What the Lady Wants

by Jennifer Crusie

  "Big deal. So are mine. We both handled it last night." Mitch frowned. "How the hell did they get Mae's prints?"

  "They took them from her room."

  "And while they were doing that, she skipped?"

  "No, she skipped while they were arresting Carlo. For vandalizing your car."

  Mitch started. "I didn't call in a police report on that yet."

  "Newton did it for you last night. He told the police it was probably Carlo. The Riverbend PD is very enthusiastic about Carlo. That bit with the finger really annoyed them, and then they showed up at Mae's with the warrant and got him as a bonus. They're pretty pleased in general."

  Mitch put his head on the steering wheel. "So now Carlo thinks I turned him in. Great. The last time he thought somebody ratted on him, Armand died. Thank you, Newton."

  "Forget Carlo. Think Mae. As soon as you find her, bring her in."

  "I don't know where—"

  "Don't mess with me on this, Mitch." Nick looked grim. "As soon as you find her, bring her to me, and I will go with her to the police. This fugitive bit is not good. We've got to get her off the street."

  "I don't want her to have an arrest record."

  "I may be able to stall them on that." Nick shifted in his seat. "They've got enough to charge her, but I don't think they're happy about it. They're not dumb, these guys. If I can guarantee she'll stay put, they may release her to me. But she's got to come in. If they find her, they'll arrest her, and all I'll be able to do is mop up."

  "And get her off," Mitch prompted.

  "That, too, but let's hope to hell it never gets to court. Mae's awfully photogenic. She could be the Hard Copy flavor-of-the-month."

  "Oh, hell."

  "Forget that for now. Just find her." Nick started to get out of the car. "Oh, I forgot. What do you want me to do about the eviction?"

  "Find out who's evicting me, for starters. But I have a pretty good idea whose behind it."

  Nick nodded. "Sure. I'll get somebody on it. Wrongful eviction. Financial harassment. I'll make something up. Anything else while I'm at it? Paternity suit? Breach of promise? Prenuptial?''

  "Nah. Mae can have anything I've got."

  Nick grinned. "You and Mae, huh?"

  "You don't sound very surprised."

  "I'm a lawyer. Nothing surprises me."

  Mitch shook his head. "Nothing used to surprise me until I met Mae. Now everything does."

  Nick's expression sobered. "Find her, Mitch."

  Mitch nodded. "That's my plan."

  Mae had walked for an hour before she realized where she was going.

  She stopped and looked at the tree-lined, brick-paved street. Armand's town house was just around the corner.

  Where would the police look for her first? Gio's or Claud's, probably. Work, definitely. Mitch's, maybe.

  And sooner or later, Armand's place. But probably later.

  She turned the corner and walked to Armand's front door, fumbling in her purse for the key so she could unlock the door and get inside as swiftly as possible. But once inside the cool dimness of the hall, she stood trembling, finally reacting to the shock of the police. "They're here for you," Carlo had said, and she'd accepted it at once. Carlo knew about police. If he said they'd come for her, they had.

  And it could only be for one thing. Somebody was finally taking her lie about Armand's death seriously.

  She moved slowly through the archway into the living room, listening to see if anyone else was in the house. It seemed filled with the empty silence that only deserted places have, a desolation born of loss. People had been happy here once, and now it was empty. She could feel the unhappiness in her groin, like a cramp, and she ached for Stormy and what she had lost. Even though Armand had been a jerk, Stormy had still loved him, and in his own way, he'd loved her. And love was a terrible thing to lose.

  She knew that because now she had love to lose. She had Mitch.

  She sank onto the soft amber couch and tried to think.

  She couldn't stay here too long. Sooner or later, they'd come here, if only to look for clues. The temptation to go upstairs and crawl into a bed and never come out again was overwhelming. She could live there forever, going out into the garden at night to see the stars. It would be a sanctuary, and she could stay there alone forever and no one would hurt her.

  Except that someone had to take care of June and Harold, and the police would definitely show up sooner or later, and there were no sanctuaries. There were no safe places in life. That's why you had to keep moving.

  And besides, she didn't want to be alone. She wanted to be with Mitch.

  Think, she told herself, but she didn't know enough to puzzle out what was happening to her. Something had happened to all that money, but she didn't know what. Someone was shooting at her, but she didn't know who. The police wanted her, but she didn't know why. She thought longingly of Mitch, not as a savior because he wasn't the savior type, but as a partner, somebody to share the puzzle with. She wanted to tell him everything and say, "What do you think?" and argue the possibilities with him, go and find out things with him, and just be with him. Not for comfort, not for support, just for the lightness of being with him.

  But he wasn't there, and she was alone, and she had to think of something fast. She let herself fall back against the couch and rest for just a minute. She was so tired from no sleep the night before and the adrenaline rush that morning and the six-mile walk in a daze that thinking became as strenuous as lifting heavy weights. She was so very tired. She closed her eyes, and tried hard to think, and tried very hard not to panic.

  "Oh, thank God, Mitch!" June dragged him through the front door and threw her arms around him. "She's gone, and the police were here!"

  Mitch patted her on the back. "Get a grip, kid. Are you okay?"

  "No." June sniffed. "I don't know where she is. And Harold's eye is swelled shut."

  Mitch blinked at her. "What does Harold's eye have to do with this?"

  "Carlo hit him this morning when Harold tried to stop him from going up to Mae's room." June sniffed again, her expression a hybrid of anger and sorrow. "We're trying to decide what to do."

  "Let me see this eye." Mitch prodded her toward the back of the house. "And then I'll take care of the rest."

  "Oh, good." June's shoulders sagged with relief as she led him toward the kitchen, her usual glide degenerating into more of a totter. "I knew you were going to be good for us when Mae brought you home the first time."

  Us? Up until then, Mitch's plans for commitment had centered on Mae, but June's assumption brought him up to date. Mae meant June and Harold, too. And Bob. He watched June's platinum head bob in front of him as she shoved open the kitchen door, and felt a rush of affection for her. She wasn't particularly deep or intelligent, and God knew, Harold wasn't anybody's grandpa, but they'd loved Mae and brought her up to be the woman he couldn't leave, and he owed them. They were good people.

  Harold looked up as they came in, his eye purple and swelled completely shut, and Mitch felt rage tighten his throat.

  "Carlo needs smacking," he said to Harold.

  "I tried." Harold's face fell into morose pleats. "He's a fast son of a bitch."

  "Then I'll have to hit him from behind." Mitch bent to get a better look at Harold's eye. "How's your head feel?"

  "I'm okay."

  "Stop being a hero." Mitch gently lifted the swollen lid back and checked Harold's pupil. "Headache?"

  "Yeah." Harold's good eye shifted to June. "It's not bad."

  "Dizziness?"

  "No." For the first time since they'd met, Harold looked at Mitch without glaring at him. "It's not a concussion. It's just one hell of a bad black eye."

  "Okay." Mitch straightened. "I have to find Mae. Are you two going to be okay on your own for a while?"

  June swallowed, but Harold said, "Hell, yes."

  "Stay here," Mitch told him. "I have no idea when I'll be back, but if Mae's in a mess and I need to reac
h you, I want you here."

  Harold nodded. "Right."

  "Do you know where she might have gone?"

  Harold shook his head and winced. "I don't even know how she got out of her room."

  Mitch grinned. "She climbed down the trellis. I'm her role model."

  "That's probably why she's in this mess now," Harold said, but his voice held no venom. "Go find her."

  "Please," June quavered.

  Mitch patted her shoulder. "I've got this all under control. Don't worry about a thing. Just keep ice on that eye."

  On an impulse, he stopped in the library and picked up the 1952 diary, and then he walked back out into the heat and stood looking at the Mercedes Mae hated and thought, What the hell do I do now?

  Mae started out of her reverie when the postman shoved the mail through the slot. She moved silently to the front door to see who was there, and then relaxed when she saw the stack of junk mail on the carpet. She picked up the mail and sorted through it, but there was nothing personal, nothing that every other resident on the block wasn't getting, too: catalogs for bedding and fashion and toys, sale reminders, coupon fliers. She dropped the mail on the table and went upstairs, trailing her fingers over the railing as she went.

  It would be nice to have a little place with a bedroom at the top of a flight of curving stairs. A bedroom with a big, warm, soft bed. A big soft bed with Mitch in it and the rest of the world gone away.

  Mae closed her eyes at the thought, craving sleep because she craved oblivion.

  She tried the first door on the right at the top of the stairs.

  It was a guest bedroom, but there was something odd about it. Mae stood inside the door and frowned, trying to put her finger on what was wrong. The walls were painted bright yellow and trimmed with a yellow flowered border, and all the furniture was white with yellow flowers and butterflies painted on it, and it was very pretty but not quite like the rest of the house, somehow. And in the middle of the room was a plain single bedstead with nothing pretty or comfortable about it. It looked temporary.

  Maybe Stormy had ordered a bed that went better, but it hadn't arrived yet. Mae tried to mentally delete the bed from the room. It definitely didn't belong. What would? Mae tried to picture a white bedstead with the butterflies and flowers, covered with a flowered comforter. Or a quilt. It was the kind of room she would have loved to have as a child.

  Mae froze. That was what was wrong with the room. It wasn't an adult room, it was a child's room. She thought of the toy catalog down on the hall table, and suddenly she knew that the missing piece of furniture, the one that would replace the cheap, plain bed, was a crib.

  Stormy had planned a nursery.

  Mae sank onto the bed, overwhelmed with sympathy for her. Stormy wasn't deep, but she was human and female and she'd loved Armand and wanted his child. And she'd planned her dreams in this room. Mae closed her eyes and pictured Stormy and a little redheaded daughter in this room, and she knew instinctively that Stormy had done the same.

  When she couldn't bear it anymore, she went out of the room and closed the door and crossed to the room opposite it.

  It was an adult room, decorated in browns and reds and dominated by a heavy mahogany bed. The only incongruous note was a large wastebasket full of socks and underwear beside the bed. Harold had packed clothes for Goodwill but had evidently drawn the line at passing on anything too personal.

  Mae sat down on the bed feeling like Goldilocks. The first room had been too young, and this one was too old. She was due to hit the one that was just right next.

  The only bed she could think of that would be just right was Mitch's.

  She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. She'd been there two hours. It was time to move before someone found her. A cab was out of the question, but a bus was a possibility. She picked up her purse to look for money, only then remembering that she'd handed it all over to Mitch the night before for gas.

  She opened the drawer beside the bed and checked for spare change, but Harold had been thorough, as always. The drawer was empty, and she was going to have to walk it.

  She looked down at her feet and tried to remember how far it was to Mitch's. She didn't mind the hike, but her leather flats weren't meant to travel that far. She was starting blisters from just the first six miles. Mitch's place had to be another fifteen or twenty miles. Four or five hours. She'd be lame for life.

  She threw her purse on the bed and went to check the boxes that Harold had packed for Goodwill. Maybe there would be shoes, even house slippers.

  Even five pairs of socks would be better than her leather flats. She pawed through the boxes, finally finding a pair of brand-new men's sneakers. She pulled them out and felt a pang of sorrow. Stormy had probably bought them for Armand, not knowing he'd never wear anything with a purple-and-magenta stripe. After seven years, she should have known, but Mae had a pretty good idea that Stormy had seen the Armand she'd wanted to see, not the real Armand. Stormy's Armand wanted a child and running shoes. The real Armand wanted Barbara Ross and money.

  Poor Stormy.

  A car door slammed out front and Mae froze, but after a moment she heard the front door of the next town house bang. She breathed out a long sigh of relief and scrambled to her feet. Now all she needed was socks. She went to the wastebasket and began to pull out socks, looking for the thickest pairs she could find. She was going to need about four pairs to get those shoes to fit her feet.

  She was pulling out the fourth pair, when her hand struck something hard. She froze and then turned the wastebasket over to dump everything onto the floor.

  There in the middle of the tangle of socks and undershorts was a brown leather book.

  Mae's hands shook as she picked it up and turned it so she could see the spine—Lewis and the current year. She clutched it to her for a moment, and then the irony of the situation dawned on her. She'd finally found the diary, so the money was protected, but now there wasn't any money. She started to laugh, and then she pulled herself together. At least the diary might tell her where Armand had put the money. In the meantime, she had to get away. Now. She put the diary in her purse, put on the four pairs of socks that made her feet fit Armand's shoes, and five minutes later walked out of the back door of the town house and down the street to Overlook.

  It was the first time in her life that she'd ever thought of Overlook as a safe place.

  Mitch tried the art institute, Claud's, the storage place, Stormy's condo and finally Armand's town house, squelching every panicked vision of Mae being run down, shot, stabbed, smothered, poisoned, strangled, pushed under a train and arrested. Arrested was looking pretty good by the time he got to it, but it still wasn't what he wanted for Mae. What he wanted for Mae was for her to be with him, with his arms around her. After that, he would wing it, but her being with him was not negotiable. It was now top on his list of needs, and he felt more and more out of control the more he tried to find her and couldn't.

  He even finally called Gio's, only to be met by alternating threats of violence and pleas to tell them where she was. Wherever she was, she wasn't at Gio's.

  At nine that night, he turned toward home. He wasn't giving up, he'd search all night if he had to, he was not going to leave her alone in the dark, but first he was going home to try to regroup. He'd tried all the logical places; now he was going to have to do some fast thinking on the illogical ones.

  The night was hot, beyond hot, and he rolled down the car window and drove through the city, trying to ignore the whine of police sirens and the screech of cars stopping too fast and the laughter of women that sounded like screams. His heart was so swollen with fear that it filled his chest, pressing on his lungs so that he couldn't breathe deeply enough, and his breath came in shallow sighs.

  Please, God, let me find her, he prayed. I'll never ask for anything again. Just let me find her and let her be all right.

  Mae sat exhausted on Mitch's bed and watched the sky slowly turn gold, then orange, then
purple, then blue-black through the single window of his apartment. She'd been drenched in sweat by the time she'd found his place, checked on the mailboxes in the hall for his apartment number and climbed through the window on the fire escape. She'd stripped immediately and showered, putting on one of his shirts because it was loose and cool and because it was the closest thing she could get to him, but within minutes she was drenched in sweat again, so she'd crawled onto the bed and sat there motionless, trying to think, trying not to fall asleep. The heat hung in the air, and his shirt stuck to her body, glued there with sweat, but she didn't notice. All through the late afternoon, she'd sifted through the snarl of facts and theories and fears that clogged her dazed mind, paging through the diary, trying to find the end of the knot, the one thing that would help her unravel the tangle her life had been fouled into. She'd found some fascinating things in the diary, but her basic situation remained the same: someone was trying to kill her, the police were after her and she was alone.

  As the afternoon faded to evening and then to night, a new knot formed: Mitch should have been back by now. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, it was past nine, and he should have been back by now.

  What if he was hurt?

  What if he was dead?

  What if the shots hadn't been aimed at her? What if the shooter was aiming at Mitch?

  What if he'd found him?

  Carlo had been headed for jail the last time she'd seen him, but he'd be out by now. Uncle Gio's lawyers had getting Carlo out down to a science. Suppose he'd decided to put an end to Mitch's involvement with her. Suppose he'd decided to put an end to Mitch.

  Mae leaned her head back against the iron bedstead and closed her eyes and concentrated on not panicking. She was fine alone. She could handle anything alone. She didn't need Mitch to get her out of trouble.

  But she did need him.

  She drew a ragged breath at the realization. She needed him in her Me, not because he could protect her, or support her, or even put his arms around her.

  She needed him because she loved him.