Cold Target

by Potter, Patricia;

  But it was the only property within her budget that allowed pets. And that was one promise she’d made to her son. “Can I paint it?” she asked.

  The agent grinned at her. “I’m sure the owner will be delighted at any improvements.”

  “He lives here?”

  “She,” he corrected. “Marty Miller. She owns Special Things, a gallery off Main Street. She’ll probably come over to see if you need anything.”

  Holly paid two months rent in advance. She did not want any credit checks.

  She used the name from the cemetery—Elizabeth Baker—on the application. She’d used another alias when she’d purchased the car. She’d also asked Mikey to pick a name he liked. A game they were playing, she told him. What was his favorite name in the world? After long deliberation, he’d decided on Harry, from Harry Potter. Harry went on adventures, too.

  An adventure. She had been able to convince him thus far that this was a grand adventure. But eventually he would start asking about his father. He would want his toys and his preschool and his friends.

  She tucked that thought away as she checked out of the motel, purchased some groceries and moved them both into the tiny house. Then, following the agent’s directions, she took her son—now Harry—to the animal shelter. That, she knew, would both distract and cheer him.

  There were twenty dogs. Harry went from one cage to another, enchanted by all of the mostly nondescript mongrels who eyed him longingly. “I want them all,” he said.

  The volunteer smiled. “I think I know the perfect dog for a young man.”

  Harry beamed at the description.

  She went to the next to the last cage and unlocked the door, coming out with a scruffy-looking, half-grown dog. The dog squirmed in her arms until she put him down. He walked over to Harry, wagged his tail, sniffed him briefly, then sat in front of him as if to say, “You’re satisfactory. I pick you.”

  “He’s been house-trained,” the volunteer said. “The woman who had him became ill and went to live with a relative who turned out to be allergic to dog hair. It broke her heart. I would have taken him myself, but I’ve already adopted four dogs.”

  “Does he have a name?” Holly asked.

  “Caesar.”

  “A noble name for a …” She stopped for fear of hurting her son’s feelings. He obviously thought the dog very handsome. She’d had a puppy in mind, but Mikey—no, Harry—was on his knees, his arms around the animal as it slurped its tongue against his cheek.

  She’d never had a dog and always wanted one. Her parent said no, and so had her husband when they were first married. She should have left then. She should have realized …

  But then she wouldn’t have Mikey. She caught herself. She had to start thinking of him as Harry.

  “We’ll take him,” she said.

  “He’s had his shots. You need to bring him in next month to be neutered,” the volunteer said, then paused. “You’ve had a dog before?”

  Suddenly afraid the woman might jerk the dog away if she said no, Holly nodded. Maybe nodding wasn’t as big a lie as actually mouthing the words.

  Moments later she had paid the fee, filled out the form with her new address and received a free leash, a pamphlet advising how to be a good dog owner, as well as a voucher that was good for neutering.

  “By the way, my name is Julie,” the volunteer said, peering at the address. “I see you’re new in town and I know how lonely that can be. I give a free obedience class once a month. Please come if you’re interested.” She wrote down a time and place.

  “Thank you.”

  “And call me if you have any problems with Caesar. We take them back if they don’t work out. No blame. Don’t just abandon him.”

  “No, I won’t. I wouldn’t.”

  “Perhaps I can visit and see how he is doing.”

  “I … don’t have a phone yet.” Holly suddenly realized for the first time that she might not be able to get one. She supposed they did check credit ratings or at the very least require a Social Security number.

  So many things to consider. Despite all the small accomplishments she’d made today, her heart sank. How could she do this? She was sure to make a mistake.

  How many mistakes had she already made?

  She forced herself to push that thought aside. She thanked Julie and invited her to stop by the house they had rented.

  The dog sat primly beside Harry in the car seat she’d toted across half the country. Her son was not going to let Caesar get more than an inch away from him. Caesar seemed content as well, occasionally putting one paw on his lap.

  She had to buy some dog food, but it was too hot to leave the dog in the car while she shopped for it. Caesar would eat human fare tonight.

  Human. She suddenly realized she felt human for the first time in years. Perhaps fear made her feel alive. Or was it the freedom? Yet she wasn’t really free. She had killed a man.

  The pleasure of the day faded. She was reminded of something else she needed to do today once they got the dog home. She wanted to go to the library and check the Internet for Louisiana newspapers. There would be news stories about her disappearance. A lot of them. She was, after all, the daughter of a judge, the wife of a rising state senator.

  However, she had seen nothing in the newspapers she’d purchased when traveling from Florida to Arizona, nor had she heard anything on the television. She’d held her breath every time she’d turned it on.

  But now she had to get to their new home and make it theirs. She had to find metal for her work. If she didn’t sell something soon, they would be in trouble. Perhaps tomorrow she would take the two sculptures she had brought from home to the various galleries and gauge their interest.

  She had to earn a living. Something she’d never done before.

  She wouldn’t let herself think it could all come to a screeching halt today, tomorrow, next week, next year.

  She wouldn’t think about it. She couldn’t, and keep going.

  NEW ORLEANS

  Meredith rang the doorbell of her parents’ house at six-thirty in the morning.

  She didn’t just barge in. Never had. Doubted that she ever would. Once she’d moved out on her own, she’d never again considered the house on Chestnut Street her home. If, indeed, it had ever seemed like home.

  Built in the early 1800s, the house now resembled a museum. There had never been a newspaper lying around or a cup of coffee left on a table for more than a moment. A book left in the living area might well disappear forever.

  Her father did not like disorder.

  Mrs. Edwards, the housekeeper, opened the door. She was always “Mrs.,” never Maude, although she had been with the family for nearly ten years. Her father hated change and was willing to pay a premium price for consistency.

  The housekeeper’s homely face wreathed into a smile. “Miss Meredith. Good to have you home.”

  “Thank you. Is my father here? I’d hoped to join him for breakfast.”

  “Six-thirty sharp, just like always,” she said. Then the smile slipped from her face. “Almost like always, ’cept Mrs. Rawson isn’t here.” She hesitated, then added, “Any news about Mrs.… your mama?”

  “Not good, Mrs. Edwards.”

  “I should go to see her.”

  “She wouldn’t recognize you,” Meredith said. “It’s all right. My father needs you here.”

  “I’ll bring you breakfast. Two eggs over light?”

  “You know me well. Thank you.”

  “The griddle is still hot. It will just take a few minutes.”

  “I’ll go with you and get my coffee.”

  She followed Mrs. Edwards into the large kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, then went into the dining room.

  Her father was reading the newspaper as he ate. He looked up when she came in. “Meredith. This is a surprise.” His eyes regarded her critically. “You look like hell.”

  “Probably because I stayed with Mother last night.”


  “I hear accusation in your voice.”

  She was startled. He usually didn’t hear anything he didn’t want to hear. “Probably,” she said. “Don’t you want to know how she is?”

  “I know. I talked to the doctor this morning. For your information, I also talked to him last night. He said she was in a coma. She wouldn’t know I was there.”

  “She might.”

  Some emotion crossed his perfectly blank face, surprising her.

  “Are you going to see her today?” Meredith couldn’t keep the question from her tongue.

  He gave her the piercing look she had seen him give opposition witnesses.

  “She was awake yesterday,” Meredith said, wanting to startle a reaction from him.

  He frowned. “I thought she was in a coma.”

  “That was later,” she said.

  “Is that why you came this morning? To instruct me on my husbandly duties?” His voice had taken on a decided frost.

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “Then what exactly?”

  Meredith was not easily intimidated, but she had to admit her father still made her nervous. Old habits died hard. Especially after thirty years of seeking his approval.

  Mrs. Edwards appeared with a plate loaded with two eggs, croissants, and fruit, and disappeared just as discreetly.

  “Mom asked me to do something for her,” Meredith said.

  His head snapped up. “What?”

  “Did … did you know she’d had a baby? Before me?”

  His face paled. She realized immediately he had known.

  It was like a blow in her stomach. Secrets. So many secrets in this house. Was that why it was so cold, so … empty? Even when filled with people?

  “Don’t rummage around in the past,” he said.

  “She asked me to find her. She wants me to share the trust fund she saved for me, for us.”

  “That doesn’t give you pause?”

  She knew exactly what he meant. “No. I earn all that I need.”

  He shook his head as if he could not imagine how she came to be his daughter. “Your mother is full of drugs. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “Are you telling me that it didn’t happen?”

  “You know your mother. Can you believe …?”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t know either of you,” she said tightly. “I realize you don’t love each other, but—”

  “You know nothing, miss,” he said sharply. He very carefully folded his napkin and placed it next to his plate, then rose. “I have to go to the office before court.”

  “We haven’t finished talking.”

  “I have.”

  “I’m going to find her.”

  He spun around. “The hell you are! You want to ruin your mother’s reputation, everything she worked to build? She cared about what people thought.”

  “Did she? Or was that you?” she asked quietly.

  “You’ve thrown away everything I’ve tried to give you,” he said. “Don’t lecture me.”

  She knew what he was doing. By attacking her, he could avoid her questions. “What do you know?” she persisted, her anger rising. He knew something. His eyes told her he knew something. The way he avoided her questions told her he knew something. He wasn’t the only attorney in the family. She knew the techniques as well as he did.

  He turned away without another word. She heard him walk down the hallway, his steps not quick and determined as they usually were. The door opened and shut behind him.

  She had more questions now than before.

  Once in his office, Charles Rawson picked up the phone.

  He didn’t bother with the niceties. “Meredith knows about her half sister. She’s going to try to locate her.”

  “There’s no trail. I made sure of that.”

  “She’s persistent. She can be obstinate.”

  “Stop her.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “I’m not asking you to try. Just do it.”

  Charles felt trapped. “She promised her mother.”

  “Marguerite?”

  “She’s very ill. She asked—”

  “You assured me your wife would not say anything. To anyone.”

  Charles didn’t answer that. At one time, he could make that assertion. But now …

  Up until now, he’d had a threat. He’d had a control that he had used mercilessly, partly because his wife had never loved him. He had loved her, enough in fact to sacrifice all his ambitions. But she had spent years telling him in so many ways that she was with him out of necessity rather than love. Perhaps she’d even stayed to punish him.

  And she had. Nearly every day of their lives.

  Never once had she told him she loved him. He couldn’t bear to see her now, a shadow of the vibrant girl she’d once been. He knew he had been responsible for the fading of colors. And now she was dying, withering away as a malignant disease rampaged through her body, and still the rejection was in her eyes.

  “She’s dying, for God’s sake.”

  “Fix the problem,” came the voice with the chilling threat.

  The phone went dead.

  Charles replaced the receiver in the cradle and sat still for a moment. What if he had told Marguerite years ago where her daughter was? He knew the answer only too well. She never would have stopped trying to get her back.

  He’d sold his soul to the devil a long time ago, and it was far too late to repent.

  Now he had placed his own daughter in jeopardy. Unless he could stop her from continuing this damned quest.

  A knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  His young associate entered. “It’s time, sir.”

  Charles looked at his watch. He pasted on his confident smile for the benefit of young Hart. The case had not been going well. He knew it. His firm was defending a chemical company that had taken shortcuts in a small community east of New Orleans and dumped dangerous chemicals near a stream. People had sickened. One child had died.

  He could read juries. It had always been his strength. He saw the verdict already in their faces—the way their expressions tightened when they looked at him and softened as they looked at the defendants.

  The defense was that rogue employees had done the illegal dumping on their own. Two men even admitted it and had been arrested. The question was the company’s culpability.

  The company was his law firm’s largest client. He’d been steadily losing clients, and the loss of this one would mean he would have to dismiss several associates.

  He wasn’t going to let Braden Hart know that. The young man was the brightest of his associates. Charles had even once hoped that Meredith might become interested in him.

  But neither Meredith nor Hart had seemed interested in each other.

  Dammit, but Meredith had become one hell of a stubborn woman, totally unlike the girl who had craved his approval as a child. He had wanted a son, but a complication with Meredith’s birth had prevented Marguerite from having another child even if she had been willing. He’d then tried to make Meredith into his son. She had been compliant until a few years ago.

  He still didn’t know why she’d turned away from his tutelage.

  In recent years, she had discarded all his plans for her. She’d quit her position with the DA’s office. The DA’s office was the fastest way to be noticed in legal circles. But just as she’d acquired a reputation as a real comer, she’d quit. Her clients now included the down and out, the dregs of society.

  He suspected she did it to spite him. He had pushed too hard.

  He’d lost her.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Hart, turning his thoughts to the next few hours. He would be cross-examining one of the men who said he had, on his own, dumped the chemicals. That he had been told to take them to a regulated site.

  If the man was to be believed, it would put the onus on him. He would be liable, and he had nothing.

  If was a big word.
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  As he strode from his office, he tried to concentrate and not think of Marguerite. There was nothing he could do for her. The doctors said she would probably not come out of the coma.

  Even so, he hesitated to visit. He was, he knew, the last person she’d want to see.

  Why had she opened Pandora’s box now?

  Revenge? Had what happened so many years ago festered inside even more than he’d ever wanted to believe?

  He only knew he had to do something to stop his daughter before she destroyed them all.

  four

  NEW ORLEANS

  Sarah, Meredith’s paralegal, was in her own cubicle when Meredith arrived at her office.

  Sarah’s face creased with concern when she saw her. “You look beat.”

  “I slept on a cot in my mother’s room last night and stopped to have breakfast with my father this morning.”

  Surprise widened Sarah’s eyes, but thankfully she made no comment about the breakfast. “How is your mother?”

  “She slipped into a coma yesterday. The doctor doesn’t seem to think she’ll come out of it.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “A personal favor?”

  “Anything. You know that, boss.”

  “What about robbing a bank?”

  “Un-huh. Miss Law and Order asking that? I don’t think so. So what can I do?” A widow and the sole support of two children, Sarah had previously worked in the district attorney’s office. Meredith had stolen her when she left.

  An attorney on her or his own needed a great paralegal, and Sarah had been the best one in the DA’s office. She’d given up a safe job with health benefits to go with Meredith. In turn, Meredith had given Sarah the flexibility to be with her children when necessary.

  Sarah would sometimes work at home, and that was fine with Meredith. The electronic age made it possible.

  The kicker in wooing Sarah away had been Meredith’s promise to make law school possible for Sarah through flexible hours, salary advances and recommendations. She intended to see that promise kept.

  The only other permanent member of her staff was Becky Thomas, who served as bookkeeper and general secretary.

  “Where’s Becky?”