Promises to Keep

by Susan Crandall

  As she lowered the stroller down a curb to cross the street, she realized she was dreaming. Dean had made his case. Nicholas was his only living relative. He wasn’t going to walk away.

  For a moment panic seized her and the irrational urge to run burst forth. And she might have actually given in to it, gone home and packed her car and driven away from here just like she’d driven away from Boston. But that would be as selfish as Dean taking Nicholas to the Middle East. Living on the run was no life to offer this child. There would never be a day’s peace, never a restful night, knowing that at any time someone could come forth and take Nicholas away. And how could she support him?

  Even as she saw it for the ridiculous action that it would be, the temptation remained.

  Molly stopped on the sidewalk in front of the grade school. Children were at recess, swinging, shooting baskets, and playing dodgeball. Just days ago, she had envisioned Nicholas playing on this playground, growing up in this quiet town. In her mind’s eye, she had seen his blond head bobbing with the other children at play.

  She reached down and touched his cheek to make certain he wasn’t getting too cold. He smiled, then moved his mouth and waved his arms as if he was trying to say something. Grabbing him up blanket and all, she hugged him against her, pressing her cheek against his knitted hat. At one time, she had thought she would never be a mother. And now, even if she was physically unable to bear a child, she would at least know the joy of motherhood. As she held Nicholas next to her heart, she understood with startling clarity, even if she bore a dozen children, there would never be one that could replace him.

  Riley was late coming home from school. In light of recent events, Lily’s mind quickly leapt to disastrous conclusions. He had seemed all right when he left this morning. For the past few days he’d been quiet, his moods deeper and more veiled than usual. And his focus didn’t seem to be the recent revelation that Clay was his father. Which caused her to be more concerned. She had expected an angry haze to linger, but all indications said he was preoccupied with something else.

  She only hoped her own father would take the news in the same stride. She had managed not to give a full explanation to him just yet.

  Keeping a steady gaze through the glass-paned door that faced the driveway, she paced the kitchen.

  The hiss of a pot boiling over on the stove drew her back across the room. She turned down the heat and stirred the chili, then she checked on the cake in the oven. Finding it done, she pulled it out and breathed in its sweet aroma. It was lemon, Mickey’s favorite. She was planning on sending Riley to the Fultons’ with it this evening—if he ever showed up.

  The back door opened.

  Spinning around, she was relieved to see Riley. She quickly calmed herself before she spoke to him. Clay said she was smothering him; that she had to give him more space and wait for him to come to her to talk about what was bothering him. But it was so hard; all she wanted was for him to be happy and safe.

  One look at his face told her something was very wrong.

  “Hi,” she said with a question in her voice and fear in her heart.

  He walked over to the upholstered chair next to the fireplace and flopped down.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, keeping to her side of the room by sheer will.

  “I went to see Mickey and her mom wouldn’t let me in the house.”

  “Oh. I thought Mrs. Fulton finally agreed you hadn’t done anything wrong. She seemed much better when I spoke to her yesterday. Maybe Mickey was sleeping.”

  “Ha! I heard her crying in the background. Mickey’s not allowed to see me ever.”

  “I thought Karen was letting this pressing charges thing go.”

  “It’s not that. Besides, I don’t know how she could anyhow; she made Mickey get examined by a doctor just to prove that I didn’t . . . .”

  Lily felt sick. As if Mickey wasn’t under enough stress. She huffed, then held onto her indignant thoughts. “Maybe she’ll cool off, now that things are settling back down. She always seemed to like you—”

  He set his angry gaze on her. “That’s when she thought I was a Holt.”

  Her stomach lurched. “How does she know that you aren’t?”

  He shrugged. “I told Mickey, she must have said something.”

  Lily wanted to say that just showed what a vile and shallow woman Karen was, but held her tongue. “And Mrs. Fulton said something to you?”

  Looking away, he didn’t answer.

  “Riley?”

  “It doesn’t matter. She says stupid stuff all of the time. It’s just that I really need to see Mickey, Mom.”

  Lily looked at the cake. “Do you know when Mickey is coming back to school?”

  “I guess Monday. When I talked to her on the phone yesterday, she said she’d be there today. I’m worried about her.”

  “I have a gift for Mickey. Maybe we’ll deliver it in the morning.”

  Riley looked at her with panic and gratitude in his conflicted eyes. “Mrs. Fulton doesn’t like you any more than she likes me.”

  “I know. But it’s a lot harder to look an adult in the eye and use an irrational argument than it is to push teenagers around. Maybe she’ll be in a better mood tomorrow. At least I think I can get us in the door to make sure Mickey’s all right.”

  He nodded, clearly relieved. “Thanks, Mom.” When he stood and kissed her forehead, she saw him for the man he was becoming. He had ten times the character of any Holt she’d ever met. Damn Karen Fulton.

  “Lucky for you, criminals work at night and so do the guys trying to catch them,” Harry said as soon as Dean answered his cell phone early the next morning.

  “What do you have?” His taxi was stuck creeping along behind a garbage truck.

  “I checked the manifest for your sister’s flight back from Rome and ran a cross-check with my people who know people. One name in particular caught my people’s attention.”

  “Does he live in New York?”

  “Yes. Seems the man keeps leaving the feds holding nothing more than a fistful of suspicion.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Not on the cell. I’ll meet you at eleven at my hotel.”

  “I’m headed to Julie’s apartment now. See you at eleven.”

  Julie had lived in a five-story building near midtown. It was on an impossibly narrow and quiet street—which was why the garbage truck caused such a problem. When they were within a couple of blocks, Dean paid the driver and walked the rest of the way.

  He knocked on the superintendent’s apartment door. A tiny, white-haired woman answered, leaving the security chain in place.

  Dean offered her his most reassuring smile. He held up his press ID. “I’m Dean Coletta, Julie’s brother. Mr. Fiore let me check on my sister’s things a few weeks ago. I’d like to have access to them again.”

  One wrinkled eye narrowed through the crack in the door. “My son is in the basement working on the boiler.” She closed the door.

  Dean heard three locks snap into place.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he called through the closed door.

  He got a thump in response from the other side.

  The door to the basement was ajar. Dean pushed it open. The stairwell was narrow and flanked by exposed brick walls. The tiny fluorescent light at the top faded long before the bottom step. At the base, there was a long hallway with a gray painted floor and another inadequate light fixture. He shuddered to think of his sister coming down here late at night to do her laundry. He stopped at a door marked “MECHANICAL” and knocked loudly.

  “Mr. Fiore?” he called as he opened the door.

  Fiore was on his knees with his face near the floor, peering under the boiler.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Fiore?”

  Fiore looked up. Although Dean had seen him before, he was still taken aback by the burn scar that covered half of the young man’s face.

  Fiore wiped his hands on a rag and said, “Damn thing should have been repla
ced fifteen years ago—but the old tightass who owns the building seems to think it’ll last forever.”

  Dean gave a sympathetic nod. “You must be good at keeping it going.”

  “Too good. I should have taken a sledgehammer to it this time.”

  Dean extended his hand. “Dean Coletta, Julie’s brother. I was here a few weeks ago.”

  “I remember.” He shook Dean’s hand and smiled, but only with the right side of his face. The left side remained as stationary as if it were made of plastic. “Again, sorry to hear about your sister. I really thought she’d come back. That’s why I didn’t set her stuff out for the trash like the landlord said to. He doesn’t know it’s all down here.”

  “I appreciate your consideration. I promise to make arrangements for having it moved soon. But right now I need to look through her things again . . . do you mind unlocking for me?”

  “No problem.” As they walked out of the boiler room, Fiore said, “Sometimes this world just makes me sick. Who would want to hurt a nice woman like her?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  Fiore gave a somber nod of approval. “Like I told you before, she always paid her rent on time. When she was late, I got worried. I called her work and they said she hadn’t been there in two weeks. That’s when I called the police—for all the good it did.”

  This was ground Dean had already covered, but he was having to go over everything again in light of his new information. “How thoroughly did they search her apartment?”

  “Checked for a body is about all.” He looked embarrassed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound crude. But that’s about all they did. I think they used one of those lights that looks for blood. They said it looked like she just up and left—skipped town. I didn’t believe it. She had too much class for that.”

  “Anyone else ask to search the apartment—other than NYPD?”

  “Nope. Ma swore she heard someone up there one day while I was out. But I checked and everything was fine, the door was locked and all. Sometimes Ma gets a little . . . overanxious. The neighborhood is changing.

  “She liked Julie,” he kept talking as they walked to the storage room. “She and Ma shared a birthday, you know. Your sister always remembered Ma with little candies at the holid—” He stopped cold as he opened the door and flipped on the light.

  Dean nearly ran into the back of him. He looked over Fiore’s shoulder. The contents of the room had been searched, and none too delicately.

  “I was in here yesterday to check the mouse traps. It wasn’t like this.”

  Wordlessly, Dean stepped around him. He shifted some of the stuff on the floor and saw a small framed photograph of Julie and Big Bird that had been taken at an ice show when she was four. He picked it up and thought of Molly’s Tinkerbell clock. He slipped the photo into his pocket.

  Harry’s questions had obviously poked at someone’s hornet’s nest. It was pointless to look for clues in her possessions. If evidence had been here, it was gone now.

  Somebody was worried.

  Chapter 22

  At ten-forty, Dean began to pace the lobby of Harry’s hotel like a caged animal. He felt as if he had a rash deep beneath his skin and nothing would relieve it. Those rifled boxes and ripped upholstery said someone feared they’d overlooked something when they killed Julie. No doubt this had been triggered by renewed interest in her disappearance. But what was the conduit that let the murderer know it was happening?

  Dean had tried Harry’s phone after he left Julie’s apartment; but true to form, Harry didn’t pick up. Why hadn’t Dean insisted they meet earlier? The seconds dragged by as panic inched closer to the surface. The kind of bad guys who could elude the hands of the feds kept on top of things; their quick reaction in searching Julie’s belongings confirmed it. They would soon figure out that Dean was behind this renewed investigation—if they hadn’t already. And Dean had left an easy trail straight back to Molly’s front door.

  He’d already called her six times and gotten no answer. Damn, why didn’t the woman at least get voice mail?

  A two-thirty airline reservation awaited Dean at LaGuardia. He would meet with Harry, then head back to Indiana. Harry could finish here. Dean had to stay with Molly. She might have been vigilant those first few days in Indiana, but now her guard was down. Even if she thought his questioning could lead the father to Nicholas, she wouldn’t have any idea it would be happening so blindingly fast.

  Maybe he should call the Glens Crossing police.

  No, not until he spoke to Harry and had some idea what was going on.

  Where was that damn man?

  He called his office and asked Smitty to pack up his boxes of mail so he could pick them up on his way to the airport. Dean would take all of it back to Indiana and comb through it piece by piece. He’d made a cursory pass through the whole mess yesterday, but he’d been looking for something from Julie. If she had sent him evidence, maybe she covered her tracks with a bogus return address.

  Then he tried Molly again. He gave up after the ninth ring.

  Harry finally showed his lanky hound-dog face. Dean had never been so glad to see anyone.

  Harry grinned like this was a social meeting and said, “Hey, buddy, let’s sit in the bar.”

  “I don’t have time. I’m going back to Indiana. Just tell me.”

  Harry laughed loudly and hugged Dean, patting him roughly on the back. Then he took Dean’s elbow and moved him in the direction of the bar. “Let’s have a drink.” His voice was even more insistent and the biting pressure on Dean’s arm said not to resist.

  Once they were seated at a table in the back, Dean said, “Christ, you’re acting like someone’s tailing you.”

  “Someone is.”

  Dean resisted the urge to look around. “Good guy or bad guy?”

  “My guess is fed. Don’t know which category.”

  “Dirty fed?”

  “I think there’s someone buttering his bread on both sides.” Harry lit a cigarette. “Your sister was supposed to meet with someone from the CIA at the train station the day she was killed. It’s just too coincidental that this boyfriend of hers couldn’t locate her for six months and the very day she was to meet with the feds, he takes her out. Either someone is tailing the CIA—which I’m not putting out of the realm of possibility—or someone on the inside told him where she was.”

  “Who is ‘him’? And how do you know she was meeting with someone? My God, CIA. . . .”

  “I don’t have it in stone yet, but all signs point to Stephen VanGraff. He was on her flight from Rome. For the past four years, the feds have been watching him and he’s been watching the feds. It’s a real tango. He heads a not-for-profit relief organization, but there’s heavy suspicion that it’s a cover for arms dealing. If it’s him, he wouldn’t have done the hit himself. He hires that kind of work done.”

  Dean’s stomach turned sour. Arms dealing. Terrorists. “That’s why McMurray laid it on heavy about my Middle East experience.”

  “I haven’t been able to put VanGraff and Julie in the same place at the same time yet, other than they were seated in the same row on that flight.”

  Something Molly said bounced back in Dean’s brain. “What does VanGraff look like?”

  “Innocent. Boy-next-door. Tall, handsome, blue eyes, reddish hair and just enough freckles to seal the deal.”

  “How reddish—like auburn . . . carrot top?”

  “Like Opie. You know, sandy.”

  “Shit.” After a moment he asked, “Why didn’t I call you in the first place?”

  “Cause you think you’re smarter than me—and you are.” He took a drag on his cigarette and blew out a long puff of blue smoke. “I just happened to have the right connections this time.” He knocked off the ash and asked, “If Julie had something on this guy, why didn’t she go to the feds right away?”

  “Because she was protecting her baby.” Dean closed his eyes and tried to quell his rolling stomach. Sh
e had set Molly up. In her very practical, methodical way, Julie was taking care of business. She had waited for the birth, then separated herself from the baby to deliver whatever information she had to the government. And she had made sure that he knew nothing about it, because she knew that if he knew, he would come after the bastard. And that would put Nicholas at risk.

  Oh, God, I’m sorry, Julie. But I’ll protect him. I swear I will.

  “Stay on this and keep me posted. I’ll see if VanGraff’s name pops up with any of my people.” Dean got up. “I have to go.”

  “Are you sure? You can help more here.”

  “The only thing that matters is in Indiana. That’s where I have to be.” He hurried out of the bar and onto the street to get a taxi.

  “Stop looking so confrontational,” Lily said to Riley as they waited for someone to answer the door at the Fultons’.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are too. You look like you want to punch someone in the face.” Not that she could blame him, she felt that way herself. But that was definitely not the way to handle Karen. She shoved the cake into Riley’s hands. “Here, at least you’ll be bearing gifts.”

  It was taking an awfully long time for someone to get the door.

  Finally, it opened slowly. Mickey stood there on her crutches in a T-shirt and boxers.

  Lily glanced at Riley, who was now wearing a broad grin. She said, “Hi, Mickey.”

  “Hi.” But Mickey wasn’t looking at her, she was looking only at Riley.

  “We brought you a surprise,” Riley said, lifting the cake like an offering.

  After a quick look over her shoulder, Mickey said, “Come on in.”

  They followed her as she thumped her crutches into the living room. The television was tuned to MTV and the sofa was piled with pillows to support her casted leg. She eased herself onto the couch and propped her leg up, then muted the TV with the remote.

  Lily sat on the love seat placed at a right angle to the couch. Riley just stood there with the cake in his hands.