Bride Of The Bad Boy

It was widely believed by the townsfolk of Endicott that if someone in the small southern Indiana town was born in the year of the comet, and if that someone made a wish the year Bob returned, while the comet was making its pass directly overhead, then that someone’s wish would come true the next time Bob made a visit. Angie had barely a passing interest in the legend of the wishes. But clearly, it was on Kirby’s mind that night.

“Hey, do you guys believe that myth about the wishes?” she asked her friends.

“What?” Angie asked. “The one about them coming true if you’re born in the year of the comet?”

“Uh-huh,” Kirby replied. “Do you believe it?”

“Nah,” Angie told her. “Wishes don’t come true. Not by cosmic means or any other.”

Evidently, Rosemary was inclined to agree. “Yeah, I don’t think anyone in Endicott ever really got their wish.”

“Mrs. Marx did,” Kirby said. “She told me so. She was born in a year when Bob came around, and the next time he came by, she made a wish, and when she was thirty, when Bob came around a third time, her wish came true.”

Angie and Rosemary turned their heads to gaze at Kirby, clearly interested in hearing more.

“What did she wish for?” Rosemary asked.

Kirby looked first at one friend and then the other. Finally, she confessed, “She wouldn’t tell me.”

Angie nodded knowledgeably. “That’s what I figured.”

“But she swore her wish came true.”

Rosemary sniffed indignantly. “Yeah, I bet she did.”

“She did,” Kirby insisted. But when neither of the other girls commented further, she turned her gaze upward once more in an effort to locate the comet.

Angie did, too, noting that the nearly moonless sky was as black as she’d ever seen it, the almost utter darkness descending all the way down to the earth. Removed from the lights of civilization as the three girls were, they could scarcely see farther than each other’s faces, and the scattered billions of stars above them seemed very far away indeed. Angie stared as hard as she could in search of Bob.

And she thought again about wishes.

“Well, we were all born in the year of the comet, right?” she said, taking up where Kirby had left off, turning to each of her friends. “So if you did make a wish, and if you did think it would come true in fifteen years, what would you wish for?”

A moment of silence fell upon the three friends, until Rosemary, always the most vocal, spoke up. “I wish that pizzafaced little twerp, Willis Random, would get what’s coming to him someday.”

Willis was Rosemary’s lab partner in chemistry, the thirteen-year-old science whiz of the sophomore class, whose current focus in life seemed to be to make her life miserable. Rosemary had never much been one for scientific endeavors, and Willis had adopted a one-man—or rather, one-boy, as the case may be—campaign to belittle her and hold her in contempt for her egregious lack of understanding for his chosen field of study.

Angie nodded. The demand for Willis’s downfall seemed a suitable wish. “How about you, Kirby?” she asked her other friend.

Kirby emitted a single, wistful sigh and turned her gaze upward again. “I wish …” she began softly. Her voice trailed off, and just as Angie was about to spur her again, she said, “I wish for true love. A forever-after kind of love. Like you read about in books and see in old movies.”

Kirby’s entire life consisted of going to school and caring for her invalid mother, Angie knew, with virtually no time left for anything social or enjoyable or steam letting. And most of the boys in Endicott just thought she was much too nice a girl to ever want to ask her out on a date. So the wish for someone to come along and make her life more romantic was in no way surprising.

“That kind of love doesn’t exist,” Rosemary told her.

“Yes, it does,” Kirby objected.

“No,” Rosemary replied immediately. “It doesn’t.”

“Yes,” Kirby retorted just as quickly. “It does.”

Knowing the two girls would argue all night if given the opportunity—Bob was making everyone in Endicott behave abnormally these days—Angie cut them both off by interrupting, “Maybe we’ll find out in fifteen years.”

“I doubt it,” Rosemary muttered.

“How about you, Angie?” Kirby asked. “If you could wish for something, what would it be?”

“Yeah, what would you wish for?” Rosemary echoed, joining in.

“Me?” Angie asked thoughtfully. “I dunno. I guess I just wish something—or somebody—exciting would happen to this stupid town sometime.”

“Riiiight,” Rosemary said. “Something or someone exciting. No problem.” She propped herself up on one elbow and turned to study her friend with a knowing expression. “Angie,” she began patiently, “this is Endicott. Nothing exciting ever happens here. Even Bob can’t work miracles.”

“Well, that’s what I wish anyway,” Angie said.

“Fine. Hear that, Bob?” Rosemary shouted up to the sky. “My friend here, Angie Ellison, wants something or someone exciting to happen to Endicott the next time you come around. Write it down, will ya? Just so you don’t forget.”

And way up high, in the black night sky above Endicott, Indiana, Bob tilted and winked as he passed directly overhead. Then he began his departure from the earth to make his way toward the sun. He would be back, after all.

In exactly fifteen years.

One

Angie Ellison couldn’t believe she was going to do what she was about to do. It was dangerous. It was immoral. It was illegal. It was downright wrong. But it was her only choice if she had any hope in the world of saving her father’s livelihood, perhaps his very life.

She crouched behind a massive crepe myrtle that was still in full flower, scrubbed a finger under her nose to keep in the sneeze that threatened and stared up at Ethan Zorn’s bedroom window. At least, she thought it was his bedroom window. She’d been in the house on only two occasions—first as a second grader on a field trip to what had then been a historic attraction known as the Stately Randall House, and again last week, when she’d been posing as a Junebug Cosmetics representative specifically so she could scope the place out.

On the first occasion, Ethan Zorn hadn’t even been living in Endicott, Indiana, and his shadowy specter hadn’t been a threat to Angie’s family. On the second and much more recent occasion, the illustrious Mr. Zorn—who was now renting out what had become the Stately Randall Guest House once the Randalls had run through the Stately Randall Inheritance—hadn’t been home.

Of course, she’d known he wouldn’t be home when she’d lifted the big brass knocker on the front door. That would have interfered with her plan. Instead, she had opened her phony sample case for his housekeeper, had faked an upset stomach and had fled to the bathroom—where she’d managed to hack out some pretty convincing retching sounds, she recalled with some pride now.

The housekeeper had run to the kitchen for a glass of water and an antacid, and Angie had run upstairs to get a quick look around. And as best as she could remember, the window directly above the crepe myrtle should be the master bedroom. She was pretty sure it was, anyway. At least, she thought it was. In any case, she hoped it was, because that was where she was going in.

A damp blond curl escaped from the black baseball cap she’d crammed backward on her head, and she tried without success to blow back the unmanageable tress that plastered itself to her forehead. She was more than a little uncomfortable in the long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans, with the heat of an extended summer breathing down her neck.

September in southern Indiana might as well have been July in the Amazon jungle, she thought. The air was oppressive, unruly and hot, and in no way conducive to breaking and entering. But she’d had to wear something to cover up her dark gold hair and ivory skin; otherwise she would have reflected the scant moonlight better than a mirror.

She rose quietly and began to make her way around the circumference of the big brick mansion, her black Reeboks whispering softly on the dry grass, her breathing thready and irregular. Belatedly, she realized there was probably an alarm system that she would have to contend with, then decided that no, people never even bothered to lock their doors in Endicott, because nothing ever happened here. Even big-time crooks like Ethan Zorn probably wouldn’t worry about someone coming in uninvited. Those things just didn’t happen in Endicott.

Not even to mobsters.

So Angie decided her chances were fifty-fifty that she would be successful in her first, and without question last, attempt at tangling simultaneously with the law and the criminal element. All in all, they weren’t bad odds, she decided. They were certainly better than the ones that awaited her if she didn’t succeed in her quest. Because if she couldn’t uncover proof that Ethan Zorn was the low-life scumbag, murdering slug she knew him to be, then her family could lose everything.

As she drew near an open window, she heard the sound of music tumbling from inside—The Brandenburg concerti. Having minored in music, she would have recognized the lush, raucous compositions anywhere. Of course, such studies hadn’t helped Angie further her career in journalism. She was, after all, still working for the Endicott Examiner. And even at that, she still hadn’t won a front-page byline. Not that working the crime beat was so bad. She had wanted to be a crime reporter, after all. She just wished there were some crime in Endicott to report. It would make her job infinitely more interesting.

Not for the first time, she hoped that her escapade tonight, in addition to helping out her family, might result in a really, really good story, too. And then the Examiner’s editor, Marlene, would have to reward Angie’s journalistic integrity and spunk. Maybe the story would even be syndicated, she thought further, fairly drooling over the fantasy. She could already see her name on the front page of the New York Times.

Of course, then mobsters everywhere would know where to find her. She frowned at the realization for a moment, wondering yet again if she was doing the right thing. Then the music ended abruptly, and she had no more time to think. She hurled herself against the cool brick building behind her, flattening herself against the wall, fading into a shadow. She told herself not to panic—Ethan Zorn was still out of town. She knew that, because she’d called her friend Rosemary, who worked as a travel agent—and who owed Angie more favors than she would ever be able to repay—to find out his itinerary. So it must have been the housekeeper who had switched off the concert.