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“Still . . . Damn, I wish there was a photo. Get into the telephone directories and see if you can find a . . .” She squinted at the screen. “Brandy Butt. Doesn’t sound Hispanic to me. And most Hispanic women don’t look like Aurora.”
“So far I’ve come up empty, but I have a few more places to check.”
“Let me see what I can dig up.” Toni began to head for the phone, then paused. Normal procedure would be to hand this off to a West Virginia field office, but there was nothing normal about the task force assigned to find Aurora. She and Jason, for example reported directly to Ken Braddock, the assistant director in charge of the National Security Division, and they could either follow their own leads or pass them off.
She picked up the phone, cradled it in her neck, and regarded her partner. “I intend to head for West Virginia first thing tomorrow, Boy Howdy. How about you? Is seven o’clock too early?”
“I was planning to leave at six, but if you need a little more rest, I understand.”
Oh, she was starting to like this kid.
The nape of Mat’s neck was still prickling. It had been so weird, standing there in the middle of the Waynes’ motor home with Button’s yellow Bo Peep romper in his hand and listening to Dateline report Cornelia Case’s disappearance. The whole thing was one of those weird coincidences, but as he walked back to Mabel, his neck still tingled. It was the same feeling he got when he was working on a big story.
He couldn’t help but make a mental comparison between Nell Kelly and Cornelia Ca
se. Despite their surface similarities, Mrs. Case was cool and sophisticated, almost ethereal, while Nell was funny, approachable, and very real. After the first impression, they didn’t even look that much alike. Nell’s hair was different, and even though she was thin, she didn’t have that upper-class clothes-hanger look Mrs. Case had. Mrs. Case’s forehead was higher, she was taller than Nell, and her eyes weren’t as blue. And, most of all, Mrs. Case wouldn’t have let Mathias Jorik kiss her.
He chuckled to himself. If Nell put on a wig, spruced herself up a little, and wore higher heels, she might be able to walk right to the doors of the White House and pass herself off as the First Lady. Then, when the real Mrs. Case came back, no one would believe it was her. It’d be a chick version of The Prince and the Pauper. What a great story!
He opened the door and stepped inside the motor home all ready to tell her about it when he saw her sitting on the couch, and his smile faded. She was wearing her blue cotton nightgown with her feet tucked beneath her. All the lights were out except one small lamp. The light spilled across her face. She looked as delicate and ethereal as a fifteenth century Madonna, and he found it impossible to imagine her doing anything as silly as buying a ceramic frog, driving a motor home, or mooing to a cranky baby.
The skin at the back of his neck prickled. She looked very much like Cornelia Case.
She lifted her head and smiled. “You took a while. Did Bertis offer you another piece of her fruit cocktail cake?”
“Cake? No. No, we were just . . .” The wide cotton strap on her nightgown slipped on her shoulder, and the impression faded. She looked like Nell again, the woman he’d been thinking about all evening. “We were just talking.”
As he sat on the edge of the banquette, the idea of making love with her passed from desire into a consuming need. “Are the girls asleep?”
“Out cold.” She studied him for a moment. “Is something wrong?”
“No, why?”
“I don’t know. You looked odd when you came in.”
He started to tell her about Cornelia Case, but came to his senses just in time. He had seduction in mind, not a discussion of current events, and the news could definitely wait until later. “Must have been that fruit cocktail cake resettling in my stomach.”
She stood, and the light provided a hazy silhouette of her body through her nightgown. “Do you want something to drink? Another root beer?”
The most he could manage was to shake his head. He found himself rising, taking a step toward her.
She gazed up at him, and he saw wariness in her eyes, the last emotion he wanted her to feel.
“Mat, we need to talk about this. There are two children just behind that door.”
“Yeah, I know.” He had been thinking of little else. It was one thing to tell himself they were sound sleepers, but now he realized how thin that door really was. Time to improvise. “It’s hot in here. Let’s go for a walk. ”
“I’m in my nightgown.”
“It’s dark. Nobody’ll be able to see a thing. Besides, that nightgown covers up more of you than the clothes you were wearing all day.”
“Still . . .”
“There’s a path right behind us that heads into the woods a little way. We can keep Mabel in sight.”
Unexpectedly, her mouth curved, and he remembered her delight in simple pleasures. “I’ll get my shoes.”
A few minutes later they were walking down a path strewn with mulch chips. Just enough light penetrated the trees from the campsites to show the way. Nealy took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of woodsmoke and rich, damp vegetation, absorbing the idea that she was wandering around outside in her nightgown. “Isn’t this wonderful?”
