by Style, Linda
“I think it’s time to go home, don’t you?” he said to them.
Cody’s bottom lip protruded.
“Remember what we talked about, Cody?”
The boy nodded to Rico and then pulled himself up, squaring his tiny shoulders. “I remember and I can do it.”
Macy trusted that whatever Rico said to the boy was the right thing. When they dropped Cody at the foster home, Nancy gushed over him, telling him she was so happy he was back. Macy didn’t believe her act for a minute. It broke her heart to leave Cody there and first thing in the morning she was going to call his social worker. If Nancy Appleton was going to send the boy back, Macy was going to ensure he got a better placement than the one he’d just had..
“I see what you mean,” Rico said when they were back at his house. “Cody couldn’t be the Rays’ child. He doesn’t look anything like Chelsey Ray or the child’s father.”
She heard the disappointment in his voice. “They’re still doing DNA and the results should be back soon. You never know.”
“No. The minute I saw Cody, I knew in my gut he’s not Chelsey’s child. You knew it, too. You said so.”
“But I was only going on physical differences. Facial features. There’s still a chance—”
“A chance he’ll show up elsewhere, maybe. But Cody isn’t the one. The case is as cold as it ever was.”
“I’m sorry, Rico. I’m really sorry.”
***
While it felt good to have Macy back at his place, Rico couldn’t seem to shake his disappointment in finding out Cody wasn’t Chelsey’s son. For weeks, he’d pinned his hopes on Cody, which he knew now was a foolish thing to do. He’d lost perspective. And he was doing the same with Macy.
After a quick meal of Chinese takeout, Rico told Macy he had work to do and went to his office. He needed time to think. Where did he go from here? As he sat there thinking, he felt a presence, turned and found Macy propped against the door to his office. “I’m going to do some work, too, but I wanted to tell you again how really sorry I am about tonight…about Cody and…everything. And to thank you for letting me stay here.”
Everything. Damn. He’d been so preoccupied with his own disappointment, he’d almost forgotten all the other crap that was going on. He stood, crossed to the door and pulled her into his arms. “You had a tough night. A tough week. My disappointment is nothing compared to what you’ve been through.”
Cody running away was only one of her problems. Probably the smallest one.
She pulled back. “What did you say to Cody today that made him want to go back to the Appletons?”
“Just a bunch of stuff about things not always turning out the way we want them to, but it’s up to us how we deal with it. I said it’s a big responsibility, especially for someone his age, and asked if he thought he could make the best of what he had to do right now.”
She nodded. “That’s good. I’ve said pretty much the same things, but he seemed to accept it better coming from you.”
“Hey, us guys gotta stick together.”
She smiled but just barely. “Okay, we both have work to do, so let’s get cracking.”
She was always on track, always proving herself. “Okay, but—” he glanced at the time “—only if you meet me in the kitchen at ten for a glass of wine.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “It’s a deal.”
Rico went back to his case file. Knowing Cody wasn’t Chelsey Ray’s kid instilled him with even more determination. Two hours later, he shoved the file to the back of his desk. Nothing. Nothing except the feeling the answer was right under his nose and he couldn’t see it.
He went to the kitchen and was surprised to see Macy already there. The dog was curled up beside her on the couch. He opened the fridge, pulled out a beer and held it up.
“No thanks, I’d rather have a glass of wine if there’s any left from the barbecue.”
“Sure. There’s more wine than beer. Chardonnay, Merlot and White Zin.”
“Chardonnay is fine.”
As he poured, she said, “I couldn’t concentrate. What happened at my place affected me more than I was aware. I really am glad you convinced me to stay here.” She worried her bottom lip. “I feel safer.”
That she felt safe with him made him feel good, too. Better than good. He wanted her to feel safe — and protected. But did she feel anything else? “Is that the only reason?”
She took a sip of the wine he’d poured. “No. I came back because I don’t think I can get through this alone.”
He felt her need. She was the most stubborn, independent woman he knew. What had it taken for her to admit she couldn’t do it alone? And where was her family? “You’re not alone,” he said. And he meant it.
If he hadn’t gone to her office to find out about Cody, and then pressed the issue, she wouldn’t have started probing into Haven’s Gate in the first place. He couldn’t discount the possibility that the threats and the breakin at her condo had something to do with the questions they’d been asking. Someone felt threatened, and it was up to Rico to protect Macy until he found out who it was.
“And there’s the wine. That’s another good reason for coming back.”
He laughed. “And if the stock we have on hand is any indication, you’ll be here for a while.”
“And the sex. I came back for the sex.”
He smiled at her bravado, trying to make light of a serious situation. As much as he wanted to make love with her tonight, he knew that wasn’t what she really needed. She needed someone to make her feel safe and secure. And that’s exactly what he was going to do.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IN THE MORNING, Macy stretched out and felt for Rico on the other side of the bed, but he was gone and Hercules was in his place. “Hello, sweet puppy dog.” She ruffled his hair. “You kinda like it here, don’t you, having the run of the place, going outside whenever you want.” Hercules licked her nose and made her giggle. “I understand. I kinda like it, too.”
Not good. Not good at all. She’d worked all her life to get to the place where she didn’t need to depend on anyone emotionally. But being here with Rico made her realize that all she’d done was cut herself off. From love. From loving … and being loved. Despite her fight against it, she’d fallen in love with Rico.
And she didn’t care.
Together right now was good enough.
Macy heard the phone ring and then Rico’s low voice when he answered. She couldn’t make out the conversation and decided it was time for work anyway. After a quick shower, she threw on her court clothes, a black pin-striped suit and a deep lavender blouse, all the while ticking off in her head the things she had to do today. Call Karen Creighton right away. Appear in court with Ginny Mathews who was certain her husband was going to violate the protective order. And knowing him, he might. She felt so sorry for that woman. For all she knew, Aaron Mathews had hired the man who’d broken into Macy’s condo. He wanted his family back and had made no secret that he thought Macy was the one standing in the way, egging his wife on to get a divorce.
But those things were peripheral to getting the answer to the question plaguing her. What happened to her child? She’d tried calling her parents in Paris, yesterday and the day before, but couldn’t make the connection.
She sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the phone for one more try. When she heard a click, her blood rushed. But it was only the answering machine. “Please call me,” she said, then cut to the chase. “I need to see my child’s death certificate. If you won’t help me, I’m going to have his body exhumed. I’ll be at the office today. Call me there.”
When she finished, her heart was pounding like a jack-hammer. Maybe she should go back to her parents and go through all her father records, her mother’s, too, if she had any. Search everywhere. In fact, her resolve bolstered, she might go over there first, before doing anything else.
That settled in her mind, she picked up her small purse, stuffed it into her
overflowing briefcase and went to the kitchen. Rico was standing at the counter and handed her a cup of coffee. “Sleep well?”
“I feel great. And I’m ready to get back into the fray.”
He leaned against one of the bar stools, his expression serious. “I received a call from the hospital. The guy is still in a coma.”
Macy slid onto the stool next to him. “Isn’t there something else the police can do?”
“It’s not my case, so I don’t know all the details of what they’ve done except send the gun to CSU and the guy’s prints to AFIS. We’ll know today if he’s in the system.”
“What if he’s not in the system? What if he never comes out of the coma? We’ll never know what he was doing in my condo or why. Maybe I’ll call the officer in charge and find out what else they’re doing. There has to be a way to identify him.”
“You can call, but they might not be able to tell you everything. In an ongoing investigation there are always details that can’t be released to the public.”
“So, we just sit and wait?”
“And hope he wakes up soon and wants to confess.”
“It’s hell waiting for all this stuff to be processed. I’ll remember to be more considerate when my clients get upset with waiting.”
“Unfortunately, it’s the way things actually work.”
“Slowly,” she added.
“Yep. And now I’ve got to take off.”
“Me, too. Do you think it’s okay for Herc to stay here today?”
“Mi casa, su casa,” he said with a smile.
***
“WE HAVE A HIT on the adoption agency and the other two accounts,” Jordan said to Rico, who was on his way to headquarters.
Rico switched his cell phone to the other ear. “Good stuff?”
“I’ll let you be the judge.”
“I’m on my way.” Rico clicked off and gunned the engine onto the freeway. Finally, a lead. He knew it was good information by Jordan’s voice. Jordan rarely got animated.
At the station, Rico saw a couple beat cops on watch. Since the bomb scare, the department had been taking precautions. He hoped Macy was doing the same. He’d asked for a house watch on both her place and his. He thought of calling her to be sure she made it to her office okay, but that would be acting like a mother hen again. He called anyway. She wasn’t there yet, so he left a message.
On his way to his desk, Rico passed Jordan and clapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, buddy,” Rico said. “Let’s see your stuff.”
A tower of papers teetered on Rico’s desk.
Rico set his thermal coffee mug down and leaned over the pile, one hand on each side, reading from a standing position. “Selena Burns, alias Betty Sells, alias…Sally Brighton? Sally Brighton is the director of the adoption agency and Haven’s Gate?” He whistled in surprise, then tensed with the rush that always came when he was on to something.
“The woman has a long record of fraud and bilking senior citizens.” Jordan came over to stand beside Rico. “She worked at a nursing home previously and was under suspicion for some missing jewelry and cash that belonged to the residents. She was also the beneficiary for two of the people who died there. But no convictions. And from what I can gather on the adoption agency, they farm out the adoptions to different attorneys.”
“Anyone we know?”
“Don’t know. It’s coded so that all the money filters from the agency to Haven’s Gate and back to the agency again. Probably to pay the attorney. Look here. Here the code is W.C., then it changes after that and later goes back to the code W.C.”
“Yeah.” He studied the sheet and saw the money going to the agency with the code W.C. spanned a five-year period, two years before Macy had her baby and three years afterward. The same time Wesley Capshaw was on the board of directors at Haven’s Gate. Something else caught his eye. “Dr. Dixon is also on the board of the adoption agency.”
“It gets even stickier. Get a load of the AFIS report underneath this one.”
Rico picked up the papers and read the name. Herbert Burns.
“Look at the photo.”
Rico flipped to it. Excitement coursed through him, the kind of excitement he always felt when he had his suspect dead-on and was about to make a collar. “Our guy in the hospital.” He read some more. Military background. Explosives expert. Dishonorable discharge. He looked at Jordan. “That’s it. We can nail him.”
“Read.”
Rico’s skin prickled as he read on. Married three times. Third wife, Sally Burns. Oh, man! “This is big. Big enough to have someone taken out if they got in the way.” With all the evidence coming down on Haven’s Gate, he regretted he hadn’t found a way to make a connection with the Ray case. “Has Brighton been to the hospital to see him?”
“No visitors.”
Rico immediately called Judge Goldberg to get a search warrant for the Burns’ house, and while he waited for it to come through, he had some other business to take care of. Business he couldn’t get out of his mind.
On the road again, Rico replayed the conversation he’d had with Macy after they’d found Cody. Something she’d said put him on alert. He’d racked his brain all night for the answer—and came up with nothing. Nothing except the same gut feeling that the women he’d interviewed were hiding something.
The information about Burns and his wife was simply another piece of the Haven’s Gate puzzle, of which there appeared to be many. He wasn’t sure how they’d all fit together. Or if they even did. But how did any of this relate to Chelsey Ray’s baby? He’d been hoping one thing would lead to another, but now he felt as if he was going backward instead of forward.
The thought sparked another idea. Going backward… He had to go back. But what if he was wrong?
***
Macy pulled farther into the drive at her parents’ home so her car wasn’t visible from the gate or street. She hoped this wouldn’t be another exercise in futility. What possible reason would her father have for being so secretive about her child? She’d gone along with keeping it a secret from others, but the thought that he wouldn’t even give her any details was absurd. She was the child’s mother, for God’s sake. And that baby was the only child she was ever going to have. She deserved to know how he died.
An hour later, she knew she wasn’t going to find a thing. Her father was too thorough. She felt weak and listless as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs.
She shoved the papers back into the files and tried to straighten the mess she’d made. There wasn’t one file she hadn’t gone through. She’d started in her mother’s room and then gone back to the library. She sagged in the chair at her father’s desk staring at the blinking message light on the phone. She’d noticed it when she came into the room.
Her father’s business never quit, not even when he was away. Or maybe it was one of her earlier messages that he’d never answered. She pressed the button, ready to erase it if it was. Then an oddly familiar voice said, “Stop her, Capshaw. Do something, and do it now!”
Stop her? Do something? Who was the her in the message? A client? It seemed strange that someone was ordering her father to do something. She remembered how divorce cases among the wealthy were always bitter and messy. Still, Wesley Capshaw never took orders. Not from anyone.
None of her earlier messages were on the machine, which meant her father must’ve retrieved them — and chosen not to call her back. Why had she ever thought he would? Hoped he would.
She swallowed back the lump in her throat. She wasn’t going to let this get to her.
Still curious about the odd call, she pressed caller ID. The voice had been familiar, but the number wasn’t one she knew. She wrote it down anyway and stuffed it in her purse.
When she was finally back at her own office, she made all her other phone calls and was happy Karen Creighton willingly agreed to find another placement for Cody. He’d have to stay where he was for the time being, but as long as the change was in prog
ress, Macy felt better.
Then she picked up her cell since it didn’t have caller ID like her office phone, and made one more call — to the number on the paper she’d copied in her father’s office.
One ring. If the caller was one of her father’s clients, the call was confidential and she shouldn’t be doing this. Two rings. Okay, she’d hang up once she heard who it was. Or she’d just say she had the wrong number. Three. Just as she was about to hang up, she heard a click.
“Dr. Dixon.”
Her heart thumped. Dr. Dixon was the one who’d threatened her father?
“Hello? Is someone there?”
Well, she’d wanted to talk with him before. Now was the perfect opportunity. “Uh, yes. Hello. This is Macy Capshaw, Dr. Dixon. Wesley Capshaw’s daughter in case you don’t remember.”
Long seconds passed. She was about to speak again when he said, “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you about my stay at Haven’s Gate. I’d like to know if your agency ever filed a death certificate on my child and what was the cause of death,” she blurted, getting it all out before he could refuse to talk to her. “And I’d like to know why you and your staff lied to me about Carla Monroe’s baby.” She wanted to ask about her record, why someone had blacked out the part about her child’s birth, which said the child had been born healthy… and she wanted to know what happened to cause his death. But then she’d have to reveal how she’d gotten the information. If she did that, she could not only get Danielle fired, but her own ethics might be on the line with the bar.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only sign the certificates. My director takes care of the rest. And I don’t remember this Monroe person.”
“She stayed in the same room with me. She had her baby the day before I had mine. She told me recently her child had been stillborn.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t recall. But rest assured, we take the very best care of every mother who comes through here. If there are problems it’s usually due to poor prenatal care. Now I have an urgent call.”