Within Striking Distance (7 page)

Lucky for him, she didn’t want him in prison. She wanted him to do her dirty work.

Yeah, real lucky.

Ralph slipped into the office and went straight for the window to close the blinds. He turned on the desk lamp and saw that McMasters had tidied up before he’d left. There was nothing left out except the computer, but that was beyond Ralph’s skills. If Mrs. Brown wanted to know what was on it, she’d have to find some tech geek to blackmail. He moved to the filing cabinet next. The lock on it was almost as good as the one on the door. He was nearly out of patience when
he felt the distinct
snick
of the lining-up cylinders travel through the lock pick to his fingertips.

Good. It looked like McMasters was old-school. The guy kept notes on paper. Five minutes later, Ralph pulled out the phone he’d been given and pressed the number that had been programmed. A woman answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Brown?”

“Of course. Don’t waste time, Mr. Bocci. Tell me what you found.”

Ralph ground his back teeth to hold in another curse, then spread out the file labeled “Becky Peters.” By the time he finished reading it to his boss, his mouth was as dry as ash, in spite of the spearmint-flavored gum that was stuck between his molars. He’d heard about the Gina Grosso case on the news a few months ago. Kidnapping was big stuff, even if it was three decades old. Especially when the parents were loaded like the Grossos. He needed that smoke.

“Very good. I take it you remembered to wear gloves.”

“Sure,” he lied, rubbing his sleeve across the front of the filing cabinet.

“Make certain you leave everything exactly the way you found it and relock the door.”

He hated the way she talked. She sounded as if she thought he was an idiot. Too bad she wasn’t like her old man. When Gerald Shillington had run the plant, he’d been decent to his employees. He’d treated them fairly. He hadn’t made them want to steal from him to make ends meet. “Yes, ma’am. Is that all?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Bocci.” Cynthia Shillington Brown’s laugh was as irritating as her voice. “We’re just getting started.”

J
AKE KNEW
he was early, so he parked his car at the curb and took stock of the neighborhood. It was a quiet one, with trees arching over the street and old houses set far back from the sidewalks. Most of the homes had been either restored or well-kept enough not to need restoration. The one where Becky lived was no exception. The two-story Victorian gleamed with a fresh coat of white paint. From what he’d learned when he’d done his initial background check on Becky, the house was owned by a well-off widow who inherited a dry-cleaning chain. She had divided the second floor into two apartments, yet there didn’t appear to be an outside staircase. The tenants shared the front entrance with their landlady.

Jake suspected the widow rented the apartments for the company as much as for the income. He liked to think of Becky making her home here. It suited her better than an apartment like his in a high-rise. Living in a family-oriented neighborhood would appeal to her need for roots.

A toddler on a tricycle squealed as he pedaled past on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, followed closely by a yellow Lab that was bigger than the child. A young, heavily pregnant woman hurried after the pair, yelling at the dog and waving a child-size hat at the kid.

Well, early or not, it sounded as if the neighborhood was wide awake. Jake grabbed the paper bag from the passenger
seat, got out of the car and headed up the front walk of Becky’s house. He was about to climb the steps to the veranda when the inside front door swung open and a tiny, white-haired woman peered at him through the screen door. “Hello.”

This must be Becky’s landlady, Jake thought, remembering his notes. Lena Krazowski. “Good morning. I’m looking for Miss Peters.”

“You must be her friend. She said you were coming. You’re early.”

Jake was subjected to the same head-to-toe scrutiny that he’d received from Shirley Dalton the previous weekend. “That’s right,” he said. “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day.”

“It’s going to get hot. Rebecca’s in the garage,” she said, pointing to the right side of the house.

“Thanks.” He pivoted to change direction.

“Mind the delphiniums.”

He assumed she meant the flowers that were clustered along the walk. “Will do,” he said, giving the bed a wide berth. He followed the driveway to the back of the house, where he found Becky’s red compact car and an older-model sedan parked in front of a double garage. Sunshine slanted through the open door, revealing walls hung with an orderly array of gardening tools. An open loft began near the front of the garage and stretched all the way to the back wall. From where he stood he couldn’t see anything over the edge except an old brass-bound trunk and several wooden crates. A steep staircase, similar to the kind that folded down to give access to attics, hung from a gap in the center of the loft. He moved toward it. “Becky?”

“I’m up here, Jake.” She appeared at the top of the staircase. “You’re early.”

“So I’ve heard.” She’d obviously been up there a while. Dust smeared her T-shirt and blue jeans. Her hair was covered with a bright pink kerchief, though a few strands had
pulled loose at her temples to dangle in front of her ears. Yet even dusty and disheveled, she managed to look beautiful.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Breakfast,” he said, holding it up. “I told you I’d bring it.”

She shoved a stray lock of hair out of her eyes and glanced behind her. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d find the right box before you got here but they’re not labeled.”

“Is there space for me up there?”

“Plenty, but it gets hot once the sun gets over the trees.”

“With any luck we’ll be done by then.” He laid his cane on the floor and assessed the staircase. It was steeper than it had appeared at first, more a ladder with wide rungs than a staircase. The wood was old and dried out. It seemed solid enough, but there were some nasty-looking splinters he’d need to avoid. He held the bag between his teeth and grasped the boards at the sides of the risers. Thanks to his workouts at the gym, he could lift a lot more than his body weight. Using mainly his arms, he hauled himself up a few steps until he could grip the edge of the loft and swing himself over it. He got to his feet with the help of a nearby crate, then offered the bag to Becky.

She was staring at him, her cheeks flushed. He couldn’t tell whether it was because of heat—the air in the loft was noticeably warmer than down below—or because she was uncomfortable from having witnessed his awkward ascent. He seldom considered himself disabled, but he knew only too well how it could be an issue with some people. He hoped Becky wasn’t one of them.

Her eyes lingered on his shoulders. It didn’t look like revulsion in her eyes. For a moment she seemed to sway toward him, and for an even crazier moment, Jake thought she was about to touch him.

As it turned out, she was only reaching for the bag. “Thanks,” she said.

“I hope you like doughnuts.”

She opened the bag and looked inside. “This is your idea of breakfast?”

“Hey, I got the kind with fruit. That’s nutritious.”

“Fruit?”

“I’m pretty sure the gooey red stuff on the inside of the powdered ones has raspberries in it.”

“Um, thanks, Jake. That’s very thoughtful.”

“Anything for another morning person. We’re a dying breed.”

She wiped the dust from her hands on her jeans, then reached into the bag and drew out one of the covered cups. “I don’t suppose either of these is decaf?”

“Sorry. Both are eye-wobbler specials.”

“I thought you were a morning person.”

“That coffee is why I am.”

She pried the top off the cup and passed it to him, then set the bag on top of a nearby trunk. “I appreciate the trouble you went to, but I’m not that hungry.”

“There’s a fruit plate under the box of doughnuts if you’d prefer that.”

“I should have known you were teasing me,” she muttered. She grabbed the bag once more, this time taking everything out until she got to the cellophane-wrapped plastic plate. She smiled with pleasure, pulled up a corner of the wrap and popped a strawberry into her mouth. “Thanks, Jake.”

“You’re welcome. I don’t recognize half of what’s on there but Lurleen assured me it’s edible.”

“Who’s Lurleen? Your girlfriend?”

“No, she works at my favorite diner. It’s been getting infiltrated by the rabbit food crowd lately so they’ve had to put some of that fruit and nut stuff on the menu.”

She licked a drop of juice from the corner of her mouth. “How tragic.”

“Downright insidious.” He blew on the coffee she’d handed to him and took a fast swallow. It burned his tongue. Which was good, because it helped him to stop thinking about how delicious the strawberry juice had looked on
her
tongue.

She’d said he’d been teasing, but it had been more. He’d been flirting. Geez, what was wrong with him?

Jake forced himself to look around the loft. The space was larger than he’d expected, and mercifully high enough in the center for him to stand upright. Two more dusty trunks were ranged in the angle beneath the eaves on one side. On the other, sheets of plastic draped what appeared to be several old bicycles and two large-wheeled baby carriages. More plastic sheets covered a group of wicker lawn furniture near the back wall.

His gaze settled on a stack of cardboard boxes on the other side of the packing crate. A few appeared to have been dragged off the top of the pile. He nodded toward them. “Are those yours?”

“Yes.” Becky stuffed a large piece of pineapple into her mouth, wiped her fingers on her jeans again and went to kneel beside one of the boxes. “I thought I’d try this one next,” she said, ripping the packing tape off the top. “It felt the right weight to have photos.”

The first few boxes contained Becky’s high-school year-books and grade-school artwork. Others were packed with knickknacks and souvenirs from races. The box with the extra photographs turned out to be at the bottom of the stack.

Jake decided she hadn’t been exaggerating by much when she’d said her mother had taken a million pictures. Most were still stuffed into the envelopes from the developing company, with the slot for the negatives. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the outer envelope with the date the film had been developed, nor had they been packed in any discernible order. The only way to find what they wanted was to look through each one.

By mutual agreement, they settled on the floor with their breakfast and the box of photos between them. This was the kind of tedious detail-checking that Jake was accustomed to doing in the course of his work. Yet after the tenth lot of photos, he realized that he couldn’t regard them with the detachment that he should. He was seeing what Becky’s life had been like when she’d been a child. She’d appeared healthy and had plenty of toys, but in the vast majority of shots she’d been alone.

He didn’t feel pity for her, exactly; it was more of a sadness for what she’d missed. Though it had been annoying at times to share his bedroom and his toys with his brothers, most of the time he’d been grateful for their company. And while his parents had gotten into the occasional argument like any couple, their marriage had been strong. Even after his father had died and times had been tough, Jake had never imagined belonging to any family except the one he had.

Yet growing up alone with battling parents hadn’t broken Becky’s spirit. She appeared to be a secure and self-confident woman. As she’d told him, she wasn’t afraid to take risks with her heart. Patsy was pretty courageous in that regard, too. As for Becky’s determination, she might have gotten that from Dean…

If she was Gina, he reminded himself. That was still a big if.

He tucked in the flap to close one envelope and reached into the box for another. The photographs in this one appeared to have been taken when Becky had been around seven, so they weren’t any use to him, yet he paused to look at them anyway. He could see hints of the adult Becky in her clear, blue eyes and wide, honest smile. She was holding an Easter basket and wearing a yellow dress that had an embroidered white rabbit, complete with a pom-pom tail, on the skirt. In the next picture, the front of the dress was smeared with what looked like chocolate, as was her smile.

“What?” Becky asked.

He looked up to find her watching him. He lifted his eyebrows. “What do you mean, what?”

“You’re smiling. Did you find something?”

He turned the photo around so she could see it. “For a future model, you didn’t seem too worried about how you looked on camera.”

She laughed. “My mother was always dressing me up for special occasions, but I was happier in jeans. I still am,” she added, glancing down at the dirt-smudged denim that covered her legs. She dug into the box for another envelope of photographs. “I’m more interested in whether something’s comfortable than whether it’s fashionable.”

“That’s a strange thing for a model to admit.”

“Why? Modeling is how I earn my living, that’s all. I’m essentially an easel for a client to display his art on. I’m lucky to have a face that photographs well, but that’s not really an accomplishment, it’s just an accident of genetics.”

Jake had no doubt she believed what she said. For a beautiful woman, she had an astounding lack of vanity. “It’s more than that, Becky. Your personality comes through in your ads. That’s what makes them so memorable.” He replaced the photo in its envelope. “How did you get started, anyway?”

“An agent approached me when I was with my friends at a NASCAR race in Richmond. He claimed he could make me a fortune and gave me his business card, but I thought he was a nut.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I had just turned seventeen and was taller than everyone in my class, including the boys. I felt like an uncoordinated giraffe. I thought no one would want to pay me just for getting my picture taken.”

“What made you change your mind?”

Her expression sobered. She thumbed her stack of photos.

“Becky?”

“It was silly, but remember, I was only seventeen.” She set the photos on the floor and looked at him. “As I said, I was taller than nearly everyone I knew, including my father, and I got to thinking about how I must have inherited my height from my real parents. I must have gotten my face from them, too. So I thought that if my face ended up in an ad or on a billboard, maybe they would recognize it and try to find me.”

It took all of Jake’s willpower to stay where he was. Her eyes held a trace of lost-child sadness again, and he wanted to take that away. Not by finding her birth parents. No, the urge he felt had nothing to do with his case. He wanted to slide across the dusty floor between them, pull her into his arms and kiss her until her smile returned.

He’d come close to doing that yesterday, when they’d been in his office and he’d leaned over her chair. He’d wanted to kiss her then. The feel of her shoulders beneath his hands had gone right to his head. That’s why he’d been careful not to touch her today. Didn’t seem to make any difference.

Oh, hell. Aside from the whole lack-of-professionalism issue, he was old enough to be her father, a fact these pictures were making crystal clear. He was only a couple of years younger than Patsy and Dean. If they did turn out to be Becky’s parents, they wouldn’t be too pleased to know she was the object of Jake’s middle-aged desire. They would give him the same kind of looks as Shirley Dalton and Lena Krazowski had. And he’d deserve it.