Night Secrets Read Free

quietly. “It may not be that serious,” he said, trying to ease him slightly. “It usually isn’t.”
    â€œNo, it is very serious,” Phillips said emphatically. “Virginia would not be stealing from me if it weren’t very serious.”
    â€œIf she’s stealing at all,” Frank reminded him, “she’s stealing from herself.”
    â€œIt’s the same thing when you’re married,” Phillips told him, his face almost brutally severe. “That’s why I really believe something very serious is wrong. It could be a matter of life and death, Mr. Clemons.”
    Frank smiled again, though his eyes didn’t. Isn’t everything , he thought.
    Once Phillips had gone, Frank returned to his desk, pocketed the money, then began going through the afternoon mail. He could tell that one of the letters was from Sheila, his ex-wife. The rose-colored paper alerted him. She wrote him only once or twice a year now, always when she was thinking about their daughter’s suicide, picking at the wound. Still, a letter was better than the melancholy phone calls, the low moan of her voice as she went through it all again, how good Sarah was, how kind, smart, full of possibility. She never failed to recite the entire litany, all the “hows” but one: how lost.
    He slid the letter from under the rest, swept it over the edge of his desk, into the open drawer, then went on to the next one, hoping that it might be something interesting, perhaps something that would move him onto a different path because it had that “something extra” which most cases didn’t. But it was only a thank-you note from a client, along with a check for six hundred dollars, full payment for the time he’d spent trailing a retired security guard whom an armored car firm had come to suspect of plotting an inside job. He read the note quickly, then threw it in the garbage. The check went into his jacket pocket.
    The rest were bills, except for a single letter in a light-blue envelope. He was beginning to open it when he glanced up and saw Farouk’s enormous legs move ponderously down the cement stairs, then heard him lumber along the littered corridor and open the office door.
    â€œHello, my friend,” Farouk said.
    Frank nodded.
    â€œForgive me for the intrusion,” Farouk added as he walked to the chair opposite Frank’s desk and eased himself down into it. He glanced at the letter. “You are in the middle of something?”
    â€œNothing important,” Frank told him, the last letter still unopened in his hand. “Why, you feeling lonesome?”
    â€œNo,” Farouk said lightly. “I am my own companion.” There was no pride in the way he said it, only the brief acknowledgment that such was the way things had turned out for him.
    â€œWell, I noticed that Toby wasn’t at the bar last night,” Frank said.
    Farouk scratched the side of his face absently. “And because of that, I am supposed to be lost?”
    â€œNo,” Frank said. “It’s just that I didn’t see her, that’s all.”
    Farouk’s face screwed up slightly. “That is because she is gathered with the saints.”
    â€œWith the what?”
    â€œBack in her village,” Farouk said. “In Colombia. It is her village that has the Jesus Tortilla.”
    Frank looked at him quizzically.
    Farouk smiled, but with a strange, aching darkness. “Some years in the past, an old woman was frying tortillas,” he explained. “She turned one over, and there it was, a miracle.” His eyes widened in mock amazement. “The face of Jesus.” The smile disappeared. His eyes closed worshipfully. “The face of Jesus,” he repeated.
    â€œOn the tortilla?”
    â€œAs if burned onto it by the hand of God,” Farouk said reverently, his large hand over his heart, still feigning astonishment. “It has since then