Читать книгу Dial M for Mischief - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 8

THEY WERE SITTING around the coffee table, Rockne, having walked in a circle three times in front of the fireplace, now soundly asleep in front of the cold hearth.

They were not, basically, a jolly group.

“And that’s it, a thumbnail sketch. Business has been slow, as it usually is around Christmastime, and then it tails off again a little in the summer months.”

“Maybe all the adulterous spouses are too full of holiday cheer in December, and on vacation in June?” Sam suggested, and Jolie covered a laugh with a cough.

“We do more than divorce work, Sam,” Jade told him tightly. “Background checks for corporations, for instance. That’s really the bulk of our business. We’ve had nothing new open this past month except, okay, a few run-of-the-mill divorce cases, and they’re already wrapped up except for the paperwork. Nothing out of the ordinary there, unless Teddy was hiding something from me.”

“Not out of the realm of possibility,” Jessica said, popping a pretzel nugget into her mouth. “If it was a dangerous case, that is. His little girl and all that—oh, stop glaring at me, Jade, you know I’m right.”

“I know,” Jade said, sighing. “He’s hidden a few things from me before, but I always found out eventually. So we work the case Teddy may have been working when he died—as soon as we figure out what the hell it is. In the meantime, we work these four old cases that have been driving him crazy for years, hoping one of them may be the right case and lead us to the true killer. He had all four cases out on the desk in his bedroom, so I know he was checking into them again. As I said, it’s been a slow month.”

Jade looked all business, as she always did, Jolie thought, watching as her sister straightened the pile of manila folders, unaware of the picture she made in the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the French doors. She was really pretty—elegant actually. The one who most favored their mother in appearance.

Although Jade had never played up her good looks. She wore her light brown hair straight and long from a center part. Her hair was naturally streaked with gold, because Jade would consider hours spent in a stylist’s chair, her hair separated and wrapped in tinfoil, to be a total waste of valuable time. At least she wore black mascara on her lashes, highlighting her sherry-brown eyes, and she occasionally remembered to tint her wide, full lips a soft apricot.

And Jessica was wrong. Mother Nature hadn’t overlooked putting Jade through puberty; she’d just employed defter strokes, so that Jade was slim, slightly curved, not voluptuous.

Again, like their mother. Maybe that’s why Jade had never played up her looks. For Teddy. Because seeing her might then bring back the pain of his wife’s defection. Was that the reason? Was that why Jade stayed, worked with Teddy in the agency? Did her big sister still long to go to medical school, as she’d talked about years ago, in junior high school—before their mother left?

That was a hell of a depressing thought on a generally depressing day. Jolie wondered if she might run it past Court the next time she saw him. A self-sacrificing Jade might explain a lot of things to her ex-husband.

Jolie shook herself back to attention when, after having remained silent for several minutes as Jade stated her case, Sam finally spoke. “You’re kidding, right? You three can’t really, seriously be considering playing at private detectives.”

“Playing? Jade has a license,” Jolie pointed out, wishing he didn’t sound so incredulous and she didn’t sound so defensive.

“Yeah,” Jessica added as she popped another pretzel nugget into her mouth. “Go ahead, Jade, whip it out, show Sam that big bad boy.”

Jolie covered another involuntary smile with her hand, wondering if it might be possible to muzzle her baby sister. But Jessica got away with outrageous statements. Maybe it was the blond hair. Maybe it was the innocent tilt of the head and the fairly bemused look. Maybe it was all a carefully orchestrated act…

“All right, Jolie. So Jade has a license. And yippee for her,” Sam all but barked, getting to his feet and heading for the wall of Chinese cases that served as a concealed wet bar. “However,” he said, turning his back to them, “you do not have a license or any training, Jolie, and neither does Jessica. It’s a bad idea. A really bad idea.” He opened the doors, pulled out the stopper of a crystal decanter almost as if he planned to drink some of its contents without wasting time looking for a glass before plunking the decanter down on the bar and facing them once more. “A really, really bad idea.”

Jessica looked at Jolie. “Funny. I always used to like him. Oh, Sam-u-el—I’m a journalist, remember? An investigative journalist? And Jolie’s a…um…Jolie, you want to help me out here?”

“I’m a quick study,” Jolie gritted out from between her clenched teeth as Sam rejoined them.

“And now yippee for you,” Sam said tightly. “But in the real world, sweetheart, the bad guys don’t use blanks.”

“Nobody’s getting shot at,” Jolie protested, thinking it might be time she headed for the wine decanter herself. “Why are you always such a pessimist? No, Rockne, lie down, sweetie. You can bite him later.”

“A pessimist? You want to enlarge on that, Jolie?”

She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath. Now was no time to remind him that he’d said only one of every ten thousand hopefuls who flock to Hollywood in any given year ever end up with even a small part in a movie. “Never mind. Jade, let’s hear about thecases.Youknowyou’redying to tell us.”

“No. Don’t do that, Jade. You’re not going forward with this, so we don’t need to hear about any old cases,” Sam said quickly. “Look, I know the three of you are devastated by what’s happened. I would be, as well. I mean it. It’s a tough pill to swallow—that Teddy would ever hurt anyone or that he’d kill himself. But you can’t do anything about it. You just can’t.”

Jade sniffed—actually snorted. “Because we’re women, right?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “That has nothing to do with—okay, all right, so it has a lot to do with it. You want someone to investigate, I’ll hire someone. I’ll hire a whole team of someones.”

“Who died and left you boss? You’re not in charge of either Jade or me. And don’t look now, Sam, but you don’t own Jolie. She proved that when she left.”

Now Sam turned to glare at Jessica.

“Sam, no, please. And Jessica, I can fight my own battles, thank you,” Jolie cut in before there could be actual bloodshed.

“It’s all right. I am coming on pretty strong, I guess. No wonder they called you the pest,” Sam said, his smile helping to soften his words as he ruffled Jessica’s hair.

Jolie had been watching Sam’s face as her older sister had explained their plan and she’d known he wasn’t going to stand up and applaud. But he seemed genuinely angry—which might be flattering, if her sisters wouldn’t kill her if she said so. If Jessica’s nonsense had made him smile, at least for the moment, she’d be an idiot not to take advantage. “Sam, look, it can’t hurt anything to just talk about it. Teddy’s been working these cases on his own since he left the force. Cold cases, they’re called. We probably won’t get anywhere with any of them. Lord knows he never did.”

“Unless he did and that’s why somebody framed him for murder and then killed him, making it look like a suicide. There is that. Besides, we’ve got to do something. We can’t let this stand the way it is now. Teddy would never forgive us and we’d never forgive ourselves. Fighting is better than crying any day,” Jessica pointed out, picking up one of the file folders and reading the words on the tab. “The Fishtown Strangler. Juicy. I think I want this one. Jade? Do you know what it’s about?”

“Slow down, Jessica. First we’ll discuss all of them, then pick one and work it together,” Jade told her.

“Why?” Jolie asked her sister. “Three of us, four cases. Whoever solves theirs first, or runs into a definite dead end moves on to the fourth one. I can only be here for another two weeks, remember? Going one by one makes no sense.”

Jade looked at her levelly for a moment and then nodded. “All right. But we discuss each case every night. Together.”

Sam looked at each one of them in turn. “I can’t stop you, can I? No, I can see I can’t. All right, all right, then I’m in. My house, my coffee table, my booze—I’m in.”

“Not with me, you’re not. As long as we’re dividing things up here, I prefer to work alone,” Jade said quickly. “It’s bad enough I have to keep an eye on my sisters, I’m not taking responsibility for you, too, Sam. We said three cases. Jolie, he’s all yours. You watch him, he watches you, and that’s one problem solved.”

“Two amateurs do not one professional make,” Jessica pointed out but then waved off her words. “It’s all right, a fair division of labor. Forget I said anything.”

Jolie was about to protest but then realized she had no good argument to offer. She and Sam weren’t a couple anymore and hadn’t been for five long years, that embarrassing interlude of two hours or more ago notwithstanding. And if she said no, Jessica would probably ask why, and then they’d go round and round and…no, she wasn’t up to it. “Okay,” she said at last. “If I have to, I suppose it’s all right.”

“It’s so wonderful to be wanted. I feel like the last kid on the playground to get picked for kickball,” Sam said, mockingly toasting them all with his wineglass. “Now, before I give in to the urge to get royally drunk, let’s hear about these cases.”

“Do the Fishtown Strangler first,” Jessica pleaded. “Some headline writer came up with that name, right?”

Jade took a sip from her soda glass and then carefully replaced it on the coaster. “The Fishtown Strangler wasn’t the Fishtown Strangler until the third murder. And nobody probably would have noticed someone was out there strangling prostitutes if it hadn’t been for that headline—Fishtown Strangler Strikes Again. By the time the fourth body showed up the mayor had set up a task force. It was an election year, you understand. Concerned citizens, some higher-ups from the mayor’s political party, a couple of pastors, that sort of thing. But after the sixth body there weren’t any more and the trail went cold. If there ever was a trail—and I don’t think there was.”

“So why was Teddy involved?” Sam asked, finding a seat on the couch next to Jolie.

“He caught the second murder,” Jade told him. “He couldn’t stay the primary because of the task force and the detective who’d caught the first murder, but he got involved with the victim’s mother and young daughter.” She turned to look at Jolie. “You know Teddy—always leading with his heart. Funny, they weren’t at the funeral. I would have thought they would be after what Teddy did for them.”

“And what was that?” Jolie asked before Sam could open his mouth again, establish himself as the leader of their two-person team. Really, he was only hearing any of this because he was here. And it was his house. Jolie inwardly winced. Maybe she should take the chip off her shoulder.

“He moved them out of some condemned building in Fishtown,” Jade told them as Jessica began paging through the manila folder in her lap. “And he’s been checking up on the daughter all these years, the same way he’s done with Jermayne.”

Jessica looked up from the page she’d extracted and was holding in her hand. “Who?”

“Jermayne Johnson.” Jade looked at Sam. “Sam, maybe you remember this one. Terrell Johnson? The high school basketball player who was found shot on a city playground about ten years ago?”

“Yes, I think I remember that. He was just about to sign a letter of intent with one of the top Division One schools and then he was gone.” He shook his head. “A real waste of a good kid. Scholar-athlete, wasn’t he?”

“He was going to use his talent to get his grandmother and brother out of the city—that’s what the grandmother told Teddy. So Teddy got them out. He wiped out more than half of his savings doing it, but that’s Teddy.” Jade shrugged her shoulders, sighed. “That was Teddy…”

“Were the Johnsons at the funeral?” Jolie asked, as long as they were all descending into the maudlin again.

“Mrs. Johnson passed away sometime last year,” Jade told them. “But, you know, I don’t think I saw Jermayne. Not that that means anything. I really wasn’t looking around, counting noses.”

“It wouldn’t have taken you long,” Jolie muttered, and Sam covered her hand with his. She didn’t pull away. The man was offering her comfort and she was grateful for the gesture. But that didn’t mean she was going to make any more mistakes. In two weeks, no matter what happened here, she would be back in Hollywood for the premiere and then off to Ireland to film a new movie two weeks after that. That’s just the way life was for her now, for both of them.

“All right,” Jessica said, still holding up a page of Teddy’s precise notes. “This could be interesting. Teddy has notations on two of the four strangling victims, made in the last three weeks. A Tarin White and a Kayla Morrison. Are either of these two the one with the daughter?”

“Kayla Morrison. Her daughter’s name is Keely. Now put that away because we’re not finished yet.”

“The warden has spoken,” Sam whispered to Jolie, and once again she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from smiling. What a strange day she was having. Tears, yes, and also laughter. And a mistake…

“Case number three,” Jade said, pulling another manila envelope onto her lap. She opened it, frowned. “Oh, this one. Another catchy headline. This one was called the case of the vanishing bride.”

“Jolie and I will take that one,” Sam volunteered much too quickly, and Jolie pulled her hand out from beneath his as if his skin had just turned white-hot. “You could say I’ve got experience.”

“Not funny, Sam,” Jolie said, absently rubbing at the ring finger of her left hand until she realized what she was doing and stopped. “Not even remotely funny.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jolie,” Jessica said, finally closing the folder she’d been paging through for the past several minutes. “Jade? Was the bride one of Teddy’s cases or someone else he just took a shine to?”

“It was his case. But as to why it haunted him?” Jade turned a few pages and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph, turning it so everyone could see it. “You tell me.”

Jolie’s jaw dropped slightly as she looked at the photograph. “That could almost be Jess, just with shorter hair,” she said, her stomach knotting. “How old is that picture?”

“About twelve years,” Jade said. “Our Jessica was still in junior high when the bride disappeared, I think. But it’s amazing, isn’t it? Cathleen Hanson was about as old as Jess is now when this photograph was taken, and the resemblance can’t be denied.”

Jolie felt tears threatening again. Something about this one touched her, the fact that her father had seen his own daughter in the vanished bride. “All right. Sam and I will take this one.”

“Deal,” Jade said, closing the folder and replacing it on the table. “And I’ll take Terrell Johnson. Leaving us with the fourth and last case. I don’t think we have to concern ourselves too much about it, either, because this is one cold case that gets worked every year. These others? The cops assigned to them after the primary has retired must pull the cases out once a year, look them over…and that’s about all they do with most of them. And since a homicide was never proved, the vanishing-bride case doesn’t get looked at at all. She’s just one more missing person. But it’s different with this fourth case. In fact, this one was just on the news again last month.”

“Let me guess,” Sam said, actually raising his hand as if hoping to be called upon to answer. If Jade wanted to give up her job as warden, she’d be a great high school principal. “The baby in the Dumpster. A real heartbreaker.”

“You’ve got it right in one,” Jade said, grabbing the thickest folder. “This one hurt everyone, not just Teddy, who happened to catch it late one rainy night. He isn’t—wasn’t—the only active or retired cop who kept a personal file on the Dumpster case. A baby, only a few months old, thrown away like garbage. It hit everyone—bad. The skull was kept, forensic artists update what the boy would have looked like if he’d lived, there’s DNA just waiting to be matched to someone out there. But nothing. Back when he was still on the job, Teddy would get reporters calling him every year on the anniversary of discovering the body. Which, by the way, were the only times I ever saw Teddy drunk. That he was drunk the night he died just screams to me that he’d discovered something he really didn’t want to know.”

“Which is why we’re going to work these cases,” Jolie said firmly, getting to her feet. “Is anyone hungry? I seem to have missed lunch.”

“Most of it, anyway,” Sam said, also getting to his feet. “We’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Why are you following me?” Jolie asked him once they were out of earshot. “I remember where the fridge is, you know.” God, she was a bundle of screaming nerves, ready to explode. Didn’t he know that? Surely she couldn’t be that good an actress.

“True, and I don’t think you’re planning to pocket any of the silverware,” he said, moving ahead of her to push open the service door to the kitchen. “We need to talk.”

“No, we don’t. What happened upstairs was a mistake. You know it, I know it. It was…it bordered on disgusting, frankly. I attacked you. I have no excuses, but I will say I’m sorry. But that’s it. Discussion over.”

“Agreed.”

Jolie whirled around to goggle at him. “Agreed? You agree with what? That the discussion is over? That I should have apologized? Or that it was disgusting?”

Sam held up his hands, making a T, signaling time-out. “I agree it was a bad start, probably due to a bad ending five years ago. I also apologize and don’t think we’ll gain anything by having a postmortem, okay? Although I will say it’s nice to know we’re both so limber five years later—uh-uh, no hitting.”

“Then stop tempting me,” Jolie said, sure her cheeks were growing pink.

“If I might continue? I do not, however, agree that it was disgusting. If anything, it was a little like old times…at least some of the old times. Now, white bread or rye?”

“Neither, thank you,” Jolie said quietly, feeling she’d been rightly chastened. They may not have actually swung from those chandeliers in the dining room that long-ago night, but it had been a close-run thing. And then there was the night they’d discovered the joys and varied interesting applications of the nifty pulsating hose sprayer on the kitchen sink just behind her. They’d nearly flooded the place. And that time she’d come straight to Sam’s from dress rehearsal at the local theater, still in full makeup and wearing her black wig and Velma Kelly costume from the final scene of Chicago, and Sam had taken one look at her and…

“You don’t want any bread at all?”

“Huh?” Jolie snapped herself back from the movie reel of bordering-on-the-lascivious memories. “No. I’ll just make up a small plate of ham and cheese. They practically had to sew me into my gown for the premiere at my last fitting. If I gain an ounce anywhere, I could sneeze and end up with the seams exploding in front of a million cameras.”

“Film at eleven,” Sam said, smiling.

“Yes, and the cover of every trash magazine out there,” Jolie told him as she grabbed a plastic bag filled with ham slices from the meat drawer of the industrial-size stainless-steel refrigerator. “Where’s the cheese? I really need something that wasn’t free-range-bred or organically grown or certified to be healthy for you while only tasting a little bit like soggy cardboard.”

Sam reached past her to retrieve the package and then retired to one of the stools placed at the large granite-topped breakfast bar that might, Jolie had once remarked, be used to land a 747. He turned over the package and squinted at the fine print. “Let’s see, how many calories in a slice of cheese? Hmm, how about that? More than I thought. You may have one slice, Ms. Sunshine, no more. Break it into little pieces—it’ll last longer. I always wondered what the big time felt like. Now I know. Slow starvation. You know, Jolie, you get famous enough and you could just disappear altogether.”

“Funny man.” She grabbed the package from him and pulled out a single wrapped slice. Then she thought about that for a moment and extracted a second one. Near-constant dieting was one of her least favorite things about the movie industry, and wasn’t it just like him to zero in on that fact. “You know, Sam, if you’re just going to take shots at me, we can end this right now. Jade and Jessica shouldn’t have come here, and it wasn’t my smartest move either, when you get right down to it.”

“You want to go home now, run that gauntlet of reporters again? Be my guest.”

“And don’t dare me!” Jolie turned away from him, pinching at the bridge of her nose as she mentally counted to ten, trying to calm her temper. “I haven’t slept in days. I hate staying in that house. Jade had some disaster-recovery company come in, promise to make things right again, and I guess they did—as much as they could, at least. Jade stays there with no problem. Jessica is back in her old room, surrounded by cheerleading trophies, stuffed animals and that frilly lace canopy over her bed. The princess back in residence, as if she’d never left. But I still know what happened in Teddy’s study, right below my bedroom, and whenever I walk past that closed door I—”

“That settles it, Jolie. You’re staying here with me. No more talk of leaving. And I won’t pressure you for anything else, I promise. I won’t turn you down if you offer. I’m not a monk, Jolie. But there will be no pressure, I promise. And no more arguing, either. I just want to make things easier for you.”

“You know,” Jolie said, slowly turning back to face him once more, “we never used to fight. I thought it was strange, actually, how well we…how well we got along. Slightly crazy but compatible. What happened to us, Sam?”

“We could only remain stagnant for so long before we came to a fork in the road? We got to it and I wanted to go one way, you wanted to go another. I lost. And,” he ended on a wry smile, “it turns out I’m pretty damn lousy at losing.”

“Oh, Sam,” she said, collapsing onto the stool next to his. “I had to try, I had to know if I was good enough. If I hadn’t…”

“It would have come back to bite me in the ass, I know. The road not taken, the wondering what might have been. You’d have grown to hate me, or at least resent the hell out of me. You left, you did what you had to do and now you know.You’re wonderful, Jolie. Looks, talent, the camera loves you—the whole package, I think it’s called. For a while there,” he added, grinning, “I was wishing you’d been born with a big wart on the end of your nose.”

Jolie laughed and the tension was broken. “My first agent wanted me to get my nose fixed—shorten it, thin it out a bit. And get implants, teeth caps, liposuction. I look back on that now and wonder if I would have done what he said, if I’d had the money. Now I’m the sexy but wholesome girl next door, so it’s a good thing I didn’t have that money.”

Sam reached out to run his index finger down the side of her nose. “I’m crazy about that nose. And what you’re saying is that if you’d agreed to let me bankroll you, that nose might be only a fond memory?”

“Yeah, but think about this one, Sam—the boobs would have been spectacular,” she teased, grinning at him before filling her mouth with a big bite of rolled-up boiled ham.

“Have I ever complained about that area?”

Jolie coughed, and a bit of ham stuck in her throat. She grabbed the glass he’d brought with him into the kitchen, taking a huge gulp. She shivered, a full-body shiver, and quickly put down the glass. “Eeww, how can you drink this stuff?”

“You have the palate of a plebeian, Jolie Sunshine,” he told her, pulling a glass from the cabinet beside the sink and filling it with tap water. “Real wine isn’t supposed to taste like some sweet, fizzy kids’ drink.”

“It does when somebody turns his back and somebody else slips a teaspoon of sugar into the glass,” Jolie reminded him, grinning at the memory. “How old was that wine I did that to?”

“Old enough to have been treated with more respect.” Sam turned his back to the sink and leaned against the edge of the counter.

Jolie caught her breath. Movie stars were handsome, granted. Although she’d often wondered about the offspring of all those gorgeous faces born with Mommy’s original nose and inheriting daddy’s original receding chin. But Sam? Sam was just Sam, and he was the real McCoy. He also didn’t throw a hissy fit if she accidentally moved into his camera line during the filming of a love scene.

“Are we good now, Sam? There was hurt on both sides when I left, I know that, and I caused most of it. But have we agreed that what happened is in the past and at least now we can be friends? Can we move on now?”

“Friends? Maybe you could clarify that.” He looked at her for a long moment, slowly measuring her from head to toe and back again with his gaze before seeming to concentrate on her mouth. “What level of friends are we talking here? Good friends? Very good friends?”

Her bare toes were trying to curl themselves into the coolness of the tile floor. “Good friends. Older. Wiser. Less inclined to be selfish, self-centered—and I’m speaking of myself, mostly. How’s that?”

“It’ll do. For now. And I take full blame for my part in what happened back then—even more than you know. Shall we seal the bargain?”

“You never give up, do you?” Jolie said, laughing. And then she held out her right hand just to see what he’d do.

He did what she’d wanted him to do. He ignored her hand to slide his arms around her and lowered his mouth to her own.

For the first time since Jade’s call at midnight four days earlier, Jolie let herself feel. Really feel, react, instead of just acting and hoping for something to fill the sudden hole in her heart. But what she felt when Sam kissed her wasn’t passion. Nor was it the momentary escape she’d insanely hoped to find in their desperate coupling of only a few hours ago. Not lust, not even love. What she felt was this enormous sorrow welling up inside her. Filling her, crushing her, yet leaving her unbearably empty.

So many chances lost. So many missed moments that could never be recaptured. Choices made. Paths taken…and those not taken. But there was time; there had always been time—that’s what she’d told herself.

And now she was out of time.

She couldn’t go back, change anything.

Even Sam’s strong arms around her couldn’t change anything…

When she broke the kiss, it was to press her face into Sam’s neck, her voice catching on a sob. “He’s gone, Sam. Teddy’s gone.”

Sam held her tight, mumbling words she couldn’t quite make out because the hurt was swallowing her now, pulling her down into that black hole of misery and loss she’d been fighting any way she could, calling on every acting skill she might possess in order to hide her tearing grief. Her guilt.

“I phoned him once a week, Sam, faithfully. I invited him out to the coast a million times, but he always said he was too busy. And so was I. First working three part-time jobs to feed myself and then I always seemed to be shooting somewhere in the world. Six movies in three years. Once…once he visited me on location in South Dakota, but we were behind schedule, and I was almost always on the set and…”

She swallowed down hard. “A year, Sam. I hadn’t seen Teddy in an entire year, not even on Christmas. The big movie star, always too busy even to come home to see her own father. And now I’ll never see him again. We couldn’t…we couldn’t even have an open casket, not the way the bullet tore through…oh, Sam, this hurts. Just hold me, please. I hurt so bad.”