The Baby's Bodyguard

The cheerful radiance surrounded Casey like a hug. She glanced up at the books she’d chosen for the shelf and picked an old favorite, the original The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

From a toy chest that her father had polished lovingly, she removed the fuzzy Dalmatian dogs she’d accumulated as a child and arranged them on the carpet. The worn fur only made them more appealing, reminding her of hours spent cuddling them as she invented stories.

“Hey, you guys,” she said softly. It seemed to her that Pongo cocked his head and that Perdita’s tail stirred as if trying to wag. “There’s going to be someone new in your room soon. She won’t able to play with you at first, and I don’t want you to disturb her by barking all night, okay?”

She explained to them about Diane, how small she’d be and how she might chew on them before she was old enough to understand who they were. “But one day her little brain will click into gear and she’ll figure out that you have feelings and that you love her.”

Missis gave a knowing bark. As she warned the stuffed dog not to wake their guest, Casey felt a draft from the doorway.

Glancing up, she peered through a wing of unbrushed hair. Jack, a black kimono-style robe belted over pajama bottoms, stood watching her with a bemused expression. Maybe he thought she’d gone nuts, but at least he wasn’t scowling.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

He regarded the circle of dogs. “I don’t recall meeting these guys before.”

“My parents saved them for me,” Casey explained.

“They saved your toys?” He seemed to find the idea puzzling.

“I guess they were hoping someday the grandchildren would play with them. Or maybe having them around reminded Mom of when I was small.” Impulsively, she added, “She wanted more kids but she couldn’t have them. I wish she’d lived long enough to meet Diane.”

“I don’t even remember having toys, although I must have,” he said. “We moved a lot, sometimes without warning. Stuff got left behind.”

“You don’t remember any of them?” Casey couldn’t imagine it.

He thought for a moment. “Some books, I guess. I don’t know what happened to them.” As he studied the array of stuffed animals, she thought she saw regret flicker in his eyes. Then he crossed his arms and shifted his attention to the window, where ribbons tied back the yellow-dotted white curtains. “You ought to get opaque shades. Anyone could see inside.”

“Nobody around here…” She stopped, remembering the prowler. “I’m not used to thinking that way.”

“It’s my job to think that way.” He cast one more glance at the stuffed animals with a veiled longing that touched Casey more deeply than words.

He’d lost so much along the way to becoming a man. He always shrugged it off when she asked about the past, as if it couldn’t touch him, but she knew it affected him in countless ways.

“I wish you’d tell me more,” she said.

“About what?”

“Your parents. Your life in foster homes. How can I understand if you won’t share it with me?”

He edged away. “Sorry to disturb you. I came in because I heard someone talking.”

“Just me and the pooches.” Casey watched him go with a sense of loss. For an instant, she’d hoped he might open up, but she could see it was useless.

Nostalgically, she tucked the dogs back into the chest. She’d always taken it for granted that parents saved their children’s favorite toys. How did it feel to be stripped of those memories?

Jack might as well have come from a distant planet. For a long stretch, she’d wished he would agree to visit Tennessee with her and that it would help their worlds to blend. But he’d never found the time. And now that he’d come, it was too late.

She couldn’t reach him. Even the prospect of becoming parents wasn’t going to bridge the gap between them.

Reluctantly, she made her way back to bed.

* * *

SITTING ALONE in the kitchen while Casey dressed for church, Jack ate toast and coffee and fought down a sense of unease. The view of seemingly endless trees, with the nearest cabin barely visible and no other buildings in sight, disturbed him with its emptiness.

One of his foster families had taken him and their other charges to a regional park on a few occasions, but the place had been filled with visitors. Here, he found the vast amount of space almost threatening. It reminded him of a recurring dream in which he searched through a devastated landscape for a woman in a white dress, or perhaps it was a nightgown.

Long ago, the woman must have been his mother. During the past year, he’d known it was Casey even though he couldn’t see her face.

He tried to force himself to relax. After such a dysfunctional childhood, Jack knew his gut reactions weren’t a reliable warning of real danger. Besides, he didn’t have to search for Casey. He could hear her moving around in the bathroom.

Through the window came the sounds of birds twittering and leaves rustling in the breeze. Seeking a positive association, he decided the sounds reminded him of a book about pioneers he used to enjoy as a kid.

Come to think of it, he had many happy memories of stories. In some ways, he had taken his toys with him. All he’d had to do was venture into any library and he could visit them all over again.

Storybook figures obviously meant a lot to Casey, too. Last night, she’d looked adorable, sitting on the carpet talking earnestly to her toys as if she were still a child herself. He’d overheard quite a bit before she noticed him.

One day her little brain will click into gear. Until Casey said that, he hadn’t thought about Diane as anything beyond a helpless infant. It was disconcerting to consider the bulge inside his wife as a person who would someday have ideas and relationships of her own.

He imagined a tot with tangled brown hair and blue eyes like her mother’s, sitting on that same carpet solemnly communing with the Dalmatians. His daughter.

Yearning twisted through Jack. He’d always felt protective toward children and moved by their instinctive trust. Once, as a police officer, he’d unstrapped a baby from a car seat after a crash and barely managed to carry her to safety before the car caught fire. He would never forget the delicate feel of the girl’s arms clasping his neck as he delivered her to her mother.

But he’d had no desire to stick around beyond that moment of connection. For heaven’s sake, he was too impatient and moody to live with a little girl. He’d probably lose his temper and yell the way his father used to. The image of tears spilling down a child’s face made his coffee taste bitter.

From the living room, Casey popped into the doorway. She’d tamed her hair and donned a pink smock dress with an embroidered yoke. “You’re welcome to come to church with me.”

“No, thanks.” He never set foot in one except to attend a wedding or a funeral, and not many of those. He and Casey had tied the knot at a chapel in a Las Vegas hotel, with her parents, his partner Mike and Mike’s then-wife in attendance. “Besides, I have to leave by noon to make my flight.”

Although he’d secured a midafternoon reservation out of Nashville, he had to allow for the hour and a half drive, plus returning the rental car and clearing security. Thanks to the two-hour time difference, that would put him in L.A. by dinner.

“I’m sorry I can’t stick around to see you off but I’m teaching Sunday school,” she said.

Could things get any cozier? Stuffed animals, baby showers and Sunday school. Suddenly Jack felt suffocated. At work tomorrow, he looked forward to taking command of the situation instead of gasping like a fish out of water.

“What?” his wife demanded.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your nose wrinkled as if something smelled bad,” she challenged.

“Do you always have to try to read my mind?”

“I hope you weren’t disapproving of my teaching Sunday school. Maybe you should join the class,” Casey returned. “We learn valuable lessons from the Bible.”

“I know a valuable lesson. Mind thy own business.” He shook his head apologetically. “I don’t mean that. Casey, I think it’s great that you teach Bible school, okay?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. I should respect your right to keep your thoughts private. It’s just that you’re so closemouthed and I care what you think.”

“Have a good time,” he said.

Casey sighed, gave a little wave and went out through the living room. A short time later, Jack heard her key turn in the front lock.

Gone. His hand tightened on the coffee cup.

He had to let her go, even though it was tearing him apart. She’d made her choice to send him away. His ability and desire to protect were all he had to offer, and she didn’t want them.

He wished things could be different, but her pregnancy had wiped out any chance of the two of them returning to their old life in LA. Maybe they should have spent more time discussing the implications of having a child—financial and otherwise—but he had a feeling Casey would shut him out as she’d done when he offered to pay the doctor’s bills.

He wasn’t the only one who kept his most complicated feelings to himself. Sometimes she did, too.

It was time to put useless hopes behind him. In a few days, he’d call and inform her that he was signing the divorce papers. If she refused to accept money to help support their daughter, he’d open a trust fund for the little girl’s college expenses. Just because he couldn’t be a real father didn’t mean he intended to abandon his responsibilities.

From the carport attached to the house, he heard a car start. His ear marked Casey’s progress as she backed out and headed down the driveway.

The motor stopped just beyond the house, still humming. What was she waiting for?

He didn’t know her routine. Maybe she gave one of the tenants a ride. Curious, Jack got up and went to the porch.

From the front, he saw that she’d stopped next to the parking area and exited the car. A cloud of dogwood blossoms obscured his view of the lot.

“Casey?” he called, and stepped down from the porch. Receiving no answer, he shouted louder. Still nothing.

Jack hurried down the driveway. The car sat idling, with the driver’s door ajar. No sign of Casey.

He shouldn’t have let her go out until he’d checked the premises. Why did he let himself get distracted? If some guy was stalking her, the arrival of another male might have roused him to further action.

Surveying the surroundings for suspicious movement, Jack noticed a squirrel dart across some sunny rocks but nothing more troubling. “Casey?” he called again. The name echoed faintly.

The crunch of footsteps straight ahead brought him up short. From behind a screen of branches, his wife appeared on the blacktop.

“Jack!” She hurried forward.

“I’ve been calling you.” That wasn’t the issue, of course. “What’s going on?”

“You’d better take a look.”

He moved closer, keeping a lookout all the while. These unfenced, heavily wooded premises provided too much cover for his taste.

His attention turned to the parking area. The other vehicles from last night had vanished, leaving his blue rental sedan sitting isolated. Isolated, but not undisturbed.

A large, leafy tree limb half obscured the windshield, where it had apparently fallen. Then he noticed a broken side window.

The damage also included a bent antenna and windshield wiper, both possibly attributable to the fallen branch. The broken window and the scratches on the hood, however, didn’t correlate, and neither did the angle of the branch compared to the locations of nearby trees.

There’d been no storm last night and no winds to carry tree limbs any distance. This had to be intentional.

Jack circled the car without touching it. When Casey reached for the branch, he waved her away. “Don’t disturb anything. I need to get the whole picture.”

She withdrew her hand. “These trees are kind of overgrown. I’ve been meaning to have them trimmed.”

He noted a rock on the pavement below the broken window. Dried soil clung to one side as if it had been wrenched from the ground. On the hood, the depth and straightness of the score marks reminded him of key scrapes.

“I don’t think the branch fell by itself,” he said. “I don’t think it caused all this damage, either.”

“That’s what I was trying to figure out,” she admitted. “It seemed accidental but it doesn’t look right.”

It ticked him off to see the vandalism. Jack didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d been personally targeted. What outraged him even more was the sense that someone felt possessive toward his wife. “This is definitely vandalism, and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that my car was chosen.”

“Wait a minute.” Casey peered through the window. “You left food inside.”

He followed her gaze to the empty wrapper from his beef jerky, lying on the passenger seat where he’d tossed it. “So?”

“An animal might have tried to get in,” she pointed out.

“Would that be the same bear that squirted you with the hose?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I was thinking of a raccoon. They can do amazing things with their hands.”

“Ever see one throw a rock?”

She admitted she hadn’t.

Jack returned to his line of thought. “Whoever did this was lashing out at me. He probably acted first on impulse, breaking the window and scratching my hood, then decided to try to make it appear like an accident. He either pulled the branch down or found it in the woods and arranged it to try to fool us.”

“Jack, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to become a target. This could be expensive.”

He shrugged. “I’ve got insurance. It’ll just cost me the deductible, and the car’s still drivable.”

Those were deep scratches, though. And the rock had been thrown with force. Whoever had done this carried a lot of anger.

Yet until now, he reminded himself, there’d been no indication that Casey was the stalker’s primary concern. He’d been heard or seen near two tenants’ cabins, not her house.

Usually, perpetrators stuck to a pattern. This guy’s unpredictability and his hostility made the hairs stand up on Jack’s neck.

He checked his watch. A quarter to nine. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let me come to church with you. If whoever did this is fixated on you, he knows you’ll be there and he may show up. I might get a gut feeling about somebody.” People revealed more than they realized through their body language.

Casey released a long breath. “What about your flight?”

“I can still make it. Just let me pack my bag. I’ll caravan behind you to town, and afterwards I can head directly for Nashville.” He’d have to push the speed limit, but he hadn’t seen a sign of any state troopers on his way north.

She hugged herself. “I guess that makes sense.”

Don’t overwhelm me with enthusiasm. Well, what had he expected? “We might be a few minutes late. I’ll need to photograph the car before we leave, so don’t touch anything.” He always packed a couple of disposable cameras. In his line of work, they came in handy.

“You’re treating it like a crime scene.”

“You got that right.”

Casey regarded the car unhappily. “I wish this guy would just leave us alone. We’d be so much happier.”

“If only bad guys thought that way!” Jack teased.

She gave him a reluctant smile. “You’d better get started. I can pack your gear for you, if you like.”

“That would help.”

After he finished snapping shots, stowing his suitcase and collecting the rock in a plastic bag as a precaution, it was clear they would be late for church. Too bad. Jack would have liked to watch people arriving. It might have helped him spot the guilty party, if he were there.

As he followed Casey’s car into town, he realized that for once he belonged in a church, because he had a very appropriate assignment: to catch a sinner.

CHAPTER FIVE

Casey didn’t know which upset her more: the possibility that the prowler was becoming violent, or the fact that he’d forced Jack to stay, even for a few hours, out of what was obviously a sense of obligation.

All the same, gratitude for her husband’s presence helped to ease her delayed shock. When she first spotted the damage to the car, she’d instinctively reached for some reassuring explanation, but the more she stared, the more unavoidable Jack’s conclusion seemed. This couldn’t have happened by chance.

Maybe she’d made a mistake when she ordered him to leave. Still, sooner or later, he had to go. Maybe they’d get lucky and he’d spot the likely culprit right away.

The Richfield Community Church lay on the far side of town, a small white clapboard building with a picturesque steeple. Cars and trucks spilled over onto an adjacent lot.

As she and Jack walked across the pavement, Casey noticed him straightening and realized he must be focusing on the task ahead. He probably had no idea what a stir the arrival of her previously unseen husband was likely to create among the congregation.

When they entered the foyer, she could hear the deep voice of the pastor, Joshua Norris, issuing from the sanctuary, although the doors had been closed. Jack hesitated. “What’s the etiquette?” he murmured. “I hate to just barge in.”

“Let’s wait till they start singing.” The noise should cover the disturbance caused by their entry.

A few minutes later, Casey heard the piano—which she knew was played by the minister’s wife, Bernadette—launch into a popular hymn. As the congregation swelled with song, she opened the door and led the way inside.

Brilliance poured through the stained-glass window above the pulpit and the arching side windows. To her, the whole place seemed to shine.

As always, the hymn lifted her spirits. Nothing seemed quite so unmanageable or threatening as it had before.

The congregants faced away from them. Only a few people appeared to notice their arrival, although she could already see them whispering to their neighbors.

When she pointed out two seats in a nearby pew, Jack gave a jerk of the head, indicating that she should sit. He, however, clearly intended to stand in the back where he could view the proceedings.

Although she’d have liked to stay with him, Casey couldn’t stand for the whole service. She slid into place and picked up a prayer book.

Once the song finished, more heads turned. Her friend Bonnie smiled, her interest obviously perking when she caught sight of Jack. Royce studied the new arrival with something less than enthusiasm.

Casey remembered Jack’s suspicions about him. She had to admit her ex-boyfriend didn’t even try to disguise his mistrust of the newcomer, but she couldn’t imagine him sneaking around the Pine Woods. And if he’d wanted to harm Jack, as a mechanic he could have done something far more deadly and hard to spot than scratching the paint.

The possibilities that came to mind alarmed her. Thank goodness Royce was no criminal.

Casey forced herself to look to the pulpit, even though her mind continued to buzz. Usually she enjoyed the service and tried to apply the sermon to her personal life. Today, she kept glancing around, wondering if one of these folks had become her enemy.

Not everybody in town attended, of course. Enid was the only one of the tenants in view, which didn’t surprise her, since she knew the others liked to sleep late. There were also some people she didn’t immediately recognize from this angle, including a woman in a scarf who sat with the Rawlinses.

Nearly an hour later, when the service ended, Casey rose stiffly. She’d never noticed how hard the pews were until she began carrying a baby.

Her friend Mimi approached. “I’ll teach your class, honey,” she volunteered. “You’d better keep your eye on that sexy guy of yours or somebody’s likely to make off with him.”

“Thanks.” Casey had to chuckle at Mimi’s cheerful manner. “That would help a lot.”

“Did you see who’s here?” Bonnie arrived with her younger sister, Angie, in tow. “They say a bad penny always turns up. I’m willing to give a person a second chance, but this one’s got enough attitude to fill a barn.”

“Who?” As she spoke, Casey noticed that the woman in the scarf was frowning in her direction. Good heavens, it was Sandra, her old friend, but much gaunter than the last time they’d met. She wore dark glasses, which seemed like an affectation even if she had been living in California, and had some kind of mark on her cheek. “What happened to her?”

“I heard she was in a car crash high on drugs,” Angie said. “Rumor has it she’s on probation.”

Her older sister made a face. “If you heard all that, how come you didn’t tell me? We could have told Casey last night.”

“I heard it this morning. I think she just got back to town yesterday.”

The young women stopped chattering as Jack approached. After greeting them briefly, he asked Casey, “Who’s that man?”

She followed his gaze. “Al Rawlins.” She explained about her connection to his daughter Sandra. “Why do you ask?” ago.

“From the way he glared at you, I got the impression you’re not one of his favorite people.”

“I know. He blames me for Sandra’s problems.” Casey had familiarized him with her friend’s situation long

“Is something wrong?” Mimi asked. “The way Jack inspected the crowd, I figured we must have at least an FBI’s Most Wanted hanging around.”

“Somebody bashed his car last night,” Casey explained. “We’re trying to figure out who might have had a motive.”

“That stinks,” Mimi said. “It’s not much of a welcome, is it? Well, I’d like to stay but I’d better go teach that class.”

Casey thanked her again. Bonnie and Angie excused themselves also.

As soon as they were gone, Jack queried Casey about some of the other attendees. She identified Royce and Larry Malloy, the rookie cop who’d investigated Friday night’s assault.

“I don’t think either of them is the possessive type, and I’ve certainly given them no reason to be,” she added.

“Men who fixate on women aren’t necessarily connected to reality,” he told her. “They invent scenarios in which the woman plays hard to get but secretly loves them. They can be very difficult to dissuade.”

“What does it take to convince them she’s serious?”

“Getting a restraining order or marrying someone else usually does the trick. Unfortunately, it may also flip the guy off the deep end. That’s when stalkers become most dangerous.”

As he spoke, Jack made notes on a small pad. Compiling a list of suspects, Casey supposed.

It troubled her to view old acquaintances as potential predators. Many of them were folks she wouldn’t hesitate to call on if she needed help. Yet someone had knocked her down with a hose and scraped Jack’s car.

“You said body language might give him away,” she recalled. “What kind of behavior are you looking for?”

“People avoiding my gaze,” he replied promptly. “Inappropriate or contradictory actions that indicate the person’s putting on a pretense of normalcy. Restlessness, such as an adult who can’t stop wiggling.”

“I figure an adult who can’t stop wiggling during a church service probably needs to use the bathroom.” Casey had to admit that, as a pregnant woman, she had a rather biased perspective in that regard.

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