by Diana Palmer
A soft meow came from the parlor, and Meriwether came trotting out to greet her. The huge tabby was marmalade colored. He’d been a stray when she found him, a pitiful half-grown scrap of fur with fleas and a stubby tail. She’d cleaned him up and brought him in, and they’d been inseparable ever since. But he hated men. He was a particularly big cat, with sharp claws, and he had to be locked up when the infrequent repairman was called to the house. He spat and hissed at them, and he’d even attacked the man who read the water meter. Now the poor fellow wouldn’t come into the yard unless he knew Meriwether was safely locked in the house.
“Well, hello,” she said, smiling as he wrapped himself around her ankle. “Want to hear all about the time I had?”
He made a soft sound. She scooped him up under one arm and started up the staircase. “Let me tell you, I’ve had better nights.”
Later, with Meriwether curled up beside her, his big head on her shoulder, she slept, but the old nightmare came back, resurrected probably by the violence she’d seen and heard. She woke in a cold sweat, crying out in the darkness. It was a relief to find herself safe, here in her own house. Meriwether opened his eyes and looked at her when she turned on the light.
“Never mind. Go back to sleep,” she told him gently. “I think I’ll just read for a while.”
She picked up a favorite romance novel from her shelf and settled back to read it. She liked these old ones best, the ones that belonged to a different world and always delivered a happy ending. Soon she was caught up in the novel and reality thankfully vanished for a little while.
At nine o’clock sharp the next morning, McCallum showed up in Jessica’s office. He was wearing beige jeans and a sports jacket over his short-sleeved shirt this morning. No tie. He seemed to hate them; at least, Jessica had yet to see him dressed in one.
She was wearing a gray suit with a loose jacket. Her hair was severely confined on top of her head and she had on just a light touch of makeup. Watching her gather her briefcase, McCallum thought absently that he much preferred the tired woman of the night before, with her glorious hair loose around her shoulders.
“We’ll go in my car,” he said when they reached the parking lot, putting his sunglasses over his eyes. They gave him an even more threatening demeaner.
“I have to go on to another appointment, so I’ll take my truck, now that it’s been fixed, thanks to you….”
He opened the passenger door of the patrol car and stood there without saying a word.
She hesitated for a minute, then let him help her into the car. “Are you deliberately intimidating, or does it just come naturally?” she asked when they were on the way to the hospital.
“I spent years ordering noncoms around,” he said easily. “Old habits are hard to break. Plays hell at work sometimes. I keep forgetting that Hensley outranks me.”
That sounded like humor, but she’d had no sleep to speak of and she felt out of sorts. She clasped her briefcase closer, glancing out the window at the landscape. Montana was beautiful in spring. The area around Whitehorn was uncluttered, with rolling hills that ran forever to the horizon and that later in the year would be rich with grain crops. Occasional herds of cattle dotted the horizon. There were cottonwood and willow trees along the streams, but mostly the country was wide open. It was home. She loved it.
She especially loved Whitehorn. With its wide streets and multitude of trees, the town reminded her of Billings—which had quiet neighborhoods and a spread-out city center, with a refinery right within the city limits. The railroad cut through Billings, just as it did here in Whitehorn. It was necessary for transportation, because mining was big business in southern Montana.
The Whitehorn hospital was surrounded by cottonwood trees. Its grounds were nicely landscaped and there was a statue of Lewis and Clark out front. William Clark’s autograph in stone at Pompey’s Pillar, near Hardin, Montana, still drew photographers. The Lewis and Clark expedition had come right through Whitehorn.
Jessica introduced herself and McCallum to the ward nurse, and they were taken to the nursery.
Baby Jennifer, or Jenny as she was called, was in a crib there. She looked very pretty, with big blue eyes and a tiny tuft of blond hair on top of her head. She looked up at her visitors without a change of expression, although her eyes were alert and intelligent.
Jessica looked at her hungrily. She put down her briefcase and with a questioning glance at the nurse, who nodded, she picked the baby up and held her close.
“Little angel,” she whispered, smiling so sadly that the man at her side scowled. She touched the tiny hand and felt it curl around her finger. She blinked back tears. She would never have a baby. She would never know the joy of feeling it grow in her body, watching its birth, nourishing it at her breast….
She made a sound and McCallum moved between her and the nurse with magnificent carelessness. “I want to see any articles of clothing that were found on or with the child,” he said courteously.
The nurse, diverted, produced a small bundle. He unfastened it. There was one blanket, a worn pink one—probably homemade, judging by the hand-sewn border—with no label. There was a tiny gown, a pretty lacy thing with a foreign label, the sort that might be found at a fancy garage sale. There were some hand-knitted booties and a bottle. The bottle was a common plastic one with nothing outstanding about it. He sighed angrily. No clues here.
“Oh, yes, there’s one more thing, Detective,” the nurse said suddenly. She produced a small brooch, a pink cameo. “This was attached to the gown. Odd, isn’t it, to put something so valuable on a baby? This looks like real gold.”
McCallum touched it, turned it over. It was gold, all right, and very old. That was someone’s heirloom. It might be the very clue he needed to track down the baby’s parents.
He fished out a plastic bag and dropped the cameo into it, fastening it and sticking it in his inside jacket pocket. It was too small to search for prints, and it had been handled by too many people to be of value in that respect. Hensley had checked all these things yesterday when the baby was found. The bottle had been wiped clean of prints, although not by anybody at the Kincaid home. Apparently the child’s parents weren’t anxious to be found. The puzzling thing was that brooch. Why wipe fingerprints off and then include a probably identifiable piece of heirloom jewelry?
He was still frowning when he turned back to Jessica. She was just putting the child into its crib and straightening. The look on her face was all too easy to read, but she quickly concealed her thoughts with a businesslike expression.
“We’ll have to settle her with a child-care provider until the court determines placement,” Jessica told the nurse. “I’ll take care of that immediately when I get back to the office. I’ll need to speak to the attending physician as well.”
“Of course, Miss Larson. If you’ll come with me?”
McCallum fell into step beside her, down the long hall to Dr. Henderson’s office. They spoke with him about the child’s condition and were satisfied that she could be released the next morning.
“I’ll send over the necessary forms,” Jessica assured him, shaking hands.
“Pity, isn’t it?” the doctor said sadly. “Throwing away a baby, like a used paper plate.”
“She wasn’t exactly thrown away,” Jessica reminded him. “At least she was left where people would find her. We’ve had babies who weren’t so fortunate.”
McCallum pursed his lips. “Has anyone called to check on the baby?” he asked suddenly.
“Why, yes,” the doctor replied curiously. “As a matter of fact, a woman from The Whitehorn Journal office called. She wanted to do a story, but I said she must first check with you.”
McCallum lifted an eyebrow. “The Whitehorn Journal doesn’t have a woman reporter.”
He frowned. “I understood her to say the Journal. I may have been mistaken.”
“I doubt it,” McCallum said thoughtfully. “It was probably the child’s mother, making sur
e the baby had been found.”
“If she calls again, I’ll get in touch with you.”
“Thanks,” McCallum said.
He and Jessica walked back down the hall toward the hospital exit. He glanced down at her. “How old are you?”
She started. “I’m twenty-five,” she said. “Why?”
He looked ahead instead of at her, his hands stuck deep in his jean pockets. “These modern attitudes may work for some women, but they won’t work for you. Why don’t you get married and have babies of your own, instead of mooning over someone else’s?”
She didn’t answer him. Rage boiled up inside her, quickening her steps as she made her way out the door toward his car.
He held the door open for her. She didn’t even bother to comment on the courtesy or question it, she was so angry. He had no right to make such remarks to her. Her private life was none of his business!
He got in beside her, but he didn’t start the engine. He turned toward her, his keen eyes cutting into her face. “You cried,” he said shortly.
She grasped her briefcase like a lifeline, staring straight ahead, ignoring him.
He hit the steering wheel with his hand in impotent anger. He shouldn’t let her get to him this way.
“How can you be in law enforcement with a temper like that?” she demanded icily.
He stared at her levelly. “I don’t hit people.”
“You do, too!” she raged. “You hit that man who threatened to pull a gun on you. I heard all about it!”
“Did you hear that he kicked me in the…Well, never mind, but he damned near unmanned me before I laid a finger on him!” he said harshly.
She clutched the briefcase like a shield. “McCallum, you are crude! Crude and absolutely insensitive!”
“Crude? Insensitive?” he exclaimed shortly. He glared at her. “If you think that’s crude, suppose I give you the slang term for it then?” he added with a cold smile, and he told her, graphically, what the man had done.
She was breathing through her nostrils. Her eyes were like brown coals, and she was livid.
“Your hand is itching, isn’t it?” he taunted. “You want to slap me, but you can’t quite work up the nerve.”
“You have no right to talk to me like this!”
“How did you ever get into this line of work?” he demanded. “You’re a bleeding-heart liberal with more pity than purpose in your life. If you’d take down that hair—” he pulled some pins from her bun “—and keep on those contact lenses, you might even find a man who’d marry you. Then you wouldn’t have to spend your life burying your own needs in a job that’s little more than a substitute for an adult relationship with a man!”
“You…!” The impact of the briefcase hitting his shoulder shocked him speechless. She hit him again before he could recover. The leather briefcase was heavy, but it was the shock of the attack that left him frozen in his seat when she tumbled out of the car and slammed the door furiously behind her.
She started off down the street with her hair hanging in unruly strands from its once-neat bun and her jacket askew. She looked dignified even in her pathetic state, and she didn’t look back once.
Four
She made it two blocks before her feet gave out. Thank goodness for the Chamber of Commerce, she thought, taking advantage of the strategically placed bench near the curb bearing that agency’s compliments. The late April sun was hot, and her suit, though light, was smothering her. The high heels she was wearing with it were killing her. She took off the right one, grimaced and rubbed her hose-clad foot.
She was suddenly aware of the unmarked patrol car that cruised to the curb and stopped.
McCallum got out without any rush and sat down beside her on the bench.
“You are the most difficult man I’ve ever met,” she told him bluntly. “I don’t understand why you feel compelled to make me so miserable, when all I’ve ever wanted to do was be kind to you!”
He leaned back, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, and crossed his long legs. “I don’t need kindness and I don’t like your kind of woman.”
“I know that,” she said. “It shows. But I haven’t done a thing to you.”
He took off his sunglasses and turned his face toward her. It was as unreadable as stone, and about that warm. How could he tell her that her nurturing attitude made him want to scream? He needed a woman and she had a delectable body, but despite her response to him that night in front of the bus station, she backed away from him the minute he came too close. He wasn’t conceited, yet he knew he was a physically dynamic, handsome man. Women usually ran after him, not the reverse. Jessica was the exception, and perhaps it was just as well. He wasn’t a man with commitment on his mind.
“We’re supposed to be working on a case together,” he reminded her.
“I don’t work on cases with men who talk to me as if I were a hooker,” she shot back with cold dark eyes. “I don’t have to take that sort of language from you. And I’ll remind you that you’re supposed to be upholding the law, not verbally breaking it. Or is using foul language in front of a woman no longer on the books as a misdemeanor in Whitehorn?”
He moved uncomfortably on the bench, because it was a misdemeanor. She’d knocked him off balance and he’d reacted like an idiot. He didn’t like admitting it. “It wasn’t foul language. It was explicit,” he defended himself.
“Splitting hairs!”
“All right, I was out of line!” He shifted his long legs. “You get under my skin,” he said irritably. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“It’s hard to miss,” she conceded. “If I’m such a trial to you, Detective, there are other caseworkers in my office….”
He turned his head toward her. “Hensley said I work with you. So I work with you.”
She reached down and put her shoe back on, unwittingly calling his attention to her long, elegant legs in silky hose.
“That doesn’t mean we have to hang out together,” she informed him. “We can talk over the phone when necessary.”
“I don’t like telephones.”
Her eyes met his, exasperated. “Have you ever thought of making a list of your dislikes and just handing it to people?” she asked. “Better yet, you might consider a list of things you do like. It would be shorter.”
He glowered at her. “I never planned to wind up being a hick cop in a hick town working with a woman who thinks a meaningful relationship has something to do with owning a cat.”
“I can’t imagine why you don’t go back into the service, where you felt at home!”
“Made too many enemies.” He bit off the words. “I don’t fit in there, either, anymore. Everything’s changing. New regulations, policies…”
“Did you ever think of becoming a diplomat?” she said with veiled sarcasm.
“No chance of that,” he murmured heavily, then sighed. “I should have studied anthropology, I guess.”
Her bad temper dissipated like clouds in sunlight. She could picture it. She laughed.
“Oh, hell, don’t do that,” he said shortly. “I didn’t mean to be funny.”
“I don’t imagine so. Is your lack of diplomacy why you’re not in the service anymore?”
He shook his head. “It didn’t help my career. But the real problem was the new political climate. I’m no bigot, but I’m not politically correct when it comes to bending over backwards to please special-interest groups. If I don’t like something, I can’t pretend that I do. I didn’t want to end up stationed in a microwavable room in Moscow, listening to people’s conversations.”
She frowned. “I thought you were in the navy? You know…sailing around in ships and stuff.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “I didn’t serve on a ship. I was in Naval Intelligence.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t realized that. His past took on a whole new dimension in her eyes. “Then how in the world did you end up here?”
“I had to live someplace. I hate cities, and this is
as close to a home as I’ve ever known,” he said simply. “The last place I lived was with an elderly couple over near the county line. They’re dead now, but they left me a little property in the Bighorn Mountains. Who knows, I may build a house there one day. Just for me and Mack.”
“I don’t think I like dogs.”
“And I hate cats,” he said at once.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
His eyebrow jumped. He put his sunglasses back on and got to his feet. He looked marvelously fit, all muscular strength and height, a man in the prime of his life. “I’ll run you back to your office. I want to go out to the Kincaid place and have a talk with Jeremiah.”
She stood up, holding her briefcase beside her. “I can walk. It’s only another block or so.”
“Five blocks, and it’s midday,” he reminded her. “Come on. I won’t make any more questionable remarks.”
“I’d like that sworn to,” she muttered as she let him open the door for her.
“You’re a hot-tempered little thing, aren’t you?” he asked abruptly.
“I defend myself,” she conceded. “I don’t know about the ‘little’ part.”
He got in beside her and started the engine. Five minutes later she was back in the parking lot at her office. She was strangely reluctant to get out of the car, though. It was as though something had shifted between them, after weeks of working fairly comfortably with each other. He’d said ‘the last place he lived,’ and he’d mentioned an elderly couple, not parents.
“May I ask you something personal?” she said.
He looked straight at her, without removing his sunglasses. “No.”
She was used to abruptness and even verbal abuse from clients, but McCallum set new records for it. He was the touchiest man she’d ever met.
“Okay,” she said, clutching her briefcase as she opened the door. She looked over her shoulder. “Oh, I’m, uh, sorry about hitting you with this thing. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”