Chapter Fourteen

"He said that?" Eeva said and laughed on the other end of the connection.

Cal had called her shortly after the Garden Gang meeting.

The horizontal slats in his window blinds were open, and he looked down into the garden and across the barren treetops to the building Niles had pointed out earlier: Eeva's building, so close he could probably hit it with a baseball. His last centerfielder certainly could have.

 Cal confirmed that Niles had indeed called her an old spook. What Cal didn't say was that Niles believed it took one to know one, and that Niles was retired MI6 of Her Majesty's Royal Code Crackers or whatever it was that Niles actually did and probably shouldn't be talking about with new friends around a shared bottle of rosé. He also didn't mention his and Frank's week-long investigation into the Kosatka, on pain of death from Frank—not really—but Cal had promised not to say anything to anyone outside the Garden Gang, and Cal kept his promises.

"What does that even mean?" asked Eeva. "I'm so old that I'm a ghost? That's amusing coming from Niles!"

"No, it means like a spy. That's what he means." Cal chuckled along with Eeva. It was funny, except it gnawed at him in that ridiculous way that a ridiculous idea would plant itself in your mind. Niles was just paranoid, which made Frank paranoid—or more paranoid, and now Cal couldn't shake the thought. Afterall, he was already in cahoots with two ex-spooks, so would a third one be that far outside the realm of possibility?

"A spy?!"

It wasn't laughter that came across the phone, but Cal could tell she was smiling. After just a few encounters, coffee a few times and more than one lunch, Cal could recognize her amusement. She wasn't one for deep belly laughs, but her pale eyes would light up to match an ear-to-ear smile, and her voice would pitch up to something almost girly. It was like how she would look at him without facing him directly; she could laugh without laughing.

"You do sound like the Russian spies I grew up watching in the movies," Cal said, his voice teasing.

"No. Thees is what Russian spy sound like." And it was a perfect impression of Natasha from the old cartoon. "Maybe you and Frank are really Moose and Squirrel?"

Cal laughed and sat at the edge of his bed, wrinkling the covers he'd neatly tucked in as a habit upon waking. Some tension eased from his body, and he glanced at the open door to his room into the hall, wondering when Frank would come up from the garden and quiz him.

"When I first met Niles and Jonathan, I spent the entire conversation trying to convince him that I was Estonian and not Russian. Niles was very animated, and I felt that he was on the edge of badgering. Jonathan had to intervene on my behalf! It was only then that Niles calmed down and even apologized. I think he was lost somewhere in the past."

"Poor guy," Cal said.

"Agreed. But it speaks to something I've heard about old spies -spooks- I'm sorry."

"What's that?"

"That they get lost in the shadows of their past."

Cal considered this. Forget about Niles, he wondered, and worried, about his friend of thirty years. He laughed that Frank was paranoid and eccentric, but wasn't he always? Maybe spooks weren't trained. Maybe they were born.

"Yeah, I could see that," he said. "Did you know a lot of spooks or spies back in Estonia? When you worked in the government?"

"Cal, you can't grow up east of the Iron Curtain without learning to fear the KGB. Then when the Wall fell and my country turned its back on the Soviets and began its march towards democracy, it only got worse."

"Damn."

"Mm hmm."

A beat of silence passed between the phones in their ears.

"So, you're not a spy? Or a spook?"

"I will admit," Eeva said. "I was once accused of being a nosy neighbor."

Cal laughed. "What happened?"

Eeva explained. "A few years ago, my neighbor's house across the street caught my attention. A package was delivered to her front door in the morning, and when I returned, myself, later in the evening, it was still there, untouched. That is not unusual in itself, but more and more parcels arrived, one every day for three days straight. At this point, I was naturally curious because the parcels had piled up around her front door. I even watched to make sure that the delivery person was ringing the bell, and they did every time. Still, my neighbor never answered the door and never brought the parcels inside. I assumed that she was out of town, but then one day I crossed the street and peeked in her garage window and saw that her car was parked inside."

"You are a nosy neighbor!" Cal laughed.

"Well, I was concerned for her well-being! She was an old lady, after all, and I'd feared something had happened to her."

"And you didn't check on her sooner?"

"Estonians are private people," Eeva explained. "I didn't want to overstep. But on that evening after I saw her car parked in the garage and the pile of boxes had grown too tall to ignore, I rang her doorbell."

"What happened?"

"She didn't answer. She wasn't answering for the delivery man, and she didn't answer for me. Except I kept ringing. I was panicking by then and I kept ringing that bell well beyond what was reasonable. I was about to call the authorities, but I wanted to be sure before I made an absolute fool of myself."

"Did she answer? Was she dead?"

"Oh, she answered!" and Eeva gave one of her laughs that wasn't a laugh. "She cursed me out like I was the devil himself! How dare I bother an old woman and send her heart racing with all my damned ringing! I was so embarrassed."

Cal laughed. "So why wasn't she getting her packages? It wasn't your fault you thought she was dead."

"It turns out that her ex-husband from twenty years earlier had been dumped by his newer wife and he imagined himself back on the market. He started calling her every day to tell her how much he'd missed her over the years and how he wanted to reunite and rekindle their relationship."

"Oh, wow!"

"Well, she wasn't having anything to do with him, so he started sending her gifts. They were random things, I later found out, like a new towel rack and a cookie jar shaped like two frogs. She wanted nothing to do with him or his gifts, so she simply let them stack up on her doorstep where she hoped the wind and weather would whisk them away!"

They both laughed on opposite ends of the phone connection and this time Eeva's laugh slipped into a lively giggle.

"So, forget what Niles was saying?"

"I'm just a nosey neighbor."

"Then I'd like to take you to dinner."

Cal immediately wondered why he'd said that and in the moment of silence before Eeva answered, he hoped she hadn't heard.

"I'd like that," she said. She had heard and there was no taking it back. He'd have to plow ahead.

"Oh, wow!" he said. "I mean, is tonight good?"

"Let's do tomorrow night. I have plans this evening already," she said.

"That's great, then! That you're free tomorrow - I mean - not great that you have plans tonight. What are you doing tonight? No—never mind! It's none of my business. Look at me being the nosey neighbor now."

Cal could feel his face turning red.

"Speaking of which," Eeva said. "Look out your window and up."

"Huh?"

"Just do it," she prodded.

Cal stood from his bed and looked out his window and noticed a light flickering in a window at the top floor of the building across from him, barely noticeable from the afternoon sun reflecting in the window. A moment later the light stayed on, and the window filled with a feminine silhouette, blurry like a ghost.

"That's you?" Cal said and laughed. "I guess we have been neighbors this whole time."

"That's one thing the old man was correct about."

"Hold on—I'll flick my lights so you can see me, too."

"No need. You're on the top floor of the building with the vines. I'm a spy, remember?"

"Very funny."

"I'll see you tomorrow?"

"You will and I can't wait."

Cal ended the call and took a deep breath. He wasn't emotionally ready for a date but the energy surging through him was undeniable. I'd like to take you to dinner. The words had escaped his lips like he wasn't a married man of thirty-five years—but he wasn't anymore, really. Moving on was an option—inevitable, in fact. So why did it feel like a crime?

"Date night?" said Frank's voice from behind him.

Cal wheeled around and found his friend leaning against the doorframe, looking every bit the part of a smug prosecutor. And for a moment, Cal was right back in court standing in front of Judge Hoffer. Guilty as charged.