Then You Hide (11 page)

She sounded totally unconvincing, and he could only assume the guy on the other end wasn’t buying it.

“Oh,” she said, straightening a little, glancing over at the property. “Really? That would be awesome, Marcus, because I ditched the cruise for something…um…” She searched for a word. “Less commercial. So I could definitely do that for a few days. It would be amazing, actually.”

She tapped Wade and added a thumbs-up, nodding as she listenend.

“Wait, I lost you for a second. Did you say Nevis Properties?” She closed her eyes, pressed her finger to her other ear. “What was that? Do I just go there and give them your name or…Marcus? Are you there?” She held the phone out and pressed a button. “Shit. I lost him.”

He notched his chin toward the Palm Grove villa. “Did it look like there was a shadow moving to you?”

“No,” she said. “But listen, that was my boss in New York. One of our clients has a house on Nevis and he said we can stay there. I think all we have to do is go to Nevis Properties, but we got cut off. I’m sure it’s a tiny office. If we go there tomorrow, we can get a key to a place to stay.”

He gave her a wary look. “Why didn’t you tell him why you’re down here?”

“I don’t want him to know. He’s furious with Clive for leaving the company and would be even more furious to know I’m blowing off work to help him. But this is a perfect offer, Wade. We can’t stay here; the place is bugged. For all we know, it might have been bugged when we walked in and they heard us. This would be perfect. A secret hiding place where we can work out a plan to find Clive.”

As if she ever made a plan in her life. “Why are you lying to your boss?”

“I didn’t really lie,” she said. “I just didn’t tell him the whole story.”

“And why are you lying to me?”

Her look was sharp and defensive. “I’m not lying to you.”

“Oh, no? You saw what I saw out there.”

“There was nothing out there but trees and some lawn chairs.”

“How many?”

She frowned and glanced over again. “Four.”

He lifted his hand, holding the glasses he’d taken from the bathroom, then slid them over her face. “Pretty good vision for a person who’s nearsighted.”

She opened her mouth, and he shut it with one finger before a sound came out.

“An addendum to our deal, Vanessa Porter. Don’t ever lie to me. Ever.”

“I didn’t lie. I never said I needed them.” She swallowed hard. “I like the way they look, so I wear them.”

“Don’t lie to me on a technicality, either.”

“Fine.” She adjusted the glasses and indicated the room on the other side of the glass. “You want to go back inside and act some more?”

He brushed by her. “I wasn’t acting.”

She snagged his arm to turn him around, then took her glasses off and looked directly at him. “Neither was I.”

The last time Jack Culver visited the brick ranch house owned by Rebecca Aubry, he’d given the seventy-year-old former midwife’s nurse a picture culled from the photo files in the library of the Charleston
Post and Courier
. In exchange, she’d given him an envelope with proof that a Virginia family named Whitaker had adopted one of Eileen’s triplets.

For five brief minutes, he’d felt a surge of hope. Hope that his cop’s instinct might be working again, hope that he was close to finding the missing daughter, saving Eileen, and helping to solve a murder that he believed in his gut she didn’t commit.

Then a thug relieved him of all that hope, along with seventy-five bucks and the fucking envelope.

He’d memorized the information on the paper before he relinquished it and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to kick the shit out of the kid, squeeze his skinny neck, and get him to confess who’d sent him there. The last time he took a risk like that, he’d paid too high a price. There were less bone-breaking ways to get what he wanted.

He knocked hard on the door, loudly enough for an old deaf woman who might be napping to hear him and take a good three minutes to shuffle to the door.

Nothing.

He knocked again, gave it one more minute, then pivoted, eyeing the side of the house to consider the most efficient way to get in and look around if she wasn’t home.

Behind him, the chain lock slid, and the front door opened.

“Are you looking for the old lady?”

He turned at the female voice, barely seeing the form in the darkened entryway inside the screen door. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

“She’s gone.”

He slid off his sunglasses but still couldn’t quite make out the face or age. He knew from the tone and pitch of a younger voice that it wasn’t the companion who’d played gatekeeper the last time he’d visited.

“She’s back from Florida, right?” He took a step farther. “Did her flight get in okay last night?”

The woman’s form moved close enough to the screen so that he could see she was in her mid-twenties, dark-haired, and attractive—or at least made up to look that way. “She wasn’t on it.” She looked him up and down. “Who are you?”

He gave her a smile and matched the up-and-down. “Who are
you
?”

“I asked first.”

“My name’s Jack. I’m a friend of Rebecca’s.”

“Gina. I’m a friend of Rebecca’s nephew.”

Jack swiftly reviewed every fact he knew about Rebecca Aubry. She’d never been married and had no brothers and sisters. Therefore…no nephews.

“Hi, Gina.” He put a hand on the doorjamb and hooked the other in the back of his jeans. “Is Rebecca’s nephew here?”

She shook her head. “He had to do something, but he’ll be back. If you don’t want to wait, I can have him call you or just give him a message.”

“I really wanted to talk to Rebecca,” he said. “Any idea when she’s coming back?”

“Never.” She glanced over her shoulder, indicating two open cartons. “That’s why we’re here. He’s set her up in an assisted-living place in Florida, and we’ve been here all day packing this crap to send to her. Scratch that.
I’ve
been packing. Willie’s just been sifting through papers.”

Willie?
As in Willie Gilbert, the ex-cop who’d arrested Eileen the night Wanda Sloane was murdered?

What the hell was
he
doing at Rebecca Aubry’s house?

He glanced behind her into the dining room, where the table was covered with paper and files.

Maybe Rebecca
didn’t
turn everything over to the police when the Sapphire Trail operation was busted. And Willie Gilbert was here trying to find, and destroy, evidence of who fathered those girls.

Because he was the father…or the father was paying him? He had to work fast and smart and come up with some way to get in and look around.

“What about Butterscotch?” he asked.

“What about it?” She crinkled her nose.

“The cat. Are you shipping him to Rebecca, too?”

“I don’t know what he wants to do with that thing. All I know is I’m not touching it, because I’m allergic.”

“Why don’t I take him off your hands? I’ll let Rebecca know I have him.”

“I don’t know…”

“Unless her nephew wants to keep him.”

Curling her lip, she looked over her shoulder again. “I hope not. He sheds like hell.” She gave him another checking out. “I’ll sneeze for an hour if I go near him.”

“I’ll get him.” He held his hands up and winked. “You can trust me, sweetheart. I’m not dangerous.”

Opening the door, she stood up straight, showing off some impressive goods. “How dangerous can a cat lover be?” she asked with a flirty laugh. She wasn’t bad-looking, a little shopworn but shapely in a skimpy cropped T-shirt, painted-on blue jeans, and high heels.

He smiled and stepped toward the dining room. “Not dangerous at all. I think I saw him scoot in here.”

“He’s been on the sofa in the den since we got here.” She indicated the back of the house. “Let me go see if he’s there. You wait here, okay?”

She stepped down the hall, and Jack went immediately to the table, scanning what hadn’t yet been packed or picked over. A box of cookbooks and recipes, a pile of crossword-puzzle books, magazines, and photo albums.

“He’s not in here,” Gina called.

Jack stole a look under the table. “Not here, either. Why don’t you look in the laundry-room cabinet for some catnip? That usually gets him.”

Hoping he’d bought a minute, he flipped open the cover of a photo album and saw an old black-and-white baby picture. He closed the book and opened a yellowed shirt box next to it, instantly seeing the gold-embossed edges of certificates.

Birth certificates.

“You won’t find him in there.”

Jack turned to see her standing at the dining-room entrance, a sharp, accusing look on her face.

“I know,” he conceded. “I just thought I could snag a picture of Rebecca before you sent all this stuff down to her.”

Her look was all doubt. “How do you know her, anyway?”

“I used to live down the street.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “With that accent? You expect me to believe you ever lived anywhere outside of New York, let alone Charleston?”

“Why would I lie?”

She shrugged. “Be straight with me, dude. What are you looking for?”

He sighed. “A picture.” He closed the photo album and turned to her. “I let Rebecca borrow a picture I’d taken from the library at the Charleston
Post and Courier
a while ago, and she never returned it. They want it back.”

“I’ve been through a lot of her pictures today,” she said. “What was it?”

“It was Rebecca, about thirty years ago, with a baby.”

She snorted. “There are, like, fifty pictures of her with babies. She used to be a midwife, didn’t you know?”

“Could I see them? I bet I could find the one I need.”

She shook her head. “Willie left with them when we opened that box. He said he wanted to make copies before he sent them to her.”

“Well, she just got this one a few months ago, so maybe it’s still here. Mind if I check?” He leaned a little closer with a smile. “I’ll still take the cat for you.”

She eyed him warily. “I don’t know. We better wait until Willie gets back.”

When Willie got back, Jack would be long gone. They’d met already, when Jack tried to get information about Eileen’s arrest from the former cop. If Willie had anything to do with Wanda’s death…if Willie was the father of those triplets…the last thing Jack wanted the man to know was that he was about to figure that out.

“I don’t have time to wait,” Jack said. “I’ll just take the cat. Want me to go get him?”

She considered that and shook her head. “I can pick him up for a minute if I wash my hands. You wait right here in the hall.”

The instant she disappeared, he grabbed the shirt box and turned to the open window, punching the screen just hard enough to pop it off its track. He stuck the box out, looked over the windowsill to see where it would land, and let it drop to the ground.

He was back in place before she rounded the corner.

“Here you go.” She shoved the orange tabby into his hands with a sniff. “You better go. He probably won’t like that I let you in here.”

He grinned mischievously. “Then let it be our secret.”

Her eyes twinkled in response. “Deal. I’ll tell him the cat ran away when I opened the back door.”

“If I go out that way, then you won’t be lying.”

“All right.” She laughed lightly. “Follow me.”

He did, watching her perfectly toned ass slide side to side for his benefit. She moved gracefully, totally at ease in her sexy clothes and the skin under them.

“You a dancer, Gina?”

She shot a sexy look over her shoulder. “Sort of.”

“Let me guess. Exotic?”

She laughed and pointed a finger at him. “Some call it that.”

“Where do you work?” Just in case he had to interrogate her again on the comings and goings of Willie Gilbert.

“Diamonds,” she said as she opened the laundry-room door that led to the side yard. “Tuesdays and Saturdays.”

“What night is Willie there?”

She grinned and looked right up at him as he paused next to her in the doorway. “Every Saturday, like clockwork.”

He looked up and down her face, slowing on her mouth, then back to her eyes, watching her color rise. “I’ll make it a Tuesday.”

She gave him the same look, only she spent more time studying his torso. “You do that, Jack.”

When the door closed, the cat wiggled and mewed, but Jack held tight as he slipped along the side of the house to the dining-room window. Just as he got there, a gray BMW whipped into the driveway, and out stepped Willie Gilbert.

Jack crouched down and grabbed the shirt box with his free hand, ready to run to where he’d parked a block away, curious to hear if Gina outed him. He stayed low, under the window, stroking the cat under the chin to keep him quiet.

The front door slammed, and Gina’s greeting floated through the window. Willie answered, too softly for Jack to make out the words. Then “Aren’t you done yet?” The question held just the tiniest hint of a threat.

“I got sidetracked,” she said.

“Doing what? You had one thing to do, Gina, and you didn’t finish it.”

“Screw you,” she mumbled.

Good girl
. He’d definitely stop by Diamonds and give her a nice tip. He balanced on his feet, checking out the best route to the street without being seen.

“Where’s the box, Gina?” The words boomed through the window. “Where’s the fucking box that was right here?” A thud on the table punctuated the question.

“I…I don’t know.” But she didn’t sound so sure. Would she rat on him now?

Jack straightened enough to start his run but froze at the sound of a slap and Gina’s pained cry.

“Find it, you stupid bitch. It’s the whole fucking reason I’m here.”

“I swear to God, Will.” Her voice faltered. “I don’t know—” Another slap and a grunt of pain.

Aw, fuck
. The sound sent disgust coiling right down to his toes.

“Maybe I accidentally threw it out,” she mumbled with a sniff. “I’ll check the back, by the trash.”

“You better find it.”

Jack eyed the box. There were answers in there, answers that might be able to solve a thirty-year-old mystery. And if Willie didn’t find them, Gina the pretty stripper would pay for Jack’s deed.