Strangers In The Night. Kristin Gabriel
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when the door opened, it wasn’t Mrs. Clanahan who greeted him but a middle-aged man wearing a torn white T-shirt and a pair of baggy red shorts. An old game show rerun blared on the television behind him and the stench of rotting meat permeated the air.
“Yeah?” the man said, scowling up at him.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Clanahan.”
“She don’t live here no more.”
“Since when?”
“Since she fell down and broke her hip about three months ago. Her daughter lives in Florida, so she carted her down there and sublet this apartment to me.”
Mrs. Clanahan had often talked about how much she missed her daughter. Too bad she’d had to break her hip to spend time with her. He felt a moment’s concern about the sweet old lady’s injury, but he had another matter to deal with.
“And you are?”
“Clyde Buckley,” he replied, growing impatient. He craned his head over his own shoulder trying to watch his television show.
“So tell me, Mr. Buckley, what arrangements did Mrs. Clanahan make about Horatio?”
Buckley scowled as he turned back around. “Who the hell is Horatio?”
Adam hitched his thumb behind him. “The cat in the apartment across the hall. Mrs. Clanahan was supposed to feed him while…”
“Oh, yeah,” Buckley interjected, “that was part of the sublet agreement. But the guy came back early. Lucky thing, cause I’m allergic to cats.”
Apprehension skittered over Adam’s spine. “What guy?”
“The guy who lives there,” Buckley replied, scratching his belly. “Delaney. He picked up the key and even gave me twenty bucks for all my trouble.”
Adam didn’t want to believe the man, but Clyde Buckley seemed incapable of artifice. He seemed barely capable of walking upright. “Did you ask him for some kind of identification?”
“Why should I?” Buckley retorted. “He knew the name of the damn cat. Who are you anyway and why are you here asking all these questions?”
He clenched his jaw. “I’m Adam Delaney. You gave my key to the wrong man.”
Buckley stuck out his jaw. “So where’s your identification?”
For the second time that morning, Adam pulled out his wallet and flashed his driver’s license and passport.
Clyde Buckley leaned in for a closer look. “Okay, so it says your name is Adam Delaney. But you sure don’t look much like him.”
It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet and Adam wanted a drink, but his pounding head nixed that idea. “I think you mean he doesn’t look much like me.”
“Huh?”
Adam took a deep breath, trying not to lose his temper. It wasn’t Buckley’s fault that some jerk was trying to screw up his life. “Tell me what he looks like.”
His gaze drifted to the television set. “Who?”
“Delaney.”
Buckley looked back at him. “I thought you said you’re Delaney.”
“I am,” he snapped. “I mean the man who told you he was me.”
“Oh.” Buckley crinkled his brow. “I can’t really remember—I only saw him once or twice.”
“Try.”
The older man shrugged. “Maybe about six feet. Skinny. Needed a haircut.”
“What else?” Adam asked, wanting specific details. “How about the color of his hair? His eyes? The kind of car he drives? Anything at all you can tell me.”
Buckley snorted. “Hell, I don’t know. I mind my own business around here, you know?”
“Did you ever see him with a woman?”
“Like I said, I mind my own business.” Buckley paused for a moment. “There was a broad who showed up at his door once in a while, but don’t ask me to describe her, ‘cause she sure wasn’t worth remembering.”
Then it couldn’t be his dream girl. Adam mentally kicked himself for letting her go. He’d never find her again in a city of over two million people. She might be the only one who could answer all of his questions.
“I gotta go,” Buckley said. “They’re about to spin the big wheel.”
The door closed in his face before Adam could say another word. He stared at it a moment, tempted to kick it down in frustration. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything except alienating his new neighbor.
He turned around and walked back inside his apartment.
Adam couldn’t deny it any longer. Someone had been impersonating him. But who? And for what reason? To find the answers, he began a thorough search of the apartment, hoping to find some clue to the man’s real identity. He started with the bedroom, but the only thing he found that didn’t belong to him was a lone black sock underneath the drapes.
When he walked into the living room, his gaze fell on the bookshelf. Two books caught his eye. He walked over and pulled them out, noting a sticker on each spine from the Denver Public Library. Books he hadn’t checked out.
“Success at Any Price,” he muttered, reading one title. Then he looked at the other book. “How to Change Your Life Forever.”
His darkroom yielded more evidence. It had been a small bedroom that he’d converted into a darkroom to allow him to develop pictures at home. Several items had been moved and one of his old cameras was missing.
He continued his search, even digging though the trash cans in the bathroom and kitchen. It was clear from the amount of garbage he found that someone had been living here recently. Someone pretending to be him.
Adam strode into his office and opened his file cabinet. All his files were neatly in place, but that didn’t mean the impostor hadn’t combed through his records. They detailed almost everything about his life. Bank accounts and insurance policies. His professional contacts. Even all the names, addresses and telephone numbers of his family and friends in his hometown, Pleasant Valley, Colorado.
Adam had to figure out what the impostor had done with this information. But first, he needed to contact Cole Rafferty, a good friend and local private investigator, to find out just how badly this guy had screwed up his life. Then he’d call his editor at Adventurer magazine and tell him the trip to New Zealand would have to be delayed for a while. Because he wasn’t going anywhere until his life was his again.
ON MONDAY MORNING, Josie rushed into the main branch of the Denver Public Library just before the doors opened to the public. Always punctual and professional, she drew stares from the other employees as she hurried to her desk. No doubt they’d all go into a state of shock if they were to discover Josephine Sinclair had spent Saturday night in the arms of a stranger.
A fact she didn’t plan to divulge to anyone.
But she couldn’t put it behind her, either. She’d spent most of last night tossing and turning in bed, then slept through her alarm this morning. Running late for work had only made her feel more harried, more out of control.
If only she’d never gone through with that surprise midnight seduction. But Josie so often resisted the urge to do something wild and spontaneous that she’d been unable to help herself.
With disastrous results.
After settling in behind her desk, she straightened her nameplate and the electric pencil sharpener, then untangled the telephone cord. She had to put her life in order again. But to do that she needed some answers.
As a reference librarian, she excelled at providing information to patrons on some of the most bizarre