Cry Mercy (23 page)

“Henry.” She hit redial, but the phone rang and rang. When the call went to voice mail, she left a message. “Henry, it's Emme Caldwell. Your call was apparently dropped. I'm trying to get back to you but seem to be having a problem. I'm sorry we missed meeting up today but hopefully you're calling to
reschedule. Please call me back so we can set something up.”

She was still frowning when she ended the call.

“What?”

“It didn't sound like a dropped call. There was someone on the line, I'd swear to it.”

“Maybe it was just one of those screwy connections you get sometimes.”

“Mommy?” Chloe called from the bedroom.

“I'm right here, honey.” Emme put the phone down on the table and excused herself to Nick. “I'll be right back.”

“Who are you talking to?” Chloe mumbled and rubbed her eyes, her feet sticking out from the blankets on one side of the bed.

“Nick.” Emme pulled the covers back over her and leaned over to kiss the top of Chloe's head.

“Nick didn't say good night to me.” Chloe's eyes were opening.

“Nick,” Emme called to him. “Would you mind saying good night to Chloe?”

“Good night, Chloe,” he said from the doorway.

“′Member you said we could go to an amusement park?”

“Sure. As soon as your mom and I can arrange the time, we'll go.”

“Yippee! Can we go to one that has—” she began to sit up.

“Back to sleep, Chloe.” Emme gently coaxed her back down. “We can talk about that some other time. It's late now, and we have to meet the Realtor in the morning, remember?”

“Are you going to sleep now, too?”

“In a minute,” Emme told her.

“I was just leaving,” Nick said. “I can let myself out. I'll talk to you tomorrow, Emme. Let me know if you hear from Henry or Lori.”

Before she could protest, Nick had turned his back and she heard the door open and close softly.

“Who are Henry and Lori?” Chloe asked sleepily.

“The people we were supposed to meet at the zoo today.” Emme curled up next to Chloe.

“I'm glad they didn't come.” Chloe yawned and snuggled closer to her mother. “We got to be with Nick.”

Well, there was that
.

“I like Nick,” Chloe murmured as sleep reclaimed her.

“So do I, sweetie,” Emme whispered. “Now go to sleep.”

When Chloe's breathing slowed, Emme climbed off the bed carefully and locked the door. She turned off her computer and turned out the lights, then changed into a nightshirt. She slid back into bed and lay in the dark, her hands clasped at the back of her head, staring at the thin outline of the window drawn by the lights in the parking lot, her mind bouncing from one thing to another. She could hear car doors slamming and engines starting up and wondered if one of them was Nick.

Her tired mind settled on him for a moment, then warned her that this was not safe territory. She concentrated on finding something objectionable about him, but she was having a hard time coming up with anything. The fact that he was a client could have been enough to deter her, but she reminded herself
this wasn't a criminal case she was handling and she was no longer a cop. Did the same rules apply in this situation?

It was hard to overlook the fact that they'd had a perfect day. There'd been no strangeness and no awkwardness. He and Chloe had taken to each other like the oldest of friends. They'd laughed and strolled around the zoo, looking like any of the families that strolled along with them.

She shook herself out of that thought in a hurry.

She'd never had much luck at relationships. It wasn't hard to figure out why. Success in interpersonal relations depended largely on the ability to trust, and that was one thing she'd never learned how to do. She'd taken her share of psychology courses at the community college and she understood that her unsettled childhood, where no one had ever claimed her and no one had ever asked her to stay, made it difficult for her to believe that anyone would ever want to keep her around for more than a little while. Until Chloe, no one had ever been a constant in her daily life. She looked back on her decision to take Tameka up on her offer to sign over the parental rights to her child as the luckiest day of her life.

When Tameka Jackson had asked Emme to take her child, Emme'd been stunned. She'd never thought of having a child, and her first instinct was to brush her off and pretend the offer had never been made. But Tameka had already gotten it into her head that the cop who'd tried so hard to help her get off the streets and get her life together would give her baby a better life than anyone else she knew, and she wasn't about to give up. With the assistance of a social
worker, and a lawyer Emme knew to make it legal, Tameka's baby girl left the hospital as Chloe Nolan. And whatever premonition Tameka had had become reality. Ten days after the birth of her baby, Tameka had been stabbed to death in the shower in the county prison. No one had ever been charged with her murder.

Like
that
was some big mystery. Her trial for the sale and distribution of cocaine was drawing closer, and word on the street was that Anthony Navarro wasn't taking any chances that Tameka would talk. At the time, he hadn't shown the least bit of concern for his baby. Now he was willing to pay thousands to get her back.

“Over my dead body,” Emme whispered.

Chloe was hers now, and no one was going to take her.

Not for the first time, she wondered at the wisdom of having begun to play such a precarious game. If anyone came for Chloe, who would have her back?

Her fingers followed the path Nick's thumb had traced along her bottom lip, and thought that maybe—just maybe—there might be one person she might be able to count on.

“What are you doing here so late on a Sunday afternoon?” Having stopped at Robert's to return Trula's cooler on her way back from looking at houses, Emme had made a quick run to her office to pick up the file she'd left on her desk. On her way down the hall, she'd been surprised to find Mallory's door open, and even more surprised to find Mallory at her desk.

“I can't keep up with all the applications,” Mallory sighed. “They're coming in faster than I can field them.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Emme stepped into the room.

“You are helping. You're investigating our first case.” Mallory rubbed her eyes. “How's it going?”

“Two steps forward, three steps back.” Emme brought her up-to-date on everything she'd learned that week, right up to the Carroll-Wilson kids not showing the day before. The only thing she left out was the part about Nick following her back to the hotel.

“This is crazy stuff.” Mallory shook her head. “Who'd have seen all this coming when we decided to take this case on?”

“Hey, you were a cop, too. You know you have to always expect the unexpected.”

“Yeah, but this should be different. This should be … saner.”

Emme laughed. “How do you figure? We're doing the same work.” She thought that over for a moment, then amended it. “Actually, we're doing work that, for whatever reason, the cops were unable to do.”

“Which should make this job harder.” Mallory rubbed her eyes again. “I think I need to stop. I'm getting loopy.”

“Go home to Charlie. Go out to dinner. Go to the movies. Do something fun,” Emme said.

“Don't I wish. Charlie's working a case. I probably won't see him for days.”

“Get one of your girlfriends.”

Mallory shook her head. “Don't have any.”

“Everyone has friends.” It was Emme's turn to frown. “Why don't you have friends?”

“Long story. Too tired to tell it.”

“Okay, then, how ′bout family?”

“Don't have any of them, either.”

“You're kidding.” Emme sat on the arm of one of the chairs in Mallory's office. “No family at all?”

“Nope.” Mallory leaned back, as if in deep thought. “Well, there is someone who
claims
she's my sister, but she could be lying.”

“How is she your sister?”

“I don't know. I don't know that she really is, and I don't really care.”

“Didn't you ask her why she thinks …”

“I didn't answer her letter. Didn't I just say that I don't really care?”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying you got a letter out of the blue from someone who says she's your sister and you just tossed the letter without answering it?”

“I didn't toss it.” Mallory averted her eyes. “I have it at home. Some place.”

“But you didn't bother to find out if she's really related to you?”

“Why should I?”

“Because if she's your sister, then it means you do have family. You do have someone.”

“I don't need anyone.”

“We all need someone.”

Mallory stood. “I think I'm done for the day. I think I'll take these files and—”

“Mallory, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought my feelings into your situation. It's just that, well, I'd just about die if someone came along and said she was my
sister. It's been one of my fantasies for most of my life.”

It was Mallory's turn to stare. For a long moment, she appeared to be debating with herself. “If my mother had another child and she decided to keep that one, well, good for her. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Am I not hearing right? Didn't you just say you had no family? But now you're saying you have a mother
and
a sister?”

“I haven't seen my mother in thirty-five years. Not since she dumped me on her sister and split.”

Emme was only vaguely aware that her mouth had dropped open.

“Sorry,” Mallory mumbled, and waved a hand as if to dismiss the conversation.

“I'm the one who's sorry,” Emme told her. “I'm the one who's gaping.”

“Yeah, I know. It's not a pretty story.”

“It's not that. It's just that, well, I always thought I was the only one.”

“The only one who what?” Mallory looked puzzled.

“The only one whose mother dumped her and took off.”

“You're kidding. You too?”

“On the day I was born. She left me in a church. The nuns found me when they came in for mass at five in the morning. They named me—” Emme caught herself. She'd almost said,
They named me Ann, after St. Ann, for whom the church was named
. “I didn't have a name, so they named me.”

“Seriously?”

Emme nodded.

“Were you adopted?” Mallory asked.

Emme shook her head. “No. I spent eighteen years in foster care. I've never known who my parents were, either of them. I don't know if they're dead or alive, why they left me, if I have a brother or sister somewhere … cousins … aunts … uncles…” She shrugged. “I've never had anyone. Until Chloe, that is.”

“We're quite a pair—two girls without any family.”

“But you said your mother left you with her sister. That means you did have someone.”

“It wasn't quite like that. When I say my mother left me there, I mean she made like we were only visiting. Then she left in the middle of the night. She didn't bother to take me with her. My aunt did the right thing by keeping me, but she never for a minute let me forget that it was only through the goodness of her heart that I had a home. I never felt welcome there, I never felt loved.”

“Did you ever ask your mother—”

“No, and I probably never will.”

“Why not?”

“My mother was a hooker in the casinos in Atlantic City. My aunt always said she'd left her burden behind so that she could go back to work. That she couldn't give up the glitz and all that high life she enjoyed to take care of a baby she hadn't wanted.” Mallory's facial muscles drew taut.

“Wow.” Emme shook her head slowly. She simply couldn't think of anything else to say. “Just … wow.”

“So you can see why I don't have any interest in contacting my mother. I've never known who my father is, never even knew his name.”

“Well, we certainly have a lot in common, don't we?” Emme said softly. “But maybe your sister—aren't you at least curious about her?”

“No. Why should I be?”

Emme stared at her. “All my life I've waited for someone to appear and tell me that we share the same blood, the same background. That we have a connection that goes beyond friendship or anything else.”

“Some of us don't need that connection.”

“Don't kid yourself,” Emme heard herself say. “Everyone needs that connection.”

“Not everyone.” Mallory cleared her throat and stuffed the papers she'd been holding into her briefcase. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Right.” Emme backed toward the door, knowing she'd overstepped. “I'll see you then.”

“Look, I'm sorry I was short. I just don't like to talk about … all that.”

“I understand. I should have kept my two cents to myself. I'm just going to say good night to Susanna and head out.”

Emme was already into the hallway when Mallory called to her, “Susanna's not here. She took off again this weekend. Charlie said he saw her headed toward the turnpike on Friday night.”

“Still won't say where she's going?”

Mallory shook her head. “Just one more little mystery for the Mercy Street Foundation to work on. See you Monday.”

Robert stood at the kitchen window overlooking the vast grounds that spread out behind his house. He watched Trula's face light up as Chloe ran across the yard to the pool where Trula floated in an inflatable chair. Cleopatra's barge, he'd dubbed it when Kevin presented it to her on Memorial Day, which happened to be her birthday. It had an airtight pocket that zipped up, big enough to hold one of those paper back novels she was always reading when she thought no one was looking, and a special inflatable cup holder made to hold a can of soda—which Trula wouldn't be caught dead drinking—or a bottle of water, which she had with her at all times.