Denim Detective

by Adrianne Lee

  She opened her eyes, and he was standing there. Beside the hospital bed. He smiled and his handsome face lit as if from within. The love in his eyes caused her heart to ache with pleasure.

  He took her hand and held it over his heart. Her pulse beat in tune with his. He didn’t speak, and she knew he needed a few minutes to rein in emotions that he would deny feeling if asked. Emotions he’d only recently shared with her. She gave him the time, reassuring him she would be okay.

  “I met Dr. Barzelli,” she said. “He’ll be performing my surgery in six weeks. He’s been reading up on my case and says there’s a new procedure for which he thinks I might be a good candidate. He’s going to give us brochures to study. But he insists I don’t do anything too strenuous between then and now.”

  “Like getting yourself buried beneath boxes and storage shelves?” Beau’s voice was gruff, the emotion not quite under control.

  He wanted to know why she’d been in the evidence room. But he hadn’t asked. Suddenly she didn’t want to ask him about Callie’s bunny. If he’d taken it home, then she needed to let it be for now. She didn’t need to invade that private moment of his grief for their daughter.

  She said, “I hoped looking at the accident photos again might jar loose a memory, or that I’d see something in the pictures that would give us some idea of how to find Callie.”

  “And did it help?” He searched her face as she had searched the photographs, the same hope in his eyes as she’d held in her heart. “Did you remember?”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head, wincing at the pain that ran across her skull. “Ouch.”

  Sympathy softened his expression. “You have a slight concussion.”

  “I know. Why don’t you get me released from this place and take me home? I need some of your special TLC.”

  “Sorry, babe. But the doctor wants you to spend the night. They’re readying you a room at this very moment.”

  “No!” Fear rushed through her. “Don’t leave me here, Beau. I’m afraid. I won’t be safe. Not here.”

  He lifted her hands and kissed them. “Ah, babe. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right at your side all night long.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” He kissed her cheek. “In fact, I’ll even post a guard outside the room once you’re settled. Okay?”

  “Okay.” She gathered a shuddery breath and sank back on the pillow, her head thumping, her hip achy.

  “Dee, I know you’re exhausted and hurting, but I have to know. Did you see who pushed the shelves over on you?”

  “No. I heard a scuffing. But then it stopped and I thought I might have imagined it, or that it was a mouse. So, I shoved the box back onto the shelf intending to get out of there. But I wasn’t quick enough.”

  “It’s very likely your being slow kept you from getting injured worse than you were.” He kissed her hand again.

  “It’s so frustrating, not being able to do something to find Callie. Did you find out anything new about T. R. Rudway?”

  “I made the calls and everything was just the way she said it would be.” He ran his hand across his hair, mussing it, frowning as if bothered by something.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Except my gut telling me something about T.R.’s past is as slick as the lady herself.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing I can put my finger on…but something seems…too pat.”

  She sighed, her frustration sitting in her throat. “Is there any news on Callie’s dress yet?”

  “Last I checked they said they’d maybe have something in the morning. They’d better—because this waiting is killing me.”

  “It’s killing me, too.”

  They held hands for a while, joined by love and fear and the thread of hope that they might soon hold their daughter once again.

  If only they could find her.

  The nurse came and wheeled Deedra to a private room. While they settled her, hooking up an IV to counter the dehydration, Beau called Heck to man the hall outside her room throughout the night.

  Once they were alone, Deedra suggested, “Maybe we should look at her note again. Maybe that will give us something to go on. It’s in my purse.”

  Nora Lee had brought the bag over from the precinct, and he’d seen the nurse place it in the room’s metal closet. He found it and handed it to her. Deedra pulled out the copied note.

  Beau sat on the edge of the bed, cradling her against him and read over her shoulder. She shivered at the end, as violently as she had when she’d first read it. But this time something struck her that hadn’t before. Maybe it was because her head hurt so badly her concentration had narrowed and shoved out extraneous matter.

  An eerie excitement caught her. “Look, Beau, she says she knows what it feels like to lose a child.”

  His gaze zeroed in on the line in question. “What has that got to do with why she’s trying to bring me to my knees?”

  “I don’t know.” She twisted around and gazed up at him. “Were you ever involved in a case where a child lost his or her life?”

  “No. God, no. You know how I feel about kids.”

  “Did you ever investigate the death of a child? Perhaps proving the prime suspect didn’t do it? A case that ended up unsolved?”

  “Never.” He released her and stood, pacing across the room, staring out the window.

  Deedra laid her head on the pillow again and shut her eyes, listening to the tumble of thoughts spinning through her brain. Bits and pieces of everything she’d believed and imagined and felt since Callie had disappeared whirled round and round in her mind like colored chips in a kaleidoscope. Suddenly a design fell into place. She levered herself up on her elbows, ignoring the pain that sprang from too many sources. “There was one case, Beau, where a child died. An unborn child.”

  Beau pivoted toward her. His tanned face went pale and filled with pain, as much from the guilt that he would always feel as from realization.

  Her voice rang with reverence, with respect for the dead mother and child, “Merry Sue Mann’s unborn baby.”

  Beau knew she was right, but his eyes darkened, grew pensive, thoughtful. He started shaking his head. “It can’t be. Mann is behind bars. He sure as hell isn’t doing this to us.”

  No. He couldn’t be. She shifted on the bed, moving gingerly to avoid more pain. “Might he have an accomplice bent on revenge?”

  Beau blinked as though she’d struck him. “You mean a family member?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Floyd Mann is a loner. He doesn’t ‘team’ well. It’s why he bailed out of the white supremacists. Or why they kicked him out. He has no family as far as I could ever discern.”

  “How about Merry Sue?” She warmed to this new idea, sensing she’d hit on the thing that had been eluding them all this time. “Did she leave behind family members who might want to avenge her death, the death of her unborn child?”

  Beau froze, his expression saying it all. He’d never considered that side of the tragedy, Merry Sue’s family’s side. “As soon as you’re released in the morning, I’ll take you home, then I’m heading to Butte to talk to Mann again.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Floyd Mann. He reminded Deedra of an ogre even more now than he had the first time she’d sat in this room and watched through the two-way mirror as Beau interrogated him. She lowered herself gingerly onto the hard plastic chair, careful of her bruised hip and grateful the sharp-edged metal shelf hadn’t stabbed into her belly. Or her neck. Or somewhere else equally vulnerable.

  The concussion had pain lingering against her temples and across her skull. She strove to ignore these physical aches and concentrated on the men in the other room.

  Just as before, Mann hunched in a metal chair across the table from Beau. Defiance scrunched his curmudgeon face. The swastika tattoos reminded her that this was not a man who’d be easy to handle. Or one who was
likely to cooperate. But he had to. He just had to.

  Mann laced his fingers together as if he wanted to be sure Beau didn’t miss the message K-I-L-L-C-O-P-S etching the flesh above his knuckles. “Walkin’ without the cane, I see,” he said, a sneer in his gravelly voice. “Too bad the damage inflicted on me won’t heal so quick. If ever.”

  Despite his worst crimes, Deedra felt a pang of empathy for Mann. She knew how it felt to have the most cherished thing in one’s life ripped away. Knew that sudden sense of irreplaceable loss. But she felt no pity for how he’d handled his grief. He’d gunned down another man, a father, and devastated another family as he’d been devastated. That kind of vengeance always came back harder on the one exacting it.

  As it ought to on the people who had snatched Callie. The ones who were still trying to destroy her and Beau.

  Beau’s face had turned steely at Mann’s barb, but she knew he would always hold himself to blame for the accidental death of Merry Sue and her unborn child. He would always regret a decision he couldn’t change, a decision that had changed not only Mann’s life but his own. Her own.

  Beau leaned on the table separating him from Mann. “What was it you said to me last time I was here? Oh, yeah. You said, ‘I ain’t the one after you. Not me.’”

  Something shifted in Mann’s watery blue eyes, and he dropped his gaze and turned his head to the side. But he didn’t deny it.

  “But you know who is, don’t you?”

  Mann ignored him.

  Beau slapped the table with his palm. Mann’s head snapped up, his eyes jumping. Beau growled. “Don’t you!”

  Mann ran his tongue over his lips. “I got my suspicions.”

  “Who?”

  He laughed, a nasty bark that held no humor but dripped of sarcasm. “What would my tellin’ you get me?”

  Deedra’s heart sank inside her chest. Mann was likely to be convicted as a cop killer and receive life in prison or the death penalty. There would be no deals for him. No lighter sentence. Nothing Beau could barter that Mann would care about enough to oblige him.

  Beau arched an eyebrow. “Tell me about Merry Sue’s family.”

  Mann’s eyes widened in amazement. Beau had landed on the truth. “How’d you…?”

  “Never mind that. Tell me about them.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and he looked as if he were about to spit at Beau. “Go to hell.”

  Desperation grabbed her stomach as tightly as a clenched belt. Mann wasn’t going to tell them anything. He had no reason to care whether or not they stopped whoever it was coming after them. No reason to care whether or not they found their missing daughter.

  But Beau wasn’t getting out of his chair. He wasn’t giving up. He eased back, settling deeper into his seat. His shoulders went slack, and he shed his cop facade. A pensive expression claimed his face and for a long moment he studied Mann. When he spoke, his voice was disarmingly soft. “My wife’s family didn’t want her to marry a cop. They didn’t think I was good enough for her. Still don’t.”

  That grabbed Mann’s attention, and Deedra felt her own eyes rounding. Her parents had never met Beau. Very likely they never would. And even if they did, whether they approved or disapproved of him would matter little to her or to Beau. But this was just a ploy. A way to make Mann think they had something in common.

  “Too bad for you,” Mann snarled.

  Beau wasn’t deterred. “I’ll bet Merry Sue’s folks hated you on sight, too, huh?”

  Deedra watched Mann flinch, and then he slumped against the chair back, the mean going out of him. “What’d they know? Bunch a white trash.”

  “Well, you have to admit you’re not exactly the clean-cut all-American boy the average mom and pop dreams their daughter will grow up and marry.”

  “Hah! Don’t go paintin’ Merry Sue’s kin as no Brady Bunch. Pa died afore she were born, and their ma raised the four of ’em on welfare and every other dodge in her bag of tricks.”

  “So, Merry Sue was the baby of the family.” Beau steepled his fingers. His dark eyebrows were low over his green eyes, thoughtful. Insightful. “Then it’s likely she was the favorite, wasn’t she?”

  “You think yer pretty smart, huh?” Mann’s watery eyes filled with tears and his voice broke. “Sure she was the favorite. She was pure as rich cream. White-blond hair hangin’ down her back. Eyes the blue of an iced-over pond. She wouldn’t hurt a critter. Not even a fly. Just shoo it on out of the cabin if it got in.”

  He put his head in his hands for the beat of two breaths and then lifted tear-filled eyes to Beau. “What’d she ever see in the likes a me?”

  Beau winced and swallowed hard. Deedra had a lump in her own throat. She knew Beau’s heart went out to the other man for the loss of the woman he’d loved. For the love of the woman he’d lost. She knew he could relate in more ways than Mann would ever learn.

  Deedra hugged herself, wishing she could hug Beau instead.

  Mann made a face, swiped at his tears, wiped his nose with his hand, and all the while gazed at Beau with a measuring stare. He tipped his head sideways, then craned his neck. “Yer sorry, ain’t you? Not just cause someone’s after yer missus, but sorry about Merry Sue and our babe?”

  Beau’s eyebrows lowered and his expression turned solemn, earnest. No longer cop and killer, now she saw only husband and father talking to husband and father.

  “Yes.” Beau nodded. “Eternally sorry.”

  Mann looked as if his throat were thick with emotion. He pressed a fist to his heart. “I like that. Yeah, I do.”

  Deedra expected he’d laugh that nasty laugh again and tell Beau he hoped he’d choke on the guilt and regret forever. She held her breath as he glanced away, sniffed hard and cleared his throat.

  Beau said, “They took my child.”

  Mann jerked back toward him. His eyes narrowed, and he studied Beau again. “Thought yer little ’un crawled into the woods and—”

  “No.” Beau interrupted.

  Deedra rubbed her fingers gently at her aching temples. She couldn’t shake the sense that time was essential. If they couldn’t get to these people and soon, they would never find Callie.

  “Merry Sue’s family took her.” Red climbed Beau’s neck, and his voice held a dangerous note. “For revenge.”

  Mann stilled, then shook his head. “An eye for an eye.”

  Deedra gasped at the reminder of her nightmare. The bull’s-eye evolving into mirrored eyes. An eye for an eye. Pain throbbed against her skull, matching the ache in her heart.

  Mann looked up as if he’d heard her gasp, staring at the mirror as if he could see her. “It ain’t right. Snatching a babe from its mama…but it wouldn’t be the first time her kin done it.”

  “What?” Beau lurched out of his chair. “They’ve done this before?”

  “I ain’t got proof. But I heared things. Was a rumor goin’ ’round Idaho about the time I met Merry Sue.”

  Beau’s brows drew together as though he were dredging an old memory, recalling an old case. “What was your wife’s maiden name?”

  “Dillard.” Mann wiped at his mouth as if he’d just spat something foul. “But that was as changeable as dirty socks. On one day, off the next.”

  Beau didn’t look surprised. “You know any of their aliases?”

  He squinted, thinking. “Nash. Bascom. That’s the only ones I heared of.”

  “Where are they?” Beau gave up all pretext of hiding his desperation. “Where do they live?”

  “Fer the sake of yer babe, I’d tell ya if’n I knowed.” Mann looked as though he meant it. “But they’s as hard to pin down as mosquitoes, flittin’ in to suck yer blood, then gone before ya can swat ’em. Could be anywheres.”

  THE DILLARDS might be “anywheres” but as Beau drove Deedra home, getting her promise to rest, he was determined to find them and find out everything he could about them. He tucked Deedra in and kissed her, then stroked near her ear, savoring the silken feel of her short hair
and baby-soft skin.

  She looked so sad and weary he wanted to climb into the bed with her, hold her and make love to her. Take all her pain and hurt and heartache into himself. He wanted to bring their little girl home to her and place her in her mother’s arms. He leaned down and brushed a kiss to her mouth. “Sleep, my love. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Beau, no.” She caught his sleeve. “Not yet. Just hold my hand a moment more, okay?”

  “Glad to.” He kept his tone and his expression light, striving to hide his distress. He wanted to give her that sense of security she so deserved. “I’m only going to the precinct. To make some calls. See what I can learn about Merry Sue Mann’s kin. It’s a place to start….”

  At long last.

  “Then you should go.” She stifled a yawn.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Go. Find our Callie. You can do it, Beau. I know you can.” Her mouth tipped slightly at the corner. The next second her eyelids fluttered shut and her breathing grew easy. There had been a time he would have had to fight for her trust. But she’d given it readily now. The knowledge heartened him. He had to end this nightmare once and for all. He had to find Callie.

  He kissed Deedra’s forehead. And left.

  At the police station, Nora Lee and Heck were at their respective desks, and Nora Lee was on the phone. At this time of day, Luanne had likely gone to her counseling session, which reminded him he would have to deal with Dr. Elle Warren and the missing tapes sometime soon. But he had more pressing concerns right now. First and foremost, protecting Deedra.

  He crossed to Heck’s desk. “I need you at the ranch to guard Deedra.”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff.” Heck shoved out of the chair. “I’m on my way.” He checked his gun, grabbed his hat and took off, boot heels echoing in his wake.

  Nora Lee was still on the phone. Beau checked his own desk for phone messages and then returned to Nora Lee’s as he heard her hang up.

  He asked, “Was that the lab?”

  “No.” Nora Lee leaned back in her chair and gazed up at him. “But they did call.”