Maybe Baby Read online

  “So… let me get this straight. She’s been kidnapped by Boris and Natasha? From Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t know who they are. But they sounded like Boris and Natasha.”

  Dana blinked. “Russian?”

  “No. Stupid. Which works in our favor, although I don’t want to take any chances. Babs said the guy had a gun, and I have no reason not to believe it.”

  A gun. Great. Super. “So we have until tomorrow morning to find a bald British guy living in the Lower East Side with a smelly bird?”

  “He might be from Australia. Maybe New Zealand. One of those countries where men call each other ‘mate’,” he said.

  “So, Irish, possibly?” Dana felt her breath catch in her throat. “Do they say ‘mate’ in Ireland?”

  Nick put his hand on her lower arm, leaning closer to her. She stared at his hand, amazed at how strongly she felt it through the general numbness.

  “Hey,” he said. She raised her eyes to his. He gave her a soft smile. “I can find this guy. I can get that bird. It’s all going to be fine.”

  Dana’s vision blurred under the tears as emotion found its way through the fog.

  Her mother was kidnapped. With a gun to her head. Possibly scared, but Nick said she was pissed off, but how could she not be scared?

  “Diz,” Nick said, one thumb rising to her face to wipe away a tear. “She’s gonna be fine. We’ll get her back. I promise you.”

  “Okay,” Dana said, nodding. Nick gave her arm a squeeze and leaned back. Dana wiped her face and stared into her tea. A question presented itself in her mind, and she voiced it on autopilot.

  “What exactly do you do for my mother, anyway?”

  ***

  Nick watched Dana, not sure what to say. They’d been having a nice moment, a connected moment. After she’d run out of Murphy’s, he didn’t think they’d ever have another one of those. He knew it was only temporary, but it was nice, and the last thing he wanted to do was ruin it by talking about what he did for Babs. He got up and walked over to the kitchen phone, cycling through the Caller ID list.

  “What are you doing?” Dana asked.

  His cell phone and two unknown numbers were the only ones in the Received Calls memory log. No good. He stared down at the number pad.

  “Do you know how to take this thing off Do Not Disturb?”

  “No. You’re avoiding my question. Mom said you freelanced for charity.”

  He put the handset back on the cradle and leaned against the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Freelanced for charity? Since when is volunteer work called freelancing?”

  “That’s just what I thought,” Dana said. “So, what, she lied to me?”

  “No,” Nick said. “It’s just hard to explain. I do favors for her, kinda.”

  “Favors?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Like what? Like changing light bulbs or fixing the occasional sink?”

  Nick let out a light laugh at the thought. “Babs knows more about sinks than I do, and that’s not saying much.”

  “Okay, fine, so if it’s not sinky stuff… what is it?” Her face crinkled in suspicion, and she leaned back away from him. “You two… you aren’t…?”

  It took a moment for Nick to get what Dana was implying.

  “No! God, no! Dana, Jesus, how could you even think—?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, focusing on her tea mug. “I rarely talk to her and I never talk to you and anything’s… possible.”

  “Not with your mother, it’s not.”

  “Why?” Dana said, and he could see that he’d offended her. “What’s wrong with my mother? She’s still a very beautiful woman, and she’s smart and fun and lively.”

  Nick couldn’t help but laugh. “What, you want me to date her?”

  “No, but…,” Dana stammered, “she’s a beautiful, smart, lively woman.”

  “No argument, but she’s your mother,” he said. He waited until she looked up and met his eye before continuing. “There are a million reasons why that would never happen, not the least of which being that she’s like a mother to me. But at the top of the list, Diz, is you.”

  She gave him a slight smile, and he returned it, holding her gaze for a moment before looking away. He leaned forward, grabbed his mug off the table, and brought it to the sink.

  “She has a lot of rich friends, and they have…” He paused as he poured the tea into the sink, trying to think of the right word. “…errands they need run. I run them.”

  “So you’re an errand boy?”

  He shrugged. “More or less. Usually the things they need done are a bit unorthodox.”

  The left side of her lips quirked in a semi-smile, and her eyes brightened with amusement. For the first time, he noticed that she’d aged a bit about the eyes, just slight creases indicating she still smiled as much as she used to. This buoyed and saddened him at the same time; he was glad she was still smiling and sad he’d missed whatever had been making her laugh.

  “So,” she said, “you’re an unorthodox errand boy?”

  Nick realized he was staring at her and turned back to washing the mug.

  “Yeah. For instance, once, one of Babs’s little friends wanted a new necklace worth the gross national product of a small country, but her husband refused on the grounds that she already had too much jewelry, so she put a handful of things she didn’t want in a box and hired me to break in and steal it.”

  Dana’s smile dropped, and her eyebrows knit together. “What? You broke in? You know how to break in to places?”

  Nick shrugged. “Sure.” He felt a bit uncomfortable under her gaze and cleared his throat. “I mean, no. I mean, it wasn’t really breaking in, since she asked me to do it.”

  “But her husband didn’t,” Dana said.

  Nick watched her in silence as she stared at him, her expression one part stunned and two parts… what? Disappointed? Probably. Maybe she wasn’t regretting her mistake so much anymore, which he guessed was a good thing. For her, anyway. He dried the mug and put it back in the cabinet.

  “Look, we should start concentrating on this bald guy.”

  Dana stood up, bringing her mug to the sink. “I wasn’t judging you.”

  “Yeah, you were,” he said, moving away as she came toward him. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ve got other things to think about right now.”

  She sighed and turned to face him. “Why do you do that?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “What?”

  “You never want to talk about things,” she said. “You just change the subject, shuffle it under the carpet.”

  “I talk about things when it might make a difference. I don’t see the point in beating a horse that’s still gonna be dead when we’re done.”

  “Well, sometimes the horses aren’t dead. Sometimes they just want you to listen and talk and…” She trailed off, threw her hands up in the air. “You can’t just proclaim a horse dead because you want it to be.”

  Nick stared at her for a moment. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She let out a big sigh. “Look, I can tell I offended you, and I’m sorry. I was just trying to understand what you do, which I still don’t, but now, I just don’t care. Okay?”

  She turned to face him, and he felt it again, that wringing in his gut that happened when she got close. One more motivation to get Babs home safe as quickly as possible.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She turned to wash out her mug. Nick leaned back on the counter behind her, keeping his eyes on anything but the curves of her backside.

  “So,” he said, after giving her a moment to calm down. “I figure I’ll start with this bar in the Lower East Side. A guy like that should be memorable to someone. I should be able to get some information pretty quickly—”

  Dana tossed the dish towel on the counter and turned back to face him. “You? You mean we.”

  “No,” Nick said. Just the
idea of spending any more time with Dana than absolutely necessary made his shoulders knot up like a Boy Scout’s rope. “I mean me. You will stay here.”

  “And in what universe did you think that was going to fly?”

  Nick let out an exasperated sigh. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. “You’re not going with me. What if Babs calls? Someone should be here—”

  “If she calls, she’ll call you. Like before. On your cell. And when she does call, I’m going to be there.”

  “Fine,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone. “You keep this here, with you.”

  She pushed it back at him. “They’ll want to talk to you. And anyway, I don’t need your permission. It’s my mother. I’m going.”

  She stomped out of the kitchen toward the front hallway. Nick ground his teeth and followed her.

  “It’ll be better for everyone involved if I do this alone, Dana.”

  “Sorry? What was that? All I heard was ‘Blah blah blah I’m a macho jerk blah blah.’ “

  He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her around to face him, releasing her almost immediately as he did. “Maybe you should listen a little more carefully, then. I’m not taking you with me.”

  She stared up at him, her blue eyes piercing into his, and he felt it again. That same instinct—no, not instinct, need—to pull her to him and kiss her until neither of them could think straight. He took a step back. She grabbed her jacket off the rack and hit the call button for the elevator, staring at the doors, as though he weren’t there.

  “We don’t know who this guy is or what he’s willing to do to keep that bird, and I’m at a disadvantage if I have to worry about you.”

  Her face softened a bit, and he felt a ray of hope that he might be able to get her to stay. He put his hand on her arm.

  “Look, Diz—”

  Her face quirked, and she pulled her arm away from him.

  “Please stop calling me that.”

  Nick almost asked her what she was talking about, and then he nodded mutely. When had he started calling her “Diz” again? How had he slipped into the old familiarity without realizing it?

  The elevator dinged, and the door opened. They watched each other for a moment, then Nick held out one arm.

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She stepped into the elevator and hit the button. Nick followed, and there was nothing but silence for the thirty-floor ride down to the lobby.

  Eleven

  Finn walked into the lobby of Babs McGregor’s building, checking the place out as he moved. Marble columns. Oriental rugs. Exactly the swank digs he’d expected. He walked up to the reception desk and pulled on his brightest corn-fed smile.

  “Hi,” he said. “Delivery for McGregor from Chez Animaux.”

  The doorman glanced up at him, then sat forward and checked his clipboard.

  “Yeah, she called about you guys this morning. Birdcage, parrot food, box of toys,” he read. He glanced at Finn. “All of it outside?”

  Finn nodded. “You betcha. It’s just me doing deliveries today, so I’ll have to make two trips.”

  The doorman spun the clipboard around to face Finn. “Says you can go on up. I just need you to sign here.”

  “Surely,” Finn said, then scribbled “Big Bird” in unreadable man-scratch on the clipboard. The doorman took it back without looking at it. Good news—complacency in the door staff.

  “Service elevator is out. You’ll have to use the main. I’ll call up so if anyone’s there, they know to expect you.”

  Finn gave him a big smile. “Sounds great.” He himself had called about ten seconds ago, and no one had answered. So far, so good. He returned to his double-parked van, pulled out the bulky birdcage, and walked back inside the lobby. A woman with a dog wearing a fur collar glanced at him. He gave a bright smile and a small wave.

  “Howdy,” he said. She looked away. Finn had learned a long time ago that the more friendly people in uniforms are to a certain segment of the population, the harder that certain segment works to make them invisible. If it ever came down to a police interrogation, it would be as if the interaction had never happened.

  These people were just too easy.

  The doorman waited for him by the elevators. One opened, and a pretty woman flew out, followed by a tall guy in a light leather coat. They both looked upset about something. Finn moved out of their way and kept his head down.

  “Ms. Wiley. Mr. Maybe,” the doorman said as they stormed past without giving him so much as a nod.

  He keyed in the penthouse floor, and Finn stepped inside. He checked his watch—12:38. Mrs. McGregor had said the bird would be arriving in the afternoon, so it might not be there yet. If it wasn’t, he’d at least be able to get a good look at the security system. He knew the weaknesses of most of them, and the secret to jobs like this one was having a handle on the weaknesses. All he had to do was find one, exploit it, and come back later.

  Easy, breezy, Japanesey.

  A Kakapo. A friggin’ Kakapo. His fingers tingled as he thought about it. He already had two buyers lined up at two hundred thousand each—pit them against each other, and he’d have an offer of a quarter million by tomorrow. Then it would be good-bye ChezAnimaux, good-bye birds, and hello… something else. He didn’t know what, exactly, but he knew that if it didn’t involve birds, it would be good.

  Very, very good.

  ***

  Dana watched as Nick leaned over the bar to talk with the bartender. Bleeker’s Pub was a dingy hole in the wall with peanut husks on the scuffed, dark wood floor. The place was predominantly belowground, so the only light from the sunny October day outside came through the grimy front window. Some brand of Irish drinking music piped out of the worn speaker system, and at two o’clock in the afternoon, business was slow. It was the perfect place to wallow in a depressed bender.

  Dana decided she could get used to this place. Between Nick’s moving to California, her mother’s kidnapping, and the impending financial implosion of her winery, a depressed bender in a dank pub sounded like a damned good idea. She was kinda disappointed that she hadn’t thought of it sooner.

  The bartender said something to Nick that made him chuckle. Dana watched him and couldn’t help smiling herself. When Nick smiled, even that small one that stayed mostly in his eyes, he lit up a room. Or at least, he lit it up for her.

  Dante at the Blockbuster didn’t have a smile like that. He was very nice, though. Four feet tall if he was an inch, but he had a solid job. He knew all the best anime films and could probably snag her some nice movie posters to wallpaper the one-room studio she’d be moving into when she lost her winery, her home, and her sense of purpose in the world.

  Oh, God. She really needed to get started on that bender.

  Nick traded some cash for two beers and returned to their table.

  “According to the receipt I found, our guy was here on Monday at seven,” Nick said. “We got lucky. The waitress who works that shift comes on in two hours.”

  “Lucky?” Dana said. “How is that lucky?”

  Nick raised his beer. “We get to sit here and drink until she shows up. Trust me, this is comfortable compared to other jobs I’ve done for Babs.”

  Dana sipped her beer, then took another. With each drink, she felt a little better. This wasn’t bad at all. “Why does my mother get these jobs?”

  “Because Babs is the person crazy rich people go to when they’ve got a problem.”

  Dana watched him, her heart suddenly stung by the fact that he knew more about her mother than she did. Not that it was anyone’s fault but her own, really. “She helps people?”

  Nick shrugged, smiled lightly. “Yeah. It makes her happy. I just do the stuff she can’t do.”

  “Like breaking into people’s homes and taking their birds,” Dana said, smiling.

  He raised an eyebrow. “With their permission. Yeah.”

  Dana lowered her eyes first. “
So what’s with the charity thing?”

  “Oh.” Nick took a sip of his beer and settled it carefully back on the table. “She coerces donations.”

  Dana chuckled. “Coerces donations?”

  Nick smiled. “Yeah. You know Babs can’t sit still, and organizing fund-raisers got boring pretty quick, I guess. So, she does these favors for her rich friends and in lieu of a fee, they make donations to one of her pet charities. Usually St. Jude’s.”

  Dana felt a small surge of pride, an unusual feeling to be connected with her mother. “The children’s hospital? Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Wow,” Dana said.

  Nick smiled, that smile that sparkled at the edges of his eyes, and Dana felt dizzy and leaned back in her seat, for the first time noticing that half of her beer was gone. Whoa. How had that happened?

  Nick noticed it, too. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

  Dana blinked, then shook her head. “Didn’t sleep much last night, either. But I feel fine.” She grinned up at him. “Really fine.”

  “Stay here,” he said, starting up from the table. “They’ve got a menu at the bar.”

  “No,” she said, and put her hand on his. Wow. She must be drunk. If she were sober, she’d never have the nerve. She kept her hand there and looked up at him. “The beer took the edge off, and I’ve been way edgy. I’m okay. Really.”

  He gave a brief nod and settled back into his chair, nudging the bowl of peanuts on the table toward her with a soft smile.

  “Compromise?”

  She dipped her hand into the peanuts, pulling out a handful and settling them on the table in front of her and reaching for the beer.

  “At least slow down on the beer,” Nick said.

  “I’m fine,” Dana said. “I can hold my drink. Remember that time in the eleventh grade when Becky Doosey and I went to the elementary school playground and got drunk and she threw up all over the… the… the…” She snapped her fingers, trying to remember what they called that thing. “You know, the twirly thingie.”