Undercover Babies

by Alice Sharpe

  “I’m frightened,” she said.

  He stared at her. In fact, his gaze was so focused, she had the feeling of being eaten alive by a benevolent male protector.

  She straightened her shoulders. She didn’t need protecting. Well, okay, maybe a little, but what she needed was someone to help her, not overshadow her.

  She said, “So, are you hired or not?”

  His gaze never wavered. He said, “We have nowhere to start.”

  From behind him, Aunt Beatrice’s voice was clear. “Of course we do,” she said with a genteel sniff. “There’s a perfectly good clue right before your eyes. Well, more or less…”

  Chapter Four

  “Take off your bra,” Mac said calmly, leveling his gaze at Grace.

  Grace wrinkled her brow.

  Aunt Beatrice scolded him with her eyes.

  “That’s what you’re alluding to, isn’t it?” Mac said, staring down his aunt. “Her specially made, fancy underwear? Our one link with her past?”

  “Neither piece of my underwear has a label,” Grace said. “I checked.”

  “Forgive my nephew his bluntness,” Aunt Beatrice said as she clasped Grace’s hand. Her cheeks were highly colored and Mac knew she found discussing a woman’s undergarments with a man in the room to be distasteful. However, ever practical, she squared her shoulders and added, “Travis is right. Your unmentionables are the only clues we have. They’re a start. So if you wouldn’t mind—”

  Here she gestured toward a narrow door behind her desk. Mac knew it led to a half bath.

  Grace sighed. “If you two think it’ll help,” she said, and, casting a worried frown at Mac, disappeared inside the small room.

  “She’s a good sport,” Aunt Beatrice said as the door clicked shut.

  “She doesn’t have much choice,” Mac said. He rubbed the back of his head. Images of Jake lying dead in the alley kept getting confused in his thoughts with images of Grace in Jake’s clothes and, once in a while, with his mom. He closed his eyes. Too many lost people.

  He consciously cleared his head by picturing the night sky. He erased the stars and the moon until there was nothing but a vast blackness. It took effort to keep himself in that sky, immersed in that empty space. Thoughts kept streaking through like blazing meteorites.

  Who had trailed him and why?

  To find Grace?

  Before he’d rescued her, she’d been in the alley. How long? Had Jake seen her, spoken to her? Had someone else bargained with Jake for his clothes and given them to Grace? How could she not remember that?

  How could it be a coincidence?

  But was Jake’s death directly related to Grace?

  Were the broken window and the tail today just part of a puerile conspiracy by the police to jerk him around? It seemed unlikely Chief Barry would engage in those kinds of shenanigans.

  Mac heard the door and opened his eyes to find Grace emerging from the bathroom, sweater smoothed down over her body, a scrap of black silk in her hands. He made himself glance away from the gentle swell of her wool-clad chest but the image of last night’s nudity was so fresh in his memory he would have blushed had he been a blushing kind of man.

  His aunt hid her discomfort by crisply demanding, “Hand it to me, dear.”

  Grace gave her bra to Aunt Beatrice. All three of them crowded around the wispy garment. The tiny sea horse, its glittering eye twinkling in the light from the desk lamp, stared up at them.

  His aunt retrieved a small magnifying glass from her desk drawer and studied the sea horse before announcing in her grand manner, “I’m positive this is a L’Hippocampe.”

  “What’s that mean?” Grace asked.

  “It’s a brand name,” Mac said, straightening.

  “It’s French for sea horse,” Aunt Beatrice added. “The sea horse’s eye is a real diamond. I imagine this little thing cost five hundred dollars.”

  “Five hundred dollars!” Grace gasped.

  “Maybe it’s a knockoff,” Mac said.

  “I have a rather snooty friend, Cynthia Sinclair. You might recall her, Travis. Tall woman with red hair that defies the laws of nature? No? Well, she wears only L’Hippocampe. Frankly, between us three, she’s rather tiresome about it. She’s the kind who takes great stock in the exclusivity of an item and tends to go on and on. That’s how I came to recognize this from your description.”

  Mac said, “Call her up. Ask her where she bought it.”

  “You don’t understand,” Aunt Beatrice said. “One doesn’t go into a store and buy prestigious things like this off a rack. One makes an appointment, chooses material, talks to a designer, is fitted—”

  “Just call her up and ask her where she had the appointment,” Mac said through gritted teeth. “Please.”

  “I can’t. She’s in Europe.”

  Mac turned on his heel.

  “Where are you going?” Grace asked as he strode toward the door.

  “Cooper has a computer in his quarters. It’s older than dirt, but I’m fairly certain it’s connected to the Internet. I’m going to see if these people have a Web site.”

  “A place like that advertise? Too gauche,” his aunt said.

  “Everyone is connected these days, Aunt Beatrice. Even upscale enterprises like this one.”

  “I don’t know, Travis. It’s true that Cynthia is something of a braggart, but she swears there are only a handful of their boutiques worldwide.”

  “If they exist, they’ll be on the Web,” Mac said firmly. “You ladies hang out for a while. Don’t answer the door, don’t let anyone in. I’ll wake up Cooper and go look.”

  He was aware of both of them staring at him as he shook Cooper awake, but when he turned to toss them a reassuring wave, both heads were bent over the bra, studying the sea horse.

  GRACE SET ASIDE the cup of hot tea Cooper’s wife, Maddie, had served along with a rambling discourse on the neighbor’s new butler.

  Now, with Maddie out of the room, Grace felt free to stop pretending to sip the tea. She didn’t like the stuff. Unfortunately, Aunt Beatrice seemed to order it at every lull in the conversation.

  Mac strode back into the room after being gone little more than thirty minutes. Though she studied his face as he approached her, she couldn’t tell a thing from his expression. As a former cop, he was probably pretty good at shielding his emotions.

  For a second, he stood over her, staring at the cards she’d set out in neat rows atop the coffee table, red upon black, aces at the top. Then he sat down next to her and took her hands into his.

  The pressure of his grip elicited an overwhelming feeling of safety. Shocked by such an outlandish response to such a casual gesture, she pulled her hands from his and clasped them together, steeling herself for what he had to say.

  “There are three L’Hippocampe boutiques in the continental United States,” he began. “One in Canada, a few scattered across Europe. If you bought your underwear in Europe, we’re pretty much out of luck.

  “The stores here are in Miami, New York City and Washington, D.C. Whether you bought your garments on vacation or whether you live in one of these cities is kind of immaterial. Unless you were overseas, you walked into one of these three stores. Your tan, and the fact that’s it’s relatively recent, helps narrow the field. New York and D.C. are too cold this time of year. Canada, too, for that matter. That pretty much leaves Miami.”

  “Your reasoning is full of holes,” Aunt Beatrice said as she sipped tea from a porcelain cup.

  “Well, I don’t have much to work on but assumptions and speculation,” Mac said.

  “I’m just thinking that after her first fitting, she could have ordered new garments any time she wished. Or perhaps she had half a dozen made at the same time. Although this brassiere looks new, it might in fact be old. Or, she might live somewhere warm and have vacationed somewhere cold where she ordered her underwear. Or, contrarily—”

  “Not the point,” Mac interrupted. “All we’re looking f
or at this point is a starting place. It really doesn’t matter when Grace bought the stuff, as long as we find the where, and then only if someone recognizes her.”

  “Places like this pride themselves on customer service,” Aunt Beatrice said. “Their staff is trained to render the personal touch. Grace is a lovely young woman. Someone will recall you, dear.”

  “I must be very wealthy,” Grace said.

  “Unless someone bought them for you,” Mac said.

  Grace touched the faint tan line where it seemed certain a wedding band had recently perched. “Then my husband—”

  “Of course,” Aunt Beatrice said quickly and, setting aside her cup, rose to her feet.

  Mac cleared his throat. “Or a boyfriend,” he said softly.

  Grace stared into his blue-green eyes. “You mean I might have a…lover? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  He shrugged.

  Grace felt her face burn. “You’re suggesting I cheated on my husband with another man who bought me expensive undies.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Mac said softly.

  Aunt Beatrice said, “I don’t think—”

  “Yes, it’s a possibility,” Grace admitted.

  “Bottom line is that it doesn’t matter, not now, not when our main thrust is to discover your identity,” Mac said.

  “And to explain this feeling of anxiety that eats at my gut,” Grace added.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Aunt Beatrice said, obviously glad to move the conversation along. “Now, Travis, you have a place to start. I suggest a nice dinner, a good night’s sleep and then you two take off for Florida. I’ll have Cooper call the airline and book your flight.”

  “No flight,” Mac said, standing. “Grace has no identification. They won’t let her on a plane. We’ll have to drive.”

  “Then, after dinner—”

  Looking at Grace, Mac said, “I’m going to leave you here for the night and collect you in the morning. I have things to do before we leave.”

  He glanced at his aunt and added, “Call your doctor and ask him to come take a blood sample from Grace. He’ll have to come here. It’s just too dangerous to take her out.” With that, his hand briefly grazed Grace’s shoulder before he started for the door.

  “I need clothes,” Grace called after him, annoyed he was abandoning her again.

  His gaze pierced her. “There are some more of my ex-wife’s things back at the apartment. Will they do?”

  “For now,” Grace said reluctantly.

  He studied her face a moment and added, “We’ll pick up whatever else you want once we get out of town.”

  She nodded.

  He kept staring at her and she wondered what he saw. A woman he didn’t know decked out in his ex-wife’s clothes? A woman who might be responsible in some way for the murder of a harmless old man he’d befriended? A woman who had helped coerce him into driving her to Florida?

  She didn’t feel like any of these women and yet she was all of them.

  She felt alone and anxious, nervous that her only hope— Mac—might walk out that door and rethink his desire to get involved with her. What would keep him from calling his police friends and handing her over? What if his old police training kicked into gear?

  She was, after all, connected in some way to Jake. His clothes, his alley. By rights, she should talk to the police; only there wasn’t a thing in the world she could tell them.

  Did Mac truly believe that? She and his aunt had more or less forced him into helping her; once he was away from this house, would he rethink his position?

  How could she blame Mac if he took the easy way out and handed her over to the authorities?

  “I’ll be back in the morning,” Mac said.

  Would he?

  “Be careful,” his aunt whispered, but Mac was already gone.

  MAC MADE the tail within three blocks of his aunt’s house. Dark, late-model car—the kind undercover cops preferred. Mac found it hard to believe his actions warranted that kind of scrutiny unless Chief Barry was worried Mac might stir up additional trouble.

  Or unless the chief was aiming to pin Jake’s murder on Mac in the hope that it would get him permanently out of his hair and by association, ruin Bill Confit’s chances of a November upset.

  It seemed a little over the top, even for Barry. And yet the tail was on him and not back at his aunt’s house, watching Grace. Unless there were two tails. Mac couldn’t see the reason for one, let alone two!

  He suddenly realized he’d never gotten any answer from Grace about what had propelled her out of the Broadhurst alley. How did she get there in the first place? Did she remember anything now that her mind seemed clear?

  If she’d seen something pertinent, should he turn her over to the police?

  No way. Finding Jake’s killer was their problem. Protecting Grace was his.

  An attempt to get a license plate number failed because the car didn’t seem to have a front plate. In order to shake the guy, Mac made a few tight corners, ignoring the inevitable honks and colorful hand gestures from other drivers. His tail accomplished the same turns until Mac made a hard right at the last moment, all but skidding out of his lane. He watched in satisfaction as the car behind him clipped a row of newspaper machines.

  He thought about driving around the corner to check things out from behind. On the other hand, it was a minor accident and he could already see the vehicle backing up. He kept going, making a few more random turns until he was pretty sure he’d lost the guy. Then he pulled into the precinct parking lot.

  Mac made his way inside the six-story building he used to think of as a home away from home, ignoring the familiar twinge of sorrow he always felt when coming here. He’d faced the fact long ago that he would never be a cop in Billington again; it was a world that would forever be denied him. He found Lou Gerald at his desk.

  “There you are,” Lou said, glancing up from a computer terminal. He was older than Mac by a decade, a confirmed family man with four kids and a wife who looked like a swimsuit model.

  “We IDed your homeless friend, the guy you called Jake,” he said, shuffling through a stack of papers for the right one. “His real name was Michael Wardman, originally from Chicago, but for the last twenty years, from Billington,” Lou said as he handed Mac a form. “We hoped his past might point a finger at his killer, but it doesn’t look likely.”

  Mac scanned the paper. “You identified him fast.”

  “Believe it or not, someone in the morgue recognized him. Michael Wardman was a doctor back before the bottle got him. His closest living relative is a nephew in Detroit.”

  A doctor. Grace was terrified of doctors. Did Jake, Michael Wardman, have a connection to Grace beyond the alley and the clothes? Mac said, “How long was the old guy out on the streets?”

  Lou shrugged. “Two, maybe three years. And he wasn’t that old. Only fifty-eight.”

  He had looked fifteen years older. The point was, however, that Grace would have been in her late teens when Jake lost himself in booze. Mac didn’t know what to make of this information. If Jake being a doctor was directly related to Grace’s problems, then the answers to her identity existed in Billington, Indiana, not off in Florida.

  He rubbed the back of his head and said, “Did he practice medicine here in Billington?”

  “He didn’t actually practice medicine. He was in pathology. Worked over at the hospital. That’s why the guy in the morgue recognized him. He was in and out of there for years.”

  Did this mean anything? Seemed unlikely. If the guy had been an OB/GYN, maybe Grace went to him for her pregnancy. But a doctor who studied disease itself? Mac’s instincts told him the reason for Jake’s murder lay in the present, not in the distant past. Handing Lou the paper he’d perused as he talked, he said, “So, where does the investigation go now?”

  “Well, given the climate around here, you won’t be surprised to know we’re rounding up other derelicts. The mayor will
put pressure on the chief and the chief will put pressure on me to solve this case fast.”

  “Great,” Mac said with a sigh.

  “It doesn’t help matters that the guy in the morgue also contacted the newspapers. You know how they love a good human interest story and the fact this guy was a fallen MD will give the story legs. Hell, after the stink you raised last year when that derelict under the freeway died, they’ll probably want to interview you. I’d say Confit’s chances of becoming Billington’s next mayor get better every day this case remains unsolved. I’d also say your stock with the chief just took another nosedive.”

  What’s new? Mac thought.

  “Can you think of any reason why one of you might tail me after I left the crime scene today?” Mac asked. “Am I wanted for something?” Again he thought of Grace. Had they somehow connected her directly to Jake—Mac couldn’t yet think of the man as Michael—and then to him?

  “Not that I know of and I’d know, wouldn’t I?”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Lou added, “What about that amnesiac girl you were telling me about this morning? Still want me to run her prints?”

  It was either an idle question or the beginning of a fishing expedition. Hard to tell which. Mac said, “That won’t be necessary after all. I think I’ve just about located her family.”

  Lou nodded absently as his gaze roamed back to the keyboard. It must have been an idle question.

  Mac knew any investigation engendered massive paperwork and he also knew Lou was a stickler for detail and accuracy. The more thorough the report, the less likely a detective would get himself hauled into court and Lou hated going to court.

  Rising, Mac said, “I might be leaving town for a couple of days. You have my cell number if something else comes up, right?”

  “No problem,” Lou said, but his fingers were already clicking away.