Tommy's Mom

by Linda O. Johnston

  “We’ll bring them both along,” Gabe said. “So we can keep an eye on Tommy.”

  Her hesitation told him she was considering a protest, but finally she simply said, “Good idea.”

  For the rest of the day, Gabe worked in Thomas’s office. He got a patrol officer going off duty to bring over some files, and he made a lot of phone calls.

  Holly worked upstairs in her workroom. He got to see her designs and found them outstanding—cheerful, full of color and creativity and pizzazz. “Great stuff,” he told her.

  “Really?” She looked at him dubiously. “I didn’t think men…” Her voice trailed off.

  Cops, she meant. She didn’t think cops liked this sort of thing. Maybe Thomas Poston didn’t, but Gabe did.

  “I’d like to buy one from you,” he said.

  She smiled. “For your office. I know just the one. It’s not finished yet, but I’ll give it to you when it is.” She pulled out some brilliant blue fabric that reminded Gabe of the sky over Naranja Beach.

  “It’s great,” he said. “But I’ll buy it.” He was rewarded with an even wider smile.

  In the afternoon, he went with Holly to pick up her minivan. Its tires had been replaced and the minor repairs completed.

  He patrolled the house and grounds often, making certain they remained secure. He was usually accompanied by Tommy, except at naptime. In the office the tyke colored on the floor while Gabe worked.

  Late in the day, it was time to go to Evangeline’s rehearsal. Holly popped her head into the office to tell him she was ready. She had changed into a white sundress that contrasted becomingly with her dark hair and showed off every luscious curve that he had caressed last night….

  Knowing in advance it was a mistake, he didn’t resist the urge to draw her into his arms and kiss her. He felt the expected reserve in her response. She obviously regretted their lovemaking. He drew back and looked into her eyes. Though she smiled, she seemed remote. As if he were a new acquaintance, rather than the man she’d loved so passionately the night before.

  Damn! Sure, her backing off was for the better. For both of them. But he detested the fist of hurt that rammed his solar plexus.

  Tommy was dressed up, too, in a button-down shirt and dressy shorts. “Tommy, we’re going to play a game tonight. I’m really, really happy you’re talking again, but we’re going to pretend you’re not, okay? I don’t want you to talk to anyone else.”

  “Even Aunt Edie?” he asked.

  Gabe nodded. “Even Aunt Edie.”

  Pain shadowed Holly’s expression, but she reinforced Gabe’s words with Tommy. “Okay, honey?”

  Tommy grinned silently and nodded. Gabe wondered, though, at the ability of a four-year-old to play this very vital “game.”

  Gabe drove them all to Edie’s apartment. She wore one of the shortest skirts Gabe had ever seen. He appreciated how shapely her legs were, yet the woman who gave him a big, come-hither smile couldn’t hold a candle to Holly’s slender sexiness.

  They headed for the theater. The dress rehearsal had begun.

  “Keep Tommy toward the back of the theater,” Gabe told Edie. “If he gets restless, walk around a little, but bring him back where there are a lot of people as soon as you can.”

  “Sure, Gabe.”

  Holly and he took seats near the front. He didn’t see Evangeline at first. And when he did, he had to keep himself in check. He wanted to rise from his seat and shout something at her. Demand some answers.

  He heard Holly’s small gasp of surprise from beside him at the same time.

  For Evangeline’s costume was a dark blue police uniform.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Despite her earlier promise, Evangeline didn’t have time to see Gabe right after the rehearsal. The cast was meeting to discuss problem scenes. He wasn’t surprised.

  They dropped Edie off at her place after she assured them that Tommy had behaved well—relatively—and hadn’t done anything unusual. Like talk, though they didn’t ask her that.

  Then Gabe told Holly, “There’s someplace I need to go now.”

  “Fine,” she said in the shadows beside him in the front seat of his Mustang. “But drop Tommy and me off first. It’s way past his bedtime.”

  His vehicle was now permeated with the sweet apricot scent of her. He loved breathing it in….

  “Come with me.” He wasn’t sure what he would do with them while questioning Evangeline, but—

  “No thanks,” Holly said. “We’ll be fine. Especially with all the patrols you have running by our house.”

  He didn’t want to argue. Still, he reasoned with her. She wouldn’t give in.

  “Fine,” he finally said, then gunned the engine. He took Holly and Tommy home. He couldn’t be with them twenty-four/seven, he reminded himself. He had a job to do.

  He needed to find a killer, for Holly’s sake as much as anyone’s.

  He told her to lock the door and not let anyone in but him. “No one,” he underscored. “Not even someone else you trust.”

  “Who says I trust you?”

  He hoped she was teasing. But he knew from the remote look on her face as he said goodbye in her doorway that she was slipping even farther away from him. Rejecting him because he was a police officer whose duty called him away.

  So be it. He had no choice.

  “I’ll be back later,” he promised, and once again battled wounded pride when she stepped back as he tried to kiss her. He wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms, make nonstop love with her again as they had the night before.

  He wanted nothing more…except solving this case so he could put it behind him. Behind them. Only there was no them.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said sweetly. She was so beautiful that evening, in her wispy white sundress. And so far away from him. So far away from what they had shared last night.

  Sitting in his car in the driveway, Gabe made a call. “Jimmy? I need your help.”

  “You don’t mean now, do you?” came the groan from the other end of the line. “I had a long day.”

  “I know.”

  Jimmy had gone to L.A. with the package Al Sharp had given Gabe. It would be days before the Los Angeles lab had answers, though they’d promised to hurry. In the meantime, Jimmy hadn’t ignored his other duties that day.

  “But, yeah, I do mean now,” Gabe said. He’d been in touch with Jimmy by cell phone, lined him up to keep an eye on Holly’s place when Gabe couldn’t be there.

  “Okay.” Jimmy didn’t sound enthused, but Gabe knew he could rely on him. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Gabe pulled out of the driveway and into a parking spot on the street. True to his word, Jimmy arrived in fifteen minutes. Gabe exited the space and let his subordinate and friend pull in.

  Gabe headed for Evangeline’s. He’d told her he would meet her at her house that night as soon as she could get away.

  He hadn’t told her he was going to let himself in.

  But her costume was a police uniform. Her fingerprints were on the mask in Sheldon’s store. A “monster” wearing the mask and a uniform had frightened Tommy and was probably the person who murdered Thomas Poston.

  Evangeline couldn’t be the murderer. And yet…

  When he’d moved to Naranja Beach, she had given him a spare key to her trendsetting beachfront condo, and its security code, to use in emergencies. This was an emergency, though not the kind she’d meant.

  If she had any records of the extortion ring, she’d hardly keep them in the mayor’s office. And she hadn’t been involved in the day-to-day management of her shop since she took office. As a result, if there was any evidence to find, it was likely to be at her home.

  He parked along the driveway to her condo unit. The beach was right across the street, and he inhaled a good, heady whiff of the ocean air. He turned on the lights after he let himself in so Evangeline wouldn’t be startled to find him inside.

  Angry, perhaps. Startled, n
o.

  He went directly to the extra bedroom upstairs that she used as a study. She kept it as clean as her office in City Hall. He had no trouble finding what he sought. It was right at the bottom of the only pile of mail on her desk.

  Convenient.

  He heard the door open downstairs but didn’t move.

  “Gabe!” Evangeline strode into the room a minute later, looking, with her red-tinted hair, like an outraged grizzly bear. “What are you doing?”

  As forceful as her voice had been, her face was as pale as sand, her hazel eyes round and wide and fearful.

  He lifted the unsigned letters. “Let’s talk about these. And about what else I learned today.”

  GABE LEFT forty-five minutes later. He didn’t want to believe Evangeline had been directly involved in the protection scheme or in Thomas Poston’s murder—or Mal Kensington’s, for that matter. But he couldn’t rule anything out.

  Evangeline admitted knowing about the protection scheme. She claimed, though, she’d only just learned of it. She’d not been approached before. It was his fault now, in a way, or so she’d alleged.

  She had been contacted anonymously. She was being threatened but didn’t know by whom. And she’d been ordered to control Gabe. Make sure he didn’t keep digging into what really happened to Mal Kensington and Thomas Poston. Call him off before he found anything.

  Otherwise, not just her mayoral office would be forfeit, but her store, too. Maybe even her life. And Gabe’s. Even if she’d take a chance on her life, she didn’t want him harmed. Or so she said.

  The threats had come in the computer-generated letters he’d found. She’d been warned not to show them to him, yet she had planned to anyway. Soon. Or so she said. And she also claimed she’d received threatening phone calls.

  But the letters could have been manufactured to further throw him off the trail. The phone calls might never have happened.

  For all he knew, Evangeline could have been involved from the start. And he’d been brought in as the dupe to protect her.

  This woman was like family to him. He owed his life to her real family. She’d brought him to this town, given him this job.

  This woman he loved and admired might be guilty of extortion, conspiracy, and worse. Much worse.

  Murder.

  Arriving back at Holly’s, he signaled to Jimmy who started his car and left, but not before tossing a salute to Gabe indicating he’d seen nothing wrong.

  Gabe rang the doorbell. Holly didn’t answer right away. But when she did, she was shaking and pale, clearly terrified.

  “What is it?” he demanded, reaching automatically for his 9mm in the holster beneath his jacket. Was someone inside, menacing her?

  Jimmy would have walked the perimeter of the house, but there was only one of him. He could have missed a forced entry.

  Holly stared at his gun, then his face, with damp and terrified eyes. Her voice was strong and strangely sardonic, considering her obviously fragile emotional state. “That won’t help.” She gestured toward the gun. “I got another phone call.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I just hung up.”

  It could have been Evangeline….

  A phone call, though, and not a physical threatening presence. Gabe relaxed, but only a little. He put the safety back on the gun, then stowed it away. “What did the caller say?” Gabe wasn’t going to use the masculine gender to refer to the creep who called. Not anymore.

  “That time is up. If I don’t turn over whatever it is I’m supposed to have gotten from Thomas, the caller’s coming after Tommy.”

  CALMLY, Holly ushered Gabe into the living room. He looked tired. And something in his eyes tonight suggested he’d confronted a particularly maleficent demon that day.

  Which case was he working on? What was happening with it?

  Not that she expected him to tell her. Or that she really wanted to know, unless it involved Tommy and her.

  But she hated, despite everything, to see him hurting like that.

  She sat, as she customarily did, on the sofa, and gestured for him to take Thomas’s recliner chair. She was dressed in a robe. The call had gotten her out of bed. She felt as cold as if she had been left soaking wet on a wintry ski slope. But she tried hard not to let her shivering show.

  Holly ached to have Gabe close to her on the couch. Feel his strong arms around her, warming her, protecting her.

  But whatever his business was that had drawn him away so late that night, whatever the case that was troubling him, it had taken precedence over her needs and Tommy’s.

  Of course it had. It was her own stupidity that she had fallen in love with another cop. But her good sense would, in time, allow her to fall right back out.

  In the meantime, she needed him to be a cop, for Tommy’s sake. To focus on their case. Her son had been threatened.

  He’d been sound asleep, thank heavens, when the phone call had come.

  Now, Holly responded as Gabe interrogated her about the call with the patience but firmness of the seasoned police detective he was. He had already listened to the tape, and she hadn’t any more information about the caller this time than before. Except that he sounded as if he had reached the end of his restraint. There would be no more threatening phone calls. But the menace hung about her now like a poisonous miasma.

  She was to get the mysterious item and leave three pennies on the dashboard of her minivan when she was ready. Then she would be given instructions what to do with it.

  A childish signal, she thought. But in a way, its usual benign insignificance made it seem even more ominous.

  “But I still don’t know what he wants,” she finished sadly, then asked Gabe, “Should I leave the pennies on the dashboard anyway? Maybe if I’m contacted again—”

  “No,” he said sharply. “Not yet. If you pretend you’ve got something and then don’t follow instructions, it could lead to more problems.”

  Like something happening to Tommy. She knew that. But what could she do? She had to do something.

  “You’re right in a way,” Gabe said. “Putting out the pennies would be a great way to trap whoever it is. But first, we need a plan.”

  She nodded. And smiled, if only a little. He had said “we.” At least he wasn’t shutting her out totally. “Thank you, Gabe,” she said, without explaining exactly why.

  “Holly…” He was suddenly beside her on the sofa. As she had wanted before, his arms were around her. He cradled her against him, and his lips were on her forehead, her cheeks, her lips.

  She didn’t pull away. But neither did she allow herself to respond, although she wanted to very, very much.

  She waited till he stopped. Pulled away from her. Looked at her with green, stormy eyes filled with confusion, sorrow and pain.

  “There are things I just can’t tell you.” She heard the bitterness in his voice. Toward her?

  She flinched, but she put her head down on the planes of his chest and held on. Tight. “I know, Gabe,” she said sadly.

  THAT NIGHT, Holly knew she shouldn’t have allowed Gabe in her bedroom. But she needed his nearness. And although he held her all night, and she felt the rigidity of his desire for her as they nestled together, he did not try to make love with her.

  It was better that way, wasn’t it?

  He awakened with first light the next morning and made some phone calls. When he returned to her bedroom to say goodbye, he told her he had arranged for different shifts of officers to come over and paint the trim around the windows of her house.

  “It doesn’t really need it,” he explained, “but whoever is threatening you must be watching the house or how would he or she know if you put pennies in the window of your van?”

  “Unless he sees it somewhere we park when we’re out.”

  “True. Still, this will show you’re not alone. I’m having a detective come over to do some more investigation into Thomas’s things. Plus, there’ll be patrol cars assigned to cruise your street
again to keep an eye on you and the teams of guys painting your house.”

  She smiled grimly. “The fox guarding the henhouse?”

  “Something like that.”

  She thanked Gabe. She did appreciate all he was doing for her. And maybe it was selfish of her to believe that she should come first with any man.

  But weren’t there men who put their families first? Men who didn’t let their duties override all else?

  Right after Gabe left for work, Detective Jimmy Hernandez arrived. He seemed nice enough, but gruff. She didn’t know what he’d be looking for but gave him the run of the house.

  Soon the first painting shift stopped in: Bruce Franklin and Dolph Hilo, out of uniform and in grungy painting clothes. They let Tommy come out and supervise. Of course her son came back in with paint on nose and cheeks and shorts. She didn’t allow him out of her sight all day, especially when he was in the presence of the police officers. Not that she wanted to suspect Bruce and Dolph. But how could she help it?

  She knew that Gabe suspected them, too. And that must be why Jimmy Hernandez was conducting further investigation, right in her house, that day.

  Later, George Greer and Al Sharp arrived. After Tommy’s nap, Holly and he baked cookies and gave some to the police officers, including Jimmy, who was underfoot a lot. He told her he knew of the phone calls and was hunting for what the caller wanted. Not that he seemed any more successful than Gabe and she had been.

  Holly decided to take matters into her own hands. She had her own plan. Gabe might not be able to tell her everything. Neither did she need to tell him everything.

  She called Al Sharp away from his painting. On the path beside her backyard garden filled with fragrant roses and colorful wildflowers, she told him she had received another phone call. “I’d turn whatever the guy is looking for over to you to deal with, Al, if I knew what it was,” she said. Her tearfulness wasn’t feigned. “But I don’t. I hate hearing from him, but I’m thinking about putting the damn pennies on my minivan dashboard. If he calls again, I’ll tell him I wanted to talk to him again. I’ll demand that he tell me what he wants and promise to turn it over. Then I’ll give whatever it is to you. What do you think?”