Assumed Identity(65)
“Can you describe him?” Robin asked, as anxious to get eyes on her daughter as she was to find the truth. “The police can ask you these questions, too.”
“I don’t know. Brown hair. Business suit. Too buttoned-down and uptight for my tastes.” Robin tugged on Jake’s arm again, and this time he let Mark go. She grabbed Mark by the scruff of his starched collar herself and opened the door. She swept her gaze through the lobby, searching the line of waiting guests for one in particular. “There.” She pointed to Brian Elliott, leaning down to hear a comment from his assistant. Mark knew Brian, didn’t he? She’d dated Brian Elliott for almost two years before she’d broken it off. What other man in a suit showed up at her shop on a regular basis? “Is he the man you sold the pictures to?”
“No.” With Jake flanking his other side, she didn’t think Mark was lying. “Are you going to tell the police about this?” Mark dropped his voice to a pleading whisper after she released him. “Please. Yes, I was skimming business away from you—but I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Emma.”
Brian’s questioning gaze found hers across the lobby, but she quickly shook her head and turned away. She never answered Mark. She was deep in thought, thinking through all the men she knew. And how far too many of them, like every male guest here, wore business suits. Robin looked from acquaintance to acquaintance, from stranger to stranger, in the lobby, wondering if any man here had an interest in her and her daughter.
While she was distracted by wary suspicion and fear, Jake scooted Mark along his way toward the door again. “Get out of here. And if you’re thinking of skipping town before you pay the lady back, I will find you.”
Mark scuttled away, ignoring the curious looks and questions from the people he passed. He even blew off Leon when he stormed past him out the door.
Robin jumped at the brush of Jake’s fingers against her back. “Now, can we go?”
She had a very bad feeling. Like the answer to whoever had threatened her was right here under her nose. Only she wasn’t seeing the right picture. Only one thing would reassure her now. She spotted Shirley chatting with one of the ushers next to the table where Emma’s carrier sat. “Emma?”
Jake guided her through the line of guests to the table set up beside the vestibule doors. “I’ll get your coat and her bag. Be right back.”
Robin thanked Shirley and dismissed her as Jake fetched their things. It almost made her smile to see that he’d set Emma’s carrier on the Vanderhams’ gift table. Emma truly was a gift in Robin’s life, and the thought Mark taking pictures, of a stranger wanting to buy those pictures—of anyone wanting to separate Robin from the child who’d given her her first taste of true love—filled Robin’s eyes with tears, instead.
But the smile won out when Emma saw her and squealed a happy laugh.
“Hey, sweetie. Are you watching all the people...?” Robin’s voice trailed away when she saw the moisture on Emma’s cheek. But Emma wasn’t crying. Robin immediately wiped off the cool wetness. There was a smear of something on her pink-and-white blanket, too, as though someone with a dirty wet hand had touched it.
“Jake?” Her knees wobbled. Who had touched her baby? She looked back and forth. There were lots of people coming in from the rain with wet hands or moisture on their clothes. Who could resist that sweet face, sitting there and cooing, as the guests dropped off their gifts and cards and wandered past? Only, she had a feeling this wasn’t some curious, cooing auntie who’d touched her child. “Jake?”
“What’s wrong?” Jake draped her raincoat over her shoulders and positioned himself between Robin and the clamoring crowd.
“Ms. Carter?” a woman’s voice called over the white noise of all the conversations in the crowded vestibule.
Robin ignored them all and lifted the soiled blanket away from her daughter. “Oh, my God.” The breath seized up in her chest. Robin tossed the blanket aside and reached for the hand-sewn doll that had been tucked into the carrier with Emma.
“Where did that come from?”
Robin shook her head. “It isn’t hers.”
She picked up the doll. Like the blanket and Emma’s cheek, it was soaking wet. Robin turned the unwanted gift in her hand. If she had found it in a craft store, she would have admired the even stitching and calico fabric. But everything about this gift was a vile incursion into her family, a threat that had literally touched her daughter. Who brought a doll to a wedding? This couldn’t be accidental. “Who did this?”