Angus's Lost Lady

by Marie Ferrarella

  As he got out, he tucked the tool back into his pocket. His other hand was tightly closed around the handkerchief he used to house what he’d found. He opened it for her benefit.

  There was a bullet laying on the white cloth.

  Rebecca stared at it. A bullet. “It still doesn’t seem real to me. Doesn’t look very big, does it?”

  “Doesn’t have to be big, just accurate.” Very carefully, he refolded the handkerchief, trapping the prize inside. He tucked it into his breast pocket. Biordi was going to see this. The bullet looked to be a 9 mm. If a weapon had been fired, that made Rebecca’s case something more complicated than just a missing person and an unexplained case of amnesia.

  Angus glanced at Rebecca. Did she realize that she might very well still be a walking target? He noticed for the first time that she’d taken off her bandage. If the bullet had been a fraction of an inch closer, the two of them wouldn’t be standing here together, looking for clues.

  His scrutiny made her feel nervous. It was the fluttery kind of nervous, rather than the panicky kind. She pressed her lips together. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I was just thinking that you were one lucky lady.”

  Her eyes held his for a minute, her nervousness increasing.

  “So was I.”

  She tried to shake the feeling from her, the one she told herself was due only to an overwhelming wave of gratitude. But the feeling wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t allow itself to be reasoned away. She was attracted to Angus. There was no denying it. No denying the fact that, in unguarded moments when their eyes met, she felt something. A pull.

  A very strong pull.

  But she had no business feeling anything until she knew who she was. And who, if anyone, was in her life.

  Stepping back from Angus, but not from the feeling, she gasped as she stumbled. One of her heels had gotten stuck in the grating that ran parallel to the wall.

  “Hold it.” Angus caught her before she fell ignobly at his feet.

  “Thanks,” she murmured. She was acutely aware of him, of the scent of his aftershave. Of the scent of his body permeating the musty air in the structure. It all surrounded her like a futuristic force field, keeping everything else out. Keeping her in.

  . After a second, she thought to step back. But she still couldn’t move. The grating was holding her heel captive. Embarrassed, she slipped out of her shoe and began to reach for it.

  “Wait a second.” Angus stopped her, bending down himself. Gripping the heel, he slowly rocked the shoe back and forth until he managed to work it free. The grating, intended to offer a semblance of drainage for the structure—which was built on a downward slope—was hopelessly clogged. No one had bothered to service it for some time.

  Angus wondered if it would be worth his while to pull a few lengths of it off and see if anything had gotten trapped there.

  Rather than hand her the shoe, Angus cupped her heel and slipped her foot into it.

  Lightning raced up her leg. Her eyes widened slightly as she felt her pulse accelerate.

  His smile as he looked up at her was soft, easy. Sensuous. “Cinderella, I presume?” Rising, he dusted off his hands. “I seem to keep giving you shoes.”

  Her mouth felt completely dry. “Like I said, a knight in shining armor.”

  “Or a frustrated shoe vendor.” Angus looked around, pretending to himself that he hadn’t become completely distracted. “That’s probably how you lost your shoe yesterday,” he speculated, trying to remember that a detective was the only thing either one of them needed him to be. Not a man drawn to a very attractive woman. “The heel got caught while you were running.”

  Looking down at the grating, he wondered just how far it extended. “I’m going to check out the rest of the grating. Are you tired? Do you want to go back to the car?”

  She had no intention of retreating now. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” Rebecca blinked. That sounded hopelessly quaint to her. “I wonder how many other trite sayings I’ve got stored up within me.”

  Rebecca felt the sensual moment disappearing.

  Angus laughed. “I can’t wait to find out.”

  They found her other shoe stuck in the grating at the rear of the structure. Squatting, Angus pulled it free. The heel was not only stuck, it was broken. As he stood, Angus absently looked out beyond the perimeter of the exit.

  Across the way was a Dumpster, so full that its lid was not quite closed. It was located at the rear of a Vietnamese restaurant.

  The alley Rebecca thought she found herself in, Angus realized.

  “Look familiar?” he asked her. The small, sharp intake of breath told him it did.

  The next moment, she was leading the way. Minutes later, her heart hammering, Rebecca walked from one side of the Dumpster to the other. It wasn’t quite flush against the wall. There was some space there. A small space, big enough for a child. Or a small woman.

  The strong aroma of curry assailed her as the wind shifted in their direction. It aroused another fragment of a memory.

  So did the smell of smoke that suddenly seemed so prevalent.

  She had been here, she thought excitedly, a tiny part of the fog lifting from her brain. She’d woken up here, roused by the rain and the smell.

  “It was here,” she told him, adrenaline pumping through her veins. “I came to...here.”

  The excitement at the revelation diminished slightly. Though she remembered waking up behind the Dumpster, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there.

  “Maybe you ran across from the parking structure and hid back here, then blacked out because of your wound,” Angus offered.

  It sounded plausible. She looked back over her shoulder at the parking structure. The view was plain enough from the right place. If she could just remember.

  “But why didn’t whoever was chasing me look here?” It seemed so obvious to her. “All the person had to do was look.”

  “Maybe he was going to,” Angus suggested. “But someone scared him off.” The Dumpster was only a few feet from the rear door. “Someone from the restaurant could have come out just then—to empty the trash or take a cigarette break. Who knows?”

  What he did know was that he was grateful that she’d managed to escape.

  He took her hand and began to walk toward the edge of the restaurant.

  Beside him, still holding onto her shoe, Rebecca walked quickly, so as not to slow his pace. “Where are we going?”

  We. It had the sound of a partnership, he thought. Well, why not? It was her life they were dealing with—or at least trying to reconstruct.

  “To see if anyone in the restaurant noticed anything suspicious yesterday.” It was too much to hope for, he knew, but every once in a while, you got lucky.

  He wondered if she felt lucky.

  As they circled the building, the smell of smoke became more acute. “Look.” Rebecca pointed to the building three doors down. The front was completely charred.

  “Now we know where the smell’s coming from. Must have been within the last couple of days.”

  Angus remembered she’d smelled slightly of smoke when she came to his office. So...she’d been here, during the fire. Maybe there’d been too much going on for her assailant to get a clear shot at her, he thought.

  The front of the restaurant had an ornate canopy to offer protection from the sun. Angus tried the door, but it was locked.

  Rebecca placed her hand on his shoulder, calling his attention to a sign in the lower corner of the window. Further view into the restaurant was blocked by a beige curtain.

  The sign was written in two languages, the second of which was English. “It says they don’t open until eleven-thirty.”

  “They’re not opened to do business yet,” he corrected, knocking again louder.

  There was still no answer.

  “Maybe nobody’s in,” she suggested.

  Angus glanced at his watch, though it was a redundant gesture—he’d always ha
d an innate sense of time. “It’s after eleven. There must be someone there,” he assured her. “They have to get ready before they open.”

  He continued knocking until someone finally came to the window, pulling back the curtain.

  The small, wizened woman looked at him through the glass with tired, dark eyes that were older than time. She shook her head and pointed to the sign. Her expression was a testament to incredulity that he should be knocking when the sign clearly indicated the establishment’s hours.

  Rather than retreat, Angus dug into his pocket and took out a ten-dollar bill. He held it up. The curtain dropped back into place.

  A moment later, the woman cautiously opened the door a crack. She looked solemnly from his face to the money in his hand.

  Angus placed his hand on the door, preventing her from shutting it again. “I’d like to come in and ask a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  The woman stared at him in silence, as if she were trying to process his words in her mind. “No ask. Eat,” she finally told him.

  If that’s what it took, he thought philosophically, they’d eat. “All right, we’ll order something,” he agreed.

  But she still didn’t admit them. “Closed,” the woman insisted. “Come later.”

  Before the limited, halting conversation could continue, the old woman was joined by a much taller, much younger man. He looked as robust as she was frail. The smile on his face when he looked at Angus was polite, but dismissive.

  “I’m sorry. My grandmother doesn’t speak English very well. We’re not opened yet.” He moved to close the door on them.

  Angus’s hand remained on the door. “We’re not here to eat,” he informed the younger man. “We’d just like to ask a few questions.”

  A trace of suspicion entered the dark eyes. They shifted from one face to the other. “About what?” he asked guardedly. “If it’s about the fire, we already talked to the inspector. We didn’t see anything.”

  Angus would have preferred to come in and discuss the matter under friendlier circumstances, but he’d conducted inquiries under less favorable conditions than these.

  “We’re not here about the fire. Did any of your employees see anything strange taking place yesterday around noon?”

  There was no indication that the man knew what Angus was talking about.

  “Specifically, did you see anyone hanging around back? Maybe running from the parking structure across the way?”

  The young man shook his head. “Nobody said anything to me about it and I was here all day.” His gaze shifted from Angus to Rebecca again. His brow furrowed in concentration. When he saw the shoe she was holding, it came to him. “You’re the woman with one shoe. Yeah, I saw you yesterday.” His expression grew more affable. “Sorry, you all tend to look alike to me.” He grinned at his own witticism, growing friendlier. “Is that what you’re asking about?”

  Angus exchanged looks with Rebecca. She appeared to be hanging on the man’s every word. Maybe they were finally getting somewhere. “Partially. Was there anyone chasing her?”

  The question didn’t seem to surprise the man. The neighborhood obviously wasn’t the best. “No, I just saw her crossing the street in front of the restaurant when I looked out the window. She almost got hit by a car, but the guy just shouted at her and drove off. If there had been anyone chasing her, I would have gone out.”

  The man did look as if he knew how to take care of himself.

  “Do you remember what time that was?”

  He answered without bothering to think. “Yeah, two-thirty. The lunch crowd had just cleared away. We were starting to get ready for dinner.”

  Angus had a feeling that he’d gotten about as much information as he was going to get. He took out his card and handed it to the man.

  “If you think of anything else...anything at all...we’d appreciate it if you called this number.”

  As the man pocketed the card, Angus saw that the old woman was still eyeing the ten-dollar bill he hadn’t bothered putting away. With a polite, formal bow of his head, Angus offered it to her.

  Embarrassed, the woman’s grandson waved the money away. “That’s okay.”

  Angus knew by the look in the old eyes that it was definitely not okay to withdraw the money. The woman might not understand the language all that well, but she understood the currency. He pressed it into the wrinkled hand.

  “Consider it a down payment on a tip,” Angus told her grandson.

  Nodding, he thanked Angus, said something to his grandmother and closed the door.

  Rebecca blew out the breath she’d been holding. Turning, she began to retrace her steps with Angus. Her head was aching. She wondered if it was the tension or the wound. Probably a little of both.

  “So, now what?” she asked him.

  “Now we know where it happened and the time frame when you came to, and we have a bullet,” he enumerated, patting his pocket. “We can get the make and model of the gun that fired it.”

  None of that gave her a last name, she thought. “Is that helpful?”

  “It might be,” he allowed, “in the long run. Can’t hurt at any rate.” He looked at her. “Are you hungry? We could find a restaurant—”

  “How about a grocery store?” She was thinking of the one near his apartment complex.

  “Sure, we could go to a grocery store.” He knew of a couple that had a deli section and were set up to accommodate a few people who chose to eat their purchases on the premises. But he had a hunch that wasn’t what she had in mind. “Why?”

  “Because I want to cook something for lunch. I feel like doing something, and I’m definitely no help here.” She looked at him. “Call it therapy.”

  Part of surviving was knowing when to give in. Angus gave in. “Therapy it is.”

  Chapter 7

  Detective Al Biordi rocked back in his chair, thinking. The resulting creak of protest the chair made was swallowed up by the constant low hum of activity within the squad room. He looked at the single spent bullet Angus had brought to him. Now antiseptically encased in a clear plastic bag, it was lying on his desk, right next to a half-empty mug of what could, quite possibly, be the world’s worst-tasting coffee.

  He didn’t hold out much hope.

  “Looks like a pretty unremarkable 9 mm. My guess is that it’s from a Beretta. I’ll run it by ballistics for you, Angus, but I’m not making any promises. I don’t know when they’re going to be able to get to it.” He gestured vaguely to the folders haphazardly scattered over his desk, effectively covering every square inch. The desk was a carbon copy of every other desk in the squad room.

  “Caseloads are pretty heavy around here right now. Must be the weather,” he mused more to himself than to his friend, then raised his eyes. “And remember, there’s no urgency. It’s not like there’s a crime being reported in connection with it.”

  Angus leaned a hip against the desk. One of the files fell off, landing at his feet. He bent over to pick it up and tossed it on the desk. Every time he came by, the stacks got a little higher, a little messier. The hallmark of a growing city, he thought with a twinge of regret.

  “Bullets found in the upholstery of abandoned cars pretty commonplace these days?”

  Biordi took no offense at the light sarcasm. Very carefully, he enumerated the reasons on his fingers. “One, no body. Two, no injured party—”

  Angus didn’t quite see it that way. “Rebecca.” She had been injured, physically and certainly emotionally.

  Biordi stuck by his opinion. “She’s not bringing up charges.”

  A glimmer of temper flashed in Angus’s eyes before fading. “Charges? Hell, Al, she can’t even remember what happened.”

  Like a smug lawyer resting his case, Biordi spread his hands. “My point exactly.”

  Angus shook his head, not really clear on what his friend’s point was. “Maybe whoever shot at her is out there, still looking to finish the job.” He didn’t like thinking of her as a wal
king target, even if she was with him. He could only do so much for her—had only so many resources at his disposal. Biordi had the entire police force if he needed it.

  Biordi steepled his fingers together, thoughtfully. “Maybe,” he allowed. “And maybe it was just a run-of-the-mill mugging that got out of hand. My brother, he picked up a saying while he was in medical school: if you hear hoofbeats, it’s probably just a horse, not a zebra.”

  Sitting up, he leaned forward, narrowly avoiding hitting the mug. Looking slightly annoyed at the near mishap, he set it off to the side. “In other words, Angus, it’s probably just something routine, nothing exotic. No hit man,” he added for good measure. Seemingly satisfied he’d made his point, he reverted back to being Angus’s friend. “Want my advice?”

  Angus laughed shortly. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what he heard. “No, but that’s never stopped you before.”

  Biordi continued as if Angus hadn’t said anything.

  “Take it easy, do what you’re best at,” Biordi counseled with a broad wink. “See if you can find out who she is, since that’s what she wants to know. And in the meantime, enjoy the lady while she’s around.”

  Biordi was his friend and there was no reason to take offense, Angus told himself. And yet, part of him did. For Rebecca’s sake. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  If the slight shift in Angus’s tone registered, Biordi didn’t show it. He glanced at the framed photograph on his desk. Surrounded with files, it was partially buried—out of sight. There were times, like right after an argument, when he liked it that way.

  “That means—off the record—if I weren’t married to a very special lady with a hell of a right hook, I might be putting in a lot of time on this thing myself. This Rebecca’s a looker. Even beneath those big shoes you stuck her in, and that dirty raincoat.”

  He almost looked as if he were waiting for a few intimate details, except that Angus knew better. Biordi wasn’t the type to indulge in vicarious experiences.

  The smile on Biordi’s lips took the years away from his face, making him look like a boy rather than a police veteran. “I bet she cleans up real nice.”