This Little Baby

by Joyce Sullivan

  But she remained silent as he planted his hands on his hips and stared at a People magazine lying on the gold shag carpet. “The last time we had dinner I offered to move them into a nicer apartment in Kanata—closer to where I live. My consulting firm is doing very well. I can afford to pay her to stay home with Mikey. All I asked for in exchange was reasonable visitation. I want to play an active part in Mikey’s life. That little kid is all my parents and I have left of Ted.”

  Paulina absorbed his words, listening to her heart. She didn’t share his archaic views on child care—Gil sounded too much like her ex-husband. She wondered how Cindy had reacted. Gil’s offer smacked of control, but Paulina respected -the fact that he wanted to be more to his nephew than a signature on a support check. She didn’t think he’d withdraw the support money if Cindy decided to work. The dark circles under his eyes and the lines of tension carved in his features broadcast his genuine concern.

  He was telling the truth. She was sure of it. He’d climbed onto the balcony but he hadn’t pried open the door, which posed the unsettling question—who did? And why?

  With tentative strides he joined her in the narrow corridor, the bulk of his massive frame blocking the sunlight that filtered through the patio window from the living area. Wrapped in shadow, he gave the impression of a strong man trying to find his way in the dark.

  “You’re still here,” he remarked quietly. “Does that mean you’ve reconsidered and you’ll help me find Cindy and Mikey?”

  Gil held his breath and prayed, waiting for her response. He didn’t have a chance in hell of finding Cindy without Paulina. Why hadn’t he paid more attention to the details of Cindy’s life? He didn’t even know her birthday. March something, he thought. He was more adept with recursive file searches than people searches, and a contact in the solicitor general’s office had confidentially told him Paulina was the best.

  Her expression was unreadable in the shadowy foyer. Did she find the idea of working for him that repugnant?

  In his college days at Northwestern Gil had faced threehundred-sixty-pound offensive tackles at the line of scrimmage and tenth-level wizards in role-playing games who hadn’t intimidated him half as much. Those linemen and wizards didn’t wear delicately scented perfume that reminded him of the wild lilacs blooming in the spring along his favorite jogging route.

  “I’ll continue working for you on one condition,” she said, holding up her finger like a dungeon master laying out the rules of a quest. “From now on, we play by my rules and my rules only. Agreed?”

  Gil blinked as relief flooded through him. “Yes, ma’am. Can I have a look at the door now? I haven’t got a clue why someone would want to break into Cindy’s apartment. But come to think of it, the place seems messier. I don’t recall the magazines being on the floor.”

  “Be my guest. We’ll let Max know so he can get it repaired. I just want a peek inside Cindy’s dresser drawers, then we can try talking to the neighbors.”

  Gil noticed Paulina came back from the bedroom with her hands empty. He accompanied her out into the hallway. He had no intention of interfering with her investigative techniques any more than she would have tried to tell him how to customize a computer application to a client’s needs. He just wanted to be part of the action. Sitting on the sidelines would drive him crazy.

  He tried not to be discouraged when it quickly became apparent the neighbors didn’t know anything about Cindy—not even her name.

  Paulina gave him a sharp poke in the ribs as she moved on to a door at the end of the hall. “Stop glowering, it doesn’t help.”

  He pasted a smile on his face.

  “Now you look like you’re on drugs.”

  “Half the people in this building look like they’re on drugs.” He wasted the smile though. No one was home.

  “Let’s try the apartments near the front entrance,” Paulina suggested. “If we’re lucky, there’ll be a busybody in residence.”

  THE BUSYBODY WAS A scrawny elderly woman in a flowered housecoat. Her red lipstick rimmed her mouth as though it had been applied with a plunger. Either that or she’d had her mouth pressed to the door while she’d ogled them through the peephole.

  “You look familiar, young man,” the woman told Gil with a wink as she opened her door.

  Paulina launched into her spiel and showed a picture of Mikey and Cindy. Her story found a sympathetic audience.

  “That poor young woman having to raise her baby on her own. It’s tough with all the welfare cuts the government has been inflicting these days. How are we expected to eat? You say her husband died?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a shame. I don’t think I saw him more than a few times. That’s a peculiar schedule her husband had, bringing him home in the afternoons.” She winked at Gil again and patted her unnaturally orangish hairdo. “He was quite a handsome man, but then, I’ve always had a weakness for blondes.”

  Gil frowned. “Blondes?”

  “Yes. My first husband was a blonde, but his hair started to recede. I divorced him when he went totally bald. His head was so unattractive. My second husband, Gerry, had a head of hair you wouldn’t believe—”

  “Excuse me…but is this the man you saw?” Gil opened his wallet to a family photo taken a few years ago and pointed to Ted, whose dark brown hair could never be mistaken for blond.

  “Why, no’ Though, come to think of it, he looks vaguely familiar. I thought this bloke lived up on the third floor. He struck me as the construction type.”

  Gil felt as if the woman had kicked him in the kidneys. Who was the blond man Cindy was seeing?

  “You’re remarkably observant,” Paulina complimented the woman. “Could you tell us what the man you saw with Cindy looked like?”

  “Well, he wasn’t nearly as tall as this young buck you’ve got here. But five foot ten is tall for a woman of my stature. He had a good physique—very athletic. He hoisted the baby carriage over the front steps no problem.”

  Gil’s insides churned. Ted was six foot one and lean. He wanted to blurt out a million questions at the woman but Paulina had shifted her body stance, positioning her shoulder slightly in front of him as though subtly telling him to back off and let her handle things.

  “Long or short blond hair?”

  “Long and flowing like the men on the cover of those books near the checkout counter in the grocery store.”

  “No wonder you noticed him. Blond men with muscles are a memorable combination.” Gil saw the corner of Paulina’s mouth curve into an appreciative this-is-a-womanthing smile. “Can you recall when you saw him last? Was it recently—within the last week or two?”

  “Now that’s a tough one.” The woman tapped a finger adorned with a peeling coat of plum polish on her lipsticksmeared lips. “Oh, I remember, it was Labor Day weekend. It was an evening, and quite hot and humid. The baby was crying in his carriage. I opened my door a crack and peeked out into the lobby to make sure everything was okay. I could tell they were tense with each other. He was hollering over the sound of the baby and asking where they were going. She hollered right back and said anywhere with air-conditioning. I got a laugh over that. Babies, they don’t like the heat.”

  “I don’t suppose in all this hollering you happened to overhear his name?”

  The woman shook her head. “Afraid not. I closed the door as soon as I was sure nobody was being slapped around. I don’t like to pry into other people’s business.”

  Paulina thanked the woman and moved down the hallway knocking on doors. Numbly, Gil stuck close to Paulina’s side, but his thoughts were far away.

  Had Cindy run off with another man?

  “ARE YOU OKAY?” Paulina cast a sideways glance at Gil as they emptied the garbage bags from Cindy’s apartment onto the conference table in the back room of Stewart Investigations. He’d been awfully quiet since they’d found out about the blond man with muscles. Paulina didn’t have to guess why. She’d been doing a little speculating hers
elf.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” He scowled fiercely. “I just wasn’t expecting to find out Cindy was cheating on Ted.”

  “We don’t know that for certain. I agree it’s a possibility we should consider, but we don’t have enough information to come to a conclusion like that yet. This man could be a friend of Cindy’s or a friend of Ted’s. Or a relative you know nothing about.” She handed him a pair of surgical gloves. “With luck, the garbage will give us a few clues. Let’s dispense with the disgusting stuff first. The diapers are making the room stink. Then we’ll sift through what’s left.”

  Paulina wasn’t sure if Gil had ever actually changed one of his nephew’s diapers. Probably not, if she was reading him right. That chore was probably mothers’ work in his rule book. At least he didn’t complain as he slipped on the gloves and combed the pile for dirty diapers, lobbing the white plastic bundles with unerring aim into the wastebasket she’d set on the table for that purpose.

  “Believe it or not, this is very similar to what I do designing applications for my customers,” he said tightly. Another diaper scored two points with a dull thunk. Paulina wagered he was working out a lot of pent-up aggression by the sound of those thunks. “During the analysis phase, I weed through a lot of bits of paper—and I’ve been known to pull stuff out of the trash—so I can figure out how their business operates and tailor a program to suit their needs. But, holy mackerel, I’ll think twice before I take on contracts with day cares.”

  A laugh slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it. She glanced at him quickly, an apology ready on her lips. There was nothing laughable about the situation—a baby and his mother were missing. But Gil was on the brink of laughing himself, the tension in his face eased by a halfhearted smile. Paulina felt a tiny flutter like the brush of a butterfly’s wings in her stomach. She hoped that faint smile of his lingered a long time. His fears about Mikey would return soon enough and chase the smile away.

  Twenty minutes later she felt it safe to conclude—once they’d opened a window and were breathing fresh air again—that Cindy had a fondness for frozen dinners, bananas and fudge cookies. They’d also salvaged an eightday-old Sunday edition of the Ottawa Citizen—which Paulina fervently hoped Cindy had bought for the free television guide and not the travel section—and a small pile of miscellanea including business cards, receipts and the odd bill, which suggested Cindy had cleaned out her purse before her departure. Paulina considered this pile a gold mine and hoped it would yield a nugget or two.

  She handed Gil the Sunday paper and Cindy’s Yellow Pages directory. “Pore over the airlines listings in the Yellow Pages and every page of the newspaper for handwritten notes,” she told him. “Pay particularly close attention to the travel section. She might have circled some cheap airfares if she was planning a trip to visit family or a friend.”

  “I think she’d have mentioned some family or close friends if she had any,” Gil muttered, his jaw visibly stiffening. Tension shimmered around him like an impermeable glass dome.

  Paulina knew his anger and frustration weren’t directed at her. “Not necessarily. Cindy could have run away from a tough situation—and had a change of heart because of recent events.”

  “Well, I don’t buy that, but I see what you mean.” He bent his head over the Yellow Pages directory. Paulina let her gaze rest on his thick, dark hair for a moment. Gil wasn’t just trying to find Mikey and Cindy, he was battling loss and disillusionment. Paulina had had her own run-in with those two nemeses and she’d survived. Gil would, too. With a small sigh, she started sifting through the pile of miscellanea awaiting her inspection.

  The business card for the pregnancy counseling clinic raised a few questions in her mind, but now wasn’t a good time to ask Gil about it. She fanned out the receipts, checking the dates. Three were for Joe’s Diner, a popular Fiftiesstyle diner in the Byward Market. All three receipts indicated Cindy had dined alone within the last month. There were grocery receipts dating as far as four months back and a two-week-old receipt for magazines from a pharmacy.

  There was no doubt about it. Cindy had cleaned out her purse—the kind of thing a woman did before she went on a trip. Not the kind of thing she did before she moved in with a man in another part of town. Paulina let that thought unfold.

  Across the table the newspaper rattled. Gil cursed under his breath. She looked up, careful to shield her thoughts. “Find something?”

  “The travel section is missing—and I’m leaping to conclusions,” he said darkly. He sent the paper flying across the room. Anger, hurt and confusion deepened the worry lines framing his mouth. His eyes teemed with unanswered questions. “Dammit, why is she doing this?”

  He looked so lost and in need of reassurance Paulina couldn’t stop herself from laying her hand on his arm. From trying to somehow ease the pain he was enduring, to share part of his burden. “I don’t know, Gil. But I promise you, we’re going to find out.”

  The moment she touched him she was conscious of the heat and tension coiled in the contoured muscles of his forearm. It pulsed up her arm and circulated through every cell of her body. Her breath caught in her lungs as though paralyzed by the strange phenomenon invading her body. She’d had hundreds of clients unburden their souls to her over the past six years. She’d listened and cared—always ready with a supply of tissues and sympathy—using her heart and her conscience as her guides. But none of their stories had affected her in quite this way.

  She’d never made a promise to a client before. She could almost hear the cadence of her father’s baritone as he advised her to always err on the side of caution. Some of her cases had taken years of painstaking follow-up on the slimmest of leads to resolve—and here, she’d practically promised Gil she’d find Cindy and Mikey.

  Her eyes searched his handsome face as she tried to pinpoint the cause of her rash behavior. The answer she arrived at was so blatantly obvious—as evident and intimidating as the battle-scar bump on his nose—she was embarrassed to acknowledge it. She was reacting to his classic handsomeness. She’d never had a client before of the knee-knocking male-soap-opera-star caliber. She probably wouldn’t again, if word got out she was making promises she couldn’t keep.

  She absolutely had more important things to do than stare into a pair of indigo eyes. Clearing her throat, she glanced down at the table and realized she needed her hand in order to examine the telephone bill she’d found in Cindy’s trash, but her hand was quite occupied making circular stroking motions on Gil’s arm. Fire rose to Paulina’s cheeks. No wonder she still felt so warm and tingly!

  As though sensing Paulina was about to snatch her fingers away, Gil’s hand settled over hers, trapping her hand on his arm. His large fingers made a surprisingly gentle cage.

  “Thank you,” he said in a husky tone. “After seeing you in action today, I know if anyone can find Mikey and Cindy—it’ll be you.” His eyes lingered on her for a minute—a brightness entering their turbulent depths that reminded her of sunshine dancing on the Ottawa River. Her heart did a funny skipping pattern against her ribs.

  “I suggest we get back to work, then.” Paulina tugged her fingers free. Sexual attraction had already led her through one marriage and divorce. She preferred to learn from her mistakes rather than repeat them. She’d already made a lifetime commitment to missing children. “So, no notes in the newspaper or in the telephone book?”

  “Not a one.”

  She studied Cindy’s phone bill. “There are no long-distance calls registered. What day did your brother die?”

  “August seventeenth.”

  “This bill covers the period from August 8 to September 5. Cindy didn’t phone anyone long-distance to tell them about Ted.” She set the bill aside and flipped through Cindy’s calendar to the month of September. Weekly notations written in girlish round letters indicated Cindy took Mikey to a play group every Wednesday morning. And she’d had an appointment with a lawyer at 11:00 a.m. the previous Monday. Unfortunately C
indy hadn’t noted the lawyer’s name, phone number or address. “You know the name of Cindy’s lawyer?”

  Gil shook his head. “No. I offered to handle Ted’s estate but she said she’d hire a lawyer, so I didn’t pry.”

  Paulina nodded in understanding as she flipped through the remaining months, looking for phone numbers of friends or other acquaintances. A work schedule in the early part of the year made her pause. Gil had indicated on Cindy’s background form that she’d worked at a ladies’ clothing store in the Rideau Center. “Did Cindy ever mention going back to work at Fashion Sense after Mikey was born?”

  “Ted didn’t see any reason why she should work.”

  Paulina rolled her eyes. Ted and Gil had evidently attended the same male-chauvinist training camp. “Well, it’s worth a shot to contact her former employer.” She stood and went to the door, calling into the outer office for Andrea to bring her the telephone directory. She had an assignment for her.

  Paulina gave her intern a smile as the slim Asian woman entered the room, the scent of vanilla wafting around her person. She explained what she wanted Andrea to say, then sat back to watch Andrea’s efforts. Gil shifted uncomfortably in Paulina’s father’s favorite leather chair, which seemed better suited to his size. His dark brows knit together as he observed the proceedings, but he didn’t interfere.

  Andrea conducted herself convincingly over the phone, her youthful, unsure voice just right as Cindy’s “younger sister,” who’d unexpectedly dropped into town and hoped to get a glimpse of her new nephew. Paulina took pride in Andrea’s performance. She had high hopes Andrea could be convinced to stay on once her internship was finished. It would be nice to have a partner again.

  “The manager told me Cindy quit in April,” Andrea reported when the call was finished, tucking her chinlength hair behind her ear. “She’s brought Mikey by the store a few times to show him off…and mentioned returning to her job when Mikey was a year old. No one’s phoned the manager to verify her work references.”