Pushing Up Bluebonnets

1

My daddy used to say there's news and then there's sitdown news. When I received the call from a police officer named Cooper Boyd asking me to help him identify a car-wreck victim, I was thankful to be already seated in the big leather chair in my home office.

"Oh my God," I said. "Is it Kate? Or Jeff? Or—"

"Ma'am, the victim is female. Who is Kate and when did you see her or speak to her last?"

My heart was racing now. "Kate Rose is my twin sister. She has dark brown hair and brown eyes. She works in the Texas Medical Center and I talked to her before she—oh God. What happened?"

"Take a deep breath. The victim has blond hair and the incident occurred in Montgomery County last night. Obviously this woman is not your sister."

"That's good. That's so good." Now that my thoughts were no longer focused on worst-case scenarios, I noticed Boyd's voice sounded like he'd gargled with axle grease this morning.

"This wasn't exactly an accident," he said. "I've come here to Houston from Pineview, where I'm the police chief. The victim was life-flighted to Ben Taub General around midnight. She's in a coma."

"Will she pull through?" My pulse slowed a little, but the coffee I'd just finished was still sloshing around after being stirred by panic.

"Doctors aren't saying much," he answered.

"You said Pineview? I've never heard of it."

"Small town, northwest Montgomery County. You know anyone up that way? A client? A relative? A friend?"

The word client caught my attention. "You must know more about me than my name. Why do you think I can help you identify this person?"

"The victim had your business card in her possession, ma'am. Yellow Rose Investigations, right? And adoption reunion is your specialty?"

"Yes," I said.

"See, her having your card is one of the two things we know about her."

"And the other?" I asked.

"Someone wanted her dead."

I closed my eyes and pictured a young woman tangled in the wreckage of an automobile. It didn't help the swirling in my gut. "And she had my card?"

"Yes, Ms. Rose."

"Okay, I'm worried she might be one of my former clients, even though I'm pretty sure I've never done a search for anyone up that way. But she could have just moved there or—"

"Listen, I need your help now," he said. "This young woman probably has relatives who should know she's in critical condition. Think you could meet me in the hospital lobby?"

"I—yes. Sure. Which hospital did you say?"

"Ben Taub."

At least she was in good hands. Ben Taub has one of the best trauma centers in the country. "I can be there in fifteen minutes. How will I know you?"

"I'm in uniform. Brown and gold." He disconnected without a good-bye.

Since it was August and hotter than hell's door handle, I was dressed in shorts and a tank top. I decided that wasn't suitable hospital attire and hurried upstairs with my calico cat, Diva, on my heels. I quickly changed into lightweight cropped pants, a sleeveless cotton blouse and summer clogs.

"What the heck do you think this whole identify-thecoma-patient thing is about?" I asked Diva as I applied lipstick. No time for any other makeup to cover my usual crop of summer freckles, the ones that had ap peared despite the gallon of sunscreen I'd gone through since May.

Diva answered my question with several insightful meows. Too bad the cat whisperer wasn't around to interpret her answer.

As I stepped outside and went through the back gate to the driveway, I wondered if I'd even had a letter from anyone from Pineview. I sure couldn't remember, but then there were times when I couldn't even remember the Alamo.

Using the remote on my key chain, I turned off the car alarm on my new silver Camry. I'd had a superduper special-order car alarm installed that beeped a reminder to engage it whenever I parked. No one got near my car without that thing making enough noise to embarrass thunder. I'd had a little trouble on a case last year with a very bad man sticking GPS devices under my bumper every time I wasn't looking. That would never happen again.

Five for Fighting's latest CD started playing once I started the ignition. "The Riddle" was currently my favorite song. The drive took only ten minutes and that meant I had five minutes to find a parking place in the Medical Center complex—a definite challenge. But since it was nearly noon, most of the morning clinic appointments were over and I located a spot pretty fast. Then I walked the long path to the hospital.

The air-conditioning made the small, stark lobby almost as cold as my ex-husband's heart. I quickly spotted Cooper Boyd thanks to his brown uniform. He looked to be in his midforties with dark, gloomy eyes. He'd be a pretty darn good-looking guy without the gloom. I approached him and we shook hands.

"Abby Rose," I said.

"Thank you for coming." Boyd reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to me. "This is a copy of what we found under the woman's front seat. We sent the actual card for fingerprinting."

My business card, all right—front and back. Someone had scrawled the words "adoption searcher" and "Do this today" on the back. The card appeared smudged and wrinkled, and this condition made the copy a poor one.

I looked up at Boyd, who must have been at least six feet tall. "I could use more details," I said. "Maybe I did have contact with this person in the last few years. Otherwise, how did she get my card?"

"For one thing, a passenger could have dropped it, but speculation is a waste of time at this point. What kind of details do you need?" His drawl had to be East Texas. Very pronounced.

"You're sure this was a murder attempt?" I asked.

From the look on his face, I wished I would have eaten those words before they'd tumbled out. I'd just questioned a lawman's conclusions. You don't do that. Jeff, my boyfriend, is HPD Homicide and I know better.

Boyd's right jaw muscle tensed. "Yes, ma'am, I'm certain. Even the assailant didn't much mind if we figured that out. Now, can we go upstairs and have a look at the victim? Then you can be on your way."

"I am so sorry. I didn't mean to question your assessment. My daddy always said I had a tongue like a bell clapper."

He smiled briefly and I breathed an inward sigh of relief. Conflict with strangers is not my favorite pastime.

"No offense taken," he said.

"Please call me Abby, by the way."

"And I'd prefer Cooper." We began the short walk to the elevators. "Chief seems like a title I don't deserve. Like I should be a genius and God knows I'm not. I've only been doing this job for a year."

"What did you do before?" We entered an empty elevator and Cooper punched the button for the fourth floor.

"FBI. But not anymore."

I wonder why, I thought. "And now you work in a small town," I said.

"Very small." He crossed his hands in front of him and stared up at the indicator lights.

Once we hit the fourth floor and walked out of the elevator, he said, "This young woman was found on a county road, her car wrapped around a tree. Didn't take a mechanic to figure out her air bags had been removed. That's why she suffered the head injury."

I felt a small shiver unrelated to the AC. "And she had my card, but no purse and no insurance information?"

"That's right. They could have been stolen from the wreck immediately after she crashed or maybe she never had them with her in the first place."

"What about the vehicle identification number? Couldn't you track the car ownership that way?" I asked.

"Deliberately destroyed. Even the confidential VIN had been sanded down."

"There's more than one?"

"On this model, there were three—dash, door and the confidential one. Newer models than what she was driving also have VINs etched into the windshield. That's tough to tamper with, but I didn't get lucky there."

"And her thumbprint didn't come up when you ran it by DPS?"

He glanced my way, studying me with what I thought might be amusement. "I'm used to asking the questions, not answering them. We didn't get a match or I wouldn't be here."

"Duh. I knew that." Why couldn't I stop putting my mouth in motion before my mind was in gear?

We followed the signs to the neuro ICU and I explained to Cooper how I work, that many people contact me and that most of them can do their own searching with only a few pointers from the "tip sheets" I send out on how to locate lost relatives. I always send my card when I answer inquiries.

"Because I get far more letters than I could ever handle in person, I take on the more difficult cases—even though I'd be glad to work every case if I had a clone or two. It's sort of a mission for me."

"A mission, huh? I wondered why someone as rich as you—I do my homework, by the way—ran a PI business."

He obviously knew Daddy left my sister and me buckets of money and a successful software company. What else does he know? I wondered. That our own adoption had been illegal, that discovering this changed my life forever and led me down an unusual path as an adoption PI?

"Anyway," he went on, "that means you don't see many clients in person." He sounded disappointed.

"I do as many cases as I can. And that could mean your mystery woman was one of my clients. Or related to one of my clients. Or a friend of a friend. Believe me, I meet plenty of relatives during the reunions."

"Good. There's still hope you can ID her, then. Let me warn you, she's banged up—her face is swollen. I hope you might recognize her anyway because finding out who attempted to kill her is pretty difficult when I don't know who she is."

"Tell me the truth, Cooper. Is she . . . going to die?"

"Don't know. They're keeping her knocked out to let her brain calm down. Swelling, they say." He stared straight ahead, his jaw tight again. "She had her whole life ahead of her and who knows what she'll face if she ever wakes up?"

"Any possibility she did this to herself? Maybe she was depressed."

"Females usually take pills or slice their veins open. And she wouldn't need to cut the brake line to drive into a live oak. Did I tell you the brake line was cut? Anyway, she could speed up to a hundred and slam right into that tree on her own if she wanted to die."

I nodded my agreement, noting his tone had hardened. We walked in silence until we reached the waiting area for the neuro ICU, which was across the hall from the forbidding doors that would allow us in. Boyd told me to have a seat and he'd arrange for us to visit her.

When he came back to get me, he said, "We've got five minutes."

We were admitted into the ICU and Boyd led me to the mystery woman's room. She was covered with a white thermal blanket and was so tiny she seemed lost in the small space crowded with medical machinery, all of the equipment either beeping or blinking. An IV dripped slowly into tubing that fed her bruised arm. But that wasn't all that was bruised.

Her thick dark lashes rested against the purple cres cents under her eyes. She had a battered forehead, a split lip and stitches above the largest lump on her forehead. Any skin not bruised was as pale as the sheets.

"Heck fire," I whispered. I blinked several times, wondering how anyone would recognize this young woman, even someone who knew her. Seemed a miracle to me that she wasn't already pushing up bluebonnets.

I'd stopped a few feet into the room, but Boyd urged me toward the bed with a gentle hand on my back. "Get closer. Try to picture her without all the damage."

"Kinda hard, Cooper, but I'll give it a try."

When I came up beside her, I tilted my head, hoping to get a feel for a profile, maybe. That helped a little. Then I squinted, mentally thinning her face. That seemed to work, too. I could envision the person who might lie beneath the injuries. A sweet face, late teens, early twenties maybe.

"Sorry. I don't think I know her," I finally said.

"You're not sure, though?" Boyd said.

"Like you said, her face is pretty messed up. Maybe I could come back in a few days? Have another look?"

This wasn't what Boyd wanted to hear. "See, I don't know if I can come back. There's only four officers in Pineview."

"I can come by myself." I smiled and tried to sound encouraging. "I sincerely want to help. If I could have that copy of my card, I'll enhance it on my PC. I get plenty of letters and maybe I could match the handwriting."

He pulled the paper from his pocket and handed it to me. "Anything's worth a try, I guess." But glum was the only word to describe Cooper Boyd.

"Can I buy you lunch? The cafeteria in the basement here isn't half bad."

"I don't think—"

"Come on." I tugged his arm, anxious to escape the sleeping Jane Doe. I felt helpless seeing her so still, so banged up and with no family to hold her hand. I understood why Boyd was bummed out. "You need a decent meal before you head back to Pineview."

We took the elevator down, both of us silent. I was thinking how I'd hate to be comatose with no one there to cheer me on, sing to me or talk to me and make me want to fight for my life. Maybe that's what Cooper Boyd was thinking, too.

Once in the cafeteria I chose the comfort of macaroni and cheese—with a salad to cancel out the fat and carbs.

Boyd had a sandwich piled high with turkey and lettuce on whole-grain bread with no mayo. I should introduce him to Kate. Maybe they could share a soy smoothie or a black-bean burger. I glanced at Boyd's ring finger, making sure I hadn't seen a wedding band. Yup. My brain had registered correctly. Not that Kate needed to date another older man. She'd been there, done that, and it had been a disaster. And besides, she'd apparently given up dating altogether thanks to him. Every woman I know has had some jerk mess with her head, but this particular male mistake had taken a big toll.

"You prefer small-town police work over the FBI?" I asked. I needed to slow down on the mac and cheese. I was upset after what I'd seen upstairs and emotional eating always seems to add twice as many inches to my thighs. Which means twice as long a workout to remove those inches.

"They're very different. The FBI was my dream job and I learned a lot. But that's over now."

There was a story here, one he wasn't about to share with a stranger. This was a scarred man and I sure did wonder why.