Free His Best Friend's Baby by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby Page A

widened. “Wait. Isn’t that...”
    He tucked the photo away. “I’m going to ask you to keep what you know to yourself for a few days.”
    “Oh!” Eyes still wide and glassy, she nodded and kept nodding. “I can do that. Sure. Wow.”
    Back in Seattle, Quinn and Ellis Carter flashed the wife’s photo around some more and found a taxi driver willing to swear he’d picked her up at the airport—“Yo! That woman is a witch!” he declared—and a desk clerk at the Alexis Hotel who had registered her for a room.
    “I knew who she was,” he said with composure. “We often have guests who choose to register under an alias to avoid the public eye. I thought nothing of it.”
    All suggestive enough to earn a search warrant, executed by San Francisco P.D. They called within a few hours.
    “Here’s a bizarre one,” the San Francisco detective told Quinn. “Get this. We found a lock of blond hair in a little crystal candy dish with a lid. The hair had been dipped in blood. Dried now, but you could tell what it was. The lab’s got it. If the DNA matches...”
    If the blood had just been the rock star’s, his wife might have dreamed up an excuse for treasuring the two-inch chunk of blood-soaked hair. They weren’t exactly a normal couple with all-American habits. Unfortunately for her, some of the blood came from the blonde whose body had been fished from the Sound.
    The arrest brought huge headlines and ensured that the faces of the dead musician and his wife dominated the covers of the tabloids. Quinn got tired of the endless requests for interviews and was grateful to have a couple of quiet days off.
    His own lawn had gotten shaggy and the milk in his refrigerator was sour when he poured it on his cereal.
    He growled, and dumped the rest down the sink. The bread was growing mold, too. He cut it off and toasted a couple of pieces for breakfast. Grocery shopping needed to come ahead of mowing.
    In the produce section at the store, he saw a pair of long legs that turned out to belong to a teenager with short tousled hair like Mindy’s, but also a nose ring. Still, he stood in the checkout line wondering how she was doing. She hadn’t left a phone message. Maybe she’d seen him on the news and realized he wouldn’t have had time for her anyway. Or maybe she was more stubborn than he’d expected.
    He wouldn’t make her beg, but she was going to have to ask for help. All he was doing was honoring her declaration of independence, not holding a grudge. In that spirit, he sure wasn’t going to drive by as if by chance just to see what the house looked like, even though the thought crossed his mind as he turned out of the grocery store parking lot.
    Another week passed, and then another, and he began to wonder if she would call. Dean’s attorney phoned at last to let him know that probate was coming along.
    “With the boat and the BMW sold as well as the business...”
    Quinn interrupted. “She sold her car?”
    “Mrs. Fenton is a levelheaded young woman,” Armstrong said with apparent approval. “Without a substantial income of her own, she could see that continuing to make such steep payments doesn’t make sense.”
    So the little bright blue car was gone. Quinn frowned, wondering what she’d chosen to drive instead.
    “I was going to buy the Camaro,” he said.
    “Yes, in fact I have it here. That’s really why I called. She’s already signed the papers so we can transfer the title.” He went on, but Quinn didn’t listen.
    She didn’t want him at the house even to pick up the car. Maybe he was just dense not to have realized she disliked him so much.
    Stupid to be shocked, but he was. He was also suddenly conscious of a hollow feeling under his breastbone. He shouldn’t have had that Philly sandwich for lunch. The stupid onions.
    “Yeah. Okay. Sure,” he said, only belatedly noticing that Armstrong was still talking. Into the silence that followed his interruption, Quinn said, “I’ll, uh, pick