20
Tyrone wasn’t at home or at the drop-in center, so I decided to stop by the art museum and knock two things off my to-do list in one visit—make peace with Zoe and make sure the museum didn’t have any of Capone’s forgeries hanging on their walls.
I spotted Matt strolling out of the nearby zoo with his wife and little boy and pulled over. “Hey,” I called out my window, “good to see you enjoying some time off with the family.”
His wife, Tracey, wrapped her arm around his waist and grinned. “We’re off to have a picnic in Turtle Park now.”
“Ooh,” I said to their toddler, making my eyes go wide. “Fun.”
“By the way,” Matt said to me, “we did get some good news last night. A traffic cam got the license plate number of the driver who flicked the cigarette at you. He claims he didn’t do it deliberately.”
“You believe him?”
“Yeah, I do. He doesn’t have a record. And no known ties to XYZ Inc. or any of its employees.”
“That’s great.” I shot Tracey an apologetic look for interrupting their family time with work. “Now get back to enjoying yourselves.”
I shifted the SUV back into drive and parked it along the street in front of the museum. It was a sweet ride. I took a few minutes to experiment with all the bells and whistles and to ensure no one had followed me. The love song Zoe had picked for her wedding played on the radio, and Mom’s words echoed through my brain. Any man who buys a woman a fancy new SUV because he’s concerned for her safety is hearing wedding bells.
I shook my head. Mom was seeing what she wanted to see. Tanner was married to his job.
I strode in the front doors of the art museum and showed my ID to bypass the metal detectors, then headed straight to the security room.
As Zoe opened the door, she said to the man surveying the line of monitors, “If you see anyone watching or following her or doing anything suspicious, radio me immediately.”
“I’m sorry. Are you in the middle of a situation? I can come back.”
Zoe grinned. “You’re the situation.”
I groaned. “You heard about the bus incident?” Zoe had a tendency to joke about things she was especially worried about. Maybe that was why we got along so well. We shared the same deranged sense of humor.
“Oh yeah. The phone lines around the neighborhood were buzzing all night.”
“I guess that means Jax won’t want you rescheduling our shopping trip anytime soon.”
“Ha, we’re thinking of ordering online from the security of a heavily guarded conference room.”
I frowned. She wasn’t being serious. But she probably should be.
Zoe pulled me into a hug. “I’m glad you’re okay. I tried calling, but the phone was busy all night.”
“Reporters,” I said, giving her a quick hug, then stepping back to avoid attracting unwanted attention. We were still standing in the short hall outside the security room, within view of the museum’s main lobby. “Eventually I just left my apartment phone off the hook and turned off my cell phone.”
“Well, don’t worry about the dress shopping. We’ll figure something out.”
I ignored the twinge of guilt that worrying about dress shopping had been the furthest thing from my mind and steered her toward the Impressionists’ gallery. “I also needed to talk to you about some paintings.” I explained the situation with Capone and his photographs of pieces from the museum.
“Oh sure, I remember him. He came here a lot. Painted fabulous reproductions.”
“Yes.” I stopped in front of the Pissarro I’d recognized in one of Capone’s pictures and handed Zoe the contact sheet I’d made of his photos of museum pieces. “Like this one.” I scrutinized the painting more closely but didn’t notice any telltale signs it was fake. Then again, I was no expert. “To be on the safe side, you might want to check to make sure they’re all still the originals.”
A shudder reverberated down her arms. “Absolutely, we don’t want a repeat of what happened at Caracas Museum in Venezuela,” she said, referring to a Matisse, stolen and replaced with a forgery, that remained undetected for two years.
“Hey, the FBI recovered it for them.”
“Ten years later. I’d be out of a job by then for letting it happen on my watch.” Zoe’s radio buzzed, and I automatically scanned the area. Zoe laughed. “That’s the code for a problem with the bathroom, not for someone following the FBI agent.” She winked.
“I’ll leave you to deal with that, but let me know if you turn up any iffy paintings.”
“Will do.”
I headed straight home from Forest Park. The street was quiet. No suspicious vehicles lurking outside my apartment building. I parked in the small lot behind the red brick three-story and scrutinized my door and window, accessible from the outside metal staircase. No sign of tampering, so I walked around to the front of the building to collect my mail and check the inside door.
Mr. Sutton, my next-door neighbor, was just locking up his box. “Evening. You use today’s word of the day?”
“Um, I think I missed catching today’s. What is it?”
“Pettifogger. A person who tries to befuddle others with their speech.”
“Hmm, if I could master all the words you’re teaching us, I’d make a good pettifogger.”
He laughed. “That’s the idea. Yes.” He pushed the elevator button and then held the door for me when it opened.
“You go ahead,” I said, opening my mailbox. “I’ll be a bit.”
Nate rounded the corner, carrying a ladder, a tool belt slung low over his hips like a gunslinger. “Planning on reading your mail in the lobby, are you?” Amusement twinkled in his eyes.
“No, I was going to talk to you.”
“Uh-huh, and did that idea come to you before or after the thought of being closeted in an eight-by-eight box suspended by a thin metal cable?”
I stuck out my tongue at him. I’d never broadcast the fact I might be slightly . . . somewhat . . . horribly claustrophobic, but he’d apparently figured it out.
He grinned. “You interested in watching that DVD tonight?”
“That’s a great idea.” In fact, it sounded really safe and normal. I could use some normal.
“I could come up around eight. Work for you?”
“Perfect.” I jogged up to my second-floor apartment. No note on the door. Looking good so far. I scanned the edges from top to bottom. No signs of trip wires. I cocked my ear to the door.
Meow.
Harold’s paw shot out under the hall door and swatted my foot.
Okay, that was a good sign. Maybe Tanner’s pals decided to take the day off from terrorizing me. I unlocked the door and, pushing it open, scooped up Harold before he could scoot out. “Hey, buddy, you talking to me again?” I eyeballed the parts of the kitchen and living room I could see from the doorway. No sign anything had been moved.
I closed the door, released Harold, and did a thorough check of all the rooms. “We’re good. And guess what? Your pal Nate is coming up to watch a movie with us tonight.”
Mom’s pettifogging on Nate’s apparent romantic interest whispered through my mind—he phoned every cop and official he knew to track you down. Uh, boy. What was I supposed to do with that?
Harold twined around my legs, meowing and nudging me closer to his bowl.
“Okay, okay, don’t worry. I won’t forget your dinner tonight.” I filled his bowl with kibbles and tossed a frozen TV dinner into the microwave. Mom would cringe if she knew, but I actually kind of liked them. Well, okay, I liked pretty much anything I didn’t have to cook, except maybe frog legs. Not that I couldn’t cook. There were just a lot of other things I’d rather do.
While my food was being nuked, I changed into jeans and my favorite Wash U sweatshirt and debated what to do with the couple of hours I had before Nate arrived. Paint? I wasn’t really in the mood. Laundry? I still had two clean white blouses. Research the case more?
I clicked on the computer.
The microwave beeped. I grabbed a fork and brought my dinner to my desk. Harold had already commandeered my chair and was swatting at the mouse, his eyes fixed on the screen.
“You want to watch more cat videos, do you?”
I clicked onto his favorite site and found a video of a cat sneaking up on a dog and pouncing on it. Harold was mesmerized. No doubt wishing he could have such a fun playmate to terrorize.
Pounding erupted on my door.
“Hold your horses,” I called out, then checked the peephole because it wasn’t like Nate to hammer my door, and he wasn’t due for half an hour.
Matt Speers stood in the hall, looking haggard, his two-year-old son on his hip.
I yanked open the door. “What’s wrong?”
“Good, you’re home.” Matt shoved a diaper bag at my chest. “I need you to take care of Jed until my mother-in-law can get here to pick him up.”
“What? Uh, Matt, someone tried to make a bus sandwich out of my car last night. You don’t want me anywhere near your child right now.”
Matt’s face went pasty, but he shook his head. “It can’t be helped. I’ve got no one else close enough. I’ve got to get Tracey to the hospital. There’s something wrong, but she refuses to go in with Jed along. She doesn’t want him to be frightened. She almost died with the last—” His voice faltered.
I scooped Jed into my arms. “Okay, go. Go.”
“Thank you. And pray. Please.” He raced off without any further instructions.
Jed looked at me as if he might burst into tears at any second, and my heart did a nervous flutter.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, bouncing him in my arms. “We’ll have fun. Wait until you meet Harold.”
Harold took one look at the little guy and darted under the couch.
“Chicken,” I said. I shut the door behind us and glanced around my living room. I only had a few breakables I’d have to put up. Hopefully the new surroundings to explore would distract him from his parents’ panic.
“Uh!” Jed pointed to the replica of my grandfather’s old Ford pickup I had sitting on the bookshelf.
“You want to play with the truck?” I asked.
“Okay.” I set him and the truck on the floor and then grabbed a box to collect everything potentially dangerous that looked too enticing to a twenty-month-old.
Jed happily pushed his toy truck around my living room floor as Harold watched suspiciously from under the sofa and occasionally took a swat at the truck’s wheels when it got too close. I locked the box in my spare room and shut the other doors to be on the safe side, then checked out the diaper bag Matt had left. It contained all the paraphernalia I could possibly need—diapers, PJs, a well-loved teddy and blanket, and—“Ooh, animal crackers.”
I peeked around the corner at Jed and snuck a sample. “Yum.” Taking a seat in the living room, I finished eating my dinner while watching Jed muscle his car around my coffee table. He was adorable, with curly blond hair and the cutest dimple in his left cheek when he smiled, which he seemed to do often. And it was one contagious smile. I could see why Mom was so eager for grandkids.
I slipped into the kitchen, rinsed out my frozen dinner container for recycling, and poured myself a glass of juice.
Crash!
I dashed back to the living room. “Jed? Where are you?” My heavy coasters were scattered across the wood floor—the crash. “Jed?”
“Uh.” The sound came from under my desk, where Jed had his little hands fisted around the dangling wires.
“Oh no, no, no.” I grabbed the keyboard and mouse inches before they hit the floor.
Thankfully, Jed didn’t cry the way my cousin’s daughter did when you told her no. He just toddled off to the sofa as I set the keyboard and mouse back in place, fished the dangling wires up to the top of the desk, and then wedged the chair into the opening so he wouldn’t be able to crawl under again.
I spun toward him and clapped my hands. “Okay, what do you say we—oh no, Jed!”
He was happily plucking items out of my purse.
“Let’s put those back in,” I said in my best isn’t-this-a-fun-game voice.
He fell for it and stuffed my comb and then my pack of gum back inside as I dug my keys out from behind the cushion.
“What’s in your mouth?”
He grinned up at me with that adorable dimple, his lips clamped tight.
I held out my hand. “Let me see.”
His lips pinched tighter.
“Je-e-ed,” I said sternly.
He scampered to the other end of the couch.
I grabbed his foot. “I gotcha. Now let me see.” I forced my fingers into his mouth and pulled out what looked like—I gasped. “Where did you find this?”
He pointed to the purse. “Uuuuh.”
I grabbed my phone and called Tanner. “You’ll never guess what I just found in my purse. A GPS tracker.”
“That explains how our Lexus driver tracked you down.”
“Yeah, and now he knows I’m home.” My voice rose a tad hysterically. Checking it, I glanced back at Jed a second before he disappeared into the kitchen. “And I’m babysitting Matt’s little boy.”
“I’ll come over and pick it up,” Tanner said, sounding as if he was already jogging out the door. “We can devise a trap to lure him into.”
Crash!
“I gotta go.” I thumbed End on the phone and dashed into the kitchen. “Ah, so you think my pot cupboard needs rearranging, do you?” I said sweetly, willing my racing heart down a couple hundred beats. “You’re probably right. You go right ahead.” I didn’t have anything breakable in my lower cupboards. “Oh.” Then again . . . I snatched my cleaning supplies out from under the sink and pushed them to the back of the counter. “There, now you should be okay.”
He held up a pot with holes in the bottom. “Uh?” His little voice modulated up on his three-syllable version of the word, which I took to mean “What’s this?”
“That’s a steamer.”
He held up a circular pan that folded in half. “Uh?”
“That’s to make omelets.”
He pushed to his feet and toddled back to the living room, leaving the pots strewn across the kitchen floor.
“Are you done?” I called after him. “We should clean these up before you play with something else.” I stacked them back in the cupboard. “I could read you a book. Would you like that?”
Silence.
I hurried back into the living room. “Jed?”
The smell hit me two feet in. “Whoa, Jed. You little stinker.”
He was back at his truck and grinned up at me. “Uh.”
“Uh is right. We need to change you.” I fished through the diaper bag and found the wipes and a clean diaper. “C’mon, mister, we’ll do this in the bathroom where we can put on the ventilation fan.” If I’d had a clothespin, I might’ve even clipped it on my nose. How did mothers do this every day?
But I had to chuckle when I saw what else was in the diaper. He’d pooped out a smiley face sticker! Then again, I sure hoped his parents didn’t find something of mine in there tomorrow.
The instant I got his bum wiped, Jed twisted off the clean diaper I’d set under him.
“Hey, hey, we’re not done yet.”
He twisted the other way as I tried to figure out how to open the tape. “Uh!”
Apparently uh was the only word he knew, but he said it with a dozen different inflections I couldn’t translate. “You’re a regular pettifogger, aren’t you?”
He slipped out of my fingers and made for the hall.
I slung the diaper on him on the run and had two of the three snaps snapped on the diaper shirt by the time he hit the living room. “And I thought suspects were slippery!” I hurried back to the bathroom to bag up the foul-smelling diaper before it polluted the whole building and then slipped out to drop it directly down the garbage chute. As I stepped back inside, I glimpsed a dark shadow cross the window.
I snatched up Jed and doused the light.
“Waaah,” he wailed.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay, baby,” I whispered, edging toward the hall door. No way could Tanner have gotten here this quickly. It had to be one of Dmitri’s guys monitoring the tracker.
Pounding erupted at the kitchen’s exterior door.
Jed abruptly stopped crying. “Uh?”
I reached for the doorknob of the door that opened into the building’s central hallway. “C’mon, bud, let’s get you to safety.”
“Serena?” The shout came from outside the kitchen door.
Billy? I flipped on the outside lights, and my prowler knocked off his night-vision goggles. I yanked open the door. “Are you crazy? I could’ve shot you.” He was wearing black camo from head to toe and had a gun and a billy club slung on his hip and night-vision goggles dangling around his neck. “What are you doing out here?”
“Zoe was worried about you. Suggested I keep an eye on the place. I heard crying and thought you were in trouble.”
“That was Jed.” Who was now straining to get back to his exploring. I set him on the floor, and he went back to the pot cupboard. “You’re lucky I had Jed to worry about or I might’ve shot first and asked questions later.” Billy was ex-military and apparently had become his family’s own personal peacekeeper.
“Should he be in there?” Billy looked seriously concerned.
My gaze dropped to the pot cupboard. No Jed. I spun around. “Jed, no!” I pulled him out from under the kitchen sink and yanked the cleanser-laden steel wool he was clutching from his hand. “Did you put that in your mouth?”
He burst into tears.
Billy backed toward the door. “Is he okay?”
I pried open Jed’s mouth and saw no sign of foreign stuff inside. “I think so.” I bounced him in my arms. “Shh, you’re okay. I’m sorry I scared you. You scared me.”
“I’ll go now,” Billy said, backing out the door, his gaze fixed on Jed like he might be the IED that would finally take him out.
“Right, thanks for”—Jed wailed louder—“shh, shh, it’s okay. The scary man is going.”
I locked the door behind Billy and startled at the sound of someone tromping through the main door. I spun around. “Nate!”
“What’s going on? I heard screaming and crying and no one answered the door, so I used my passkey. Who’s the kid?”
“A friend’s. I’m sorry. I should’ve called.” I lifted my voice higher to be heard over Jed’s fussing. “I don’t think we’ll be able to watch the movie.”
Nate made a goofy face and even goofier noises.
Jed laughed and stretched his arms toward Nate.
Nate scooped him up and blew a big raspberry on his belly, which sent Jed into rip-roaring peals of laughter.
My smile must’ve wobbled because Nate threw me a concerned look. “Hey, you alright?”
“No. He’s adorable, but he gets into everything. A second ago he almost ate a pot scrubber. Who knows what chemicals they put in those things.”
Man, people think my job is scary. Being responsible for a baby is way scarier.
Tanner stepped inside my kitchen door and took the small microchip-sized tracker from my fingers, his gaze straying to Nate bouncing Jed.
“Matt’s wife had a sudden complication with her pregnancy, and they needed a babysitter fast,” I explained.
Tanner’s expression didn’t betray what he was thinking. He studied the gadget. “It’s the same model as the one they found on your car.”
“What? They found a tracker on my car? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Sorry, did I forget to mention it when I delivered the SUV?”
“Yeah! I’m sure I would’ve remembered if you had.”
“I wish I’d thought of planting one on you after last night’s scare,” Nate chimed in from behind me. Jed was now perched on his shoulders, playing the drum on the top of Nate’s head.
Tanner’s lips twitched into an almost-smile, as if he agreed but didn’t want to admit it. “I’ll take it. I already talked to Benton. We’re going to set up a sting.”
Matt appeared at the kitchen door, rapped his knuckles on the window, and immediately let himself in. “What’s going on? Did something happen?” His gaze zinged to Jed. “Jed’s okay?”
I lifted him from Nate’s shoulders and handed him to Matt. “He’s fine. Was as good as gold. How’s Tracey? I didn’t expect you back. I thought your mother-in-law would be coming.”
“Tracey’s stable. Her mother’s with her at the hospital. They admitted Tracey and then she started worrying about Jed being here.”
“Ah, I’m sorry.” I patted Jed’s back and gave Matt an encouraging smile. “It’s all good. Haven’t heard a peep from any bad guys.”
Matt looked skeptically from Tanner to Nate. “Then why the bodyguards?”
I shrugged. “You know what they say. It takes a village to raise a child.”
Tanner showed him the tracker. “Your kid found this in Serena’s purse. You ever see one like this?”
“Sure, it’s the model our detectives use.”
“You aware of anyone having Serena under surveillance?”
“Only me. I asked a buddy to cruise by every half hour.”
A lot of good that did me. He hadn’t spotted Billy skulking around the place.
Nate backed toward the door. “I’ll get out of your hair. Maybe we can catch the movie tomorrow night?”
“Yes, I’ll call you.” So much for my normal evening.
Matt gathered up Jed’s paraphernalia. “I better go too.”
I closed the door behind him. “Why would a cop be following me?” I asked Tanner. “Do you think a cop’s in cahoots with the Russian mob?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time cops were on the mob’s payroll. Sloppy of them to use department-issued equipment, though.”
“I guess anyone could pick up this kind of thing at a high-tech store. Even Aunt Martha was checking them out one day online.”
Tanner eyeballed the piece again, a smile stretching his lips. “You don’t think she or your mom planted it, do you? Because they might go ballistic on me if they see it spend the night at my place.”
I laughed. “It would serve them right.”