A One-Woman Man Read online

  He struck her in the face and she cried out. Desperate to make him let go, she bit the back of his hand. The man howled and pulled her hair again, then forced them both down flat on the floor. With one hand, he held both of her hands against the cold linoleum. She wiggled and yelled, then saw the syringe.

  With his free hand he was pressing his thumb against the end, readying it.

  Good Lord, she thought. This man was here to kill her!

  “No!” Elizabeth screamed, kicking into his arm with both her bandaged knees. The force of her movement sent the syringe flying through the air and crashing into the wall where it splintered with a tinkling, brittle sound.

  “You bitch!” the man hissed, then raised his fist to hit her but she yanked her hands free and rolled away just as the door was kicked open and a wild-eyed Tommy Lee McCall rushed into the room.

  “Tommy Lee!” she screamed in terror.

  His handsome face was contorted with anger. He held a drawn pistol in his hand and his voice was deadly. “Don’t even think of moving, you sorry son of—”

  “My God!” Dr. Katherine Smiths screamed out behind him, obliterating his last words. “What on earth—?”

  Dr. Smiths’s arrival was all the distraction the man in the doctor’s jacket needed. He grabbed Elizabeth again and pulled her in front of him like a shield, the broken stem of the thermometer pointed at her throat. “Your bullets are going to have to go through this little honey first. Back off, tough guy!”

  Tommy Lee stayed where he was inside the doorway, and heard Katie Smiths run down the hallway for help. He knew the man in front of him. Ray Robinson, local small-time felon, had evidently been hired for some big-time mischief. The guy was scared. And Tommy Lee knew from experience that scared punks acted without thinking. Slowly he lowered the gun. “I won’t shoot. But I’m not letting you take her out of here.”

  “Not my plan, man. I wasn’t paid to tumble on a kidnapping beef.” Robinson pulled Elizabeth, who was glaring fearfully at him, to her feet and dragged her with him as he walked backward in the direction of the bathroom. Before Tommy Lee could react, the man shoved Elizabeth to the floor and ducked into the lavatory, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  Tommy Lee rushed to Elizabeth, his arms gently lifting her in a hug against his body. He kept his gun trained on the bathroom door as he moved them both back in the direction of the hallway. “Watch the glass on the floor, now. When I get you to the hallway, run like hell to the nurses’ station and make sure Katie called the police.”

  Elizabeth shook her head and tried to catch her breath, then realized she was crying and shaking and bleeding all over Tommy Lee’s jacket. When they got to the doorway she took off, but didn’t have to go far. Two hospital security guards and a uniformed Belle Fleur cop were running down the hallway toward her room, trailing two men in green scrubs along with a winded Dr. Smiths.

  Katie Smiths embraced her and sat her down in a chair, then started shouting orders to two nurses who stood hugging each other in front of the reception desk. A few seconds later the cop and the two guards ran past her in the opposite direction toward the elevators, followed by one of the interns and Tommy Lee McCall.

  “Is he still inside?” Elizabeth asked in a shaking voice as Tommy Lee came to a halt beside her chair.

  “Nope. Slimeball took a ride down the laundry chute in your bathroom to the basement. Probably headed back to the rock he crawled out from under by now.” Tommy Lee looked Elizabeth up and down, then wiped a tiny glass chip from her cheek. “You doing okay? He didn’t hurt you before I got there, did he?”

  “No, no. I’m fine,” she replied, unable to control her shivers.

  “Leave her alone, Tommy Lee,” Dr. Smiths said. “I’m going to put her in another room and examine her. Come on, Miss—”

  “Let her go, Katie,” he interrupted. He put his arm around Elizabeth and darted a glance in both directions of the hallway. Her arm was bleeding where her stitches had been pulled, and she had a scrape on the side of the face, but all in all she seemed no more badly damaged than earlier. “Anything feel broken?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. One of the gauze bandages had been pulled off her knee and she tried to tape it back on. “I may never wear shorts in public again, but I’m sure these will heal.”

  He let go of her and jammed his pistol into the front of his jeans, and then took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. He told the intern standing beside him to run and get Elizabeth’s things out of her room, then checked out her feet. She was only wearing a pair of pink bobby socks, but he wasn’t waiting around to find shoes.

  Without another word he slipped one arm around her back and a second under her legs and picked Elizabeth up in his arms. She was tall but light enough for him to hold her without breathing hard. “Let’s give those knees a rest. We’re going out the back way. My truck’s parked there. Dr. Smiths, tell Chief Foley I’ll call him when I get Miss Monette tucked away somewhere safe.”

  “Put her down this instant, Tommy Lee McCall!” the doctor yelled back, her hand slapping against his elbow. “Are you crazy? You can’t take her out of the hospital. She needs medical care!” He appeared not to hear her, and slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter Four

  Elizabeth pulled the blanket Tommy Lee had produced from the back of the pickup closer around her shoulders and tried to keep her shivering to herself, but Tommy Lee must have heard her teeth rattle. He looked at her closely in the darkened space and turned on the truck’s heater.

  Every inch of her ached, but she felt the exhilaration of someone who had gotten away with something unlikely. She was supposed to be at a dinner party with a lot of people she hardly knew and a couple she didn’t like, but instead, here she was, in a pickup truck with a handsome stranger, on a dark road heading who knew where, and it seemed almost like fun.

  You’re losing it, Elizabeth, she said to herself.

  “I bet you wonder where the devil I’m taking you,” Tommy Lee said suddenly, flashing her a sideways look. “Don’t worry,” he continued, dead serious. “No one will find you where we’re headed.”

  “That’s exactly what I am worried about,” she said, a nervous laugh erupting from her throat. “After what’s happened today, I think I need to ask you to tell me.”

  “My place.”

  Oh, good, she thought, not feeling safe at all, but liking it. They were on the causeway, crossing the dark, foamy water of the Mississippi River. The truck’s heater crackled and the tires rumbled, gently vibrating under the old pickup’s frame. Tommy Lee pointed to the lights on her right. The Fairbreeze Marina and Yacht Club hosted an annual Christmas parade on the river, and the boats were all decked out with sparkling gold-and-white lights, or the traditional multicolored bulbs. The reflected liquid rainbow against the glassy blackness of the water was as mysterious and thrilling as the northern lights.

  “My house is about six miles that way, beyond the boats. My housekeeper, Mrs. Lane, will get you something to eat and you can call your folks. You should probably stay here instead of going home.”

  “Why?”

  Tommy Lee seemed to try not to frown, but she could see he felt her question was pretty dumb. “Why?” he echoed. “Because someone has tried twice to kill you today, in my ex-professional opinion. If the third time’s the charm, wouldn’t it be smart to not be where they’d expect you to be tonight?”

  “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Mr. McCall.”

  “And I don’t appreciate your holding out on me, Elizabeth,” he retorted. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for your birth parents earlier today? Why keep the main reason for coming to Dottie a secret from me?”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to tell him it was none of his business, but closed it and snuggled closer to the passenger door. “I’m sorry. I got cold feet. You see, this whole thing about being adopted is new to me. I guess I’m not being very mature.”

  He was quiet
for a few seconds. “I think it’s pretty mature to do what you’re trying to do. Not very smart, maybe, but clearheaded, at least.”

  She grinned, a little annoyed with herself for feeling so pleased that he approved. “I take it you talked to your sister. How is she?”

  “She’s great. Just great. Don’t change the subject,” he added.

  She didn’t blame him for being irritated; she was irritated herself by her own behavior and lack of coherent explanation when they had first met this afternoon. She was also more than a bit baffled by how quickly her rather boring but well-ordered life had been turned on its ear almost the instant she had been told the news she was adopted.

  For a moment Elizabeth had felt a rush of anger at Miss Lou and the judge. They shouldn’t have waited all these years to tell her. They shouldn’t have hidden the truth. It had made it much more shocking and thrown her into turmoil to discover the facts at twenty-five, facts she should have known at age ten and maybe should have guessed at even earlier.

  She shook her head in wonder at the events of the past few weeks. She had left a secure job, in a city she felt much more at home in than Fairbreeze, primarily to track down a mystery she had little hope of solving.

  And for what reason? she asked herself silently. What would solving the mystery of her birth fix? Was her urge to know so great that it was worth placing herself in danger, digging around in issues that were best left buried? Elizabeth had always been a big “fixer.” She was the one people asked to organize dances, fund-raisers, the second-grade field trip.

  She was the one who had been together enough—on the outside, at least—at age ten, to give her girlfriends advice on cheating boyfriends and broken hearts. She had lately even begun to take care of things for her parents, hiring movers for Miss Lou when they migrated back to Fairbreeze, seeing to it that her father’s medical records were sent to Tulane’s best heart doctors in New Orleans before they left Baltimore.

  But ever since she’d learned about her adoption, she had felt disorganized, off-balance, off-center, as well as angry and confused. Mostly confused. Confused about what she really wanted to find out. Did it matter who her birth parents—her biological mother and father—were? No, not in any way that would affect her identity to herself, or her self-confidence about her place in the world.

  But it did matter, and suddenly, sitting in Tommy Lee McCall’s drafty, rattling heap, Elizabeth felt her heart present the answer to her own question. If she found out the facts about her own origins, she would understand once and for all the memories, half-formed and nightmarish, that had intruded into her life for as long as she could remember.

  Since she’d heard Miss Lou and the judge say the words that she was adopted, she had known that the secret thoughts she had been fearful and ashamed of did define her in a way that was unhealthy—because she had never known what they meant. But now she did. She now knew for a fact that they weren’t nightmares.

  They were memories.

  Memories of real events, real people.

  Memories of her life. Memories she had hired Tommy Lee McCall to help her chase down, without telling him what he should be looking for.

  “I’m sorry for all this,” she again said to Tommy Lee softly. “I thought about telling you the whole truth today, but the hate mail and the accident with my car seemed more pressing, and less personal. I didn’t mean to mislead you as to why I had originally called Dottie. But it is really hard to discuss.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” he told her, accurately reading her emotions. “You were just a kid, with no choice in the matter of what happened in your life. It’s natural to want to know who your kin are.”

  “Even if they’ve proved they don’t give a damn about you?”

  He made a sound in his throat, nonjudgmental and serious. “It’s hard to read intentions when all you’re looking at is the outcome of something. I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions that your family didn’t give a damn, just because you were adopted.”

  Her skin grew clammy. Suddenly she didn’t feel ready at all to take on the past. “Look, I can’t see having you go looking into that issue right now, what with what happened today. So why don’t we just drop it.”

  “Why?” Tommy Lee’s voice had gentled.

  Elizabeth, however, was unable to calm herself. “Well, because it’s obvious that what’s really going on here is that someone’s trying to scare off a Queen of Midnight contestant, for some sick or jealous reason. But a reason that has nothing to do with who my parents were.”

  “I agree it’s fairly illogical to think it’s all connected, but we’ve got to consider it, Elizabeth. It’s a mighty weird coincidence.”

  She lost her train of thought again and let herself smile over the fact that Tommy Lee had said “we.” Then she forced herself to concentrate on the issue at hand. “I don’t think so. It’s just coincidence. One has nothing to do with the other. Probably.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to figure out how to do what you asked me to do today. That’s all. If you don’t like my suggestions, you’re the boss. Fire me. But if you can see the sense in what I’m saying, then think it over. Real carefully. Start with telling me if the guy tonight was familiar in any way.”

  Elizabeth felt the tension go out of her arms. She nodded. “Okay. I’ll consider it.” Turning her thoughts back to the events of the day, panic again began to build as she remembered the dark car bearing down on her, and the fake doctor’s grimy hands on her throat. “The man posing as a doctor might have been at the accident today. He seemed familiar.”

  “What about the car? Ever notice one like it parked near your place in Baltimore, or out by your daddy’s place in Fairbreeze?”

  “No, but I thought they were New York plates.”

  “Yeah. Do you know anyone in New York?”

  “No.”

  “Did your parents mention that anyone in New York was connected to your adoption?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you could testify that the guy in your room tonight was the same man standing across the street today right before the accident?”

  A hazy picture of someone wearing earphones flitted through her brain, but no discernible memory of a face came into focus. “Sorry, Tommy Lee. I don’t usually stare at strange men.”

  “Right. Not good manners for you debutante electees,” he teased.

  “I told you, I’m not a debutante. I’m only going along with this Queen thing because of my folks.” Elizabeth crossed her arms over her breasts. “And by the way, I don’t think you have any room to tease me about the Queen of Midnight Pageant. Your ex-wife told me you are no stranger to the electee scene in Belle Fleur. I think she mentioned you two met at a ball one New Year’s Eve.”

  Even in the truck’s darkened cab she could see his tan cheeks glow. Since having met the gorgeous Luvey, Elizabeth hadn’t been able to stop wondering if he was still carrying a torch for her.

  Not that it mattered, she told herself, but held her breath in order to hear every intonation in his voice when he replied.

  Tommy Lee disappointed her by making no comment on his ex-wife’s tales. “When did your folks tell you about the adoption?”

  “Early September. They came to do some bank business and we went out to dinner. They both seemed so nervous about something, I took them to my apartment for dessert and coffee. They told me while I was cutting a pie.” She swallowed hard, remembering her inability to eat a bite after the news and the odd, floating, disengaged way she felt.

  “Did they say why they told you, after all those years?”

  “My dad said since he was sick, he was worried he wasn’t going to get a chance to explain things to me. Mama said they had always intended to tell me when I was a teenager, but it had never seemed the right time.”

  Tommy Lee braked for a cat that raced across the road. “When did you call Dottie? Do you remember the date?”

  “Yes. I decided before the middle of Septe
mber not to return to my teaching job. I thought I’d better come to Belle Fleur and see what I could find out. I called Dottie on October 31. I remember the kids trick-or-treating when we were talking. Why?”

  “And when did the car trouble happen, exactly?”

  She blinked hard, trying to remember. “November 8th. The movers came to drop off boxes.”

  “And the first letter arrived when?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that day, or the next. What are you getting at with this time line?” Elizabeth demanded, sitting upright against the cold vinyl seat.

  “You’ve only known about the adoption for a few weeks, Elizabeth. It just looks to me like as soon as you contacted Dottie, things started to happen. I’m not sure your looking for your parents isn’t connected to these mishaps.”

  “What are you saying? Someone is trying to kill me because I talked to your sister a couple of times about looking into the whereabouts of my parents? Why would they mention the Queen of Midnight Ball in the letters, then?”

  Tommy Lee chewed that over, then spoke simply. “Maybe they thought it would be easier to warn you off that way.”

  “Warn me off? Who would care about me looking for my parents?”

  He glanced at her. “Maybe they don’t want to be found.”

  Elizabeth’s skin grew hot and her stomach churned. She didn’t know why, but his cruel hypothesis was too much to think about. “That’s absurd. There’s no reason to think anyone but you knows I spoke to your sister about all this.”

  “Maybe,” he repeated.

  “Besides, what kind of people would try to kill their own flesh and blood just because they came looking for information?”

  He let out a breath. “I’ve been a cop for thirteen years, Elizabeth. I’ve come across plenty of families who have done as bad, or worse. You know what they say—crimes of the heart are the cruelest, and the most common.”

  “I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this.”

  “Well, maybe I’m wrong. Why don’t you tell me what you know about your biological parents? Dottie says you told her you thought your mama was dead.”