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He could’ve questioned her then, but he hadn’t. They’d talked about nothing in particular. Her goldfish. He was called Darryl. The weather. It was hot. Her garden—it needed rain. And then the pains started piling in on her, and he’d let her crush his fingers and wished there was more he could do.
Not that it was any of his business, but she needed someone, and nobody else had showed up.
“It won’t be long now,” he’d told her, hoping to hell he was right. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
“I think I...left the...back door unlocked,” she’d said through clenched teeth.
“I checked. It’s locked.” She had nice teeth. Not perfect, just nice and white and square. Joe tried to convince himself that she couldn’t possibly be involved. In the hospital gown, in spite of a few fine lines at the outer corners of her eyes and a few more across her forehead, she looked more like an overgrown kid than a woman in the process of having a baby.
But she had the goods. She was fencing the stuff. None of the other women he’d talked to had been left with anything. The jerk had seduced them, promised them marriage, cleaned them out and left them, every last one Joe had interviewed, flat broke and either mad as hell or brokenhearted. Or both.
This one was still in possession of the J. J. Dana jade collection. A collection that had been valued at a million and a half nine years ago when the old man had passed away and was probably worth a lot more now. And if she was carrying either a grudge or a torch for the jerk, she covered pretty well.
Once they’d rolled her into the delivery room, Joe had returned to the waiting area. He’d considered going out and finding himself a hotel, figuring he could come back in a day or so, talk to her once she’d had time to settle down and wind things up. There was time. She wasn’t going anywhere.
But he hadn’t. Instead he’d hung around some more. Waiting.
“Are you the father?” Roughly an hour and forty-five minutes had passed. The woman in scrubs was back.
Not about to get himself thrown out on a technicality, Joe cleared his throat and said, “He couldn’t be here. I’m standing in for him. Is she okay? Has she had it yet?”
The nurse shoved a lank chunk of hair back up under her paper hat. “It’s a girl. Mother and daughter doing fine. She’s been moved to Room 211 and is resting now, but you can see the baby if you want to.”
Joe didn’t know what to say. It seemed pretty callous to tell her he had no interest in babies, but the truth was, he didn’t. He’d delivered a few. Cops occasionally did. Sometimes he’d followed up with a visit, sometimes a donation, but it wasn’t his nature to get involved with the people he came into contact with through his work. Not that this case was work, exactly. It was more in the nature of a family obligation. Still...
“Sure,” he heard himself saying. “Might as well.”
Well, hell—somebody had to welcome the little tyke into the world. Once he’d done his duty he would check into that hotel and get something to eat. He’d had enough of machine food to last him a while. Candy bars. Peanuts. Barbecued pork rinds. One of these days he was going to have to get started on a health food and exercise regimen. Maybe after he wound up this business for his grandmother, Miss Emma, and returned home.
Two
She was no beauty, he’d say that for her. Practically bald, with a red face, fat cheeks and a sour expression, she looked like a bird that had fallen out of the nest about a week too soon. You had to feel sorry for something like that.
“Hi there, Fatcheeks,” Joe whispered, after checking around to be sure no one was close enough to see him making a fool of himself. There was an elderly couple ogling the runt on the end and a man with his necktie dangling from his shirt pocket making googoo noises at the bundle in the crib three rows down. Assured that no one was paying him any mind, he relaxed. “You gave your mama a pretty rough time, you know that?”
It occurred to him that looking after a newborn infant wasn’t going to be any cinch for the Bayard woman. Did she have any friends? Any family? What would she have done if he hadn’t happened along when he had?
She’d have gotten along just fine, he told himself quickly, because he needed to believe it. She didn’t strike him as the helpless type. She wasn’t neurotic. She wasn’t sleeping under a bridge out on I-40. He’d learned a lot about her while she talked her way through labor. She’d grown up in an orphanage. Still—if things got tough, there were agencies she could call on. She was bound to have somebody. Nobody was completely alone.
So he’d wait until she caught her breath, and then he’d ask her how the devil she’d come to be in possession of a valuable jade collection that belonged to a woman in Texas, and why she was selling it off, piece by piece. And while he was at it, he’d find out what her connection was to the joker who’d cut a swath across the south, leading women into one indiscretion after another, cleaning them out and skipping town.
And he’d get his answers, too. Not for nothing had he been called the Inquisitor, with a capital I, back at DPD.
He waggled his fingers against the nursery glass and whispered, “Yeah, life’s a pretty tough gig, kiddo, but with a little luck you’ll come through it just fine.” It didn’t particularly bother him that he sounded like a nutcase. The baby couldn’t hear him through the glass. Couldn’t even see him. Her eyes were swollen shut.
“What you want to do is find yourself a nice farmer and settle down out here in the country where it’s pretty and peaceful, make a few babies, have yourself a few laughs—stay out of any major trouble and chances are pretty good you’ll make it through okay. Most folks do. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s the truth.”
The infant labeled only Bayard Girl puckered up and began to wave her fists and kick her tightly bundled feet. She opened her mouth, as if she was expecting a worm to be dropped in it, and, feeling helpless, Joe left.
He needed a real meal, a bath and a three-day nap. Then he was going to get to the root of this business before the Bayard woman figured out what he was after and dug in behind her defenses.
It was a wonder she couldn’t tell just by looking at him that he was a cop. Most folks could. His youngest sister, Donna, said it was attitude. Said it stood out all over him, even after he left the force.
But then, both his sisters had proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they were lousy judges of men.
“Ms. Bayard—when can I see her?” he asked a nurse at the station.
“Are you family?”
He nodded. He was his sisters’ brother and Miss Emma’s only grandson. “I was just down the hall looking at the baby. She’s really something, isn’t she?” Which wasn’t an outright lie, either.
“Then you might as well go on in if the door’s open. Supper trays’ll be coming around any minute now. After that, they’ll bring the babies around.”
On the way to Room 211, Joe lined up his questions in firing order. If she was feeling up to it, he figured there was no real point in postponing the inevitable. The first round would have to go right to the heart of the matter, though, because once she tumbled to the reason he was here asking questions, she’d clam up, guilty or not. One thing he’d seen happen over and over again—a woman who’d just been made a fool of didn’t like to talk about it. Protecting her pride, she could come across as guilty as sin. On the other hand, a woman who really was guilty as sin could act as innocent as a preacher’s maiden aunt.
In other words, there was no understanding a woman.
“You awake?” He whispered. Her eyes were closed, but Joe had a feeling she wasn’t really asleep. He told himself she should have looked like hell, considering she’d just delivered a baby that weighed in at nine pounds, seven ounces. She did look tired, but mostly she just looked vulnerable and innocent and guileless.
He studied her features, telling himself it wasn’t really an invasion of privacy because he’d announced his presence. At her best, Sophie Bayard was probably one damned good-looking woman. She wasn’t at her best, but there was still something about her worth noticing.
Personally Joe had always preferred peppery little brunettes. Had married one, in fact. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a big, easygoing, sweet-smiling blonde when he happened across one in the line of duty.
Sophie knew he was there. For some reason, she didn’t want to face him yet. She felt...raw. But she opened her eyes and even managed a smile. She couldn’t remember ever being this tired in her entire thirty-four years. Or hurting the way she’d just hurt. They said she’d forget the pain in a matter of days, that new mothers always did, but she hadn’t forgotten it yet.
Besides, she was embarrassed. She’d panicked, which wasn’t like her. Normally she was calm and levelheaded to a fault. Everybody said so.
How on earth could she have allowed a perfect stranger to mop her off, change her clothes, drive her to the hospital and sit with her all through her labor? She’d practically broken his fingers, hanging on to him while she waited to be wheeled into the delivery room.
So much for her independent, self-sufficient new life-style.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” she said, her voice huskier than usual. She had a dim recollection of yelling a lot when the pain wouldn’t go away. She didn’t recall it helping much.
“Nope. Still here. How’re you feeling?”
“I hurt,” she said, which wasn’t what she’d intended to say at all.
“You want me to call somebody?”
“No, just pour me some water, will you?”
He did, and then held her head up off the pillow so she could sip from the straw. “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere, mostly. My toenails. My hair really hurts. My...well...like I said, mostly everywhere, but it’s getting better.”
She remembered making an attempt to braid her hair at some time during the procedure, but then the pains had started piling in hard and heavy and she’d let it go.
“Thank you for staying. You really didn’t have to. We’ll be just fine now. But thank you.” That sounded like a bread-and-butter note written by a second-grader. Her brain was functioning, only she couldn’t seem to hook it to her tongue.
“You feel like talking?”
She didn’t, but said she did because he’d been so nice and he seemed to want to tell her something. And she owed him, because if he hadn’t happened along at the right time she might have had her baby right there in the garden between the onions and the butter beans.
No, of course she wouldn’t have. There’d been plenty of time. She would have called a taxi. She would have gotten over her momentary panic and handled everything just fine.
“Have you seen her yet? Isn’t she beautiful? I still haven’t settled on a name.” As tired as she was, she felt all warm and glowy, just thinking about her precious little daughter.
“Yeah, she’s really something. Listen—” He looked so fierce. She’d noticed that about him right off, even when she’d been all wrapped up in her own situation. He had a hard face, not a handsome one. Not like Rafe. “Are you up to answering a few questions?” he asked her, and she nodded, wondering how many times his nose had been broken.
“Sure. My mouth’s about the only part of me that doesn’t hurt. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as having a baby can make you feel like you’ve been in a car wreck? Especially my feet.”
Joe reached down and jerked the crisp white spread loose from the mattress. “Your toes are bent. Hospital corners. Always hated ’em, myself.”
“Oh, that feels better.” She wriggled her toes and smiled at him. “Go ahead, ask away. I’ll tell you anything I can, but if it’s about—”
The clatter that had started down at the far end of the hall grew louder and stopped right outside her door. Someone brought in a tray, plopped it on the stand at the foot of the bed and left without a word.
“Sink or swim, huh?” Joe said as he rolled the stand into position and then cranked the bed up a few turns.
“They don’t have much help. I’ve been considering maybe applying for a job here myself, once the baby’s a little older.”
“You a nurse?”
“No, but I can do office work. I can use a computer. I could even help in the kitchen.”
“You’re out of work?”
“No, not quite. But I’m ready for a change, and they have a nursery here. That’s a big plus.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Joe lifted the cover off the plate. He knew hospital food. Texas or North Carolina, it didn’t make much difference. Meat loaf was meat loaf. Vanilla pudding was vanilla pudding. “You want me to cut anything up for you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my hands. But thanks. I don’t usually act this way, you know. Helpless, I mean. I’ve been looking after myself ever since I left school, and I’ve hardly been sick a day in my life. Maybe that’s why all this threw me.” She took a bite of meat loaf, grimaced and looked for the salt. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
She threw him off stride. She was supposed to be evasive. Instead she was asking for it, which screwed up his theory.
So he dragged up a chair, sat down and lined up his questions, but before he could begin, she asked one of her own.
“Why did you stay? You don’t know me—you certainly weren’t under any obligation. Are you from the home? Should I know you? It’s been so long... I’ve kept up with a few classmates, but they’re all girls. Well, women, now.”
She sipped her coffee, and Joe made a few mental notes and got set to try again.
And again, she beat him to it. “Want my corn bread? It’s dry, but there’s some...well, I don’t suppose it’s butter, but it’s something, anyway. I could ring for a nurse and see if she could bring you something to drink.”
So they talked about the food and whether or not caffeine was any worse than decaf. Joe still hadn’t managed to get around to asking her if she was the brains behind Rafe Davis’s long string of robberies, or if she’d only acted as his fence when a woman in a lab coat came in and asked him to step outside.
He did, feeling frustrated, but as soon as he went back inside and started to question her again, someone else came along with a clipboard, and he gave up.
Forty minutes later, he had checked into a hotel, ordered room service, set the air-conditioning on max and run himself a tubful of hot water. He’d waited this long. He could wait a few more hours.
The next morning Joe slept through the alarm. Slept until a crack of sunshine sliced through the drawn draperies and drilled through his eyelids.
He ordered pizza for breakfast, did a few of the exercises the physical therapist had promised would put him back in peak working condition and then eased the resulting kinks out of his carcass under a hot needle-spray shower.
He thought about riding out to the house while it was still empty, going over it with a fine-tooth comb and then facing her with the evidence. They could cut through a whole lot of crap that way.
But he didn’t. Instead he called his grandmother and asked how she was feeling, and what she’d been up to. Frowning, he listened to her lethargic responses. “Well, look—I’ll be headed back in a few days. Right now I’m going to go by the hospital and check on Sophie and the baby. Remember, I told you about her last night? You wouldn’t believe how homely she is. The baby—not Sophie. I thought all babies were supposed to look like the kid in the toilet paper ads.”
Sophie didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but then, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something she didn’t want to do. At least this time she had a good reason to get up. They were going home. She was taking Iris Rebecca Bayard home, and then they’d see how much of her old training from the Children’s Home she remembered. She used to be pretty good with the babies but that had been a long time ago. Nearly eighteen years.
She could have used another day to rest up and prepare herself for the responsibility of motherhood, but her insurance wouldn’t cover it. And thanks to a handsome, smooth-talking rascal who had stolen her heart, her savings, her self-respect and just about everything else of value she possessed, she couldn’t swing it on her own.
At least he’d left her with something, although that was purely accidental. If she hadn’t taken it to the bank with her that day to show it to her friends and see if it would fit into a deposit box, he would’ve taken that, too.
She was wearing her old maternity tent. The going-home outfit she’d packed wouldn’t fit over her flab and her outrageous bosom. She’d felt like crying, but then they’d brought in her baby and she’d felt wonderful all over again. Tired, aching, but still wonderful. Euphoria, her new friend would’ve called it.
She had just asked the orderly to call her a cab when he poked his head around the door and then followed it with a pair of shoulders wide enough to scrape highways. Joe Dana, she decided, was a man who didn’t like to reveal too much of himself. Yesterday she’d seen his scars. Before that she’d noticed only that he was big, even bigger than she was. And dark. Black hair shot with gray. Dark eyes that reminded her of the tinted glass some people had in their cars. From the inside you could see out, but those on the outside didn’t stand a chance of seeing in.
Even as distracted as she’d been then, and as tired as he’d obviously been, she’d felt his intensity. It was almost audible. Like humming power lines.
“Good morning,” she greeted, a self-conscious smile trembling at the corners of her lips. “We never got around to finishing our conversation, did we?”
“You’re fixing to go somewhere?”
“Home. I’m already cleared for takeoff, as they say in all the airplane movies. I’ve never flown. One of these days I’m going to, though.”
She beamed at him. He looked baffled, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, which was understandable. She always talked too much when she was nervous. “I just sent someone to call me a cab. The hospital’s lending me a car seat for the baby until I can get one of my own. Isn’t that nice of them?”
“No need to call a cab. my truck’s right outside.”
“Oh, but I can’t—”
“Sure you can. I’ve got a vested interest in little Miss Fatcheeks, remember? The least I can do is see her home.”
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. And then you can ask me whatever it was you wanted to ask me.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, and saying something about pulling his truck up to the front entrance, he left.
For one crazy moment Sophie started to call him back. Didn’t want him to leave her. She told herself it was only postpartum silliness, and that it would pass. She was already forgetting the birth pangs, just as the nurse said she would. In a few days she’d be back at her computer, juggling nursing, diaper changing and writing ad copy for the agency that currently helped pay the bills while she mailed out résumés and tried not to get her hopes too high.
All the same, she wondered just who he was, and why he was still hanging around.
Miss Fatcheeks, indeed! Her name was Iris Rebecca Bayard.
Three
“It was the yard that convinced me. That big old oak tree will be just perfect for a swing. And you saw my garden. In a year or so I’m fixing to fence in the other side to make a play yard. I might even get a few laying hens. Out here in the country, you can keep chickens, you know. It’ll be a wonderful place for Iris to grow up.” Sophie only hoped she sounded as confident as her words implied as they turned off the highway.
Joe had hardly spoken a word since they’d left the hospital, but then she’d already discovered that he wasn’t much of a talker. She’d chattered all the way home because it was what she did when she was nervous, but she was beginning to run out of things to talk about. The truth was, she was feeling less confident with every mile. What on earth had she been thinking of, moving way out here in the country? The closest neighbor was nearly a mile away, and not even particularly friendly. She’d made the mistake of paying a call soon after she’d moved in, and it had been plain from the first that she’d interrupted the grumpy old man in the middle of his morning nap, or something equally important. The first words out of his mouth were that if she was selling something, he wasn’t buying. If she was collecting, he wasn’t giving anything, either, because he was living on social security and there was dagnabbed little of it.
