Fables & Felonies

by Nellie K Neves

  “What?”

  “Promise me you’ll find her killer.”

  My eyes clenched shut because that meant he was going to do something stupid.

  “I promise.”

  The line fell dead immediately. I stared at the phone in my hand, unable to breathe for nearly a full minute.

  I couldn’t feel my face.

  Out of nowhere, I couldn’t get past the fact that the right side of my face went totally numb.

  “Typically, you talk into it.” Andrew Perkins, one of the defense attorneys, stood at the right side of my desk. He’d hit on me my first day of work, the typical macho man type who usually had some embarrassing secret fetish he was compensating for. “People can’t hear you blinking at them.”

  I slammed the phone on the cradle and grabbed the pile of stuff I kept under the desk. I had no patience for his stupid jokes and ill-timed cat calls.

  “I have to go,” I mumbled as I pushed past him.

  Andrew yelled something, but I didn’t hear it. I was gone.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I drove to the precinct first, but the desk sergeant told me Ranger wasn’t around. Likely driving to pick up Amos for murder. If only I had some other rock-solid lead to get him off Amos’ back. I thanked her and returned to my car to try my next location.

  The decision wasn’t one I made consciously, but when my car turned off again I was parked outside my dad’s office. After a quick check-in, I half-walked, half-jogged, to Dad’s office. Lawyers gathered in Donnelly’s office, talking excitedly, making plans. Whatever they’d found was enough to dash all those doubts Donnelley had written on his pad.

  So much for worthless cops.

  My dad’s door was slightly ajar, enough that I watched him pace the floor like he might carve a rut into the hardwood. I rapped my knuckles once before I entered. Not even a breath later, his arms wrapped tight around me. I wasn’t sure if the hug was meant for me or for him, but it felt good either way.

  “If they find him at our place, I’ll be fired, Lindy.” His breath flashed hot in my hair. Worry hedged up in my mind. I felt it on my ear, but not on my cheek.

  Numb.

  New numb.

  I shoved the thought back and looked at my dad. I hated seeing him desperate. Working in the gray areas didn’t suit him. He was right, my lifestyle of bending rules wasn’t meant for him.

  “He left the house.”

  Dad pushed back to look into my eyes. He used to do it when I was little, to make sure I was telling the truth, back before I knew how to lie.

  “Do you know that for sure? Do you know anything about him?” Dad let go of me and began pacing once more, wearing that pattern thin. “I never should’ve called you. I never should have involved you. This is my fault, I should know that I—”

  The phone rang and my father nearly knocked every picture from his desk in his mad dive to answer it.

  “Hello?” A pause, then, “Yes, yes, I understand. Thank you, sir.”

  The phone eased back into its cradle. Fear was replaced by something else, something far worse.

  Guilt.

  “Amos turned himself in,” he said, as if the words didn’t make sense. In his world men like Amos didn’t do the right thing. It didn’t compute.

  It was unusual, I’d give him that, but it didn’t matter what drove him to do it. All that mattered was that the case rested solely on my shoulders. Amos’ freedom was in my hands.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Pretty sure they gave me the same room that I started this mess in. The same cameras, my same hands on the table so they saw I was willing to play nice, but when they brought Amos in this time, he wore handcuffs. He hadn’t been stuck in interrogation. He was in a holding cell waiting for a transfer to the county jail.

  He didn’t look good. His confession that morning did nothing to raise his spirits, instead it made it all real. Before, he could pretend as if none of it had happened. Now Hallie was really gone. The woman he loved had been strangled, and he was going to take the rap for it.

  “Hey, Little Sparrow.” The guard locked him into the table. I wanted to wave him off, tell him none of that was necessary, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. It was protocol. Amos had been charged with murder. Certain safety measures had to be in place.

  I waited for the guard to leave before I spoke. “Why did you do this? Why didn’t you take off? I know you, you could have disappeared.”

  My thoughts had been stuck there all afternoon while I waited for him to be processed. All I could think about was our last morning in Washington over three years before, the morning he told me his real name and his real endgame. The morning he returned all the money he’d swindled from me and rode out of my life forever, or at least so I thought at the time. I’d looked for him, relentlessly at first, but even Kip couldn’t find him. When Amos wanted to vanish, he did. And yet this time he gave himself up.

  “Why?”

  “I have to know,” Amos said. “If I don’t stay, I’ll never know. I have to be able to visit her grave with a clear conscience. I loved her, Lindy.”

  “Now that you’re being honest with me, was there someone else? Was she seeing someone else?”

  Amos shrugged. “Obviously, I mean, we weren’t exclusive. She didn’t like that sort of thing, and I’m flexible, but I don’t know his name. She wasn’t real forthcoming, especially after I told her the truth.”

  “Did she love you, Amos?”

  It wasn’t fair to ask him, and yet I wanted to know what I was dealing with.

  “Not like I loved her.” The truth ate at him. “But that’s not her fault, she only knew Mack, not me. Like you said, how could she fall in love when she didn’t even know my name?”

  Regret stained me, and every time he looked up at me I felt it singe my skin.

  “I tried not to. I swear I fought against the feelings as hard as I could. I almost drove away early to escape this.” His head sank to his chest. “Maybe that’s exactly what I should have done.”

  Amos pulled the chain attaching his handcuffs to the table until they were taut and then let them loose again. The bracelet was gone. “Sparrow, have I ever told you about the lion who fell in love?”

  “No,” I said, though with the mood that had swallowed him, I was willing to listen to any story he wanted to tell.

  “A lion fell in love with a mouse. She brought him to meet her family because they wanted to be married. Her family said no way could she ever marry such a ferocious creature. He’d eat them all. To show his great sacrifice, the lion pulled all the teeth from his head so that he was no longer the ferocious beast they feared. When he returned to the mouse family to ask for his love’s hand, the mice laughed at him, knowing he had nothing left to threaten them with.”

  “Amos—”

  “I’m that lion, Lindy. They’ve taken my teeth and for the first time, I’m scared.”

  Those sorts of thoughts weren’t going to get us anywhere. I had to change the topic.

  “I’m going to check Club Feugo next,” I told him. “There’s something there. I know it in my gut.”

  “Remember the fable of the old lion. He was too tired to hunt, so he waited in a cave and asked animals to help him; when they moved too close he ate them. All except the fox, who stayed outside the cave. When the lion asked him to please come in, the fox shook his head. Do you know why?”

  “No. Why is that?”

  “There were lots of footprints going in the cave, but none going out.”

  “Beware of traps,” I said. He’d never been this depressed before, though I couldn’t blame him. The case was stacked high, and he was the most obvious suspect. “I’m getting faster with all my running. Maybe I can outrun the traps.”

  “Are the birds out while you run? I remember how you love the egrets, those are the white ones, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I see them in the morning.”

  “Do you know the fable about the egret and the oyster?”


  I shook my head. Our time was growing short, but he wasn’t going to be any help to me, not today, not when the shock of his choice was still this strong.

  “The egret caught an oyster in the water. The oyster jammed itself in the egret’s mouth so it couldn’t swallow it. The egret said, ‘Give up, I’m going to eat you.’ The oyster said, ‘No you won’t, I’ll stay here until you starve to death.’ They went on arguing for hours, so distracted that they never saw the crocodile coming until it ate them both.”

  “What’s the moral of that one, Amos?”

  The guard returned and began working on freeing the handcuffs from the table. Before he left Amos said, “I don’t know. Sometimes they’re just stories.”

  I collected my emotions before I left the room. Without returning to the desk sergeant, I made my way to Ranger’s desk. He saw me from a little ways off. His hands rose defensively. “I’m just following the evidence, Lindy.”

  “Yeah,” my nod was weak, “but I don’t think you have all the evidence you need. I have some stuff I’d like to share with you if you can keep an open mind.”

  The chair groaned, and he shifted forward to his desk. “Okay, what do you have?”

  Not much, I thought. Everything I had was hunches, but with a couple days’ work I knew I could solidify it.

  “I want to have hard proof, a paper trail. Give me a couple days to smooth it out for you.”

  He was skeptical. Stall tactics were always too obvious. To sweeten the deal, I added, “Come over for dinner Sunday night. Mom can cook, you all can catch up, and I’ll run you through everything I’ve found.”

  “Well, your mom’s cooking is a little too hard to pass up. You’ve got a deal. Is dinner still at six at your place?”

  “Some things never change,” I said with a smile. But I was hoping after I showed him what I had, everything would change, and I could get Amos out of the mess he had tripped into.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I still couldn’t feel my face when I pulled back into my parents’ driveway that night. I poked at it all the way home, with my finger, with a pen, with a discarded straw I found on the floor until I thought better of it and tossed it to the passenger side. It was numb and that was new. New was always bad when it came to MS.

  I found an empty house. Mom had gone somewhere. Maybe Dad had warned her of the possible trouble and had forgotten to give the all clear. I pulled out my phone, needing good news, and dialed Uncle Shane’s number. Right to voicemail. I clicked on the PI Net app, but no Ryder. I was alone, and for once it bothered me. The step was hard beneath me as I sunk and rested my head in my hands.

  “Ready for that muffin?” a familiar voice called from over the fence. Jack Stone leaned heavily on his cane, but the smile on his face was as strong as ever. “You look like you need a pick-me-up, and maybe a listening ear.”

  Against my more snarky judgment, I rose to my feet and headed for the gate that separated our front yards. He met me at the gate and held it open like a gentleman.

  “Do you at least have one of those things? A pick-me-up, or a listening ear?” I asked.

  “I might even have both,” he teased as he offered his arm.

  I took it, noting the thick cardigan that covered his button-up shirt. He ran a little cold. I was the same way, except in the summer when I always ran hot. Was it an MS trait? I avoided everyone else with the disease, tried not to read anything about it, generally worked at pretending it wasn’t real. I was the last person who’d know.

  He held his front door for me and once more I was drawn to his shelves of seemingly endless curios. I was glad it didn’t offend him; rather, he seemed to appreciate my interest.

  I held an animal jigsaw no bigger than the palm of my hand. Jack pointed to it and said, “That was New Zealand. About fifteen years ago. Young teen there made those by hand.”

  I replaced it on the shelf. “Where to next?”

  Jack moved toward the couch where he’d sat before and motioned for me to join him.

  “Fiji,” he said as I sank into the chair near him. “I’m always cold these days. I want to go somewhere tropical before the real heat sets in.” He laughed to himself. “Not like I have to explain that sort of thinking to you, though, do I?

  “I guess not.” I was only half listening. My face was still numb. Technically, I didn’t have to worry until it persisted more than twenty-four hours. But new, new was bad, always bad.

  “What’s going on, Lindy?” Jack asked after watching me for a moment.

  There was no easy way to say it, so I blurted the truth out all at once.

  “I’m messed up.”

  “Messed up? How so?”

  There were too many pieces to list, too many ways that I’d broken in my lifetime, and no idea how even start.

  “I don’t reach out and talk to other people. I keep them at an arm’s length. I don't know where the lines are drawn. I don’t understand how to be around people now. I sometimes get achy all over, and it makes me cranky. My face keeps going numb. Sometimes I can't get my right foot to move at all.” I looked up at him to see if his reaction would tell me that I’d gone too far, but as promised, he was listening.

  I feel,” I said, “like I went three rounds in a boxing ring and lost. And all I can think to ask you is, am I normal?”

  Jack stretched a finger across his nose. His palm covered his mouth for a brief moment as he considered what I’d asked him.

  “No, that’s definitely not normal,” he said. My heart dropped at his words. “In fact, you probably have MS.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed to my feet to pace the floor. He laughed at his own joke with a jubilant amusement I didn’t think was warranted.

  “Oh, Lindy, calm down,” he urged. “I was only kidding. You’re strung so tight I thought you could use a laugh. Truth is, yes, you’re normal, but only because no one is normal. There is no set standard on which to judge normalcy. Normal isn’t a good describing word. Instead, I want to ask you, are you happy?”

  “No.” My answer fell out before I could temper or qualify it.

  “Why not?”

  Easy answer after the day I’d had.

  “I can’t find Shane. Ryder is still in the hospital and can’t remember me. I’m not any closer to solving this case, and the cop who could help me still thinks of me as a kid. To top it off, my client was just officially charged with murder this morning.”

  Jack’s smile came easy, but I doubted it knew any other way. “I’m hearing a lot about other people, but happiness doesn’t come from other people. Happiness is all about you. It comes from inside.”

  “Sure, that’s easy when you’re in Fiji. But here in the real world, people actually seem to try to make your life horrible.”

  “Life can be horrible, sure, but it’s up to you to decide how you’ll react. Never let the hard times take your freedom.”

  I’d found Buddha in an MS patient.

  “The hardest part is no knowing what to do,” I said. “Amos needs me and I’m not sure I can do what he needs me to.”

  “Not with that attitude,” Jack teased. “Last I heard, you were scaling buildings. Seems like getting someone off a murder charge should be a piece of cake.”

  He was right, maybe not about everything, but definitely about getting the answers I needed. No more wallowing. I had work to do.

  “Thanks, Jack.” I stood and moved from the room. He was right. I couldn’t let someone else tell me I couldn’t. Even if I had to shove stolen evidence down Ranger’s throat, I was prepared to do that.

  Chapter 13

  Kip and I had dated years ago. He was PD, or pre-diagnosis, back when I was a bit more carefree with my life. We’d stayed friends over the years, and occasionally I hired him to do some of my deeper research. Computers and I were not friends. I could do the basics, enough to complete a background check or investigate simple fraud, but anything deeper and I got lost. Spend an afternoon in a dusty basement going through planni
ng documents and musty books full of somewhat pointless information? Absolutely. I’m your girl. But computers beyond billing and invoices, no, not my bag.

  “Hey, Lindy, it’s been awhile,” Kip said, picking up on the second ring. He was married a few months ago and I tried to give him some space.

  “Yeah. Sorry, Kipper.” I sank onto the couch in my cottage. “I was incommunicado for a bit.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Okay enough.” I knew he could hear it was far from the truth. “Amos is wrapped up in something, and I’m trying to get him out of it.”

  “Oh, Lindy, no, not him again.”

  “It’s not like that,” I assured him. “But I need your expertise for a bit if you can.”

  “Yeah, of course.” It didn’t take much to get Kip involved. He seemed to love the danger, at least from a distance. As a software engineer, he didn’t get to see much of it without me.

  “I’m back home, at my parents’ place.” I had to pause to give him time to snicker. “There’s a nightclub here called Club Feugo. I don’t have much more than a hunch, but I need to know if there’s something illegal happening there. Can you see what you can dig up for me?”

  The keys clattered in the background before I stopped talking. I hadn’t meant that very moment, but maybe my absence had him hoping for a little adventure.

  “How are things with your sister?” Kip asked, while the keys still rattled like rain on a roof.

  I knew he didn’t mean Eleanor.

  Jackie.

  “I’ve had to put that on hold for a bit.” I hated admitting it out loud. “Too many other people to save.”

  “You told your parents yet?”

  “No, I want to know it’s her for sure.”

  “You should tell them anyway. She’s their daughter. They have a right to know.” A few keystrokes hit hard and fast, a clue that he’d found something. “Hey, right away I’m seeing that there was a body found in the alley that borders the club almost three weeks ago. You know, it wasn’t hard to find, you could really start doing some of your own research.”

  “But then I wouldn’t have an excuse to call my favorite computer nerd.”