FOR THE BABY'S SAKE (3 page)

Liz had tried to call her a dozen times before giving up.
Dreading that Detective Montgomery would find her before she had the chance to
locate Mary, she’d left the office. She’d worried that a frustrated Detective
Montgomery might take matters in his own hands and track Mary down.

Liz had never expected he’d show up at the fund-raiser. But she
should have known better. Detective Montgomery didn’t seem like the kind of guy
who gave up easily. In fact, he seemed downright tenacious. Like a dog after a
bone.

She tried to hold that against him. But couldn’t. While it made
for an uncomfortable evening, she couldn’t help appreciating the fact that he’d
held her to her twenty-four hours. He took his work seriously. She could relate
to that.

“Are you okay now?” he asked, sounding concerned.

She nodded, not willing to verbalize any more half-truths. From
across the room, she caught Carmen’s eye. She was standing behind the punch
table, pouring cups for thirsty dancers. Liz could read the concern on her
pretty face. She’d had that same look since Liz had told her about the
letter.

Liz shook her head slightly, reassuring her. Carmen was little,
but she could be a spitfire. If she thought Liz needed help, she’d come
running.

“Who’s that?” Detective Montgomery asked.

“Carmen Jimenez. She’s a counselor, too. I think I mentioned
her yesterday.”

“I remember. Did you tell her about your letter?”

“Yes.”

“She hasn’t gotten anything similar?”

Liz shook her head.

“I’ve got some bad news,” Detective Montgomery said. “We found
another dead body this morning. Right outside of this very hotel. He’d been
shot. Up until a few weeks ago, he’d been a cook for Mirandez.”

“Mirandez has a cook?”

He leaned his mouth closer to her ear, and she felt the shiver
run down the length of her spine. “Not like Oprah has a cook. A cook is the guy
who boils down the cocaine into crack.”

“Oh. My.”

“People keep dying,” he said. “It’s my job to make it stop. If
Mary knows something, it’s her job to help me.”

She’d been wrong. He wasn’t like a dog after a bone. He wanted
fresh meat. She pulled away from him, forcing the dancing to stop. She couldn’t
think when he had his arms around her, let alone when his mouth was that close.
“If you had enough to arrest her,” she protested, “you’d have done it yesterday.
You don’t have anything but a wild guess.”

He had more than that. The tip had come from one of their own.
It had taken Fluentes two years to work his way inside. Sawyer didn’t intend to
sacrifice him now.

Push the counselor.
He could hear
Lieutenant Fischer’s words almost as clearly as if the man stood behind him.
“She was there. And you need to convince her to tell us what she saw. She needs
to tell us everything. Then we’ll protect her.”

“You’ll protect her?”

“Yeah.” For some reason Liz’s disbelieving tone set Sawyer’s
teeth on edge. “That’s what we do. We’re cops.”

“She’s eight months pregnant.”

“I’m aware of that. We would arrange for both her and her baby
to have the medical care that they need.”

“And then what?” she asked, her tone demanding.

Sawyer threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I guess the baby
grows up, and in twenty years, Mary’s a grandmother.” Sawyer rubbed the bridge
of his nose. His head pounded, and the damn drums weren’t helping. “Look, can we
go outside?” he mumbled.

She seemed to hesitate. Sawyer let out a breath when she nodded
and took off, weaving in and out of the dancers, not stopping until she reached
the exit. They walked outside the hotel, and he led her far enough away that the
doorman couldn’t hear the conversation.

She spoke before he had the chance to question her. “I’ll talk
to her. She’s supposed to come to OCM at eight tomorrow morning. It’s her
regular appointment.”

“And you’ll convince her to talk to us?”

“I’ll talk—”

“Liz, Liz. Back here. What are you doing outside?”

Sawyer turned back toward the hotel door. Her date stood next
to the doorman, wildly waving his arm. The man started walking toward them, his
long legs eating up the distance.

“He doesn’t know about my letter,” Liz said, her voice almost a
whisper. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

When the man reached Liz’s side, he wrapped a skinny arm around
her and tugged her toward his body. For some crazy reason, Sawyer wanted to
break the man’s arm. In two, maybe three, places. Then maybe a kneecap next.

“You had me worried when I couldn’t find you,” he said.

She stepped out of the man’s grasp. “Detective Montgomery is
the detective assigned to the shooting at OCM.” She turned back to Sawyer.
“Detective Montgomery, Howard Fraypish,” she said, finishing the
introduction.

The guy stuck his arm out, and Sawyer returned the shake. “I’m
OCM’s attorney,” Fraypish said.

The man’s hot-pink bow tie matched his cummerbund. “I better
get going,” Sawyer said. “Thanks for the information, Ms. Mayfield.”

“I certainly hope you arrest the men responsible for the attack
at OCM,” Fraypish said. “Where were the city’s finest when this happened? At the
local doughnut shop?”

Was that the best the guy could do? “I don’t like doughnuts,”
Sawyer said.

“Are you sure you’re a cop?”

Liz Mayfield frowned at her date. The idiot held up both hands
in mock surrender. “Just a little joke. I thought we could use some humor.”

Sawyer thought a quick left followed by a sharp right would be
kind of funny.

“I should have called you, Detective. Then you wouldn’t have
had to make a trip here,” she apologized.

“Forget it.” His only regret was the blue dress. He knew how
good she looked in it. He wondered how long before he stopped thinking about how
good she’d look without it.

* * *

L
IZ
WOKE
UP
at four in the morning.
Her body needed rest, but her mind refused to cooperate. She’d left the hotel
shortly after midnight. She’d been in her apartment and in bed less than ten
minutes later. She’d dreamed about Mary. Sweet Mary and her baby. Sweet Mary and
the faceless Dantel Mirandez. Jenny had been there, too. With her crooked smile,
her flyaway blond hair blowing around her as she threw a handful of pennies into
the fountain at Grant Park. Just the way she’d been the last day Liz had seen
her alive. Then out of nowhere, there’d been more letters, more threats. So many
that when she’d fallen down and they’d piled on top of her, they’d covered her.
And she hadn’t been able to breathe.

Waking up had been a relief.

She showered, put on white capri pants and a blue shirt and
caught the five-o’clock bus. Thirty minutes later, it dropped her off a block
from OCM. The morning air was heavy with humidity. It had the makings of another
ninety-degree day.

She entered the security code, unlocked the front door, entered
and then reset the code. She didn’t bother to go downstairs to her office,
heading instead to the small kitchen at the rear of the first floor. She started
a pot of coffee, pouring a cup before the pot was even half-full. She took a
sip, burned her tongue and swallowed anyway. She needed caffeine.

While she waited for her bagel to toast, she thought about
Detective Montgomery. When he’d walked away, in the wake of Howard’s insults,
she’d wanted to run after him, to apologize, to make him understand that she’d
do what she could to help him.

As long as it didn’t put Mary in any danger.

But she hadn’t. When Howard had hustled her back inside the
hotel, she’d gone without protest. Jamison had made it abundantly clear.
Attendees had coughed up two hundred bucks a plate. If they wanted to dance, you
danced. If they needed a drink, you fetched it. If they wanted conversation, you
talked.

Liz had danced, fetched, talked and smiled through it all. Even
after her toes had been stepped on for the eighteenth time. No politician could
have done better. She’d done it on autopilot. It hadn’t helped when Carmen had
come up, fanning herself, and said, “Who was that?”

“Detective Montgomery,” Liz had explained.

“I suspect I don’t have to state the obvious,” Carmen had said,
“but the man is hot.”

Liz had almost laughed. Carmen hadn’t even heard the man talk.
Or felt the man’s chest muscles when he’d held her close—not too close but close
enough. She hadn’t smelled his clean, fresh scent.

Detective Montgomery wasn’t just hot; he was
smoking
hot.

Her bagel popped just as she heard the front door open. She
relaxed when she didn’t hear the alarm. Who else, she wondered, was crazy enough
to come to work at five-thirty in the morning?

When she heard Jamison’s office door open, she almost dropped
her bagel. He probably hadn’t gotten home much before two.

She spread cream cheese evenly on both sides and started a
second pot of coffee. Jamison was perhaps the only person on earth who loved
coffee more than she did. She had her cup and her bagel balanced in one hand and
had just slung her purse over her shoulder when she heard the front door close
again.

She eased the kitchen door open and glanced down the narrow
hallway. Empty. All the office doors remained closed. “Hello?”

No answer. She walked down the hallway, knocked on Jamison’s
door and then tried the handle. It didn’t turn.

She walked down the steps to the lower level. Her office door
and all the others were shut. “Good morning?” she sang out, a bit louder this
time.

The only sound she heard was her own breathing.

Liz ran up the stairs, swearing softly when the hot coffee
splashed out of the cup and burned her hand. She checked the front door. Locked.
Alarm set.

She relaxed. It had to have been Jamison. What would have
possessed him to come in so early and leave so quickly? She hoped nothing was
wrong. She walked back downstairs and unlocked her office. It was darker than
usual because no light spilled through the boarded-up window.

She had to admit that the wood made her feel better. Maybe
she’d ask Jamison to leave it that way for a while. At least until she got her
nerves under control.

Rationally, she didn’t put much stock in the letter. It wasn’t
out of the realm of possibility that one of her clients or their partners had
decided to jerk her chain a little. It didn’t make her feel any better, however,
to think that the shooter had been aiming for Mary.

She intended to somehow make the girl open up to her, to tell
her if there was any connection between her and Dantel Mirandez. But in the
meantime, she needed to get busy. She sat down behind her desk and opened the
top file. Mary was not the only client who was close to delivery. Just two days
before, Melissa Stroud had been in Liz’s office. They’d reviewed the information
on Mike and Mindy Partridge, and Melissa had agreed to let the couple adopt her
soon-to-be-born child. Liz needed to get the necessary information to Howard so
that he could get the paperwork done.

At twenty minutes to eight, she heard the front door open
again. Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs, and within seconds, her boss
stuck his head through the open doorway.

“Hey, Liz. Nice window.”

She shook her head. “Morning, Jamison. How are you?”

“Exhausted. It ended up being a late night. We didn’t leave the
hotel until they pushed us out the door. Then Reneé and I and a couple others
went out for breakfast. I didn’t want to say no to any potential donors. I’ve
got a heck of a headache, though. It was probably that last vodka tonic.”

“Jamison, you know better.” Liz smiled at her boss. “Had you
been to bed yet when you stopped by here this morning?”

“This morning? What are you talking about?”

“You stopped in about six. I had coffee made, but you left
before I could catch you.”

“Liz, how many glasses of wine did you have last night?”

Liz dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand. “Two. That’s
my limit.”

“Well, you may want to cut back to one. Reneé had set the alarm
for seven, and we slept through that. I barely had time for a two-minute shower
just to get here by now.”

Liz shook her head, trying to make sense out of what Jamison
said. “I heard the door. The alarm didn’t go off. I’m sure I heard your office
door open. But when I came out, there was nobody around.”

“It must have been a car door.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Liz protested.

“Then it was Cynthia or Carmen or one of the other staff.
Although I can’t imagine why anybody would have gotten up early after last
night. What were you doing here?”

“Mary Thorton is coming at eight. I wanted to get some stuff
done first.” No need to tell Jamison that she’d been running from her dreams. He
already thought she was losing her mind.

“Have you talked to her since the shooting? Poor kid. She must
be pretty shook up.”

“I’m sure she was. Detective Montgomery thinks she knows more
than she’s letting on.”

“Is that why he came to the dance last night?”

Liz was surprised. Jamison rarely noticed anything that didn’t
directly concern him. But then again, Detective Montgomery had a way about him
that commanded attention.

“Yes.”

“At least he wasn’t in uniform. That wouldn’t have been good
for donations. How do you think the party went?” Jamison asked, sitting down on
one of Liz’s chairs.

“People seemed to have a good time,” Liz hedged. When his eyes
lit up, her guilt vanished. He could be a bit self-centered and pushy, but Liz
knew he’d do almost anything for OCM. She would, too.

Even spend an evening with Howard Fraypish, who had been
Jamison’s college roommate. After college, Jamison had taken a job in social
services and married Reneé. Howard had gone to law school, graduated at the top
of his class, married his corporate job and produced billable hours. Lots of
them, evidently. The man had a huge apartment with a view of Lake Michigan, and
he’d opened his own law office at least five years ago.