He chuckled. “I like to surprise my women, Pauline.”

Your women? Goldie and I exchanged glances that said, “Interesting.” But I chuckled, very ladylike, and turned toward Goldie. “He’s doing great, Doc. Really great.” I winked at Goldie. And stupidly could imagine myself living at Forsyth Manor. I mean, a house with a name!

“I am,” Gold managed.

Neal examined him and with my assistance changed the outside bandage, promising that in a few days Goldie would get to see his accomplishments, although there would still be swelling and bruising involved.

Gold’s eyes lit up like a kid’s on Christmas Eve.

I felt ten years younger, knowing Goldie’s pain was not in vain.

Neal turned to me. “May I speak with you, Pauline?”

Goldie made a little sound. Kinda sounded like a cat, a scaredy cat.

Neal, the doll, touched Goldie’s arm. “Nothing about you. You fit into the textbook recovery scenario for your procedure. No. Nothing about you, sir. It’s personal.”

Goldie let out a sigh, and I walked Neal to the door.

“I’m free tomorrow night for our date,” he whispered.

Geez. So soon?

After today’s visit with Lydia I wanted to cancel. Just not in any mood for…“Tomorrow would be perfect,” I heard myself say and mentally shook my head.

Suddenly I missed…Jagger.

Back in my room, I flopped onto my bed and looked at the door, expecting a knock and a “Are you ready to eat?” But nothing.

Even Samuel seemed to be gone. I couldn’t feel his presence or any cold draft. Damn. Kinda missed the guy. This was lonely! For a few seconds I shut my eyes and reviewed my case, or what little info that I had. One thing for certain was that I had to make another trip to the office and snoop around the files.

I needed to find the “frequent flier” patients’ records. The files might just tell me whom the fraud was being committed for. Seemed logical to me that those patients would have been spending the most money at Highcliff, and they were almost a guarantee to spend more.

My stomach growled, but I didn’t want to go out to eat all by myself. I sat up and took out my cell phone, dialing Fabio’s office. When I looked at my watch, I curled my lips. “Damn. I’ll bet Adele has gone home already.” Just as I started to flip the cell closed, I heard a voice.

“Hello?”

“Adele?” Didn’t really sound like her though. Maybe I had the wrong number.

“Chéri? This is Lilla. You are Pauline?”

I leaned back on the bed not feeling so alone anymore. “Yeah, it’s me. Lilla?”

“Oui. My mother, she has gone home already. May I give her a message from you?”

“Well, truthfully I was just calling to see if Jagger was around. Do you know him?”

I could hear the hitch in her voice-a very Jagger-like reaction to the guy.

“Oui,” rolled off her lips, and suddenly, despite the fact that I liked Lilla, I felt a wee bit jealous. She was, in all honesty, a real looker.

“Umm. Then he’s not there?”

“No, Pauline. He has not returned from Newport as far as I know.”

“Well, I think he did. No sign of him. Huh?”

“None.”

I thanked her and selfishly was glad Jagger hadn’t shown up there, but couldn’t help but wonder, where the hell was he?

Hey, I was a red-blooded, healthy woman!

After eating two slices of a pizza I foolishly had delivered to my room, I offered the rest to the evening staff. Then I dressed in my black turtleneck with black jeans, took my camera that was disguised as a beeper and clipped it onto my belt, grabbed my thin black gloves and stuffed a flashlight into my pocket. I also carefully removed the pink locket that Jagger had given me as a gift from my makeup case. At first I’d thought the locket was jewelry, but it turned out to be pepper spray for protection. What a guy.

Thank goodness Stella Sokol had always made us kids take a travel-sized flashlight wherever we went, “in case the power goes out.”

I shook my head, thought about Jagger, ignored that thought and walked downstairs and out the door-feeling a rush of cold breeze behind me.

“I’ll be fine, Sam. Go haunt someone else,” I said, then laughed as I turned out the walkway, heading to Highcliff Manor.

This was a rather safe neighborhood and filled with walkers or other joggers, so I didn’t worry about going out alone-since Ian was no longer around. I will, however, stay off Cliff Walk at this time of the night, I thought as I turned down the street with Highcliff in view.

Neal’s car turned out of the parking lot, heading toward Bellevue Avenue. Suddenly my hormones went into overdrive. Damn, I just missed him. You are bad, Pauline, I told myself. You have a date tomorrow. Tonight is investigating time. With that, I walked along the driveway and up to the main door. No one was around, so I figured that was a good sign from up above.

For a second I considered going to see how Goldie was doing, but decided not to risk it. One of the staff might see me and know I was in the building. No. Gold was progressing fantastically and, in fact, would be more beautiful in a few more weeks.

So I walked into the foyer, looked around and headed toward the reception desk area.

The evening clerk was sitting at the computer-probably playing Solitaire like Lydia. I didn’t recognize the woman, but she was much older than me and, frankly, looked bored. That could be helpful. Maybe she’d need a cup of coffee soon. I tucked myself into an alcove near the door, behind a gigantic Fica tree, and waited.

The receptionist’s eyes started to close!

Great. Could I sneak past a sleeping woman and get into the files? That wasn’t my strong point, but if need be, I’d give it a try. Waiting for several more minutes, I watched her head bob back and forth. Damn. I needed to get her out of the reception area since I wasn’t feeling lucky enough to work around her.

I took out my cell phone and dialed, knowing I was far enough away that she couldn’t hear me speaking. When the phone in front of her rang, she jumped, nearly plummeting out of her chair. I would have felt horrible if she’d fallen.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding very confused.

“I’m calling for Mrs. Olivia Wheaton-Chandler.”

I never saw anyone come to attention so fast as the poor receptionist. “She…she’s not here at the moment.”

“I know that, you fool,” I said, feeling badly about being so rude but figuring anyone working for Olivia would act that way. “She wanted me to check and see how things are going there. Any problems? You are paying attention, aren’t you?”

Suddenly the woman was up from her seat, blinking her eyes and carrying on that everything was fine. I then hung up and waited.

Perfect. She shoved the phone back in its cradle, stretched and set the BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTEs sign up on the desk. Great. Caffeine it is, I thought as she walked around the front of the desk. But before she headed toward the staff’s kitchen, she went to the front doors, jiggled the handles and…locked them! She used a key that she then tucked back into her pocket. That had to be against the fire code, but she probably didn’t care and did it to keep out Olivia’s spy.

I was locked in Highcliff Manor!

Oh, well, I’d been in tougher situations, often with Jagger, so I decided to get to the files and worry about my escape later.

When I got into the back office, I took out my flashlight, deciding it was safer than turning on the light. Then I stuck on my gloves, thinking Jagger would be proud that I’d remembered. Probably no patients would be about at this time, and certainly no visitors could get in, and the doc had left, so until “Rip Van Winkle” herself returned, I was safe.

I felt certain that was what Jagger would have done.

That lonely feeling started to creep into my thoughts, so I hurried to the locked file cabinet and refused to give in to that sentiment. Again I needed to find a key. I already knew the file cabinet key was not in the same box as the desk one. It would have stood out the other day when I was there. Nope. Had to be somewhere else.