Read Online Stealing Time by Leslie Glass - Free Book Online Page A

well? How about her level of patience? Did she get impatient easily? Was she happy in New York? Did she ever set a fire when she was a little girl, ever hurt an animal? Did she ever get burned, or burn anybody?
"What kind of questions are these?" the mother demanded.
Routine, April assured her. She couldn't completely abandon the possibility that Heather might have found out her baby was her husband's with another woman and killed him in revenge. Such things were not completely unknown in history.
Mrs. Kwan knew what April was getting at, but insisted Heather wasn't that kind of child. Good child. Too independent, maybe, but good.
"How many months ago did your daughter tell you she was having a baby?"
Silence.
"Was she excited about it?"
"She's a good girl."
"When you talked to her after she got the baby, what did she say? How did those weeks go? Did she enjoy having a baby?"
"What kind of questions are these?" Mrs. Kwan asked again but this time in a way that indicated she knew very well what kind of questions they were. "Heather Rose good girl," she assured April again. "Best daughter in whole world. She call me every week. Never complain. Never." But Soo Ling Kwan must have heard something in her daughter's voice during those weekly calls.
She insisted Heather Rose had suffered no injuries, no accidents, had never hurt or starved herself. But she had also immediately jumped to the conclusion that any call from the police had to mean her daughter was dead. It might not be an unusual reaction, but still April wondered if a part of Mrs. Kwan had been expecting such an end for her daughter. She learned nothing else.
If it had been a quiet night, April would have been heading out about now. But this was the kind of case that made everybody nuts. Even if Iriarte hadn't told her to keep on it, she wouldn't have been in a hurry to leave. Nobody liked abuse and missing babies. They weren't the kind of thing you could go home and forget: have a nice night. Losing a kid was the worst. It was more than a career maker or breaker. It was personal. She glanced at the stack of pink message slips on her desk. Then her phone rang.
"Midtown North detective squad, Sergeant Woo," she said in nice even tones.
"Hola, querida, que tal?"
She smiled into the receiver. "Hey, Mike."
"Miss me?"
"Yeah," she admitted in spite of herself. Then she wanted to bite her tongue for revealing her feelings.
"Yo tambien."
"How's the case going?" she asked, playing with a pencil. Mike had gotten a homicide two days ago, a real mess in a hotel on Lexington Avenue. All she'd heard were rumors that State Department, intelligence, and Israeli consulate people were working on it. For some reason he'd been holding out on giving her the details. Now he grunted.
"Victim was an Israeli. His business partner claims he had ten thousand dollars in cash and a sack of diamonds worth a quarter of a million when he was iced. ME's report says he was tortured and his crown jewels were hacked off while he was still alive. Poor bastard bled to death."
She knew Mike had attended the autopsy; now she knew the reason for his silence. Ugly, ugly case. She made a sympathetic noise, didn't envy him.
His voice brightened. "I hear you caught a big one, too."
"What do you hear?"
"Nothing—just you caught a big one. Need help?"
"No, thanks. You didn't ask for mine." April bristled; she wasn't good at inequality.
"You don't want to know about this one."
"Sure I do. And you just hate being left out of anything."
"Give me a break. Is it a sin to be supportive? I thought that's what every woman wants."
"Sorry. I'm a little touchy about this one. It's weird."
"Not as weird as mine," he shot back.
"Fine, it's not as weird as yours, but still it's weird." She gave him the gist of it, relieved to get it off her chest.
"Ransom note or call?"
"No."
"Anything on the phone tap?"
"Nothing yet, but I'd be real surprised if we get a ransom demand on this one," she said. "It's not her baby. But don't pass