Chapter 5

Taylor hesitated outside the door to Shane’s room. She didn’t know which was worse, dealing with her mother or with Shane Donovan. Her mother was totally obsessed with Renata Rollins. Vanessa was convinced this woman had to be her lost daughter.

The last thing Taylor wanted was to have her mother’s final days ruined by charlatans after her money. Since meeting Caleb Bassett, Taylor was positive the man was an appealing impostor who would cause her mother needless pain.

What did Shane think?

They’d left Caleb and returned to the Windsor Court Hotel without Shane saying anything much except he was going to check the story Caleb had told them. Brianna hadn’t been helpful either, claiming Caleb was an unusual person, but he just might be telling the truth.

No getting around it. Caleb Bassett had a way about him. That, combined with his good looks, could very well take in her mother.

Taylor knocked and waited, listening to the thunder grumbling in the distance, promising more rain. She had her hand raised to knock again when the door swung open. Shane had pulled on a pair of khaki slacks and had zipped them up, but the button at the waist was undone and he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

He’d just toweled off from the shower. His skin was still moist and his rebellious hair waved in different directions.

“Taylor?” he said as if he didn’t recognize her.

“Do you have a minute?”

A beat of silence, then he stepped aside and she walked into the room. He had his laptop set up on the small round table in the corner. Even at this distance, she could see screen saver, the initials D. I. A., and an eagle.

D. I. A.? What did that stand for?

She turned to face him and found him looking at her in a way that was as blatantly sexual as if he were gazing at her from the same pillow. Meeting his fixed stare with an icy glance, she went into her professional mode, not wanting him to think for a second she’d come to his room for any other reason than business.

“My mother called. She wanted to know what we thought. I explained how little information Caleb gave us, but she didn’t care. She’s convinced Renata Rollins is her daughter.”

“That’s what she wants to believe.” Shane combed his wet hair with his fingers, but it didn’t help much. “Is that what you came to see me about? It couldn’t wait until dinner?”

His teasing tone implied she had some other motive for visiting him.

“No. I wanted to know if you’d found out anything,” she told him in a breathless rush. “The sooner I can persuade my mother we’re dealing with impostors, the better off she’ll be. I don’t want her last months to be ruined by false hopes.”

“Don’t count on it.” Shane crossed the room in a few long strides, hit a key on the computer, and the screen went dark. “So far, what little Caleb Bassett told us appears to be the truth.”

“He didn’t say anything that would prove—”

“True, but when Peggy Sue Bassett—Renata’s real name if she’s who Caleb says she is—enrolled in first grade, her next of kin was listed as her father and her grandmother, Alma Bassett.”

“The adoptive mother must have died the way he said,” Taylor replied, a flicker of compassion for Caleb replacing skepticism.

She crossed the room so she could look into Shane’s eyes. This man was hard to read, and something about him kept disturbing her. She didn’t know how to talk to him except defensively.

Well, she was going to have to learn. Taylor needed him to thoroughly investigate these people.

“Alma was on welfare and so was Caleb,” Shane informed her. “It isn’t the profile of a man who could afford an expensive private adoption where you had to pay off a lawyer and the woman who handed over the baby.”

“The wife’s family may have had money.”

“There could be some other explanation.” Shane dropped into the chair facing his computer and closed the lid. “Bassett had a daughter, but it doesn’t mean she was adopted.”

“True. Anything else?”

“The Bassetts moved to Brigg’s Crossing when Renata was nine, after the grandmother had died. Caleb worked as an insurance salesman. The next year the house they were renting burned down, and they lost everything.”

Taylor stifled a groan. “You think he’s telling the truth.”

“What he’s told us so far seems true.”

“You don’t think that man is charming but a bit off? The way he acted, the way he dressed, that house—”

“He might have been working with glue a little too much.”

It took Taylor a second to get it. “Very funny.”

“You may not like Caleb Bassett, but what matters to me is verifying whether Renata is the missing baby or not.”

“Unless we can prove they’re lying, my mother is going to want to meet Renata. Mother is already talking about bringing them both to Miami.”

Taylor heard defeat and desperation in her own voice but couldn’t help it. She gathered her thoughts for a moment, then asked, “You found out all that online?”

Shane nodded. “You’d be surprised what’s out there in cyberspace.”

“Like why a seemingly poor man went to an attorney for a private adoption,” she replied, then waited while Shane studied her in silence. “Hold it. How old was Caleb when the baby was adopted?”

“You’re smarter than you look.” Shane’s impudent grin canted to one side in a way some women might have found charming or even sexy. It merely annoyed Taylor. “He was twenty-five.”

“That’s awfully young to adopt a baby.”

“Not if you knew—for certain—you couldn’t father a child.”

“Doesn’t it seem unlikely a man that young living in a backwater town would have consulted a fertility expert?”

“Maybe he had mumps in his teens, and they settled in his testicles. More likely, the mother knew she couldn’t have a baby. Women usually push to have children, not men, especially men so young.”

“He never had another child, and he never remarried,” Taylor observed, thinking of Paul Ashton and knowing how it felt to lose the love of your life. The flicker of sympathy she’d felt moments ago intensified. Maybe she’d been too quick to judge Caleb Bassett.

“He still lives near his daughter even though she’s a grown woman,” she said. “Strange.”

Renata shouldered her way through the back door of Puss ’N Boots with only minutes to spare before her act began. “Buzz, get in here,” she yelled at the bouncer who kept the low life creeps from coming backstage.

The three-hundred-pound ex-Marine lumbered over to her. “Hey, babe. What in hell happened? Did a trick go south on you?”

“Sorta’, but I got paid plenty.”

She grabbed his beefy wrist and pulled him into the makeshift excuse for a dressing room she shared with Cissy LaBuff. Cissy was onstage fan dancing, and as usual, her makeup was strewn across the dressing table. With a sweep of her arm, Renata sent open bottles and jars crashing to the floor.

“Money talks, Buzz. Real loud.”

“Yeah? All money ever says to me is bye-bye.”

Renata almost laughed as she whipped off the red sundress she was wearing. Underneath she was buck naked. She knew Buzz had the hots for her, but seeing her undressed was nothing new. He was backstage all the time, and the girls pranced around naked while getting ready to perform.

“Whatcha lookin’ for?” Buzz asked when she began to rifle through the drawers in the battered Formica dressing table.

“Tweezers. Can’t you see that huge splinter in my ass?”

Behind her Buzz cleared his throat. “They’re over there.” He edged by her and picked up the tweezers from the mess on the floor.

“Great. Thanks.” She pointed to her butt. “Pull out the splinter.”

Buzz placed one clammy hand on her waist. He grunted as he took his sweet time locating the splinter. He yanked it out with another grunt. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying.

“There’s more. It’s broken into pieces.”

Small wonder, she thought. She’d felt it when she’d driven herself here from the bayou. So, the money was great. It beat flatbacks—regular tricks—to hell.

The John worked on one of the oil rigs in the Gulf and had money to burn when he was on shore. She’d had rough sex with him before. Each incident became more violent.

She swore this was the last time and thought about Caleb’s plan as Buzz removed the splinter fragments.

“What were you expecting?” Brianna asked as they walked up to the line of men waiting to get into the club where Renata Rollins worked in the seedy fringe of the French Quarter.

“Dancing at a club called Puss ’N Boots isn’t the ballet. I should know. I used to make a living lap dancing in Little Havana, remember?”

“Was it like this?” Taylor asked, conscious of the men leering at them.

She was unexpectedly thankful they had Shane escorting them. Most of the guys waiting to get into the club looked as if they should be in a police lineup.

“It was worse,” Brianna replied. “Your uncle was the only gentleman who ever came into the club where I worked.”

Taylor grudgingly admired Brianna. She never pretended to be anything she wasn’t.

For an instant, Taylor thought of her mother, a woman who kept her background a well-guarded secret and lived to maintain a place in society. She could just imagine what her mother would say if she saw just the outside of this dive and knew Renata worked here.

The sign for Puss ’N Boots featured a comic strip type painting of a nearly nude woman dressed up in a cat outfit with a long tail and a headband with oversized ears. The nipples of her humungous breasts were covered with fur pasties. She wore shiny black leather boots up to her knees and brandished a whip in one hand.

The thundershower had passed, but water dripped from the roofs and formed oily puddles with cigarette butts floating on them. A pale ghost of a moon momentarily parted the clouds. Moisture formed gauzy haloes around the neon signs for the other joints on the narrow street.

Rain had cleared the air but had done nothing to make this place look better. What could?

“New Orleans gets more rain than Seattle,” Taylor said, thinking out loud about a question for her Trivial Moments game.

“No kidding?” Shane said with a hint of humor.

“Bet on it,” Brianna told him. “Taylor’s hobby is trivia. She knows her facts.”

Taylor tried for a nonchalant smile but didn’t quite make it. She peered into the alley across the street. Piles of cardboard boxes soggy from the rain. A black cat foraging in a McDonald’s bag. Discarded Styrofoam cups.

A world away from the Miami she knew.

“Both of you stick close to me,” Shane ordered. “Don’t make eye contact with any man. No matter what they say, don’t answer.”

Shane guided them around the line of men and walked up to the bouncer. “We’re guests of Renata Rollins.”

Caleb had told them to say this and it would get them inside. The dark man appeared to be Bahamian, and he looked them over while the men nearby whistled and tried to get their attention. Shane slipped the bouncer a folded bill and he stepped aside.

The stench of beer, cigarette smoke, and rank body odor hit Taylor the second she walked into the pitch-dark club lit only by a blue neon sign advertising Abita beer. Off to one side was a long bar with several women in pussycat outfits serving drinks. At the front of the club was a small stage with a brass pole in the center.

“I see a table near the front,” Shane said as he guided them through a warren of tables crammed with men.

Several men reached out to grab them, but Shane zapped them with a look that could have backed down a pit bull. Except for the women who worked here, they were the only females in the club.

The three of them huddled around a table the size of a dinner plate in the second row from the stage. A waitress in a threadbare cat costume with limp ears and a tail that dragged behind her collected the cover charge and brought them a pitcher of what she claimed was their famous Hurricane.

The phosphorescent drink so popular on Bourbon Street tasted like lukewarm turpentine in this club.

“I guess they’re between acts,” Brianna said, stating the obvious.

“Are they lap dancing here?” Taylor asked.

“Nah,” Brianna replied. “There’s not enough room. Expect a stripper.”

A stripper. She’d suspected as much the second she’d heard the club’s name, but nothing prepared her for how seedy this place was.

Look on the bright side, she thought. Mother won’t be so anxious to bring a stripper home. Especially a stripper with a half-baked story about being her daughter.

Her mother was a snob; no getting around it, Taylor silently conceded. At all times Vanessa Maxwell was conscious of class and background and breeding. Her wealthy friends, the country club, her place in society meant a lot to her.

Now Taylor understood why. Her mother had grown up poor and neglected. Even the love of a wealthy, powerful man hadn’t made Vanessa feel secure. Unless Renata Rollins could prove she was Vanessa’s daughter, Taylor knew her mother wouldn’t want the woman around.

With a drum roll, the stage went dark and a hush charged with anticipation replaced the chatter in the room. Taylor inhaled a calming breath, wondering if this woman would look like her the way Taylor resembled her mother.

She prayed not, but she wasn’t positive. Shane’s confirming what Caleb had told them had shaken her.

A single spotlight blasted the stage with a circle of blinding light. In its center, leaning against the pole was a tall woman clad in a black leather trench coat and stiletto heels.

Renata Rollins.

Thick hair gleamed blue-black in the intense light. Pouty lips suggested collagen. Those spidery lashes couldn’t be real.

Taylor forced herself to admit the woman was beautiful in a hard-looking, overly made-up way. Renata’s eyes were as dark as her hair and enhanced by the liberal use of eyeliner.

Taylor examined every feature as the woman strutted across the small stage and untied the belt on her coat to the hoots of the all-male audience.

She didn’t see a hint of her mother in this … person. Thank you, God. Taylor watched, relief morphing into anger. This stripper and the jerk they’d met this afternoon planned to take her mother for a ride.

Over my dead body.

“Typical striptease,” Brianna whispered as the woman slowly peeled off the coat, then tossed it aside.

The closest Taylor had been to anything like this was a raunchy show she’d seen in Key West during spring break when she’d been at Yale. The women had danced in skirts and tops that came off with a flick of Velcro, leaving them in black lace bras and matching panties. She stole a glance at Shane to see what he was thinking.

Like every other guy in the place, his eyes were tracking Renata, but his face was expressionless. He was darn good at hiding his thoughts, she decided. This afternoon with Caleb Bassett, she hadn’t been able to gauge Shane’s reaction to the man.

Renata had shed her skirt and sweater as well as her boots. She was wearing a red satin slip that Taylor had to admit was sexy. She noticed Shane’s eyes narrowed just slightly. So, he wasn’t the master of the poker face after all.

“Why is she doing that?” Taylor whispered to Brianna when Renata began to move provocatively against the pole in the center of the stage.

“It’s called ‘humping the pole.’ It drives guys crazy.”

Taylor nodded, noticing the men were now banging on the tables or stomping their feet. Many were yelling for her to “Take it off. Take it all off.”

Shane was silent, but his eyes were still on Renata.

After another shimmy against the pole, Renata sashayed to the front of the stage. Running the tip of her tongue over her cherry-red lips, she gazed out at her enthralled audience. If she noticed two women among the horde of men, Renata gave no sign.

She lifted the hem of her slip up an inch at a time, revealing slender thighs. She stopped just short of showing her panties and waited. And waited.

The men went ballistic, yelling more, stomping louder. Finally, Renata inched the slip upward exposing a swatch of red satin.

“More! More! Go for it!” screamed the apes at the table next to them.

It seemed to take an eternity to pull the slip up enough to reveal a belly button pierced with a circle of rhinestones that glinted like diamonds. A larger stone, too big to be real, winked at the audience from the center of her belly button.

In a split second, she shucked the slip and flung it high into the air above the crowd. Men scrambled to their feet, fighting each other for the garment. A soccer-type fight threatened to break out. A burly bouncer shoved the rowdiest men back into their seats.

Looking mildly amused, Renata stood there in all her glory. A wisp of red satin passed for a G-string and patches of red satin connected by thin straps covered huge breasts. She slowly turned to allow the men to admire every inch of her body.

Taylor fought the urge to run for the exit. What would it be like to have to earn your living by stripping every night? Mortified, Taylor’s stomach churned.

How was any woman reduced to this? What had happened to her?

Taylor thought about Caleb’s town house. It was in marvelous condition and was furnished with antiques. Why didn’t he sell something to save his daughter from humiliating herself like this?

What kind of man was Caleb Bassett? she wondered. He was handsome and had a certain … charm, but he was odd. He didn’t seem fatherly at all.

He couldn’t be her father, she decided, anger resurfacing again and getting the better of the analytical train of thought that served her so well in business. That charlatan and this stripper were trying to take advantage of her mother.

“She’s good,” Brianna whispered. “It’s all about timing and she knows it.”

Maybe Brianna really did love Doyle, Taylor decided. He’d taken her away from a degrading life like this and put her on a pedestal. Why wouldn’t she love him for it?

Renata slowly pivoted and showed her rear end. Her bottom as flawless as a newborn baby’s. Red lips were painted on one cheek with what appeared to be lipstick.

Renata looked back over her shoulder, her lips forming a sexy pout. “Renata has an owie. Wanna kiss it and make it better?”

She jumped from the stage and paraded by the first row. The men took turns kissing her butt. Taylor couldn’t force herself to watch.

Some of them smacked so loudly that the rest howled with laughter. She knew, from watching the first few, they were tucking money into the elastic band of her G-string.

She promenaded around the room, collecting more and more bills. Circling back, Renata approached them. Taylor wanted to hide under their table.

To quell her reaction, Taylor concentrated on the woman’s face, again checking it for something—any hint—of a family resemblance.

Nothing.

Renata halted right in front of Shane. She smiled and showed him the lips painted on her rear. This close, Taylor could see it had been painted on with nail polish, not lipstick.

“Come on, big boy,” Renata purred.

Taylor could see why she’d singled out Shane. He might have looked scruffy in South Beach, but he was GQ material in this crowd. She sucked in her breath and waited for him to kiss ass. The spotlight flooded their table with glaring light, and its heat brought a prickle of moisture to the back of Taylor’s neck.

Shane cracked a smile and took out his money clip. He peeled a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill from it. While the other men yelled for Renata to take off her bra, Shane folded the bill into a fan.

He stuck it between her breasts and winked.

Renata grabbed the bill and put it over one ear like a flower. She pranced over to the stage, hopped up, and stood there, smiling. With a flick of her hand, she unhooked the bra.

Little had been left to the imagination before, but seeing those bare breasts thrust upward like some pagan offering sent the men over the top. They hooted and threw money onto the stage. Renata swung the bra in the air the way she had her other clothes and tossed it into the audience.

It landed, the cups down like ear muffs, on Shane’s head.