Be My Baby (8 page)

Pete shrugged. “Tell her you’re sorry. Beg her pardon. Give her a ring. Tell her you’re nuts about her. How hard can that be?”

Wonder closed his eyes, sighing. “You have no idea.”

“Nope, I don’t.” Cal waved in Dahlia’s general direction. “Telling the woman you love that you love her seems like a pretty straight-forward deal.”

“Thanks, oh great and powerful wizard,” Wonder snapped. “I should have come to you earlier.”

“Yep, you should.” Cal gestured toward the table as Dahlia approached. “Two Lone Stars, a Spaten, a Dos Equis and a crying towel for the dentist.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes at him, then turned on her heel.

“The ring idea has some merit, though.” Wonder looked thoughtful. “Maybe I’ll go over to Logsdon’s jewelry store and see what he’s got. Prove my gravitas, as it were.”

Pete blew a raspberry. “Wonder, the ring will only work if it comes accompanied by an apology and a declaration. You cannot buy yourself out of this one.”

“Then again, maybe I’ll buy her a frying pan,” Wonder mused. “Last time we were in Austin, she got all misty-eyed over an All-Clad twelve-inch skillet.”

Cal shook his head. “Man, you are on the verge of becoming pathetic.”

“On the verge?” Pete scoffed.

“Look, you’re going to have to beg her pardon. And I do mean beg.” Cal reached out to take the beers as Dahlia returned to the table, then dug into his pocket. “Anybody got a five?”

Lars dropped a five into his outstretched palm, while Pete and Wonder dropped in singles to make nine.

“What about you?” Wonder turned to Lars. “Want to take your turn giving me a kick in the pants?”

Lars picked up his beer. “Are you actually asking me for romantic advice, Wonder? Seriously?”

There was a moment of silence at the table. Lars watched Wonder’s usually pasty complexion turn faintly pink. He actually looked better embarrassed.

“Holy crap,” Pete muttered.

Lars blinked at him, then realized he was staring at the door. He turned to see a familiar silhouette heading across the Dew Drop in their general direction.

Beside him, Cal tensed, then blew out a slow breath. “Hi, Erik.”

Erik stopped next to the table, removing his Stetson. “Evening.”

Pete slid over, wordlessly. After a moment’s hesitation, Erik sat beside him, then turned toward Lars. “I found your guy. Or I found where he was earlier, anyway.”

Cal frowned. “What guy?”

“Later.” Lars leaned forward. “So what did he say?”

Erik shook his head. “He wasn’t there. He’s registered at the Elite Motel out on 16. Lorne Haggedorn, right?”

“That’s what he told me. Has he gone?”

“Not that I could tell. The motel clerk said he hadn’t checked out, but he didn’t know where he’d gone or when.” Erik shrugged. “I’ll keep an eye out for him now I know where to look.”

“Did the clerk know anything about him?”

Erik gave him a dry smile. “The clerk looked to be about fifteen or so. I had to get him to unplug his iPod so he could talk to me. My guess is he wouldn’t know Haggedorn if he tripped over him.”

“Who’s Haggedorn?” Cal asked again. “What have I been missing?”

Lars sighed. “Long boring story. Thanks, Erik.”

Erik shrugged. “No problem.”

“You want a beer?” Dahlia stood next to the table, a pencil stuck behind one metal-studded ear, her gaze locked on Erik.

Lars glanced at him again. Erik looked like all the rest of them. Tall, broad, dark hair, dark eyes. Only he looked sort of weathered, like he’d been dragged down a long dusty road for a while.

Erik shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m on duty.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes, as if she’d just noticed the Konigsburg Police patch on his shoulder for the first time. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Erik pushed himself up from the table, then turned back to his brothers. “Good seeing you.”

All three of them nodded back, sort of like a collection of king-size bobble heads.

Erik started back toward the door, but Cal leaned after him. “Hey, Erik.”

Erik paused. “Yeah?”

“You doing anything for Thanksgiving? Dinner’s at my house.”

For a moment, Lars thought he saw a smile playing around Erik’s mouth. Then he slid his Stetson back on his head. “I’m on duty, but I’ll see if I can drop by.” He turned again and walked toward the door, nodding at Dahlia as he left.

Dahlia stared after him, her jaw slack.

“Damn,” Wonder murmured, studying her. “Maybe I should take lessons from the four of you.”

Pete tipped his bottle to his lips. “Wonder, just apologize, okay? And tell her how you feel about her. This whole thing is getting way out of hand.”

Wonder sighed. “A ring. Or maybe a skillet.”

Cal closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I wash my hands of you.”

Chapter Eight

The cool air on the back of Jess’s neck woke her. She checked the clock on the computer—nine-thirty. She’d fallen asleep at her desk again, something she’d already done a couple of times over the past week. There were only a few changes left to make on Synchronicity. It would take an hour or so, assuming she could stay conscious that long. She stood, yawning. Must be an open window somewhere.

And suddenly she was wide awake, frozen in place, her heart pounding. There were no open windows in her house in November. She knew that for a fact.

At least none that she’d opened herself.

She reached behind her desk for the baseball bat she’d begun keeping there after Lorne Barrymore’s visit. Was it Barrymore? Why would he come back at night? Jess started inching toward the hall that led to the bedrooms.

Shadows cloaked the dining room and the kitchen—the only light she’d left burning was in the living room, and it reflected dimly over the dining room walls. Jess moved carefully along the side of the room, narrowing her eyes to see into the faint light. Cool air brushed across her face from the open window.

One mystery solved. She knew damn well she hadn’t left the dining room window open when she’d started working on the site. She tightened her grip on the bat, moving closer to the bedrooms.

The bedrooms where Jack was sleeping.

She felt a quick surge of panic, making her throat clench.
Stop it! You don’t have time for this.
Cool air from the window played along the back of her neck. She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself together, then moved into the hall as quietly as she could.

Darkness enveloped her again, more total here. None of the light from the living room reached this far. She fumbled her hand along the wall, trying to find the light switch.

The blow to her shoulder sent her stumbling backward. Jess squawked in surprise and pain as the bat slipped from her fingers onto the floor with a thump. A shadowy figure brushed past her, shoving her hard against the wall as it did. Jess clawed at a sleeve, feeling muscle and bone underneath. The intruder jerked away, backhanding her hard across the face.

Sparks danced in front of her eyes, but she lurched to her feet again, turning back toward the dining room. “Son of a bitch,” she gasped, stumbling after the dimly moving shadow until she heard a thin wail behind her.

“Jack,” she whispered. “Oh, Christ, Jack!” She turned and ran back down the hall toward the bedrooms.

The door to Jack’s room was closed. Jess pushed through, muttering, “Please be all right, please, please, please.” In his room, Jack clung to the side of his crib, his wails increasing as he saw her. She scooped him into her arms, fighting back the wave of nausea roiling through her stomach.

She sank to the floor, holding him against her chest, feeling his breathing calm to a series of gasping sobs. “It’s okay,” she murmured, rubbing his back. “It’s all okay.” She leaned her forehead against the crib rail, trying to catch her breath, knowing she was a fool and a fraud.

Things in Konigsburg, Texas, had never been less okay, at least not for the Carroll family.

Lars knew he should go to bed. It was after ten. He had to get up at six tomorrow, if Daisy didn’t get him up sooner than that—as she probably would. Nothing in the report he was writing had to be done tonight.

Still he kept doggedly hitting keys. He was going to finish one thing before he went to bed. Even if it was so boring he was ready to doze on top of his keyboard.

The buzz of his cell phone jolted him back to consciousness. He glanced at the number. Jess Carroll.

Jess Carroll? At this time of night?
Please, please, please don’t have a sick kid that will make me send Daisy to Wee Care.
The thought of the logistical nightmare that scenario would involve made his blood run cold. He hit the connect button. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Toleffson? Lars?”

Lars frowned. Her voice sounded muffled, scratchy. Oh lord, maybe she was the one who was sick! That was worse—adults took longer than kids to bounce back. Daisy could be in Wee Care for a couple of weeks. “What’s up, Jess?”

“You said…” Lars could hear her breathing. She sounded as if she’d been running. “You said if I was frightened or upset about something, I could call.”

Lars felt ice drip down his spine. “What’s wrong, Jess? Is someone out there? Did you hear something?”

“Someone…broke in.” She took a deep breath. “I fell asleep at my desk. He was in the hall.” Another deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I should have called the police. I didn’t mean…”

“Are you all right?” Lars gripped the phone so tightly his fingers tingled. “Is Jack okay?”

“We’re okay. Just a little…shaken up, I guess. I’ll call the police now.”

Lars closed his eyes. “Do that. I’ll be there in ten or fifteen minutes, as soon as I can get Daisy over to my brother’s house.”

“No, that’s okay, you don’t have to…”

“Yes, I do,” Lars cut in. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Fortunately for all concerned, Daisy could sleep through just about anything, including being bundled up in a quilt and dropped into the arms of an astonished Pete.

“I’ll be back,” Lars promised.

“Right.” Pete gave him a dry semi-smile. “Just leave her with us overnight. And tomorrow morning you can tell me what the hell’s going on.”

Lars pulled into the clearing at the Lone Oak right behind a Konigsburg cop car. He wasn’t altogether surprised to see Erik get out. It was that kind of night.

Erik nodded at him, unsmiling. “You know anything about this?”

“Probably less than you do.” Lars started walking across the meadow, trying to keep from running. “Jess said somebody broke in.”

“You’re thinking Lorne Haggedorn?” Erik raised an eyebrow as he paced along at Lars’s side.

“I don’t know. Maybe. At this point, I don’t know what I should be thinking.”

Erik raised his fist to knock on the door. “What you should be thinking is, my brother is a cop and I’ll let him handle this.”

Lars blew out a slightly irritated breath. “Right. Believe me, I’ve got no intention of getting in your way here.”

Or he hadn’t until he saw Jess Carroll’s face when she opened the door. One cheek was bruised, showing dark red against the dead-white pallor of her face. Her skin looked paper thin, as if it might crack. She held Jack tight against her chest, her arms wrapped around his sleeping body.

She looked at Erik and swallowed hard, blinking. Then she glanced at Lars.

“It’s okay,” he blurted. “This is my brother Erik. He’s a cop.”

Erik gave him a look that said volumes about his current assessment of Lars’s IQ.

“Come in, please.” Jess stepped back. “I’m sorry, I’m just sort of disorganized right now.” She walked ahead of them into the living room, sinking onto a rocking chair. Lars didn’t think she’d loosened her grip on Jack since he’d stepped inside.

Erik sat on the couch, pulling a notebook out of his jacket pocket. “Can you tell me what happened, ma’am?”

Jess closed her eyes, as if she were gathering herself together. Then she looked up at Erik. “I fell asleep at my desk after I put Jack to bed. When I woke up, I felt cool air on the back of my neck. I went into the dining room to check and the window was open.”

“You didn’t leave it that way, I guess.” Erik glanced at her as he wrote.

Jess shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I started down the hall to Jack’s room and somebody…hit me.” She swallowed hard again. “He thumped my shoulder so that I fell back against the wall, and then he took off. I tried to catch hold of him, but he got away from me. That’s when he did this.” She pointed toward the bruise on her cheek.

Lars stared at her, caught between irritation and shock. “You tried to catch hold of him? For god’s sake, Jess! He could have had a knife, or a gun.”

“I know.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “I wasn’t thinking, I guess.”

“Can you describe him?”

Erik’s voice sounded remarkably calm under the circumstances. Lars felt like snarling.

Jess shook her head. “I didn’t really see him. It was just a shadow. And after he hit me, I went down. I didn’t see him leave.”

Lars’s shoulder muscles clenched.
After he hit me.

“Did he go back out the window?”

“No.” Jess swallowed again. “He left the front door open.”

“Okay.” Erik flipped over a new page. “Tell me what you do know. Was it a man?”

Jess started to nod, then stopped. “I thought so,” she mused. “But I guess I’m not sure. It could have been a woman as easily as a man. But she had a hell of a punch.” Jess ran her fingers over her cheek.

“When you grabbed him, what did you grab?”

“His arm. That’s how he could shake me off.”

“How was he dressed?”

Jess blinked. “I couldn’t see him.”

“I know,” Erik said patiently, “but what did it feel like to you when you grabbed him? Leather jacket? Denim? Bare skin?”

Jess shuddered. “No. It was a jacket. Some kind of leather. I felt some metal studs on the sleeve.”

Erik nodded, writing in his notebook. “Okay, any idea of general size? Tall, short, heavy, skinny, like that?”

“I was on the floor.” Jess shook her head. “I can’t give you any idea of height, sorry. The arm wasn’t fat, but there were muscles.”

“Did you see the silhouette when he headed down the hall?”

Jess closed her eyes, thinking. “Yes. But he was all bundled up. I can’t tell you much about him.”

Erik leaned back against the couch again, his gaze meeting Jess’s. “Could it have been Lorne Haggedorn?”

Jess glanced at Lars, her eyes widening.

“I asked Erik to check Haggedorn out,” he explained. “I didn’t know if he’d done anything illegal.”

“He hadn’t then.” Erik shrugged. “If he did this, he’s definitely crossed the line.”

Jess sighed, shaking her head. “I can’t say one way or the other, to tell you the truth. It could have been him, but I don’t know for sure. I just had one glance at him before he was gone.”

“Right.” Erik pushed himself up from the couch. “Show me where it happened.”

Lars extended a hand to Jess as she struggled to her feet. “Let me take Jack, so you can show him.”

Jess stared at him, her eyes wide.

“It’s okay. I’ve held a baby before. I won’t hurt him.”

She stood rooted for a moment longer, her eyes full of panic. Then she nodded, her expression becoming blank. “Sure. Okay, thanks.”

Lars gathered the baby into his arms, the warm body sprawling against his chest, then watched as she followed Erik.

Erik paused at the entrance to the hall, reaching for the light switch. “Down here?”

Jess nodded. “It was just around the bend. The light from the living room doesn’t reach that far.”

Erik switched on the light, illuminating the hallway, then knelt to look at the carpet. “That where it happened?”

Lars squinted and saw a series of slight scuff marks on the carpet surface.

“I guess so. Yeah, it must have been.” She pointed to a mark on the baseboard. “I scuffed my shoe there when I went down.”

Erik pulled out his cell phone, pointed at the hall, and began clicking. He glanced back at Lars. “Didn’t think to bring my camera, but I can download these.”

Lars shifted Jack to his other shoulder. “Could you trace the guy this way?”

Erik’s look showed he’d just revised his already-modest estimate of Lars’s IQ downward by a couple of points. “No, Lars, they’re just scuff marks. Not footprints.”

Beside him, Lars saw the corners of Jess’s mouth edge up slightly. Terrific. Erik was amusing her. On the other hand, a smile was a smile. And it was a hell of a lot better than her expression had been in the living room.

Erik stood again. “Did he take anything out of any of these rooms?”

Jess shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“So what’s down this hall? What was he after?”

Jess’s slight smile disappeared abruptly. “Bedrooms.” Her voice was faint. “Nothing special.”

Erik glanced back at her. “You keep any money in there? Jewelry.”

Jess shook her head again. “My purse was next to the desk. And I don’t have any jewelry to speak of besides my rings.”

Lars glanced at her hand. A plain gold wedding band with a small diamond engagement ring.

“When Barrymore was here, did he see this hall?”

“No. He never got inside the house.”

“Had the intruder gotten into any of the rooms down here?”

It didn’t seem possible for Jess to get any paler, but Lars thought she just had. She reached one hand to the wall beside her, as if she were steadying herself. “No. All the doors were closed.”

“Right.” Erik nodded slowly as he wrote another note. He turned back toward the living room again, herding Jess and Lars in front of him.

“Okay. I’m going to write this up as breaking and entering. If you find anything missing, let me know. And if anything else happens call me right away.” He pulled a card out of his pocket, writing quickly. “That’s my cell. And that’s the number for the station. If you call there and nobody’s around, it’ll be forwarded to whoever’s on duty.”

Jess nodded, licking her lips. “Thank you. I’ll put it with my phone.”

Erik glanced at Lars, then shrugged. “That’s about all I can do tonight. But you keep in touch, Ms. Carroll. And keep your eyes open. Take care now.” He settled his Stetson on his head again and left.

Jess turned to Lars, extending her arms, and his heart rate abruptly speeded up. It took him a moment to remember he was still holding Jack splayed against the front of his shirt. He gathered the sleeping baby into his arms and handed him to his mother.

Jack muttered in his sleep, then settled back against Jess’s shoulder.

“Was he awake for all of this?”

“Most of it.” Jess looked down at her son, chewing on her lower lip. “The noise woke him.”

The lamplight caught the gold of her hair, glowing in the dimness of the living room. She glanced up at him again, her eyes a deep green in the shadows, her lips pressed into a thin line.

The wave of arousal caught him off guard. He swallowed hard. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms, taste those lips, make her smile again.