Sidney Sheldon 3-Book Collection: If Tomorrow Comes, Nothing Lasts Forever, The Best Laid Plans

‘Good. We got more for you,’ Lola said.

Tracy gave no indication that she heard their taunting. She was concentrating on the black woman. Ernestine Littlechap was the reason Tracy had come back to this cell. Tracy did not trust her. Not for a moment. But she needed her.

I’m gonna give you a tip, querida. Ernestine Littlechap runs this place …

That night, when the fifteen-minute warning bell sounded for lights out, Tracy rose from her bunk and began to undress. This time there was no false modesty. She stripped, and the Mexican woman gave a long, low whistle as she looked at Tracy’s full, firm breasts and her long, tapering legs and creamy thighs. Lola was breathing hard. Tracy put on a nightgown and lay back on her bunk. The lights went out. The cell was in darkness.

Thirty minutes went by. Tracy lay in the dark listening to the breathing of the others.

Across the cell, Paulita whispered, ‘Mama’s gonna give you some real lovin’ tonight. Take off your nightgown, baby.’

‘We’re gonna teach you how to eat pussy, and you’ll do it till you get it right,’ Lola giggled.

Still not a word from the black woman. Tracy felt the rush of wind as Lola and Paulita came at her, but Tracy was ready for them. She lifted the piece of metal she had concealed in her hand and swung with all her might, hitting one of the women in the face. There was a scream of pain, and Tracy kicked out at the other figure and saw her fall to the floor.

‘Come near me again and I’ll kill you,’ Tracy said.

‘You bitch!’

Tracy could hear them start for her again, and she raised the piece of metal.

Ernestine’s voice came abruptly out of the darkness. ‘Tha’s enough. Leave her alone.’

‘Ernie, I’m bleedin’. I’m gonna fix her –’

‘Do what the fuck I tell you.’

There was a long silence. Tracy heard the two women moving back to their bunks, breathing hard. Tracy lay there, tensed, ready for their next move.

Ernestine Littlechap said, ‘You got guts, baby.’

Tracy was silent.

‘You didn’t sing to the warden.’ Ernestine laughed softly in the darkness. ‘If you had, you’d be dead meat.’

Tracy believed her.

‘Why di’n’ you let the warden move you to another cell?’

So she even knew about that. ‘I wanted to come back here.’

‘Yeah? What fo’?’ There was a puzzled note in Ernestine Littlechap’s voice.

This was the moment Tracy had been waiting for. ‘You’re going to help me escape.’

Chapter Eight (#ulink_de02ff9e-1c68-58df-a5b0-9477ee154cce)

A matron came up to Tracy and announced, ‘You got a visitor, Whitney.’

Tracy looked at her in surprise. ‘A visitor?’ Who could it be? And suddenly she knew. Charles. He had come after all. But he was too late. He had not been there when she so desperately needed him. Well, I’ll never need him again. Or anyone else.

Tracy followed the matron down the corridor to the visitors’ room.

Tracy stepped inside.

A total stranger was seated at a small wooden table. He was one of the most unattractive men Tracy had ever seen. He was short, with a bloated, androgynous body, a long, pinched-in nose, and a small, bitter mouth. He had a high, bulging forehead and intense brown eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses.

He did not rise. ‘My name is Daniel Cooper. The warden gave me permission to speak to you.’

‘About what?’ Tracy asked suspiciously.

‘I’m an investigator for IIPA – the International Insurance Protection Association. One of our clients insured the Renoir that was stolen from Mr Joseph Romano.’

Tracy drew a deep breath. ‘I can’t help you. I didn’t steal it.’ She started for the door.

Cooper’s next words stopped her. ‘I know that.’

Tracy turned and looked at him, wary, every sense alert.

‘No one stole it. You were framed, Miss Whitney.’

Slowly, Tracy sank into a chair.

Daniel Cooper’s involvement with the case had begun three weeks earlier when he had been summoned to the office of his superior, J. J. Reynolds, at IIPA headquarters in Manhattan.

‘I’ve got an assignment for you, Dan,’ Reynolds said.

Daniel Cooper loathed being called Dan.

‘I’ll make this brief.’ Reynolds intended to make it brief because Cooper made him nervous. In truth, Cooper made everyone in the organization nervous. He was a strange man – weird, was how many described him. Daniel Cooper kept entirely to himself. No one knew where he lived, whether he was married or had children. He socialized with no one, and never attended office parties or office meetings. He was a loner, and the only reason Reynolds tolerated him was because the man was a goddamned genius. He was a bulldog, with a computer for a brain. Daniel Cooper was single-handedly responsible for recovering more stolen merchandise, and exposing more insurance frauds, than all the other investigators put together. Reynolds just wished he knew what the hell Cooper was all about. Merely sitting across from the man with those fanatical brown eyes staring at him made him uneasy. Reynolds said, ‘One of our client companies insured a painting for half a million dollars and –’

‘The Renoir. New Orleans. Joe Romano. A woman named Tracy Whitney was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years. The painting hasn’t been recovered.’

The son of a bitch! Reynolds thought. If it were anyone else, I’d think he was showing off. ‘That’s right,’ Reynolds acknowledged grudgingly. ‘The Whitney woman has stashed that painting away somewhere, and we want it back. Go to it.’

Cooper turned and left the office without a word. Watching him leave, J. J. Reynolds thought, not for the first time, Someday I’m going to find out what makes that bastard tick.

Cooper walked through the office, where fifty employees were working side by side, programming computers, typing reports, answering telephones. It was bedlam.

As Cooper passed a desk, a colleague said, ‘I hear you got the Romano assignment. Lucky you. New Orleans is –’

Cooper walked by without replying. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? That was all he asked of anybody, but they were always pestering him with their nosey overtures.

It had become a game in the office. They were determined to break through his mysterious reserve and find out who he really was.

‘What are you doing for dinner Friday night, Dan … ?’

‘If you’re not married, Sarah and I know a wonderful girl, Dan … ?’