“Why? It’s not like I’ll be interrupting you two having sex.”
“Bye,” Carlotta said pointedly, then shoved the car door closed.
After glancing around to make sure no cars stood out to her, she casually made her way into the bustling coffee shop where she bought a large latte and a postcard to send to June Moody, friend and proprietor of Moody’s cigar bar in Atlanta. She found a pen in the bottom of her bag and jotted a quick note.
Thinking of you. Carlotta
Carlotta sighed. June wasn’t the one person she’d been thinking about. She snapped the bracelet a couple of times to keep those dead-end thoughts at bay. Jack equals pain.
Her phone vibrated and she checked it, hoping for some word from Jack or Coop regarding the identity of Dead Johnson. Instead it was a text from Peter.
Sorry to be spending the day with clients. I hope you and Hannah have fun.
As far as he knew, Carlotta was going shopping with Hannah. He hadn’t questioned her friend’s transformation, had just chalked it up to Hannah’s oddball personality. But the fact that he’d mentioned Hannah at all meant he was warming up to her. Carlotta pushed down the thought that he was a hypocrite. Everyone who’d seen the new Hannah had responded positively to her new look—except Hannah.
Carlotta texted back I hope you have a nice day, too. Then she made sure her phone’s location was disabled. Her phone was on Peter’s account which, now that she thought about it, might be on Mashburn & Tully’s account.
Carlotta brought her fist to her mouth. Had Peter or the company been tracking her whereabouts all along to see if she went to talk to her father in prison? Thank goodness the time she and Hannah conned their way inside the federal pen, they hadn’t taken their cell phones.
Then she gave herself a mental shake—she was being paranoid.
Two men walked into the coffee shop and with a start she realized they were the two guys from the restaurant who had followed her and Peter after noticing her ring. In front of them, she spotted their quarry—a middle-aged couple standing in line were arguing, oblivious their clothing and accessories stamped them as novice tourists. The man’s zippered backpack was hanging open, exposing a pricey tablet device—easy pickings for a thief.
Knowing the men wouldn’t recognize her in the red wig, Carlotta straightened and walked toward them, elbowing her way between the two couples. “Excuse me, not cutting line, just trying to get to the ladies’ room. Oh, sir—your backpack is open.”
The man and woman stopped long enough to thank her, then began arguing about whose fault it was the backpack was unzipped. Carlotta didn’t look at the would-be thieves, just kept moving toward the restroom. Once inside, she closed and locked the narrow door behind her. After checking her appearance in the smoky mirror, she sipped her coffee while reading some of the hundreds of messages that had been scribbled on the yellowing plaster walls in everything from ink to lipstick.
Mark and Jenna, celebrating 12 years!
Metallica rules.
Call Babs 555-5890 to talk or ?
Just be happy.
Doug F. Mitchell is an mf liar! He cheats too.
Carlotta smiled at peoples’ urges to leave a bit of themselves in a place so random. If she were going to add a bit of wisdom to the wall, what would it be?
She bit down on her lip. If she wrote the name of the man she thought she should marry, no one would ever know. She pulled the pen from her bag, pressed the tip against the wall in a tiny blank space, and wrote his name in curly cursive letters, as if she were writing in her high school notebook.
Carlotta angled her head, smiling at her secret message to the universe, then something written just below caught her eye.
Valerie W was here.
Her breath caught in her throat. There were probably thousands of Valerie W’s in the world, and hundreds who had passed through Las Vegas. But one thing she’d forgotten until this moment was how her mother signed her name and added wings to the “W.”
Just like this signature.
Her own message forgotten, Carlotta pulled out her phone to zoom in and take a picture of the signature. Her hand was shaking so badly, the camera lens had a hard time focusing. She ran her finger over the scrawl, as if she could absorb some kind of truth from it, or determine how old it was. Had her mother written it in a bout of loneliness after being ripped from everything she’d known?
She glanced around the small dingy bathroom, imagining her vivacious mother standing here, feeling desperate enough to write her name on the wall. Goose bumps rose on her arms.
The door handle rattled, then a knock sounded. “Hey, there’s a line out here.”
Carlotta stowed her phone, then unlocked the door and walked out, undeniably rattled.
The two thieves had left—no doubt with a couple of lifted wallets. On the sidewalk outside the coffee shop, she checked the security of her own bag, then headed back to the shipping store. She breathed deeply to steady her emotions, but it was hard not to feel hopeful she might be close to unlocking the secret to her parents’ disappearance.
As she approached the storefront, she sipped her lukewarm coffee and tried to act casual. The windows of the business were studded with hand-lettered signs proclaiming “NO Loitering—This Means You.” “NO F*cking Smoking.” (Which only reminded her how much she craved a cigarette.) And more menacingly “Customers Come & Go at Your Own Risk.”
She pulled open the heavy glass door and walked inside, glad to see the man at the counter had a customer. It gave her time to get the lay of the land.
The place was grubby and stale-smelling, with a few missing ceiling tiles. The one-room shop was deep and narrow, with shipping supplies and a counter on the right, and a bank of mailboxes on the left and back walls. She had memorized the post office box number from the receipt she’d found in her father’s things: 610.
A quick scan of the numbers led her to the box in question located against the back wall, second row from the bottom. It was one of the smaller boxes, about six by twelves inches. Which was encouraging—a smaller box would likely be checked more often, she reasoned. As the customer at the counter completed his transaction, she casually reached into her bag and pulled out her keyring. She fumbled and jangled the keys, then grunted loudly and said, “Oh, no.”
The man behind the counter apparently heard her distress call. “Can I help you?”
She turned and sighed. “I’m a dope. My father is sick and asked me to pick up his mail, but I must’ve brought the wrong keys. Can you save me? Box 610.”
The man frowned. “Are you on the list of names authorized for the box?”
“I must be. My dad wouldn’t have asked me otherwise.”
He nodded. “Let me check—box 610, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
He used his index fingers to hunt and peck a few keys on a keyboard. “And what’s your name?”
She hoped her father had used the same name he’d given to the Atlanta real estate agent—Bill Randolph. “Er…the name on the box is Randolph.”
“Yes.”
His confirmation sent her adrenaline spiking.
“But what’s your name?”
“Uh…Carlotta.” It was a longshot.
“Sorry ma’am, but that name isn’t on the list.”
“Maybe he has me in the system as Melanie?”
He squinted, then checked. “No female names listed on the account at all. Sorry.”
“Maybe you could check to see if there’s a letter from my father’s doctor’s office?” All she needed was a piece of mail that might lead her to a street address.
The guy pointed to one of the many hand-lettered signs posted on the counter. This one read “No mail given out over the counter. Don’t ask.”
“Oh. Okay, just to make sure I have the right box, can you confirm the street address on the account?”
“None listed,” he said.
“Phone number?”
He frowned. �
�Come. Back. With. The. Key.”
“I’ll do that,” she said congenially. She started to leave, then turned back. “One more question?”
The guy rolled his eyes.
She pulled out her phone and retrieved an image—a decade-old picture of Randolph and Valerie. “Just to make sure I’m in the right place, do you recognize my father? He’s older now.”
Her heart beat in her ears as the man peered at the photo. Then he shook his head. “No, that’s not the man who picks up the mail for 610.”
Her disappointment was acute. “Thanks. Maybe I do have the wrong place.”
“But I recognize the woman.”
Carlotta’s head came up. “You do?”
“Yeah, she’s been in with the man who picks up the mail. Pretty lady. Although, now that I think about it, I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
Carlotta thought her heart was going to hammer through her chest. “How often does this man come in?”
The guy gave her a quizzical look.
“Just wondering how piled up my dad’s mail might be.”
“I don’t know—maybe once or twice a month?”
Crap. She didn’t have that much time.
Another customer walked in carrying boxes, and the man went to help.
Her numb feet exited the store. Valerie was alive and somewhere nearby—or had been.
Carlotta stood there for a moment, paralyzed with elation and indecision. Now what? She needed to think. Moving blindly, she wheeled to go back to the coffee house.
And plowed hard into Jack Terry.
Chapter 8
“EXCUSE ME,” Jack said, grasping her arm to keep her from falling. “I—”
His eyes bulged and any hope Carlotta had of him not recognizing her in the red wig evaporated.
“Carlotta? What the hell are you doing here?”
She shook herself free. “Good morning to you, too, Jack.”
“Don’t start batting your lashes, goddammit. Talk.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying,” she said primly. “What are you doing here?” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”
His face went all mottled. “No. I’m not following you. I’m wondering why instead of having breakfast in bed in that outrageous suite of yours, you’d be loitering in a seedy part of town.”
“I’m not loitering. I had coffee at a little place a couple of blocks away, bought a postcard, and came here to mail it.” As proof, she pulled the postcard from her bag. “See?”
“Did you forget to mail it?”
He had a point. “N-No,” she said, trying to recover. “I…decided to write something else on the postcard and mail it later.”
He picked up a lock of the red wig. “And do you always get morning coffee in disguise?”
She pushed his hand away. “In the coffee shop, I saw those two guys who followed me and Peter, and I didn’t want them to recognize me.”
Jack squinted. “So you put on the disguise after you got to the coffee shop?”
Oh, crap. “Uh-hm.”
He crossed his arms. “You’re usually better at lying. But I’m going to give you a chance to come clean.”
Her mouth watered to tell him the night she’d discovered the post office box receipt, he had been the first person she’d called because she’d wanted to share her jubilation. But he’d preempted her announcement with the news that Liz Fischer was carrying his baby. “Because you’re so honest about everything, Jack?”
His shoulders fell. “Okay. We might as well have this conversation now.”
She raised her eyebrows and waited.
“I’m sorry about the Liz situation.” He sighed. “More than you know. It was a random night a couple of months ago—it didn’t mean anything at the time. Maybe I was trying to prove something to myself, but that’s no excuse. I was careless, and my actions hurt you. I’m sorry, Carlotta—truly.”
Mixed emotions coursed through her as she processed the words of his apology. She’d practiced what she would say when they were alone, but all the clever, breezy retorts she had thought of abandoned her. “I’m so mad at you, Jack, for messing up everything.”
Emotion flickered in his gold-colored eyes. “So am I.” Then he straightened. “That said, you seem to have recovered pretty quickly. You didn’t think to mention your engagement before I got on a plane to come out here? I have feelings, too, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” she corrected, her ire returning. The Great Impregnator had some nerve to be irritated at her for moving on. “Besides, when I called, I had a lifeless man on my hands.”
“You’d better get used to that,” he said with a dry smile.
She crossed her arms. “Peter might not be Mr. Exciting, but I don’t have to worry about him getting another woman knocked up ten minutes after leaving my bed.”
He pressed his lips together and had the good grace to dip his chin in concession. “Peter will give you the kind of life you deserve.”
She knew Jack meant it as a compliment, but she was so confused about Peter’s loyalties, it was lost on her. And the fact that she couldn’t be one hundred percent happy about her engagement made her even more mad—at herself.
“So are you ready to tell me what you’re doing here?” Jack said, nodding to the storefront.
“I already told you.”
“Wrong. I know exactly why you’re here, Carlotta.”
She swallowed. “You do?”
“You found the piece of paper with the address on it in the dead man’s mouth, then put it back, didn’t you?”
Dead Johnson had a note in his mouth with this address on it? “You got me.”
“I knew it. I told Coop no way you missed that.”
Damn, she was slipping. But if Dead Johnson had that info, why was he following her? Why not do his own surveillance of the box? Wait—maybe he didn’t have the box number.
“Jack, did you take a picture of the note?”
“You didn’t?”
“I was in a hurry,” she improvised.
Jack pulled out his phone, flipped through some images, then turned the screen toward her.
It was a small crumpled sticky note. She squinted at the writing, blurry from—presumably—saliva. Ick. It was the shipping store’s address alright, but no box number.
Her breath rushed out in relief. Only she had it.
“So what did he say?”
She blinked. “Who?”
He gestured to the shipping store. “The guy working inside. I assume you showed him a picture of our dead man and asked if he knew him?”
“Er…actually, no. He had a line of customers, and my coffee was running through me, so I thought I’d come back later.”
“Wow, so you’re actually letting me do the police work?”
“What can I say, Jack? I have a tight…little…bladder.” She batted her eyelashes.
Jack’s eyes inadvertently swept over her, then he shook his finger. “You have to stop that. We’re both…unavailable.”
“The thing is, Jack, you always were.” She gave him a little smile. “I’m going to find a bathroom.”
“You don’t want to go in with me?”
And have the guy ask her if she was back with the key to box 610? “No. But I’ll get you some coffee if you’ll pick me up and give me a ride back to the hotel.”
“Deal. I take mine black.”
“I remember,” she said, then took off walking.
She replayed Jack’s apology and how seamlessly they seemed to transition back to a teasing hands-off relationship. The uncertainty of where she stood with him before had been a constant pull on her heart. Maybe they were better at…this.
Her mind buzzed all the way back to the coffee house. The man at the shipping store had confirmed her mother was in the vicinity—or had been at one time. But who was the man who picked up the mail? Randolph in disguise? If so, the mail had been piling up for a while now while he sat in the Atlanta
penitentiary.
At the coffee shop, she visited the bathroom and got a bolstering glimpse of her mother’s signature, mulled the man’s name she’d written on the wall, then ordered two coffees and danishes to go.
She waited only a few minutes before a neutral-colored SUV pulled to the curb and Jack waved.
“Nice rental,” she said, climbing in. “Did the guy at the shipping store recognize Johnson?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’m thinking maybe he was supposed to meet someone there.”
“Or pick up a package?” Carlotta offered, trying not to feel guilty for attempting to throw Jack off track. “Maybe he mailed something to himself from Atlanta.”
I asked the guy if there were any unclaimed packages, but he said if packages aren’t picked up within two days, they get returned.”
“Sounds like a dead end, no pun intended.” She passed him a coffee and a danish.
“Thanks.” Then he zeroed in on her arm and frowned. “That bracelet you’re wearing is giving you a bad bruise.”
She glanced at the growing discoloration on her wrist and sighed inwardly. “I’ll be fine.” Disconcerted, she took a sip of coffee, then changed the subject. “Where’s Coop?”
“At the morgue. The M.E. invited him to observe the autopsy. He stuck around to learn the cause of death, or anything that could lead back to the guy’s identity.”
“What do you make of him having no fingerprints?”
“He’s either a criminal, or someone who tracks criminals.”
Either way, he could be connected to Randolph.
Jack took a drink from his coffee cup. “I remembered you said your real estate agent friend thought the ambiguity of the deed to the house where Johnson was staying pointed to a government agency.”
“That’s right. You blew me off.”
“It didn’t seem important at the time. But I left a message for Agent Wick in Atlanta to look into it, and told him we had an unidentified body.”
“You think Johnson might be a GBI agent?”
“Maybe. Or working for the GBI. If so, it’s possible the people he worked with don’t know he’s dead.”
“Makes sense. Why do you think he had the note in his mouth of all places?”
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