Dead Giveaway

Brown to a table, and I'll be with him in a minute. Maybe he'd like some coffee.'

Jeff came back over and bent close to my ear. 'I need to interview this one now that I have his complete attention.'

I whispered, 'Okay, I can wait.'

'Please go home. I'll call you.'

'But—'

'And do me a favor? Let me talk to Will Knight first.'

He said this nice enough, but he wasn't asking for a favor: Jeff was warning me not to contact my client.

'If you say so,' I answered.

Now, sometimes you gotta dance to the tune the band plays, especially when one of the fiddlers is your cop boyfriend. But as I drove home, I had to think long and hard whether this was one of those times.

2

I arrived home around ten, grabbed a Coke from the fridge and headed for the living room, unable to stop thinking about Verna Mae's call to me today and the horrible way she died. The sheer brutality had me as mad as a bull in red dye factory. I needed to find out what had happened. I mean, why beat a woman to death for jewelry and the contents of a handbag that could have been snatched without much effort? But maybe she had some fight in her and pissed off her assailant. If the bad guy was on drugs, it wouldn't take much to set him off.

Then there was Will. He would soon learn about this, and I sure wanted to be the one to tell him. I did have his number on speed-dial. One press of a button and I could see if he was home, walk that tightrope Jeff had placed between me and my client by asking Will if he'd had any surprises today—like a visit or call from Verna Mae.

Don't be an idiot, I told myself. I needed to respect Jeff's request, and I sure didn't want to get on the wrong side of HPD. I was still a new PI and under the supervision of Jeff's good friend Angel Molina of the Molina Detective Agency. Though I am a registered investigator, I only stay that way if I don't get into trouble. Getting into trouble with Jeff would affect not only my ability to work as a PI but also our relationship... which could affect Jeff's friendship with Angel... and maybe then affect the prospect of getting my little subsidiary of the Molina Agency, Yellow Rose Investigations, licensed by Texas in a few years. That damn domino effect will get you every time.

No call to Will. Period. But I had to do something.

With my calico cat, Diva, watching from the arm of one of the overstuffed chairs, I practically wore a hole in the Oriental rug in front of the sofa while sorting through all this, thinking about what I'd seen tonight and trying to remember every detail of my conversation with Verna Mae the other day. Could there be a clue from our meeting, a clue to explain why she contacted me today, a clue connected to her death?

Sipping intermittently on my soda, I recalled the woman's enthusiastic greeting when we'd arrived at her house, an encounter that immediately made Will and me uncomfortable. It would have made any sane person uncomfortable. I mean, what was Will supposed to do when a stranger hugged him like the human equivalent of Saran Wrap? Verna Mae's nose only came to his navel, and she pressed her plump face into his abdomen, wrapped her fleshy arms around him and held on for dear life. He reacted by raising his own arms as if he were being fitted for a tuxedo, all the while staring at me bug-eyed.

After she finally let go, she gave me one of those pat-you-on-the-back type hugs, thanked me for bringing her boy back home and walked us through her I Lust for Waverly house to the dining room. There we found a meal fit for a July Fourth picnic. Fried chicken, potato salad, a slab of ribs, baked beans and a gallon of sweet iced tea were laid out on a massive table—enough food to serve the state legislature.

We filled our plates—she'd even brought out the good china—and went out to the front porch. I chose the wicker chair right next to a planter filled with baby's breath, and Will sat to my right. Verna Mae flanked him on the other side. Thank goodness the round glass-covered table was high enough that he could fit his unbelievably long legs underneath.

I no sooner took my first bite of beans when I dropped my napkin. I bent to retrieve it and saw it had blown under the planter, the one I hadn't paid much attention to when we walked inside despite its presence near the front door. The one I now realized used to be a bassinet.

A white wicker bassinet on wheels.

I felt like ten caterpillars were crawling up my neck. 'Um, unusual use of a baby bed,' I said. 'Did it belong to one of your children?' About then I was praying that was the explanation, but my gut told me otherwise.

'I have no other children, Ms. Rose.' She rested a hand on Will's arm. 'I placed the bassinet where I found my boy that night.'

A brief, tense silence followed before Will said, 'Cool,' and continued eating.

I believe that's how teenage boys cope with everything—by eating.

Verna Mae raised the thin eyebrows over her gray eyes—the only thin thing on her body. 'You may have the planter if you like, Will.'

He gave me this pleading sideways glance that shouted, Please help me.

'A baby bed in a men's dorm might make for some interesting jokes,' I said, trying to sound lighthearted rather than critical.

'Of course,' she replied. 'I was just... kidding.' Her tone was terse enough that I knew the lighthearted approach had failed.

So much for my acting skills. 'Why don't you tell us about the night Will arrived.'

Her face relaxed and her eyes glazed over in dreamy remembrance. 'I heard him crying. Jasper— he was my husband—said a cat was in heat. But I knew better. Thank goodness Will came to us in October, because the weather was perfect. No danger of him freezing or dying from the heat.' She turned to Will. 'When I picked you up, you quit crying right away. You knew we belonged together.'

More hairy little feet on the nape of my neck. More painful glances from Will.

'But that's not how things worked out,' I said.

'Thanks to Jasper.' She practically spat his name. 'Will was sent to me. God knew how much I wanted a baby, but Jasper called the police—even after I told him it was downright blasphemous to go against God's will. We should have kept our baby.'

'But... your husband did what he was supposed to,' I said, trying to sound apologetic for pointing this out.

She looked at me like I'd tracked horse manure onto her plush white carpet. 'The right thing to do, my dear young woman, is to accept what God gives you. And He gave me a perfect baby boy.'

Will subdued a 'Yeah, she's definitely crazy' smile by scooping up one last giant forkful of potato salad and shoving it into his mouth.

'If you'd kept him,' I said, 'wouldn't people have wondered where this baby came from?'

'They might have had questions,' conceded Verna Mae. 'But folks in town knew we wanted to adopt. It's not like I didn't talk to everyone and their stepcousin about our desire for children.'

'Did you apply to be Will's foster parent after he was taken from you?' I asked.

'That's not something I wish to discuss.' From her brusque attitude and the little twitch near her eye, I figured I'd better leave the subject alone.

According to my amateur psychological analysis, this woman was angry at her dead husband and mad at the system that took Will away—grudges she'd held for nineteen years. Focusing on her old wounds wouldn't help Will find his birth parents. I needed to know what had not appeared in the newspaper articles, anything that would give me a place to start looking for clues. I said, 'The articles Will's parents kept about the abandonment were pretty sketchy. Did Will come with a note? Or a special formula or baby bottle? Anything?'

'Nothing but the little T-shirt and diaper he arrived in,' she said.

'No blanket?' I asked.

'Maybe a flannel receiving blanket. I don't really recall.'