Never Kissed Goodnight

by Edie Claire

  She sighed and checked her watch again. Surely Mason wouldn't wait too much longer. There was nothing to stop someone else from accidentally happening on his "money," not to mention the fact that the trash can could be emptied at any time.

  So where was Mason, anyway? She had looked for him as soon as she had arrived, but was certain he wasn't among the crowd. The man she was looking for would be in his mid fifties, probably not tall (given Cara's petite stature), and most likely a natural redhead gone gray. Her cousin's peculiar shade of strawberry blond hair had certainly not been inherited from her mother's side of the family, whose varied rosy hues Leigh knew to come exclusively from bottles.

  There was only one man visible who could possibly fit the bill. He was white and about the right age, but that was all. He had swarthy Italian good looks, with jet-black hair streaked with gray at the temples and dark, piercing eyes. Outwardly he looked bored, like everyone else, but his eyes periodically swept the room, and twice she had had to avert her own gaze to dodge them.

  He wasn't Mason Dublin. But—she thought with a devious smile—he could be the PI. The PI would be here too, of course, keeping watch on the very same can. She scanned the room again, following the gazes of anyone who seemed a likely suspect. What did PIs look like, anyway? She'd never seen one outside of the Hollywood rendition, and Hollywood was usually wrong about such things. Anyone Gil would hire would be a seasoned professional, and undoubtedly high-priced. But then, he would probably dress down for the occasion, to look like a traveler.

  Would he come alone? Probably. The swarthy man had wrapped his arm around the much younger woman at his side, and suddenly seemed less of a candidate. Leigh's eyes scanned over a thin, nicely dressed black man reading Forbes Magazine (too smart) and an overweight, thirty-something white man with a comic book (not smart enough) to a short, pale twenty-something man with a bushy, unkempt mustache.

  A disguise? The idea of a private detective going to a stake out with a false mustache seemed juvenile, even to her, but what did she know? Almost all the other working-age men in the room had obvious traveling companions, and she couldn't believe male PIs regularly brought women on the job just for appearances. It had to be Mr. Mustache.

  She began to watch him carefully, and was disturbed to note how infrequently he glanced toward the can. Being inconspicuous was fine, but unless the detective had peripheral vision like an owl, he was going to miss the whole shebang. She was about to decide the quack wasn't worth his salt when she realized that she wasn't, either.

  A man was standing over the trash can, rummaging like mad.

  Chapter 7

  Leigh's spine straightened, her eyes fixed on the man at the trash can. Curses. His back was to her, and he was bent over too far for her to see his face. She wiggled to the edge of her chair, but the view was no better. Should she get up and walk where she could see him clearly? Would that be too obvious? If he saw her watching him, he might think she was a PI. Or more likely, a cop. Then what would he do?

  Afraid to find out, she stayed rooted to her seat, feeling helpless. But after what was really only a few seconds, the man walked briskly away—shoe box in hand.

  Thinking no further, she rose and followed him.

  The night was cold, and she knew that Warren's jacket would bring little comfort for her bare calves, but she walked on anyway. She wouldn't follow him far—just far enough to get a good, hard look at him. And if she was careful, he would never suspect a thing.

  Her quarry made a beeline for the exit of the bus terminal, and she hung back as much as she dared. He might not be looking for a younger woman in a dress and floppy jacket, but he would certainly be worried that someone might follow him. Sure enough, he whirled around just as he reached the door, and Leigh dove into the alcove by the vending machines just in time.

  Her heart beat madly as she stood there, counting the seconds. She still hadn't gotten a good look at him. But she did now know that he was of medium height, and that what little hair remained in a ring around his bald head was an indeterminate mousy gray. He was neither heavy nor thin, but had an ageless aura that would probably allow him to pass for anything between fifty and seventy.

  Having no intention of letting him slip away, she finished her countdown and stepped out, then sprang towards the door and walked into the cold. Leigh had worked in downtown Pittsburgh for years and knew it to be a relatively safe place for a stroll; however, Saturday night at midnight was hardly an optimal time. The streets were largely deserted after hours even during the week, and though most of the business district was well lit and patrolled, the very emptiness of it held the power to spook.

  She quickly scoured Eleventh Street in both directions, and was relieved to see that the man was still in plain view, heading down Liberty Avenue at a brisk pace. What's more, a group of twenty-somethings was walking in the same direction a few paces ahead of her, making for excellent cover. She fell into step behind them, and after one of the girls gave her an initial wary glance, they ignored her.

  Their progress was slower than his, however, and after the better part of a block she was certain she would lose him. But just as she was debating whether to leave her cover and catch up, she saw him duck into the entrance of the Amtrak station.

  Eureka.

  Breaking loose from the twenty-somethings, she made for the Amtrak station as fast as her pumps would carry her. Her legs were shaky, but it wasn't the cold that was making her shiver. If anything, she was sweating up a major dry-cleaning bill. The enormity of what she was doing was wreaking havoc with her nerves. At long last, she was about to put a real face on the name Mason Dublin.

  The Amtrak station wasn't nearly as populated as the bus station, and she had no trouble locating him. He had stopped not ten feet from the door and was standing against the wall by a payphone, the shoe box at his feet.

  Leigh pivoted sideways and pretended to be studying a string of empty newspaper boxes. But he wasn't looking at her. He was staring at a piece of paper.

  She jumped as he uttered an expletive and dashed the paper to the floor. He was close to her, maybe a little too close. She could see his face clearly now, and she stared with fascination as beads of sweat broke out across his reddened forehead, a look of desperation entering his clear, light-blue eyes.

  Mason Dublin—in the flesh. All those years she and Cara had spent dreaming about him—a dashing, mysterious prince. And here he was. A ruddy-complected, tired-looking man with worry lines beyond his years. A poster child for Rogaine, and perhaps Arrid Extra Dry. She thought she had no expectations, but given the sinking feeling that was now overwhelming her, she knew she'd overestimated herself. The sad fact hit her square in the face. Mason Dublin was an ordinary schlub.

  And he was not pleased with the note in the shoe box. He turned and leaned into the wall, pressing his forehead against a raised arm. The expletives continued to flow as he struck the wall repeatedly with the opposite fist. Leigh stood frozen. She wasn't sure how he would react to the note, but this wasn't it. Anger, yes. Definitely irritation. But what she was seeing was that and more. It was closer to despair.

  He turned around again and slammed his back into the wall with a thump. Leigh watched as the anger seemed to drain out of him. His pale eyes had turned glassy, and she could swear that his rapid blinks were holding back tears.

  But why? She started forward without thinking, and the peripheral motion seemed to stir him to action. He bounced immediately off the wall and strode purposefully toward the ticket booth.

  Leigh walked to where he had been standing and picked up the pay phone receiver. It was lame cover, since she wasn't even bothering to punch the buttons, but he wasn't watching anyway. He was talking to the worker in the ticket booth.

  What now? She had seen him, and that was all that she had wanted, right? Her knees continued to knock, and she struggled to get a grip on herself. It was ridiculous that she should feel so disappointed…and so cheated. But there it was.

&n
bsp; An ordinary schlub.

  She began walking toward him with no particular plan. She had thought that seeing him would produce some sort of closure, but that wasn't happening. If anything, she felt more of a hole in her gut than ever. Who was Mason Dublin, really? Why was he so desperate to get money from his son-in-law? And what was he going to do now?

  Pretending to be next in line, she stepped close enough to overhear some of his conversation with the ticket clerk. "Could I change it again later, if I want?" he asked with a strained tone. "Or will the price go up?"

  She couldn't hear the ticket seller's response, but Mason grunted in consent, and wheeled around. Leigh ducked her head and pushed quickly up to the booth as he stomped past her.

  "What you need, Ma'am?" the man in the window asked expectantly.

  Leigh looked up at him as if he were dense, then realized that that honor belonged to her. "Um, nothing," she said sheepishly. "Sorry. I changed my mind."

  The man offered a nonjudgmental shrug, and Leigh wheeled around quickly. But Mason Dublin was nowhere in sight. She strode to the exit, clutching the jacket around her tightly.

  Let it go, Leigh, the little voice of reason in the back of her head droned. But she paid no attention. Clearly, just seeing Mason Dublin wasn't all she had really wanted. She wanted to understand him. She wanted to know how any man decent enough for her Aunt Lydie to love—and decent enough to share fifty percent of Cara's gene pool—could possibly give up a wife and child, only to blackmail them three decades later. It didn't make sense. He didn't make sense. And unfortunately for Leigh's little voice of reason, things she didn't understand bugged the hell out of her.

  She stepped back out onto Liberty Avenue and looked both ways. Nothing. How could he possibly have gotten out of sight so fast? She walked a little ways up and down the street, but no nearby alleys looked particularly promising, and even if they had, she wasn't stupid enough to go tromping down one alone at this hour. Not quite, anyway.

  A chill wind swept up her coat, and she shivered again. He was gone, end of story. Admitting defeat, she bowed her face out of the gust and headed toward the parking garage. She had just reached Eleventh Street when a rapid movement caught her eye.

  It was him again—jaywalking across the empty street with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He jogged toward the DoubleTree Hotel and the obvious object of his intentions—a lone cab. Leigh stood still and watched as he leaned down to converse with the driver, then jumped into the back seat. As the cab drove off, a string of curse words filtered through her foggy brain. It took a few seconds for her to realize it wasn't her mouth they were coming out of.

  "And who the hell, I might add, are you?" the voice continued.

  She turned to note that another man had somehow advanced on her from behind, and was now planted firmly at her left elbow. Worse yet, he was glaring at her.

  "Excuse me?" she said defensively, taking a quick step back. Logically, perhaps, she should have run screaming, but something about the man's manner belied him as a gentleman, despite his sharp words. Furthermore, she recognized him.

  "Why were you following that man just now?" he demanded, struggling to control his tone.

  Leigh didn't answer, but surveyed his tasteful business-casual outfit and intellectual-looking wire-rimmed spectacles with respect. Forbes Magazine, indeed. The man looked more like a professor than a gumshoe. Perhaps that was his intent. "You don't look like a private investigator," she said mildly, annoyed with herself for dismissing him so easily before. "But you do swear like one."

  His eyes narrowed briefly, then his face relaxed somewhat. "The important thing is that I don't look like a cop. And I repeat, who the hell are you?"

  She smiled a little. She knew she needed to be careful, since she had no proof this man really was Gil's PI, but her intuition was quite certain, and it had only rarely steered her wrong. "I'm Leigh. Perhaps your employer has mentioned me?"

  The man surveyed her critically. "You're the sister-in-law, then," he said sullenly, turning to look in the direction of the departed cab. "Though why you felt you had to be here is beyond me. I've never seen anyone do a more obvious trail job."

  Leigh bristled, but found her ego quickly deflating. Once she'd laid eyes on Mason, she'd forgotten all about the detective—and the whole point of his being there. He was supposed to be following the blackmailer, but evidently he'd been following her as well. Not too hard, since she'd made no attempt at all to look inconspicuous to anyone behind. He must think she was a nut case.

  It was a common mistake.

  "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "And I'm the cousin-in-law, actually. I just wanted to see him for myself. I didn't mean to get in the way."

  The detective's dark eyes softened a bit. "I don't think he noticed you," he said flatly. "He wasn't looking for a woman. He wasn't being very careful at all, as a matter of fact. Just got damn lucky with that cab, or I'd still have him."

  He gave her another long, studying look, his manner now all business. "Did you overhear the conversation at the ticket booth?"

  Leigh repeated what little she had heard, and he nodded in understanding. She wanted to ask him some questions of her own, but she knew he wouldn't answer them. He had only her word that she was the cousin-in-law of his employer; and in any event, he wasn't on her payroll. But she could piece most of it together for herself.

  Mason had probably planned on leaving with the money as soon as possible—perhaps the very next train. But when the deal fell through, he had changed his plans. He had switched his ticket for a later departure, retrieved his duffel bag from a locker somewhere in the terminal (undoubtedly while she was out looking for him on the street), and hailed a cab. But a cab to where?

  One thing seemed evident. He wasn't leaving Pittsburgh immediately. And if he wasn't leaving, it must be because he had something worth staying for. Like Plan B.

  Producing real evidence against her Aunt Lydie.

  Chapter 8

  Leigh paced restlessly in her apartment the next morning, far more antsy than usual after only two cups of coffee. She had tossed and turned all night, and her mind was still racing. Warren was still asleep, and though she sorely needed a sympathetic ear, she didn't want him to face the election any more sleep-deprived than he already was. Nor was she particularly anxious to explain the last twenty-four hours.

  She would have unburdened her soul last night, but she had only slipped into the apartment a few minutes before he had, and feeling chicken, she had decided to play possum. Though her husband wasn't in the same Me-Tarzan league as Gil, had he arrived to find their apartment empty two hours after she had left the party, he might have worried just a tad. Not that he was overprotective per se, but he did have a thing about wanting to know where she was and whether or not a felony had been committed.

  She wished she really had been asleep, since two nights without a full seven hours was more than her thirty-something constitution could take. But sleep hadn't come. What had come was an endless replay of Mason Dublin's face as he read the note in the shoe box: furious, dispirited, and completely alien. A blackmailer. A bank robber. A wonderful woman's biological father.

  The images conflicted in a big way. In fact, the whole puzzle seemed more disturbing—and lacking in crucial pieces—than it had been before she had seen the man. So what had happened after she left? The PI's car had been parked too far away for him to give chase personally, but he had jotted down the cab's number. When would he report to Gil? She had tried calling the farm and Cara's cell phone, but her cousin had the annoying habit of ignoring both, and though Gil had his own phone, Leigh didn't have his number.

  She glanced at her watch. Her mother's plane was due in this morning, and for once, Leigh couldn't wait to talk to her. There would be no more pussyfooting about Mason and Lydie's stormy past. Frances knew the whole truth, and Leigh intended to drag every bit of it out of her as soon as she stepped off the gangway.

  "Your mother will be jetlagged," her
father had said succinctly when she had called him at dawn to suggest she make the airport run herself. He hadn't bothered recommending that she let Frances unpack and get settled before the onslaught; they both knew that wasn't going to happen.

  After one last attempt to get through to Cara and Gil, Leigh scrawled a note to Warren and attached it to the coffee maker with a sigh. They usually enjoyed Sunday "muffin" mornings together, but this week it wasn't to be. She'd even forgotten the donuts she'd promised him. But maybe if she was lucky, he'd still be home at lunchtime.

  She arrived at the airport right on schedule, but as her mother's plane had been delayed, she was forced to burn off her anxiety by pacing the Airmall. Pittsburgh was blessed with a nice one, and after finding some comfort in an oversized bakery muffin and chocolate sampler, she headed back to the gate.

  The weary passengers lumbered out the tunnel doorway like rejects from a sleep experiment, and Leigh's heart beat fast as she waited for her mother to appear. Getting information out of Frances wasn't all that easy under the best of circumstances, and this information was particularly sensitive. She was in the midst of deciding to change her plan of attack—again—when her mother finally appeared.

  At least she thought it was her mother. The normally impeccably groomed, pearl-decked Barbara Bush impersonator she called Mom appeared to have been replaced by a much more hip woman in a wrinkled sweatsuit and—Leigh blinked just to make sure—sneakers.

  She approached the strange woman with apprehension. "Mom?" She asked tentatively.

  "Leigh?" Frances answered with equal suspicion. "Where’s your father? Is he all right?"

  "He's fine," she replied with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I just offered to come get you myself, that's all."

  Frances's eyebrows rose instantly. "Are you all right?"