Matchmakers Box Set: Matchmakers, Encore, Finding Hope (58 page)

“Well, it appears to be a problem with our cleaning staff, sir. I have reviewed the tapes. The only person who was in your room today was the housekeeper, and we cannot find her.”

Trevor nodded. “And my room was the only one destroyed?”

“Yes. It seems she opened the door with the cart parked outside of it. She came back out, shut the door, and walked down the hall to the room where we keep the supplies and left the cart.” He shrugged.

Trevor nodded again. This had nothing to do with the housekeeper and he knew it. “Well, nothing is missing and nothing looks broken on my end.”

“We would like to offer you another room. On the hotel, of course, for your inconvenience.”

“I appreciate that, sir. But I just received a phone call from New York,” he said, still holding his cell phone in his hand. “It looks like I’m needed back. I guess my stay was almost over anyway.”

“I know the police are investigating this, but if we find anything we will certainly be in touch.”

“That would be wonderful.”

“I hope you’d consider staying here again,” the manager pleaded.

Trevor smiled and shook the man’s hand. “My stay was pleasant. This was random. I wouldn’t hold it against the hotel.”

The manager looked satisfied with that and moved toward the door where Trevor now noticed a security guard posted.

He finished packing his bag and signed all necessary papers with the hotel. He threw his bag into the trunk of his car and headed to the police station to sign some papers there as well.

Trevor made the phone call to Bryce as he left the police station. He’d made him wait three hours and he knew Bryce wasn’t going to be happy.

“Bryce.” He held the phone away from his ear as the string of curses flew from his roommate.

“They broke into the office too. What the hell are you into? Dammit, you should see this place. They broke all my fucking CDs.” He could hear Bryce kicking around items at his feet.

“What did they do to the office?”

“I don’t know. Call your mommy. She’s the one who found out about the office. I’m stuck here in the shit-hole apartment waiting for the damn cops.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ass, you’d better be. Freaked the redhead out. She won’t move in now.”

He laughed. “Sorry for that too.”

“You know who did this?”

“I have an idea. They just hit my hotel too. I was talking to the police when you called.”

“Shit, man, you’re in over your head.”

Trevor agreed on many levels. “I’m headed that way. I should be in there by nine in the morning.”

“And I’ll bet you need a ride from the airport.”

“Yeah. That would be helpful.”

“And in your sick mind I assume you think I’ll come get your sorry ass like I owe you for something.”

“You do.”

“What? For all my shit getting wrecked?”

“For the redhead.”

“I told you, this freaked her out.”

“I’ll talk to her while I’m there.”

“Sure,” Bryce said and Trevor heard the doubt. “Come home. Do the redhead and then dump her on me. That’s a pal.”

“Trust me, I’m not going to be doing anything to her.”

“Damn. You’re totally legit with that girl?”

“Totally,” he said, silently laughing at his friend’s cluelessness to the world beyond their trashed apartment. “How’s my mom?”

“Oh, you know her. She’s Sherlock Holmes in a skirt. She’ll have the case closed before you get here.”

He laughed again. Yeah, he was probably right. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It had grown late and he’d wanted to wait and call Hope when he arrived in New York the next morning, but his phone was ringing before he cleared the turn for the airport. It was Hope’s cell phone.

“Hi, baby,” he answered softly, hoping not to cause panic.

“Hey. Is everything okay? Do they know who did this?”

“No. They think it was a housekeeper. But I want you to stay with Carissa.”

“Yeah, no problem. That’s why I’m calling. Thomas said you should come here too.” Her voice was sweet, and he already missed her more than he’d ever missed any other person in his life.

“I can’t. I’m on my way to New York.”

“Right now?” And there was the sound of panic he was trying to avoid.

“I just got a call from my roommate. It seems my office in the city was also broken into.”

“Trevor,” she whispered and he heard her move about the room and then the door shut. “What’s going on?”

“Listen, it’s nothing. But I have to check on the office and my apartment. My roommate is a little freaked out.”

“Was he at your office?”

“No,” he let out a ragged breath. “They hit the apartment too.”

“No!” He heard the tears forming in her voice.

“Hey, Hope. I want you to calm down. Please.”

“Someone is after you,” she said and in the solitude of his car, he shook his head.

No, honey. Someone is after you.

“I’ll be okay. I want you to stay with your sister. I’ll be back in just a few days. Everything is going to be okay.”

“Trevor, when you get back, you stay with me.”

“Hope, this isn’t the time to go into that.”

“Then don’t. Know that you’re moving in with me. Until everything is settled at least. Then if you think you want a place away from me that’s fine. But I’m being firm on this.”

He smiled. God, he loved her. He was going to have to make a point to tell her that an awful lot when this mess with Donald Buchanan was over.

“Okay.”

“Be careful.”

“I promise.” He took the exit to the airport. “I have to turn in the car now. I’ll call you from New York.”

It was his mother standing at the baggage claim when he arrived and not Bryce.

Violet Jacobs smiled at her son, her arms open wide to engulf him in a hug. Trevor smiled as she wrapped her arms around him. He could have picked her up and swung her around, he’d missed her that much.

He took a look at her when he backed away. She was dressed in a business suit and heels. A string of pearls adorned her neck and her perfectly coiffed hair swung just past her jaw. In true fashion of his mother, she interlaced her perfectly French-manicured fingers and raised her eyebrows to him. She didn’t say a word, but was asking what’s going on?

“I think it’s the wife,” he said as he hoisted his suitcase from the baggage carousel and walked beside his mother toward the elevator.

“Buchanan’s?”

“Yeah.” They stepped into the elevator. “He seems to have disappeared.”

“He had a heart attack Sunday night. He’s still in ICU.”

“Bryce figured you’d have this all solved.” The elevator opened and they exited to the parking garage.

“Did he?” she asked, her voice playful and knowing.

“So fill me in. What did I get myself into?”

Violet said nothing but simply smiled as they walked toward her BMW parked near the elevator. She hit the key fob and opened the trunk. Trevor lifted his case into the trunk and then walked toward the driver’s door and opened it for his mother. She passed by him, patted his cheek, and slid into the car.

Trevor shut the door and took a moment to walk around the car. He let out a breath and then climbed into the passenger seat.

Violet handed him a manila envelope as she drove out of the garage. He opened it and dumped the contents into his lap, then gave a low whistle.

“You work fast.”

“Thank you.”

“So this is Delores Buchanan?” He examined the photograph, his brows knit.

“That’s her.”

“In my head this is exactly what I envisioned. Scary.”

Violet snickered behind her large dark sunglasses. She paid the parking fee and pulled into traffic.

“So you think I’m right? You think she’s the one behind all of this?

“She’s looking for that girl you’re smitten with.”

“Head over heels in love, Mom.”

Violet nodded. “You never were one to wait on things when you wanted them. Does she feel the same way?”

“I think she does, but the family is leery of me.”

“Who wouldn’t open their arms for my son? He’s such a good boy,” she said in a patronizing tone.

“The family who watches out too closely for her.” He lifted his head and turned toward his mother. “They all know she asked me to help find out about her birth parents. Hardest part is keeping my confidentiality for Buchanan. And up until now he’s asked me to get to know her, paid me up front, in cash, but doesn’t want his wife to know. So here I am playing secretive boyfriend and the sister knows I know too much.”

“Oh, you are in so deep.” She was laughing, which meant she wasn’t worried. He hoped that Hope and Carissa would laugh too when the truth came out.

“Anyway, why is Mrs. Scary Buchanan looking for my Hope?”

“I think she’s the reason your Hope lives with her biological sister and her father.”

“Run that by me again.”

She smiled her in-fact-I-do-have-it-all-figured-out smile. “From what I can pull together, your client had an affair with a woman twenty-four years ago.”

“Not news,” he said with a rise of his brows.

“Smart-ass, do you want help?” He nodded. She continued, “Somewhere in all this sneaking around the wife got involved, found out about the mistress, confronted the mistress and not the husband. So whatever went down between Scary Buchanan and your girlfriend’s biological mother landed Hope in the hands of the family she grew up with.”

“You think she threatened Mandy?”

“Yes, that’s what I think.”

“And why is it that you sell auto, home, and life?” he joked as he fingered his way through the papers on his lap.

His office was trashed too. Every file had been dumped, every drawer emptied, and the water cooler smashed against the wall. Whoever had come looking hadn’t found what he was looking for.

“I told you it was a mess,” Bryce complained. “How the hell are we going to pay for this?”

“I know for a fact you have a good insurance agent,” Trevor joked as he walked through the mess toward his desk.

His letter opener had been stabbed into the wood as though the culprit had taken his revenge on the desk. He shook his head as he tugged the letter opener free.

“Scary Buchanan didn’t do this on her own. She has people working for her.” He looked around. “I need to find out why.”

“Why? She’s an overprotective bitch! Her husband fucked around on her, and obviously it’s the fault of the floozy.”

“Nice thinking, huh?”

Bryce shrugged. “That’s how some people think.”

“So why has she been quiet for twenty-three years?”

“There wasn’t a threat until you came along.”

“I didn’t just come along.” Trevor looked up at Bryce. “He came to me.”

“Then there’s a reason. If his wife made the mistress disappear, then something got his attention to tell him there was a child.”

Bryce was a moron most days, but he was a brilliant puzzle solver.

“So what I need to find out is who contacted him.”

“Duh!”

Trevor laughed, picked up his chair from the floor, and sat down at his disheveled desk. “So Buchanan can’t keep secrets very well. Wife found out about the mistress, and nearly a quarter of a century later she finds out he hired me to find the child he didn’t know about.”

Bryce nodded. “Yep.”

“And he’s not going to be much help since he’s in the hospital.”

“She try to kill him?”

“I don’t know. Mom said he had a heart attack and is in ICU.”

“And you’re thinking that if he’s in ICU his wife is dutifully sitting by his side and you can go ask her yourself.”

“You are one amazing son of a bitch.” Trevor grinned. “Let’s go.”

Bryce had a way with people—or a keen skill in lying. The cute young nurse at the station was baffled by the bull he’d produced that he and Trevor were sons of a previous marriage and wanted to see their father. By the end of the conversation, Bryce had touched her hand, complimented her on her hair, had her phone number, and Trevor was walking through the curtain to see Donald Buchanan.

Buchanan lay unconscious. His ICU bay was empty of visitors.

The nurse, hot on Bryce’s trail, followed them into the bay. “He had bypass surgery yesterday, so he’s still out. But his vitals are good,” she said as she checked the monitors by his side. “I can’t let you stay long, but…”

“Where’s his wife?” Trevor asked.

The nurse shrugged. “She left after the surgery and said she’d be out of town for a few days.”

That caught Trevor in the gut. Where would she have to go while her beloved was dying? “Did she say where she was going?”

The young nurse shook her head. “She only left a number in case we needed to get in touch with her.”

Trevor looked at Bryce. How to get the number? The nurse would be suspicious of two guys who claimed not to know the cell number of their stepmother. “See, I told you we should have told her we were coming.”

Bryce shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, bro. My mistake.”

Ah, he was good, Trevor thought. But that still didn’t get them the number. Unless… “The phone number she gave you, is it her new cell phone number?”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s a new number.”

“Probably is. She lost her old phone and had to get a new one. Didn’t even think to keep the old number. You know how stepmothers are. They only think of themselves.”

The nurse nodded. “I can get it for you.”

“Would you?” Bryce smiled with a wink and one more touch on the arm of the baffled nurse. “We’d really appreciate that. You might be able to tell, she doesn’t accept us much.”

“I understand.” The nurse shook her head. “My stepmother is the same way. I’m not her child, but she seems to forget I’m the child of her husband.”

“Exactly,” Trevor added. “We’ll leave him rest if you can get us that number.”

“Oh, sure.” She smiled and walked out of the room.

Bryce and Trevor exchanged glances before the nurse returned with the number.

“Thanks.” Bryce smiled as he put the number in his shirt pocket. “I really appreciate it. I’ll give you a call, okay?”

“Great. Bye.” She gave him a flirty wave and Trevor shook his head.