by Nancy Bush
It had been Daniella’s bad luck that a man and his date had walked outside the bar and caught a glimpse of Lumpkin after she had gotten his leg back inside and was just shutting the door. “He okay?” the guy had asked.
Panicked inside, Daniella had said, “Yeah, I don’t know. He kinda pulled the door shut and just fell over. I knocked on the window and when he didn’t respond I opened the door and he kinda flapped a hand at me.”
“Maybe we should call 911,” the date said. She was a small woman, shivering in the brisk night air.
“Y’think?” he asked, clearly not interested in getting that involved.
Daniella meanwhile had been worried about her fingerprints. She’d yanked open the door without thinking. She didn’t have a record, but she was Lumpkin’s tenant of record. Shit. What had she been thinking? And where the fuck had Teresa gone?
They had all stood there a moment, and then the man said, “If he waved at you, then he must be okay.”
“Maybe he’s just sleeping it off,” the date suggested. “At least he’s not driving.”
“I think he was kinda pissed I opened the door,” Daniella said.
“God, it’s cold. You think it was the Arctic, not LA.” The date had shivered and the man put his arm over her shoulders.
“Okay, well . . . whatever,” he said, then turned the woman with his arm and they had walked away, their momentary interest fading off.
Once out of view, Daniella wiped down the door handle, then immediately ran to the Chevy. She drove around the block to where the Xterra had been parked, but it was no surprise to find an empty space at the curb. Teresa had been long gone.
In a painful quandary, Daniella had nervously squeezed her hands and cracked her knuckles, then she’d put the car in gear and headed toward the airport. While Teresa had been inside Ray’s with Lumpkin, Daniella had unlocked the Xterra with one of their extra keys and rifled through the bags tossed into the backseat. Andre didn’t trust Teresa, who had been a real closed-off bitch since the Cantrell business, which was just weird because Teresa didn’t even like Jonathan Cantrell. She never liked anybody, except maybe that Laughlin guy—she’d married him, for God’s sake—but even he hadn’t affected her as much as Cantrell. Well, of course, the kid had died in that accident, and that hadn’t been part of the plan. Still, Teresa had never shown she cared much about anything but Teresa, so Daniella had assumed she’d get over it.
Of course, Jerrilyn had changed after being Mittenberger’s mistress for so many months. She had become quieter, more watchful, and almost sort of fake-friendly. Andre had noticed it, too, though he pretended not to. Daniella just hoped Jerrilyn maybe really cared about the guy. One less handmaiden to fight off. Meanwhile, Naomi was still her bossy old self and Clarice was just a blank between the ears. If Teresa was really gone, and Jerrilyn was falling for some other guy, then definitely things would be better.
As those thoughts had filled her head, her hand had encountered a small folder in the bottom of the second bag. She’d pulled it out and recognized an airline packet just as she heard Teresa’s voice. Daniella stuffed the folder at the bottom of the bag and backed out of the Xterra, banging her head on the doorway in the process. Head pounding, she’d raced away, hiding behind the huge, black truck.
When Teresa, after a few moments with Lumpkin at his car, had racewalked to her car, Daniella had been torn. She was supposed to follow her, but always before Teresa had driven the victim’s car away, letting him wake up miles from the scene of the crime, if he woke up at all. Teresa would then walk to a nearby bar, call a cab, and have them drop her at the original location. She never knew she was being followed, and she always acted in the same way.
But this was new with Lumpkin, so that’s why Daniella had looked.
She’d arrived at LAX forty minutes later, knowing Teresa only had about ten minutes on her, tops. It was one helluva big airport, but she’d seen Delta written on the folder and a time, just after midnight. Maybe the flight wasn’t for tonight, but why else would her bags be in the SUV? She’d already broken protocol and Andre would not be forgiving.
So, she’d gone to the Delta counter and been shocked to see Teresa right there, big as life, at the ticket counter. Taking a huge risk, Daniella had circled around the other passengers waiting in line who gave her dirty looks like she was cutting, then had walked behind Teresa just as the woman handing Teresa back her ticket was saying, “Check with the gate agent when you get to Miami. It’s tight, but doable, I think.”
Now Daniella was faced with a glowering Andre whose left eye was ticking. A bad sign. Maybe he was having one of his headaches, or maybe he was just that enraged.
He said, “What am I going to do with you if you can’t do one job?”
“She was supposed to move him to somewhere else. I don’t know why she didn’t.”
“She was supposed to take care of the problem.”
“She didn’t move him.”
“She was supposed to take care of the problem,” he stressed.
Daniella nodded. Maybe that’s why Teresa had balked; she didn’t want to kill him. Daniella, herself, hadn’t been asked to commit this ultimate act of allegiance. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to, and maybe Andre had guessed that, or maybe her time just hadn’t come yet. If it meant pushing herself to the front of the pack, maybe she could . . . maybe . . . God, she hoped so.
“We are all going to have to find Teresa now,” Andre said, his eyes dark and flat as they gazed hard at her.
Behind her, she felt someone come into the room and glanced back to find Naomi, her eyes bright. She was almost as fervent as Andre sometimes.
“When you find her, what’s—”
“We find her,” he corrected patiently.
“Going to happen to her?”
“You know, when we do bad things, we must be punished.”
“I don’t do bad things,” she blurted out.
“You failed The Messiah,” Naomi said. Daniella’s quivering turned to an out-and-out shaking. Naomi shifted behind her and said, her breath stirring the hair at Daniella’s crown, “Jerrilyn is on a weekend trip with Mittenberger.”
“Get her back here,” Andre said. He hated being thwarted in any way.
Naomi didn’t question him, just turned on her heel and went to do as she was bidden. How Jerrilyn would explain to her mark that his mistress had had a change of plans was Jerrilyn’s problem. Daniella had enough of her own.
“What if I can’t find where she went?” Daniella asked, cringing inside at her scared tone.
“You will find her,” he said.
Daniella nodded, lowering her gaze. She could tell him right now. She should tell him right now. But she needed to at least pretend that she hadn’t been lying. She would take the Chevy and drive around for a while, then she would find a way to explain how she’d learned Teresa had driven to LAX and that she was on her way to Miami and beyond.
West had accepted a glass of lemonade and they were both standing on her balcony, looking over the street below. Time was passing and she needed to get him out of her apartment soon, but he was clearly in no hurry to leave. He would probably be happy to wait all afternoon and evening and into the next day.
“So, your grandmother married a cattle rancher and moved out west,” she said, continuing the conversation that had sprung up from her search at the Internet café.
“Who’s this friend, Aimee?” he asked.
Callie just shook her head. There was no way out of this. The bracelet was too big of a giveaway.
Her phone suddenly started ringing from inside her purse, which was sitting on a table inside. West’s gaze slid to her purse and then back to her eyes. “No phone, huh,” he said.
“Excuse me.” She hurried inside and ripped her cell out of her purse. “Hello,” she answered, expecting it to be William and it was.
“You want information on the Laughlins . . . ?” he asked carefully.
“Than
ks, I already took care of that.” She saw West casually walk back inside.
“May I ask why?”
“Don’t worry about it. I really can’t talk now. I’ll call you back later.”
“I’m assuming you mean the Laughlins of Laughlin Ranch.”
“I believe so. Gotta go. Thanks.”
She clicked off and turned to face him.
“So, you lied about the phone, too,” he said.
“You know, I don’t know what’s going on here, either,” she said. “I don’t know how I got involved with your family problems, but I did, apparently. Now I just want it all to go away. I’ve only got a few more days in Martinique, and I would kind of like to spend them relaxing and preparing to go back home. No offense . . . West . . . but you need to leave me alone.”
“Tell me about the bracelet, who gave it to you, and I don’t just mean their name. I want to know who they are, and why they would give it to you. Believe me, I know it’s a Laughlin heirloom, or, actually, if you want to get technical, a Brantley heirloom as Victoria was a Brantley before she married my grandfather. Call the gendarmerie if you have to, but I’m not leaving till I get those answers.”
Through the door Callie heard a clatter of footsteps on the outdoor stairs. She whipped around. Oh, God, no! It’s too early!
West’s head turned, too, following her. Then there was the sound of a small fist pounding on her door.
“Calleee! Calleee!” came through in a muffled cry.
Like an automaton, Callie walked to the door, twisted open the handle. Tucker flew inside and hurled himself at her, throwing his arms around her.
West stared at the boy clamped to Callie’s thigh and then lifted his eyes to meet hers. She was surprisingly calm, matching his gaze with a challenge in her own blue eyes, although there was trepidation as well.
Outrage burned through him as he set his unfinished glass of lemonade on a glass-topped side table. Damn it all. This had to be Stephen’s boy.
So, maybe the woman in front of him was Teresa after all. From what he’d discerned, Teresa would easily assume someone else’s identity, if it suited her purpose. The backstory about Callie Cantrell could be all true, but it didn’t mean she was Callie.
The boy was looking at him, having recognized there was someone else in the room. “You must be Tucker,” West said.
He looked like Stephen . . . same dark hair and blue eyes, a Laughlin brand as much as any mark seared into cattle hides.
“Tucker, this is Mr. Laughlin,” she introduced.
“Allo.” Then Tucker screwed his neck around to look up at her. “You are amies?”
“We just met yesterday,” she said. Her voice was wooden. West could tell she’d shut down but he sensed that she was ready to claw his eyes out if he so much as spoke to Tucker in a way she deemed incorrect.
But to hell with her. He wanted answers. “So, is she your mother?” he asked.
The boy turned to him fully and sized him up and down as Callie seemed carved in stone. “We are amies,” he said scornfully, as if West were really dense.
“Friends,” she said.
“Friends,” the boy repeated, as if memorizing the word.
“But not your mother,” West reiterated.
Tucker looked confused and “Callie” said, “He lives with his mother.”
Tucker shook his head emphatically. “She not mon Maman.”
She gave the boy a look and said, “Tucker, you’ve always called Aimee Maman.”
“Non,” he insisted.
“So, this woman is not your mother, and Aimee is not your mother,” West clarified, holding on to his patience with an effort. He didn’t much like being played for a fool.
“I’m Callie Cantrell,” she insisted.
“You don’t live with your mother? Teresa?” West pressed Tucker.
His tone shut the little boy up tight. He just stared at West and “Callie” snapped at him, “He lives with Aimee.”
“And Jacques,” Tucker said solemnly, never taking his eyes off West.
“Who’s Jacques?” West asked.
“Jacques is the wharf cat who’s adopted Tucker,” she filled in.
Tucker asked, “Qui?”
“Jacques is your chat,” she clarified.
Tucker nodded his head several times. “He eat rats.”
“Can I meet Aimee?” West asked the boy.
“I’ll take you there,” she inserted tautly before Tucker could respond.
“Nooooo,” he cried, running to the other side of the room and plopping down in one of her rattan chairs, holding on tightly to its arms. “I stay.”
“What are you doing home so early?” she asked. “I thought you were at school.”
“Ahh . . .” His small shoulders lifted in a very Gallic shrug. “Maman . . . um . . . Aimee forgot. We leave école soon.”
“School was early out? But Aimee was there when you went home just now,” she reminded. “You went there first.”
“She was there,” he said, but his eyes slid away.
“Tucker, was Aimee there when you got home?” she demanded.
“Oui. I eat what you brung me. Merci!” He suddenly jumped up and darted past West to the balcony.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
She was nervous, it was clear. Didn’t want to hardly look at him. Well, fine. But the jig was up now, at least where Stephen Tucker Laughlin was concerned. He’d already been convinced she’d been connected with Teresa, and now, after seeing Tucker, nothing she could say would convince him this boy wasn’t his brother’s son.
As if reading his mind, she said, “I’m not Teresa.”
“Yeah?”
“But I haven’t been completely honest,” she admitted.
No shit, sister.
He saw her hug herself and it caused her breasts to swell over the square neckline of her blue top. Dragging his gaze away, he looked instead around the room.
When he’d first followed her into the apartment, he’d looked around with a cop’s eyes, sizing it up. It was clearly a rental. The flower-printed cushions were faded and slightly worn although the pillows were plumped and clean. The small table and chairs were rattan, beaten up at the legs by a vacuum cleaner, if he was reading the whitened, scarred wood correctly. The kitchenette cabinets were functional but the laminate was peeling up just a teensy bit at the corners of the doors. Still, it was comfortable. And probably a helluva lot cheaper than his room at Bakoua Beach; he’d purposely kept back the information that he was staying at the hotel, not wanting to scare her when she had inadvertently chosen his hotel as yesterday’s venue. Now he was glad he hadn’t been forthright. He was pissed off at her. He’d wanted to believe in her. Had believed in her, but she’d hornswoggled him on damn near everything and he’d believed he was beyond being hornswoggled by a good-looking woman again.
Just goes to show you, he thought darkly.
He’d gotten a call back from Dorcas, his ex-partner, who’d wanted to know what he was looking for. “The car that went over on Mulholland about a year ago,” West had reminded him a bit impatiently.
“Yeah, Cantrell. Got it,” Dorcas had said. “The husband and kid died. Wife survived. But what are you doing?” Then, before he could answer, “You on some kind of private case?”
“For my grandmother,” he had said, seeking to squelch any further questions.
But Dorcas wasn’t known for taking hints. An ex-college linebacker, Peter Dorcas kept his block of six foot three, two hundred fifty pounds in fighting shape from a five-day-a-week workout at the gym. West had also been a regular gym rat, but he was a much leaner build and not quite as tall. Since his falling out with his captain, which had included an IA review that had proven nothing other than showing Paulsen for the demigod he was, West had slacked off the workout routine, had been in search of whatever he wanted to do in this next phase of life with or without a job in law enforcement.
Dorcas had responded with, “Bullshit
, pard. You’re workin’ on sumpin-sumpin, ain’t ya?”
“Ex-pard,” West had said. “Just dig into the Cantrell accident and get back to me. And send me a picture of the wife, if you can.”
“Where you at?”
“Martinique.”
“Where the Sam Hill is that?”
“An island in the Caribbean.”
“What the fuck, man?”
“Just get me the info.” He had then told Dorcas the number to call him back, adding, “And anything you can find on Mrs. Cantrell would be appreciated.” Then he had clicked off as Dorcas had tried to complain about the extra work. As yet, his ex-partner hadn’t phoned back, but it was a lot earlier in Los Angeles, so maybe he would check in later.
“We can walk Tucker back,” she said, as if it were the last thing she wanted to do.
“Noooo!” said Tucker, who was pressed up against the wrought-iron balcony rail, looking down at the passing cars and pedestrians, vehemently shaking his head. “I not go back!” A torrent of French followed this, which West couldn’t understand. Neither, apparently, could Callie because she said, “Speak American, Tucker.”
That stopped the boy short. “American?”
“Mr. Laughlin and I don’t know that much French. I think you were saying you’re going with Michel,” she encouraged.
He glanced at West and said solemnly, “Michel is mon amie.”
“Michel’s father, Jean-Paul, is a fisherman and the boys like to go fishing with him,” she explained.
She wouldn’t meet his gaze any longer. West said, “All right, let’s go.”
Over Tucker’s continuing protests, they headed for the door, and finally the boy stomped his way across the room and preceded them into the outer hallway.
She could feel sweat forming down her back and between her breasts as they walked up the hot streets. She felt slightly light-headed, but maybe that was because she was anxious. Having West meet Tucker had ratcheted up the danger level.
Tucker, after getting over not wanting to leave Callie’s, was in the midst of a fishing tale that was half in French, half in English. “Big fish . . . big, big poisson,” he said, stretching his arms wide.