“Both names are hers. Noelle’s her middle name.”
“That a fact? I got their wedding invitation. I must’ve known it then. Daryl rang me up a couple of times a month. Noelle’s all I ever heard him call her.”
“Gilly said he liked that name better. From the time they met, he insisted she drop Gillian. I figure he must have been pretty scared to phony an ID for her the way he did.”
Pain flashed in the old man’s eyes. “I keep thinking if maybe I hadn’t been so busy looking down the road at retirement, he might’ve opened up to me earlier.”
“Sounds to me as if he came to you when he was ready. Gilly said Daryl didn’t do anything on the spur of the moment.”
“True. He was methodical as a kid. Used to drive me nuts. Noreen, too. That boy wasn’t to be rushed.”
“Since you knew him so well, do you have any thoughts on what he might have done with the all-important key?”
“I guess Noelle told you we searched the car and everything she owned. In fact, we’d finished a thorough shakedown of her car and suitcases a few minutes before Capputo and Turpin ran me down.”
“She told me. She traded the car because she was afraid they’d track her through the one they’d been following.”
“Smart gal, ain’t she?”
“Very. Are you avoiding my question about the key?”
“Not at all. I’m blamed if I have any idea what the boy did with the damn thing. I spent some time thinking it over while I was flat on my back in the hospital. Especially as the days wore on and the department didn’t bring me word of any Jane Does matching her description.”
They sat for a moment, eyeing one another.
“Of course, I wasn’t looking for a redhead with short hair,” Malone admitted.
“There’s always the possibility Daryl never had time to hide the documents, and then return to where he stored the automobile. Or maybe he died with the key on him.”
“Could be. Only Daryl was precise. According to his e-mail, his wife had the key. I was left with the feeling that it wouldn’t be easy to find unless we knew where to look. Daryl said he thought the client was on to him. He said he’d be in touch through a safer channel and that he’d give me all the information then. Next thing, Noelle shows up at the station, in a panic, saying people were after her and Daryl had been shot down on his porch.”
Mitch continued to mull over the situation in his head. He usually tried to put himself in a victim’s shoes. Now he wondered how Daryl McGrath would think, what steps he’d take. To do a credible job, Mitch needed to know a lot more about Gilly’s ex.
At that moment, she appeared in the doorway carrying two trays of piping hot stew. Thick pieces of buttered bread sat on side plates next to frosty glasses of iced tea. She handed one tray to Mitch, then eased the hospital table across Patrick’s bed. Gillian unwrapped his silverware and tucked the napkin securely under his chin.
“Aren’t you going to tuck my napkin in?” Mitch teased.
Gillian danced across the floor on her toes, batting her eyes like a caricature of a ditzy waitress. “Certainly, sir. If you’d break your arm, I’d be happy to oblige.”
Patrick guffawed. “Being in this contraption does have some advantages.”
“What might those be?” Noreen asked her brother as she whisked through the room bearing her tray and Gillian’s.
“Noelle spread out my napkin nice and neat, and placed my spoon right in my hand. You could take some lessons, wench.”
“I’ll wench you,” his sister muttered. “If I start giving you the royal treatment you’ll be wanting to move in permanently.”
“Tell her, Mitch. A man would sooner be locked up in prison than spend his days lazing about in bed.”
Mitch clapped a hand over his heart. “I try never to argue with a pretty woman. But,” he drawled, letting Noreen preen a bit, “in this instance, I have to vouch for what Patrick says.”
“Enough baloney,” Noreen chided. “Eat.”
Mitch noted that the banter had cheered the older couple, who were obviously getting weary of each other’s constant company.
“This stew is excellent,” Gillian praised when everyone had fallen silent. “It’s even better than Bert’s, isn’t it, Mitch?”
“If you ever tell Bert I said so, you’ll be toast. But, yes, it’s great, and I’m a stew connoisseur.”
Noreen snapped Mitch’s leg with her napkin. “I know you’re trying to get back in my good graces. It might work, young man, but you’ll have to compliment my homemade bread, too.”
“Yum,” was all Mitch said.
“Well, that’ll do. Now, about your situation… I’d like to offer you and Gilly the use of my condominium in Sedona as a hideout.” She smiled fleetingly. “I suppose with all those words of flattery about my stew—which, I might add, one person in this room doesn’t appreciate— I’ll have to toss in my biweekly visits to the spa, as well. That, my dears, is pampering at its best.”
Mitch’s eyebrows shot straight up.
Leaning toward Patrick, Gillian whispered, “Where’s Sedona?”
“Are you kidding?” Mitch yelped. “Sedona is the heart of the Red Rock Country. In other words, one step down from heaven.”
Noreen had obviously decided earlier to make them the offer. She took a key out of her apron pocket, and a hand-drawn map. She passed both to Mitch.
He accepted them eagerly, and began at once to scan the map.
Gillian stiffened primly. “A few minutes ago, I made up my mind. I’m not running again,” she said, setting her tray aside.
Mitch glanced up and saw she was serious. “Gilly, this condo is the answer to a prayer. Sedona teems with tourists. You’ll be able to get lost in the crowd. It won’t be for more than a couple of weeks. With the information Patrick supplied, Ethan will nab those bastards in short order.”
“They’re slippery,” Patrick added. “The number-one question is, can your friend hold them for any length of time after he nabs them?”
“Long enough to place a bug in the ear of the New Orleans police. If there’s even one solid bit of proof that they’re involved in Daryl’s murder—” Mitch snapped his fingers “—they’ll be extradited like that.”
In spite of the fact that everyone in the room seemed to agree, Gillian stubbornly dug in her heels. “A minute ago we were all laughing,” she said wistfully. “I want to live like that again. I simply can’t face spending the rest of my life looking over one shoulder. I want what I haven’t had in a long time. A normal life. I won’t get that hiding in a borrowed condominium. Not only that, if the leader in all this has the power you and Patrick say he has, what’s to prevent him from sending another team of assassins after me? And then another?”
“She has a point,” Patrick admitted hesitantly.
Mitch raked his fingers through his hair. “Your plan would be to do what, Gilly?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.” She shrugged. “Why put anyone else at risk? What if I sent word that I wanted to meet with them?”
“Oh, great. So they could blow you away in a park or something?”
“No.” Gillian pursed her lips, and swung one foot rapidly, a sure sign she was irritated. “Surely they wouldn’t shoot me in…say, a busy coffee house.”
Patrick was already shaking his head. “Are you forgetting they gunned Daryl down in a residential district with neighbors looking on? And tried to run you down in a police parking lot, getting me by accident? I don’t like it. Furthermore, where would that get you? You don’t have what they want, so you have no bargaining chip.”
“Amen.” Mitch stood, looming over Gillian. “You aren’t dealing with rational human beings, Gilly. These people have no ethics.”
“Then I’ll just have to find the key. Maybe I missed it in my old car. I’ll explain to the man I sold it to. I’ll buy it back. If need be, we can tear the whole automobile apart.”
“Okay, I concede to that. We’ll buy it
back and drive it to Sedona. A week, Gilly, give me a week to make some headway cracking this case. If seven days go by and Ethan and I haven’t made any progress, we talk about trying it your way.”
She nibbled on a fingernail. Tension all but crackled in the room. Ultimately, Noreen injected the deciding factor.
“Take a good look at how Mitch limps. Stop and consider how long Patrick’s been attached to those ropes and weights. And they’re walking in clover compared to Daryl. Ask yourself if a week is too much time to invest in your health and well-being. Your future.”
Gillian flipped a red curl out of her eyes. “Thank you. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Mitch, I’m going to listen to you and Patrick. After all, you two are experts in these matters. I think I’ve just been on the run for so many weeks, I’m ready to disregard caution and take back my life. Since you’re all sure that no one else will be injured on my account, I’ll agree to hibernate for a week.”
“A week.” Mitch slowly let out the breath he’d been holding. Although he and the seasoned cop swapped looks of dismay, they both pasted on sunny smiles for Gillian’s benefit.
“Noreen. Patrick.” Mitch took first one wrinkled hand, then the other. “I hate to eat and run, but I’ve got a lot of holes to plug. I’d better get started.”
“Noreen will see you out. If I think of anything else that’ll be of help, I’ll give you a jingle at the condo.”
Mitch snapped his fingers. “Glad you reminded me.” He pulled a card out of his wallet. “Ignore the title. The cell phone’s a good number and less traceable.”
Gillian kissed Patrick’s forehead and Noreen’s cheek. “You’ve been so kind. Daryl knew he was lucky to have you step in for his folks. I’m sorry we never managed to get together while he and I were married, and before…before…” Her voice broke.
“It’s all right, Noelle. Lord willing, we’ll all be around a week from now and we’ll see each other then. You two take care, okay?”
“We will, sir, and thanks for everything.” Mitch handed Gilly his handkerchief to blot her eyes as they walked out.
“Mitch,” Gillian murmured in the dark confines of the car some time later. They were well on their way back to Desert City. “If anything happens, if this doesn’t work out, I want you to know—”
“Everything’s going to work out,” he said fiercely to halt her morbid train of thought.
He sounded so confident, Gillian sank back and closed her eyes. She fell asleep at once and dreamed of endless, happy nights in the company of Mitch Valetti.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IN THE LOWER basement of the Desert City police station, Mitch, Gillian and Ethan clustered around a computer screen, reading the criminal records of Foss Turpin and Lenny Capputo. Ethan had pulled them from the national database.
Mitch leaned away from the screen first, rocked in his chair, and picked up a metal ruler, which he bent back and forth, trying to ignore the burning in his gut.
Gillian slid off her perch on the corner of Ethan’s desk, and cleared her throat. “If those men have been arrested so many times and they’ve done all the terrible things listed there, how can they still be running around free?”
“That’s the downside of police work,” Ethan said, still flipping through screens. “If cops make one minor error in the arrest and booking process, the perp walks. There’s a lot of money driving big crime syndicates. They hire the best, craftiest lawyers money can buy. An even uglier truth is that sometimes they use their dirty money to grease palms throughout a justice system that should be on our side.”
“I hate to appear naive,” Gillian murmured. “But those Lenny and Foss characters have been accused of heinous crimes. They associate with known drug lords, pimps and assassins.”
“They aren’t your average boys next door, that’s for sure,” Ethan agreed, pausing to open a pack of gum and pass it around.
Mitch’s brooding expression prompted Gillian to continue. “I’ve probably said this before, but I’ll say it again. Daryl wasn’t the type of person to get mixed up with anyone of that ilk.”
Mitch flung the ruler down on the desk with a loud pop. “You have said it before, Gilly. So did Sergeant Malone. Tell us more about Daryl. Ethan and I need background details so we can ferret out what triggered your ex-husband’s plunge into underworld activities.”
“Be candid,” Ethan urged.
“Candid? Of course,” Gillian whispered. “It seems eons since Daryl and I met. Funny how a person you think you know so well becomes a total stranger.”
Ethan crumpled his coffee cup and tossed it into an overflowing wastebasket. Mitch dragged a straight chair over, turned it around and straddled it. He patted the seat of the swivel chair he’d vacated, indicating Gillian should sit, too.
“How far back do you want me to go?”
Ethan sent a hard look toward Mitch. “If it’s not too uncomfortable, start where you met and got married.”
“In a Midwest college. We both worked to pay our fees and expenses, which excluded us from the in crowd. We didn’t fall crazy in love, at least not in the way my girlfriends described.” Gillian couldn’t take her eyes off Mitch while she revisited her past. Did he understand that Daryl had never exhilarated her with a touch? Not like Mitch did.
“In the beginning, we met mostly in the library. If neither of us had to work, we’d go to a coffee house and talk. Back then, we talked openly about our feelings and dreams. I majored in horticulture, Daryl in accounting. After our marriage fell apart, I realized we’d stopped communicating. Twenty hours a day, Daryl immersed himself in his numbers. I kept my nose in gardening magazines. In bed, where most couples communicate,” she said, blushing brightly, “Daryl stayed awake half the night playing number games. He was especially fond of those pattern analysis books available through Mensa. He kept stacks of them beside the bed. Neat stacks.”
“Yet you both achieved your goals,” Mitch said thoughtfully.
“Our professional goals,” Gillian corrected. “We were so focused on career success, somewhere along the way our personal objectives got canceled out.”
A strange expression flickered over Ethan’s face. “Regan and I discussed that very problem recently. Work, family and community activities all conspire to steal a couple’s time from each other.”
Gillian shook her head vigorously. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
Mitch shifted a hip and rubbed at a stitch developing in his side. “We’re veering off track. What does any of this have to do with Daryl taking on a client tied to a crime syndicate?”
“You’re the one who wanted to know everything about him,” Gillian said defensively.
“Let her tell it her way, Mitch.”
Mitch had fallen hard for this woman, and he discovered belatedly that he didn’t want to hear intimate details about her life with a former lover. Glowering at Ethan, Mitch crossed his arms over the chair back. Closing his eyes, he rested his forehead on his wrists and slowly counted to ten.
“To make a long story short,” Gillian resumed in a less sure voice, “we moved to New Orleans to be closer to Daryl’s only sibling. Conrad owns and operates a successful antique import shop there. Daryl and I devoted our lives to making our businesses as profitable as Conrad’s. It seemed to me that he was always challenging Daryl to do better. After a few years, money was less tight for us. I was able to hire part-time help at the flower shop. I thought it was time to start our family. To my dismay, Daryl didn’t agree.”
In the drawn-out silence following her statement, Mitch and Ethan both heard what Gillian didn’t say: Daryl McGrath hadn’t wanted baby Katie.
“I waited six months before taking a second stab at changing his mind. By then he was even more adamant. I take full blame for the decision I made to stop taking birth control pills. At the time, I convinced myself that if I got pregnant Daryl would really be happy. I was wrong. So very wrong. A husband and wife should reach agreement on such an important issue.” G
illian’s voice dropped to a stricken whisper.
Mitch catapulted to his feet. His chair fell over with a crash. “Let’s go,” he ordered, righting the chair, then tugging Gillian to her feet.
Ethan also scrambled up. “Mitch, for God’s sake, what’s gotten into you? We were finally getting to some possible reasons McGrath reversed character and went off the deep end.”
“None of these details changes your job, partner. You have to track down Capputo and Turpin and bring them in for questioning. If a mob attorney shows up to bail them out, you phone New Orleans and request extradition. With Gilly safe in Sedona, I’ll be free to follow them to Louisiana to see who intervenes. Or I’ll hire Bob Wentzel to go.”
“I don’t need you telling me how to do my job.”
Gillian placed herself between them. “Please! I won’t have you trashing your friendship on my account.”
No one moved for a heated moment. Then both men visibly cooled off.
Ethan was the one who finally set Gilly’s mind at ease. “We’ve had worse fights. If our friendship isn’t stronger than a few arguments, it deserves to die.”
Mitch neither concurred nor disagreed. He unfolded the address Noreen Malone had given him and scribbled it in Ethan’s notebook. “We’re going to your house now. Odella should be back with Gilly’s clothes. Then I’ll run home and pack a bag. We’ll swing by Dave’s place and ask him to keep an eye on the ranch. It’ll be late when we reach Sedona. First, we’re going down south to try to buy back Gilly’s car. I’ll drop it off at Impound if you’ll submit a request to have it shaken down for any sign of a key.”
Ethan nodded. “Hey, what are your plans for Trooper while you’re gone? You can’t take him to some posh condo.”
“Maybe Dave…”
“What about Jeremy? He’s been bugging my folks for a dog. I promised him I’d do what I could to convince them. This will give him a chance to see if he can handle school and a dog. Plus, he’ll continue Trooper’s training.”
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