Bringing Baby Home (2 page)

She used the pen clipped to the stack of papers and
quickly scratched out the guy’s license plate number. On the first page of her loan application, she realized too late.

Yep, it was just one of those days.

D
AVID
B
AINES
only made it six blocks before he had to stop, get out of his truck and rehook the chain that kept the right side of his tailgate from working loose. He used his shoulder to shove the worthless piece of metal in place then hooked two links between the grooved notches that he’d rigged up.

His head was pounding, but at least his temper was starting to cool. He couldn’t believe he’d actually yelled at a woman for running over a plant. Yes, he cared about his cactus and other seedlings, but only a madman—a crazy demented fool—would place a higher priority on cacti than people. What was wrong with him?

So many things he couldn’t begin to count, but he knew to a day when this change in his personality had begun. August 21, 2001. The day he’d died.

He reached over the side of his truck bed and made sure the rest of his tools were accounted for. Shovels, rakes, edger. No mower. He did landscaping, not yards. He grew the plants that he transferred to people’s raised beds and patios. He didn’t call himself a landscaper, though. That sounded too presumptuous. He was a handyman/gardener. He felt the combination sounded innocuous enough. Certainly not the kind of job a person with three postgraduate degrees would be doing.

Once he’d started his new life, he’d had no choice but to learn a new trade. He’d ceased to be a scientist with credentials up the wazoo and had become a man who worked with plants. He grew them in his makeshift greenhouse at the rear of the oversize lot behind the house he rented from
his elderly and slightly whacko landlady. Mimi Simms lived in the double-wide mobile home on the adjoining lot. Her late husband had spent his final years in the shack she euphemistically called the “guesthouse.”

The rent was reasonable, so David couldn’t complain even though the one-bedroom, one-bath residence was impossible to heat or cool. And in the four years that he’d been renting from her, he’d managed to grow a wall of hardy and unforgiving thorn bushes that gave him privacy and some illusionary sense of safety.

He realized that he was hiding behind the hedge. Like an ogre in some children’s fable, he’d distanced himself from polite society, only venturing forth to fulfill his private vow to do good. He’d done enough bad to last a lifetime.

He no longer made “better living through chemicals.” He made a better world through plants. This time, on a very small, humbling scale.

Which partly explained why he lost it when someone destroyed one of his plants. Or so he wanted to believe, but he was too honest to place the blame for his temper tantrum on the lovely shoulders of the woman he’d just yelled at. He’d been in a funk for over a week. Happened every year around his daughter’s birthday. Memories would slip past his defenses. Despair would fill the hole in his heart like air in a balloon—until he blew up.

This time, at a woman. He’d terrified her. And made her cry.

But she’d laughed, too, he reminded himself. As if his attack had been that of a crazy person. And she was right. Sane people didn’t explode over little things. He owed that poor woman an apology. It wasn’t her fault she’d smashed his cactus on a bad day. A day when the past couldn’t be denied.

Today
was Ariel’s birthday. Number nine. No doubt she would celebrate with a party, friends and gifts galore. She was probably four or five inches taller than the last time he’d seen her. Maybe she had a retainer or braces. From what he’d gleaned from his clients with young children, orthodontists were starting earlier these days.

He tried not to think about Ariel.

She wasn’t
really
his child, after all. He’d married her mother when Ariel was a toddler. Ariel’s real father was a rat-bastard who had abused Kay and neglected their baby daughter and twins Jordie and Randall who were two years older than their sister. The man’s only response to his wife’s request for a divorce was his fierce refusal to pay child support.

David hadn’t wanted his new love to be tied to a man like that in any way. He had a high-paying job with a billion-dollar pharmaceutical company. He could certainly provide for his new family. And he had—until Kay, the children’s mother, left him for another man. A neighbor who was home when David hadn’t been.

The timing, it turned out, had been providential. Kay and the children were safe from the fallout created by David’s losing favor with his boss, a megalomaniac named V. A. “Ray” Cross. Born Vincente Aurelio Conejo, Ray went from being the first kid in his family to graduate from high school to the boardroom of one of the largest privately owned pharmaceutical labs in the country. His staff had often speculated about the number of bodies buried along Ray’s remarkable climb to the top, and the closer David got to the man he’d at one time considered his mentor, the better he understood Ray’s maxim for life. In Ray’s world, only Ray mattered. The bodies, David feared, were real. And, in a way, included his.

He
got back in the truck and drove carefully, never exceeding the speed limit. Faster cars passed him impatiently, but David was a follower of rules. Most of them, anyway.

“Thou shalt not kill”—unless you count poisoning thousands of unsuspecting consumers.

“Thou shalt not lie”—unless the truth means losing profits in any given year.

“Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife”—well, he could honestly say he’d never done that. His neighbor’s life, maybe. All he’d ever wanted was a home and a family of his own. The kind he’d known as a child, before his parents were killed in a car accident and he was told he had to stay with his grandmother, who had considered her work over and done when the daughter she raised got married.

June, as his grandmother preferred to be called, did her duty. She even sent her grandson to the best college his inheritance money could buy, but it hadn’t occurred to her to try to replace the love he’d known in his parents’ arms.

He’d tried to find that as an adult, and thought he’d succeeded with Kay and the children. Until, fate ripped that family out of his hands, too. And seldom a night went by that he didn’t think about the pain his “death” must have caused the children he’d called his own.

As he pulled into his driveway, he caught a glimpse of his landlady. Mimi Simms was eighty if she was a day. Her red hair was brighter than a poinsettia in bloom. She was an odd combination of nosy and antisocial. David preferred the latter. Once he’d made up his mind to speak out, to become a high-profile whistleblower, he’d had no choice but to leave the past behind and disappear.

For four years, he’d been lucky. He’d also never once had an altercation with a customer and drawn attention to himself. He could only hope that the beautiful lady with
the kind eyes would shrug off his embarrassing faux pas and forget about him.

“You’re a fool,” he muttered as he pulled the truck to a stop in front of his little shack. “You had your chance at a normal life, but you chose to work for Ray Cross, instead. Now, you can’t ever go back.”

Nor could he start a new life with someone else. He’d made a vow never to put anyone through that kind of torture and distress again. His decision to give up his old life and enter the federal Witness Protection Program had been relatively easy—it was either that or wake up some morning with Ray Cross’s gun in his face. The deputy U.S. marshals who had been assigned to his case had come up with an elaborate plan that included an inferno at the lab where David had spent most of his time. No body. No funeral. No fuss. Or so David had assumed. But apparently no one had informed his ex-wife.

Dying had been difficult, but it had been a lot easier on him than on his loved ones. He would regret that for the rest of his life.

“Okay. Who
wants to go first?” Alex asked, looking around their mother’s table.

Alex, who was a year and four months older than Liz, often acted as the CEO of the Radonovic family. But beneath the businesslike facade was a gentle heart that made nearly every child at her Dancing Hippo Day Care and Preschool fall in love with her.

Neither Liz nor Kate volunteered. These weekly breakfast meetings just weren’t the same without Grace, the youngest of the Radonovic sisters. She’d always shown up bubbly and full of topics for discussion. Sometimes Alex and Kate would share their problems, too, but nobody really expected Liz to contribute. She didn’t dump. She preferred to keep her problems to herself. Things seemed to sort themselves out eventually without her sisters’ help.

“Has anyone heard from Grace?” she asked.

Newly engaged, Grace had followed her fiancé, Nick Lightner, to Detroit, where she was settling in and planning their wedding, which was scheduled for next spring. But, in typical Grace fashion, she couldn’t resist being an active part of Kate’s recently decided upon nuptials, as well. “Practice makes perfect, right?” she’d told Liz on the
phone a few days ago. “By helping to plan Kate’s wedding, I’ll know what mistakes to avoid.”

Grace. Liz missed her—everyone did. Especially Kate.

“Here’s her flight information,” Kate said, handing Alex and Liz copies printed from the Internet. “Did I tell you she’s having a costume made for Maya? Just like ours. Grace insists Maya will be ready to dance at my wedding. How? Are you teaching her, Alex? Because I sure as heck don’t have time. And I know Liz is too busy.”

“Liz is always too busy, aren’t you, Liz?” Alex asked. “Too busy for anything fun.”

Liz looked across the table at her older sister. As kids they’d shared a special bond. But the past few years had been difficult. So much had happened in both their lives that neither seemed able to talk about.

“I wouldn’t make much of a teacher, even if I had the time,” she said. “Do either of you want to try my new tea? I’m calling it Woman Power. It’s better than coffee, Alex. And a heck of a lot better for you than soda, Kate.”

Kate made a face. “I gave up sodas weeks ago, remember?” Kate’s life had turned upside down when her ex-husband was released from prison on parole—just in time for his ex-wife’s engagement to another man.

“Good for you. But you should try this. It has maté in it. A little pick-me-up without coffee’s acid.”

She poured them two cups and added a squeeze of honey from a bear-shaped vessel. “Where’s Mom?” she asked.

“Airing out Claude’s place. She hired a cleaning crew. Same people who did Romantique after the county boys got done with it,” Kate answered.

Their paternal uncle had lived next door until Grace’s hubby-to-be busted Claude and several other family members for their illicit business dealings with old family friend
Charles Harmon. The house was now empty, but with family coming to town for Kate’s wedding, every bed would be needed.

“So, it’s official? The Sisters of the Silver Dollar are dancing at your wedding?” Alex asked Kate.

Liz and her sisters had danced for their father as children, scampering after the coins he’d tossed their way. As they grew up, they’d taken the craft more seriously, incorporating the old steps into their routines. The name stuck, but the girls hadn’t danced together since their father, Ernst, passed away. Until recently.

“Well, you know Grace,” Kate said, sipping her tea. “Um, this is good, Liz. I told you your mint tea is a huge success at the restaurant. Maybe not being able to do physical therapy for a living is a good thing. Herbal remedies might be your true calling in life.”

Her sister’s praise was nice to hear, but Liz hadn’t given up the thought of being a physical therapist completely. P.T. wasn’t her first love, but it paid well. Starting her new tea business, which she’d decided to call Tea for Me, with a “T4Me” logo, was a terrifying leap of faith, but she’d really had no choice when every other avenue seemed closed to her.

Liz would never go back to WorldRx, a Doctors Without Borders kind of group. She’d been midway through her second six-month stay in Bosnia when she was brutally attacked and left for dead in a snowbank. When a patrol found her, they’d rushed her to the E.R. where she usually worked. The doctors sewed up her cuts, applied ice to her bruises and gave her drugs to protect against pregnancy and disease. But nothing had eased the sense of violation so traumatizing she’d spent three weeks in a farmhouse a mile from her station, refusing to return to her post until
the men who attacked her were caught. An impossible task in a place devastated by war. As a friend later told her, “War doesn’t bring out the hero in everybody. In most, it brings out the beast.”

“Liz.”

Liz startled. She felt her face heat up. She never let the past creep into her thoughts. She came from a long line of mystics and fortune-tellers. The last thing she needed was for one of her sisters to pick up on what had happened to her. She hadn’t shared this particularly unpleasant experience for a reason. She was over it. Period. “What?”

“Well, don’t bite my head off. I just asked if you could make a new tea for Jo. She’s doing great since she got back from Stanford—she hasn’t smoked in weeks, but the new medicine the doctor has her on is making her nauseous.”

Jo Brighten was Kate’s partner in the restaurant and mother of Kate’s fiancé, Rob Brighten. Liz liked the frank, spunky woman a lot. She’d been battling what her doctors had thought was lung cancer, but after a trip to a specialist in California, Jo was told she had emphysema. The diagnosis had come as a huge relief to everyone, but she wasn’t out of the woods, yet.

“I’ll try to come up with something this afternoon. After I drop off my loan application at the bank.” She took a drink of tea. “Boy, am I sick of those nosy jerks.”

“So, why are you doing the refinancing?” Alex asked. “You’ve only been in your house a year or so. Do you have enough equity to make it worth the effort?”

Liz hoped so. The money, added to what she’d saved, would give her the initial application fee associated with a foreign adoption.

After her father’s death, Liz had traveled to India to stay with a friend who worked in an orphanage. Liz had planned
to volunteer her physical therapy skills at a nearby hospital, but she became so wrapped up in helping the children, she completely forgot about her original plan. The children, from infant to young adult, had seemed so grateful for every bit of attention she gave them. She’d seen enough death. She wanted to experience life. And then, one of the caregivers had handed her Prisha, and Liz’s life was changed forever.

“I think so. I hope so,” she added under her breath. And maybe all the landscaping by the homeowners association would work in her favor—increase the value of her home. If she ever saw that snarly gardener again, she’d thank him.

“It’s true the price of real estate in Vegas has gone nuts,” Alex added. “I couldn’t believe what Rob paid for your new house, Kate. Not that it’s not gorgeous. You’re going to love living there, but…ouch. Glad I’m not in the market for a new home. I’m going to be stuck here in the Compound forever.”

The Compound was what family and friends called the cul-de-sac where their mother’s home sat. Uncle Claude’s house was on one side, and his youngest son and daughter-in-law’s place just one door down from there. Alex’s four-bedroom, ranch-style home on the opposite corner had been converted to the Dancing Hippo. Some days it seemed as if you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a family member.

Liz had looked in this neighborhood before she bought her home, but there hadn’t been anything available. So, contrary to her family’s wishes, she’d purchased a place in Henderson, twenty or so miles to the south—and was still catching flack for it.

“So, Liz, are you going to bring a date to the wedding?” Alex
asked. “One of my student’s fathers—he’s also a member of Rob’s Dad’s Group—asked me to go with him. I was so shocked I nearly dropped his kid.”

“Um…I don’t know. Probably not. Who would I ask?”

The only face that came to mind belonged to her irate gardener. She started to laugh.

“I told you something is wrong with her. She’s giggling. Liz doesn’t giggle,” Kate said.

“Maybe it’s the tea,” Alex said, giving her mug a suspicious look.

“Liz, tell us what’s going on. Should we be worried?”

Liz sighed. Maybe talking about the bizarre incident with the neighborhood gardener would help her let go of the nagging guilt she felt. Not from running over the cactus so much as from the impetuous call she’d made after he left the scene.

“Yesterday, I had a guy accuse me of murder.”

“Murder?” Kate squawked.

Liz nodded. “The man who’s installing some landscaping on the curbs up and down my block said I killed one of his cacti. Echinocereus somethingorotherus.” She shrugged. “Come to think of it, he seemed surprisingly well educated for a gardener—knew the genus or class or whatever of the plant I ran over, but, I mean, come on. It was a cactus. They’re a dime a dozen. And vehicular cactus-slaughter is not murder.”

Alex shook her head. “He obviously doesn’t know you—the Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa of the physical therapy world.”

She ignored the sisterly dig. Something about the guy had stayed with her long after the encounter. Maybe it was his compelling green eyes, she thought. Like icy fire or fiery ice. She couldn’t decide which. “It’s not like I did it
on purpose,” she said, shaking her head to stay focused. “I was reaching for my stack of papers. You know what the suspension is like in my car. Even mini-SUVs are a little top heavy, and I’d hit the curb while trying to avoid his truck. I really do feel awful, though.”

“So buy him another one,” Kate suggested.

“I would, but I don’t know his name. Or phone number. Or address.”

“Did you look in the phone book under
Mystery Gardener
?” Alex asked, laughing at her own joke.

“No,” Liz admitted, “but I did call Zeke and asked him to track down the guy’s license plate number.”

Alex sobered. “You what?”

Kate sat forward. “That sounds a bit extreme. Why didn’t you contact that pain-in-the-rear next-door neighbor of yours? She hired the guy. She must have his number.”

Liz turned away so they wouldn’t see her blush. She poured the last of the tea in her mug and said, “You know how much I dread talking to Crissy. She’d have made a big deal out of it, like I was going to undermine her authority or something.”

When she looked over her shoulder, she saw her sisters communicating in silence. She knew what they were saying and hated the fact that they were right. Liz wasn’t a coward, but for some reason she’d let Crissy—with her doggone Martha Stewart perfection—intimidate the heck out of her.

“What did Zeke say?” Alex asked.

“He gave me a hard time about not being on call for the Radonovic family, but he’s hooked on my three-mint tea, so he said he’d do it.”

Zeke Martini was their mother’s undeclared beau. All of the sisters found this a bit surprising considering he’d headed
the investigation that arrested Charles Harmon and brought the dogs of hell yapping at the heels of every Romani in town. No one—aunts, uncles and cousins, included—could seem to understand what Yetta, the acknowledged matriarch of the Romani clan, saw in the silver-haired
gaujo
—non-Romani—cop.

“Well, I’m sorry you had a run-in with the guy, but if you’re that curious about him, I still say you should talk to that Crissy woman,” Kate said. “I know how much you hate contentious situations, sis. But my wedding is in two weeks, and I need your complete focus.”

Liz smiled. Kate was a self-disciplined go-getter who could multitask with the best of them. This blatant plea for help meant her sister was truly in over her head, which Liz probably shouldn’t have found surprising given Grace’s involvement.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Everything. Finish picking out the new furniture for the house. Find a hair stylist who can whip this mop into some kind of shape. Teach my daughter our old Sisters of the Silver Dollar routines. Make sure my future mother-in-law is taking her medicine. And anything else that crops up. Between the two of you, I’m sure you’ll handle it. I’m going to my room and have a nervous breakdown. Bye.”

She didn’t leave, of course. And it wouldn’t have done her much good, since her room was right down the hall. Kate and Maya had been living with Yetta since Kate’s divorce. The arrangement had worked out well for everyone during the long, difficult time after Ernst’s death. But, soon, Kate and her daughter would be living in a brand-new house not far from Liz.

“I’m happy to help. Keeping busy makes waiting to hear
from the loan officer that much easier,” Liz said. Plus, cutting and curling her share of the skeins of ribbon Grace had shipped might take her mind off her mysterious cactus man.

But Kate was right. The person to ask for the name and whereabouts of the man in the tan jumpsuit lived right next door to Liz. So what if Crissy appeared to be living the American Dream—perfect house, two perfect kids and a perfect marriage? Liz refused to be intimidated.

“C
OME HERE, YOU DUMB BEAST
. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The cat, which David was tempted to call Ugly, switched his crooked tail and stepped behind the bags of soil additives stacked in the corner.

“Look. I bought you tuna. Not cat tuna. Real, recently-swimming-in-the-sea-meant-for-human-consumption tuna.” He tapped his fork against the outside of the can. The tinny sound did nothing to lure the animal closer.

“Fine. Be that way. I have to leave in a few minutes and I was sincerely hoping we might settle the question about whether or not we need to get you fixed.”

The cat was a strange color combination. Mostly gray with hair that was just a bit too long to make a clear call on the neutering situation. But he had two swatches of white. One under his belly and another from his foot to the top of his left hind quarters. He looked as if he’d slipped into an open can of white paint.