arising from a good man whose soul, containing not one empty chamber, was filled with those spoon-by-spoon virtues that do not evaporate.
They sat in silence, and the moment held such an extraordinary quality of expectation that Kathleen would not have been surprised if the vanished quarter had suddenly appeared in midair and dropped, winking brightly, to the center of Nolly's desk, there to spin with perpetual motion, until Vanadium chose to pluck it up.
Nolly finally disturbed the quiet: 'Well, sir? you're quite a psychologist.'
That saving smile once more returned lost harmony to the scarred and broken face. 'Not me. From my perspective, psychology is just one more of those easy sources of false meaning-like sex, money, and drugs. But I will admit to knowing a thing or two about evil.'
Daylight had retreated from the windows. Winter night, wound in scarfs of fog, like a leprous mendicant, rattled out a breath as though begging their attention beyond the glass.
With a shiver, Kathleen said, 'We'd like to know more about why we did the things we did for you. Why the quarters? Why the song?'
Vanadium nodded. 'And I'd like to hear about Cain's reactions in more detail. I've read your reports, of course, and they've been thorough, but necessarily condensed. There'll be lots of subtleties that only reveal themselves in conversation. Often, the apparently insignificant details are the most important to me when I'm devising strategy.'
Rising from his chair and rolling down his shirt-sleeves, Nolly said, 'If you'll be our guest for dinner, I suspect we'll all have a fascinating evenings.'
A moment later, in the corridor, as Nolly locked the door to his suite, Kathleen linked her right arm through Vanadium's left. 'Do I call you Detective Vanadium, Brother, or Father?'
'Please just call me Tom. I've been forcibly retired from the Oregon State Police, with full disability because of this face, so I'm not officially a detective anymore. Yet until Enoch Cain is behind bars, where he belongs, I'm not ready to be anything but a cop, official or not.'
Chapter 65
Angel was dressed in as much red as the devil himself: bright red shoes, red socks, red leggings, red skirt, red sweater, and a knee length red coat with a red hood.
She stood just inside the front door of the apartment, admiring herself in a full-length mirror, waiting patiently for Celestina, who was packing dolls, coloring books, tablets, and a large collection of crayons into a zippered satchel.
Though she was only a week past her third birthday, Angel always selected her own clothes and carefully dressed herself. Usually she preferred monochromatic outfits, sometimes with a single accent color expressed only in a belt or a hat, or a scarf. When she mixed several colors, the initial impression that she gave was of chromatic chaos-but on second look, you began to see that these unlikely combinations were more harmonious than they had first seemed.
For a while, Celestina had worried that the girl was slower to walk than other children, slower to talk, and slower to develop her vocabulary, even though Celestina read aloud to her from storybooks every day. Then, during the past six months, Angel had caught up in a rush though she traveled a road somewhat different from what the childrearing books described. Her first word was mama, which was fairly standard, but her second was blue, which for a while came out 'boo.' At three, an average child would be doing exceptionally well to identify four colors; Angel could name eleven, including black and white, because she was able routinely to differentiate pink from red, and purple from blue.
Wally-Dr. Walter Lipscomb, who delivered Angel and who became her godfather-never worried when the girl seemed to be developing too slowly, counseling that every child was an individual, with his or her particular learning pace. Wally's double specialty-obstetrics and pediatrics-gave him credibility, of course, but Celestina had worried, anyway.
Worrying is what mothers do best. Celestina was her mother, as far as Angel was concerned, and the child was not yet of an age to be told, and to understand, that she had been blessed with two mothers: the one who gave birth to her, and the one who raised her.
Recently, Wally administered to Angel a set of apperception tests for three-year-olds, and the results indicated that she might not ever be a math whiz or a verbal gymnast, but that she might be highly talented in other ways. Her appreciation of color, her innate understanding of the derivation of secondary hues from the primary colors, her sense of spatial relationships, and her recognition of basic geometric forms regardless of the angle at which they were presented were all far beyond what was exhibited by other kids her age. Wally said she was visually, rather than verbally, gifted, that she would undoubtedly exhibit increasing precociousness in matters artistic, that she might follow Celestina's career path, and that she might even prove to be a prodigy.
'Red Riding-Hood,' Angel announced, studying herself in the mirror.
Celestina finally zipped shut the satchel. 'You better watch out for the big bad wolf.'
'Not me. Wolf better watch out,' Angel declared.
'You think you could kick some wolf butt, huh?
'Bam!' Angel said, watching her reflection as she booted an imaginary wolf.
Retrieving a coat from the closet, shrugging into it, Celestina said,
'You should have worn green, Miss Hood. Then the wolf would never recognize you.'
'Don't feel like a frog today.'
'You don't look like one, either.'
'You're pretty, Mommy.'
'Why, thank you very much, sugarpie.'
'Am I pretty?'
'It's not polite to ask for a compliment.'
'But am I?'
'You're gorgeous.'
'Sometimes I'm not sure,' said Angel, frowning at herself in the mirror.
'Trust me. You're a knockout.'
Celestina dropped to one knee in front of Angel, to tie the drawstrings of the hood under the girl's chin.
'Mommy, why are dogs furry?'
'Where did dogs come from?'
'I wonder about that, too.'
'No,' Celestina said, 'I mean, why are we talking about dogs all of a sudden?'
' 'Cause they're like wolves.'
'Oh, right. Well, God made them furry.'
'Why didn't God make me furry?'
'Because He didn't want you to be a dog.' She finished tying a bow in the drawstrings. 'There. You look just like an M&M.'
'That's candy.'
'Well, you're sweet, aren't you? And you're all bright red on the outside and milk chocolate inside,' Celestina said, gently tweaking the girl's light brown nose.
'I'd rather be a Mr. Goodbar.'
'Then you'll have to wear yellow.'
In the hall that served the two ground-floor apartments, they encountered Rena Moller, the elderly woman who lived in the unit across from theirs. She was polishing the dark wood of her front door with lemon oil, a sure sign that her son and his family were coming to dinner.
'I'm an M&M,' Angel proudly told their neighbor, as Celestina locked the door.
Rena was cheerful, short, and solid. Her waist measurement must have been two-thirds her height, and she favored floral dresses that emphasized her girth. With a German accent and in a voice that always seemed about to dissolve in a great gale of mirth, she said, 'Madchen lieb, you look like a Christmas candle to me.'
