Twice a Hero, Always Her Man Read online

  “You mean a new listing?” Maizie asked her innocently. “Yes, I just put up three new signs. As a matter of fact, there’s one in your neighborhood, Theresa,” she added.

  “Oh, stop,” Cilia begged, rolling her eyes. “You know that’s not what Theresa and I are saying.” She leaned closer over the small rectangular table that had seen so many of their card games over the years as well as borne witness to so many secrets that had been shared during that time. “Spill it. Male or female?”

  “Female,” Maizie replied. She smiled mysteriously. “Actually, you two know her.”

  Cilia and Theresa exchanged puzzled glances. “Personally?” Cilia asked.

  Maizie raised a shoulder as if to indicate that she wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually spoken with her friend’s daughter.

  “From TV.”

  Cilia, the more impatient one of the group, frowned. “We’ve been friends for over fifty years, Maizie. This isn’t the time to start talking in riddles.”

  She supposed they were right. She didn’t usually draw things out this way. Momentarily placing her own cards down, she looked at her friends as she told them, “It’s Elliana King.”

  Theresa seemed surprised. “You mean the reporter on Channel—?”

  Theresa didn’t get a chance to mention the station. Maizie dispensed with that necessity by immediately cutting to the chase.

  “Yes,” she said with enthusiasm.

  “She didn’t actually come to you, did she?” Cilia asked in surprise.

  “A girl that pretty shouldn’t have any trouble—” Theresa began.

  “No, no,” Maizie answered, doing away with any further need for speculation. “Her mother did. Connie Williams,” she told them for good measure. Both women were casually acquainted with Connie. “You remember,” Maizie continued, “Ellie was the one who tragically found out on the air that her husband had been killed saving a couple being held up at gunpoint.”

  Theresa closed her eyes and shivered as she recalled the details. “I remember. I read that her station’s ratings went through the roof while people watched that poor girl struggling to cope.”

  “That’s the one,” Maizie confirmed. “As I said, her mother is worried about her and wants us to find someone for Ellie.”

  “Tall order,” Cilia commented, thinking that, given the trauma the young woman had gone through, it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Brave woman,” Maizie responded.

  “No argument there,” Theresa agreed.

  Both women turned toward Cilia, who had gone strangely silent.

  “Cilia?” Theresa asked, wondering what was going on in their friend’s head.

  Maizie zeroed in on what she believed was the cause of Cilia’s uncharacteristic silence. Maizie was very proud of her gut instincts.

  “You have something?” she asked.

  Looking up, Cilia blinked as if she was coming out of deep thought.

  “Maybe,” she allowed. “One of the women who work for me was just telling me about her neighbor the other day. Actually,” Cilia amended, “Olga was making a confession.”

  “Why?” Theresa asked, puzzled.

  Maizie went to the heart of the matter. “What kind of a confession?” she pressed.

  “She told me she offered to clean the young man’s apartment for free because it was in such a state of chaos,” she explained. “And Olga felt she was betraying me somehow with that offer.”

  Theresa still wasn’t sure she was clear about what was going on. “Why did she offer to clean his place? Was it like a trade agreement?” she asked. “She did something for him, then he did something for her?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Cilia quickly corrected, guessing at what her friend was inferring was behind the offer. “She told me that she felt sorry for the guy. He’s a police detective who’s suddenly become the guardian of his ten-year-old niece.”

  Maizie was instantly interested. “How did that happen?”

  “His brother and sister-in-law were in this horrific skiing accident. Specifically, there was an avalanche and they were buried in it. By the time the rescuers could get to them, they were both dead,” Cilia told her friends. “Apparently there’s no other family to take care of the girl except for Olga’s neighbor.”

  Theresa looked sufficiently impressed. “Sounds like a good man,” she commented.

  “Sounds like a man who could use a little help,” Maizie interjected thoughtfully.

  Maizie took off her glasses and gazed around the table at her friends. Ideas were rapidly forming and taking shape in her very fertile brain.

  “Ladies,” she announced with a smile, “we have homework to do.”

  * * *

  “But I don’t need a babysitter,” Heather Benteen vehemently protested.

  “I told you, kid, she’s not a babysitter,” Colin Benteen told his highly precious niece, a girl he’d known and loved since birth. Life had been a great deal easier when the only role he occupied was that of her friend, her coconspirator. This parenting thing definitely had a downside. “If you want to call her something, call her a young-girl-sitter,” he told Heather, choosing his words carefully.

  “I don’t need one of those, either,” Heather shot back. “I’ll be perfectly fine coming home and doing my homework even if you’re not here.” She glared accusingly at her uncle, her eyes narrowing. “You don’t trust me.”

  “I trust you,” Colin countered with feeling.

  Heather fisted her hands and dug them into her hips. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is,” he told his niece patiently, “that I know the temptation that’s out there.” He gave her a knowing look. “I was just like you once.”

  “You were a ten-year-old girl?” Heather challenged.

  “No, I was a ten-year-old boy, wise guy,” he told her, affectionately tugging on one of her two thick braids. “Now, humor me. Olga offered to be here when you come home and hang around until I get off.”

  She tried again. “Look, Uncle Colin, I don’t want to give you a hard time—”

  “Then don’t,” he said, cutting Heather off as he grabbed a slice of toast.

  Heather was obviously not going to give up easily. “I don’t like having someone spy on me.”

  “Here’s an idea,” he proposed, taking his gun out of the lockbox on the bookshelf where he always deposited his weapon when he came home at night. “You can get your revenge by not doing anything noteworthy and boring her to death.”

  The preteen scowled at him. “So not the point,” she insisted.

  He wasn’t about to get roped into a long philosophical discussion with his niece. She had to get to school and he needed to be at work.

  “Exactly the point,” he replied. “Olga will be here when I’m not, just as she has been these last few weeks—and we’re lucky to have her. End of discussion,” he told her firmly.

  “For there to have been a discussion, I would have had to voice my side of it,” she pointed out, all but scowling at him in a silent challenge that said she had yet to frame her argument.

  Colin paused for a moment as he laughed and shook his head. “Sue me. I’ve never raised a ten-year-old before and I want to get this right.”

  The impatient look faded from her face and Heather smiled. She knew that they were both groping around in the dark, trying to find their way. Her uncle had always been very important to her, even before she’d woken up to find that the parameters of her world had suddenly changed so drastically.

  She gave him a quick hug, as if she knew what was really on his mind. Concern. “We’ll be all right, Uncle Colin.”

  “Yes, we will,” he agreed. He pointed toward the front door. “Now let’s go.”

  For the sake of pretense, Heathe
r sighed dramatically and then marched right out of his ground-floor garden apartment.

  * * *

  Less than an hour later, Colin found himself halfway around the city, tackling a would-be art thief who was trying to make off with an original painting he’d stolen from someone’s private collection in the more exclusive side of Bedford.

  The call had gone out and he’d caught it quite by accident because his new morning route—he had to drop Heather off at school—now took him three miles out of his way and, as it so happened today, right into the path of the escaping art thief.

  Waiting for the light to change, Colin saw a car streak by less than ten feet away from him. It matched the description that had come on over the precinct’s two-way radio.

  “Son of a gun,” he muttered in disbelief. The guy had almost run him over. “Dispatch, I see the vehicle in question and I’m pursuing it now.”

  Turning his wheel sharply, he made a U-turn and proceeded to give chase. Despite his adrenaline pumping, he hated these chases, hated thinking of what was liable to happen if the utmost care as well as luck weren’t at play here.

  He held his breath even as he mentally crossed his fingers.

  After a short time and some rather tricky, harrowing driving, he pursued the thief right into a storage-unit facility.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath. Did the guy actually believe he was going to lose him here? Talk about dumb moves...

  He supposed he had to be grateful for that. Had the thief hit the open road, he might have lost him or someone might have gotten hit—possibly fatally—during the pursuit.

  As it was, he managed to corner the man. Colin jumped out of his car and completed the chase on foot, congratulating himself that all those days at the gym paid off. He caught up to the thief, who had unintentionally led him not only to where he had planned on hiding this painting that he’d purloined but to a number of others that apparently had been stolen at some earlier date.

  It took a moment to sink in. When it did, Colin tried not to let his jaw drop. Things like this didn’t usually happen in Bedford, which, while not a sleepy little town, wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, either.

  “Wow, you’ve been quite the eager beaver, haven’t you?” Colin remarked as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on the thief’s wrists.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” the thief declared. “Never saw these other paintings before in my life,” he swore, disavowing any previous connection.

  “And yet you came here to hide the one you stole this morning,” Colin pointed out. “Small world, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I never saw these before!” the slight man repeated loudly.

  Colin shook his head as he led the thief out to his waiting car. “Didn’t your mama teach you not to lie?” he asked.

  “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer,” the thief announced, and dramatically closed his mouth.

  “Good move,” Colin said in approval. “Not much left to say anyway, seeing as how all these paintings speak for themselves.”

  Desperate, the thief made one last attempt to move Colin as he was being put into the backseat. “Look, this is just a big misunderstanding.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Panic had entered the man’s face, making Colin wonder if he was working for someone else, someone he feared. “I can make it worth your while if you just look the other way, let me go. I’ll leave the paintings. You can just tell everyone you found them.”

  Colin smiled to himself. It never ceased to amaze him just how dumb some people could be. “Maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you started putting this private collection together for yourself.” He saw the thief opening his mouth and sensed there was just more of the same coming. “Too late now,” he told the man.

  With that, he took out his cell phone and called in to the station for backup to come and collect all the paintings. There were going to be a lot of happy art owners today, he mused. They wouldn’t be reunited with their paintings immediately, since for now, the pieces were all being kept as evidence, but at least they knew the art had been recovered and was safe.

  He glanced at his watch as he waited for his call to go through.

  It was just nine thirty, he realized. Nine thirty on a Monday morning. His week was off and running.

  Chapter Two

  Maizie put as much stock in fate as the next person. She didn’t, however, sit back and just assume that fate would step in and handle all the small details that were always involved in making things happen. That was up to her.

  Which was why she was on the phone that morning calling Edward Blake, an old friend of her late husband’s as well as a recent client she’d brought to Theresa’s attention. The latter had involved Edward’s youngest daughter, Sophia. Theresa had catered her wedding reception at less than her usual going rate.

  Maizie used that as her opening when she placed her call to the news station’s story director.

  What had prompted her call was a story she heard on her radio as she was driving into work. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up. That, she felt, had been fate’s part. The rest would require her help.

  “Edward,” she said cheerfully the moment she heard him respond on the other end of the line, “this is Maizie Sommers.”

  There was a pause, and then recognition set in. “Maizie, of course. How are you?”

  “I’m well, thank you,” she replied as if she had all the time in the world rather than what she assumed was a clock ticking the minutes away. She knew how the news world worked. “I just called to see how the newlyweds were doing.”

  “Fine, fine,” Blake asserted in his booming baritone voice. “They’re not looking for a house yet, though,” he told her, obviously assuming that was why she was checking in with him.

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” she answered with a laugh. “It’s much too early to start thinking about dealing with things like escrow and closing costs and homeowner associations.” She paused for just a beat, then forged ahead. “But I did call to ask you a favor.”

  Their friendship dated back to the final year in college. Edward had been a friend of her late husband’s. They had pulled all-nighters, helping each other study and pass final exams. “Name it.”

  “That news reporter you have working for you, Elliana King,” Maizie began, then paused so that the woman’s name sank in.

  “Ah, yes, great girl, hardest worker I’ve ever had,” the station manager testified fondly with feeling. “What about her?”

  “I just heard about what could be a good human-interest story for your station and thought you could send the King girl to cover it.”

  “Go on,” Blake encouraged, intrigued. He genuinely liked and respected Maizie and was open to anything she had to pass on.

  “According to the news blurb, a police detective in Bedford chased down this supposedly small-time art thief and wound up uncovering an entire cache of paintings in a storage unit that had been stolen in the last eighteen months. I thought you might want to send someone down to the precinct to interview this detective.” And then she played what she felt was her ace card in this little venture. “So little of the news we hear is upbeat these days.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Blake said with a sigh. And then he chuckled. “So you’re passing on assignments to me now, Maizie?”

  “Just this one, Edward.”

  There was more to this and he knew it. Moreover, he knew that Maizie knew he knew, but he played his line out slowly like a fisherman intent on reeling in an elusive catch than a station manager in a newsroom that moved sometimes faster than the speed of light. “And you think I should assign King to follow up on it.”

  “Absolutely,” Maizie enthused, adding, “She has a nice way about her.
”

  “Oh, I agree with you. She definitely has a rapport with her audience,” Blake said. When he heard nothing more illuminating on the other end, he asked, “Okay, what’s really going on, Maizie? Is this some kind of a matchmaking thing?”

  “I have no idea what you mean, Edward,” Maizie told him in far too innocent a voice.

  “Right. Belinda told me what you and your friends are up to in your spare time,” Blake said, referring to his wife. And then he became serious. “If you think you’ve found a way to get the pain out of King’s eyes, go for it. You’ve got my vote.”

  Relieved that the man was so easily on board, Maizie tactfully pointed out, “What we need is your assignment, Edward.”

  “That, too. Okay, give me the details one more time,” he instructed, pulling over a pad and pencil, two staples of his work desk that he absolutely refused to surrender no matter how many electronic gadgets littered his desk and his office. His defense was that a pad and pencil never failed.

  * * *

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Jerry Ross warned Ellie just as she sank down behind her desk in the overly crowded newsroom.

  The six-two onetime linebacker for a third-string minor-league football team strode over to the woman he followed around with his camera a good part of each day, sometimes successfully, sometimes only to see his footage ignobly die on the cutting room floor.

  “Up and at ’em, Ellie,” he coaxed. “We’ve got ourselves an assignment.”

  Ellie had just begun to sit down but instantly bounced back up to her feet again. She was more than ready to go wherever the assignment took them.

  Two years ago it would have been because each story represented a fresh opportunity to put her stamp on something that was unfolding. Now it was because each story necessitated her having to abandon her private thoughts and focus on whatever the news report required from her. The first casualty was her social life, which she more than willingly surrendered. She really didn’t have one to speak of now that Brett was no longer in her life.