Janet Evanovich - Full Scoop

Lydia tapped her lingers impatiently on the arm of the chair. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's sort of grayish-brown and has leather straps on it."

"Oh. She keeps it in her living room. Why?"

"I just remember it being in Maggie's parents' barn. A friend of mine had one just like it." He took another sip of his beer and wiped his mouth. "Does she have a boyfriend?"

Lydia gave an enormous sigh of disgust. "I don't know, and it's none of my business. The woman is trying to build a practice and raise her child as best she can. Why can't you just leave her alone? And why would you take an innocent child who has never done one thing to you?"

"You need to shut up, Lydia," he said, waving the gun at her. "I don't think you know what I'm capable of."

"Well, if you think I'm going to let a child and an old man lie upstairs without food and water you'd better think again. I'd rather be shot than watch suffering."

She stood and squared her shoulders.

Carl Lee immediately straightened. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I just told you."

Lydia turned and started toward the kitchen, her fingers touching the pocket that held Ben's syringe. She jumped when she heard Carl Lee pull back the hammer on his gun. Lydia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. And waited.

Carl Lee laughed.

* * * * *

Zack walked into the room with his coffee cup, and his gaze immediately sought out Maggie. "How are you doing?" She shrugged and looked away because her tears were too near the surface, and her eyes already ached from crying.

Queenie reached for the small pouch and handed it to Zack. "Keep this in your pocket," she said. "It'll help you find Mel."

"Really?" He looked it over. "Is it some kind of tracking device?"

"You don't really want to get on my bad side right now," she said.

He grinned and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans, then filled his coffee cup and returned to the living room.

Max walked down the hall, obviously to check on Jamie.

"Excuse me for a minute, Queenie," Maggie said and joined Zack in the living room. She took in the makeshift office, which had started out with Zack's laptop and had turned into a conglomeration of complicated-looking equipment with Max's arrival. Several telephones had been connected to various blinking apparatuses, and cords sprouted from every direction and coiled like snakes on the wooden floor. She wasn't sure what they were doing, but she knew they were doing everything they could to find her daughter. That was enough.

"Didn't mean to mess up your living room," Zack said, reaching out to her. She joined him on the sofa, and he took her hand and held it for a moment. He turned it over and traced the lines inside her palm.

His touch made her stomach quiver. "I appreciate all your hard work," she said. "Max's, too," she added. "I'm sure you had to lean on Lamar to get things moving so quickly." She suspected he felt as guilty as she did that Mel had slipped from the house unnoticed.

Zack gazed into her light blue eyes. "You're one of the bravest people I've ever met."

Maggie shook her head. "No I'm not. My guts feel like they've been crammed into a washing machine and turned to the spin cycle. I'm hanging by a very thin thread, Zack."

Queenie shouted to them from the kitchen. "Hurry, come look at this!"

The small countertop TV was on, turned to CNN. "It's too early for Paula," Zack said, as he and Maggie entered the room.

"Da-um!" Queenie said, as a dog food commercial came on. "You missed it! But it's coming back on so they'll have more."

"More what?" Maggie said.

"That man that was with Carl Lee," she began quickly. "Not the one that got shot, the other one. Ray or Roy—"

"Ray Boyd," Zack said.

"Okay, well, guess what? Ray and Carl Lee stole a car with a dead man in it!"

Maggie frowned. "Huh?"

"This old guy named Ed White left Alabama because his daughter was going to put him in a nursing home, right? He was gone for a couple of days; it was on the news and in the papers. Anyway, Carl Lee and Roy—"

"Ray," Zack said.

"Okay, Ray. Somehow they ended up with Ed's car."

"And he was in it, dead?" Maggie asked.

"Nobody knows yet when he actually died. But this is where it gets weird."

"I think what you just told us is pretty weird," Maggie said.

Queenie went on. "Ed's daughter looked out the window this morning, saw her daddy's car in the driveway, ran out to it, and you won't believe what she found!"

"What!" Zack and Maggie said in unison.

"She found her daddy propped in the backseat wearing an Elvis costume and sunglasses! And he was dead! And guess what? Ray Boyd left a note. Said her father died of natural causes and did not suffer."

Max and Jamie came into the room. "Hold on," Queenie said, "it's coming back on."

"They're doing a story on Carl Lee and Ray Boyd," Zack said.

Queenie waved her hands in the air "Quiet!"

Max and Jamie came up beside them, pretending to tiptoe and zip their lips.

"Who is that ugly woman taking Paula's place?" Zack said.

Queenie glared at him and turned up the volume.

In a follow-up to our story, police and FBI are still searching for convicted killer Carl Lee Stanton who escaped outside of a hospital near Texas Federal Prison in Houston after complaining of severe chest pains.

Roy Boyd—

"Ray!" Zack and Queenie shouted in unison.

Excuse me, that was Ray Boyd. Boyd and another ex-convict named Luis Perez assisted in the escape as Stanton was being led by authorities to the emergency room. Gunfire was exchanged and several guards shot, but all are recuperating. Perez suffered a fatal injury, and his body was later discovered near Birmingham, Alabama. Stanton was serving a life sentence at Texas Federal for robbing and shooting an ATM driver, as well as the shooting death of FBI Agent Robert Hamilton, shown here in a family photo shortly before he was gunned down in the parking lot of a motel in Richmond, Virginia …

Maggie and the others leaned in to see the photo. "Da-um," Queenie said. "That agent's son looks like you, Zack."

Agent Hamilton's stepson, also FBI, has worked undercover for ten years and recently put a Colombian cartel out of business, after arresting a dozen key players and confiscating two thousand pounds of cocaine. Paula Zahn will air an interview with this agent in days to come.

Max and Jamie exchanged looks as Maggie and Queenie stared at Zack in disbelief. Queenie reached over and turned down the volume.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Maggie asked, trying to make sense of what she'd just heard.

"That's what I'd like to know," Queenie said. "Do you have any idea what I would give to meet Paula Zahn? Why, I love her almost as much as I love—" She paused and her voice became hushed, reverent. "Oprah."

"It was a long time ago, Maggie," Zack said. "I didn't think it was important—"

Max led Jamie quietly from the room.

"Wait." Maggie pressed her hand against her forehead where everything seemed to be swirling about in all directions. "Your stepfather was the agent that Carl Lee Stanton killed in Virginia fourteen years ago."

"Yes."

"And the FBI assigned you to work this case? To bring in your stepfather's killer?" she asked.

"Unofficially," he said.

"And you didn't think it worth mentioning to me? Why is that, Zack?"

"Uh-oh," Queenie said, slipping past them and joining Max and Jamie on the front porch. "I don't want to be in there," she whispered, "when this place blows." Her eyes widened as she looked into Jamie's face. "You're pregnant!"

"Yes," she said, sharing a private smile with Max. "I have my first doctor's appointment the end of the week, but I passed seven in-home pregnancy tests," she said proudly, "and I've already started having morning sickness."