A Knight In Cowboy Boots (12 page)

Chapter Nine

Zach would have liked to spend the day with Maddie and Jesse, but after a late breakfast, she sent him on his way, so she could go to the Laundromat. Back at the hotel, he decided to make up for the sleep he’d missed the night before. He’d only slept an hour when the room phone rang.

“‘Lo,” he mumbled into the receiver.

“Double aught six numbers are issued in Maine,” Jake said without preamble.

Zach came awake immediately. “Maine? Are you sure?”

“That’s what it says. I take it that wasn’t what you expected.”

He swung his legs off the bed and sat up. “No.” Not that he knew what he expected; he just knew Maine wasn’t it. “I suppose she could have moved from Maine when she was young. What else do you have?”

“The number belongs to Susan M. Grey of Portland, Maine.”

“Well, the name’s right.” Zach laid the shirt in the duffel and reached for the unworn stack of jeans Rachel had bought. “Did you find anything else?”

“Susan M. Grey was born Susan M. Nelson. She married Donald Grey three years ago.”

Zach’s stomach clenched. “Any kids? Or a divorce maybe?”

“No mention of either one. She and her husband bought a house in Portland, Maine last year.”

“Oh, Christ.” Zach clutched the phone and sat on the edge of the bed. The night with Maddie had lulled his uneasiness. Yes, something in her past had her crying broken-heartedly in the night, but Zach had stopped thinking it was ominous. Jake’s news reawakened his sense that something was seriously wrong.

“That’s not all.” Jake’s tone said the rest was going to be even worse.

Zach wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. “What?”

“Susan M. Grey was buried in Portland, Maine three months ago. There’s an obituary online if you want to check it out.”

Zach ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. They had to be looking at the wrong Susan M. Grey. But if the social security number matched, how could they be? And Maddie herself had written it on her job application. There was no mistake. “Does it say how she died?”

“Nope, but in the obit, the family requested that donations be made to the American Cancer Society.”

Zach wondered why the hell he couldn’t have just left all this alone. “I guess that rules out any chance she faked her death.”

“I’d say it’s a long shot.”

Jake waited patiently while Zach tried to think through the implications. “How would you know if someone’s using a fake social security number?” Zach asked at length.

“Well, normally, you can’t get a job unless the name matches the number in the government’s data base, but she seems to have borrowed both.”

“The government don’t know Susan Grey’s dead yet?”

“The State of Maine would because they issued the death certificate, but I don’t see how the Fed would until her husband files his taxes next year. And I ain’t sure they really care. The IRS don’t play well with others. We both know illegals who’ve worked on fake social security numbers for years. You tell me how they get away with it.”

Zach knew how common that was. “Did you get anything on the plates?”

“That costs another forty bucks. You want to spend that?”

“Not just yet.” It had occurred to Zach that he had another option for tracking the plate if Jake came up empty, and his mama had raise him to be frugal. He wouldn’t get anything on the weekend, but he could at least set the wheels in motion.

After he hung up with Jake, he picked up the phone again.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mamma.”

“Zachariah!”

It never ceased to amaze him how his mother always knew which of her children was on the phone in just a few syllables.

“Did you see Jacob? He said he was gonna come see you at that there ho-tel.” She made ‘hotel’ sound just one step better than ‘den of iniquity.’

“Yes, Mamma. I saw him yesterday.” He smiled to himself. Rachel had known better than to tell their mother he’d been shot in her hotel. His sister would likely pay more than Zach himself would to keep his mother from knowing about that.

“You still coming home Monday?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I might wait a few more days.”

“Have you met a woman?” Her tone was suspicious.

Zach closed his eyes and groaned silently. In his mamma’s eyes, nothing but a good paying job or a woman would keep one of her boys away from the ranch. And since he was in the city, undoubtedly, she would be a woman of loose moral character. Exactly the kind of woman her sons appreciated far more than their mamma did.

“You be sure she’s a nice girl. You have Rachel meet her.”

“Rachel’s already met her. She works here at the hotel.” No sense telling his mamma she was a bartender. He’d never taken a poll, but he was reasonably sure his mother would put a hotel bartender just a step or two above street walker.

“That’s good. I trust Rachel’s judgment.”

Well, even his mamma wasn’t right about everything.

“Mamma, is Deborah there?”

“She is. She’s taking a pie out of the oven for supper.”

“Cherry?”

“Rhubarb.”

“Oh, you really know how to hurt a guy.”

His mother chuckled. “Then get your butt on home where you can have a piece.”

“Soon. I promise. Can I talk to Deborah? I need to ask her something.”

He heard his mother call his sister’s name. A minute later, she was on the phone.

“Hey, Zach.”

“Hey, Daisy Mae,” Zach greeted his kid sister with the nickname their father had hung on her. “You still working part-time at that insurance company?”

“Yeah, three days a week.”

“Think you could get someone there to run a plate number for me? I need to know who it’s registered to.”

“Is this something I could get in trouble for?”

“Not bad trouble. I’m trying to find a girl.”

“You met someone,” Daisy said in a dreamy yet somehow accusatory tone. Just the sort of silliness Zach knew he could count on from his sister.

“Maybe. I won’t know for sure though until I track her down.”

“Gimme the number. I’ll find out about it.”

Zach read the number off the twenty. Then he told her it was a Wyoming plate.

“A Wyoming plate? You met a girl in Wyoming?”

“No, silly. I met a girl here who drives a car with Wyoming plates. She just moved here. I know it’s not going to be easy, but the plate’s all I’ve got to go on. Do what you can for me, okay? I’ll take it from there.”

“Oh, I hope you find her. That’ll be so romantic.”

“Just find out who it’s registered to, and you’ll get all the credit at the wedding.”

“Oh, can I be a bridesmaid?”

“Hey, let’s get the horse back in front of the cart. I gotta find her first.”

“Okay. I’ll ask Carly first thing Monday.”

“Call me at the hotel. If I’m not here, leave a message. And leave the name and such, not just a message saying you got it. Mamma’ll get suspicious if I call to talk to you twice in one week.”

“Jerk.”
“Brat.”

“Love you.”

“Me, too.”

After they hung up, Zach thought about everything he really knew about Maddie. It didn’t add up to much. Jesse bothered him the most. Maddie bore no stretch marks, and no matter how well she took care of herself, he couldn’t imagine that a nearly ten pound baby didn’t leave its mark on a woman.

Zach sat on the bed, holding the phone between his knees as he mulled that over. Nine pounds, twelve ounces. She’d been specific but matter-of-fact about that. If she wasn’t the mother, she knew the mother. Maddie didn’t even have to know her well; in Zach’s experience, new mothers threw around birth weights like fishermen bragged about their big catches.

The way she held Jesse showed an easiness that indicated familiarity, and she diapered him with practiced ease, so she’d had him awhile. She didn’t just know how to handle kids; she knew how to handle this particular kid.

He remembered the way she’d over-reacted when he’d woke her after her interview. She was obviously afraid someone would catch up with her. Zach had thought it was maybe an abusive boyfriend or husband, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Some women were nervous and overprotective, especially with their first child, but that thing with the bonnet had been just plain weird. And when he’d offered to take Maddie and Jesse to breakfast after their night together, Maddie had insisted on feeding him instead. He’d thought it charming at the time, but now he wondered if she just hadn’t wanted to take Jesse out where people would see his red hair.

Reluctant as he was to face where all this pointed, he would bet big money Jesse wasn’t her kid.

Could she have kidnapped him?

He wanted to reject the thought outright, but it wasn’t easy. He could be jumping to crazy conclusions. There might be a perfectly logical explanation for all of it. What that might be, Zach couldn’t imagine, but he hung onto the thought.

He tried resurrecting his theory about the abusive boyfriend.
Yeah, that’s why she’s on the run with someone else’s kid.
The pieces didn’t fit well enough to convince himself.

He needed another lead.

What was he going to do with whatever name came attached to the plates? If it was Susan M. Grey, it would be a dead end, but if it was something else …

During his winters on the oil rigs, he’d made friends with a number of the roughnecks. One or two of them had surely moved on to derricks in Wyoming, but it would take him a while to find out who and probably wasn’t worth the effort. Most of roughnecks were good guys, but discretion wasn’t the first word that came to mind when he thought about any of them.

The death of his older brother’s best friend struck him with fresh regret, followed quickly by guilt that the emotion was rooted in his own selfish motives. If Vince hadn’t died in Wyoming, Zach would be getting his number from Sol, so he could call him with whatever information the plates turned up.

A stab of unsullied regret washed over him. Zach missed Vince for his own sake, not just for what he could do because he was conveniently located. Vince had used his own connections to get Zach his first job on an oil rig. He’d mentored Jake, urging him to attend veterinary school because he knew that was where Jake’s heart lay. He’d done a hundred other things for Sol’s little brothers, just because they were Sol’s brothers and because Vince was a generous person. It wasn’t fair that he’d been killed by some woman’s nutcase ex-boyfriend in Wyoming.

He was going to go home Monday as he’d originally planned, Zach decided. He needed to see for himself how Sol was doing. And if Daisy came up with something that confirmed his suspicions, if he was at the ranch, he’d be forced to consider what he should do next, instead of just going off half-cocked.

*

The regular day bartender was sitting at the end of the bar, checking the week’s liquor order and watching over Maddie on her first day. She was nervous, but the job-related part of her nervousness was a normal emotion; just the desire to do well at her new job. Deep down, another sort of nervousness was knotting her stomach.