by Amy Vansant
Charlotte huffed. “You could just ask me to come. You don’t have to cuff me.” She glanced at Harley, held suspended in the palm of the female officer. “Be careful with her. She’s built like a bird.”
“I can feel that,” muttered Rosey. Charlotte could tell she thought the dog was ridiculous.
Probably more of a German Shepherd person.
Jackson urged her towards the door.
Charlotte turned to the couple, still standing in their spots, staring at her.
“Look, I really am a private investigator. I’ll try to help.”
“No, you won’t,” said Jackson, irritation dripping from every word.
Shana nodded. “Come back when they’re done with you.” Her husband shot her a look before closing his eyes and rubbing his hand over his balding skull.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hunter watched the officers lead a woman into their patrol car outside the Bennetts’ home and lowered her binoculars.
What’s that about?
She’d watched the woman pull up in her old Volvo and start walking her dog, a tiny little thing that reminded her of Harley, the dog Angelina owned when she’d left the Inn.
That part had made her smile, but she’d known right away something was up. That car didn’t belong in this neighborhood. And judging by the way the officers were guiding the woman’s head into their cruiser, they thought she was off, too.
They didn’t seem in a hurry, though. Chances were good the dog-walking woman wasn’t the baby-napper. Could be she was a nosy reporter.
Let’s find out.
Hunter grabbed the little notebook sitting on her passenger seat, got out of her Toyota and moved quickly away from the vehicle. She’d parked five blocks away.
Her car didn’t belong in that neighborhood either.
She was also wearing a sheriff’s uniform. Cops weren’t supposed to arrive in foreign cars they’d won in a poker game on their way from New Hampshire to Florida.
She reminded herself not to let anyone look too closely at her uniform, because she’d bought it from a specialized role-play escort service in New York. More specifically, she’d bought it off the hooker they’d sent to her motel room. She didn’t want the lap dance but she did want the uniform. She’d given the pale, freckled hooker four hundred dollars and the information of a place upstate she could go if she wanted to leave the life. Hunter suggested leaving with the money she’d overpaid for the uniform would be a good start. So would the window in the motel room’s bathroom, which would allow the girl to avoid the enormous man waiting in the running Chevy out front. The girl had seemed on the fence, until Hunter threw in the keys to her car, also parked out back.
Which is why later that evening she had to insist that stupid college kid put up the keys to his Toyota during the poker game the spoiled brat should have never been playing.
She paused for a moment as she passed the old Volvo in which Yorkie Girl had arrived and jotted down the license plate number in her notepad. She peered inside. Nothing unusual.
Hunter strode to the Bennetts’ house and was about to open the gate into the front courtyard, when she heard a loud throat-clearing bark from her left.
She stopped and took a step back. The old man the girl with the Yorkie had been talking to was standing on the edge of his property, staring at her.
“Can I help you sir?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t notice her uniform wasn’t quite the right style for the area. Or at least she hoped he wouldn’t notice the pants were tear-away. That would be a dead giveaway.
“Oh sorry,” he said. “It’s just you look like an older version of the girl they just took away in the police car.”
Older. Hm. Thanks for that.
Hunter smiled. “Coincidence.”
“Well, twice the coincidence,” he said as she tried to continue on her way. She stopped and rocked back again.
“Twice?”
He nodded. “She said she was looking for someone who looked something like her. And here you are.”
Hunter hung her thumbs in her plastic gun belt and squared up with the man. “You think she was looking for me?”
He shrugged. “Seems like it.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. I told her about the blind baby and she headed right inside there. I guess—”
Hunter held up a palm. “Blind baby?”
The man raised his hand to cover his mouth. “Oh, looks like I did it again. You didn’t know the baby was blind either? I keep thinking everyone knows. Especially you folk.” He motioned to her uniform.
Hunter shifted, uncomfortable with the critical eye he’d cast on her costume. “The kidnapped one, or the returned one?” she asked, moving her hand from her side to her face so he would follow it to her eyes.
“What’s that?” he asked, as if now staring at her face he was talking to a different person.
“Which baby was blind?”
The old man chuckled. “The new one, of course. Who would kidnap a blind baby?”
Hunter grimaced. Delightful.
“Well, thank you for letting me know.”
“Do you want me to let you know if she comes back? Officer, eh...” He leaned down to squint at her badge. “Firebush?”
Hunter glanced down and realized she’d never looked at the nametag.
The hooker had been a redhead.
“Sure.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her little notebook. Between the pages she found one of her last remaining cards from her time in New Hampshire and handed it to the man. “You can call me here.”
He studied the card, no doubt confused by its simplicity. It wasn’t the sort of business card a real officer would have, but she didn’t mind the idea of the man alerting her if the girl came back.
“It just says Hunter.”
“Right. That’s my first name.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Hunter nodded and headed back to the gate. She knocked on the door and the man she assumed was the father of the kidnapped child answered the door.
“Hello, I’m officer—” Hunter winced a little. “—Firebush. They asked me to come and take your statement one more time.”
“Everything?” asked the man. “But we’ve gone over everything a thousand times already.”
She softened her expression to show she empathized. “You’d be surprised what comes back to people.”
His shoulders slumped. “Fine. Come in.”
Hunter nodded and stepped into the home.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Come with me.” Angelina crooked her finger in Croix’s direction.
Croix looked at her as if she’d come off her tracks, which the smartass girl did three or four times a day, so it didn’t slow Angelina for a second.
“What about my post?”
“I’ll have Bracco cover it.”
Croix blinked at her. “You’re kidding.”
“What? He’ll be fine.” She turned to the doorman. “Bracco, watch the desk.”
Bracco tipped his cap. “Nightingale.”
Croix grimaced and walked out from behind her desk to join Angelina at the elevator. They stepped inside and Angelina used the key around her neck to work the button for the penthouse.
“You need help with Mick?” asked Croix.
“No. Not exactly.”
The doors opened and Angelina strode into the hall and down the corridor until she reached the window at the far westerly side of the building. She tried to open it, pushing, squatting and grunting until Croix took pity on her, unlocked the window, and opened it herself.
Smartass.
Holding out a hand so Croix could steady her, Angelina stepped through the window and onto the flat part of the roof. Croix followed, squinting in the sun.
“You should have told me to bring my sunglasses,” she complained.
“True.”
“Why are we on the roof?”
“I want you to look around.
Tell me from where you would watch us if you were Siofra.”
“You think she’s coming here?”
“There’s a chance.”
Croix raised her hands in front of her face and clapped them together in rapid succession. “Ooh, that’s exciting.”
“Mm-hm.”
The girl’s expression shifted from glee to confusion. “Why wouldn’t she just come through the front door?”
“She might. She also might watch the building from some undisclosed location, and I want to know where that location is before she does.”
Croix pursed her lips and walked down the roof line, scanning the area.
“Well, there’s the parking lot, of course.”
“Duh. We have cameras everywhere for that. Siofra installed half of them. Well, the originals, they’ve been upgraded since, but the new installers followed her plan.”
Croix swept her finger from left to right as if she were tracing the Intracoastal waterway running behind the hotel.
“She could watch from a boat.”
Angelina pulled at her chin. “I thought about that. But the angle isn’t good. Especially for seeing into Mick’s room.”
“So you think, specifically, she’d be looking for Mick?”
Angelina nodded.
“Hm.” Croix looked skyward. “Hot air balloon? F-22A Raptor?”
“Funny. Imagine she doesn’t know exactly where he’ll be.”
“But he’s always—” Croix turned. “She doesn’t know?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“So she’d expect to spot him walking in and out.”
“At first.”
“But that wouldn’t happen.”
“Clearly.”
Croix turned up her palms. “Well then, this is easy.”
“What?”
“Drone. No matter how she decides to surveil the hotel, she won’t see Mick walking anywhere, so she’ll have to look harder, and there’s only one way to look in every window.”
“Drone.”
“Drone. She could fly one right up here and peek in his window.”
“Right. She could use one to watch the hotel too.” Angelina grimaced. “How could we track a drone?”
“Well, we couldn’t, not really. It would just fly away.”
“Could we shoot it with a tracking device?”
Croix traced her toe against the roof shingles, standing on one leg and making Angelina’s stomach flip.
“Stand flat! You’re making me nervous.”
Croix rolled her eyes like a petulant fifteen-year-old. “It’s a flat roof. It’s no different than standing on pavement.”
“It’s different. Cut it out.”
“You’re in heels.”
“Heels are the natural shape of my foot. Cut it out.”
With a huff, Croix stood on both feet again, but not before circling her arms and pretending she was about to flip off the roof.
Angelina closed her eyes and shook her head.
Smartass young people. I swear I hate them all.
Croix giggled and continued. “I suppose we could hit a drone with a tracker, in theory, but I’d have to see it, get into range, shoot it—all before she flew away.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“Um yeah. I can’t just go buy a tracker-shooting gun on Amazon. I’d have to build it.”
“But you could do that?”
“Sure. But unless I’m perched out here on the roof keeping watch day and night, I’m not sure how I’d spot a drone in time to shoot it.”
“But you could do that.”
Croix frowned. “If you leave Bracco in charge of the front desk that long we’re going to lose some customers.”
Angelina felt a trickle of sweat start down her brow and wiped it away. “Can we get out of the sun? It feels like lasers shooting through my skin.”
“You’re the one who brought us out here.” Croix slipped back through the window and held out a hand to help Angelina back inside.
Angelina steadied herself and then tilted her chin as a brilliant idea smacked her upside her head.
“What if we made it easy?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“What if we left his window uncovered and we set up a gun that we could shoot from anywhere by remote control. A motion-sensing one?”
Croix closed the window and locked it. “You want me to rig a gun that shoots sticky tracking devices at drones outside Mick’s window?”
Angelina patted her on the shoulder. “Perfect. Good idea. Make that happen.”
Croix sighed, her hands on her hips. “But—”
“Make it happen.”
“By when?”
Angelina smiled. “Yesterday.” She walked back down the hall toward Mick’s room. She tried to look cool, because it was important to make the youngster think she still had it, but she was so sun-blinded in the relatively dark hall she nearly clipped her head on a sconce. She thought she heard Croix giggle behind her.
Smartass.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Angelina took Mick’s hand in hers.
“I don’t want you to get too excited, but I think Siofra’s coming home.”
Mick remained still. Of course.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we can’t just sit around and wait for her to show up, and I’m here to tell you I have it covered. It’s clever. Croix is helping me. We’ll find her.”
Angelina’s phone rang and she gave Mick’s hand a pat before answering.
“Hello?”
“It’s Charlotte. Mick’s granddaughter.”
Angelina rolled her eyes. “I know who you are.”
“Right. Good. Because I need you to get me out of jail.”
“What?” Angelina’s eyes popped wide. “Where’s Harley?”
“I have her. They let me keep her.”
“In prison?”
“I’m in jail, not prison. Big difference.”
Angelina scowled. “I don’t care if you’re in the pokey, you’ve got my dog. My baby won’t survive in the Big House. She’s a gentle princess. Those prison mutts will eat her alive.”
She heard Charlotte snort a little laugh.
“They threw me in here while they’re waiting for the local sheriff, but I think it might be helpful for me to have a local advocate to vouch for me—”
“Got it, I’m on my way. Don’t let anyone turn Harley into their bitch.”
Angelina hung up and stood from the chair beside Mick’s bed. She planted a kiss on his forehead and rubbed the resulting red-lipstick imprint from his skin with her thumb.
“I have to go keep your granddaughter out of prison. Seems your apples land very close to your tree.”
***
Angelina drove to the police station and walked to the reception desk. She’d been hoping the regular girl would be there, but she didn’t recognize the woman behind the desk.
“I’m here to bail out a little dog.”
The woman stared at her, nonplussed. “Just the dog?”
“Maybe.”
The woman chuckled. “Well, she doesn’t need bailing out. Probably. Palm Beach County sheriff is coming to talk to her and we were out of waiting rooms.”
“Really?”
The woman leaned forward and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “No. I just thought it would be funny to put her and her dog in the lockup.”
Angelina laughed and glanced at the woman’s name tag. “I like your style, Loretta.”
The woman beamed. “Thank you.”
“But that’s my dog.”
“Oh.” Loretta sighed, her large bosom rising and lowering like a pair of bobbing buoys. “I guess I can let the dog out on good behavior.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“The dog?”
“Ha. I see what you did there. The girl.”
“Sure.”
Loretta came around the desk and led Angelina to a pair of ce
lls in the back of the building. Charlotte sat on a bench with Harley tucked under her arm, staring at the ground and stroking the dog with her fingers. She looked up at the sound of their approach.
Loretta opened the door without unlocking it, and Angelina cocked an eyebrow at Charlotte.
“It isn’t even locked.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Harley,” said Angelina, throwing out her hands. Charlotte stood and handed the dog to her.
“This is so embarrassing,” said Angelina, taking the dog. “You didn’t let her paws touch that dirty floor, did you?”
“That floor is not dirty,” mumbled Loretta.
Angelina turned and winked to show she was only kidding. She could tell Loretta was an asset she wanted to keep.
“She’s been in my lap the whole time,” said Charlotte.
Angelina held Harley in the air, dropping her nose to ping against her own. “Oh my little jailbird. Are you okay? Did mean Aunt Charlotte get you thrown in the clinker?”
Charlotte grimaced. “Why, yes, I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
A man with a mustache entered the area from the same door through which Angelina had passed.
“What’s going on in here?” he asked.
“Buck!” exclaimed Angelina, as if her long lost lover had returned from war.
Loretta headed out of the room.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Angelina.”
“You too, Loretta.”
Angelina followed in her wake until she reached Buck. She threw one arm around him and hugged him sideways to keep Harley from being crushed between them.
“What are you doing back in here?” he asked. “I thought you cleaned up your act.”
“Never,” she said, playfully poking him in the side.
She turned her head back toward Charlotte and flashed a grin.
I got you, girl.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Declan heard Bob clear his throat before the man spoke. He closed his eyes to give himself strength.
“Hey, Declan, watcha doin’ up there?”
Declan peered down at Bob’s upturned face. The rest of him was hidden by the slant of the roof on which Declan perched. He’d climbed up there hoping to fix Charlotte’s leak and be back at his pawn shop by ten. No one had ever accused him of being a handyman, so his even greater wish had been to finish before the old guys in Charlotte’s neighborhood noticed him.
