Courting Disaster (8 page)

“Wake up. Get the baby. We're leaving.”

Hannah opened her eyes to see Tyler Marsh standing over her. Fear gripped her. “What are you doing here?”

“Let's go,” he said.

“I can't just walk out of the hospital.” She clutched the blankets as if they could protect her from him.

“Sure you can. No one's able to hold you against your will. Is the kid a boy or girl?”

She studied him, trying to determine if he was lying. If he'd looked in the nursery, he would have seen pink ribbons on Kaitlyn's crib. Or didn't he care enough to look for his own child? Of course not. Why should that surprise her?

She hated him even more than she thought possible. “It's a boy.”

“A son. Good. Don't just lie there. Move.”

“I'm not going,” she said.

“Yes, you are.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her from the bed. “Where are your clothes? Get dressed!”

She yanked her arm from him and backed away until the wall stopped her from going farther. “The baby can't leave. There's something wrong with his lungs. He's in an incubator. He was very small.”

His eyes narrowed as if trying to decide whether or not she was lying. “You said everything was going well, that the baby would be strong and healthy. Hell, woman, you got big as a house. How could the brat be a runt?”

She felt tears threaten. How had she ever loved this man? “He'll be fine as long as the congestion clears up and it doesn't turn into pneumonia. He needs to stay in an incubator a few days.” She prayed that what she was saying made sense.

He gripped her shoulders, lifting her to her toes, his face too close to hers. She turned her head, sickened by the sight of him, by the memories of all he'd once meant to her. “You're lying again, aren't you? We're wasting time.” He shoved her, and she sprawled onto the bed.

She scrambled over the mattress, trying to get far from him. “It's not a lie. Believe me. The baby will be all right. In a couple of days we'll go with you.”

He paced, running long fingers through his hair. “What are you doing here anyway? Why aren't you at that birthing clinic you talked about or SF General? How can you pay for a hospital like this?”

“The maternity ward at SF General was full. They moved me here.”

“Why didn't you phone me?”

“It…it happened so fast. I didn't think I was in labor. I went to emergency because I felt sick, and they told me. How did you find me?”

“You didn't want me to, that's for sure,” he growled.

She sat up straight, taking deep breaths and trying to bring some semblance of sanity back to their relationship. “I was going to call as soon as the baby was healthy enough to leave.”

“Sure.” He leaned toward her. “That's why I had to call all over the city to find you, and couldn't until I remembered that you often told people your name was Jones. Then I figured that if you were using a fake name, you'd probably left the city. On my third call, I found you.” With a quick movement, he clutched a handful of her hair, jerking her head close and forcing her to look him in the eye. “Now, why don't I believe that you planned to tell me where you were?”

Tears filled her eyes. “Of course I was going to tell you. Where else would I go?”

He gave a hard tug on her hair, hurting her. “We made a deal. Don't ever forget it. All this makes me very suspicious of you, Hannah.”

“I'm not backing out of anything,” she cried, desperate for him to leave her alone. “Maybe the baby will be all right tomorrow. Come back then. I'll talk to the doctor about letting him go home.”

“Good girl.” His voice was low, almost a growl. “Very good girl.” Then he put his hand under her chin and tilted her head. He met her lips with his in a soft kiss, a loving kiss, the kind he used to give her when they first dated.

Stunned, aching for the warmth and gentleness from him she'd once adored, she allowed it until she realized what a sick, lying bastard he was and pushed him hard away from her.

He put his hands on his hips and smirked. “You'd better not be lying to me, Hannah. Remember that.”

With the unspoken threat hanging in the air, he turned and swaggered from the room.

 

Angie was sitting up in bed trying to figure out a word for YNNNAGOI when her cell phone rang. She should have been asleep already, but her conversation with Paavo had kept her awake. Once again, she'd turned to crossword puzzles and word jumbles in the newspaper. They helped her clear her mind of other things. They also had a tendency to make her sleepy. She was turning to them more and more these days.

As she reached to answer the late-night phone call, the answer struck: ANNOYING.

“This is Hannah,” a soft, timorous woman's voice said.

Hannah? She didn't know any Hannah. Why would someone…Then she remembered. Stan's friend. It was twelve-thirty in the morning. Had something happened to the baby? Why call her and not Stan? “Yes?” she said.

“Angie, help me.”

 

Angie tucked Hannah's long brown hair under a blond wig. They were in the women's room near the emergency entrance. Angie had parked her car there, rather than by the main door.

Hannah wore one of Angie's loose-fitting raincoats. The baby was under it, held by Hannah's right arm while the left one was wrapped in paper towels. From a distance, it would look as if Angie were wheeling out a patient with a broken arm. The broken arm could explain the odd way Hannah sat in order to hold the baby against her.

The head nurse had been unhappy about releasing the baby, but she had no choice when the mother demanded to leave.

“I had no idea you were so clever, Angie,” Hannah said as she looked at herself in the mirror.

“That's not all.” Angie took out a pair of lightly tinted sunglasses and put them on Hannah. “In the dark, they'll look like they're for distance.”

“No one would ever recognize me,” Hannah exclaimed.

“That's what you said you needed,” Angie replied doubtfully.

“But what about you?” Hannah asked. “You've been to the restaurant. Tyler will recognize you.”

Angie could have kicked herself. Here she'd prided herself on her fast thinking ever since getting Hannah's distraught phone call, yet she'd forgotten something so basic. “I know!”

In a supply room, she found a white cotton towel, wrapped it around her head to cover her hair, and pinned it against the nape of her neck.

“Okay, we're all set,” Angie said. “But before we leave the hospital, I want you to tell me why you're so afraid of Tyler.”

Hannah chewed her bottom lip. “I've told you. He's crazy.”

“He didn't appear at all crazy to me, Hannah,” Angie said. Something about Hannah bothered her. She wanted to trust the woman, and yet—

“I don't want him to ever touch me or my baby!” Hannah cried.

“My God! You think he might hurt a baby? Why?”

“I can't…I don't want to go into that.” Hannah pressed her hand to her forehead. “It'll be better for everyone if you don't know.” She turned pleading brown eyes on Angie. “He'll be back tomorrow. I've got to leave. Stan offered his apartment. If I could stay there just a day or two, that's all the time I need. No one would find me there. I don't want to go to LA with a baby this young.”

When Hannah called, she said she'd contacted Angie because if the baby's father was watching and Stan showed up in a taxi, Tyler would see who she left with. But he would never dream she was leaving in a Mercedes. With Angie, she and the baby would be safe.

Angie had pondered a long time over calling Paavo or Stan about this. The more she thought about it, though, the more she believed that the two women could more easily leave the hospital unnoticed than if either man were with them.

She didn't know if she was doing the right thing or not, but Hannah had convinced her she'd leave the hospital that night with or without help.

Angie hunched over, head bent, and pushed the wheelchair out of the hospital.

Although the parking lot had a number of dif
ferent exits, they all funneled onto the same roadway. On that street, Angie noticed someone sitting in a parked car, a dark, older American car of some sort.

A shudder went through her as they passed it on their way out, and despite her better judgment, she headed toward the freeway faster than the speed limit allowed.

 

Paavo was tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep as his conversation with Angie at dinner kept replaying in his head. He lived his life using logic and reason, and couldn't stand her father's stubbornness about him. It was both illogical and unreasonable. In short, it pissed him off.

He threw back the covers and sat up. Sal's words about taking care of the problem himself had troubled him all day. Maybe that was why he dressed, picked up his car keys, and left the house. For someone logical and reasonable, it was neither, but he drove in the direction of Elizabeth Schull's apartment.

As he neared her building, he could see, parked across the street from it, an old red Lincoln that took up half the block.
Damn!
he thought.

He stopped and pulled into a parking space, then shut off his headlights. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see that the Lincoln wasn't empty. Sitting in it was none other than Sal Amalfi, watching the apartment. What was he up to?

Paavo sighed. It was going to be a long night.

 

When Stan opened the door to his apartment, the sight of his unexpected visitors vanquished any trace of sleepiness.

Without a word, Angie shoved past him. Hannah, in a blond wig, gave him a wobbly smile and followed with the baby in her arms.

“Hannah?” He gaped. “Why aren't you still in the hospital? Angie—what's going on?”

Angie tossed the complimentary hospital bag with formula and diapers onto the sofa. “It's a long story.”

“What's that?” His head swiveled from one woman to the other, and then to the strange paraphernalia on his sofa.

Hannah looked ready to drop.

“You need to lie down.” He held her arm to steady her. “The bedroom's this way.”

Angie was already ahead of him. While he stood in the doorway, holding Hannah's arm, she found fresh sheets and remade his bed, then pushed a nightstand out of the way and shoved the bed against the wall. “That should do it,” she said.

Stan gaped at his rearranged bedroom.

“This is wonderful.” Hannah looked at him with adoring eyes. “I don't know how to thank you.”

“It…it's nothing,” he said stoically. “I'll make up the couch for myself.”

Angie sent Stan out to find an all-night grocery to buy basic supplies for a baby, while she helped Hannah set up a couple of bottles of formula.

It was near dawn when Hannah, wearing one of
Angie's nightgowns, sank into Stan's bed, exhausted, and Angie headed back to her own apartment.

Stan still hadn't returned from the store.

As soon as Angie woke up the next morning she was on the phone with Paavo to tell him about her adventurous night with Stan's strange new girlfriend. He warned her to stay away from Hannah and her troubled relationship. Every cop knew that domestic disputes, even if the couple wasn't married, were potentially the most violent and the most dangerous.

Connie was much more interested, and she had news for Angie as well. She'd donated her hot tub clowns and a few other items to the public TV station's week-long annual auction to raise money and pledges, and while at the KQED studio, she learned that the station had gotten a number of the city's biggest restaurants to donate dinners for four. The auction director had planned to have the restaurateurs share the TV camera to promote their restaurants and the event.

As soon as Connie said that, Angie knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. Connie affirmed it, saying jealousy ran rampant, with each owner de
manding peak audience time and more minutes on camera than any other owner. The whole concept was threatening to fall apart.

While Connie spoke, Angie thought about the restaurateurs all gathered in one spot—owners of the type of place Serefina would likely choose for a party. She barely had a week and a half left. Maybe she'd gone about this all wrong and needed to talk to the owners themselves.

Just then an idea sprang to mind. It was the answer to her prayers—and maybe KQED's as well.

 

Paavo got himself a cup of French roast, black, at the South San Francisco Starbucks, then took a seat at the table across from Sal. He'd called him that morning, planning to discuss face-to-face the foolishness of sitting outside Schull's apartment. If she saw him, she'd have a case against him that Johnnie Cochran wouldn't be able to get him out of.

To his amazement, Sal showed up wearing what looked like a doctor's white jacket.

“What's that getup?” Paavo asked.

“When you called this morning,” Sal said, “I realized you'd be the perfect foil. Let's go.”

“Go? Go where?” Paavo's voice rose. “We need to talk.”

“We'll talk in the car.”

Sal headed out the door, and Paavo followed, fuming. Now he knew where Angie got her one-track mind.

“Do you want to drive?” Sal asked. “Or shall I call a taxi? I'm not sure of the way, and I don't like driving in strange neighborhoods.”

“The way to what?” Paavo asked.

“The Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital.”

After much arguing, which did no good, Paavo decided to drive them himself in hopes of convincing Sal to change his mind. His hope was in vain.

“May as well park in the doctors' parking,” Sal said.

Paavo went to the general area. “It's not going to work,” he warned.

Both men got out of the car. “Come along and find out,” Sal answered, clipping an ID badge to his breast pocket. The badge had his photo and was from San Francisco General, which worked closely with the city's mental health facility. “It's amazing what a little money can buy,” he said, patting the badge.

“You'll get caught.”

“
Dio!
You're like the Voice of Doom,” Sal complained. “The same thing over and over. Relax! You'll be there to arrest me if I do anything wrong. I just want to look at her records. It's not as if I'm going to rob the place!”

“Sal, it's illegal.” Paavo said the words as slowly and forcefully as he could.

“So is jaywalking.”

He headed for the hospital, Paavo at his side.

“Excuse me, nurse.” Sal strode up to the woman at the reception desk. “Where can I find the archived medical records? I need to look up something right away that's a good twenty years old.”

She looked him over quizzically. “I'm sorry, but do you belong here?” she asked.

Here we go,
Paavo thought.

Sal lifted himself up to his full height, his voice quivering with indignity. “I'm Dr. Salvatore Amalfi. Who do you think I am?” He peered down his nose at her.

“Oh, of course…I'm so sorry,” the nurse murmured. Then, stronger, “You'll need to go to the basement. Keep to the right when you get off the elevator. It's all the way at the end of the hall.”

“Thanks.”

Paavo breathed deeply as they took the elevator.

They got a few surprised looks as they passed a couple of orderlies and a doctor and walked through the basement corridor, but no one questioned them.

They went through the file cabinets until they found the one with her records, listed under her original name, Janice Schullmann.

Sal pulled it out and read, Paavo peering over his shoulder.

She'd been engaged to be married, and one week before the wedding, she learned that her fiancé had run off to Reno and eloped with another woman. When he returned, she tried to run him over with her car.

She accepted a stay in the mental hospital, and in return the ex-fiancé didn't press charges.

The diagnosis in layman's terms was “a psychotic episode brought on by extreme jealousy.”

“A very scary woman,” Paavo murmured.

Sal nodded, his face a little pale.

 

Hannah padded barefoot into the kitchen, where Stan sat at the table reading the
Chronicle.
Her face
was still wan and tired, and she was bundled in a thick terry cloth bathrobe from Angie.

“You're awake,” he said, jumping to his feet.

She was already asleep when he finally made it back from the grocery last night, or, more accurately, this morning. He rarely went grocery shopping. Trying to shop for a woman was bad enough, for a baby was impossible. He read labels until his eyes went all bleary and finally a female store clerk took pity on him and helped him out.

He'd slept on the sofa in his clothes, not wanting to disturb her by going into the bedroom to get his pajamas.

“Are you sure you should be up?” he asked as he dashed around the small table and pulled out a chair for her. “Sit, please.”

“Thank you, but—”

“Would you like some coffee? Tea?” He darted from the table to the Mr. Coffee on the counter.

“Coffee is fine,” she said.

Coffeepot in hand, he looked at her seated at the table. “Oh, a cup.” He put down the pot, dashed to the cupboard, pulled out a cup, studied it, put it back, and took out another, finally settling on a third with a matching saucer. He hurried back to the pot and poured, then set it in front of her.

She asked for milk and sugar. He'd bought milk, and found some rock-hard sugar cubes in the back of a cupboard.

“I don't want to put you to any trouble,” she said.

“You're no trouble.” He sat again, watching her, and pushed his newspaper aside.

She took a sip, then put down the cup. “I'll figure out where to go and what to do soon. I just never expected…”

“It's all right. You're welcome here. Oh! You must be starving.” He jumped up and opened the refrigerator. “We've got Egg-Os, Jimmy Dean sausage breakfast”—leaving the door open, he turned to a cabinet—“instant Quaker Oats, Pop-Tarts, and I'm not sure what else,” he said dejectedly as he couldn't remember what else he'd bought. Maybe nothing. “What would you like?”

“I don't know,” she said, her head swiveling fast as he rushed about. “I'm not very hungry.”

“Well…” He wasn't sure what to do. Was he supposed to decide for her?

“Just some toast, please,” she said finally.

“Toast…toast.” On top of the dinner plates he found the long loaf of Wonder bread. Glad he bought it, he took two slices and was about to drop them into the toaster when the baby let out a cry. The bread flew from his hand and onto the floor.

As Hannah left the room, he tossed the dropped bread into the garbage and put more in the toaster, then sat again, feeling a bit weary himself. He turned back to his newspaper, unsure where he'd left off.

She soon returned. “Baby's fine. Took a little of her bottle and went right back to sleep.”

He folded the newspaper shut, then studied her a moment before saying, “Angie said this is about the baby's father.”

She gripped the cup with both hands. “It's a long story. Not one that's easy to talk about.”

“She said you're afraid of him.” The toast popped from the toaster and the sound made him jump as well. He never ate toast—not his own, anyway. He put it on a plate, then found the butter and remembered that he'd even bought some strawberry preserves. Slowly, as he perused his once-neat-and-bare cupboards, the horror that was last night's shopping adventure came back to him. He'd never seen such a huge food bill in his life. “How did he find you? Wasn't the name you gave fake?”

She nodded. “My real name is Polish, or so I've been told. It's pronounced Jan-ick, but spelled D-z-a-n-i-c. Weird, huh? Sometimes it's easier to simply use Jones. It isn't as if I knew any Dzanics anyway. I'm the last one in the whole world, it seems.” She paused a moment, as if to quell the somber effect the words had on her. “I'd forgotten that I once told him I sometimes use Jones. If I hadn't been in such a state when we got to the hospital, I might have come up with something more original.”

“He called the hospitals?”

She nodded.

“Why? I thought you said he was out of your life. It doesn't sound like it.”

“There's nothing between us but hatred.”

Her words were so stark, her expression so unhappy and troubled, Stan wasn't sure what to say. Obviously, there was a lot more to the story or she wouldn't be hiding.

“Here's the newspaper,” he said, placing it beside her plate.

She shook her head. “My social worker said it's too depressing. She wants to make sure I don't get any more upset”—she used her napkin to wipe her eyes—“than I am. I'm so sorry to be so much trouble. I didn't mean to intrude.” Sniffling, she buttered her toast. She didn't touch the preserves.

He stood. “Guess I'll take my shower and get dressed now while you're out here. I didn't want to disturb you earlier.”

“You wouldn't have,” she said.

He went into the bedroom and quietly got some clean clothes. Whenever the baby made any sound, he froze, not wanting to wake her. Her cry was surprisingly loud. He remembered how red and wrinkled she was the first time he saw her, and now, only thirty-six or so hours later, she looked quite human. It was all very amazing.

Under the shower the hot water beat down on him like needles as he tried to make sense out of all this.

He wasn't the type of man that women and children—or anyone—turned to for help. Having a woman and child show up on his doorstep was more than strange. He'd given Hannah his bed, yet had no idea who she was or what was going on in her life.

He soaped his body, scrubbing hard.

For all he knew, Tyler Marsh was insanely jealous and was loading a shotgun at that very moment. If he found her at the hospital, could he find her here as well?

Why did I let her come here?
Stan asked that question over and over as he poured shampoo in his hand and began to lather his hair. She was nothing
to him. None of this was his responsibility. He added more shampoo.

A glob of soap bubbles slid down his forehead into his eyes.

Eyes stinging, he groped for a washcloth. Why did this strange woman raise such a sense of responsibility in him? Finally, hair clean, eyes clear, he turned the temperature lever down to cold to clear his head and his emotions.