Page 10 of Holmes Is Missing
As soon as Poe got back down to the first floor, Grey cleared her throat and cocked her head toward the door. “Got time for a walk?” she asked. Poe nodded. They headed out through the front door together and then turned, walking past the row of windows.
Marple was a top-notch lip reader, but all she could pick out was Poe saying, “Let’s go to the park.” Grey’s lips weren’t moving at all.
Marple turned to Holmes as he walked over. “What do you think? Is Poe definitely the father?”
Holmes nodded and headed for the stairs. “As my namesake would say, ‘the probability lies in that direction.’”
“In that case,” said Marple, following right behind him, “‘now is the dramatic moment of fate.’”
She knew her Conan Doyle as well as Holmes did.
Maybe better.
CHAPTER12
POE WALKED SIDEby side with Helene as they entered Irving Square Park, the garden spot of Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, with the old lampposts marking their route. The broad stone pathway led past happy couples and young families catching the last of the early autumn day. When Helene’s hand brushed his, Poe took it gently and squeezed. His heart was pounding. Helene squeezed back, staring straight ahead. Two kids on scooters shot past them, wheels humming against the pavement.
“In case you were worried,” said Helene, “the baby is yours. Couldn’t be anybody else’s.”
Poe felt a flash of anger. He jerked his hand away. “Why would you say that? Do you think I suspected you of sleeping around? Is that why you wouldn’t return my calls?”
“I needed a little time,” Helene said as she kept on walking. “Maybe I wanted to leave you a shred of doubt—in case you didn’t want any part of this. Anyway, it wasn’t intentional. I must have skipped a pill by mistake.”
Poe immediately felt guilty. He blurted out, “Ethinyl estradiolis only 99.7 percent effective,” he said. “So there’s a 0.3 percent chance that it would have happened anyway.”
Helene stopped and gave him a look. “That sounds like something Holmes would say.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t care about chemical formulas right now, Auguste. I want to know what you’refeeling. About this. Aboutus. I want to know what’s really going on in your mind.”
Poe wrestled with what to say next. It was the same thing he’d been wrestling with for the past fifteen hours. He loved Helene. He was sure of that. She was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. But at the moment, that was about theonlything he was sure of.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “what’s really going on in my mind is: I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a parent.”
Helene nodded. She let her hand slide off his arm. She looked up and stared into the distance across the park. “Right,” she said. “That makes two of us.”
CHAPTER13
SHIRTS. SOCKS. SLACKS. Briefs.
Marple sat on the silk sofa in Holmes’s bedroom and watched as he carefully unpacked his duffel bag, item by item. In typical Holmes fashion, everything was immaculately pressed and impeccably folded.
“You have no idea what it took to get an ironing board in that place,” he said.
Marple ran her hand over the sofa cushion. “I missed you, Brendan,” she said. “More than I thought I would.”
Holmes gave her a slightly embarrassed smile. “I was a handful before I went away,” he said. “I know that.”
A handful? That was an understatement. Marple flashed back to all the times Holmes’s drug habit had put their PI licenses—and their lives—in jeopardy. But through everything, she and Holmes had kept a strong bond. Comrades to the end.
The duffel was almost empty now. The last item Holmes pulled out was a small prescription bottle. “Buprenorphine,” he said, rattling the pills inside. “My new best friend.”
“Not methadone?” asked Marple.
“Methadone is Schedule II,” said Holmes. “Buprenorphine is Schedule III. On paper, lower potential for abuse.”
“On paper,” Marple repeated.
“Correct,” said Holmes. “Says so in all the literature.”
As he put the small white bottle on the bedside table, Marple saw a slight tremor in his hand. She leaned forward. “Brendan, are you all right?”