"Certainly."
"You're obnoxious," she said, still not meaning it.
"Unavoidably," he said.
"And unmanageable," she added.
"But domesticated, and done. Are you hungry?"
She took a deep breath. "No. I thought I was. I thought I could do this over a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine, but I can't."
"Do what?" Mason asked as his own appetite slipped away.
"You don't know me at all, Lou," she began. "I own my own business-Fresh Air. I'm a public relations consultant. I polish corporate images, manage bad news."
Mason shrugged. "That's nothing to be ashamed of," he joked. "That's Mickey Shanahan's died-and-gone-toheaven dream. I'm surprised he hasn't already proposed."
Abby clenched her jaw. "Claire warned me you would be like this."
"Like what?" Mason said, palms up in protest.
"She said you would fall in love with me at first sight and dazzle me with one-liners."
"It's on my business card," he said.
Abby withheld her smile. "I saw Sherri Thomas's report on Channel Six last night. She said the police suspect a woman named Jordan Hackett killed Gina Davenport and that you're representing her."
Mason softened his tone. "Abby-"
She interrupted. "Lou, please don't talk to me about privilege and confidentiality. I've spent my life living with secrets."
Mason had also watched Thomas's broadcast, despite his promise to ignore it. He paused and nodded. "Okay. I am representing her and she may be a suspect. What's that got to do with you?"
Abby drew another deep breath, gripping the table with both hands. "Jordan Hackett may be my daughter."
Mason had prepared himself for every possible permutation of Abby's involvement in Gina Davenport's murder-patient, suspect, friend of the victim-but not this one. Abby's squared shoulders rolled inward, her well-toned arms quivered, her eyes pooled. Mason didn't know if it was true, but he felt Abby's torment that it might be.
Neither Jordan nor her parents had said that she was adopted. He wouldn't have cared because it wouldn't have mattered. He would learn the root of Jordan's emotional problems if she was charged with murder. Adoption was an unlikely source. Adopted kids look for their birth parents. They don't kill their therapists.
"Is that why you called Claire?"
Abby nodded, the moment of confession passed, and she rallied. "I didn't know about Jordan at first, just Gina Davenport."
"I don't get the connection," Mason said.
"I got a telephone call last Friday from a woman who didn't identify herself. She said if I wanted to find my daughter to call a number." Abby reached into her purse for a yellow Post-it note and handed it to Mason. "816555-2319," she recited.
Mason asked, "Whose number is it?"
"Gina Davenport's."
"You spoke with her?"
"She identified herself when I called. I'm the same way. I always answer the phone with 'It's Abby.' She said, 'Dr. Davenport.' I told her who I was and how I had gotten her number. She went ballistic, said she didn't know anything about my daughter and that if I called again she would sue me for harassment."
Mason said, "You've left out one pretty important piece of the story."
"I know. The part about having a daughter. I was seventeen and stupid. I thought it was love at first sight. I gave my baby girl up for adoption."
"Had you tried to find her before last Friday?"
Abby wiped her hands and eyes with a napkin. "No. Being an unwed mother was my first experience with public relations. I grew up here. My parents were mortified when I got pregnant and sent me to live with an uncle in St. Louis until I had the baby. They told everyone I was enrolled in a school for gifted children. I came home after graduation."
"Did your parents get over it?"
"They moved away. We don't talk much. Their story became my story. I went to school, went to work, pretended it didn't happen. I refused to read stories about women who searched for the children they gave up. It wasn't about me. Then I got that phone call and I couldn't pretend anymore."
"So you called."
"When I'm helping a business manage a crisis, I focus on proportional response. Gina Davenport's response was way out of proportion, which made me think she was lying."
"What did you do next?"
"Nothing. I didn't know what to do. Claire and I worked together on a fund-raiser last year. I called her after Gina was murdered. If there was a connection between Gina and my daughter and someone murdered Gina, my daughter could be in danger too. I asked Claire to help me find my daughter and she invited me to dinner."
"She was fixing us up. I'm surprised she didn't do it before."
"She tried. I was with someone," Abby said.
"Timing is everything. Why do you think Jordan may be your daughter?"
Abby looked at her hands for an answer, then straight at Mason. "In my business, I go with my gut. I size up people and problems for a living. I couldn't attribute the anonymous phone call I got to a bad joke. The woman who called me knew I had given up my daughter for adoption. She wanted me to think that Gina Davenport knew where my daughter was and she wanted me to call Gina. Gina's reaction didn't make sense to me unless she did know something. Then Gina was killed and a girl the same age as my daughter was named a suspect. It's all I have to work with."
"Have you told the police?"
Abby bit her lower lip. "Yes. The detective was very polite, but I think I just made her more suspicious of Jordan."
"The phone call and Davenport's murder were certainly a jolt, but I still don't understand why my involvement upset you so much."
Abby blushed, her eyes pooling again. "You said you were defending someone who might be charged with Gina Davenport's murder. My feelings about my daughter were so close to the surface after all these years, I guess I overreacted the same way Gina overreacted to my phone call."
"Is that all?"
"No," she answered, dipping her head before looking at him again. "Love at first sight hasn't been kind to me."
Mason reached across the table, wrapping his hand around hers. "Why don't we start with dinner and see how that goes before we worry about dessert."
Chapter 6
Mason stood outside the Cable Depot at eleven P.M., forty-nine hours after Gina Davenport's murder. The eighth-floor window was boarded up, facing south above 6th Street, the building flanked by Jefferson on the west and Washington on the east-dead presidents immortalized in side streets. The bloody stains and chalk outline marking the spot where Gina died were still faintly visible under the lights along 6th.
Mason had watched Sherri Thomas's continuing coverage of the murder on the ten o'clock news. While Mason and Abby were having dinner, her cameraman had filmed a Depot janitor as he scrubbed the pavement. Sherri caught Arthur Hackett in an ambush interview, asking him if his daughter had confessed to the murder. Arthur took the bait, shoving both Sherri and the cameraman.
"Great," Mason said to the television. "I can represent the daughter on a murder charge and the father on assault and battery."
His dinner with Abby had not been the romantic watershed he'd hoped for even though their attraction for one another was more than passing, each sensing something in the other that was missing in their lives. That was plain in the way they touched, their hands molding together like a matched set.
Abby's involvement with Gina Davenport and Jordan held them back, sending each of them home alone. Abby knew of nothing that tied her to them beyond the phone call she had received. Mason realized he'd have to uncover the connection regardless of the consequences, setting aside his personal feelings for his client's life.
They didn't talk of any of this over dinner. It was there as they danced around intimacy, reaching out and retreating while they stumbled over the superficial details of their daily lives. Abby didn't have to ask him to find out whether Jordan was her daughter. She just put it on the table. Mason almost asked the waiter to box it up so he could take it home and chew on it tomorrow, knowing that he would do what he could.