The Escape Artist (20 page)

She played with a piece of lettuce hanging out of her sandwich, disturbed by his tone of voice. “I wasn’t suggesting a new report.” She could hear the hesitancy in her voice. “But…I guess I don’t understand you, Ron. Why wouldn’t you want to do everything possible to find Tyler?”

“Peggy.” He swallowed a bite of his sandwich, then set it down on the wrapper. “I can’t continue to support you in this. Not to the extent you want, anyway. When I listen to you talk about all this supposed danger Tyler is in with his mother, I just…I can’t be party to that sort of hysteria.”

“Hysteria?” She was incredulous.

“Yes. I can’t listen to you talk about this situation and keep my thoughts to myself any longer. If you want to tell me what’s going on with Tyler, you’re going to have to hear what I think.”

“Are you saying you think Tyler is better off with Susanna than he would be with us?”

“If ‘better off means having anything money can buy and the attention of two parents, then of course he’s better off with you and Jim. But if it means being loved and well-cared for, then I see no difference which parent he’s with.”

“The court—”

“I don’t care what the court said. Susanna didn’t lose custody because she was an unfit mother. She lost because she lacked the resources to fight you and Jim.”

“Oh, Ron, that’s simply not so.” She slammed her root beer on his desk with such force that it bubbled out of the top of the can. “Money had very little to do with it. There were many other things that came into play, and you know it. What about Linc Sebastian? Susanna was probably going to end up married to him. Do you like the idea of Tyler living with someone like that?”

“Linc served his time. He paid for what he did. And I think he genuinely cared about Tyler. When I was called into the hospital for Tyler’s emergency surgery, it was Linc who was there. Not you. Not Jim.”

Peggy bristled. “We weren’t there because we knew it would make things more complicated if we—”

“Peggy,” Ron interrupted her, “listen to me. Jim became interested in Tyler when you became interested in Tyler. If you can’t accept—”

“You’ve never liked Jim,” she interrupted him. “You’ve always hated lawyers.”

Ron laughed. “You’re a lawyer and I love you.”

“I don’t feel very loved at the moment.” She felt the pout forming on her face and wanted to kick herself. She was a competent woman, a competent lawyer. When she was with Ron, though, she became the little sister she’d always been with him.

“I have nothing against Jim,” Ron said. “You’re missing my point. I think you’re a wonderful person. So is Jim. So is Susanna, So is Linc Sebastian, as far as I know. There’s no right or wrong here. There’s just a lot of pain.”

“What do you mean, no right or wrong? Susanna broke the law, Ron. She kidnapped a baby and is probably hiding out under an alias somewhere. She’s a criminal.”

“You and Jim
made
her into a criminal when you pressed criminal charges. You turned a loving, very frightened mother into a felon, for Christ’s sake.”

“We
had
to make her a felon,” Peggy argued. “The only way we could get the authorities to take the case seriously is if
we
took it seriously.”

Ron leaned across the desk toward her. “How would you have felt in Susanna’s position? You get pregnant, then discover your husband is sleeping with another woman.”

Peggy winced. Ron was the one person to whom she’d confessed that miserable incident in Jim’s bedroom. “I never should have told you,” she said.

“So you find your husband with another woman,” Ron continued, “and then you have to give up your new home to her. Not only that, but—surprise!—the other woman wants your baby, too.”

“That’s not fair. You’re making me sound like a villain.”

“No one’s a villain. But just because you were not lucky enough to be able to have a baby yourself doesn’t mean you’re entitled to someone else’s.”

Peggy sat back in her seat, wounded. She could think of nothing else to say. She stared at her brother in silence for a moment, then rewrapped her sandwich, picked up her purse, and started for the door. He made no move to stop her.

One hand on the doorknob, she turned around to look at him. “I thought I’d only lost my stepson,” she said, her throat tight, “but I see now that I’ve lost my brother, too.”

“You haven’t lost me.” Ron didn’t look the least bit upset by this exchange. “All I’m saying is that I can’t, in good conscience, join you in bashing Susanna any longer.”

JIM WAS LATE GETTING
home that night, so it wasn’t until they were in bed together that she finally had the chance to tell him about her conversation with Ron. He listened, then put his arm around her.

“Don’t blame him,” he said. “He doesn’t really know Susanna. He’s just trying to be fair.”

“He said just because I can’t have a baby of my own doesn’t mean I’m entitled to Susanna’s.” Ron’s words still cut through her. She hadn’t known her brother could be so cruel.

“But you are entitled to mine.” Jim gave her shoulders a squeeze. “And so am I. We’ll get him back, Peg, don’t worry. Detective Rausch called me today to say they finally got a court order to disclose Susanna’s credit card records. I guess she only has a Visa, and apparently, she hasn’t used it yet. But we’ll be able to trace her if she does.”

“That’s good,” she said, but she was thinking that if Susanna hadn’t used her card by now, she would never use it. Susanna was smarter than Jim gave her credit for.

Jim raised himself up on one elbow. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her. “All I want is for you to be happy.” He kissed her again, with some heat this time, and she nearly started to cry. The last thing she felt like doing was making love. But she’d put him off for too long.

She returned the kiss, determined to meet his passion with her own. It was going to be difficult, though, because when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the disappointment and disdain in her brother’s face.

“I LOVE THIS EARLY
autumn smell.” Ellen sat down in one of the rockers, a cup of tea in her hand, and took a deep breath. She smiled at Kim and Lucy. “It’s one of those comforting smells from childhood, you know?”

Kim did not know. The smell of an eastern fall was not familiar to her, but Lucy seemed to understand.

“Oh, yes,” Lucy said. “It’s just like where I grew up in Pennsylvania.”

“I guess you didn’t have this sort of smell as a kid in L.A., huh Kim?” Ellen asked.

“No.” Kim leaned over to fix the cuff on Cody’s jeans. “It’s the smell of smog that comforts me.”

They laughed, and Kim chuckled herself, pleased with the sense of ease she was beginning to feel with her two neighbors as she settled into Kim Stratton’s life. As she
created
Kim Stratton’s life. She’d learned to deal with Lucy’s many questions by saying whatever popped into her head, and Lucy didn’t seem put off by the inconsistencies in her answers. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even seem to notice them. People accepted whatever you told them, Kim was discovering, as long as they had no reason to doubt your story. With each passing day, she was becoming more and more Kim Stratton. Susanna Miller was beginning to feel like some long-deceased relative she’d never taken the time to grieve over.

She and Cody had drifted into a routine, one that lulled her into a soft, easy complacency and let her hope her new world might hold promise and not pain. Her early mornings were spent over coffee on the porch with Lucy. Ellen usually had clients in the morning—those vibrant, clear-eyed early risers who needed their massage fix before going off to work—so it was rare for her to be able to join them. This morning, though, Ellen’s first client had canceled, and since Kim had proclaimed this to be Cody’s birthday, Ellen had joined in the modest celebration. The four of them ate doughnuts, and Cody unwrapped a pull toy—a wooden basset hound—from Lucy and a mobile of stars and planets from Ellen.

After coffee on the porch, Kim would usually take Cody for a walk through town and then to the park, where she could push him on the swing. She loved to see the healthy glow from the fall air on his cheeks and smell the outdoors on his skin and in his hair. And now she tried to be at the park the same time as Roxanne and her boys. There seemed to be no danger in making friends with Roxanne, and she’d decided Jack was not such a terrible kid. Cody was enamored with him and his brother, Brandon. Cody needed to be around other children, Kim thought, and fortunately, the gun had not reappeared.

Cody was crawling around on the porch floor, drooling mightily, one hand pushing the basset hound.

“Push him over here, Cody,” she said. She didn’t like him to get too close to the stairs.

He crawled in her direction, looking dapper in his new blue sweater with the sailboats on the pockets. She’d bought it for him this past weekend on one of her garage sale outings. Fifty cents, and it was adorable. Even if she woke up wealthy some morning, she would not go back to store-bought clothes.

She’d had a fairly substantial amount of work this week. Kitty Russo had kept her busy, and she’d even received a paycheck when she turned in the last of the work on Friday. Kitty had nothing for her this week, she’d told her, but next week she would need her again. It was a good start.

Cody pulled himself up to his feet, one hand on the glider, and Kim showed him how he could walk by holding onto the glider with one hand and pulling the wooden dog with the other. She studied her son. In a few hours, she was taking him to the pediatrician Lucy had recommended, and she was not looking forward to it. She’d tackled Cody’s medical records over the weekend. There was a two-inch thick stack of them. She went through them carefully, pulling out the information that looked important and typing it into a fresh document. On the sheets with the most recent blood work, she whited out the name of the lab as well as Tyler’s name and typed Cody Stratton over it, along with the fictionalized name of a lab in Trenton, New Jersey. She took her recreated work to a nearby copy shop and made two copies. Then she stayed up half the night wondering whether or not doctors would be on the lookout for a year-old boy with a telltale scar on his chest. She was two thousand miles from Boulder, she reminded herself. No one knew her here.

This paranoia had to end. She’d watched
America’s Most Wanted
on television the week before, holding her breath, waiting to see her own face and Cody’s on the TV screen. She’d had a dream sometime that night that Lucy and Ellen saw them on a similar program and had the police breaking down her door.

“I’ve got
another
cancellation this afternoon,” Ellen said. She was holding Cody’s mobile in the air, watching the floating planets as they caught the sunlight. “I hate having two cancellations in one day. It throws me off.” She set the mobile down carefully on the porch floor. “Maybe I’ll call Cherise Johnson and see if she wants to come in. She’s got a flexible schedule.”

Kim looked up at the mention of Cherise’s name. “I keep forgetting to thank you for asking Cherise to invite me to her gallery when I first got here,” she said.

Ellen looked puzzled. “Well, you’re very welcome, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You probably don’t remember,” Kim said. “Cherise had a showing of Adam Soria’s paintings at her gallery, and she sent me an invitation. I didn’t know a soul in town at the time, so I assumed you must have mentioned me to her and that’s why she invited me.”

“Hmm.” Ellen leaned her head against the back of the rocker and looked at the ceiling. “I might have mentioned to her that someone moved in upstairs, but I don’t think I went into more detail than that. I’m glad she asked you, anyhow.”

“Me too.” Kim helped Cody untangle the basset hound’s string. “That’s where I met Adam and Jessie.”

“Ah, yes. Adam,” Lucy said. “So tell us, Kim. Is he your boyfriend?”

Kim looked at her in surprise. “Adam?” she asked, as if the question was ridiculous—which it was. “He’s just a friend.” He was a friend, as was Jessie, and that was more than she’d expected to find for herself.

“And Jessie,” Lucy said. “She’s just his sister, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Kim said. “And they’re both my friends.”

Adam and Jessie had stopped by the afternoon before and coerced her into going to the movies with them, a decision which had been a mistake, since Cody was teething and she’d spent much of the movie comforting him in the lobby. She’d seen them one other time this week as well, meeting them at the little Italian restaurant again for dinner.

“Well,” Lucy said. “Let’s find me a friend that handsome.”

She hadn’t thought of Adam as handsome. She hadn’t evaluated his looks one way or the other.

“And one for me, too, while we’re at it,” Ellen piped in. “Actually, mine doesn’t have to be all that handsome. Just spiritually evolved. And a Scorpio, of course. He has to be a Scorpio.”

Lucy laughed. “Of
course.
“

“What sign is your Adam?” Ellen asked.

“He’s
not
my Adam.” Kim laughed. “And I have no idea what his sign is.”

“Well, what’s yours?” Ellen persisted.

“Pisces,” she said, and then realized with a jolt that Kim Stratton was no such thing. “I mean,” she stammered. “God, I forget. What’s August sixteenth again?”

“Leo.”

“Oh, right. I always get those two mixed up.”

Ellen looked at her as if she couldn’t believe anyone could be so nonchalant about her astrological sign. “You cannot possibly be a Leo,” she said. “You are about as un-Leo-like as anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Ah, you just don’t know the real me,” she tried to joke. What were Leos supposed to be like?

“I think you had it right the first time,” Ellen said. “At the very least, your moon must be in Pisces.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged, wondering if there might be something to this astrology nonsense after all.

Through the open upstairs window, she could hear her telephone ringing. Setting down her mug, she quickly reached for Cody.

“I’ll watch Cody,” Lucy said. “You go ahead or you’ll never get there in time.”