all the courage I had just to climb that hill and push open the gates of the cemetery by ten o'clock…

Or was it eleven…?

Or midnight…?

I reached into my pocket to check the note—

—only to find it was gone.

I glanced back at where the Lincoln limo was parked.

Only to find it was gone too.