An Angel for Emily Read online

  “No wonder he asked you to marry him,” Michael said under his breath.

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Emily, you were his whole career. How many of these stories were chosen by you, researched by you, then written by you?”

  “A few,” she said. That Donald was a lying, betraying jerk didn’t mean she was. The credits on the news shows had shown that Donald had written and researched them; Emily’s name never appeared on any of the scripts. And that’s the way she wanted it, she’d told herself often. Some of the stories he had done were quite controversial and….

  She looked up at Michael. “Perhaps I stepped on a few toes and someone found out it was me, not Donald, who had found out what I did. Is that what you think?”

  “Exactly.”

  For a moment Emily’s head whirled with memories of all the stories she had “helped” Donald with. In fact, that’s how they’d met. Emily had repeatedly written to Donald begging him to come to her library to speak to a group of teenagers about broadcasting careers, but all she’d received were form letters saying his schedule wouldn’t permit him to come. Emily had racked her brain to find a way to entice him to her library, then she remembered something she’d read about endangered species, and she remembered something the wife of a big-time building contractor had said in jest, then she remembered something she’d heard on TV. When she put it all together it made a rather good story, so she wrote it up and sent it to Donald.

  Two weeks later Donald came to Greenbriar, met Emily and talked to the students, and ended up renting an apartment and making the tiny town his weekend home. And Donald had investigated what Emily had written, found it all to be true, so he’d done an exclusive on the evening news. In the end, the building contractor had been stopped in the middle of the job and Emily had heard that he’d lost millions in future contracts. But Donald had won an award for the story and he’d celebrated by buying champagne and roses for Emily and taking her virginity.

  “Why are you looking so strange?” Michael said. “How many of these stories have given someone a reason to hate you?”

  Emily gave a weak smile. “I’d think they’d hate Donald. He read them and he received the awards.”

  “Contrary to your opinion of him, it doesn’t take much of a brain to realize that Donald is an idiot. He’s a pretty face and he reads rather well. No one who had spent half an hour around him would believe that he discovered these stories. Kill Donald and what do you achieve? Nothing. A person needs to kill the source, which is you.”

  “Oh,” Emily said as she sat down hard on one of Donald’s black couches. “I never thought of it that way. I encouraged Donald to allow me to remain anonymous. I never wanted the limelight. I just wanted to see that justice was done.”

  Michael smiled at her. “I like that you never change. You have always been a lover of justice. A couple of times you’ve even given your life for justice.”

  “Is this one of those lives?” she asked timidly.

  “Not if I have anything to do with it. Now, let’s get busy. I think we need to look for a case that isn’t finished. Do you remember which ones those would be?”

  “Does that include the men who are getting out on parole soon?”

  For a moment Michael just blinked at her. “When I asked you what evil surrounded you, why didn’t you think of all these reports you had done?”

  “I didn’t think anyone knew about my connection to them. Donald always said I was his secret weapon.”

  “Donald wanted to take all the credit for himself,” Michael said with a grimace. “All right, what’s done is done. How do we start going over these? If we take them one by one I can feel which have evil attached to them.”

  “Why not just pick up the bound scripts?”

  “Too diluted. There’s bad energy there but it’s too weak. I need the source. Where is your original research?”

  “On computer disk,” she answered, being purposefully vague.

  Michael glared at her.

  “All right. Everything is on Donald’s portable computer. He didn’t want to leave anything with me because….” Breaking off, Emily looked at Michael.

  “You don’t have to tell me, I know. He didn’t want anyone to accidentally find out that you had done all the work and he had done nothing.”

  “That’s not exactly what he said, but maybe it’s the truth.”

  “So where is his computer?”

  “You can’t look into a person’s private files. It’s illegal and unethical and, besides, I have no idea. I would imagine it’s with him or at his office.”

  “I doubt that he’d leave it at the office. He wouldn’t want anyone snooping. Shall we look around here?”

  Emily knew better than to tell Michael that they couldn’t stay there to go searching through Donald’s private effects because she well knew that Michael would do whatever he wanted to do. “Bedroom?” she said. “Or would you rather take the living room first?”

  Chapter 19

  HAPPY NOW?” EMILY ASKED. “WE’VE COMMITTED grand theft as well as breaking and entering, but we have nothing. So, are you terribly happy?”

  “Not in the least,” Michael answered, ignoring her sarcasm. “There is something wrong here but I don’t know what it is.”

  “What’s wrong is that Donald will probably be coming home any minute and he’s going to call the police and have both of us sent to jail. You may be able to fly out but if someone kills me in jail I’ll stay dead.”

  “A common problem with mortals,” Michael said without looking up from the book of scripts.

  It was now after 6:00 P.M. and, as Emily said, they had found nothing. Not that the day hadn’t been interesting. They had found Donald’s personal computer and with its seven hundred bytes of disk space, all Emily’s research had easily fit onto it. The problem was that Donald had a password to protect all his files and Emily had no idea what the word was. After she’d explained to Michael what was needed, he’d said, “Lillian will know what it is. She makes your duck’s life her business.”

  “Shall we call her?” Emily asked, reminding him that Lillian was a naked lady with no body. “Or do we conduct a séance?”

  “I’ll ask Henry to go for me. I’d go myself but I have to drag this body around and it takes too long.”

  “I hate to hear who Henry is.”

  “He lives here.”

  “Of course. Why did I even wonder?” After that Emily didn’t ask too many questions as Michael spent the next hour poring over more of the bound volumes, page by page. And later, he cocked his head to one side as he seemed to listen to someone—or something—then he informed her that the password was “Mr. News.”

  “Not very original, is he?” Michael asked, refraining from remarking on Donald’s vanity in using such a password.

  And Emily bit her tongue to keep from asking how one ghost transferred information to another. How did they travel? The whole thing made her feel creepy to know that there was an invisible world around her world that, until recently, had seemed so solid.

  But even if she’d wanted to, Emily couldn’t have said anything because, abruptly, Michael said, “We have to go. Now.”

  “He’s coming, isn’t he?”

  Once again, Michael seemed to be listening to someone. “Yes,” he said softly, then gave Emily a long look. “We must go this instant.”

  There was something in his manner that made her hesitate. “Is it more bad spirits? Are they after you?”

  Michael didn’t answer as he shut the lid of the computer (making alarms go off because he hadn’t exited properly) tucked it under his arm, then began to push Emily out the front door of the apartment.

  But they were too late, for coming down the hall toward the apartment was Donald, his arm around a beautiful blond who Emily was sure didn’t have a brain in her head. It would be much too unfair for her to have brains and legs like that, Emily thought as she stood rooted to where she was and