She turned toward the coffee shop and bumped into a man who reached out to steady her. “Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as if smiling was his usual expression, though his lips were flat now. He towered over her five feet two inches, and she guessed him to be six foot. His shaved head made his large brown eyes even more expressive and compelling, and he exuded controlled energy and power under his very attractive surface. His muscular arms and face were tanned as if he’d spent a lot of time in the sun. Her immediate attraction to him made her take a step back. She steered clear of relationships. Losing someone you cared about hurt too much.
Those dark eyes smiled down at her. “You’re Jane Hardy.”
“Guilty as charged. You look familiar.”
A flush flared under his tan. “Maybe you’ve seen my picture around.” He held out his hand and shook hers. “Reid Dixon. You might have seen some of my documentaries.” He released her hand.
Of course she had. “You did the piece on cults a few years ago.”
“I did. I was about to grab a cup of coffee. Care to join me?”
She didn’t want to agree, but he was here for a reason, and she had a feeling that since he’d sought her out, she wouldn’t like whatever had brought him to town. Better to be prepared than blindsided.
“I was about to get coffee as well.” She walked beside him to Pelican Brews and had her dog settle in the shady overhang outside before she stepped into the building. The fresh aroma of the Guatemalan roast put a spring in her step. She ordered and paid for a coffee, then found a small table next to the window to wait for him.
He ordered black coffee and joined her. She took a sip of her coffee and waited for him to tell her what he wanted. When he didn’t speak, she filled the silence. “I’m not sure where you live, but I’m sure it’s far from our little burg.”
“I live in New Orleans. I’m here for a few weeks for a new documentary.” He gestured to the south. “I rented the Holbrook place.”
The brick mansion on the Bon Secour River hadn’t sold yet. Not many could afford its price tag. “Nice place.”
“Yeah, it is.” He sipped his coffee and glanced out the window. “You live here long?”
“Most of my life.”
“Nice area. My boy and I are going shrimping in a little while.”
What did he want with her? “It’s best at night.”
“Yes, but Will finishes his basketball camp in a couple of hours, and he’s jonesing to get out shrimping.” He glanced at her and opened his mouth to say something else, but her dispatcher called.
“Chief Hardy.”
“Jane, we’ve got a murder,” Olivia Davis said. “You need to get down to the pier. A shrimper pulled up a dead body.”
“On my way.” She grabbed her coffee and rose. “Nice to meet you, Reid. I need to go.”
“Of course. I’ll be contacting you later.”
It felt more like a threat than a promise.
Two
White boats bobbed along the finger piers of the marina, and Jane motioned for Detective Brian Boulter to follow her and Parker down the swaying path to the shrimper Seacow. Brian could intimidate suspects by his sheer size, and he played up his resemblance to Dwayne Johnson by working on the size of his already-massive arms. She had often been grateful for his strength, though he dwarfed her small frame.
The knot in her belly only grew when she caught sight of the boat, a decrepit relic she’d seen many times over the years. The body must have shown signs of violence for the dispatcher to call it a murder.
She spotted Paul Baker and walked toward him. About six two, Paul strutted toward her like a man used to turning female heads. She knew him to be about thirty, and he had ambition. He’d wanted to be appointed chief instead of her, and he wouldn’t be happy to still play second fiddle. Especially to a woman.
“What’s the story?” she asked.
“The shrimping trawler was on its last load of the day and pulled up an old cooler. The torso was inside.” Though his voice was cool, he must not have heard about her appointment yet or she would be able to feel his anger.
She winced. “Only a torso?”
Paul nodded. “The ME just got here, but I took a peek without touching the body. No head or limbs. Probably to muddy ID.” He hesitated. “She’s in a wedding dress.”
Jane winced. “I haven’t seen any missing brides come across my desk.”
“Nope.”
Two male figures sat on the dock with their feet dangling off the edge. She recognized Alfie Smith immediately. She liked the old codger, and he’d often given her free shrimp. He stared blankly out toward Pelican Harbor. His teenage sidekick, Isaac, threw bread to the gulls fighting over the crumbs. They both wore long-sleeved shirts over long pants stuffed into rubber boots that used to be white.
Seeing a bride’s torso was bound to rattle the most equanimous person.
Her steps sounded on the wooden decking, and Alfie turned his head. He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants.
“You okay, Alfie?”
His faded blue eyes gave her a hard once-over, and he seemed smaller this morning—shrunken and spent. His Adam’s apple made a jerky movement. “I’m plumb tired, Jane. I never seen nothing like this.”
“Where is the cooler with the body now?”
“Still aboard. Starboard of the sorting table. I can show you.”
“What else can you tell me about the body you found? Did you touch it?” She went over the usual questions, though Paul would have already interviewed him. Alfie liked her, and he was apt to open up more to her than to anyone else.
He shook his head. “At first I thought it was just a wedding dress until I realized how heavy it was. I-I could see parts of the arms in the sleeves. There’s no way a whole body could fit in that size cooler, even though it’s a big one. There’s n-no head either. Just what looks like a torso.”
Jane’s stomach gave a slow roll, but she controlled her expression. “Any identifying marks on the cooler or the body that you noticed?”
“No. But like I said, I didn’t touch it. I think whoever put it in the bay wanted it to be found. This is prime shrimping water. If they didn’t want it dragged up, they would have taken it out to sea.”
“Unless the killer is someone who doesn’t know anything about shrimping.” Jane glanced at the boy. “How about you, Isaac?”
He shifted and stared down at his dirty white boots. “There wasn’t much to see, and I didn’t want to look.” His face carried a green tinge. “I called Alfie over and then threw up. He did too.”
The body itself would reveal more information than these two who had found it. “Thank you for your time. I might have more questions after we examine the remains.”
Alfie straightened and touched the boy’s arm. “You know where to find us.”
Robert Yong, the ME, appeared, and Jane led the way aboard the boat. The reek of shrimp and sea life made her nose burn, but she walked to the large cooler with more confidence than she felt. She stepped back for Yong to kneel by the cooler, then peered over his shoulder as he gingerly did a preliminary examination with gloved hands.
The wedding dress had once been a pearly white and looked expensive with its lace and sequin detail. Locating the shop that sold it might help identify the bride inside even though her head and hands were missing. If she wasn’t in the DNA database, she’d be hard to identify, though a missing bride on the day of her wedding would surely have been reported missing.
Yong had held the position of medical examiner for the past three years, and Jane liked him. His calm pragmatism was appreciated at a scene like this. In his early forties, he had black hair with no gray yet, and his brown eyes usually held a genial expression. Married to a schoolteacher, he and his wife had two grade-school kids and lived down the road from Jane.
He gasped and jerked back far enough to fall onto his backside on the de
ck. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he said in a shaky voice.
Jane moved closer. “What is it?”
“Our victim isn’t female. It’s a man.”
“In a wedding dress?” A cross-dresser? A transvestite?
“Definitely male.” Robert stood and shut the lid. “I’m going to request an autopsy in Mobile, of course.”
“Of course.” She nodded.
Robert didn’t conduct autopsies himself. If he felt a case warranted it, he could request one from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. If ever a case required an autopsy, this one definitely qualified.
* * *
The net spilled its catch onto the sorting table and mixed the odor of shrimp with the stench of diesel fuel. The afternoon sun was hot on Reid’s arms as he and Will had motored out into the Gulf of Mexico. A pod of bottle-nosed dolphins escorted them away from shore. Gulls squawked from the boat’s railing and waited for their chance to snatch discarded shrimp. A pelican and some blue herons flapped by overhead and added to his sense of a perfect day.
Reid frowned at the mixture of shrimp and detritus brought up by the seine. It was more trash and fewer shrimp than he would have liked. Maybe because he’d found it hard to keep his mind on shrimping now that he’d met Jane Hardy in the flesh this morning.
She was no longer a callow girl and had turned into a very beautiful woman.
Perdido Key rose in the distance, and several boats moved past in the choppy waters. Shrimping was best done at night, but his boy had begged to come out and Reid couldn’t say no. What teenager still liked to hang out with his old dad?
He motioned for Will to help sort the ball of sea life and trash. Will was nearly six feet tall with developing muscles. Soon Reid wouldn’t be able to pin him in their wrestling matches.
“Not much here, Dad.” Will began tossing trash into a bucket. “I think we should move into Pensacola Bay and see what we find.”
Will had a sixth sense about shrimping, and Reid had learned to trust his son’s innate sense of where to drop the net. “Whatever you say. I’ll finish sorting while you change our course.”
These precious hours out on the shrimp boat with his son didn’t happen often. As Reid’s documentaries had become more and more sought after, he traveled more than he liked.
Reid’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at the number. He didn’t recognize it, but the area code indicated it was from a cell phone in the area. It could be a customer he hadn’t programmed into his phone, but producers and people pitching stories were often strangers. “Reid Dixon.”
A long pause followed before the caller spoke in a husky voice. “Reid?”
Her voice was the first thing that had attracted him. He held the phone away from his ear and looked at the number again. Was he dreaming? He glanced at Will, who stood at the helm. With the wind and waves he’d be unable to overhear.
Reid put the phone to his ear again. “Lauren?” His throat squeezed shut. It can’t be her. No way.
“In the flesh.” Her throaty chuckle was so familiar, so sexy.
“You’re alive.” Stupid thing to say. Of course she was alive or she wouldn’t be talking. “I mean, I had you declared dead a year ago. Where have you been?”
“As soon as the law allowed, right?” An edge sliced through her voice.
He didn’t answer, and she blew out a breath. He could almost smell the scent of tobacco wafting his way. She loved her cigarettes the way a cocaine addict loved the straw.
Where had she been, and why was she calling after all these years? He grabbed hold of his scattered thoughts. “I tried to find you for years. You just—vanished. What did you expect me to do?”
“How are you, Reid? And, um, Will?”
The thought of his son made his knees quiver. Lauren’s sudden reappearance would rock him, and that reaction was exactly what Lauren wanted. “Fine. We’re both fine. What do you want?”
The shape of Will’s shaggy dark hair moved in the pilothouse, and Reid gulped back his terror. If she tried to take Will from him, he’d fight her tooth and nail. He never should have let her adopt him, but she’d hidden her true nature from him until it was too late.
“I hear you’re very successful these days. I’ve hit a bit of a rough patch, and I need money.” She stated her request with a bored tone, as if she knew he’d do whatever she wanted.
And he’d done that once. Tried to give her everything she wanted. But nothing he did or bought was ever enough. He knew better than to try now. “No.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to Will and see what he has to say about how you’re treating me.”
“You deserted a seven-year-old who needed you. You’re not fit to even talk to him. Motherhood bored you then, and I’m sure you haven’t changed. You won’t take my boy from me.”
“He won’t cry and hang on to me now. I’m sure we’d get along just fine. And I know you, Reid. You’ll want to protect him from his big, bad mommy. You won’t want him to know how much I hated being a mother, how I shoved him away when he wanted me to pick him up. You won’t want him to know about the times you had to take him before I threw him to the floor, will you? I get that, but protecting him is going to cost you.”
She had him cold. In the beginning she’d seemed to truly love Will. Once Reid had married her, he’d helplessly watched her change toward his little man. He’d do anything to keep Will from knowing the truth about Lauren. In Will’s mind, she had been a wonderful mother and something tragic had happened to her. It would devastate him to know she’d walked away willingly. And to know she wasn’t his real mother would be even more traumatic.
It would lead to questions Reid wasn’t prepared to answer.
He exhaled. “How much?”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“I can’t possibly raise that kind of money. I can scrape together a hundred grand, but that’s it.” And even that would be a stretch. Coming up with that amount of cash wouldn’t be easy after Gary had stolen money and equipment from him. Reid had to spend quite a bit of his savings to replace the expensive cameras and editing equipment.
She must have recognized the truth in his voice because she sighed. “Fine. I need it as soon as I can get it.”
He’d have to sell some stocks, raid his 401k. “It will take me a few days to get it together.”
“You have until Wednesday or I make myself known to Will.”
“I’ll text you when I have it.”
The phone went dead, and he looked at the screen. She’d ended the call. Typical. He palmed the back of his neck with a shaky hand. He couldn’t even talk to anyone about this. Will could never know.
* * *
The game was afoot.
He saw the spring in Jane’s step as she left the meeting and smiled. It wouldn’t be there for long. Something about the shape of her face and her size always reminded him of Reese Witherspoon. Petite and small-boned, Jane walked with her head high and an I-can-take-on-the-world expression. She would find out she was no match for the adversary she didn’t know existed.
Jane had no idea how much he was going to mess with her life. It had been a long time coming. Retribution was an exciting word, one he’d rolled around and around in his head for years. It would be a freight train coming for the Hardys at full speed. None of them would understand his purpose until it was too late.
He’d managed to rope in other help, and now that they were working together, the cases being thrown her way would keep her occupied until it was time to strike. He pulled out his 1964 Kennedy half-dollar and flipped it through his fingers. He’d leave it where she’d find it, and she would think it was a lucky find when really it was the face of destruction.
It was just the first move in a deadly game of chess. Checkmate and game over.
Three
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
Jane looked up at the sound of Olivia’s voice in the doorway. In her late forties, Olivia Davis was the department’s head
dispatcher. She’d been here as long as Jane and had taken her under her wing the moment Jane met her when Dad got a job with the police force.
Jane smiled and set her pencil down. “Thanks, it was a shock. I just made coffee. Want some?”
Olivia had been a widow since her officer husband, Chris, was killed in the line of duty when he was thirty-three. Jane had often wondered why her friend had never remarried since she was a bubbly brunette who made everyone feel like her best friend the moment they met her. Jane adored her.
Olivia shut the door behind her. “I need to talk to you.”
Jane frowned. “Uh-oh, what’d I do now?”
Olivia’s smile didn’t reach her dark-blue eyes. “It’s not you—it’s me.” She sank into one of the visitor chairs. “I’ve got ALS, Jane.” Her voice trembled, but she held Jane’s gaze with the strength and steadiness that made her so endearing. Parker must have heard the stress in her voice because he got up and came to push his nose into Olivia’s hand.
Jane struggled for something comforting to say. She’d never known anyone with ALS, though she knew it was deadly. She squatted in front of Olivia and took her hand off Parker’s head. “Tell me all of it.”
Olivia’s fingers were cold as she held to Jane’s hand. “My muscles have been twitching and felt funny. My right leg has been weak, and I’ve fallen several times.” She gestured to the elastic bandage on her ankle. “After falling for the third time, I went to the doctor thinking I might have MS. He sent me to a neurologist.”
“That’s why you were off work last week for a couple of days? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Olivia swallowed. “I didn’t want to worry you. The doctor ran a bunch of tests to rule out other possible causes. Nothing else showed up, so she’s calling it ALS.”
“Well, that’s a crazy way to diagnose something! Maybe it’s not ALS at all. You need to get a second opinion.”
“I can do that, but she’s certain that’s what’s wrong. She will run more tests in six months to see how far it’s progressed. She put me on some new medicine to slow the disease, but 95 percent of the time, it’s fatal in two to five years. I’m praying I’m in the 5 percent who can live twenty years with it.”
One Little Lie Page 2