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MILLS & BOON
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“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “…plans to give you hope and a future…and [I] will bring you back from captivity.”
—Jeremiah 29:11, 14
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
ONE
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mary Margaret Muldoon was terminated.
As were Helmut Rheinemann, Toby Matthias and Muriel Harper. J.Z. Prophet held the death certificates of the well-to-do seniors in his left hand. On a neat pile before him sat autopsy reports that identified the cause of death as natural in all four cases. But the papers in his right hand belied those certificates.
“E-mail,” he muttered to his partner, Dan Maddox. “What self-respecting mobster orders hits through e-mail? But here they are: Terminate Mary Margaret Muldoon, and Terminate Helmut Rheinemann.”
J.Z. could have read the others, too. But why? They said the same thing. And the same woman had sent them all: Maryanne Wellborn.
He flung the pages onto his desk and rose from his chair. He went for his coffeepot, which he’d brought to the office when he got tired of FBI sludge, and poured himself his fourth cup of the morning. It was only seven o’clock.
After another hit of caffeine, he asked, “What kind of librarian would order a bunch of hits?”
Dan, an easygoing guy, shifted in his chair and shrugged. “Hey, it’s a great cover—if they were hits.”
“Okay. It is. But I want to know how she’s offing them. Pathology found no evidence of foul play. The causes of death are listed as asphyxiation from emphysema, congestive heart failure, liver cancer and pneumonia. We might be able to pin the asphyxiation on her, but how’d she kill the others?”
“I think it’s our job to find that out.”
“It’s our job to get the evidence that’ll lock her up.”
“Hmm…a librarian. Maryanne Wellborn, you say?”
“She’s behind these hits.”
“Sure of yourself, aren’t you? And letting it get personal.”
The accusation slugged J.Z. in the gut. “Not at all. This is business. The other’s past history.” He set his coffee mug on the corner of his desk, then jabbed a finger toward Dan. “Don’t forget. You were right at my side the last six months. You helped me track the Verdis and their mob pals as they scammed their way through these ritzy retirement homes. You counted the bodies they left behind, just as I did, and looked just as hard as I did for something to stick on them—”
“Something stuck. Joey-O’s behind bars.”
“Not for this. He shot Carlo Papparelli. Aside from those shaky connections to Joey-O and Tony the Toe Verdi—scum, if ever there was scum—we didn’t come up with a single solid thing to nail the deaths of the old people on them. But I know their game. And this perp in New Camden is just the latest in the string of killers we’ve been after. The only difference is that this one made a mistake. She left us these e-mails. How generous of her.”
His partner’s hands went up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Lay off the lecture. It was just a friendly warning I gave you. Can’t let your old man’s troubles mess with your mind on a case. My future’s in your hands.”
J.Z. snorted. “Last time I looked, there was a line of ladies wanting to take it in theirs.”
Dan winked. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“This man’s—” J.Z. tapped Dan’s chest then glanced at the papers on the desk “—got a job to do. He can’t be thinking about his next date, and do it right.”
“You complaining about my work?”
“Warning you against dropping your guard.”
“That’s uncalled for,” Dan countered, his voice tight.
“Just put your social life on ice while we’re on this one.” J.Z. knew he was out of line but couldn’t back down. Dan’s reminder of the skeletons in the Prophet family closet rankled. “It’s clear Wellborn’s got brains and more guts than most. Takes a cocky crook to send this kind of message out for the world to read.”
“Weeeell…,” Dan drawled, “e-mail’s not exactly out there for everyone to read.”
“We got copies, didn’t we?”
“Sure, but it took Zelda—computer geek extraordinaire—days to track them down. It’s not as if Wellborn posted them to a bulletin board or announced them in a chat room.”
J.Z. rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that Internet junk. If we can get the stuff, anyone can. Maryanne-the-library-anne is one arrogant cookie. It’s time to wrap up months of paper trails, bank-and account-hopping fortunes that then disappear without a trace, if you’ll remember. We did interviews, surveillance and pored over autopsy reports that coughed up nothing concrete. We even planted an agent at the nursing home in New Jersey. The pattern’s the same at Peaceful Meadows—cushy retirement home, dead seniors, buckets of money. Wellborn’s in the thick of it, ordering hits, and I’m going to bring her down.”
Paperwork in hand, he stood. “Come on. We have to get a judge to sign the permits so we can bug her office and tap her home phone. Then we can head out to New Camden.”
“I’ll have Zelda come with us—you know, for the computer stuff. We’ll probably get more from that than the other.”
J.Z. grimaced. “That Internet stuff is garbage. This is going to take the usual: surveillance, taping, interviewing witnesses. Not that e-mail business.”
“Still an Internet-phobe, huh?”
“And proud of it.”
“Have it your way, but I want Zelda’s magic fingers on our side. From the looks of it, we’re going to need all the help and evidence we can get.”
J.Z. crossed to his office door. “Do whatever you want. Bottom line, I’m going to nail Wellborn. Who’d figure a librarian as a mobster, putting out hits on old people in a nursing home? And for money…As if her breed—mobsters, not librarians—doesn’t have enough of the bloody kind already. Organized crime’s the worst form of scum, but this woman’s taken their usual a notch lower.”
Dan’s arm lay heavy on J.Z.’s shoulders. “Don’t let it get personal, okay? I know this is about the Verdis, but the past is past, and your old man’s locked up. He’s going nowhere.”
J.Z. shrugged off his partner’s arm and ground his teeth. “That was uncalled for. I wasn’t thinking of him. Wellborn’s the one who’s out there. In New Camden. With a bunch of seniors who can’t help themselves. Just like the ones who couldn’t help themselves and wound up dead. You know it, I know it, the department knows it. Disgusting scam.”
“Let’s go see what we can do.”
They strode down the hall and into a large room full of cluttered metal desks, the hub of the FBI’s Philadelphia organized-crime unit. On their way to the elevator, an unmistakable pair of high heels clicked toward them.
“Special Agent Prophet. In my office. Now.”
J.Z. groaned. Once upon a time, Eliza Roberts had voiced his name in sweet, loving tones. Not anymore. He’d never felt the truth of the old chestnut about women scorned until he broke up with her after she demanded more than he was ready to offer.
He shook his head and caught the glee in Dan’s brown eyes as he entered his superior officer’s cubicle. Eliza had clawed her way up to the position he turned down just before their breakup. The way he figured, she did it to spite him. But it didn’t bother him. He had turned it down first. Pushing papers appealed to him as much as a case of Montezuma’s revenge during a worldwide Imodium shortage.
When Eliza closed her office door, J.Z. gave up hope of a neutral encounter. She was out for bear. He might as well have Smokey, Yogi or Boo-boo written across his chest.
He couldn’t wait to get away. “What’s up?”
Eliza rounded her desk then sat in her expensive and very new leather chair. The Bureau didn’t provide that kind of luxury. She must have bought it to make it look as if she’d wormed the perk from the higher-ups. J.Z. was glad he’d noticed her less appealing attributes and cleared out of their relationship before he wound up with heel marks down his back—and heart.
“Well?” he prodded.
She handed him three pieces of paper. “Another nursing home hit.”
Great. As he scanned the pages, a familiar name jumped out. “Carlo Papparelli? As in Laundromat Jr.? Mat, the mob moneyman?”
“The one and only.”
“No way. The Gemmellis had him gunned down a week ago. The Philly P.D. got Joey-O behind bars for it, too. Didn’t they?”
“Read ’em and weep.”
He did—read the papers, that is—he’d never waste a tear on a mobster. “I don’t get it. I heard the family’d shipped the body back to the old country for burial.”
“Read on.”
He did. And frowned. “What is this? Papparelli was only fifty or so. What was he doing in an old folks’ home? Oh, who cares? What really went down?”
“That, J.Z., is the most intriguing detail.” She pointed to the paper in his left hand. “There’s Maryanne Wellborn’s e-mail ordering the hit. In your right hand, you have his death certificate—but not for a week ago. He died day before yesterday. And the cause of death is a stroke, not the bullets we know about. No autopsy. The family refused.”
“This clinches it. She’s as dirty as they come. She’s mixed up with either the Gemmellis or the Verdis and took out the Laundromat. But how’d Mat slither into the nursing home when he was supposed to be dead? How can this librarian get away with all this? Does she have doctors on the take? Is the coroner in on the kill-the-rich-old-folks-for-their-bucks scam, too?”
Eliza smirked. “Don’t you think finding those answers is a field agent’s job? Your much-loved field job. You know…what you’re paid to do.”
Something in her voice made him ask, “Do you doubt I can do it?”
She waved. “Of course not—ordinarily.”
“Ordinarily?” His stomach plummeted. “What do you mean?”
The back of J.Z.’s neck prickled at the gleam in her blue eyes. When she pursed her lips and tapped her polished nails on the desktop, his gut churned. When she stood and leaned toward him over her desk, his survival instinct compelled him to run.
But he couldn’t.
“There is one tiny thing, J.Z.,” his Supervising Special Agent said. “You know that problem you have with rules?”
Since he’d yet to meet the rule he wouldn’t get around for the sake of justice, J.Z. shrugged. He always got the job done. Nothing else mattered.
“Well,” Eliza went on, “we’re going to do things my way this time. This case will be investigated by the book. You got that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That since you recently went off like a half-cocked shotgun—again—and this case involves your preferred target—the mob—I will yank your badge and gun if you pull one of your stunts on my watch.”
“Come again?”
Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. “I mean it, J.Z. You’re off the case if you cross the line. And if you’re half as smart as you like to think, you’ll believe me. I have the power now.”
Blood roared in his ears. She’d known just how to hit him.
How could he ever have found her attractive? These days, he only saw the spite in her glare; he only heard the gloating in her voice.
“So you want a pound of my flesh.”
She looked away. “Something like that.”
He turned and opened the door, his rage barely leashed. “I’d be careful if I were you. Blue-eyed redheads don’t look good with pea-green skin.”
Her voice, low and nasty, made him pause. “One toe over the line, J.Z., and you’re out. Got it?”
“Loud and clear, boss.”
He made for the bank of elevators where Dan slouched against the wall, busy charming the new girl from the secretarial pool.
J.Z. asked, “The permits?”
Dan patted his jacketed chest. “All set.” He then arched an eyebrow. “Your mood took a different turn. It’s safe to say you didn’t kiss and make up with the dragon lady.”
J.Z. ignored the comment. “Need to pack?”
Dan pushed the elevator call button. “You know I keep a bag in the trunk of my car.”
“Let’s go.” J.Z. followed Dan into the elevator. As the silver doors closed out the disappointed young woman, Dan faced J.Z.
J.Z. held up a hand; with the other, he punched the button. “Don’t say it.”
“I did warn you before you started dating her. You can be as charming and kind as you want, but you can’t get involved with coworkers. It’ll smack you in the face sooner or later. Keep business and pleasure far, far apart, I say.”
Exhaustion hit all of a sudden. “Just drop it.”
Dan stepped out of the elevator. “It’s just that when you make a mistake, Prophet, you really make a doozy.”
J.Z. followed the younger man to the street. Dan’s words continued to mock him. The Prophet family was known for their mistakes. And as Dan had put it, whenever they made one, it was of the doozy variety. J.Z. was determined to stop making mistakes.
He would have to take extra care this time, if for nothing else than to avoid Eliza’s payback. Because, without a doubt, he was going to nail Maryanne Wellborn for the murders.
Even if it killed him. And it might. If Eliza grounded him, the failure would do him in.
“Happy Birthday, dear Stanley…Happy Birthday to you!”
As the residents of New Camden’s Peaceful Meadows Residence and Nursing Center sang to her father, the guilt Maryanne Wellborn had carried for months began to lessen. Maybe Dad had been right to insist on the move into the multilevel care facility.
“I want to be where the action is, Cookie,” he’d argued, roguish grin in full bloom. “All the—” he winked “—dudes and babes are there, the ones old enough to speak my language, that is.”
Maryanne had wanted to care for her only surviving parent at home—his home. But Stan Wellborn’s obstinacy rivaled a mule’s, and he’d insisted on putting the family home up for sale. It had sold distressingly soon.
She’d known how much attention he needed. An insulin-dependent diabetic and recent amputee, his blood-sugar levels needed constant monitoring, as did his blood pressure and diet. Not to mention, his penchant for merriment and trouble. He’d been lonely and bored at home while Maryanne worked. Boredom had led to nutty amusements, which then mushroomed into mischief. Mischief had invited risk along, and both had courted danger.
She couldn’t discount the friendships he’d made since he moved in. He wasn’t bored anymore.
“Hey, Stan!” called a bald-headed fellow of her father’s vintage. “Whatcha waiting for? Blow out them candles already. We want some of that cake.”
Murmured agreement broke out.
Her dad winked. “I’m making my wish, don’t you know?”
“Ha! What do you need more wishes for?” This gent leaned on a cane. “The ladies here have made them all come true since you moved in.”
The birthday boy grinned, closed his eyes and then blew out the eight candles—seven fat ones for the decades and a thin one for his additional year—on the large blue-blossomed cake. “You’re just jealous of my irresistible charm, Hughie.”
The residents howled at the banter, no one louder than Maryanne’s dad. For a moment, she wished her mother were still alive to share his pleasure. Then she realized how silly her wish was. Mother would have frowned upon the whole scenario. Quiet and unassuming, Martha Wellborn would have been mortified by her impulsive, happy-go-lucky husband’s lack of restraint.
Propriety had been Mother’s underpinning, and she’d drilled its need into her daughter’s psyche from the moment Maryanne could understand.
What she never did understand was how two such disparate souls had made a match in the first place, but she’d never questioned her parents’ love for each other. Martha’s death two years ago had plunged Stan into a depression deeper than Maryanne had expected in such an upbeat man.
The depression vanished once he moved into the home.
She shook off her dark thoughts, stepped closer to her father and kissed his high forehead. “I brought you something.”
His hazel eyes twinkled. “What are you waiting for?”
With a nod to the nursing home’s activities coordinator, Maryanne smiled back. “Let me help Sherri bring it in.”
The two women lugged in a stack of cartons and set up the stereo. Tears gleamed in his eyes.
“Oh, Cookie. I oughta say you shouldn’t have, but I’m tickled you did.”
Blinking her own mistiness away, Maryanne said, “I knew how much you missed your music, and your old record player was useless. Enjoy this one, okay?”
“You know I will. C’mere.” He patted his blanketed thigh. “Let your old man give you a hug and kiss.”
Maryanne perched on her dad’s lap and hugged him tight. She loved the old scamp, and she meant to keep him as healthy and happy as possible for as long as she could.
“I love you, Dad.”
“Love you always, baby.”
“Harrumph!” offered the bald man. “You’re getting too mushy for a party. Let’s try out that stereo.”
With a final pat to his daughter’s back, Stan gave a whoop. “Go for it, Charlie. We need music to make this a real party.”
Under cover of the hubbub, Maryanne said, “You’re really happy here, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Cookie, I really am.” He winked. “Now it’s your turn to find some action. Of the young, male, falling-in-love kind, that is. It’s not God’s plan for a beautiful young woman to spend her life buried in a library or visiting a bunch of geezers.”
“You’re not a geezer, and I love books.”
“You need a…a—Oh, yeah! A chunk to show you what’s what, girl.”
Maryanne rose to hide her blush and stifle a nervous giggle. “I’m too busy, and I’d rather spend my free time with you.”
Stan shook his finger and grinned. “Mark my words, girl. When that lovebug bites, you’re gonna fall hard.”
“Hey, I use bug spray by the gallon. It’s my favorite fragrance. But I’d better go help Sherri—look at that mob of cake-starved partiers around her.”
While she doled out cake, Maryanne watched her father from the vantage point of the activities hall stage. The stack of small gifts from his friends thrilled him. Then, after they’d finished eating, with his favorite Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo and Jimmy Dorsey tunes on the new stereo, he drew each ambulatory lady near and twirled her around his wheelchair.
“I told you not to worry,” Sherri Armstrong told Maryanne as she tied off another bag of trash. “He practically begged you to move him here.”
“I know. But it was hard.”
“He’s busy, and he’s happy. And he wants you to build a life for yourself. That’s your next assignment, you understand?”
“Not you, too. First Dad, now you.”
Sherri, happily married mother of two, nodded. “We know what we’re talking about.”
“We’ll see.” Maryanne gathered the empty punch bowl and headed for the kitchen. “Right now, we have a mess to clean.”
No sooner did she enter the vast, equipment-filled white room, than Dean Ross, Peaceful Meadows’ director, called her name. Her middle knotted. The busy man rarely found time to discuss the library cart she brought twice a week to the home. She doubted he’d come for the birthday party.
“How are you, Dean?”
He grimaced. “Same as always. You’re going to have to cancel Audrey White’s library privileges.”
“Oh, no. I missed her at Dad’s party and meant to stop by her room to see how she liked the last historical novel I suggested.”
“The ambulance just took her to the hospital. She slipped into a coma a little while ago, and she won’t be back.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. You saw how weak she was when you brought her books.”
“You’re right. She couldn’t even sit up when I came…was it day before yesterday? The day before, maybe. Rosie, Audrey’s nurse, was getting the other bed in the room ready for a new patient. I helped her…I had to push the meds stand out of the way to get to Audrey’s side of the room. And Audrey mentioned she was headed to another floor.”
“She was. Intensive care. And the new patient did no better.”
Maryanne winced. “Audrey didn’t say a thing. Now…can’t they do anything more?”
“Cancer at that stage is merciless. Morphine for the pain is the best we have. Nature helps and lets the patient enter a coma toward the end, but I’m afraid Audrey—”
“I understand,” Maryanne said around the lump in her throat. “I’ll take care of her library card.”
“She’s not the only one.”
She bit her lip. “Who else?”
“I don’t think you had a chance to meet him. Mr. Papparelli, the patient who moved into Audrey’s old room. He passed on, too.”
“You’re right. I never did meet him.” His death wouldn’t hit her as hard as Audrey’s decline. “I set up his privileges as soon as I got word he was coming—I never knew he was the one moving into the bed I helped make. Then day before yesterday Marlene in Admissions called to say he’d gone into cardiac arrest and wouldn’t need books. He wasn’t dead yet, but close. I terminated him right away.”
Dean sighed. “It’s never easy, you know.”
Maryanne nodded and again tried to swallow the knot in her throat. “I know, and I’d better say good-night to Dad. I have to be at work early tomorrow.”
She fought more tears—these hot and painful by comparison to her earlier tender ones—on her way back to the activities hall. As usual, a bevy of aged belles surrounded her father’s wheelchair, smiling and chatting with the unrepentant flirt. Maryanne sighed in relief. It was foolish to need the reassurance just because a sweet woman she had befriended was near the end. And yet, she did.
She donned a bright smile and made her way through his admirers. “I’m going home now, you party animal. Some of us have to work.”
“You work too much,” he countered. “But I won’t keep you. You need your rest. Thanks for everything, Cookie. Just don’t worry about me. I’m in my element.”
Feminine laughter tittered around them. Maryanne swooped down for her good-night hug and kiss. Then, before she broke down and cried for real, she rushed from the building and into her car.
She was going to miss Audrey. Just as she missed Mary Margaret Muldoon and her love of mysteries, Helmut Rheinemann’s armchair travels and Toby Matthias’s penchant for art books. She loved to serve the nursing home residents. She felt called to bring the joy of books into their often lonely and frequently pain-filled days. If only she could learn the art of detachment. Each loss broke her heart.
Tomorrow she would order Audrey’s termination. Then she would work surrounded by sadness. And she counted on the Lord to see her through the day she had to terminate her own dad.
Maryanne wiped her eyes with a tissue and then typed the curt e-mail first thing the next day. Terminate Audrey White. She expected a visit once Sandy Rodriguez, the card privilege clerk, downloaded that morning. The young man had learned that each message was written with a fresh batch of tears.