An Angel for Emily Read online

  “You could remain single. Or you could marry a man of your own choosing.”

  “No, thank you. You’ve made me see how bad I am at that.” She glared at the top of his head. “I always choose inappropriate men. Look at Donald. Look at what else I’ve involved myself with.” She meant him, that he was as bad as all the other men she’d chosen over the centuries.

  Michael didn’t bother to look up. “But then, you didn’t choose me, did you, Emily? I chose you. Now, run along and see if you can find the treasure. The captain says it’s rubies; his wife loved rubies.”

  For a moment Emily thought about sitting down on a mattress and not moving, anything to keep from obeying his autocratic dismissal, but, in the end, rubies won out. As she started up the stairs again she was sure she heard laughter and knew very well that it was the captain showing his amusement that she had chosen sparkling stones over revenge. “Your wife probably committed suicide to get away from you,” she said under her breath, then immediately wished she hadn’t because she could feel the spirit vanish. Instead of being surrounded by warm laughter she felt nothing but emptiness near her.

  “Great,” she said. “I have offended a ghost and an angel. Who’s next? Maybe God should let me at the devil. With my luck I’d make him so angry he’d go into a sulk and never speak to the world again.”

  With heavy feet, she made her way up to the attic and now she’d spent two days there going through old trunks and looking at the edition numbers in the hundreds of books there. She hadn’t found any rubies but she had found some wonderful furniture and books and a set of china that was beautiful.

  It was on the afternoon of the second day that she sat on a round-top trunk and surveyed what was in front of her. She had to give it to the captain that he’d been strong enough to keep vandals away from these treasures all these years. Emily knew a couple of antique dealers who’d give a great deal to see what she was seeing now. And if Emily knew anything it was that there were some real treasures up here.

  “Wonder how much it’s all worth?” she said aloud, but instead of thinking of money, she thought how nice that wing chair with the eagle-headed arms would look downstairs in the living room. There was a huge trunk full of curtains and Emily wondered if they could be relined and reused. Wouldn’t the red ones look divine in the dining room? She could almost see the dining room at Christmas, red candles everywhere, those dishes she’d found in a huge wooden crate on the table and heavy silver flatware glowing in the candlelight. And—”

  Suddenly, it was as though the whole house began to vibrate. At first she thought it was the beginning of an earthquake but as she looked at the walls and the contents of the room, they were still. It was just the air that was vibrating. It was as though an electrical current was coursing through the air of the room and she could feel it.

  “Angels and ghosts,” she said aloud and knew that Michael had at last found the evil he was looking for. Without even dusting herself off, she started running for the stairs, but Michael was already there.

  “I found it,” he said, holding up the computer and she could see that there was a picture on the screen. “It wasn’t in the printed matter but in the photographs. I didn’t know you could have pictures on these things. I didn’t know—”

  He broke off as he looked about the attic. Glancing backward, Emily saw what he did. Every trunk, wardrobe, crate, box had been opened and the contents were now standing about.

  “The captain said you were a damn good rummager but I had no idea…”

  Emily narrowed her eyes at him. “You want to show me the photo and stop commenting on what is none of your business?”

  “Want to know where the rubies are?”

  Emily had to bite her tongue to keep from shouting, “Yes!” He had been cool to her for days now so she could be cool in return. “If the captain wants to tell me he may, but it doesn’t matter as I’d just have to turn them over to the city because it owns this house.”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” Michael said. “And you wouldn’t want to have the fun of finding them, would you?”

  “Could you refrain from making fun of me long enough to tell me what it is that you found? And, by the way, is someone moving those curtains over there?”

  “Albert!” Michael said sharply. “You’ll frighten Emily. Look at this,” he said, handing the computer to her. “One of those men is responsible for trying to kill you. Who are they and what do they have to do with you? What have you done to one of them?”

  After a look of disgust at him, she turned toward the photo. There were three men wearing beat-up old fishing gear, laughing into the camera, holding up four fish hardly bigger than pet goldfish.

  “I’ve never seen any of them in my life. Where did the picture come from?”

  “The computer,” Michael said as though she’d just asked a very stupid question.

  “Who put it in the computer and why?”

  For a moment Michael listened then he told her that Donald had manned all the pictures into the computer.

  “Scanned,” Emily said automatically. “So you’re saying this is just one of many photos he has on disk?”

  “Yes. There are at least fifty of them. No, Alfred says there are seventy-one photos and only a few of them have captions so he doesn’t know who the people are.”

  “I would imagine Donald knows who everyone is in those photos,” Emily said.

  “Shall we call him?” Michael asked with a smile.

  “He might be a bit, ah, perturbed that we took his computer,” she answered, smiling back at Michael. The minute their eyes met, he looked away and his friendly manner was once again cool.

  She took a deep breath. She was not going to ask him why he’d turned against her or what was wrong with him, or the worst one, what she had done wrong. If he wanted to sulk, let him. And the sooner they found out why he was here, the sooner he could leave and the sooner she could have a life.

  “Nice-looking men,” she said, studying the photo. “Wonder if they’re married?”

  “One of them is trying to kill you but the other two might be available. We just have to sort out who is who.”

  “I have an idea. Why don’t I meet all three of them and the one I fall madly in love with will surely be the killer.”

  Michael had to override his coolness to laugh at that, and in spite of his good intentions, he warmed up. “All right, we have work to do. Tomorrow night there is a big party in the city and we’re going to go. There’re going to be two men there for you to meet; it’s all been arranged. Now I need to know who these men are so they can be there too. Once I meet them I’ll know which one is trying to harm you.”

  “Will you know why?”

  “I doubt it but I can make him tell us.”

  “Then what do you do? How do you stop him from going ahead and killing me? You can’t murder him first, can you? You can’t make him have a heart attack, can you?”

  At that Michael looked aghast. “God decides when people live and die. Angels do not,” he said stiffly, as though she’d insulted his code of ethics.

  “But, really, what can you do if you find out this is the man?”

  For a moment Michael looked bewildered. Obviously he hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. If I meet him I can go right to his guardian and find the answers to a lot of things. But to do it the other way, to take the photo home and try to find who guards this man could take years.”

  “Could you condense it into earth time and make it a couple of hours here?”

  Michael narrowed his eyes at her. “You want me to spend years working when you could make a few calls and find out what we need to know?”

  Emily had the pleasure of giving a little shrug, as though to say, It’s all the same to me.

  “Now, is there someone besides Donald who’d know who these men are?”

  “What makes you think I would know such a person? After all, I’m not smart enough to be told the truth about Captain Madison’s li