“I have no idea. But I’m not willing to make a case of adultery out of a chat on a park bench.”
She jumped off the couch and started pacing back and forth. “But he lied to me about where he was. Okay, so Bebe saw him in the park and thought it was odd, just the way he was dressed and the way he was kind of talking to this woman out of the corner of his mouth, all strange.”
“I just knew something was weird with him the minute I saw him,” Bebe agreed. “It looked very suspicious, you know? So I didn’t go over, didn’t say hello, nothing, just got the dog and got out of there.”
“And she said to me, why was Michael up at Humboldt Park the other day? And I’m wondering about this, because I don’t know any reason. The man has a desk job. He doesn’t go out in the field anymore. I mean, maybe to a luncheon or something, but the middle of a park? Meeting some young slutty-looking girl? I don’t think so.” Picking up steam as she continued the story, his mother perched next to him again on the couch, nudging him to look at the photos again. “So I ask him where he was that day, and he shrugs and says he was at work. All day. He remembers because it was such a busy day. And, of course, I know he’s lying. So I tell his secretary, who is a doll, to let me know the next time he’s out of the office and doesn’t have an appointment in the book.”
“Oh, Ma…” Sean stared into space. His mother playing amateur detective and checking up on his dad and conspiring with his secretary? And right when the old man was up for a major promotion? He’d never forgive her.
Sean looked up. On the other hand, what was Michael Calhoun doing on that park bench with that woman? He narrowed his eyes at the photos. Ever since he’d cracked a couple of hard cases, people had been teasing him about his “uncanny knack for seeing the truth.” It was a quote from a newspaper account of his career, and the other detectives—and his brothers—thought it was pretty funny to ride him about it. It was a bunch of baloney, but still… If he stared at the photo of his father and the curvy blonde long enough, would he see the real deal behind this shadowy meeting in the park?
“So the next time your father wasn’t where he was supposed to be, I sent Bebe back to Humboldt Park again, you know, disguised, so she could get closer this time. She wore a headscarf and sunglasses and pushed a baby carriage. Your father never suspected a thing,” his mom said with fierce satisfaction.
Bebe in disguise, pushing a baby carriage. It might’ve been funny if it weren’t so horrifying. “Let me get this straight. You had Bebe shadowing Dad at the park?”
“So? She got some very good pictures, didn’t she?” His mother shook her head. “Same woman, same park bench. Meeting her again. And look at her, Sean. Cheap Christmas trash.”
Well, he couldn’t disagree. Bebe’s clear, sharp photographs showed a dyed-blonde with obvious roots and a frizzy ponytail, big sunglasses, and a dark raincoat over her clothes. She had a good jawline, a determined little chin, and what appeared to be a nicely shaped mouth exaggerated by a load of shiny, dark pink lipstick. The raincoat was open far enough in several of the pictures to reveal a low-cut top, very tight jeans, and the most god-awful pair of shoes he’d ever seen. They were clear plastic sandals with very high heels and glitter and stars plastered all over them. He didn’t have to be a detective to recognize hooker shoes when he saw them.
So which was worse? The assumption that his dad was having an affair? Or that he was somehow involved with a prostitute?
“All right,” he said grimly. “You’ve got photos of him with a suspicious woman. Is there more?”
“That’s the thing, Sean. I was waiting for him to have, you know, another unexplained absence. But he hasn’t. Well, until today, but his secretary heard him on the phone arranging to meet Jake, so I think that was okay.”
“Yeah,” Sean put in. “I got a message from Jake canceling the fishing trip. He said Dad had an errand for him. So that checks out.”
“So since the meeting where Bebe got the pictures, he’s been clean. But now…” Her voice was positively triumphant as she made a flourish Bebe’s way.
“I saw her again,” Bebe whispered.
“At the park?”
“Oh, no. At the airport.” Bebe leaned forward, her eyes wide. “I had to go pick up my niece, who is such a nice girl. And so smart. She had a scholarship to Johns Hopkins. You should meet her, Sean. She’d be perfect for you.”
“Uh huh. How about the rest of the story?”
“Well, I went to pick up my niece, and who do I see? That same woman from the park! Oh, she was trying to look different all right—her hair was a different color and she had a headscarf, a bandanna kind of thing, but that did not fool me.” Bebe, now the queen of scarf disguises, nodded sagely. “I recognized that trick, I’ll tell you.”
“You saw her at the airport,” Sean said patiently. “So she was leaving town. Which is good, right? If Dad was somehow mixed up with this woman, he’s not now, because she left town.”
“Oh, no, that’s the thing,” Bebe interrupted. “She wasn’t leaving. She was arriving.”
“I don’t get it. If she was already in Chicago, why was she arriving?”
“We don’t get it, either,” his mother said, patting his arm. “But that’s where you come in.”
He had a very bad feeling about this. And since Jake had just canceled out on the fishing trip, Sean didn’t really have a good excuse to duck and run, either.
“Sean, my sweet, adorable son,” Yvonne Calhoun murmured, putting her head on his shoulder, “we all know you have this…”
He knew what would be next.
“You have an uncanny knack for seeing the truth,” she finished. “Sean, you are practically psychic when it comes to these criminals and figuring them out. Disguises, deceptions, it’s nothing to you. You just see right through.”
Already feeling trapped, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”
His mother sat up straight, laying it out for him without mincing words. “Here’s the deal. Bebe saw her at the baggage pickup, she thought it was her so she followed her, she lost her again, but then she picked her out at the Help desk.”
“I spotted the headscarf,” Bebe said helpfully.
“So she got right in behind her at the Help desk and eavesdropped.”
“Wow, Bebe, maybe you should join the force,” Sean suggested, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Keystone Kops on a stakeout.
“I know,” Bebe said with a smile. “I was pretty good, I’ll tell you.”
“And what did you hear when you eavesdropped?” he asked tersely, knowing he didn’t really want to know.
“She wanted to know how to get to…”
Sean bent closer, waiting for the word that would come at the end of the dramatic pause. “Where?”
“Champaign,” both women said at once.
“Downstate Champaign?” he asked doubtfully. “University of Illinois?”
“Exactly.” His mother sat back. “She caught a bus to go downstate to Champaign. So I want you to go there, too, and find this tart and figure out what she wants with your father.”
2
AS SEAN UNPACKED AT the Illini Union, he could feel himself begin to relax. A beautiful summer day. A nice hotel room overlooking the Quad on a serene, green college campus where most of the students were gone for the summer. And just about no chance in hell he would ever run into anything remotely connected to the bimbo in the hooker shoes his mother wanted him to find.
Okay,