Cold Target Read online

  What could he want? She thought about pretending not to be home, but her car was in front. She could not postpone trouble forever. She had discovered that with Randolph.

  And if there was any suspicion about her story, perhaps she would see it in the lawman’s face. Then she and Harry would have to disappear again. She kept their things ready.

  She approached the door and opened it just as Sheriff Menelo was about to knock. His hand was in midair, and he looked at it sheepishly when there was no place to knock.

  “Sheriff?” she said.

  “Hello,” he said awkwardly. “Russ, well, he told me your boy liked animals and might want to go riding. I board a couple of horses at his place, and I’m taking Jenny, my niece, out there now for a ride. I wondered if you and Harry would like to go. Russ has several ponies.”

  No!

  Yes.

  Once more her head was telling her one thing, and her heart something else. She knew how much Harry wanted to ride.

  She’d promised him a great adventure. She had encouraged his interest in cowboys. But how long could she pretend to be something she wasn’t with a man trained to detect deception?

  “I don’t think—”

  “If you’re busy, I can take him. The whole city will vouch for me,” he said with a slow, easy smile. “I’m mighty careful with children. Been looking after my niece since her father left her and her mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. And she was.

  “I’m not. He was a sorry—” He stopped suddenly.

  She had a pretty good idea of what he would have said if she had not been standing there. “How old is she?”

  “Seven, going on thirty.”

  She smiled at that. Harry surprised her at times as well.

  “You should do that more often, Mrs. Baker.”

  “Do what?”

  “Smile. It’s very nice.”

  Not beautiful. Not elegant. Not lovely. All adjectives she’d heard before. Just “nice.” It was the best compliment she’d ever received.

  “Mommy.” She heard Harry’s voice behind her.

  She turned. A sleepy-eyed midget stared up at her with confusion.

  “Hi,” she said. “Do you remember Sheriff Menelo?”

  Harry looked up—a long way up, Holly noticed. He nodded.

  She waited. She expected Sheriff Menelo to make the same offer to her son, to make her the bad guy if she refused. That’s what her husband always did.

  But this man didn’t. “Hi, buddy,” he said.

  “’Ello,” he said as he had last night, then looked at her. She had emphasized over and over again not to trust strangers, especially not to talk to adults without her being present.

  “He wants to know if you want to ride a horse,” she said.

  All the sleep left his face and he looked as if someone had handed him the world. His face was so full of hope that her heart broke. “Mommy, can I?”

  She nodded.

  “Good,” the sheriff said. “I’ll take the patrol car back and pick up my niece. I’ll be back here in, say … an hour.”

  She wondered what she was doing. Yet there was a shy sincerity about the man that disarmed her. Several hours of being very careful would be worth seeing pleasure on her son’s face. And maybe feeling a few moments of pleasure herself.

  Yet deep down, she knew she would regret this. She knew it to the depths of her soul.

  NEW ORLEANS

  Fingering her rarely used key to her parents’ house, Meredith rang the bell first and waited.

  No Mrs. Edwards. After several minutes, she put the key in the lock and let herself in.

  The house was like a tomb. Big and silent. She went into the kitchen. It was spotless. Then she stopped by her father’s study. The room was large and wood-paneled. Certificates lined the walls. The desk was completely clear, the mahogany gleaming in the light drifting through the windows.

  A computer was on a computer stand to the right of the desk. She resisted the urge to go over to it and turn on the power.

  She looked at her watch. She thought she had several hours before Mrs. Edwards returned. Meredith didn’t want her father to know she was snooping and didn’t want to put Mrs. Edwards in an awkward position of choosing between two loyalties.

  Meredith went up the stairs, then opened the door that led to a second set of stairs. She reached for the light overhead, wondering whether it still worked. No one came up here. Relief flooded her when it illuminated the dim stair area. She climbed the steps to the attic door and turned the knob. It was unlocked.

  The room was lit by sun streaming in through two windows.

  She looked around, stunned.

  The attic was empty. The file cabinets were gone. So were the boxes that had been piled against the walls.

  She stood there for several moments, then ran her finger along the floor. No dust. The boxes had been removed recently.

  Very recently.

  What was her father trying to hide?

  She left, turning out the light. She descended the stairs and walked to her mother’s room. Her mother and father had had different bedrooms for as long as she could remember.

  The room was large and, like the rest of the house, looked as if it waited for visiting royalty. The walls were of a sky blue, and the floor covered by a rich, deep royal blue. Lovely delicate bottles lined the dresser.

  Meredith looked in the night table. A recent bestseller. A notebook and pen.

  She looked in the notebook, feeling a little like a Peeping Tom. This was her mother’s world, one she’d never quite been allowed entrance. But the pages were blank, or they had been torn out.

  Undeterred, she looked in the dresser, then a large chest, and finally the closet.

  The walk-in closet was filled with clothes neatly separated into casual and dressy. Built-in drawers were filled with lingerie. Shoes lined racks. Sweaters were neatly folded on two shelves.

  She sighed, then spotted a shelf in the back. Books. She reached back and found three yearbooks for the private girls’ school her mother had attended. There was also a book of poetry.

  They were out of sight but not hidden. She took all four volumes, feeling as if she’d caught the golden ring on a carousel. Her mother had cared enough to keep them. Perhaps they held some secrets.

  She took the stack to the small antique writing desk and sat down. She picked up the book for the year her mother was a senior. Her mother was in the class photos and some group scenes, but there were no scrawled messages as there usually were in yearbooks. No writings from classmates. She picked up the second book. She found her mother’s photo in the junior class. Fellow classmates had written all over their photos.

  Her glance rested on the photo of her mother. She had long blond hair and looked at the camera with a huge smile.

  Meredith couldn’t remember ever seeing that smile.

  An observer could see the energy and life in the girl, even in a black-and-white photo. Meredith looked through the group photos. Drama Club. Choir, Art Club. Homecoming court. In the latter, she looked like a princess.

  Meredith thought how different her mother and she had been. She had gone to a different private school where she excelled in scholastic activities and not much else. She had been in the Latin Club and Honor Society, on the debating team. She’d been editor of the school paper.

  And her sister? Was she more like their mother?

  Meredith suspected she had been a disappointment to her mother. She had her father’s analytical mind and introspective nature. She’d never liked parties and fancy dresses and dancing classes.

  Then she turned her attention to the book of poetry. A collection of romantic poetry.

  She looked inside for an inscription. There was none. So it probably wasn’t a gift. It certainly wasn’t something her father would have given her. At least Meredith didn’t think so. But then nothing was as she had thought.

  She put the book of poetry down and rifled in the
drawer of her mother’s desk. The contents were spare and neat. Stationery. Pens. Envelopes. An address book. She flipped through it and recognized the names of many of the city’s social figures. Nothing that caught her attention.

  She picked up her purse and the books. It would soon be time for Mrs. Edwards to return, and she would rather that neither she or her father knew Meredith had been inside. Not now.

  There were too many puzzles. She needed more information before she confronted her father again.

  She would start with some of the girls in the yearbook, particularly those with more personal messages. Surely her mother had confided in one of them.

  It was, at least, a place to start.

  Gage woke to the sound of heavy panting. Beast was standing on his bed, exhaling dog breath on him in an effort to get his attention. He obviously wanted his breakfast and this was his way of making an offer that Gage couldn’t refuse.

  He’d had damn little sleep. Despite the captain’s warning, he’d spent his day off going over the Prescott files. He was missing something. He knew it. Then, frustrated after failing to find anything, he’d gone to a blues bar and stayed far too long. He wondered who had gotten to the captain. He had wondered that when he went to bed and again now as he reluctantly put feet to the floor. He looked at the clock. Seven in the morning. It had been three when he had arrived home, and he’d been unable to sleep.

  Beast nudged him and Gage scratched his ears. Beast sighed with delight.

  Gage had named him Beast for lack of anything better. Beast was big, probably part Doberman and God knew what else. He had been a watchdog for some drug dealers Gage had busted. The animal had been pacing the interior of a fence surrounding a house suspected of being a lab. The dog had bared his teeth and growled, and one of the officers had taken out his pistol. Gage had a soft spot for animals, though, and had shook his head. Instead he’d started talking to the beast, and the damn thing stopped growling and started wagging his tail. He followed Gage to the door and knocked him down just as a bad guy fired at him. Gage wasn’t hit. The dog was.

  Hell, that damned animal saved his life. He couldn’t let him go to the dog pound after that.

  And so he had taken the dog to a vet, then home. The sixteen-year-old son of his neighbor loved dogs, and he and Beast had taken to each other immediately. When Gage worked late, Foster would feed Beast and play with him.

  But Gage was his person, and Beast was ecstatically happy when Gage was home. He would crawl up in the king-size bed one leg at a time. Slyly. As if he were invisible and putting something over on his person. At first, Gage had tried to discourage the practice but Beast would stand there, looking at him with heartbreak in his eyes.

  Beast had been Gage’s first impression and Beast he had remained. The dog seemed perfectly happy with the name.

  “Okay,” he said as a huge red tongue darted out and licked his forehead. “I get it. You want to eat.”

  He rose, still feeling the effect of two days without much sleep, and grabbed the pair of jeans that always lay next to the bed. He was getting too damned old for these kind of hours.

  He went into the kitchen, started a large pot of coffee and poured dry food into the dog dish. Then he went to his bathroom and stepped into a shower.

  He thought best in the shower.

  He especially thought best as steaming water poured over his body. So many questions echoed in his mind. Who had called the captain about his reopening the Prescott case? Someone had. That much was for sure.

  Who had the kind of power to stop an investigation, to bring out a captain late at night to remove a detective from a case? That alone would raise questions. So why had it been risked?

  Was there something to be found?

  The only people with whom he’d discussed the case were Glenn Wagner, the homicide detective who’d previously looked into the case, Meredith Rawson and her father. The father was the most likely person to intervene.

  He turned off the shower and stepped out. Beast was sitting there, waiting.

  Beast barked.

  “Okay,” Gage said. “I know. You want to get the paper.”

  The tail wagged frantically.

  Gage dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then opened the front door. Beast raced out, picked up the newspaper lying in the driveway and raced back in, plopping the paper into Gage’s outstretched hand.

  “Good boy,” he said, giving Beast dessert—a giant size dog biscuit—as the smell of coffee permeated the kitchen. Gage poured himself a large cup of coffee, took a donut from a box he’d bought yesterday and sat down at the table to read the paper.

  He found little of interest, probably because his mind was wandering. It kept returning to Meredith Rawson and the Prescott case. Why had he been told to leave it alone? And did either the father or the daughter have anything to do with it?

  He’d never liked being told to leave something alone once his curiosity had been piqued. It was certainly piqued now.

  Perhaps he would go into the station and talk to Morris, the detective handling the attempt on her life. Or had it been an attempt? Had it only been a ruse to try to find something in her home? If so, what?

  The questions wouldn’t go away.

  He thought about piling his canoe into his pickup and paddling through the swamp. The quiet beauty usually cleared his head.

  Or he could visit Angola Prison to see his brother today rather than Sunday. He looked at the clock. He would never arrive in time for visiting hours. And he had to get the books.

  He also knew he was stalling. He loved his brother, but God, it hurt seeing him in prison. It always made Gage feel that he had failed, and that Clint was paying for that failure. He would find those books this afternoon and have them ready Sunday.

  He and Beast went outside for a few moments to play with a Frisbee.

  But he couldn’t get Meredith Rawson off his mind. Nor the Prescott case. Instinct told him they could be related. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

  “Okay, boy,” he said. “That’s enough.” He tried to ignore Beast’s mournful look as the Frisbee hung forlornly from his mouth. “Foster will come and play with you later.”

  Beast was not placated. He tried to push the Frisbee back into Gage’s hand. Gage threw it one last time and the dog jumped high in the air to catch it, then proudly trotted back.

  “Now that really is enough,” Gage said, scratching an ear.

  He went back in, Beast at his heels. As he mentally plotted the day, Gage picked up the file that he’d happened to take home.

  The bookstore first for Clint’s books. Then he would find an office supply store and copy some of the Prescott files. He didn’t know whom he could trust in the office, and he had the feeling that if caught copying the file, he would be told in no uncertain terms to leave it alone. Then he would have no choice.

  He would also drop in to see Morris and see whether he knew any more about the attack on Meredith Rawson.

  A question. Just one question to ease his mind.

  eleven

  NEW ORLEANS

  It took until Saturday night before her house was habitable again.

  Meredith unboxed her new computer after the cleaning crew left and sat down at her desk, one of the few undamaged pieces of furniture remaining in the house. Other pieces were being reupholstered and repaired.

  She hadn’t had time to replace the paintings or even the ruined drapes in her bedroom. That would have to wait. Other things couldn’t, like the mattresses she had purchased on the condition that they be delivered immediately.

  But enough was completed for her to go home.

  She was tired of the hotel room and had thought she would like nothing better than to be home again. She wasn’t prepared for the fear that accompanied her homecoming.

  A tremor shook her body. Would she ever feel safe again? She double-checked the locks on both the windows and doors but the sense of violation remained. Every time she looked around, s
he saw something that needed to be done. A rip along the wallpaper in the dining room. An obviously empty place on the wall that was formerly occupied by her favorite painting.

  After completing all the computer connections, she went out to the kitchen, made a sandwich and heated some hot chocolate, then sat at the kitchen table with her mother’s yearbooks in front of her. Hot chocolate was her comfort food, an indulgence she rarely indulged. But she needed indulgence tonight.

  She was tired, on edge. She’d decided not to go to the hospital tonight; the private duty nurse promised to call if there was even the slightest change. She needed tonight to go through the yearbooks and identify people she knew. Then she would use those people to find others.

  Someone had to know whom her mother had been seeing at the time. Once she had her sister’s father’s name, she could find out what he knew. Surely her mother had told him something. Perhaps he had agreed to the adoption, or had raised the baby himself.

  She sipped the chocolate as she studied the yearbook from her mother’s junior year. She recognized some of the students as current pillars of New Orleans society. That made sense. They had attended the city’s most exclusive private school. By the time she’d finished the chocolate, she had identified nearly a third of her mother’s class. Then she studied the photos of the classes directly ahead and behind her.

  She was totally absorbed when the phone rang. She picked it up. “Meredith Rawson,” she said.

  No answer. Heavy breathing. Then click.

  She had started to feel safe again. Now she stood next to the phone, the receiver quivering in her hand. She looked at her Caller ID but she knew what she would see. Unknown.

  A chill permeated the room. Someone wanted to terrify her.

  She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. She sat back down and called the cell phone number Morris had given her. He answered immediately.

  “This is Meredith Rawson. I just received an anonymous call. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be concerned but—”