The Only Child

“Don’t let yourself hope then. But for pity’s sake, check it out.”

“I plan to. If Dulcy is alive, I must find her and bring her home. But I’m not sure how much more disappointment I can take.”

Looking into his eyes, Molly realized how difficult it must be for such a man to reveal this sign of weakness, not only to a woman but a comparative stranger. She felt sympathy for him in the same moment she knew how deeply he would resent her expressing it.

Molly sighed. She couldn’t leave this problem alone any more than she could abandon this strange, lonely man. “I think the first thing to do is talk to your detective. See if you still believe him. Maybe take Rick and Zoe with you.”

“I don’t plan to tell Zoe any of this until I’m certain the child is alive and we have some hope of finding her.”

“Then I’ll go with you.” There. The die was cast, the words were spoken. She could only hope he’d refuse her offer. But he didn’t—not exactly.

“I can’t ask you to—”

Just then, the driveway alarm sounded. Logan MacMillan started as though she’d stuck him with a pin.

A moment later, Molly went to the front door and opened it.

“Gram, I know it’s late, but I had to say good-night to Maxie.” A coltish prepubescent girl with chestnut hair straight down her back flew into the room, followed by an exasperated woman who might have been Molly twenty years earlier. The child stopped when she saw Molly was not alone.

“Sorry, Mom. We were in the neighborhood. I tried to stop her,” the woman said, and grinned.

“No sweat. Anne Crown, this is Logan MacMillan. Logan, my daughter.” She smiled at the child. “And this is my granddaughter, Elizabeth.”

Logan, who’d stood when Anne and Elizabeth came in, nodded.

“Hello,” Anne said. “Hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

“Hi,” Elizabeth said, then turning to Molly, “Got any carrots in the fridge?”

“Yes. Don’t forget Eeyore,” Molly called after the child, already disappearing into the kitchen. They heard the refrigerator open and a. moment later shut. “And don’t slam the—”

The back door slammed.

“Please sit down, Mr. MacMillan,” Anne said. “We can only stay a minute. I have to get home to fix dinner.” She glanced at her watch. “Phil will probably have to go back to the office. It’s the end of the quarter. No rest for the poor tax accountant.” She shrugged. “I had to pick Elizabeth up at the Fitzgeralds’. Anytime we’re close to Mom’s, Elizabeth insists on stopping by.”

“The attraction is Maxie, her pony, not me.” Molly laughed. Looking at Logan, she realized he had retreated into his shell.

The back door slammed once more. “Okay, old mom. Maxie pig and Eeyore pig are stuffed. We can go home now. I’ve got tons of homework.”

“You spending the night Friday?” Molly asked Elizabeth as she followed the pair to the door.

“What’re you offering?” the girl said. “Pizza, maybe? A movie?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of brussels sprouts and barn-cleaning.”

“Yech!” Elizabeth made a face. “Can I bring Karen?”

“Sure. Maybe pizza. Maybe popcorn. Definitely barn-cleaning.”

“Deal. ‘Bye, Gram.” The child leaned over and kissed Molly. Anne raised her eyes to heaven and waved goodbye as she followed her daughter to the car. Molly stood in the door and watched them until she heard the driveway alarm go off as they turned onto the road. Then she came back into the living room.

“I must be going, as well,” Logan said. “I’ve taken up entirely too much of your time.” He stood by the window. Molly realized he’d watched the pair into their car and down the road.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve barely started. I’ve got a couple of steaks in the refrigerator. I’ll whip up a salad. Stay.”

“I couldn’t.”

Molly had visions of a turtle pulling back into his shell. “Why? Because it’s on the spur of the moment? You’re a vegetarian? You really do have plans? What?”

Logan stammered, “I…uh.” He looked across at Molly in the doorway, her hands on her ample hips, her feet wide apart, peering at him with those marvelous eyes as though she could see right into his soul. She didn’t seem pleased at what she saw.

He thought of the cold chicken he’d planned to pick up on his way home, the silent kitchen in which he’d eat it, the lonely empty apartment, the broad empty bed. “All right.”

“Good. Want a drink? I don’t, but my friends do.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Okay, how about a soda?”

He nodded.

“Come into the kitchen while I fix the salad.”

“Your granddaughter is very beautiful.”

Molly snorted. “She’s nothing of the sort, but she’s going to be. She inherited Anne’s brains and her father’s metabolism.”

“You seem very comfortable with each other.”

“She doesn’t say ma’am or sir, if that’s what you mean. I want real respect, thank you, not the fake kind. She respects what I do. It’s going to be tough to lose her in a couple of years.”

Logan sat up. “What do you mean, lose her?”

Molly turned away from the refrigerator, a head of romaine lettuce in her hand. She said seriously, “Because sometime between now and age fourteen she will turn away from me for a few years. If I’m lucky and live long enough, I should get her back around twenty. We have entirely too good a relationship, so I’ll be one of the people she’ll have to rebel against if she’s going to grow up. Painful for everybody, of course, but teenagers are certifiably loony, anyway. The trick is to get them to adulthood without a pregnancy or a police record and definitely in one piece.” She glanced at Logan and gasped. “Oh, God, that was a stupid thing to say. I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Perfectly true. Unfortunately, I discovered too late that a parent actually has to be on site to accomplish that.”

Molly obviously had no idea what he meant, and he wasn’t ready to explain.

He watched her move easily and competently around the kitchen. She radiated warmth and a kind of inner composure that he didn’t think he’d ever encountered before. Suddenly a wave of panic swept over him. She touched him. Made him feel. He didn’t dare feel anything. If he allowed one crack in the protective shield he’d built around himself, all the pain might come crashing in.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’ve remembered I have an engagement. I must leave. I apologize.” He strode to the front door.

Molly stared after him, heard the door slam, the car start, and a moment later the alarm sound. She looked down at the lettuce in her hand and shook her head.

“That man is definitely a menace,” she muttered.

CHAPTER THREE

LOGAN STRUCK the heavy bag again and again. He felt each blow all the way to his shoulder, but he kept punching. Barely protected by light boxing gloves, his hands still ached from hitting the BMW. Sweat poured down his face, slid over his naked shoulders and chest down to the waistband of his sweat pants. The thrumming rhythm of the bag echoed off the attic walls.

He saw the face of George Youngman on the bag every time he hit it. He’d trusted the private detective. If the man had lied or screwed up, Logan intended to make him very sorry.

Eventually, his bursting lungs drove him to his knees. He rolled over on the mat and listened to his heart thud against his rib cage. Stretching out, he waited for his pulse to slow down.

Overhead in the wooden rafters a fat spider scuttled across its web.

Each night when he came up here from his apartment to use Jeremy’s exercise equipment, he felt close to his dead son. The place needed a good cleaning, but he liked it as it was, spiders and all.

His pulse rate slowed and stabilized quickly. He was in good physical shape for a man his age.

He stuck his left boxing glove in his right armpit to pull it off, then pulled the other off and dropped both on the mat beside him. His emotional shape was something else. He felt older than the pyramids and more battered than the Sphinx.

He rolled over, pulled Jeremy’s rowing machine to him, climbed in and began to row. He had to exhaust himself totally or he’d never sleep.

The cordless telephone on the floor beside him buzzed. He reached over and picked it up.

“Where have you been?”

“Zoe.” Wearily, Logan acknowledged the anger in his daughter’s voice. “Here. At least since about six.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been worried sick!”

“Why?”

“Sherry called looking for you and said there’d been some kind of a mess at Molly Halliday’s after I left. What was she talking about?”

Silently, Logan cursed Sherry. He hadn’t planned to explain anything to Zoe. “Nothing. A minor mix-up.”

“You broke something, didn’t you?”

“As a matter of fact…”

“Oh, Lord! Do we still get the dolls?”

“Why didn’t you tell me they were going to be on consignment?”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. “Would it have made a difference?”

“Of course it would, Zoe. I went there to get you a better deal. You know I don’t interfere with the store.”

“Oh, right.”

Logan sighed. He couldn’t ever get through to Zoe. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, shall we? I’m sorry I worried you.”

The phone slammed down. Logan listened to the dial tone.

She never called him by any name. She spoke of him to other people as “my father,” but when she spoke to him directly he was never “Daddy” or “Dad” or even “Father.”

She was right to blame him for all the mistakes he’d made, all the years when he’d dropped in on his family’s lives and dropped out again. But he had truly believed he was doing the best thing for them all. Good intentions didn’t count with Zoe.

At least Zoe had her plumber. Rick was a full-time husband to Zoe. He didn’t go running off to the Arctic Circle to work on a pipeline. Logan and Rick might not be on the same wavelength, but he could see why Zoe would choose a man like Rick after a lifetime spent with an absentee father.

He began to row again. His legs and arms hurt, his back ached, but he didn’t stop. He knew how tired he had to be to sleep. He hadn’t reached that point yet.

He was glad he’d walked out on Molly Halliday. Her eyes had a way of seeing into him that zeroed in on his pain.

Then he remembered her soft full mouth. A mouth made for deep, gentle kisses. Her breasts seemed created to pillow a man’s head.

His loins tightened. If one meeting with Molly could awaken longings in him that he had denied for years, she was very dangerous. She could infiltrate the protective wall he’d painstakingly constructed around his emotions.

He thought about the easy way she acted with her daughter and granddaughter. They treated one another casually, certain of the love they shared.

God, how he envied her!

“YOU DEMONIC LITTLE troll, I could just murder Sherry for bringing that man out here!” Molly jabbed at Quentin Dillahunt’s right eyebrow with a viciousness it didn’t deserve. She knew if she didn’t calm down she’d ruin the portrait and have to start from scratch. She didn’t have time.

“I keep seeing you with Sherry’s horns on you, you little beast.” She smoothed her thumb across Quentin’s pate as though the horns had begun to grow. She wasn’t really mad at Quentin or Sherry. She was mad at Logan. Whether she liked it or not, the moment he destroyed the Dulcy doll he became entwined in her life. She didn’t want anybody entwined anywhere, drat it!

Of course he had to find out the truth about Dulcy; he had to find the child—or try to find her—if she was still alive. The thought of a little girl dragging around the country behind an alcoholic felon of a mother was more than Molly could bear.

Maybe she had opened Pandora’s box. But like Pandora, she’d managed to keep hope alive for Logan. That ought to be worth something. He’d been living without hope for a very long time.

She laid down the scalpel before she did irreversible damage. Logan had paid for the broken doll; maybe she should simply walk away and forget the whole thing.

Except that she wasn’t built that way. She had to know about Dulcy. Unfortunately, that meant she had to deal with Logan again, and that she had to go outside her little compound into his world of society women and powerful men, a world she’d thankfully left behind when she and Harry divorced.

Did she have the nerve to go back out there without her status as a craftswoman to protect her? She dealt with wealthy and powerful clients every time she sold a doll. Those clients knew she was a recluse, and they loved it. The last magazine interview about her dolls had gone on and on about her log house, her menagerie, and the fact that she hadn’t put on a skirt in three years. She had to admit the paragraph about her “unabashedly gray hair” and her “crinkly” blue eyes had made her want to reach for the Clairol and the telephone number of the nearest plastic surgeon.

But she’d gotten over it.

Then why did it bother her that Logan MacMillan probably saw her the same way. Why should she give a tinker’s damn what he thought of her? Why should it be important that he see the woman she really was?

The damned man was too sexy for his own good.

Sherry should have warned her. Molly took a deep swig of her diet cola, looked into Quentin’s piggy-little eye sockets, and saw instead the sad gray eyes of Logan MacMillan staring back at her.

The man was strung so tight that if you poked him right he’d probably fly apart. Molly was not in the rescue business. True, he’d had more than his share of sorrow, but that didn’t give him the right to show up behind her eyelids every time she blinked.

Molly sighed, wrapped Quentin’s head in a damp towel and slid it into the refrigerator under her work counter. She’d have to refire the piece in the morning, but she hadn’t messed it up yet. She cleaned her tools carefully and arranged everything neatly in the cabinets beside her.

She locked the workshop behind her and walked up the brick path toward the back door of her cabin.

If Dulcy MacMillan was still alive, Molly had to help Logan bring her home. Only Dulcy mattered. Any developing feelings Molly might have for Logan must be squelched before they made her miserable.

She went at once to her junk closet and began to pull out cardboard boxes stuffed with souvenirs and photographs from her trips. They weren’t marked by datethat would be too organized—but maybe she could find a picture that would jog her memory. She had to remember where she’d seen that child!

“MRS. HALLIDAY. I’m so glad you came.” Zoe Jackson set a small celadon vase down on a Federal end table and met Molly three steps inside the front door of MacMillan’s.

Molly shifted her heavy leather handbag to her other shoulder and smiled.

“My father said there was a problem yesterday. He broke something?”

“No problem. He paid for it—a lot, I’m afraid.”

“You’re still going to let us carry your dolls, aren’t you?” Zoe pointed to a tall Welsh dresser against the far wall. “I thought I’d clear off all that Chinese-export stuff and set up a display area on the shelves for the smaller dolls, with the larger dolls in buggies and strollers on the floor.”

“That would be perfect.” Molly followed her. “We didn’t actually settle anything yesterday, but I think you made your point before you left.”

Zoe sighed. “I know. I behaved badly. I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes I feel as though my father treats me like I’m about six years old.”

Molly laughed. “My father tried to balance my checkbook for me until the day he died. Fathers are like that.”

Zoe smiled politely. “At any rate, I know we’ll sell lots of dolls for you and get you plenty of portrait orders. Did you and my father manage to discuss how much commission MacMillan’s would charge on the orders we acquire for you?”

“Afraid not. Don’t worry about it, Zoe, we’ll work something out. How’s that precious Rick of yours?”

This time the smile was radiant. “He’s not quite so precious at home, you know.”

“One of my mother’s friends once told me that given the choice of a twenty-carat diamond or her own personal plumber, she’d opt for the plumber every time. You’re lucky to have married one.”

“You know that old story about shoemaker’s children never having shoes? It goes double for plumber’s wives. The hot-water faucet in our bathroom has been dripping for weeks. Rick keeps promising to fix it, but he never does.”

Without Logan around, Zoe reverted to her normally pleasant self. Molly had always thought she was highstrung and nervous, but now that she knew she’d lost a mother, a brother and a niece, that was understandable. “Is your father here? I really came to see him.”

Zoe’s face clouded. “Oh, yes. The negotiations.”

“Nothing like that,” Molly assured her. “Just something that came up last night.”

Zoe obviously wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t. “He still lives upstairs. Funny, I was raised in that apartment, and now I don’t feel comfortable even going up in the elevator. This is my bailiwick.” She spread a hand at the opulence around her. “Shall I buzz him for you?”

“Please.”

“Have a look around. You haven’t been in before, have you? I should have invited you when Rick brought me out to see your dolls.”

Molly watched Zoe move among the showcases with grace. She must take after her mother. Tall, slim, casually elegant, she looked every inch a successful businesswoman. She must be over thirty. She wore a simple navy suit that probably cost more than Molly’s entire wardrobe. No jewelry. Not even earrings. It was as though she didn’t want to distract the customers from the luxurious surroundings.

Molly didn’t think she needed to worry. A czar in full coronation garb couldn’t distract from a store like MacMillan’s. Molly felt as though she’d strayed into Ali Baba’s treasure cave. The shop was awash in Scalamandré silks and what her mother called antique “sitarounds,” as well as furniture made of wood so old and so beautiful that Molly longed to pet the chairs like cats. Everything was displayed in a sort of higgledy-piggledy ebullience that looked casual but undoubtedly wasn’t.

In her freshly pressed dress jeans and polished L.L. Bean topsiders, Molly felt a familiar sense of panic. She glanced at the other customers. At least no one realized she longed to run out the front door. She picked up a small triangular damask pillow and promptly dropped it when she saw the price tag.

Zoe came back looking puzzled and curious. “My father says would you please go up. The elevator’s by the back door.” She pointed and watched until the door slid shut on Molly.

When the door opened onto the MacMillan living room, the first thing Molly noticed was the number of throw pillows. No doubt Sydney MacMillan paid wholesale prices, but she’d still piled them three deep on every piece of ornate French furniture in the room.

Logan held the elevator door open for her. He was dressed casually but immaculately in slacks and a sweater. He smelled as though he’d just gotten out of the shower, and his gray hair was still damp. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.

Molly came close to pushing the button and letting the elevator doors shut on her again. She must have been out of her mind to come. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered.

“No, I meant I’m glad you came. When I left so rudely last night…”

“Please. It’s all right.”

“Come in. I won’t bite.” He smiled. “I’ve got coffee if you’re interested.”

“No, thank you.” She stood in front of the elevator, poised for flight. “Last night I went through all my old photos. I found something I thought you should see.”

“Show me.”

Molly dug into her capacious handbag, pulled out a folio of photos, flipped it open and handed it to Logan. “Take it to the light. Ignore all the people in the foreground. They were on the tour with me. Look at the background. I imagine someone can blow it up if you’d like.”

Even at ten in the morning there was almost no light filtering into the living room through the heavy gold damask drapes drawn across the windows. Logan pushed them aside and raised a cloud of dust. The room—revealed in the sudden light—seemed like a disused movie set or a posh suite in a bankrupt hotel.

He stared at the picture. “Dear God, that’s Tiffany. I’m sure of it.” He glanced at Molly. “But I don’t see a child.”

“Try the next one.”

Logan flipped to the next photo. He went very still. “That hair,” he whispered. “I can’t see the face clearly, but Dulcy’s hair was just this color. And curly like this.”

“It’s an odd strawberry blond. I think that’s one of the things that caught my eye when I saw her. So it really is Dulcy?”

He shook his head as though to clear it. He couldn’t take his eyes off the photo. Molly saw that his hands were shaking slightly. She wanted to reach out to him, but instead she clutched her handbag even tighter. After a moment he steadied himself. “I still can’t believe it.”

“It’s a start, at any rate. Do you have those computer enhancements?”

“Yes. In my office.”

Molly followed him down a long hall papered in gold silk damask and into a small room at the back of the house that was bathed in light from a bank of windows across the back wall.

This must be where Logan really lived. The door was held open by an irregular chunk of concrete. A two-foot section of steel I-beam stood on end to form a side table beside a brown leather chair with the dye worn off arms and seat.

There were three steel file cabinets, a battered steel desk, shelves stuffed with books, a blue umbrella rack full of rolled up blueprints. On the walls were framed photographs of dams and bridges in various stages of construction. A large computer sat on a credenza. Everything seemed immaculate and orderly but chosen for serviceability rather than show.

“Please have a seat.” Logan pointed at the leather chair and went directly to the file cabinets. He dropped the photos on the desk and searched rapidly through the files in the top drawer. There was an urgency about him now. He pulled out a thick file and dropped it in Molly’s lap. Then he sat in his desk chair and stared at the two photos again, squinting to see the background. “The computer enhancements are at the back of that file.”

Molly found them. Her eyes widened. “It was Dulcy I saw!”

He glanced up sharply. “You say that as though you weren’t sure before.”

“Of course I was sure. I just wasn’t sure-sure.”

Logan flipped the photos to look at the backs. “Do you know where you took these? Don’t you write dates and places on your photos?”

“The ones before that are from Oklahoma City, the ones following are from Denver. I checked my itinerary. We stopped for lunch along the way in Moundhill, Kansas.”

MacMillan’s jaw dropped. “Where?”

Molly repeated the name, then asked, “Why? What’s the problem?”

“Moundhill, Kansas. That’s where Dulcy’s buried.”

CHAPTER FOUR

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY that morning, Molly and Logan walked into George Youngman’s office unannounced. Youngman showed only a moment of surprise, then he became all smiles. Molly could see why Logan trusted him. The private detective had guileless blue eyes and a generous mouth. He stood five feet seven, and was built in a series of soft globes like the Michelin Man, yet gave the impression of muscles lurking beneath the paunch. His firm handshake didn’t last a second too long. His office was large and comfortably furnished. On the wall behind his desk were gold-framed photographs of Youngman shaking hands with high-ranking policemen and prominent lawyers.

Logan introduced Molly and held her chair for her. Youngman sat behind his oversize desk in his oversize leather desk chair.

“I was surprised when I got your call, Mr. MacMillan, after all this time,” Youngman said. “Something I can do for you or the little lady?” He shot his immaculate white shirt cuffs. They were monogrammed with an elaborate “GY.” Molly revised her first assessment. She instinctively distrusted men who wore monograms.