A One-Woman Man Read online

  As Dr. Heywood finished his remarks with a joke, the room broke into laughter, led by the loud, squeaky voice of Belle Fleur’s mayor for the past six years, Paris Prince. Elizabeth saw her chance and grabbed it. Rising gracefully, she slipped out of her seat and mouthed the words, “I’ll see you tonight at the party,” to Aspen. Without attracting too much attention, she crossed the room and had exited before her mother noticed. Elizabeth hurried through the lobby, past one of the young women she recognized from the banquet. The so-called Queen “electee” was deep in conversation with an older, foreign-looking man standing near a darkened phone booth.

  Elizabeth looked away before she had to make any kind of an explanation to one of the girls on the court. As she hurried past, she experienced another odd intuition that the furtive-looking pair did not wish to be spoken to any more than she did. I’m being a bit paranoid, Elizabeth chided herself, realizing her overly active imagination was probably due to the appointment she was secretly rushing to keep.

  Reminded of that errand, she clenched her teeth and continued through the revolving doors, emerging nervous, once again, into the chilly winter air. If she thought about it too much, she’d probably postpone this meeting until after all the Queen of Midnight nonsense, and then maybe forever.

  Could she live the rest of her life not knowing? No, her mind replied. No, you couldn’t. With that conclusion, Elizabeth retrieved her gym bag from the bellman and stood patiently while he beckoned the cabbie waiting beside the curb. In a moment she was off on a trip that might change her life forever.

  With a smile she leaned into the leather seat, not once noticing the rusty pickup parked across the street, or the thin, gray-haired man sitting inside who had waited for three hours just to catch a glimpse of her.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Elizabeth’s cab pulled into another hotel parking lot in an older, less charming section of Belle Fleur and deposited her at the door. Elizabeth stared at the office building across the street for a moment, tucked her purse under her arm, settled her gym bag over her shoulder and set off.

  She had never met a private detective before, never even considered meeting one before last week. To tell the truth, if anyone she knew had said they were going to hire one, she would have smiled politely and wondered what on earth a nice, well-bred person like her friend was doing going to a private detective.

  Ordinary people didn’t need private detectives, she would have thought. “What a difference a few weeks makes,” Elizabeth whispered to herself as she stepped out of the creaking elevator on the second floor of the Montrose Building. She walked slowly toward the door on which were hand painted the words D. Betts, Investigations and rapped sharply.

  There was no answer.

  With a thud, the elevator doors across the small hallway shut and the slow, whining sound of the car’s cables filled Elizabeth’s ears. She began to feel a sense of panic, almost of foreboding. From the edge of her consciousness a piece of a memory surfaced, like a ripple on dark water. The echo of her knocking, of knuckles against wood, were followed in her mind by the sound of…of what?

  Of a horrendous popping sound. Of glass breaking and a woman screaming. Of a little girl sobbing, and calling out for her mother.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d had this memory, but as they had a hundred times in the past, sadness and fear overwhelmed her. Blinking back the static terror that accompanied these haunting thoughts, Elizabeth took a breath and forced her concentration back to the present. Though her palms were damp and her heart was racing, she silently thought of the words the psychologist had told her when she’d first been treated for panic attacks years before.

  “It’s only imagination. It’s only imagination. You’re safe. You’re safe. Don’t push to remember what it means, Elizabeth. When your mind is ready—if it ever is ready—the memory will return.”

  She knocked again, this time more firmly.

  No answer.

  Elizabeth looked behind her at the elevator doors, reassuring herself she was alone, though suddenly not reassured by that thought. Where was Dorothy Betts, the investigator she had talked to yesterday evening? Why wasn’t she in her office? The woman had told her to stop in today. “I’m always there at two. Typing up notes, or on the phone. Don’t bother to call ahead, just come on by no later than two or you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to see me,” the woman had told Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth leaned closer to the door and listened again. Had she heard something inside? The muffled sounds of talking? Was Dottie Betts on the phone? If she was, perhaps she hadn’t heard her knock. With that thought, Elizabeth turned the doorknob and opened the door.

  And came face-to-face with a man who looked every bit as surprised to see her as she was to see him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said in a rush, her voice too loud to her own ears. “I didn’t mean to intrude…”

  “No problem,” the man replied, taking a step back toward the desk he had been leaning against when she’d entered into the room. “Can I help you find someone?”

  “I’m looking for Ms. Betts.” Elizabeth smiled. She had been expecting to find the friendly-voiced woman whose gentle manner had reached out to her through the phone lines. She had been expecting to find the ex-legal-secretary-turned-private-detective, whose specialty was tracing the birth parents of adopted people through public records.

  But instead of the kind Ms. Betts, Elizabeth was confronted with a tall, big-boned, firm-jawed man whose black hair needed combing, mustache needed smoothing and blue jeans needed mending.

  It was a wholly disconcerting turn of events, and Elizabeth felt her face flush from the man’s open scrutiny of her. She didn’t feel threatened, for his appearance wasn’t unsavory or ill-groomed, except for the holey blue jeans. If anything, he looked scrubbed, a tiny nick on his chin evidence of the very recent pass of a razor. But though he looked civil enough, the man had an almost-animal-like air of watchfulness about him. Like a pet dog an owner tells you to go ahead and pat, but when you reach a hand toward the animal, it responds with a growl, or a bark, or worse.

  Elizabeth stood her ground and met the man’s brown eyes with her own steady gaze. “Do you know where Ms. Betts is?”

  “Yes, I do. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  The man motioned to a straight-backed chair and surprised Elizabeth by walking behind the desk and settling into what was presumably Dorothy Betts’s chair.

  “Excuse me, but where is Ms. Betts?”

  “In the hospital.”

  Elizabeth gasped. “Oh, my. Is she all right?” Several lurid scenes from television detective dramas flashed into her mind.

  The dark-haired man smiled and put his feet up on the desk. “Yes. Or at least she will be in a bit. As soon as those two rascals she’s fixing to give birth to are ready to make an appearance, I’m sure she’ll be her old hell-raising self.”

  “Oh, then she wasn’t hurt on the job.” Elizabeth sat down and sighed. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  The man shot her a look, then smiled. “No. No crazy ex-husband or maniac creditor took a gun after her, if that’s what you mean. Though if one did, I’m here to tell you they’d be the ones ending up in the hospital.” He grinned again, more kindly than watchful this time, then abruptly stood and extended his hand across the desk. “I’m Tommy Lee McCall, Dottie’s brother.”

  Elizabeth accepted Tommy Lee’s firm, warm handshake. “Elizabeth Monette. Nice to meet you, Mr. McCall.”

  “And you, Miss Monette.” He sat back down, his eyes seeming to measure her in every way imaginable. “Now, what can I help you with?”

  “You?” she said quickly.

  “Yes, me. You see, last night when Dottie found out her doctor was sending her to the hospital in New Orleans, I agreed to help out here until she can come back. So unless you can wait for help for three or four months, I’m it.”

  Elizabeth now took a closer look at Tommy Lee. The first thing she decided was that he was impati
ent. Several things about his quick movements and penetrating gaze told her he was a man who made instant judgments, who never walked if he could run. He probably never chatted or shot the breeze with his neighbors, and when he wanted to ask a woman out, he spent little time working up to the question.

  This last thought surprised her, and quite suddenly Elizabeth couldn’t imagine discussing with Tommy Lee McCall anything as intimate, or as painful, as what she had come to confide to Dottie Betts.

  “Well, Miss Monette, whenever you’re ready,” Tommy Lee said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McCall. It’s just that I was expecting to meet with your sister. We’ve talked several times on the phone. I’ve just two weeks ago moved back to Belle Fleur from Baltimore, and before I arrived I contacted her to look into a, uh, situation with my family, and I guess maybe I’d better wait—”

  “Suit yourself,” Tommy Lee answered abruptly. He leaned back in the chair, which creaked with his weight, then shifted one boot-clad foot onto the desk and looked up at the painted ceiling, as if mentally counting to ten. “But as I told you, Dottie’s not going to be back in business for four or five months, if you ask me. So if what you need help on can wait until spring, that’s fine. I’ll tell her you stopped in.”

  Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Did your sister mention my name at all to you when she passed her duties over?”

  “Not that I recall. But then she didn’t exactly have time to give me much detail on anything. Her husband was hovering, as was her little girl. Also, her bigshot doctor was pacing up and down, looking like Dracula’s kin ready to suck some more blood out of her arm.” He smiled. “Your name didn’t come up, but I’m ready to listen as soon as you’re ready to talk.”

  “Yes. Well, it’s not that simple.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.” Their eyes locked for a moment, then she turned away. Elizabeth debated with herself as she stared out the second-story window at a massive magnolia tree, its branches black against the gray December sky. The city Christmas ornaments seemed cheerless, devoid of color, and hung limp from the overhead wires. “You should put a note on the front door, warning people that your sister is out for a while.”

  “Good idea,” he replied easily. “’Beware of Tommy Lee, All Ye Who Enter Here.’”

  Tommy Lee chuckled, but was irked a bit by this woman’s attitude. He had seen people beat around the bush to avoid talking about painful issues hundreds of times in his thirteen years as a cop, but this woman was a champ at avoidance. Tommy Lee glanced over her head at the clock. It was time to move her out of here, then call up Dottie and let her know his spur-ofthe-moment agreement to baby-sit her private-investigation business was a bad idea.

  He wasn’t cut out for patiently waiting for someone to spill their guts. He had realized this all morning while fielding calls and meeting with Dottie’s other visitor, a sixty-year-old woman who wanted him to investigate her seventy-year-old neighbor, Miss Leticia Prince, who happened to be the mayor’s aunt, for flirting with the postman and “delaying the official business of the federal government for several minutes every day.”

  He was a cop, ready to investigate, act and react. Actually an ex-cop now, as all those damned disability folks had insisted on calling him on their computerized forms. But he still felt and thought like a cop. And he realized as he stared at the gorgeous-but-closemouthed Miss Elizabeth Monette that he would muck up this private-investigator thing in short order if she and the other woman were typical of the clients his sister dealt with.

  That decided, Tommy Lee moved swiftly. He stood and motioned toward the door. “May I walk you to your car?”

  Elizabeth snapped out of her mulling and stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Your car. If it’s parked downstairs, I’d be glad to walk you to it.”

  “But our meeting…”

  “I thought that was over, Miss Monette.”

  Flushing, Elizabeth stood and dropped her purse. She bent to get it, annoyed that Tommy Lee McCall watched, or rather stared, at her when she bent down. She retrieved her purse and stuck it into the gym bag. Standing quickly, she stiffened her back and glared at him, while she couldn’t help noting that the man was well over six feet tall and not at her eye level, like most men. The blood ran warmer in her cheeks. He was incredibly attractive, and openly appraising her. She thought suddenly of what kissing a man with a mustache would be like, how the silky hair would feel on her lips, on her tongue.

  Elizabeth experienced a moment of mental dizziness and blinked to regain her composure. She was not used to having this type of elevated physical reaction to a man, but as she met his glance straight on, she realized she had never really met anyone quite like Tommy Lee.

  “Well, no. Our meeting’s not over. I mean, well, I have some business and…” Her voice drifted off. She looked out at the dismal winter grayness. She didn’t want to leave, but she was suddenly afraid he might just laugh at her if she began confiding her worries to him.

  But the letter she carried in her purse was no laughing matter—not after what had happened in Baltimore. Twenty sleepless nights of worry overruled her generally cautious nature, and Elizabeth decided to take the plunge. She snapped open her purse and removed a folded white paper. Handing it to Tommy Lee, she said, “I received this three weeks ago.”

  He took it from her, unfolded it, frowning as he read. Before he could say anything, she handed him a second, smaller sheet, inside a pale yellow envelope. “This came yesterday. It was stuck under the front door of my parents’ home, not sent through the post office like the other.”

  Still silent, Tommy Lee took the second note and scanned it, his face expressionless, but the playful light in his brown eyes disappeared. “What else?”

  Elizabeth realized she’d been right about Tommy Lee’s inability to make small talk. “Three weeks ago, before I moved here from Baltimore, someone may have tampered with my car. My brakes failed. According to the mechanic I took it to, it looked as if someone may have cut the brake line and the fluid drained out.”

  “Were you hurt?” Tommy Lee asked dispassionately, though his eyes were gentle as he again inventoried her from head to toe.

  Elizabeth touched her forehead, smoothing her heavy bangs. “A little bump. I always wear my seat belt. The telephone pole I hit took the worst of it.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “Nothing. I—”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?” he interrupted. “They didn’t investigate? They have tests they can do easily to tell if the line was deliberately cut.”

  Elizabeth put her purse on the desk and sat down, turning her face away. She was suddenly more than tired; she was frightened. “I didn’t call the police.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I couldn’t believe it was done deliberately,” Elizabeth replied, her voice rising. “I don’t have any enemies. It just didn’t make sense. I mean, I assumed it was a prank, or some kids who went further than they meant to…” Her voice trailed off and she turned her eyes back to Tommy Lee. “But then I got those letters and I thought maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

  Tommy Lee handed her back the letters. “Call the police. Now.” He jerked his head toward the phone on the edge of the desk. “Use that one. Ask for Chief Foley. He’ll probably come out himself, considering that second letter.”

  Elizabeth stared at the note Tommy Lee passed back to her. The words were scrawled in feverish black felttip slashes and cut-up pieces of printed ads. “The Queen of Midnight means death for you. Leave town now,” it read. The first letter’s contents were identical, though the ink was blue. They were as insane looking and meanspirited a thing as she could imagine.

  “I don’t think I want the police involved,” she said softly.

  “Are you running for Queen of Midnight?” Tommy Lee replied, trying not to allow his personal opinion of the overhyped New Year’s Eve event to seep out.

  “Yes, well, I am ‘r
unning,’ I guess you call it. I haven’t lived in Belle Fleur for ages, but my parents moved back two years ago and got all involved in the committee again. It means a lot to them,” she added. “You know what the Pageant is?”

  “I know,” he said in a controlled voice. Tommy Lee sat down behind the desk and picked up the phone. “Look, let’s get the police down here and go forward from there.” He began to dial but stopped when Elizabeth clicked the disconnect button.

  “No.”

  Tommy Lee hung up the handset and crossed his arms over his broad chest. He stared angrily into Elizabeth Monette’s vivid blue eyes. “This is serious, Miss Monette. If I were you, I’d be worried about my safety and that of my parents, and do what is right by them. This person came to your house, or sent someone. Either way, they know where you live. Who are your parents, by the way?”

  She lifted her chin defensively. “Baylor and Luisa Monette. Of Fairbreeze.”

  Tommy Lee snorted and shook his head. “Judge Baylor Monette, retired federal circuit-court judge? I’ll bet he doesn’t know anything about this little mess.”

  “No. He doesn’t. He’s not been well lately, Mr. McCall, which is why I was hoping that your sister could quietly look into this and—” She stopped abruptly and leaned forward to look him directly in the eye. “Listen, I’m not going to be elected Queen—some girl who has lived here her whole life and is planning on staying forever will be. That’s certainly not me. So I think in another month, when the Pageant is over, this nonsense will stop. This is probably just some prank. But I don’t want my parents to have to deal with a scandal, and bad publicity, which in a town like Belle Fleur will last for years. And I especially do not want my father worried silly over this.”

  “So what exactly do you want?”

  “I want to find out who is sending these notes and stop them from sending any more to my parents’ house. Reason with them. Discuss it. Or at least let them know I know who they are. Surely that alone will stop it.”