Bad To The Bone Read Free Page B

locate him, and I saw this
movie once on Lifetime where the—"
    "Gotcha," I said, cutting her off. Watch one
week of Lifetime programming for women and you'll walk away with a
working knowledge of the law—along with a firm conviction that
every woman in America is either being stalked, driven crazy by a
cheating husband, screwed in a divorce or trying to convince a
daughter that her boyfriend is a psycho. Which may be close to the
truth.
    "Everything looks okay," I admitted as I
examined the court papers stored inside the envelope. I skipped
over the part about what jerks they were to each other and reached
the section about sole custody being granted to the mother, Tawny
Anne Bledsoe of blah, blah, blah. Amazing how legalese can reduce a
child's future to a handful of words so dry they may as well be
referring to the fate of a poodle in a pet store. I double-checked
the last page. The court seal was genuine. Now what would I do?
    "Please," she said, sensing my hesitation.
She leaned forward and the neckline of her pink sweater gaped open,
exposing a pair of perfect apple-shaped breasts squeezed into a
push-up bra. Were those things real? She was flashing them around
like they were brand-new and store-bought. I'm not Miss Modesty,
but even I keep my gozongas under wraps until I know the person I'm
flashing a little bit better.
    For a second, I thought she might be coming
on to me, but I dismissed the thought. I'd probably just been
watching too much women's golf lately.
    "I love Tiffany more than anything in the
world," she was saying. "And I don't want anything from Robert,
except my daughter back. He can keep his alimony and child support.
I have a job selling commercial real estate. I make a good living.
I bought this coat myself."
    She thrust a furry arm at me as if she
wanted me to touch it. When I simply stared, she let it fall over
the arm of the chair and began to cry, her tears tracing rivulets
through the heavy makeup that failed to conceal her wounds. "I
can't sleep at night. I keep thinking he might turn on her
next."
    I held out a tissue and she took it with her
bandaged left hand, plucking it from my grip with robotlike
precision. "I would do it myself, go out there and find her," she
sobbed. "But I don't know where to begin. Please, I'm begging you,
as one woman to another. Help me out. Find it in your heart to help
a stranger. Look what he did to me. Just look at this." She tilted
her chin up. The scab trailed all the way down her throat, ending
in a small ring of bruises that looked like blurred
fingerprints.
    I sighed, mentally running down the reasons
why I ought to take the case, despite my misgivings. There was
nothing else on the horizon to pay my rent next month. It wasn't
very sisterly of me to refuse. Maybe the kid really was in danger.
And it would give me a good excuse for ignoring my ex-husband.
    "Okay, I'll do it," I said reluctantly, not
quite sure of my motives, other than that they were green and
involved a lot of zeros.
    "God bless you," she cried, her tears
forgotten. She leaned across the desk and grabbed my hand, then
held it up to her mouth and kissed it.
    I reclaimed my hand, taken aback by her
excessive gratitude. Desperation is always unattractive, no matter
how justified.
    "What else do you need to know?" she asked,
blue eyes fixed on my face.
    "Not much. Let's start with your phone
number and address." I wrote it down as she gave me the
information. She was living in one of the more expensive
subdivisions in North Raleigh. I'd seen the address before: on the
list of her husband's former residences.
    "You've covered everything else here." I
held up the sheet of paper with her husband's life detailed on it.
"I take it he's not at home right now?" There was an apartment
listed as his current residence.
    She shook her head. "I've been calling and
stopping by his place this whole week. No one's at home."
    "When did he take Tiffany?"
    Her eyes dropped. "Last weekend. I let him
take her to