Lost Souls

chapter 16

Carson and Michael owned a pale-yellow Victorian house with gingerbread millwork painted blue. The place looked as though it had been built by a crew of pastry chefs from a show on the Food Network.

Inside, glossy white woodwork, yellow walls, and rich red-mahogany floors lifted Carson ’s spirits every time she came home. In each room, an ornate plaster medallion surrounded the ceiling light fixture.

Previously, in New Orleans, Carson had no interest in decor. To her, a house had been a place to sleep and eat and clean her guns. Michael’s idea of decorative style had been a La-Z-Boy and a pine table with a built-in lamp and magazine rack on which to stand his beer and a bag of Cheetos.

Their last case as New Orleans homicide detectives had taken them into dark and desperate places as perverse and full of threat as any chambers in Hell. Their choices and actions since had been largely in reaction to those experiences. Case closed, they left the sweltering, fecund bayous and moved to this city built on hills, where ocean winds and crisp fogs continually cleansed the streets and redeemed each day. They sought a place with many tall windows, with light colors and open rooms, where shadows were few and soft instead of deep and pervasive, where life could be lived rather than merely endured.

Now, home from the docks at last, having left foot-shot Chang in the custody of the authorities and having given statements to the police, they were greeted in the foyer by Duke. He was a German shepherd with soulful eyes and a talent for affection, his tail a semaphore ceaselessly signaling his delight at their return.

Usually, Carson and Michael would drop to their knees to scratch the dog’s chest and behind his ears, to give him a tummy rub when, inevitably, he collapsed to the floor and rolled onto his back. A dog’s love is pure and can inspire the repressed angel in even the most corrupted heart.

Carson and Michael weren’t corrupted, merely tarnished by a world that patinated every shiny thing, but this time they returned Duke’s greeting with just a pat on the head, a quick scratch under his chin, and praise spoken in falsetto.

“Good boy.”

“Good-good boy.”

“Pretty Duke, sweet thing.”

“Daddy is so happy to see his Dukie.”

Without prior discussion, they were both eager for the same thing: the smell of fresh baby, the sight of that toothless smile, those lively blue eyes.

“Dukie,” said Carson, “where’s Scout? Find Scout. Take us to Scout.”

The shepherd sprang to this assignment with enthusiasm. He raced along the hallway and vanished through the open kitchen door.

When Carson and Michael followed, they found Mary Margaret Dolan at the sink, peeling apples. Duke had stationed himself at her side, where he waited patiently for her to drop a piece of fruit.

Mary Margaret was sixty, plump but not fat, with flawless skin and eyes the color of sliced limes. Smart, compassionate, practical, and unfailingly cheerful, she used no language worse than “darn” and “horse manure,” though the latter made her blush.

She was a former nurse, and her past employers spoke of her only in superlatives. Her professional record contained not one blemish, not even a citation for arriving late to work or a reprimand for bending a hospital rule.

Mary Margaret’s husband, Brendan, had been a highly decorated police officer who died in the line of duty. Of her two sons, one had become a priest; the other was a career Marine with a chest of medals that honored his father’s sacrifice. As for Mary Margaret’s three daughters: One was a Benedictine nun; one was a Carmelite nun; and the third was a physician working with Doctors Without Borders, currently serving the poor in Haiti.

After conducting an exhaustive background check, Carson and Michael had almost decided against hiring Mary Margaret. They were put off by the discovery that the physician daughter, Emily Rose Dolan, on vacation from her third-world service, was cited by the California Highway Patrol for driving alone in a clearly marked carpool lane.

In spite of that egregious violation of the law, they at last settled on Mary Margaret, in part because she was the only applicant for the position of nanny who was neither tattooed nor belligerent.

A woman with tattoo-sleeved arms and a grudge against the world could be, of course, just as fine a nanny as anyone else. Carson and Michael were not bigots. They believed in equal opportunity both for the flamboyantly decorated and for the perpetually pissed-off. They just didn’t want to come home one day and discover that Scout now sported a serpent with bared fangs winding around her left arm or had started tossing off the F word with aplomb.

“Are you making a pie, Mrs. D?” Carson asked when she entered the kitchen and saw Mary Margaret using the paring knife.

“No, dear. Who would want mere pie when they could have apple dumplings? Did you get your man?”

“I shot him in the foot,” Carson said.

“Good for you, dear. Assuming the miscreant deserved it.”

“He had a gun to Carson ’s head,” Michael said.

“Then you as well should have shot him in the foot, boyo.”

“She also vomited on him,” Michael said.

“You vomited, too,” Carson reminded him.

“But just into the bay. Not on the perp. I’d never vomit on the perp.”

A movable playpen stood in a corner of the kitchen, the wheels locked. In a pink pullover, a disposable diaper, and pink booties, Scout sat in the center of the pen, chewing on the baby-safe nose of a pediatrician-approved teddy bear.

Starting two weeks previously, Scout had been able to sit up on her own. But the feat still dazzled Carson, and she was no less proud of her daughter than she’d been the first time this happened.

As Carson and Michael bent close to beam at her, Scout turned the bear upside down and said, “Ah goo, ah goo,” to its butt.

With alarm, Michael said, “Mary Margaret, what’s that in her mouth, there’s something in her mouth, what is it?”

“Relax, lad. It’s a tooth.”

“A tooth? Where did she get a tooth?”

“It came through in the night. She never cried. I found it when I prepared her bottle this morning.”

“She never cries,” Carson said, lifting her smiling baby from the playpen. “She’s one tough little cookie.”

“A tooth,” Michael marveled. “Who would ever have thought she’d have a tooth?”

Scout said, “Ga-ga-ga-ga, ba-ba-ba-ba.”

“Chains of vowels and consonants! She’s babbling. My God, she’s babbling!”

“She is,” Carson said. “She really is. Mary Margaret, did you hear that?”

Clutching the teddy bear by the crotch, Scout said, “Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga, wa-wa-wa-wa-ga-ga.”

“Chains of vowels and consonants,” Michael repeated with wonder just short of awe. “Babbling. Scout’s babbling.”

“Not just Scout,” said Mary Margaret.

“She hasn’t even finished her seventh month,” Carson said. “Mary Margaret, isn’t it amazing, to babble this early?”

“Not considering her parentage,” said the nanny as she continued to peel apples. “Indeed, herself might be a couple of weeks ahead of schedule, the blessed angel, but let’s not just yet declare her a prodigy.”

“Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga,” Michael said, encouraging his daughter to repeat her stunning performance.

“Poor Duke,” said Mary Margaret, “you’ve been displaced,” and she dropped a slice of apple that the dog snatched from the air.

“Let me hold her,” Michael said.

Hesitant to hand over the precious bundle, Carson said, “Well… okay. But don’t drop her on her head.”

“Why would I drop her on her head?”

“I’m not saying you’d do it on purpose.”

“Look at that tooth,” Michael said. “A baby crocodile would be proud of that tooth.”

Mary Margaret said, “And what was all the vomiting about?”

Carson and Michael glanced at each other, but neither of them replied.

As the widow of a cop, Mary Margaret had no patience for those who evaded questions. “Am I talking to myself then, hallucinating your presence? See here, you couldn’t have worked homicide with a weak stomach.”

“It wasn’t a weak-stomach thing,” Michael said, dandling Scout. “It was a fear thing.”

“You were hard-charging policemen for years,” Mary Margaret said. “Or so I’ve been led to believe. You mean to say you never had a gun held to your head before?”

“Of course we did,” Michael said. “Thousands of times.”

“Tens of thousands,” said Carson. “But never while on a boat. Maybe it was the combination of the gun to the head and the movement of the boat.”

“Ka-ka, ka-ka, ka-ka,” said Scout.

Turning from the sink, facing them forthrightly, apple in one fist, paring knife in the other, fists on her hips, Mary Margaret appeared as stern as the mother of a priest, a Marine, and two nuns might be expected to look when she knew someone was shining her on.

“However I may appear to you,” she said, “I’m in fact not even a wee bit stupid. You were vomiting all over people-”

“Only one person,” Carson clarified.

“-because you now have more to lose, so you do, than when you were single with no tyke in diapers.”

After a silence, Carson said, “I suppose there could be a little truth in that.”

“I suppose,” Michael agreed.

“There’s not just a bit of a bit of truth in it,” Mary Margaret said, “it’s all truth, plain word for plain word, as sure as anything in Scripture.”

Scout dropped her teddy bear and clutched at her father’s nose.

Carson picked up the bear.

Michael gently pried Scout’s thumb out of his nostril.

“Do I have to say outright what conclusion this truth leads to?” Mary Margaret asked. “Then I will. If you’ve got so much to lose that a bit of risk makes you vomit all over people, then you don’t have the nerve for risk anymore. You’d best stick with simple divorce cases, bringing justice to wronged women.”

“There’s not as much money in that kind of work,” said Carson.

“But surely there’s more of it year by year.”

“It’s not always the woman who’s wronged,” Michael said. “Men are sometimes the faithful ones.”

Mary Margaret frowned. “And I would recommend we don’t take pride that we live in an age when such a thing is true.”

As the nanny continued peeling and slicing apples, as Duke resumed his vigil in hope of charity or clumsiness, Carson asked about her brother: “Where’s Arnie?”

“In the study,” said Mary Margaret, “doing what the name of the room implies. I’ve never seen a boy who took such pleasure in learning. It’s as admirable as it is unnatural.”

Michael led the way from the kitchen to the study, carrying Scout, repeating, “Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba,” to encourage the baby to babble again, but she only gazed at him with astonishment-blue eyes wide, mouth open-as if aghast that her father appeared to be a gibbering loon.

“Don’t drop her,” Carson warned.

“You’re becoming a fussbudget,” Michael said.

“What did you call me?”

“I didn’t call you anything. I just made an observation.”

“If you weren’t carrying that baby, I’d make an observation.”

To Scout, he said, “You are my little bulletproof vest.”

Carson said, “I’d make an observation with my knee in your groin. Fussbudget, my ass.”

“Your mother is a type A personality,” Michael told Scout. “Fortunately, the gene for that is not a dominant gene.”

When they reached the study, they discovered that Arnie was no longer absorbed by his textbooks. He sat at a table, playing chess.

His opponent, looming large over the game board, was Deucalion.