Woman Most Wanted

“Use your damn key, West,” he snapped. The man had raised a meaty fist and was knocking on the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

Even as he finished speaking, he heard footsteps coming from inside the apartment and all his senses went on full alert. Jenna had heard them, too, and she turned to him, shocked.

“What’s going on, Matt? Does he have the right to let someone in when I’m not at home?”

“Move away from the door, Jenna.” He ignored her question and gave the command in a low, urgent voice. Standing to one side of the door himself, he reached inside his jacket for the shoulder-holstered Sig Sauer he wore during working hours and narrowed his eyes at West, who hadn’t moved.

“If your pals are armed, you stand a good chance of being the first casualty. And if you’re not the first, you can bet I’ll make damn sure you’re the second.” He gripped the gun in both hands, the barrel pointing at the floor. His words were barely above a whisper, but the threat was unmistakable. “Tell them to open the door slowly, and no sudden moves.”

The man’s shrug of reply was almost insolently unconcerned. One side of his mouth hitched up in a mocking half smile. “This is a real career-breaking move you’re making here, D’Angelo. Maybe you should go home tonight and start packing for Anchorage. The Bureau’s probably going to send you as far out of town as they can after this foul-up.” He tapped with almost ludicrous courtesy on the door as the footsteps shuffled to a halt. “Mrs. Janeway? It’s Pete West. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Matt’s finger was tight on the trigger, and for one fleeting second he could see himself—Matt D’Angelo, who never rushed into things without carefully considering every angle, standing armed and ready to kick down a door if necessary, all on the word of a woman he’d met only minutes ago. What’s wrong with this picture, D’Angelo? he thought in momentary confusion. This isn’t you, man—step back and think this out, for God’s sake!

Then he stopped trying to reason, and let instinct take over completely as he saw the door swing slowly open.

“FBI—freeze!” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jenna edging nervously but resolutely up to the other side of the door, the dented can held high above her head like a weapon, and he felt his heart skip a couple of beats. “Step out into the hall with your hands up!”

For a second there was no reply, but then a voice answered him in a hesitant quaver. “I can’t, young man. If I let go of my walker, I’ll fall. If you’ll give me a minute, though, I think I can spread ’em, as you policemen say.”

Even as Matt pivoted swiftly from the side of the door frame to confront the intruder, his brain was scrambling into overdrive, desperately trying to pull in every scrap of information it was receiving and process it into something that made some kind of sense.

Except when he realized that he was holding a gun on a little old lady in an aluminum walker, a little old lady with white hair, orthopedic shoes, and bifocals that glinted in front of curious faded blue eyes, he suddenly got the feeling that there was going to be no way this was ever going to make sense.

God, D’Angelo, you could have blown away Grandma Walton, he thought with numb horror. Well, it hadn’t been that close a call. But he’d be willing to bet that West, standing behind him, would embellish the encounter to the first reporter he could get on the phone.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Jenna asked the woman.

For a second he’d forgotten about Jenna, but that had been another mistake, he thought, his heart sinking. Hair flying around her shoulders in a burnished copper cloud, breasts heaving in indignation under the thin Indian cotton of her dress, and shaking the can of cat food at Mrs. Jane-way, she looked like an angel, all right. Only this time she looked like an avenging angel, ready to drive the old lady out of the Garden of Eden.

Or at least out of the apartment that Jenna obviously still felt she had a claim on. A sudden thought struck Matt, and he turned with renewed hope to the superintendent behind him, ignoring West’s triumphant grin. “What are you trying to pull? It’s the wrong damn apartment!”

“What do you mean, the wrong apartment?” Jenna whirled on him angrily. “I know where I live, Matt! This woman might look like a sweet little old lady to you, but she’s got no right to be here! Look, I’ll show you!”

Before he could stop her, she’d sidestepped past the aluminum walker with a dancer’s agility, but even as he edged cautiously past the old lady with a muttered apology and reached out to grab Jenna’s arm, she froze.

“What have you done to my apartment?”

Her gaze swung wildly around the comfortably cozy living room as if she was looking upon some terrible desecration. With a trembling finger, she pointed at a row of potted African violets on the radiator by the window.

“They—they’re artificial! Where’s my fern and my spider plant?” She gestured at the colonial-style recliner sitting in front of a small television set. On a low table beside the chair was a half-knitted child’s garment, in an insipid color combination of peach-pink and cream. Her voice rose. “And what’s all this? This isn’t my furniture! I had my rattan set here, and I don’t even own a television! What’s going on?”

It was time to step in, he told himself. She’d made some kind of colossal mistake, and she just wasn’t admitting it to herself. Again, the first impression he’d had of her flashed through his mind, but he shoved it aside. She’d only lived here a week, and tonight she’d gone through a traumatic experience. She wasn’t necessarily crazy—maybe she’d hit her head when she’d fallen and received some kind of mild concussion. That had to be it, he thought compassionately. She was suffering from some kind of short-term memory loss.

It was a convenient theory, but it was full of holes, and he knew it. She’d given him this address over the phone this afternoon—before she’d been accosted by the mugger.

If there had been a mugger.

“You don’t believe me.” She was staring at him, her face pale, her white-knuckled grip still hanging on for dear life to the cat-food can, and Matt found it impossible to say anything. The smart way out would be to lie, to play along with her until he could get her out of here quietly, but suddenly he knew he couldn’t do it. As the silence between them lengthened, she seemed to be searching his expression intently.

“You think I’m crazy.” Her voice was a thready, incredulous whisper. She stared numbly at the fussy flower-sprigged wallpaper, the embroidered pictures of pastoral scenes on the walls and the stack of Agatha Christie mysteries piled on an ornately ugly coffee table in front of the plaid sofa. “You’ve got to believe me, Matt! When I left here this morning that ceiling was painted sky-blue with white clouds I’d sponged on this weekend. The walls were a lighter blue. I was making canvas cushions for my furniture, I had photographs of my parents on the wall, and my plants were growing on the windowsill. Somebody’s made it all different! You have to believe me!”

Her last few words were an urgent entreaty, and though he tried to soften his response, he knew it was the last thing she wanted to hear. “That doesn’t make any sense, Jenna.” He kept his voice quiet, hoping to soothe the raw anguish in her eyes. “What reason would anyone have for doing that?”

Instead of answering him, she held his gaze unwaveringly for a moment as if giving him one last chance to change his mind. Then whatever hope she still had ebbed visibly out of her and she turned slowly away. Walking to a half-open door, she flicked on a light switch. Matt remained where he was, his hands clenched at his sides, watching her as she looked in, switched off the light and turned back to him, her voice toneless. “Everything’s changed. My futon’s gone, the quilt my mother made for me when I was a little girl—it’s all disappeared. And you don’t believe me, do you?”

“Would anybody like a nice cup of tea?” Mrs. Janeway had hobbled back into the room. At the doorway, West surveyed the scene with a tight grin and Matt suddenly felt a violent urge to knock the smile from his face. But Jenna didn’t even spare the man a second glance. Her attention was directed at the old lady, and her head was tipped to one side, quizzically.

“It’s all an act, isn’t it?” She gave Mrs. Janeway a coldly appraising look, and the older woman halted in her slow progress across the room, her faded eyes sharpening as she met Jenna’s glance. “You must be useful for something like this—who’s going to suspect a sweet little old lady of being a crook?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear.” Mrs. Janeway smiled sympathetically. “Mr. West says you had some idea that this might have been your apartment once, but that’s just not possible. I’ve been here for over fifteen years now, and as you can see, I have all my little treasures and comforts around me. This has been my home since my husband passed away, God rest his soul.”

The old voice held a wistful tremor, but instead of rousing Jenna to pity, what little composure she had left finally cracked. “You’re lying! This is my home! You’ve stolen the first home I ever really had, you—you criminal!” She shook the can of cat food at West, standing in the doorway. “And you’re in on this with her! You rented me this apartment a week ago, and you know it!”

Suddenly her gaze went blank and she stared frantically around. “Where’s Zappa?” Her voice rose. “What did you do with him?”

“What’s she talking about?” the old lady said in a loudly whispered aside to Matt, as if Jenna was incapable of understanding her. “Who’s this Zeppo person she’s looking for now?”

The wrinkled face held an expression of saccharine pity, but behind the bifocals her eyes twinkled with avid interest, and suddenly Matt realized that he didn’t like Mrs. Janeway either. But whether he liked the woman or not, they’d intruded on her long enough. He turned to Jenna.

“We have to go. I know you’re upset right now, but—”

“Zappa! Not Zeppo—Zappa! My cat! Or do you think this is a delusion, too?” Now the tears that she’d been holding back spilled over, and those thick dark lashes were spiky and wet as she held out the dented can as if it was some kind of clinching proof. “He’s Siamese; he’s a little chunky around the middle, and his tail’s covered with sky-blue paint from when I was sponging the ceiling.” Her voice shook. “And you’ve made him disappear, too!”

From the doorway West’s glance caught Matt’s and he winked. “Like I told you,” he said in a stage whisper. “Miss Looney Tunes.”

Matt’s heart sank.

Chapter Two

“He called me crazy. Miss Looney Tunes.” Jenna sat across from Matt in the nearby coffee shop where he’d hustled her after the fiasco at her apartment. Her gaze looked as if it could start a flash fire on the cracked Formica of the tabletop between them. “And you’re thinking the same thing.”

She never should have let him persuade her to walk away from West and that deceitful old woman who called herself Mrs. Janeway, she thought in angry self-recrimination. She should have refused to leave, at least until she’d found out what they’d done with Zappa. Except that in the middle of her near-hysterical outburst she’d caught a glimpse of the expression, quickly veiled, on Matt’s face and for a moment she’d felt as if she’d actually taken a physical blow.

His expression had frightened her. Suddenly she’d realized that she’d lost her only ally, and that the man she’d thought was on her side wasn’t even able to meet her eyes.

He wasn’t meeting them now.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said a shade too heartily. There was a container of paper-wrapped toothpicks on the table, and he’d already mangled two of them. Now he stripped the wrapping off a third and snapped it in half. “It’s obvious that you’re a little confused, but that could be the result of a lot of things—stress, for example. It could be an aftereffect of the mugging.” The third toothpick lay in pieces by his coffee cup as he fell silent.

Right from the start he hadn’t known what to make of her, she thought despondently. She’d seen him glancing dubiously at her ankle bracelet and tie-dyed dress, and even on the phone this afternoon she had the sinking feeling she’d come off as a flake. When she’d met him, she’d realized that Agent D’Angelo was just as alien to her as she appeared to him.

It was no wonder he’d felt uneasy with her. It had been almost inevitable that he’d jumped to the conclusion that she was suffering from some kind of delusion.

The phrase “just the facts, ma’am,” could have been coined for him. He was the perfect FBI agent, from his unobtrusive but well-cut suit right down to his gleaming shoes. Maybe he was just a little too good-looking to pass unnoticed in a crowd, but even there he’d done his best to conform. Not a strand of that thick black hair was out of place, and that sensuously full lower lip that seemed so at variance with the rest of the hard angles of his face was usually thinned in a tightly controlled line. It must have taken him years to submerge his own personality so completely, Jenna mused. Now he probably didn’t even have to think about it.

But he’d slipped up once, and for a startling moment she’d seen past the conservative facade to the original Matt D’Angelo. The man she’d glimpsed had looked at her with a sudden flare of heat in those cool golden-brown eyes, and for a heartbeat his gaze had lingered searingly on her, as if he couldn’t stop himself. Then he’d pulled back with a visible effort, and she’d almost been able to see him convincing himself that what he’d experienced hadn’t been real.

Just like he was trying to persuade her now.

“Refill?” The waitress, a tired-looking woman in her late forties with a name tag that said Marg pinned to her uniform, was standing beside them with a full coffeepot in her hand and a mechanical smile on her face, but as she looked at Jenna her expression changed to one of interest.

“Beautiful dress, honey.” Almost reverently she reached out and her fingertips brushed the thin multihued cotton. “I used to know a girl in the ’60s who designed and dyed her own—Tamara, her name was. She used to give them away.”

“Tamara Seagull?” Jenna looked up eagerly. “She still does—this is one of hers. She lives on a commune in Vermont and barters them for produce and firewood. I traded a couple of bushels of tomatoes and a wheelbarrow-full of zucchini for this.” She laughed for the first time that evening, feeling suddenly as if she’d run into a friend.

Matt was looking at them as if he didn’t know what they were talking about. She ignored him.

“When I knew Tamara we were both still in our teens,” Marg the waitress said reminiscently. She set the coffeepot down on the table, forgotten, and her expression was faraway, as if her dingy surroundings had faded into the background. She smiled dreamily, and it was possible to see that she’d once been vibrantly pretty. “Everything seemed so simple then—she’d make her dresses, and I was going to set up a pottery studio. But then I met Dwayne and fell madly in love, and the next thing I knew, I was married and expecting a baby. Dwayne took a job for a few months at a factory, but he hated it, and two weeks after Debbie was born he took off. I never heard from him again.” She stared unseeingly through the steam-fogged window of the coffee shop to the darkness outside, and then blinked. Slowly she picked up the pot and one of the thick, chipped mugs. “I’ll never forget that summer. I still have one of the plates I made back then. But you wouldn’t even have been born in the ’60s—how do you know Tamara?”

“My father and I lived on the Sunflower Commune for a while about three years ago,” Jenna said. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Matt frown uncomprehendingly. He probably thought the lifestyle she’d lived up until recently had died out with sit-ins and peace medallions, she thought impatiently. “It’s a well-respected artists’ colony now, with a self-supporting organic farm attached—their stone-ground bread is famous all over the state. They didn’t have a resident potter when I was there, though,” she added. Beside her, Marg bit her lip thoughtfully.

“It’d take a while before I could turn out anything good again,” she said slowly. “But I’m a hard worker, and a bakery can always use an extra pair of hands. Since Debbie got married and moved away, there’s been nothing to keep me here.”

She poured Matt another cup of coffee almost briskly, and her smile at Jenna as she left their table was nothing like the mechanical one she’d worn earlier. As soon as she was out of earshot, Matt spoke.

“How’d you do that?” His voice was almost accusatory. He looked baffled. “I’ve seen agents with years of experience who can’t draw that much out of someone in hours of interrogation, but she spilled her most secret hopes to you after two seconds. Where’d you learn that?”

Jenna shook her head, momentarily taken aback. “I didn’t learn that. It’s not a technique, Matt—I just thought she looked kind of lonely. And when she noticed my dress, she reminded me of the people I grew up with.”

“Ex-hippies.” He couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. “You really were brought up on communes? I didn’t know they still existed.”

“It’s not that unusual,” she said with a spurt of defensiveness. “A lot of people still choose to opt out of mainstream society and live an alternative lifestyle closer to nature. It’s not as if we painted our bodies blue and sat around contemplating blades of grass all day.”

“Well, it explains the ankle bracelet, anyway,” he muttered, and at that her temper flared.

“And it explains what happened back at my apartment, right? I’m just an off-the-wall flake that lives in a fantasy world half the time, is that it?” She took a deep breath. “I know it must have seemed weird, Matt, but you’ve got to believe me—somebody went into my home today and completely changed everything!”

Put like that, it did sound outrageous, she thought in sudden uncertainty. Why would anyone in the world want to discredit her? What threat was she to anybody?

All of a sudden the answer was right in front of her. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as she considered her theory, examining it for flaws and finding none. Of course, she thought with growing certainty—that had to be it! And once she explained everything to Matt, he’d have to believe her, because with this missing piece in place, the whole thing made sinister sense. Jenna looked around the coffee shop, leaned across the table and lowered her voice to an urgent whisper.

“It’s a vast conspiracy aimed at making me look crazy,” she said in a rush of excitement. “That’s why it’s working so well—because it was planned that way! They wanted you to discount everything I said, so they created the whole setup—changed the locks so my keys wouldn’t work, re-painted and papered my apartment and got rid of all my furniture, and installed that terrible old woman in there with her phony walker. I was watching her, Matt.” She gave an unladylike little snort of derision. “She wasn’t even putting her weight on that thing! Heck, she probably teaches swing dancing when she’s not busy with her criminal career—” She stopped in mid-sentence, taking in the expression in the dark gold eyes across from her.

It was pity. But that was only because he still didn’t know the reason she’d called him today in the first place, Jenna thought, exasperated at herself. She did sound like a kook, spilling it out like that. She took a deep, calming breath to center her thoughts, but Matt’s voice broke into them.

“A vast conspiracy.” His tone was placatingly noncommittal, as if he was taking care not to set her off on another tirade. “Sure, Jenna, that’s probably what’s going on. But right now let’s try and find you a place to stay for the night—since Mrs. Janeway and her cohorts have stolen your apartment.”

He paused, and invested his next words with a casual carelessness, shredding another toothpick to sawdust as he spoke. “And it might be a good idea to take you to the hospital and have that graze on your arm attended to in case it gets infected. In fact, we should do that first. My car’s still outside the apartment, so we’ll walk back. I’ll drive you over to Mass. General straight away.”

He couldn’t have telegraphed his meaning more clearly if he’d been wearing a white coat and chasing after her with a net, she thought in annoyance. She discarded her plan of leading up to the subject logically and dispassionately.

“I saw Rupert Carling today, Matt. That’s what this is all about.”

Across the table from her he let the last remnants of the toothpick fall from his fingers. His features smoothed into a bland mask, revealing nothing of what he was thinking, but the gold glints in his eyes intensified and he flicked a glance around the half-empty room before he spoke. When he did, he sounded as perfunctory as if she’d made a comment about the weather. “Run that one by me again. You saw who?”

“Rupert Carling. You know—the missing tycoon who disappeared two days ago,” she elaborated impatiently. “His photo’s been on the front page of all the papers with the story about how the police think he might have been murdered. You must have seen it!”

“I’ve seen the articles. I know who Rupert Carling is.” He held her gaze with his own. “I still don’t get the connection between his disappearance and what happened tonight at your apartment.”

“It’s obvious! For some reason, no one’s supposed to know where he is or even that he’s still alive, and when they found out I’d seen him at Parks, Parks, and Boyleston today in the basement, they had to totally discredit me before I told the authorities.” Jenna tapped her thumbnail nervously on her bottom lip. “They couldn’t simply kill me. I wonder why?”

“And Parks, Parks, and Boyleston is…?” he inquired politely.

“The law firm where I started work yesterday.” Her hair had fallen forward in her excitement and she pushed it back with a quick gesture. “Don’t you see? This whole thing makes sense now—I’m simply a crazy lady with one crazy story after another.” A thought struck her and her eyes darkened. “The mugger! He wasn’t after my money, he was after my identity! Everything that could help me prove I’m who I say I am was in my wallet….”

Her voice trailed off as the enormity of the plan became clearer. “They couldn’t kill me for some reason, so they did the next best thing. They were trying to make it look as if Jenna Moon never existed, Matt. As if everything about me was a lie or a fantasy.”

Outside it had begun to rain heavily, but she hardly noticed the downpour through the plate-glass window beside them. All her attention was focused on him, and when he finally spoke she realized she’d been holding her breath.

“It sounds too incredible to be true,” he said. At her stricken expression, he continued, voicing his thoughts aloud. “And that might have been just what they were counting on—whoever ‘they’ are.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he sat up straighter and took a pen and a small notepad from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Okay, take it from the top and don’t leave anything out, no matter how insignificant it seems. How did you run into this man you thought was Rupert Carling?”

He wasn’t convinced—not yet. But at least he was giving her the benefit of the doubt, instead of writing her off as a flake, Jenna thought shakily. A wave of relief rushed over her and she felt the sharp prickle of tears behind her eyelids, but she blinked them away and tried to keep her voice steady as she answered him.

“Miss Terwilliger is training me as a records clerk, and like I said, today was only my second day on the job,” she began. He interrupted her.

“Miss Terwilliger? What’s her position at Parks, Parks, and Boyleston?”

“We call it Parks, Parks for short,” she said helpfully. “Miss Terwilliger is the head of the office staff, and she’s been there forever. Parks, Parks is her life—I don’t know what she’ll do when she’s forced to retire.” Matt rubbed his temples in an unconscious gesture and she went on hurriedly. “Anyway, she’s a dragon, but today she said she thought I might have the makings of a first-rate records clerk in me, so I think she likes me. She even gave me some files to put away in the archives but the building’s old, and I got lost going down the wrong passageway.”