Little Girl Found. Jo Leigh
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to find a recipe. For mulligatawny stew. Handwritten, stained. She passed it to Jack.
“Why would he give her this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s all he has in his wife’s handwriting.”
Jack shook his head, then put the recipe aside. He picked up a bank passbook and opened it. “Four hundred and fifty dollars. In the name of Megan Chandler.”
“When was the last deposit?”
“At Christmas.”
She didn’t see much else of interest. Just clothes, which she proceeded to fold. There were jeans and sweatshirts, a few dresses, a jacket. Two pairs of shoes, a stack of panties and three sets of pajamas.
“He knew he was going to be gone awhile,” Jack said. “Or that he might never come back.”
“It appears so. But there’s something I’ve been wondering all morning. Why did he bring Megan to you, when I was just down the hall?”
Jack’s frown deepened. “The only reason I can think of is that he knew I was a cop.”
“So he must have guessed he was in trouble. Bad trouble.”
“Given the fact that he’s a corpse now, he guessed right.”
“And he didn’t say anything else?”
He looked at her, studying her closely. She thought he was going to say something, but then he just shook his head. She had the feeling he wasn’t telling her everything. Maybe that was for the best. She didn’t want to know anything that would get her into trouble. Not when she had to look out for Megan.
As if he’d sensed her protective thought, he nodded toward the living room. “We should call.”
Hailey caught his gaze and held it. “No, we’re not going to call.”
“We’re not?”
“No,” she repeated. “I want her here.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Maybe not. But I’m going to all the same.”
He leaned back in his chair, giving her a repeat of his unhappy face. It made him look dangerous in a way. Not spooky dangerous. Sexy dangerous.
“I promised her that she could stay with me,” she said. “She has no one else. And she’s too vulnerable to be taken away by strangers. It would make things infinitely worse.”
“The cops will find out he had a kid.”
“I don’t see that as an obstacle. I’m sure there are ways we could make them think Megan was away. I could tell Grace and a few other tenants. They’d help.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he looked back at her, he’d eased up on the frown. “For now,” he said.
“Fair enough.”
“But when things settle down…”
“We’ll talk about it again.”
“You design web sites? You should have been a lawyer.”
“Thank you.”
He leaned forward again, and she prepared for his retort, but instead, he frowned once more and nodded toward the living room. “Look who’s awake.”
Hailey turned to see Megan sitting up, clutching Tottie and sucking her thumb. “Hey, sweet pea,” she said as she left Jack and his scowl. “You slept a long time.”
Megan looked at her. “I want to go home,” she said.
“I know you do, honey. But I’m afraid we can’t go home just yet. Mr. McCabe and I are going to look after you, remember?”
She nodded slowly. Hailey thought she might start crying again, but she didn’t. “Tottie’s hungry,” was all she said.
“I’ll bet she is. And I’ll bet you are, too. Tell you what. You stay here with Mr. McCabe, and I’ll get us all lunch from my apartment and bring it back.”
“I want to go, too.”
“I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Why don’t you show Mr. McCabe your special blanket?”
Megan nodded, and Hailey wasn’t sure it was a good thing. The girl was a scrapper. Always had been. She sometimes had a tendency to throw a dramatic tantrum when she didn’t get her way, although the episodes were short-lived. To see her acquiesce so soon, and so stoically, told Hailey a lot. This little one was going to need a great deal of attention and a great deal of understanding.
“I’ll be back,” she said, turning to Jack. “I’ll bring some food.”
“I’ll help,” he said, leaning down to retrieve his cane.
“No, that’s okay. You need to be here with Megan.” Before he could argue, Hailey unlocked the apartment door and went outside. It was still chilly. She would put on a jacket before she returned.
As she walked toward her apartment, she felt nervous, as if someone was watching her. When she looked at the parking lot below, no one seemed to be there, although there were several unfamiliar cars in the lot. She shook the feeling off as understandable paranoia, but she walked faster and didn’t feel better until she was inside her place. She bolted the door behind her. The feeling didn’t completely disappear, and she understood right then that her own personal bubble of invulnerability had been shattered this morning. She wondered it she’d ever get it back again.
“THIS IS GARFIELD and he’s the dog. And these are the bees, the mommy and daddy and baby, see?”
Jack nodded, feeling awkward and inept as he listened to Megan talk about her blanket. She continued to point out all the significant pictures—the little girl who was all alone, the eyes, the letters and numbers and the great big heart. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, but then he couldn’t remember ever thinking about a quilt before. Megan certainly took it seriously, though. After each explanation, she waited for his nod and only then moved to the next.
So he kept nodding when there was a pause, but he wasn’t thinking about the big bus or the bumblebee family. His thoughts were on the girl and her situation. She was an orphan, and even though Hailey wanted to keep her, the state still had control over her future. Unfortunately the state was a notoriously bad parent.
It would probably be better for the kid to stick with Hailey, but if she did that and a relative showed up, there’d be big trouble. Who knows how attached Megan would become to Hailey? Then she’d have lost her parents and her guardian, and that wouldn’t be something she could easily recover from. He’d seen that too many times to have any doubts. Kids taken from bad families, put into foster homes, then shuffled to another and another. Those kids didn’t, as a rule, fare well. They ended up coming back home, only by then the parent state was usually in the form of a penitentiary.
At least she was a girl. Girls generally adjusted better than boys.
“…daddy?”
He heard the word and realized she’d asked him something. “What?”
“Do you know my daddy?”
Shoot. He’d hoped to avoid this. What was he supposed to say? Where the hell was Hailey? “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
“Hailey says he went to heaven to see my mommy.”
Dammit, where was she? How long could getting some food take? “Yeah, uh, well…Hailey’s pretty smart.”
“Does she baby-sit you, too?”
He smiled. “Not exactly.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “People don’t come back from heaven.”
He probably needed to say something else. Something reassuring. She looked up at