It Happened One Christmas. Ann Lethbridge
and wait for him. She was a big girl. It was crazy how shy she could be, but she’d always hated going into a bar or restaurant alone. Eating alone was unthinkable. This was different, though. This was for Charley, and Luke Sarkov would show up, and everything would work out.
She opened her door and stepped onto the curb, smoothed her khaki slacks, which were rumpled from sitting so long. She had on a short-sleeved white blouse—wrinkled, also—and she shivered and she felt the breeze off the bay. She’d forgotten how cool San Francisco could be even in the summer.
Lum Lee’s was in a narrow building, with the glass storefront displaying the usual glazed spare ribs and seafood. There was a menu in the window, but Grace didn’t read it. She wasn’t there for dinner.
Pushing open the door, she walked in, the scent of garlic frying in sesame oil hitting her like a soft blow. Chinese waiters ran around, yelling in their tongue, and most of the customers were Chinese, too. There was a dumbwaiter in one wall, which busboys opened and snatched dishes from and shouted into the shaft to the basement kitchen.
Bedlam.
On the right stood a bar with a few empty stools and a sleepy-looking bartender sporting a Fu Manchu mustache. Grace halted to get her bearings. Would Luke be at a table or…? She saw narrow stairs leading to a second floor. Maybe he was up there.
She wouldn’t be embarrassed. She would stand there and collect her wits and take her time looking around.
At that moment it struck her how her entire life had shifted on its axis. Nothing seemed real anymore—especially her meeting a strange man in Chinatown. It was all a nightmare, and her skin crawled with anxiety. This meeting was so furtive, as if she were a criminal.
She would be a criminal in another day. According to the law, she would be. Oh, God.
“Dinner, Miss?” a waiter asked, jarring her to awareness.
“Uh, no, I’m meeting someone here.”
“Ah, yes, Miss. You look for Mr. Luke?” He was short and round and smiling.
“Luke Sarkov?”
“Yes. He here. Upstairs. He like it better. Quiet up there. You go there.”
She made her way up the narrow steps, came out into a dining room. A few Chinese families were eating early dinners, wielding their chopsticks, chattering quietly. Her eyes swept over them.
Why was her heart pounding so hard?
He was sitting in the farthest corner of the room. She spotted him right away, even though he was in the shadows. He was the only Caucasian besides her in the entire room. So much for her worrying about his description.
She took a deep breath and made her feet move. When she got closer, she could see he was looking at her—staring at her, really—his eyes as blue as the empty sky, close under sandy brows. Oh, yes, now she remembered those eyes from twenty-odd years ago. All of a sudden, she had an instant of stark terror as he watched her approach, and she didn’t know why. He was her father’s friend, for God’s sake.
He didn’t stand when she reached the table. He just looked up at her, his shirt unbuttoned at his throat, tie askew, old tweed sport coat stretched across broad shoulders. A definite whisker shadow on his cheeks and chin.
“Well, well, Grace Bennett,” he said.
“And you’re Luke Sarkov.”
He gestured with a hand. “Sit.”
She sat, her mouth abruptly dry.
“You have any trouble finding this place?”
“No. But parking was hard.”
“Yeah, it always is.” He seemed relaxed while at the same time utterly alert. There was a Tsing Tao beer bottle on the table in front of him, and he lifted it and took a swig before asking, “You want something to drink or eat?”
“Tea, please.” She found it hard to get words past the dry tightness in her throat.
He raised his hand and a waiter appeared as if by magic. “Chai,” Luke said.
The teapot and a cup were set down in front of her. The waiter poured, and the steamy fragrance of jasmine wafted up to her nostrils.
“You must come here often,” she began.
“I do. Lum Lee is a friend of mine. I helped his kid brother kick the habit a few years back.”
“Drugs?” she asked weakly.
“That’s right. Heroin, in this case.”
“When you were a policeman, I imagine?”
“Yeah. When I was a Vice Squad detective.” A shadow crossed his long face, and grooves suddenly etched themselves from his nose to his mouth. “Big Bob tell you that?”
“Just that you used to be a policeman.”
“Enough about me. We’re here because of your problem.”
“Yes.” She took a sip of tea. She knew what she must look like—the dowdy college professor, too ladylike, too timid, playing a role for which she was totally unsuited.
“So, tell me what happened. Bob gave me a short version.”
Lord, he made her uncomfortable. He was harsh, direct to the point of deliberate rudeness.
“Well, I…”
“Look, you can trust me. I owe your dad.”
“What exactly do you owe him?”
He stared at her for a moment, his blue eyes boring through her, then they softened. “My life,” he said shortly.
“Oh.”
“Listen, this isn’t the time for old war stories. Tell me about your problem. Your son—your foster son, that is.”
“Charley.” She took a deep, quavering breath. “I was a volunteer therapist at a women’s shelter in Boulder four years ago, and I was counseling a girl named Kerry Pope.”
“You’re a shrink?”
“I’m actually a licensed psychologist, but I rarely practice. I’m a professor at CU, the University of Colorado. I teach psychology.”
Those eyes, drilling through her. “Bob didn’t tell me that.”
“In any case,” she said primly, “Kerry was pregnant. Her boyfriend beat her up regularly. She’d been using drugs on and off. She was not in any shape to be a mother. And she knew that. She knew it.” Grace took a breath. “So she gave me temporary custody of her son just after he was born. I became his legal foster mother. Then Kerry disappeared. Never wrote or called or asked about him. Then, when I was going through the adoption process, I found out she’d been imprisoned for armed robbery, and…”
“Damn junkies.”
“Then…then, she refused to sign the adoption papers and went to court to get custody of Charley.”
“Mmm,” he said.
Grace told him about the hearing, everything Natalie had said about working on an appeal, about her own decision to disappear. When she finished, Luke leaned back in his chair and took another swallow of the beer; she could see his Adam’s apple move in his throat. She sat there, one hand in her lap, the other curving around her teacup, and waited for his reaction.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Like Bob told you, we need to get the goods on…What’s her name?”
“Kerry. Kerry Pope. P-O-P-E.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you…I mean, do you think you can help me?”
He leveled his gaze on her and his mouth curved in a merciless grin. “You want this Kerry Pope destroyed, nailed to the