Assumed Identity(30)
“About last night?” Robin nodded and Mark’s affronted stance melted away. He clapped his hands together. “That’s too frightening for me to even contemplate—you being hurt like that. And poor Emma. What do you need me to do? Are we overrun with customers?”
She reached up to straighten the bow tie he wore and patted his shoulder. “No. Just one who has a ton of money to spend and can’t make a decision. And I really need to take that call.”
“A ton of money—my favorite kind of client.” Mark fluffed his fingers through his curly brown hair and winked. “You deal with the police—I’ll help the customers spend their money.”
“Thank you. Owe you.”
“Always happy to do a girl a favor.” He burst through the doors with the flourish of a Broadway dance number and took over the appointment with the Vanderhams. “I’m Mark. Now what can I do for you, pretty lady?”
Knowing Mark could match Chloe Vanderham’s diva-licious personality, Robin closed the office door behind her. She quickly pulled the baby sling off her shoulder and lay Emma in her bassinet before picking up the extension. “Detective Montgomery? Sorry for the wait. Has something happened? Did you find the man who attacked me?”
“Not yet. But I think we found your Mr. Lonergan.”
Robin wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder so she could assemble a small bottle of formula for Emma while they talked. “Do you have a name? An address?”
“He goes by Jake.”
Jake. It fit. Manly and to the point. Finally, she had a name for the hero who’d saved her life and Emma’s. But wait a minute. Even as the news elated her, Robin frowned. “Goes by?”
Spencer Montgomery released a telling sigh. “There’s no record of him in the DMV database.”
“You mean he doesn’t drive?”
“I mean the name is bogus. It’s not like his license was taken away for DUIs or an accident. He doesn’t exist. I haven’t even found any IRS records on him.”
The math wasn’t hard to do. “That doesn’t make sense. He’s in his late thirties, maybe forty. And he’s no bum. He has to have had a job and paid taxes for twenty years or so.”
“Not according to my sources. No trackable history and he skips out before we can talk to him? Both are red flags in my book. Be careful with this man, Ms. Carter.”
Robin sank down into the chair behind her desk. But he hadn’t skipped out. Lonergan, make that Jake Lonergan, had been watching over her all night long. “Maybe he legally changed his name,” she theorized.
“There’d be a paper trail,” the detective explained. “This guy is way off the grid. My next step is to widen the search to Interpol because I can’t locate official American records on him anywhere.”
“Then how did you find him?”
“My partner, Nick, has good instincts about people. And he never forgets a face.”
“Detective Fensom knows him?” How could that be? Why would Lonergan avoid the cops if they were friends? Unless that familiarity with her mystery man meant they weren’t? Robin shot to her feet again, shaking the measured formula powder and bottled water together with more vigor than usual. “Do you think he’s a criminal? Because he wasn’t last night. He did a good deed. A great one as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want you to punish him.”
“Relax.” Spencer Montgomery’s tone sounded straightforward, taking the edge off her defensive anger, even if she didn’t necessarily think he’d agreed to her demand. “We just want to ask him some questions. We haven’t approached him yet—we’re not completely sure this is the right guy. We’d like a second opinion.”
“Do you need me to come down to the police station to identify him?”
“Not exactly.”
Robin groaned her frustration as one mystery compounded another. “Detective Montgomery, I thought you and I agreed we both like straight answers.”
“We did. I’m trying to spare you some stress and disappointment if this isn’t the guy.”
“I can handle stress and disappointment, Detective. I want to see this Jake Lonergan your partner found.”
“Do you know where the Shamrock Bar is?”
Jake Lonergan hung out in bars? He was secretive, yes. But he hadn’t struck her as the kind of guy who’d waste his time like that. “It’s around the corner, a couple of blocks from my shop. You want me to meet you there?”