Before I Wake (17 page)

Bruce just nodded.

Her laughter hurt her ribs. It got to the point she stopped trying to talk, because every new thought triggered another peal of laughter. “Where did you find him?” she finally got enough composure to ask. “You did find him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. He’d snuck out when the maid brought in more towels. I found him in the hotel sauna hiding under the bench, very well steamed. I hate to think what germs were under there. He sneezed the entire time I carried him back to his owner.” Bruce laughed at the memory. “Man, he was very well steamed.”

“This is priceless. Did you also keep the first dollar you made as a private detective?”

He shifted on the seat to tug his wallet from his back pocket. He moved the flap to get to the inside pocket. “Still crisp too.”

She took the bill he handed her. “I like Benjamin Franklin. His face looks so sweet, and he was so mercenary when it came to money.”

“Keep it.”

“No way.” She took the wallet out of his hand and slid the bill back into its protective place under the flap. “This is like a treasured timepiece.” She fanned out two photos he had in the wallet. “Those are timepieces too. I was young.” She hadn’t expected to see herself, and she could feel her heart tumbling a bit at the reality Bruce had been carrying her photo for so many years.

“We looked good together,” Bruce pointed out.

She smiled, feeling like she was stepping on a bit of quicksand. “You always could make me laugh. Where was this, the county fair?”

Bruce nodded. “Just after you got your badge.”

Rae pushed the photos back into the wallet and handed it back to him. “You need a more current picture. Folks will think you are robbing the cradle.”

Bruce put away his wallet, then reached over and gently traced her chin with a finger even as he smiled. “I figure I’ll find an excuse to get a new one of you one of these days.”

She could handle talking religion easier than she could handle the rather terrifying thought of talking about their relationship as it had been in the past. So much joy, laughter, love, and just plain emotion roiled back there, deliberately left in the past when she had wisely accepted his push that it was a good thing that she go to the FBI rather than stay with him in Chicago.

She looked away from Bruce, not wanting to duck the conversation with a trivial remark, but knowing this topic had to be set aside. She started. “Bob. He just unlocked his car.”

Bruce turned to look and hurriedly shifted to start the car. “Good catch. Had he pulled out and we missed it, you would have been telling this stakeout story on me for the next fifty years.”

Rae breathed a sigh of relief for more personal reasons. “It would have been another priceless story to tell,” she agreed lightly. “He’s going home; he has to be at this time of night.”

“We’ll see.”

Bruce stayed well back, using the taillights of the car to keep Bob in sight. They followed him safely home.

“Want dessert somewhere?”

Rae paused in her search through the picnic basket for anything she had missed earlier. A wise answer would be to ask Bruce to take her back to her car and give her an escort to the hotel. But she looked at him, at the man she’d given her heart to long ago and still thought to call when her life crashed to pieces, and didn’t want to walk away just yet from the fact that she had someone to really talk with tonight. That was too good a thing to end quickly. “Pie. I would love a really good piece of pie right now.”

Bruce changed directions from heading toward the hotel to heading downtown. “Pie I can do.”

“Would this constitute a date?”

Bruce glanced over. “Do you want it to?” he asked, curious.

“I’m just sorting out the
this-is-work–time-and-this-is-not
time,” she offered cautiously.

Bruce thought about it and smiled. “Okay. Call it a predate, so I can relearn the things you like best and the things you avoid, before I have to get them right during an actual date.”

“I like that.” Rae found her shoes and wrestled to slip them back on. “For the record, I like dates that last to midnight, but kind of end then. I need more beauty sleep these days.”

“I’ll remember. Was this a nice night, Rae?”

She looked over at him, curious about the question. “I think so. You can’t figure out the future until you’ve talked about the past. We both know that. We’ve been down that road before.”

“Then we’ll talk about the past a little more when you come over and see my house, and I’ll tell you about some of the better chapters of the last eleven years. There have been a few good ones.”

“I’d like that a lot.”

Bruce pulled into a parking spot near the M&T Diner. He came around to open the car door for her. “Still partial to chocolate-cream pie?”

“A perfect idea.”

She let him hold the restaurant door for her. Bruce was trying, in very big ways, to bridge the past eleven years and make it possible for her to be comfortable with him again. She was determined to start matching his courage with her own and to meet him halfway. The best thing she had in her life right now was also the oldest, closest friendship she had ever had. Reviving it would go a long way toward helping her sink stable roots here in Justice. She wanted that, that reality of belonging again, of having a place. If that turned out to be with Bruce and forever, it would close a circle begun years before.

“I seem to remember our first date was also over a slice of pie,” Bruce mentioned.

She smiled at the memory he offered as he retrieved menus for them both. That night in their past had been a nice night too. “Some things in life should never change.” She followed him to a private table in the back.

17

Rae scanned house numbers as she drove through the Westwood subdivision Wednesday morning, following Peggy’s parents’ directions. She passed Peggy’s home before she saw the number. Rae slowed and found a parking place along the side of the street.

Peggy had a single home on a road with a number of duplexes. The trees were still young and the landscaping needed years of growth on the bushes to fill out the blank areas.

Rae walked to the house, looking around for signs of neighbors who were still home. Duplexes meant lots of neighbors, but not many looked like they were home with small children, the best kind of neighbors for noticing who came and went.

Rae shifted keys in the ring Mr. Worth had given her. She’d suggested they might want to be here, but Mrs. Worth had not felt able to face it. Rae checked the mailbox and found it empty.

She opened the screen door and checked the door, expecting to find it locked. It turned under her hand.

Rae tensed.

She had signed the handgun-carry-permit application but it was still in process, and she hadn’t thought this morning warranted breaking the law to carry her weapon. The wise thing to do was to walk back to the car, call the cops, and watch for anyone who left before the officers arrived.

Rae stepped over to cautiously peer into the window. The blinds were lowered but she could see a slice of the room; sunlight from the other windows cut across the carpet and what looked like the arm of a sofa. There were no signs of movement.

Rae reached into her purse and retrieved the small can of Mace inside. She flipped off the tab. Spreading the keys between her fingers, she clenched her fist around the ring. She didn’t want to wait for someone else to tell her the house had been ransacked.

She pushed open the front door slowly and looked around, seeing only a large empty living room. She took one step inside and held the screen door so it closed quietly behind her.

A large living room, what looked like the kitchen to the back of the house, to her right a staircase that went upstairs. She could hear steps above her.

The worst place to confront someone was on the stairs where they had the tactical advantage of being higher than her. One person or two? She listened to the sounds, wishing the rooms were hardwood floors rather than carpeted.

No car in the driveway, no obvious way to take items being taken out the back door to a van behind the house. It was possible they had opened the garage door and pulled inside so they could load the vehicle at their leisure.

She moved toward the steps and spotted movement just a fraction before she was seen as well.

“Police! Hold it right there,” she ordered, sliding two steps back and toward the front door. “You want to tell me why you’re in Peggy Worth’s home?”

The man froze at the top of the stairs. “Easy.” He lifted his hands away from his body and opened his right hand to dangle a key ring. “She’s a friend; I let myself in with keys she gave me.”

He looked Bruce’s age, his hair turning prematurely gray, the tan dress slacks hanging loose on him, the blue suit jacket unbuttoned. “Your name?”

“Gage Collier.”

Rae vaguely remembered the name from Peggy’s address book. “Why are you here?”

“We had a date. She didn’t show.”

“Saturday night?”

“Monday evening. She had a date the night she died?” he asked sharply.

“Come down the stairs, Mr. Collier. Slowly. Let me see some identification.”

He slid out his wallet, using his left hand to reduce the threat of the movement. “I don’t remember Chicago cops carrying Mace and keys when checking out a potential burglary.”

She smiled, the same hard smile she had given her FBI training officer. “You really don’t want to find out what they teach at the academy. Set it there on the table and step back.”

Gage set the wallet on the table and stepped into the living room. “A friend of Peggy’s? I don’t remember her mentioning a cop recently, and she would have known I would be interested.”

Rae ignored his comment and opened the wallet to read the license under the plastic window while she kept enough focus on him to make sure he stayed where he was at, out of reach of anything he could throw at her.

“I don’t claim its accuracy, only that it’s a bad photo of me.”

She turned the flap and read his press badge. “What are you doing in Peggy Worth’s home?”

He opened his suit jacket, his movements still slow, and reached into the inside pocket to tug out a small notepad. “She mailed me a full notebook with a scrawled Post-it note stuck on top saying I was to take her to dinner Monday where she would explain her shorthand.

“Typical Peg, dangle a story and make me wait. I was hoping she had typed her notes into that BlackBerry she carries everywhere so I could figure out what she was doing down in Justice this last weekend, getting herself killed.”

Rae’s gaze sharpened. “Killed?”

“I know what the coroner says. But Peggy attracted trouble every day I knew her, and I can’t imagine her dying in contradiction of how she lived, the coroner report notwithstanding.” He held out his hands. “May I sit down now? I’d rather not stand here debating how my friend died.”

Rae capped the Mace and slipped the canister into her pocket. “The coroner and the police department are satisfied it’s natural causes.”

“So I’m in denial; it feels better than accepting Peggy died in her sleep. She was too young.”

Rae agreed with him on that. “I’m Rae Gabriella: ten years with the FBI, currently private and working for Peggy’s parents to figure out what Peggy was doing this last weekend.” She held up keys. “With keys and permission to be here.”

“Touché.” Gage sat down on the couch and tossed the notebook on the coffee table. “I can’t read it. And no, her parents don’t know I’m here. I doubt they knew I had keys.”

“You two were close?”

“Not in the way you mean. I’m comfortably dating a nice lady who has two adorable boys. Peggy and I were professional colleagues. I liked her, although I’m a cut above her league in who I write for and how I write, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. She was young, eager, and learning.

“I brought in her mail, fed her cat, and forwarded e-mail while she was in LA, and in return she shared gossip she heard that might apply to a book I’ve been working on. She’s got a knack for getting ladies to talk more than they would normally do about the guys in their life.”

Rae thought the story sounded authentic. She chose a seat across from him. “What do you think she was doing in Justice?”

“Following a story, which is what she lived to do. I’m a Pulitzer prize ahead of her and she wanted to find herself a story that would win herself one.”

Rae opened the notepad and found it had been filled to the last page with a shorthand she couldn’t read either. “Did you find the notes you were searching for?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “I was interrupted. There was nothing useful on her laptop, which is where I expected her to have uploaded any files. The password is vanilla-rich; she tends to file by the date she writes notes, that way she can correlate to the date at the top of a notebook page. I scanned the last month and beyond a few Chicago council nuggets didn’t see anything that fit.”

“She was trying to locate Joe Prescott.”

Gage whistled. “The Prescott kid’s death?”

“I’m from out of town, humor me and fill me in.”

“Where are you from?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“A place with more than a few stories waiting to be dug up.” Gage rubbed his chin. “Joe Prescott—it starts with a millennium New Year’s Eve rave party. A batch of bad designer drugs kills twelve teenagers, one of them Joe’s grandson.

“The dealer was determined to be one of the dead. The cops busted the man who was his supplier and he got a few years for an unrelated coke sale. They never found the cook that made the designer drugs, or anyone who would point to where they had originated.”

“It was a big story around here.”

“The saga dominated Chicago news for months while the investigation wore on. There weren’t any year 2K calamity stories to write and the media had to report on something. Peggy’s got a thick file on it in her office; I figured it was old reference material since she had done a couple human-interest stories on the topic last year.”

“Would she have been working on another follow-up story?”

“Maybe, but Joe Prescott? He’s been dead for months.”