Taken In (9 page)

“Then why do you room with him?” Beatrice asked.

“We’re the same size. He has great clothes. What can I say?”

“You can say you’ll help us, Charles,” Tori pleaded in frustration. “You can say you’ll help us track down some of these women John wronged in the hopes one of them holds the key to the truth.
Please?
”

“D-o-n-e.” Charles slowly, deliberately, ticked off each letter he said with an ardent finger.
“Done.”

Tori looked up at the clock on the far wall and felt her shoulders tense. While she was all for using every avenue available to help Dixie, waiting for Charles to finish his shift was proving to be harder than she’d imagined.

She wanted to track down each and every woman John had scammed in recent months. She wanted to talk to the family members of those women. She wanted to find the person who’d pushed him over his apartment’s balcony and be there with the biggest hug ever when Dixie was set free.

Yet even as she took a second and third glance at the time, she knew Charles was a necessary ingredient in the plan. He knew the city. He was familiar enough with John. He’d seen the parade of women the man had preyed on in a devious quest to live well. And Charles was more than willing to help.

Really, with all of those factors in play, how hard was it to wait another thirty minutes?

“We’re gonna get her out, Victoria.” Margaret Louise leaned across the two-person table they’d claimed at the edge of the café and patted Tori’s hand. “Just you wait ’n see. I’ve got me a good feelin’ ’bout Charles.”

Tori allowed her gaze to move from the clock to Margaret Louise. “I know. I just want to get her out
now
, you know?”

“We will.”

She tried to find solace in her friend’s certainty, but it was hard. Instead, she forced herself to focus on something else for a while. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen your sister so happy before,” Tori mused while eyeing Leona across the store. “She’s literally glowing.”

Margaret Louise laughed. “That’s ’cause she’s finally found herself a kindred spirit. Someone who cares ’bout hair and makeup as much as she does.”

Debbie leaned against the nearest wall and took a sip of her latte. “When I passed by them a few minutes ago, Charles was telling Leona about some hair convention he went to last weekend and how Leona would have made a wonderful hair model.”

“Was that why she was batting her lashes so hard?” Rose mumbled from behind the book she was reading in a nearby armchair. “I thought maybe she was trying to achieve liftoff.”

Beatrice poked her head around the back of her camera and made a face. “I’ve been so troubled about Dixie that I haven’t been taking as many pictures as I was the first two days we were here. Melissa and Georgina are going to be disappointed.”

“I’m sure the judge would have let you take a picture of Bobblehead Kenny next to his gavel.”

“Rose!” Tori said sharply.

The matriarch merely shrugged her shoulders and flipped to the next page of her book, her brows furrowing as she did.

Tori rushed to soften Rose’s sarcasm with a smile in the nanny’s direction. “I’m sure they’ll love the pictures you already have, Beatrice. Really.”

After a momentary hesitation, Beatrice resumed her slow scroll through the photographs she’d snapped thus far, allowing Tori to focus solely on a clearly troubled Rose. “Rose? Is something wrong?”

Rose’s head lolled to the side of the chair, prompting Tori to jump to her feet and bridge the small gap between them in a matter of seconds. “Rose? Rose? Are you okay?”

Lifting her head, Rose closed her eyes and sighed. “If it wasn’t for me, Dixie wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“What are you talking about?” Tori asked as she squatted down beside Rose, took hold of her arm, and checked her pulse.

Rose’s eyes flew open. “I’m not dying, Victoria. I’m—I’m just chastising myself for being a horrible friend and sticking my nose where it didn’t belong, is all.”

“I stuck my honker in every bit as much as you did, Rose.” Margaret Louise’s smile slipped from her face.

For the briefest of moments, Tori contemplated reminding the women that she had tried to tell them their meddling in Dixie’s life was a mistake, but let it go. I-told-you-so’s at this point in the game didn’t do anyone any good. Instead, she searched for something that would put Dixie’s dilemma in perspective.

“We’ve been through this already. Pointing fingers at this point takes us off task. The only thing we should be worried about right now is how to get Dixie out of this mess—”

Rose pointed at the book in her hand and began reading aloud. “The reason we see so many singles in the sixty-five and older group is because of a small handful of mistakes they make.”

Tori bobbed her head to the right, instantly recognizing the title and cover that graced Rose’s lap as the elderly woman continued reading. “‘Those who refuse to change their patterns and never leave their homes remain lonely. Those who take a chance and attend a senior singles group, whether online or in person, often undermine their efforts by appearing too needy or too anxious. Some even go to the extreme of making up a persona they believe will further their chances of finding a match only to discover they can’t keep up the farce or that they’ve attracted the wrong sort of mate, bringing on a sense of defeat and a fear of trying again.’”

“That’s exactly what we did, ain’t it?” Margaret Louise moped. “Only instead of just bein’ defeated as Gavin warned, Dixie is defeated, heartbroken, and livin’ a complete nightmare. And it’s all because of us . . .”

Rose’s frail shoulders slumped forward in tandem with Margaret Louise’s robust ones and Beatrice’s diminutive ones, blanketing their corner of the bookstore in the kind of defeat that could be paralyzing if it went unchecked.

Dixie didn’t need paralyzing.

Dixie needed help.

“Obviously you’re not the first ones to make a mistake like this. If you were, Gavin Rollins wouldn’t have a book, now would he?” Tori rose to her feet and looked around the store, the presence of a short, stocky girl behind the counter next to Charles giving her some hope that the start of their search was finally near. “But if you keep bemoaning all your mistakes, you’re not going to be a whole lot of help in finding a solution. So please, stop. Let’s focus on finding the truth, releasing Dixie, and getting back home to Melissa and Georgina and everyone else.”

Beatrice nodded then handed her camera to Tori. “When it comes time to show them this picture, you’ll have to explain it since I was back at the hotel with Rose and Debbie when you took this.”

Tori glanced down at the camera and the shot of John’s street as it looked with yellow crime scene tape blocking access to residents and passersby alike. “If I’d known all the excitement was about John, I wouldn’t have taken this shot.”

Margaret Louise leaned in for a closer look, her head nodding along with Tori’s words as she did. “When we took it, I thought it would be real big city–like. But all it did was document the beginnin’ of Dixie’s nightmare while showin’ how small the world is, even in a big city like this.”

“How small the world is?” Tori echoed.

“You’re darn tootin’. Why, think of all them people we saw on the way to spy on Dixie and John that first mornin’. Think of all them people in the audience when we were tapin’ with Melly and Kenneth. Think of all them people on the subway that afternoon on the way”—Margaret Louise gestured toward the picture illuminated on the viewfinder of Beatrice’s camera—“to this street with Leona. Think of all them people we passed on the sidewalk. All them people we saw on our subway when Wurly was playin’ his music so nicely. Yet even with all them people we passed, somehow, in less than twenty-four hours of bein’ here when that picture was taken, we still managed to capture a familiar face.”

Beatrice leaned around Tori’s shoulder for a closer look. “You did? Who?”

Margaret Louise pointed toward the camera screen a second time, her finger drawing their attention to a woman several feet left of Tori and Bobblehead Kenny. “That one right there.”

“You know her?” Tori repeated as she squinted at the camera.

“
Know
her? No. But I’ve seen her before. We
all
have. At the Waldorf that mornin’ when we were spyin’ on Dixie.”

Tori looked from Margaret Louise to the camera and then up at Beatrice. “Can you zoom this in so I can see her better?”

Beatrice took the camera, pressed a button twice, and then handed it back to Tori, a smile stretching her lips wide as she did. “Margaret Louise is right. We stole her plant, remember?”

“Stole her plant . . .” The words trailed from her lips as her thoughts traveled between the picture in front of her and the potted plant that had provided Tori and the rest of the crew a much-needed hiding place while checking on Dixie. For there, captured in the snap of Margaret Louise’s picture-taking finger, was the steely-eyed woman who’d retreated to the safety of a second potted plant for a quieter and more unobstructed view of—

“You are so so
soooo
going to love me, Miss Victoria.” Charles sashayed up to the chair with one arm linked around Leona’s and the other holding a business card with writing on the back. Paris hopped along at their feet.

“I am?”

“You are.” He took the camera from Tori’s hand and replaced it with the business card. “Do you see that name scrawled on the back?”

Tori held it closer and tried to decipher the handwriting. All she could make out, though, was the first name and an address on West Seventy-second. “Caroline?”

Charles grinned. “That’s right. Caroline Trotter.”

She wanted to grab for the camera, to revisit the parade of thoughts that were just trying to line up when Charles and Leona strolled over arm in arm, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Charles was doing them a favor. The least she could do was be polite. Looking again at the card, she recognized the letters in the last name now that it was spoken. “Caroline Trotter. Okay, yes, I see that. But who is she?”

“One of John’s women,” Leona drawled.

Tori’s head snapped up, her focus now firmly on Charles and Leona. “One of John’s women? Are you sure?”

Charles did a little dance without moving his feet. “I told you that you were going to love me, didn’t I?” Without waiting for a response, he continued, his words coming at a rapid-fire speed. “Well, Caroline Trotter was in here with Charles sometime last week. They sat at that table right there”—he pointed a long, slender, recently manicured finger toward the very table where Tori and Margaret Louise had been sitting not more than ten minutes earlier—“and he charmed her the way he charms—I mean,
charmed
all the ladies he brought in here. Normally, we never see them after that first meeting on account of the fact they start cooking and waiting on him from that moment on. But”—Charles stopped, took a deep breath, and went on—“Caroline left her scarf behind and called the store asking if it had been found. Vanessa—I call her
Vanny
—over there”—he pointed again, this time at the short, stocky girl behind the counter that had shown up to relieve Charles of his duties—“offered to bring it to Caroline on account of how upset the woman was.”

“I’ll never understand how someone can get all worked up over something so silly like leaving a scarf behind,” Rose groused. “It’s replaceable.”

Charles held out his hands in much the way a crossing guard would, but with more flair. “Sugar, she wasn’t upset about the scarf so much as she was John.” Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he darted his eyes from right to left. “Seems he did something that tipped his hand in the louse department.”

Tori leaned forward. “What did he do?”

“Vanny didn’t ask. She just offered to bring the scarf to Caroline the next time she was up that way, only she got sick.” Charles raised Tori’s lean with one of his own. “I have to tell you, Vanny had such
horrible
sniffles I thought I was going to die being around all those germs. It was completely and
totally
icky.”

He shot a sideways glance in Leona’s direction, and at her understanding nod, he moved on. “So I sent her home early that day. Needless to say, Vanny never got around to delivering Caroline’s scarf.”

“You really should breathe between words, son,” Rose said, shaking her head in wonder. “Gives us old people a chance to catch up.”

Charles giggled then winked dramatically at Leona. “Shall we show them, gorgeous?”

Leona perfected her already-perfect posture then pulled her arm from inside Charles’s long enough to run a preening hand along the edges of her hair. “If you think we should,” she teased. Then, reaching into her handbag, Leona extracted an expensive silk scarf and waved it around for all to see. “Charles and I think we should return this to Caroline
today
, don’t you, dear?”

It was the break she’d been hoping for when Charles agreed to help. Suddenly, the time spent waiting for Charles’s relief to show at the store was more than worth it, since it meant they already had a lead on one of the women John had scammed in recent weeks. She opened her mouth to voice her unequivocal agreement to the plan, but closed it as Charles took in the picture still magnified on the viewfinder of Beatrice’s camera.

“Leona told me your time in Chicago made you sensitive to crime and its fallout, but . . . wow . . . you really
are
good, aren’t you, Victoria? A real live Nancy Drew.”

“Excuse me?”

Charles pointed at the same steely-eyed woman who’d claimed Tori’s complete focus only moments earlier. “Here I am, all excited to hand you one of John’s unsuspecting women via a horribly gaudy silk scarf and you’ve already found one of your own.”