Twisted Innocence Read online

  While Holly nursed, Juliet sat on the coffee table across from her. “Holly, what if I can get Michael to raise your pay to fifteen dollars an hour? Could you give up cab driving then?”

  “What am I going to do with Lily if we’re both working the same hours?”

  “We can go in together and get a babysitter. Somebody who can keep Robbie and Lily at one of our houses. And sometimes we can have the babies there at work with us. Robbie has a little separation anxiety, so maybe at first the babysitter can just hang out with us at the office, until the babies are used to her.”

  “I don’t know. That place is moldy.”

  “It’s not moldy. I already had it checked. It’s just old.”

  Holly looked down at the peaceful face of her nursing child. She wanted to cry again, but it would just upset Juliet more. If only she could stay home with her baby and focus on her all the time. But when you had a baby without involving the father . . . well, staying at home was a luxury you couldn’t afford.

  At least it would be years before Lily knew that her mother was an idiot who always did things in the wrong order.

  “It’ll be hard for me too, Holly,” Juliet said, leaning toward her. “I stayed home with Zach and Abe. It feels all wrong to leave Robbie, but most mothers have to work, and the kids turn out fine.”

  Holly shot a look at her. “Please don’t give me that quality over quantity stuff. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “We can interview babysitters together. Bottom line, I don’t want you driving a taxi anymore.”

  Holly thought about the investment she’d made in the car. She would be way happier working as a PI full-time than as a cabbie, but she had responsibilities, and it didn’t really matter what would make her happier. She had to support Lily. “Like it or not,” she said, “I make more driving a cab. If Michael will raise my hourly pay, I’ll drive less and work for him more, but I can’t afford to give up the cab driving altogether.”

  Juliet clearly didn’t like it. She touched Holly’s pink-tipped hair. “I guess you’re making a mature decision, even though I hate it. You’re growing up.”

  “Twenty-eight years old, it’s about time, right?”

  Lily looked up at her, her round eyes unfazed by the bruising, bloody wounds. Holly would never get used to that unconditional adoration. That gaze had the feel of God in it, and it calmed her spirit more than anything ever had.

  Whatever motherhood cost her, it was worth it.

  CHAPTER 3

  The doctor, another of Juliet’s friends from church, saw Holly right away. He gave her six stitches over her eye, but her lip would have to heal on its own.

  Back home, after Juliet and Robbie left, Holly sat in the rocking chair her sister Cathy had bought her. Lily was awake and alert as they rocked, her big eyes focused on Holly as she sang. Holly wasn’t a good singer. She’d often taken a turn in karaoke bars when she was loose enough to have flattened inhibitions, but once a friend had videotaped her. She’d watched it later, horrified that she sounded like a bad audition on American Idol—one that left crass judges in stitches and was played in mockery on all the morning shows. Still, Lily seemed soothed by her voice.

  Holding her daughter was the biggest endorphin rush Holly had ever known.

  She dreaded leaving her with a babysitter. None of Holly’s friends was reliable enough to watch her. She knew. She had been just like them.

  The doorbell rang, and Holly felt a flash of panic. Her house . . . it was a mess. Who would show up without calling? She stood and glanced in the mirror next to her front door. She looked like she’d just been in a drunken brawl. In the adjoining kitchen, dirty dishes sat piled in the sink. Why hadn’t she washed them when she finished eating this morning? The place had a faint odor of dirty diapers. She should have changed the diaper pail.

  The bell rang again, followed by an aggressive knock. Whoever it was, they weren’t going away.

  Reconciling herself to embarrassment and humiliation, Holly raised Lily to her shoulder and headed for the door. She peered out the peephole as more knocking shook the door. Two police officers stood there, looking intimidatingly official.

  Worried, she opened the door. “Hi.”

  “Are you Holly Cramer?”

  “Yes. Have you found the muggers already?”

  The men looked puzzled. “Muggers? What are you referring to?”

  She shrugged. “The robbery today. That’s not what you’re here about?”

  “No, but we’d like to talk to you. Could we come in for a minute?”

  Her heart sank. What had she done now? Since she’d found out she was going to be a mother, she’d tried to live a good life, no longer on the razor edge of right and wrong. Had some old choice come back to haunt her?

  The taller cop, who identified himself as Sergeant Petri, was dark and somber-looking, a little like Hotch on Criminal Minds. The other one—named Tynes—looked younger but still authoritative. “Can I see your identification?” she asked.

  They showed her their badges.

  “Southport Police Department? I don’t even think I’ve been to Southport lately. What is it? What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Creed Kershaw,” Petri said. “He’s not the one who roughed you up, is he?”

  She sucked in a breath and pulled Lily tighter. “Creed? No, I haven’t seen him in months. I hardly know him.”

  “If we could come inside, you could sit down.”

  She glanced back at her living room/kitchen combo. She doubted she could convince the cops to just go away. “All right,” she sighed. “It’s just . . . it’s a mess. With a new baby, only four weeks old . . . and it’s been a bad day.”

  “We won’t take long,” Petri said.

  Sighing, she stepped back and let them in. “I know what you’re thinking. How does a person live in this mess? It’s just that I’m not getting much sleep, so the dishes aren’t really a priority, and the laundry’s piling up . . .”

  Tynes spoke in a softer voice, surprising her. “I have a three-month-old baby, so I get it. We just want to ask you a few questions about Kershaw.”

  His smile helped her relax. If they had come to accuse her of some long-forgotten infraction, they would look a little more guarded, wouldn’t they?

  She moved the blanket draped over the back of the couch, the diaper bag she had thrown there, the vinyl changing pad . . . Cradling Lily in one arm, she moved the vibrating seat on the floor blocking their path. “Here,” she said. “You can sit on the couch.”

  They sat, and she took the rocker again.

  Tynes spoke first. “We understand that Kershaw is the father of your baby.”

  Holly’s mouth fell open and she stopped rocking. She hadn’t told anyone. Not her sisters, not her best friends . . . nobody. “How is it that you understand that? I haven’t identified the father. He’s not on the birth certificate. I haven’t told anyone who her father is.”

  “Let me start at the beginning,” Petri said. “We’re investigating a murder that happened over the weekend in Southport. Creed Kershaw is a person of interest in the case, but he’s disappeared. Do you have any knowledge of his whereabouts?”

  She let that plunk into her psyche, the ripples moving through her brain. “ ‘A person of interest’? So you think he’s the killer? Great. I’ve always had amazing taste in men.”

  She saw a glint of amusement in Petri’s eyes. “So you did have a relationship with him?”

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in almost a year.”

  “Ten months, to be exact?” Tynes asked.

  How did they know all this? “What would make you come looking for him here?”

  “When we learned he had just become a father, we thought he might be here with you. Are you sure he isn’t the one who hurt you?”

  “Positive. Do you honestly think I’d defend the person who did this to me?”

  She got to her feet, found Lily’s pacifier in her swing, offered i
t to her daughter. Lily took it, her little shoulders hunched.

  Tears misted in Holly’s eyes as she strapped Lily in her swing, but she wasn’t sure if the tears were from anger or fear. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. He doesn’t know about her. I never told him. I didn’t remember his last name until you said it just now. I don’t even have a phone number for him. Does he live in Southport?”

  “Yes.” Their narrow stares indicated they didn’t believe her. Petri’s gaze broke, and he scanned her living room, registering her pictures, clearly looking for a shot with Creed in it. There weren’t any.

  She flicked the music button on the swing. “You Are My Sunshine” started playing. Lily seemed content. Holly stood straighter and faced the two men. “Look, I hate this . . . I met him in a stupid bar when I’d been drinking too much, and I made mistakes. But this guy . . . I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him. I’ve never seen him since. He has absolutely no idea.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Petri said. “We learned of you through a message on his voice mail, left several days ago. It was from a man named Rio, telling Kershaw that you’d given birth, and that he had a daughter.”

  She felt the blood draining from her face. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Do you know Rio Diaz?”

  “Yes. He used to be a friend. He introduced me to Creed that night in the bar.” She had run into Rio once when she was pregnant, and he’d asked when she was due. She shouldn’t have told him. Had he counted up the weeks since her night with Creed?

  Holly lowered to the edge of her rocker. “Look, I’m trying to change. When I realized I was having a baby, I tried to do better, you know? I didn’t want him to know because he seemed like bad news, like all the other guys I’m usually attracted to. The bad dudes I could never bring home to meet my sisters and brother. I figured he’d never know.” There was no sign of sympathy in their eyes. How could they understand? “If he knows about her, I doubt he’d even care. Wouldn’t he have called or something if he did? And if he’s hiding, he sure wouldn’t come to me.”

  “If you see him, if he shows up here, we need for you to call us right away.”

  She took the card Petri offered across the coffee table. “Is he dangerous?”

  “We believe he could be. By now, he knows we’re looking for him. He’s probably armed.”

  They got to their feet, and Holly checked on Lily, who had drifted off to sleep. She walked them to the door. “So . . . you’ll keep this quiet, right? About Lily? If he hasn’t told his family, I’d rather they didn’t know.”

  Tynes looked back at her. “I can’t guarantee his family didn’t hear the voice mail. They’ve been looking for him.”

  Her heart plunged. “Great.”

  “They’re just focused on finding their son right now.”

  She nodded, hating herself. Great job, Holly. You found the only murderer in the room, got drunk with him, and conceived a child. How does it get better than that?

  She let them out and stood on the front stoop as they strode to their squad car. When they drove away, she went back in and studied herself in the mirror.

  “Good job!” she bit out, angry tears rimming her eyes. “Look at you now.” She hated herself, from the tattoos on her biceps to the pink tips on her blonde hair. She wished she could shed her skin like a snake and become someone else, but she would still be a mess.

  Lily’s pacifier fell, and the baby started to cry. Wiping her own tears, Holly shook herself out of her self-loathing and took care of her child.

  CHAPTER 4

  It took a couple of hours for Holly to find Rio Diaz’s phone number. She had to call friends of her friends until she found one who knew how to reach him. He didn’t answer when she called, so she left a message, trying to keep it upbeat so he wouldn’t duck her call. “Hey, Rio, how’s it going? It’s Holly Cramer. Listen, would you give me a call? I need to ask you something. Thanks!”

  When he didn’t call back right away, she texted him. “Hey, Rio! This is Holly Cramer. Give me a call, will you? It’s important.”

  While she waited for his return call, she walked Lily around the house, bouncing her gently. What should she do now? She had no intention of sharing this news with her siblings. Juliet would just remind her that her bad decisions had lousy consequences.

  Holly knew about consequences. Hadn’t she had enough of them?

  It was hard to convince people you were trying to change when you kept repeating the same mistakes. Pregnancy was like a neon sign saying, “You were right! There are consequences!”

  But pregnancy had been the first thing that had ever made Holly want to change.

  She didn’t want to drag it all up again with her sisters or her brother. Wasn’t it bad enough that one drunken, careless night had resulted in a life change? They already thought that picking up guys in bars for one-night stands was common practice for her. Truth be known, it wasn’t. She didn’t normally take strangers home. Even now, she didn’t know what had gotten into her that night.

  And then . . . she’d tried to put it out of her mind until nausea began to greet her each morning. The reality of her pregnancy had hit her hard. She had fully intended to abort . . . but she couldn’t go through with it. The knowledge that there was a baby in her belly—a baby with fingers and toes and nerve endings and a developing brain, and even a personality and potential—had overwhelmed and defeated her plan to end this quietly.

  Her siblings had been great about it. What could they do when a little life was involved? But she knew that they had pretty much thrown up their hands at her latest crisis. They’d teamed up to help clean up another of Holly’s messes. At this very moment, they were probably begging God not to let her fail at motherhood.

  They all assumed she was so promiscuous that she didn’t know the name of the father. She had never told them that, but she let them believe it.

  The phone suddenly rang, startling her, but her twitch didn’t wake the baby. She grabbed the phone. Rio!

  She swiped to answer and put it to her ear. “Hey, Rio. Long time no hear from.”

  She heard the hesitation in his voice. “Hey, Holly. How are you?”

  She thought of skipping over the giving-birth part, but that would be suspect, since he clearly already knew. “Oh, I’m okay. Had a baby four weeks ago. Little girl. Getting used to motherhood and all that.”

  He hesitated again, then said, “Really? I knew you were pregnant, but didn’t know you’d had it already.”

  That made her angry, ripping her thin membrane of pleasantries. “Okay, cut the ruse, Rio.”

  “What?”

  “You know good and well I’ve had the baby, because you called Creed Kershaw. Where do you get off making the assumption that he’s the father and running to tell him?”

  He sighed. “Have you heard from him, then?”

  “No, I haven’t heard from him. He’s apparently missing and wanted for murder. Thanks for introducing us, by the way.”

  “Holly, I didn’t know he was into anything illegal—and maybe he’s not. He’s just a person of interest, right? And besides, I wasn’t fixing you up with him. I just introduced you.”

  “What made you think he had anything to do with my pregnancy?”

  “The timing,” he said. “When I saw you pregnant and you told me the due date, I sorta counted back, and it seemed like it was around that time.”

  “So?”

  “So, I know you. You’re not the type to just . . . Even that night I was surprised. When I heard you’d had the baby, I decided to tell him. I figured if he was the dad, he needed to know.”

  The thought made her sick. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I left a message, but he never called back. If he’s hiding out and evading a murder charge, the baby might be the last thing on his mind.”

  Her head was beginning to throb. “How did you even know I had her?”

  “I heard it from Mattie a
t the Dock.”

  The Dock had been one of her favorite bars, back when she was the party queen. “Yeah, she came to see me in the hospital.”

  “She showed me a picture. Cute baby. Looks just like you, except for the pink hair.”

  Holly couldn’t help the pride welling up in her heart.

  “So the cops talked to you?” Rio asked.

  “Yeah, they did, because of you. When’s the last time you talked to Creed?”

  “It’s been a few months.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about this?”

  “No, nobody. I swear, Holly. I wasn’t even sure, so I only told him.”

  “This isn’t just gossip, Rio. It’s my baby’s life. She deserves better, and I don’t want some stranger suing me for visitation rights.”

  She knew how ridiculous this sounded. If he were such a stranger, why had she gotten so intimate? The irony didn’t escape her.

  “I meant well, Holly. He was a good guy when I knew him in high school. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Next time mind your own stinking business.” Her words got caught in her throat. “Whatever. Thanks for the info.”

  She hung up and drew in a deep, ragged breath and dabbed at her eyes. Now what? She rejected her first instinct to call one of her sisters or her brother.

  She went to the window, peered out. Her street looked quiet. It had started to rain, so the road was empty of playing children and neighbors walking their dogs. She checked her locks, then armed her security system, the one that Juliet had insisted she have installed. Even if Creed didn’t come, she could always count on the meth heads showing up for an encore.

  She got her gun out of her purse and made sure it was loaded.

  Maybe the murder investigation had distracted Creed completely. Maybe a new daughter was the furthest thing from Creed Kershaw’s mind, wherever he was. But she couldn’t depend on that. And the dopers . . . they’d probably thrown away anything that couldn’t help them buy drugs right away. Still, her address had been in her purse. She prayed they wouldn’t use it.

  Anger spiraled through her chest. She couldn’t just sit here waiting. She had to do something. She didn’t know where to find her muggers, but she might be able to help track Creed down.