BRIDAL JEOPARDY Page 13

  “She wanted to have another child?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “Weren’t there other clinics she could have gone to?”

  “Maybe she only had faith in Dr. Solomon.”

  “Yes, he had a way of projecting strength and reassurance.”

  Stephanie got back to the original question. “We looked through some of my mother’s papers and found literature and application forms from the clinic.”

  “And how did the two of you get together?” Mrs. Dubour asked.

  “I got some information on who might have caused my brother’s death. I came down to New Orleans to investigate and found Stephanie,” Craig explained, giving an abbreviated version of how they’d happened to hook up.

  The old woman looked from one of them to the other. “Did you think it was odd that the two of you ended up meeting each other?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about it,” Craig said.

  Mrs. Dubour shook her head. “Maybe you should have,” she said in a hard voice.

  Craig kept his gaze fixed on her. She looked like a typical aging housewife, but she obviously had spent a lot of time thinking about what happened to her son. And she’d come to some interesting conclusions.

  “Something similar happened with my David.”

  They both stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “David was living at home and working at the hardware store in Houma when he got an email from a woman who said she’d gotten his name from a lawyer who was investigating inequalities in fees charged at the Solomon Clinic. She said her mother had paid thousands to be treated there, and his mother had gotten her treatment for free. The woman was all hot under the collar, and she came charging down here to see David. She was a weird, kind of flighty girl. I took a dislike to her right away, but as soon as she and David locked eyes on each other, something changed with him. With both of them, I guess. I mean, you could see sparks flying between him and that girl.”

  “What was her name?” Craig asked.

  “Penny Whitman.”

  “What happened?”

  “I saw them outside under the willow tree, holding hands and looking like they’d been hit by a meteor or something, like they were having some kind of secret communication nobody else could tune in on.”

  Craig nodded, understanding perfectly.

  “David was so happy. I’d never seen him like that before. They took off, and I never saw David alive again. He and the girl were found in a motel room in bed together—both of them dead.”

  Stephanie sucked in a sharp breath. “What happened to them?”

  “The coroner said it was like both of them had had a cerebral hemorrhage.”

  “My God,” Stephanie whispered.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Craig said.

  Mrs. Dubour nodded. “Losing him would have been more of a shock if I hadn’t felt that I’d lost him years ago. Or that he never really belonged to us.”

  “What do you mean?” Stephanie asked.

  “I was so excited to have a child,” she said, her voice low and wistful. “But he never was, you know, normal. He always kept to himself. He wasn’t affectionate with me or my husband. He never did date much when he was a teenager.” She gave both of them a sharp look. “Am I telling you things you understand about yourselves?”

  “Yes,” Stephanie whispered.

  Craig also nodded in agreement.

  She kept looking at them. “But you met each other, and something changed for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went off together, like my David and that girl, only it turned out different for you.”

  “Yes,” Craig said.

  “You’re alive, and he’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry he died.”

  “Because he hooked up with that woman. Why did it kill them?”

  Craig wasn’t going to tell her that it had to do with forming a telepathic bond that might overwhelm the two people involved.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Mrs. Dubour kept her gaze on them. “I guess you two should be careful.”

  “Yes,” Stephanie whispered, although Craig knew from her mind that she was sure they had made it past the dangerous phase of bonding.

  “Did you ever find out anything about the lawyer who sent the woman down here?”

  “I didn’t pursue it.”

  “Do you happen to know his name,” he pressed.

  She hesitated, probably coping with all the sad memories he and Stephanie had dredged up. It would be kindest to let her be, but because they had come here for information, Craig gave her a push. If you know who the lawyer was, you should tell us. We’d really appreciate the information.

  She was silent for several more moments, then said, “She came down here with the email.”

  “You mean from the lawyer?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Dubour got to her feet and left the room. While she was gone, they both waited tensely, wondering if she’d really be able to put her hands on the evidence. Finally she returned holding a piece of paper. “Here it is.”

  When she handed over the paper, Craig scanned it. It was from a Lewis Martinson in Washington, D.C.

  “Thank you so much,” Stephanie said. “We really appreciate this.”

  They talked to Mrs. Dubour for a few more minutes. When the woman stood up, her shoulders slumped.

  “I’m sorry to have brought all this up for you,” Stephanie murmured.

  “I hope it does some good.”

  When they were back in the car, Stephanie turned to him, and he felt the relief in her mind.

  “We could have ended up like David and that woman.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We both had a headache when we first made love. I guess that was a symptom of...”

  “Getting ready to have a stroke,” he finished for her.

  “What was the difference for them?”

  “We can’t know for sure. Maybe the pain was too much for them to focus on the pleasure. Maybe they lost their nerve at the last minute, and when they didn’t bond, they’d already set the process in motion.”

  When he saw a shiver go through her, he reached for her hand, holding tight.

  “We got through it,” she said. “Thank God we didn’t understand the danger.”

  “I guess it’s a crap shoot—how it turns out,” he said.

  “I prefer to think that we had something they didn’t.”

  He laughed. “We were hornier.”

  She grinned, then sobered. “It looks like somebody wanted to get David and that woman together. Maybe to find out what would happen.”

  “I don’t like being manipulated.”

  “Likewise. How did you happen to come down to New Orleans?”

  “I never gave up the idea of finding out who was responsible for Sam’s death, which was one of the reasons I maintained connections with police departments all over the U.S.”

  “Interesting that the body turned up after all these years.”

  “You think...”

  He let his voice trail off, but he knew where her mind was going. Somebody had deliberately arranged for him to receive the information because they wanted him to come down to New Orleans and investigate the man responsible for Sam’s death—which would mean that he would meet Stephanie Swift.

  “Which meant they knew investigating John Reynard would lead you to me,” she murmured. Then she added, “It’s someone who knows there’s something...strange about the children from the clinic.” She looked at him. “How, exactly, did you find out about Arthur Polaski?”

  “I got a call from a contact at the New Orleans P.D., Ike Broussard.”

  “You think he’s working with
Lewis Martinson?”

  “I’ll be surprised if it’s that simple.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  “We could talk to Broussard and look up Martinson. Unless you want to go poking around in Houma.”

  She thought about that. “I think that would be dangerous, because Martinson already knows we’re likely to come to Houma.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And I wouldn’t have any more contact with Broussard.”

  “You could be right about that.”

  They stopped to pick up lunch at a fast-food restaurant, then returned to the bed-and-breakfast, where Craig booted up his computer and looked up Lewis Martinson. There were several people with that name, but none of them was a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

  “Now what?” Stephanie asked.

  “I’m thinking.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ike Broussard swiped his shirtsleeve across his forehead and sat for a moment in his unmarked car, postponing the moment of reckoning. A lawyer in Washington, D.C., had paid him to make sure a guy named Craig Branson got some information about a cold case. Now he was realizing that he could have put his balls in a wringer.

  He’d thought John Reynard would never know who had given Branson the information. But somehow it had gotten back to him, and now Ike was in deep kimchi.

  Finally he opened the car door and hoisted his two-hundred-fifty-pound bulk to the cracked sidewalk.

  He didn’t count it as a good sign that Reynard had asked to meet him at one of his warehouses.

  He buttoned his sports jacket over his bulging middle, then decided it looked better unbuttoned.

  Glancing up at the redbrick building, he saw that a couple of video cameras were tracking his approach to the warehouse door. So if he didn’t come out of here alive, would Reynard destroy the tapes?

  Trying to look confident, he walked through the door, which led directly onto a dimly lit space half the size of a football field stacked with boxes. But there were no men working the forklifts that sat along the left wall. He looked upward, locating the metal balcony on the other side of the room. Up there was an office where he’d been told to meet Reynard.

  His footsteps echoed on the cement floor as he crossed the room, then clanged on the metal stairs. At the top, he looked toward the lit office.

  Two bodyguards were in the waiting area. They gave him a knowing look as he knocked on the door to the inner office.

  “Come in,” Reynard called out.

  His heart was pounding as he went in.

  “Close the door.”

  He did as the import-export man asked.

  “Thank you for coming,” Reynard said.

  Ike nodded.

  “I assume you thought I wouldn’t find out who told Branson about Polaski.”

  When Ike started to speak, he waved him to silence. “You made a mistake. Every man is entitled to one mistake.”

  The observation didn’t stop the pounding of his heart.

  “But you have a chance to redeem yourself,” Reynard said.

  Ike waited to find out what he had to do.

  “I want the location of Branson’s cell phone.”

  Ike didn’t bother saying that giving out information was against the law. He only said, “Yes, sir.”

  “I want it by the end of the day,” Reynard clarified. “And when you’ve got it, you’re going to do something else for me.”

  * * *

  AT THE COTTAGE, Craig pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “What now?” Stephanie asked.

  When he sent her a very explicit picture, she flushed. “Is that all you think about?”

  “I’m a guy. When I’m locked in a room with a beautiful woman, I can’t help thinking about making love to her.”

  “You’re not locked in.”

  “Not technically, but I think we need to stay out of sight. Which means staying in here. Do you have a better suggestion for how to use the time?”

  “Do you think Dr. Solomon was trying to create telepaths?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s kind of a stretch.”

  He nodded.

  ‘So what if he was trying to do something else, and this is what happened?’”

  “Work before pleasure. Let’s do more research on the Solomon Clinic and see if we can figure it out.”

  * * *

  “THIS IS THE ADDRESS,” Tommy Ladreau said.

  “Like the boss said, it’s a bed-and-breakfast.” He looked behind him at another car that had pulled up. It was a detective from the New Orleans P.D., a guy named Ike Broussard, and Tommy didn’t like having him on the scene. But it had been the boss’s orders.

  “We don’t know if they’re in the main house or one of the cottages,” his partner, Marv Strickland, said.

  “Go see if you can spot his car.”

  Marv climbed out and made his way through the bushes to the main house, checking the cars in the parking spots. When Branson’s car wasn’t one of them, he started down the lane that wound through the property.

  When he located Branson’s rental, he stopped, then moved into the shrubbery again.

  His orders were to bring Stephanie Swift back, and if he had to kill Craig Branson to do it, so be it. But Marv was hoping to avoid an outright murder in broad daylight.

  He went back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “You saw him?”

  “I saw his car.”

  “Tell Broussard to do his thing.”

  Marv climbed out again and walked back to the car behind theirs.

  “Go for it,” he said.

  * * *

  CRAIG AND STEPHANIE came up with several more articles about the clinic, but nothing that would tell them what Dr. Solomon had been doing.

  “I’m wondering if he was operating with government funding,” Craig said.

  “What about it?”

  “That might be a way to get a line on whoever’s after us.”

  “We also have the names of several women who worked there,” Stephanie said. “Nurses.”

  “Yeah.” Craig thought about that. “What if I talk to some of them? There’s one who’s living in a nursing home in Houma, for example.”

  “What do you mean—you? If you’re going, so am I.”

  “You’re the one who pointed out that it was dangerous to go into Houma.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “You stay here, and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Don’t go unless you know she’s really there.”

  “Okay.” He looked up the number and dialed the nursing home, asking if he could speak to Mrs. Bolton.

  “She’s not feeling well this evening,” the woman who answered the phone said.

  He felt Stephanie’s sigh of relief.

  “So you don’t have to go see her.”

  Almost as soon as Craig clicked off, his cell phone rang and they both went rigid.

  “Who could that be?”

  He looked at the unfamiliar number.

  “Don’t answer.”

  “I’d better do it.”

  When he clicked the phone, the man on the other end of the line turned out to be Ike Broussard, the police detective who was responsible for his trip to New Orleans.

  “Branson?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got some information for you.”

  “What?”

  “Not over the phone. I want you to meet me.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Bayou Restaurant in Houma.”

  “You know about the Houma connection?”


  “Uh-huh.”

  “What do you have for me?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Something to do with the Solomon Clinic?”

  The detective hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  He clicked off and looked at Stephanie.

  I’ll be back as soon as I can.

  I was hoping you wouldn’t leave.

  I know.

  He reached for her, and she came into his arms, clinging tightly. “I just found you. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

  “You won’t lose me.”

  They held each other for long moments, and he had to force himself to ease away.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He stepped outside the door of the cottage and stood for a moment, feeling the barrier between them. He couldn’t see Stephanie now, but he could still feel her mind, and that was comforting. Even when he walked to the car and climbed in, he was still in contact with her.

  Craig, he heard her whisper his name.

  I don’t like leaving you.

  Then don’t.

  He didn’t answer because there was nothing he could say. Still, he had to fight the need to turn around and go back as the contact with her faded and then vanished altogether.

  He flashed back to the horrible moment when Sam had died and the contact between them had snapped.

  This was the same, only Stephanie wasn’t dead; she was just out of range. He would finish his mission and come back to the cottage, and she would be there waiting for him.

  He turned on the engine and drove away, heading for the restaurant where Broussard had said he was waiting.

  * * *

  STEPHANIE WALKED BACK to the bedroom, where she and Craig had made love. While they’d been out, Mrs. Marcos had remade the bed.

  Stephanie sat down, smoothing her hand across the spread, thinking that if she folded back the spread and climbed under the covers she’d feel closer to Craig. Maybe she could just sleep until he came back.

  A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

  “I’ll be right there,” she called out as she walked into the living room. Thinking it was someone from the B and B staff, she opened the door.