by Sharon Sala
Becky turned back to Bodie. “I don’t know if it would be any help, but I do have some of Sally’s things in storage. There was no one to claim them after she died, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. I work tomorrow, but I’m off the day after. I could go get the boxes and bring them home, if you were interested.”
“I’m interested!” Maria said, and then glanced at Bodie.
“It wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” he said. “Where do you work?”
“I’ve been a 911 dispatcher for the city of Tulsa for the last eleven years.”
“Oh, wow,” Maria muttered. “I would not want that job.”
Becky grinned. “I’ve had that thought a few times myself, but for the most part, I actually enjoy it.”
There was a brief moment of silence, and then Becky stood up.
“I have some cold sweet tea. And I made cookies. Would you care for some?”
Bodie glanced at Maria. He wasn’t hungry, but from the look on her face, she still was. Maybe not for food, but she wasn’t ready to leave.
“Yeah, sure…why not?” Bodie said. “How about you, Maria?”
She nodded.
Becky beamed. “I won’t be a minute,” she said, and scurried out of the room.
Maria combed her fingers through her hair, lingering on the back of her neck as she rubbed absently at a sore muscle.
“You okay?” Bodie asked.
“Yes.”
He wanted to say more, but she cut him off without further comment when she refused to look at him. Then Becky was back, carrying a tray loaded with glasses of iced tea and a plate of cookies.
“Here you go,” she said, as she served each of them a napkin and a drink, then passed the plate of cookies.
“Oh…snickerdoodles,” Maria said, as she looked up at Becky. “They’re my fav—”
Becky’s eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. All of a sudden Maria realized that Becky already knew those were her favorites—that it was the reason she’d made them. It rattled her to think total strangers knew more about her than she knew about herself. She’d never had doubts about her ability to cope. Andrew had raised all his girls to believe they were capable of solving their own problems—that they didn’t need a man to survive. And then he’d died and turned their world upside down. They had been living a lie—all of them. She no longer trusted herself to cope, because her memories were a lie. She stared at the cookie, then sank back into the depths of the easy chair without tasting it.
Becky cupped the side of Maria’s face. “I also know your favorite color is blue, and that when you were little, you liked meat loaf with a browned mashed-potato crust. You’re allergic to sulfa and when you’re sick, you talk in your sleep.”
Stop talking. Stop talking, Maria pleaded silently, then drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“It’s all right, sugar,” Becky said softly. “You’re still in there. When it’s time…everything you knew will come back.”
She moved to where Bodie was sitting and held out the plate of cookies. “Detective?”
“Thank you,” he said.
The first bite revealed the cookies were still warm. It was obvious that Becky Clemmons still cared, even if Maria didn’t remember.
He didn’t realize that Maria was slowly coming undone until she stood abruptly and asked him, “Are we finished here?”
Bodie jumped. Where the hell had that come from? “Uh…yeah, sure.”
“I just remembered…I need to get back to the hotel,” Maria mumbled.
“Would you like to take some cookies with you?” Becky asked.
“No, no…thank you, but no,” Maria said. “Detective Scott?”
“After you,” Bodie said, then followed her to the door.
Becky was right on his heels, obviously reluctant to lose contact.
“I’ll call you just as soon as I get the boxes out of storage,” she said. “I don’t think there are more than three or four.”
Bodie nodded. “Okay, and thank you, Mrs. Clemmons. If you think of anything else—anything at all—call me.”
“I will,” she said, then patted Maria’s arm. “Sally would be so proud of you.”
Maria frowned. “I don’t think so. The one thing I can’t remember is the only thing that will catch her killer.”
“It will happen.”
“I hope sooner rather than later,” Maria said, and then hurried out the door.
“How do you feel?” Bodie asked a minute later, as they drove away.
Her stomach was in knots. “Rattled. Frustrated. Who the hell knows? Did you learn anything today that might help?”
He hedged his answer. “Maybe.”
“The possibility that Sally might have been trying to blackmail someone…?”
“We don’t know that,” Bodie said.
“Becky said Sally wanted out of the business. Maybe she was using me to shake down the guy who fathered me. He could have been married…maybe somebody with enough prestige that he didn’t want anyone to know he’d fathered a child with a hooker.”
Bodie frowned. “That’s harsh.”
Maria shrugged. “The whole thing is a mess. I keep seesawing between empathy for what a tough life she had and disgust for the way she lived it. Did I tell you the old man I talked to at the mission said she couldn’t read or write?”
“Really? No, you didn’t.”
“She was also abandoned as a baby on the steps of a church, or so the story goes, if you want to believe it.”
Bodie frowned. “That’s hardly something a person would lie about.”
“I guess.”
“Don’t feel like you have to disapprove just because of her lifestyle. From all accounts, she was a good mother and loved you very much.”
Maria turned away. For the first time since she’d learned the truth about herself, she was wishing she hadn’t come—wishing she’d never learned about the whole sordid affair.
Bodie could tell that she was withdrawing emotionally, but there was nothing he could say or do to change what was.
“There’s something I want to run by you,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he kept talking. “I know a doctor who’s trained in hypnosis. If I can make an appointment for you, are you willing to give it a try?”
“Whatever it takes to get this mess behind me.”
Now he could hear anger in her voice. That was a defense mechanism if he’d ever heard one.
“I’ll give her a call when I get back to the precinct. Okay if I call you later with the information?”
“Yes.”
They were almost back at the hotel, and Bodie found himself wishing their day together wasn’t over.
“Are you going to be okay?”
She turned to face him, her eyes blazing with an emotion he couldn’t read.
“Of course I’ll be okay. I’m always okay,” she said.
He frowned as he wheeled into the drive leading to the hotel. Defiant. Angry. Hurt. All her defenses were firmly in place.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he said.
“Thank you for taking me with you,” she said politely.
He resisted the urge to curse, and then she was out of the car before he had time to answer. Still, he waited until she was inside the hotel and tried not to take offense at the fact that she never looked back.
Maria strode through the lobby with her head held high and her chin up—and without looking at a single face. She made it to the elevator, then up to the sixth floor. Her steps grew faster as she neared her room.
There was a pain in the middle of her chest that just kept growing, radiating outward into every fiber of her body. All she wanted to do was get into her room before she fell apart. Thrusting her hand into her purse, she began fumbling for her room key.
She began shifting things around, unzipping different compartments and going through her wallet, trying to find the key card. Then her hands began to shake. Her vision blurred, and still she kept digging
and digging, until finally she lost it. She dropped to her knees in front of her door and emptied her purse onto the floor, then rocked back on her heels as harsh, painful sobs tore their way up her throat.
Bodie was waiting for an airport shuttle van to move before he could leave when a cell phone began to ring. It took him a few moments to realize it was Maria’s phone and not his, which meant she’d left it in his car.
“Dang it,” he muttered, and headed for a parking place.
He pocketed the phone as he got out and hurried into the hotel, then loped toward the bank of elevators. A couple of minutes later he got off on the sixth floor, checked to see which direction he needed to go to get to 604 and then took a right. Just as he turned a corner, his heart skipped a beat. Maria was sitting on the floor with the contents of her purse spilled all around her, and he could hear her crying all the way down the hall.
“What the hell?” he muttered, and started to run. He reached her within seconds and pulled her to her feet, then into his arms.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” He began to look her over, trying to see if she’d been accosted. “Did someone hurt you? Did you fall?”
She just kept sobbing.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Maria! Honey! Talk to me!”
“I can’t find it. I looked and looked, and it’s gone. Everything’s gone.”
“If you’re talking about your phone, that’s why I came back. You left it in my car. Don’t cry…don’t cry.”
“Not my phone…the room key…my memory…my life…my father…my sisters…it’s gone…everything is gone. It’s all messed up.”
Bodie sighed. He knew today had been stressful for her, but he’d had no idea how deeply she’d been affected. He glanced down at the contents of her purse strewn about their feet and immediately spied the key card.
“Here it is,” he said, and quickly unlocked the door.
She swayed on her feet as she turned to get her things, but he stopped her and gave her a gentle push inside.
“I’ll get everything.”
She didn’t argue.
Moments later, Bodie followed her in and set her purse on the table.
Maria was standing in the middle of the floor with a blank expression on her face.
Bodie hesitated. He wasn’t sure about what to do next. Instinct told him she needed comforting. It might not be proper police procedure, but she was definitely at the end of her rope.
He put a hand on her shoulder, then took a step forward. When she didn’t pull back, he cupped the back of her head with his other hand and pulled her close. She sagged against his chest as his arms enfolded her.
“I—”
“Shh,” he said softly.
She shuddered, then slowly, slowly, he felt the tension leaving her body.
They stood without moving…without talking.
The air conditioner kicked on. Outside, someone’s car alarm was triggered, followed by a series of sharp blasts from the horn before it turned off as abruptly as it had begun. The sound of an argument in progress came and went out in the hall as a couple walked past the door. The phone in the next room began to ring, then stopped when the call went unanswered.
The vibration of her heartbeat was strong against his palm. Her hair was soft against his cheek. The urge to tilt her head and kiss her was overwhelming.
Then her cell phone began to ring again.
The sound yanked them back from the brink on which they’d been teetering.
Bodie sighed, pulled her phone out of his pocket and handed it over.
“Thank you,” Maria mumbled, as she glanced down at the caller ID. “It’s Bud,” she said.
“I’ll let myself out,” Bodie said.
Before Maria could stop him, he was gone.
Still struggling with what she’d been feeling, she locked the door behind him, then answered her cell.
“Hello.”
“I’ve been trying to call you,” Bud said. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she said as she sat down on the side of the bed and lied through her teeth.
Eleven
E d was still tailing Maria Slade and the cop, but in a different car and from a safe distance. When they finally got back to the hotel, he watched until she walked inside, then headed home. Sheets hadn’t requested—or paid for—twenty-four-hour surveillance, and he was butt-numb from so much driving, not to mention tired and hungry.
As soon as he got home, he took the memory card out of his camera, downloaded it onto his computer, then printed out the shots he’d taken before adding them to the file he was compiling.
He leafed through his snail mail and listened to his messages while heating up some leftovers from Olive Garden, then ate them at the computer while he was researching ownership of the Bait and Beer shop at the lake.
Samuel Gene Vincent turned up as the owner. The cop in him wondered why Sheets wanted this information, then he shrugged it off. Information paid, and he was no longer in the cop business.
Using a reverse directory, he plugged in the address of the woman they’d visited and turned up the name Rebecca Clemmons.
On a whim, he typed in Clemmons’ name on Facebook. Her photo popped up, mentioning she was a 911 dispatcher, divorced and not looking for a relationship.
“Too bad for me,” he said and then laughed aloud at his own wit. The last thing he wanted was another wife.
He carried his dirty plate to the sink, dug a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia from the freezer, and snagged a spoon before heading back to the computer.
“Now, Samuel Gene Vincent…let’s see what dirt I can dig up on you,” he muttered, then scooped up a bite of ice cream and let it melt on his tongue as he began to type.
Being a cop had paid off more than once since he started this second profession. But this time his search was a bust. Vincent had never served time or been arrested, and he’d been at his present location for the past twenty years. He reached for the ice cream, then kicked back in the chair and finished it off before tossing the empty carton into the trash.
“Time to see what comes up on Maria Slade,” he said, and started his search from another angle.
He typed in the name and got a hit on a professional horse trainer with a Missoula, Montana, address. It was the right state, but he hadn’t expected a horse trainer’s website; then he found a photo and knew he had the right woman.
“Hmm…okay…so what brought you to Oklahoma? Maybe a job?”
Lots of people raised horses in Oklahoma, Remington Park in Oklahoma City hosted quarter horse races, and rodeo was popular in parts of the state. Best-guess scenario: she was here in a professional capacity.
After a few more minutes of research, he logged on to the website of the local Missoula paper and searched Maria Slade’s name again. Within seconds he was reading about the death and funeral of a man named Andrew Slade. One of the surviving daughters happened to be named Maria. Ed didn’t know how it all fit together, but the cop in him loved a good mystery.
He printed out the info and added it to the file, then headed for the shower. Tomorrow was another day.
Franklin Sheets strode into Jamil’s Steakhouse on 51st Street with a swagger and a smile. He thrived on the status he’d achieved as a criminal lawyer and used every public appearance as an opportunity to campaign. Even though he had yet to declare for the district attorney race, his intent was becoming common knowledge.
The woman on his arm was Amelia Paige, a fellow lawyer. She was as ambitious as Franklin, and it showed, from her perfectly tailored butter-yellow suit to the slicked-back chignon that was her trademark. Her eyes were as dark as her hair, making her expressions difficult to read. As a trial lawyer, she used all the tricks in the book to win her cases, and if her personal appearance helped hide what she was thinking, then so much the better. Words were power. She used them well.
There was nothing romantic between her and Franklin, but they often used each
other as a convenient dinner companion. Tonight was no exception. The event Franklin had been invited to was the mayor’s birthday party. All the city’s movers and shakers would be there, and he considered it no small feat that he’d wangled an invitation.
As soon as the restaurant hostess arrived, Franklin cupped Amelia’s elbow.
“We’re here for the mayor’s party.”
The hostess nodded. “This way, please.”
They followed her through a central dining area, past two smaller rooms packed from wall to wall with more hungry diners, to the room that had been reserved for the party.
Inside, the lights were up and the air was alive with energy. A waiter was circling with a tray of drinks. Franklin snagged one for himself and another for Amelia as they began to mingle, wending their way through the gathering toward their host and hostess.
“Happy birthday, Joe,” Franklin said, as they reached the mayor. “Nice party.”
Joseph LaBlanc slid an arm around his pretty wife’s slender shoulders. Not only was she his third wife, but she was also seventeen years his junior. His peers were secretly jealous, but their women generally felt threatened by Julie’s presence, as if their time on their husbands’ arms was as limited as Julie’s predecessor’s had been.
“Thanks to my darling Julie,” the mayor said, and gave his wife a hug.
“You’re just in time,” Julie said. “We’re about to be seated.”
“Happy birthday, Joe,” Amelia added. “I’ve been looking forward to Jamil’s famous appetizers all day.”
“I know,” Julie said. “I don’t know which I like best…the tabbouleh or the cabbage rolls.”
The restaurant’s Lebanese focus was reflected not only in the food, but also the décor. Even though Jamil’s was a five-star restaurant and named for its steaks, the array of ethnic appetizers that came included with every meal was what had given the place its reputation.
The guests took their seats. Franklin found himself seated across the table from Burch Westbrook, the chief of police, and next to Harry Korn, the editor of the Tulsa Herald. The dynamics of the seating arrangement were interesting. Korn was always looking for a scoop, and Westbrook was always angling for good PR. It remained to be seen how the evening would play out.
