“Want to go someplace?” he said, hands on his hips.

“Let’s just stay here, okay?”

He seemed amused by my security precautions, but after my first few ill-advised meetings, I thought it best to stay out in the open.

“Suit yourself.”

He sat down and we danced around the subject of Caroline and the nursery. If he wanted something, he was taking his sweet time getting around to it, so I decided to strike first.

“What exactly do you want from Caroline?”

“Well, that’s straightforward. Straightforward is good. I’d like her to end this.”

“End what?”

We stopped smiling at about the same time. Lucy stopped pacing upstairs; she must have sensed the tone of our conversation had changed.

“Let’s not play games. She’s been stringing us along for long enough. I want what she’s been holding on to. It’s what I need to make a new start. Then I’ll never darken her door again. I promise.”

Omigod. It was him. “Like you did twenty-five years ago,” I said, I slid farther away from him on the bench, and he pretended not to know what I was talking about.

From the upper level of the mall a cell phone came crashing down to my feet. Lucy had either dropped it again or thrown it to get my attention. I looked up and saw her struggling with two men.

“Help!” she screamed.

“Leave her alone, you assholes!” I sprinted to the escalator and took the moving steps three at a time, pushing shoppers aside. When I reached the top Lucy was being strong-armed by two men and I slogged through the crowd that had gathered to follow them.

Forty-one

Ordinarily, Mike O’Malley didn’t concern himself with shoplifting busts-that was left to mall cops and the junior men in the Springfield police department. In Lucy’s case he made an exception. I’d called him as soon as I realized she wasn’t being kidnapped-she was being arrested by undercover security.

True, Lucy did look suspicious with a crooked wig and dark glasses and two bags full of clothing with tags and no receipts, but mall security took O’Malley’s word for it that she was probably not a thief, simply another New Yorker with hard-to-fathom habits. That seemed to satisfy them and they let her go.

“Doing a little shopping, are we?” he said outside the security office. Lucy hugged him, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, he returned the favor.

“Martinets,” she said. “I could sue them. I haven’t been arrested for shoplifting since I was fifteen.”

“You mean you haven’t shoplifted since you were fifteen,” Mike said.

“Right. That’s what I meant.” Lucy caught her reflection in a Williams-Sonoma window and straightened her wig.

“Anyone who didn’t know better might think you two were up to something.”

“Not us,” I said. “Just doing a little comparison shopping. In fact, Lucy…”-I paused to organize my thoughts-“is doing a feature on secret shoppers, people hired by stores to check up on their employees. That’s why she was wearing the wig.” My explanation drew puzzled glances from both of them and I couldn’t tell who looked more skeptical at my stream-of-consciousness tale spinning.

When we parted, Lucy was effusive in thanking Mike for coming to her rescue. “Thanks for helping me beat the rap.” He left us in the mall’s garage. Then it was my turn to look askance. “Beat the rap? Is that wig too tight? Are you back in fugitive mode?”

We spoke little driving back to my place. The meeting with Brookfield was a bust, literally; but, as Lucy pointed out, at least she hadn’t been hauled off to jail. But I hadn’t learned anything either. Could I have misinterpreted what he said? What had he said that was so awful? For all I knew, Kevin Brookfield really was a handsome single guy who wanted to buy a nursery. Not that I had a chance to find out because he was long gone by the time mall security released us.

The red light changed to green and then back to red but my foot stayed on the brake as a very depressing thought came to me. “I may have totally alienated the perfect man for me.”

Lucy patted my arm. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Forty-two

By the time Lucy and I got home it was nine-thirty P.M.Half a bottle of wine was left, and soon there would be none. I made a fire and we sat on the floor in my living room, drinking.

Mike O’Malley was Lucy’s new hero and she inundated me with questions about him that made me think she was more interested in him than she’d let on. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t mind. Maybe that was the real reason Mike and I had never gotten together. Maybe we weren’t meant to. I was still thinking about Kevin Brookfield.

The phone rang as it had a few hours earlier.

“Don’t answer it,” Lucy said. “I’m not getting into that wig again!”

It was good advice. I’d had enough drama for one day. I let the call go to voice mail and only jumped up when I heard the small, tentative voice leaving a message. I pushed the speakerphone button so that Lucy could hear.

“Mrs. Warren?”

“Oh, you are there. I thought it was a machine.”

“It was a machine, ma’am. I just got to the phone late. How are you?”

“I’m well. Thank you for asking, dear. I thought you might like to know Jeff has regained consciousness. He’s expected to make a full recovery.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I played along. “I’m so glad to hear it, I was worried.”

“He did lose his position with that trucking company, but his uncle Lou may be able to get him his old job at the post office. I expect he’ll call you himself once he gets those tubes taken out and is on his feet again.” Only a hard pinch on the forearm stopped Lucy from making faces that were guaranteed to crack me up while I was talking to the old woman.

“Will he have any lasting health issues?” I asked. I had to keep her on the line until I could ask her some questions without appearing insensitive to her son’s condition.

“Well, I guess you don’t drive a truck into an overpass without shaking up your noggin a bit. He was unconscious for a few days, but they told me not to worry because it was induced-I think they called it-until the brain swelling went down.” Jeff Warren really did have the worst luck. Next she’d be telling me that one of his ex-wives was back in the picture, looking for a big insurance payoff.

“Mrs. Warren, do you remember, we were talking about the Donnelley family. Do you by any chance, know what happened to Eddie Donnelley?”

“Of course, dear, everyone knows that.”

And she would have told me the last time we spoke except I was too impatient and cut her off-that’s what I got for interrupting a sweet old lady.

I had thought it unlikely Eddie Donnelley would have changed much after twenty years in prison, but he did have a jailhouse conversion. Of a sort.

“Folks in town thought it was all that time in prison,” Mrs. Warren said, “but maybe not. People’s natures are their natures. That’s what I saw on CNN or HBO-one of those new stations.”

I thought of Ellis Damon. Maybe Lucy had been right after all. “Did he get religion?” I asked.

“Oh, no, dear, Donnelleys always had that. His mother used to have the priests over for lunch once a week. No, that wasn’t it.”

Conversion, indeed. Or perhaps transformation was a more appropriate word. Eddie Donnelley was now Edwina Donnelley.

According to Helen Warren, rumor had it Eddie planned to use the drug money he’d stashed away for his sex change operation once he got out, but the money was never recovered, so he was making do with hormone therapy and drugstore cosmetics. Some assumed Monica had stolen the money. Others thought Kate Gustafson took it, until her suspicious death. Still others suspected a fourth partner who’d never been arrested. Mrs. Warren was in the latter camp.