“Yes,” Franklin said, and together he and Brian escorted her to the car. When they arrived at her apartment she wouldn’t let them walk her up. She ran up the stairs and after letting herself in she threw her jacket off and herself on her daybed and burstinto tears. Behind her closed eyes all she could see was Lincoln lying so still in that hospital bed with a tube down his throat. And the monitors beeping and flashing numbers. She never got beyond the foot of the bed, but she’d laid her hands on his feet. And she never said anything, she couldn’t get the words past her throat. She lay there and stared at the water stain on the far wall until early in the morning, when she got up and got ready for work. Who cared if it was four in the morning when she started a pot of coffee and picked up her first file to begin her day.
*****
Three days later, she stood in the center of their work room trying to get just the right look on an arbor for the upcoming wedding she was doing on Saturday. “Brian, what’s missing?” she called out as she stepped back to see what was missing. She bumped into a wall. But heard a grunt. She whipped around, and blurted out, “What are you doing here?” She stared at the twenty-five women who were wives and girlfriends of the members of the motorcycle club. The last time she’d seen them was when they were waiting to see if Lincoln would survive his ordeal.
Before anyone could say anything Brian came rushing in, and said, “Addy, you have a visitor. Oh. Sorry. But these women aren’t your visitor, you have a different one.” He turned his glare on them, and said snidely, “I don’t know who they are but they’re not on your schedule.”
Addy looked at the woman then, Brian and then to the woman and man standing beside Brian.
“Addison Murphy?”
“Yes? How can I help you?”
“I’m Detective Lydia Marsh, this is my partner Detective Edward Ricks. In light of what happened to your husband threedays ago, the powers that be have decided today is the day. We’re here to get your phone and ask you a few questions. The take down is going to be in a few hours. Detective Ricks is going to program your cell to ring here at the office. We ask that you stay here until we return. Is there someplace private we can ask you some personal questions about your husband?”
“Um, sure, my office.” She was so dumbfounded, she turned to Mary, and said, “I’ll be right back. Make yourself useful and see if you can see what’s wrong with that arch, it needs to pop and it’s not.”
“What’s the theme?” one of the women asked.
“Love at midnight. Colors are dark blue and silver, I can’t get the stars to shine.”
Addy and Brian led the detectives to her office and she handed over her cell phone and allowed Detective Marks behind her desk. “What do you need to know?”
“In the case of my investigation it’s been brought to my attention that Mr. Murphy is called by three names. Lincoln, Abe, and Link. I will be the one using your phone to call him, to see if the suspect answers. I need to know how you address him.”
“Lincoln. I always call him Lincoln. Never Abe.” Addy actually shuddered as she said it and Lydia noticed her voice changed. “Not Link,” she said, then giggled. “Only when I wanted to get his attention when he was watching some game and wouldn’t answer me. I won’t tell you what I did to get his attention, but let’s just say he’s missed the ending of several games on the TV.” From behind her she heard a snort, and the women turned to see the grin on Detective Marks’s face.
“How did you call him?” When she saw confusion, she said, “I’m a good voice mimicker. I need you to act like you’re calling him.” She handed her a phone. “Dial the number that shows, it’s Marks’s phone. Turn your back so you won’t see Marks and picture him as Lincoln.”
Addy shrugged and did. She took several deep breaths and pictured a good time that she’d had with her husband. The phone rang, and she said on a sigh, “Lincoln, it’s me.” She frowned and hung up. “I always said that. Never realized it before. I always said his name, then it’s me. Not my name.”
“Good. We want this to be as real as possible. I’m sorry for what I’m about to say, but I know about your stay in the hospital. When you called him, did he ever say anything? Did you hear his voice?”
“No, but I felt like someone was there. Listening. But no one said anything. I only said those three words and waited. Nothing. Not until about the fifth phone call when a woman said to stop calling her fiancé.” She wiped her tears. “I didn’t recognize the voice.”
“Thank you for your honesty, Mrs. Murphy. Again, please stay here until you hear from us again.” The detectives left and Addy and Brian went back out to the workroom.
“Oh my god, how did you do that?” Addy asked as she saw the arch the way she’d pictured it. She looked at the women and saw them beaming at her.
“One of your employees said we could use anything back here,” Mary said. “I found a disco ball and we put up lights that reflect stars, but we covered it.”
Addy and Brian walked around it and stepped back. They realized they couldn’t see the ball and the lights shimmered like stars through some soft fabric. She laughed and turned to the women. “You’re hired.”
They laughed, until one of the women asked, “You do this for a living? Make arches?”
“No. I plan events, parties. This is just part of it. This arch is for a wedding on Saturday. Not all event planners do this, but I like to take the major pieces that I will be using and set them up here to look at them. I tweak them to get them perfect, so whenit comes to the time of the event, it will be just a quick setup. This particular event happens to be in the third-floor ballroom at the Hastings Hotel. It’s a night time wedding, it’s supposed to be a clear night and with the natural stars, we’re trying to recreate them for the arch and in the ballroom. I’ve been working with the grooms for the last eight months.”
“Grooms?”
“Yes, because same sex marriages aren’t legal here yet, it’s actually officially a commitment ceremony. Just shy of a wedding.”
“How many of these do you plan?”
“Honey,” Brian said, from Addy’s side. “From now until the New Year, we’ve got an event every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Weddings, commitment ceremonies, anniversary parties, Christmas parties, you name it, Addy plans it.”
“Let me guess.” Mary laughed. “All those times Abe said you had ‘a thing’, you told him what that thing was and he couldn’t remember, or he would forget and always called it a thing?”
“Probably.” Addy laughed.
