by Rebecca York
Matt and Elizabeth made him wait for ten minutes before pulling up nose to tail with his vehicle.
The driver of each car rolled down his window so they could talk.
The detective began with “You know I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”
“We understand, and we appreciate it.”
“Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff if you’re innocent?”
“We told you Derek Lang was running a house of prostitution,” Matt said.
“And bringing women illegally into the Port of Baltimore,” the detective added.
Matt winced. He hadn’t disclosed that information, but Harrison had figured it out. “We were hoping to leave out that part.”
Elizabeth jumped into the conversation. “His death has stopped the traffic, and we don’t want to involve any of the women, but we want to make sure we’re not murder suspects. That’s why we’re meeting like this.”
Leave the women out of it, Matt said, projecting the suggestion to the detective. Leave the women out of it. They don’t have to be involved. Lang’s dead, and Delano and Forester were innocently involved.
He repeated the silent words over and over, and they watched the man’s face, both of them praying that he was going to come to the right conclusions.
“What exactly happened at Lang’s bordello last night?” Harrison asked.
Chapter Sixteen
The tricky question, Matt thought.
“We went to rescue the women. Lang caught us there. He tied Elizabeth up and started torturing her. He had the guy named Southwell take me away to the basement.”
“And how did you get away?”
“I was able to escape when the shooting started upstairs,” Matt said. “Elizabeth was tied up when one of Lang’s guards came in and shot him.”
“Why?” Harrison asked.
“No idea,” Matt answered.
We were there at the wrong time, Matt silently added. We must have walked into a dispute between Lang and one of his men. We were lucky to escape with our lives.
“I guess you were lucky to get out of there alive,” Harrison said, and Matt breathed out a little sigh. The guy was buying it.
“The guard named Tony shot Lang. Southwell shot Tony.”
“And how did you get away?”
“I untied Elizabeth, and we fled.”
“How did the fire start?”
Matt shook his head. “No idea.”
We were lucky to get out alive, Matt repeated. You don’t want to punish us for rescuing a bunch of women who were in a terrible situation through no fault of their own.
Harrison looked at Elizabeth. “You had amnesia. How did you get your memory back?”
“Bits and pieces started coming back to me.” She cleared her throat. “Dr. Delano helped me by using hypnosis. Finally I remembered enough to know about Lang.”
“And why didn’t you come to the police?”
“I’d seen Lang at a reception talking to a police official.”
Harrison’s eyes narrowed. “Which one?”
“I don’t remember.”
Harrison snorted. “Convenient.”
You know we’re good citizens. You want to help us, and Lang’s death closes the case, Matt suggested.
“I think Lang’s death closes the case,” the detective said. “But I’d like an official statement from both of you about your involvement.”
“At the station house?” Matt asked.
“Yes.”
If we could just disappear, I’d go that route, Matt said to Elizabeth. But it’s kind of inconvenient not being able to get to our money.
And having a criminal investigation hanging over us.
Still he wished to hell he could read the man’s mind. This could be a trap, or it could be the key to getting them out of trouble, but they’d still have to dance around the part about the women.
They followed Harrison to the station house, agreeing on what they were going to say as they drove.
There was a bad moment when they went inside, and Harrison took them to separate rooms.
Matt saw the look of panic on Elizabeth’s face.
Just tell him what we agreed on. And if we have any questions, we can confer.
Harrison asked them each to write an account of what had happened since Elizabeth had crashed her car into a lamppost. He wrote about treating her, having Polly take her home, and Lang’s thugs coming after her.
And he silently checked in with her several times, seeing that she was writing a similar account without using exactly the same words.
The part with the women was tricky, but Elizabeth pled client confidentiality, and Matt said she had given him only minimal information about them.
* * *
HARRISON CAME IN to read Matt’s account and ask a few questions.
“So we’re cleared of any involvement in Mrs. Kramer’s murder?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you for taking care of this.”
“I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being manipulated,” Harrison said.
Matt kept his features even. “We’ve just told you what happened to us.”
“Uh-huh. Are the two of you planning to stay in the Baltimore area?”
Matt hesitated. He had been thinking about what they had to do next, but he didn’t want to share that with the detective.
“I think we’re going to try to decompress,” he said. “But we haven’t made any firm plans.”
“And while you were with Elizabeth, the two of you hooked up.”
“Yeah,” Matt clipped out. And I don’t want to discuss it.
To his relief, they were out of the police station a couple hours after they’d entered.
* * *
HAROLD GODDARD HAD checked his clipping service and his online sources four times day, looking for any item that might pertain to Matthew Delano and the woman named Jane Doe. He knew the doctor and his patient had disappeared after the woman who’d taken in “Jane” had been murdered.
He also scanned through the online version of the Baltimore Sun—where an interesting item caught his eye because it involved Dr. Delano. A crime boss named Derek Lang had been shot to death in a bordello he owned outside the city. One of his own men had turned on him, for unknown reasons. And another one had taken out the killer.
Interestingly he’d been using the same gun that had killed Polly Kramer, the nurse who had taken in Jane Doe. And there was another piece of information at the end of the story. The woman who had been known as Jane Doe was actually named Elizabeth Forester.
Harold went to his Solomon Clinic database and looked up the Forester woman. He wasn’t surprised to find out she was on the same list as Matthew Delano—the list of babies born as a result of fertility treatments by Dr. Solomon.
As he read that piece of information, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He’d been putting together men and women from the clinic, and here were two of them who had found each other all by themselves.
What were the odds of that? What were the implications? What were they going to do next?
He started digging for more information and found out where each of them lived, although he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to find them in separate dwellings.
They’d be together.
From the article it wasn’t clear exactly how they’d been involved with the crime boss, but it seemed they’d escaped from a dangerous situation.
What was their next move?
He didn’t know these people, but he had a good guess about what they were going to do. Swift and Branson had gone to Houma to investigate their backgrounds. He’d bet his government pension th
at Delano and Forester would do the same. Did he have to kill them? Or could he head them off?
Perhaps his first move was to send someone to search her house and his apartment.
* * *
“I GUESS WE CAN get back to normal life,” Elizabeth murmured, as they headed for the car.
“What’s normal?”
“If you put it that way, I don’t know. But we should start by telling Donna Martinson that she and the women are in the clear.”
“Right.”
They made the call, both of them happy to relieve the director’s mind.
“What now?” Matt asked.
“I want to go back to my house and get some clothes. And now that I’ve got my memories back, I thought of something else. My baby book. Maybe it has some clues.”
“I guess it’s all right to go there.”
“You’re not sure.”
“Old habits die hard.”
They drove to her neighborhood and parked out front, then walked to the back.
“I know you wanted to look at some of the papers in the office, but I think we should skip that for now,” Matt said as they approached the door.
She answered with a little nod. “But I should get a spare key, so that we can lock up when we leave.”
She went to the office, opened the middle desk drawer and took out the key she kept on one side.
“At least they left it. You know, I’m going to have to do stuff like get a new driver’s license.”
“Yeah. Maybe they’ve got you in the computer, and you just have to call up, explain what happened and ask for a new one.”
She grimaced. “First I’d have to prove who I am.”
“You have a point.”
She looked at the name tags she’d saved from conferences. “I guess they’re not going to accept those. But that gives me an idea. If I stop by work, they’ll know me at the office.”
“And as your doctor, I can verify that you were the woman I treated for amnesia at Memorial Hospital.”
“I hope all that’s going to work.”
“Let’s get your clothes and get out of here.”
“And that baby book.”
They climbed the stairs, and Elizabeth took a suitcase from her bedroom closet. She opened drawers, taking out T-shirts and jeans. Then she took some clothing from the hangers in the closet, glad to have some of her own things.
“The baby book is in a box at the top of the closet—on the left,” she told Matt. He reached up to the shelf and brought down the book. It had a padded exterior covered with faded pink silk. In gray letters it read My Little Girl.
He handed it to Elizabeth, and she held it carefully.
“I guess my mom was excited about having a baby.”
Opening the cover, she flipped through the pages. In the front was her birth announcement and then congratulatory cards.
She could sense Matt’s restlessness as she went through the contents.
“Bring it along. We’ll look at it later. I want to get out of here while the getting’s good.”
The words were just out of his mouth when they heard a door open and footsteps on the first floor.
They both froze, and she gave him a panicked look.
Did you lock the door behind us? Matt asked.
Yes. Do you think it could be one of Lang’s men down there?
I’m betting they got out of town—the ones who could still travel.
So who is that?
I’d like to know. But we’ve got one thing going for us. He’s taking his time. He must not know we’re here.
They listened as whoever it was pawed through kitchen drawers, then ambled down the hall to the office. After he rummaged around in there for a while, he headed for the stairs.
It sounds like only one intruder.
Unless he’s got a lookout down there. Get behind the door.
Elizabeth flattened herself against the wall, waiting tensely as she read what Matt had in mind.
The man apparently didn’t know his way around the house. When he reached the second floor, he walked into the guest room, stayed for a few minutes, then headed for Elizabeth’s bedroom.
As he walked through the door, Matt hit him with a bolt of power. He staggered back, but he stayed on his feet and pulled out a gun.
Chapter Seventeen
Elizabeth was in back of the intruder.
“Over here,” she called out.
When he whirled, Matt hit him with another bolt, and Elizabeth added her strength.
This time the man went down.
Matt leaped on him, stepping on his gun hand, making the intruder scream. And Elizabeth picked up the lamp on the bedside table and brought it down on his head. He went still.
“What do you have that we can use to tie him up?”
“What about duct tape—like we used before?”
“Yeah.”
She hurried down the hall to the guest room and came back with a roll of tape, and Matt used it to secure the man.
He groaned and blinked.
“Whaa...?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?”
When he pressed his lips together. Matt kicked him in the ribs, and he let out a yelp.
“You’d better tell us what’s going on, if you don’t want worse.”
Elizabeth made a silent suggestion. Maybe we can use the persuasion technique on him.
Matt focused on the man. You don’t want me to hurt you again. You want to tell us what’s going on. You want to tell us who sent you.
The man looked confused as Matt continued to project the message.
“Who sent you?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? How did you end up in this house?”
“A contact told me the job came from New Orleans. That’s all I know.”
New Orleans! Matt echoed. What about New Orleans? he silently pressed.
“What about New Orleans?” Elizabeth echoed the question.
“Someone down there wants the scoop on you. That’s all I know. I swear.”
Matt gave him another treatment, but he didn’t come up with any more information.
I think that’s all he’s got.
She nodded.
“How were you going to get paid?”
“I was supposed to leave a message at a phone number. Then I’d get the money from PayPal.”
Matt snorted. “Criminals are using PayPal?”
The man shrugged.
They left him on the floor and stepped out of the room.
“Hey,” he yelled, “you can’t just leave me here.”
“Watch us.”
Elizabeth put the baby book in the suitcase along with the clothing, and they hurried downstairs.
“Better leave the door unlocked so the cops can get in,” he said.
When they were outside, Matt pulled out his cell phone and dialed Detective Harrison. The call went straight to voice mail, which was a relief to Matt.
He left a message saying, “We went to Elizabeth Forester’s house to get some of her clothing, and we were surprised by an intruder. We restrained him, and you can find him in the master bedroom.”
“Is that legal?” Elizabeth asked.
“I hope so. But I’m not going to wait around.”
“What if he says he was there for a legitimate reason?”
“Like what? You called him to fix the water heater?”
“I guess not.”
“I’m hoping his fingerprints are in the criminal database. I’ll check later with Harrison on that.”
She sighed. “The cops are goi
ng to be all over the house.”
“Do you care?”
“I guess not. After Lang’s men came through, I don’t think I can live there again.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “When this is over, we’ll decide where to live.”
She nodded against his shoulder, then caught what was in his mind. “We’re going to New Orleans?”
“I was thinking we might poke into that fertility clinic. Now with this guy showing up, I think we have to.”
“Yes.”
She could see he was turning over possibilities. “You don’t want to fly.”
“I don’t want our names on a passenger list that someone could check. Which means we should drive.”
“All right. Then let’s not push ourselves.”
She knew he was anxious to get there, but he said, “Yeah, we can stop along the way to practice our skills. And do some research.”
Elizabeth checked in with Social Services and told them she wasn’t ready to return to work. It turned out she had months of sick leave she could use. And Dr. Delano was happy to say she still needed to rest. She also got a new driver’s license, and Matt checked in with Detective Harrison. When they found out the guy who’d burglarized Elizabeth’s house was a known criminal named Walter Clemens, they went down to make a complaint.
“You two seem to attract trouble,” the detective said.
“We’re hoping to change that,” Matt answered.
“How?”
“We’re going on a road trip.”
“How will that help?”
“It will get us out of town.”
Matt checked back in at Memorial Hospital and took a leave of absence.
“What if they won’t take you back?” Elizabeth asked.
“There’s always a need for doctors. I’ll be able to get a job somewhere.”
After they’d made their arrangements, they mapped out a route to New Orleans.
“It looks like about an eighteen-hour trip,” Matt said. “We could shoot for six to eight hours of driving a day.”
Their first stop was Roanoke, which had initially been called Big Lick because of the nearby salt lick that attracted wildlife. The town had been a major stop for wagon trains going west. Coal and the manufacturer of steam engines had made the city prosperous.
