by Kathi Daley
Chapter 9
Tony accessed the link at eight o’clock sharp while Mike and I looked on. Bree had elected to stay upstairs to feed Secret and put her to bed. The computer Tony planned to use for the chat was in his soundproof basement, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to leave the baby upstairs while all the adults were downstairs. I was expecting the sort of chat room where everyone typed out their comments, so when Dad’s face flashed onto the screen, I found myself smiling.
“The door to this specific piece of real estate on the dark web will close in two minutes, so I’m going to be brief,” Dad said. “As for the baby I left with Mike, she’s the daughter of a woman who has information relating to a dangerous group with international ties. She agreed to enter protective custody and work with us to shut down the group leaders but only if her baby was safe. I dropped the baby off with Mike and assured the mother that no one, including her, would know where the baby was located until this was over. I also assured her that she’d be perfectly safe in the meantime. I’ll be by to pick the baby up when we have the all-clear.”
I glanced at the clock. Twenty seconds had already passed.
“As for this man your mother was dating, he is a dangerous man, and to be honest, I’m terrified that your mother was ever on his radar.”
“Should we do something?” Mike asked.
“No. Not yet. The man calling himself Theo is currently in my custody and is being interrogated. I have the two other men he was working with as well. So far, they aren’t electing to share the information I’m after with me, but they’ll talk eventually. They always do.”
I flinched, realizing that my dad had just as much as admitted that he planned to torture the men he’d detained.
“For now, just keep an eye on your mother,” Dad instructed. “If she mentions being watched or followed, let me know. If someone new comes into her life, let me know. I sort of doubt either will occur since it seems I’ve managed to round up the entire operation.”
“Operation?” I asked.
“It’s just a term,” Dad answered.
“Do you think that Mom is in any immediate danger?” Mike asked as the sixty-second mark came and went.
“No. I don’t think so. If the man posing as Theo wanted her dead, she’d be dead. I think there’s something else going on. I don’t know all the why’s and how’s at this point, but I’ll get the information I need.”
“What about Anton?” Mike asked as the second hand counted down from one twenty to zero.
“I am aware of that situation,” Dad answered. “I have no reason to believe that Anton’s murder is in any way connected to either the mother of the baby or the man your mother was dating. I’d treat it as a local murder, but I am looking into things on my end. If I find out that your case and one of mine are connected, I’ll let you know.”
Just thirty seconds left, I thought to myself as Mike and Dad talked. There was so much I wanted to say.
“I’m going to set up another call for next Monday evening at eight o’clock. I’ll send Tony a new link when the meet gets closer. In the meantime, remember no one can know you have the baby. You have to keep her hidden.”
“She’s safe here with Tony and me,” I said. “Except for you, no one other than Tony and me and Mike and Bree even knows she’s here.”
“That’s good. And keep an eye on your mom. Make a point to check in with her every day.”
“We will,” Mike and I said in unison as the second hand crossed the hundred-second mark.
“The little black book and flash drive,” I said. “I almost forgot. Theo left some stuff at Mom’s place, including a little black book with initials and numbers and a flash drive.”
“Tony, are you there?” Dad asked.
Tony stepped forward. “I’m here.”
“Scan the black book and copy the flash drive into a secure file. I’ll send you an address to forward everything to.”
With that, the screen went blank.
By the time Dad logged off, my heart was racing. I felt like I’d just participated in a race.
“Wow,” I said. “The added element of the clock counting down really made that intense.”
“Yeah.” Mike huffed out a breath. “I have a lot of questions that still need answering, but I suppose we have answers to some of the more important questions we hoped to ask.”
“I’m glad to hear the baby’s mother is still alive,” I said. “I meant to ask him about the baby’s name, but I never got the chance.”
“Secret is fine to use for now,” Tony said. “We wouldn’t want to use her real name anyway.”
“I’m really concerned about Mom,” Mike said. “Dad seemed to think that all we needed to do was to keep an eye on her, but what if something happens when none of us are looking?”
“Mom dated Theo for over a month,” I pointed out. “If he wanted to hurt her, he had plenty of opportunities. He may have just been dating her to send a message to Dad, which I guess he’s done.”
“Tess is right. This Theo might have wanted to send a message to your dad, letting him know that just because he left White Eagle to protect you, that doesn’t mean any of you are actually safe,” Tony said. “He may have wanted to send the message that he and those he works for can get to his family at any point.”
I groaned. “Great. Now I’m scared for Mike and me as well as Mom.”
“Dad will get Theo to talk,” Mike said. “Once he does, we’ll know what we’re really dealing with.”
I was surprised that Mike was taking things as calmly as he was. I had half expected him to leave right away and go and fetch Mom and take her to his house, but instead, he seemed to be willing to do as Dad suggested and simply keep an eye on things. In a way, I supposed that was all we could do short of locking Mom up and refusing to allow her to go to work or participate in any of the activities she participated in on a weekly basis.
“I guess we should go upstairs and fill Bree in,” I suggested. “I’m sure she’s wondering how things went.
When we arrived in the living room, we found Bree sleeping in the recliner with Secret sleeping on her chest. Tony quietly picked the baby up and headed to the nursery we’d set up for her. Mike and I decided it was best to let Bree sleep, so we headed into the kitchen to discuss the call and the options as we saw them at this point.
“So what now?” Mike asked.
“Dad seemed to have both the baby thing and the Theo thing under control. He suggested that you focus on Anton’s murder case. Maybe that’s what you should do.”
Mike tightened his lips.
“He’s tasked us with keeping the baby both safe and hidden, which I think we are currently doing and can continue to do for as long as we need to. Other than that, there’s nothing we can do to help with that particular situation. It’s not like we know what’s going on with the mother, nor are we equipped to help in any way with that specific situation.”
“I guess that’s true.”
I handed Mike a beer. “And as far as the situation with Theo and Mom, Dad seems to be dealing with it. Again, I don’t see how we can help other than to check in with Mom and let Dad know if anything happens that we feel concerned about.”
“I guess that’s true as well.”
I opened the cupboard and pulled out a tall water glass. I filled it with ice and then poured tea over the ice. “So, where are you with Anton’s murder?”
“No further than when we talked earlier today. I still don’t have a single suspect, but it’s early, and my attention has been divided. I guess I’ll focus all my attention on it tomorrow and see what I can come up with. If I can figure out who Anton’s dinner guest was the night he died, that will give me a place to start.”
“Maybe you can talk to his neighbors. I know his home is pretty isolated, but someone might have seen a car in the drive.”
“Frank already canvassed the neighborhood, but I don’t suppose doing a second set of interviews is a bad idea.
” He took a sip of his beer. “I should get the DNA results back tomorrow. I guess at this point, I just need to regroup and refocus. Experience has taught me that a murder investigation is usually a marathon and not a sprint. I guess at this point, I just need to stay in the race.”
After Mike and Bree had left, Tony poured us each a glass of wine, and then we settled on the sofa in front of the fire. It had been a long and stressful day, and we both felt the need to unwind a bit before going to bed.
“My cousin, Joseph, called me today,” Tony said after we’d been sitting and enjoying the fire for a while.
“Oh? How is Joseph doing?”
“He’s doing really well. He got a promotion with the company he works for, and he and Anya are building a new home. It sounds like they are both doing really well. The reason he called, however, wasn’t to tell me about the promotion but to ask if we planned to come and visit again this fall.”
I turned and looked at Tony. “Do you want to visit again?”
He paused and then answered. “I think I do. It’s odd since I hadn’t been back to Italy in years other than when Nona suffered the heart attack and then our trip last fall, but getting together with family reminded me how much I’d missed everyone, and Nona’s death reminded me how uncertain life can be. I hadn’t been thinking about a trip, but when Joseph called, I realized that I’d very much like to spend a few weeks overseas. If, of course, that works with any plans you might have.”
I took a sip of my wine. “I don’t have any specific plans. If we are going to go, I’ll need to give Brady notice, so we should probably decide on dates sooner rather than later. Last year, we went in October, but I’d prefer to go either before or after Halloween this year. You know how I love the annual haunted house, and this Halloween will be Ella’s first, and I don’t want to miss it. Italy is beautiful in the fall, so maybe we could go in September or even early November, so we don’t miss Thanksgiving.”
“Early November works for me. We can go the week after Halloween and be back by Thanksgiving and still have a nice visit.” Tony leaned forward and kissed me. “If you’re sure you want to go, then let’s set some tentative dates. You can run the dates past Brady, and I’ll run them past Joseph. We can make adjustments if we need to.”
“Okay.” I snuggled down so that my head was resting on Tony’s chest. “I think another trip will be fun. There were a lot of things we talked about doing but never got around to. Maybe we can visit with your family and do some sightseeing.”
“That sounds like a good plan. If November doesn’t work for some reason, we’ll try for September. I agree with you about Halloween. It’s one of my favorite times of the year in White Eagle as well, and, like you, I missed doing all the local stuff last year.”
“I heard the group who set up the haunted house were in bad shape without you there to handle the electrical.”
“Yeah. I heard. But I’m all in this year. I even have a costume all picked out.”
I sat up a bit and turned toward Tony. “Oh, and what are you planning on dressing up as this year?”
“It’s a surprise for now, but since I want us to match, I guess I’ll have to fill you in at some point. It’s only May, so we’ll talk about it later, but if it works out the way I have it planned out in my head, our costumes are going to be epic.”
I laughed. “Epic. Even more epic than the matching alien costumes you and Shaggy wore a few years ago?”
“Well, maybe not that epic, but epic all the same.”
Tony kissed the top of my head, and I slipped down to once again rest on his chest. I loved these quiet evenings with just the two of us. I supposed when we did have a baby, being able to plan spontaneous trips or just relax would become a thing of the past, but for the first time in my life, I’d begun to imagine a life that included dance recitals and soccer games in place of quiet evenings spent dreaming in front of the fire. Maybe I was more ready for the next phase of our lives than I thought I was. Not that I was ready to jump right in, but perhaps I’d be willing to stick a toe in and at least enter into a conversation about what the next step might be.
But not tonight. Tonight I was exhausted. But once Secret was returned to her mother, and Anton’s murder was solved; once Dad was able to assure us that Theo and his men were no longer a threat to Mom or us, and we didn’t need to worry about the true intentions of all the people we met, maybe then I’d be ready to entertain the dialogue I knew Tony had been waiting to have since before we were even married.
Chapter 10
Sunday, May 23
The next few days seemed to fly by. I’d done my route Friday, making sure to spend extra time with Mom and ask her about her day. After I’d completed my route, Tilly and I went home, and I helped Tony with the baby. Tony had copied and sent everything in Theo’s little black book as well as the contents of the flash drive to Dad. We hadn’t heard back from him, but hopefully, we’d get an update on Theo and his potential threat to our mother tomorrow night during the chat we’d set up.
On Saturday morning, I stayed with the baby while Tony went into town. In addition to the groceries he went to the grocer to pick up, he came home with flowers for the planter boxes on the patio as well as herbs for the garden. Tony also came home with paint in shades of white, yellow, and blue. It seemed that he’d decided to paint the walls in the baby’s room yellow and the brown dresser we’d been using for the little princess white. I’d pointed out that her stay with us was temporary, but Tony had made the argument that it would be nice to have a nursery for Mike and Bree’s baby when she came to visit, so any work we put into the room wouldn’t go to waste. I’d half expected him to make a comment about our future baby needing a nursery, but he hadn’t mentioned the idea, although I knew that exact subject was on his mind.
Once Tony had gotten home from town yesterday, we’d had lunch out on the patio, and then we’d taken the dogs and the baby for a long walk around the lake. When we returned from our walk, I got to work painting the benches we had picked up at a yard sale at the end of last summer with the blue paint while he went to work planting the herbs and flowers. Painting the nursery was an indoor activity, and it was much too nice to be indoors today, so I figured that redecorating the space could be Tony’s project during the week.
We’d grilled steaks and eaten out under the stars Saturday evening after Secret had gone to bed. It was a gorgeous evening, and with the added heat provided by the fire pit, it was actually quite pleasant. After we ate, we headed inside to watch a movie and discuss our plans for the following day, which brings us up to today.
“I love what you did with the patio flowers yesterday, but I feel like we need more color around the base of the house. Maybe some shade-loving plants since it does tend to be shady in that area for most of the day,” I said to Tony as we ate the omelets he’d made for breakfast.
“I can make another run to the nursery after we eat. I was thinking we might want to add that water feature to the yard we keep talking about.”
“Do you mean something like a pond?”
Tony frowned. “I’m not sure we should do anything that large. A pond would need to be winterized, so maybe something smaller, like a fountain. I guess we can get the flowers in and then decide. I saw a setup I liked in a magazine I picked up a few weeks ago. I was thinking...” Tony was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He picked it up and looked at the caller ID. “It’s a blocked number.”
“It might be Dad. Answer it.”
Tony did as I suggested. After he’d said hello, he just listened. When he hung up without speaking, I waited for him to fill me in.
“That was a message from your dad,” he said. “It was a computer-generated call, so he wasn’t live on the line. Basically, he just said that things were wrapping up with the baby’s mother and that we should expect him to come for her one day next week. He said that tomorrow night’s call will be a quick one as the one last week had been, so he wanted to give us a heads up so
we could make any arrangements we needed to make for the transfer of the baby to her mother without wasting time on that subject during our call.”
I had to admit I felt sad that Secret would be leaving us. I was pretty sure that the baby and her mother would be moved and given new identities, which made me extra sad since I wouldn’t be able to stay in touch with her.
“I guess we don’t need to paint the nursery after all,” I said.
“No,” Tony sighed. “I guess not.”
I put out a hand and covered Tony’s, which was resting on the table. “I’m sorry. I know you and the baby really bonded.”
“We did,” he admitted. “But I always knew Secret would only be here temporarily. I’m glad everything worked out with her mother, and the two of them will be reunited.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It really is for the best.” I glanced at the baby, who was sitting in her car seat watching us talk. “I think that having Secret here has been good for me.”
“Oh?” Tony asked. “How so?”
“I guess you know that I’ve been pretty uncertain about having children of our own, at least any time soon, but being able to practice with Secret has shown me how great it can be.” I paused and swallowed. “I was afraid that adding a baby would interfere with who we are together as a couple, but in reality, having Secret with us has only added to our coupleness if that makes any sense.”