by Beverly Long
Rena nodded. “Do you happen to know where she was headed?”
Hampton shook his head. “I don’t think she said. One of the other girls, just today, asked if I knew where. That makes me think she didn’t tell anybody in the office.”
Other girls. Rena kept a smile on her face. The man was young enough to know that it was rather insulting for grown women to be referred to as girls. But he didn’t seem like a bad guy. In fact, he seemed legitimately concerned about Tess.
“Mr. Hampton, you wouldn’t happen to have an emergency contact for Tess, would you?” she asked.
“I imagine we might. Let me pull her file.”
He walked down the hallway and entered the lighted room. Rena looked at A.L. “Shark attack. Some people have really bad luck,” she said.
He nodded. “We need to find her.”
“We will.”
Clark Hampton came back with a manila folder. It had only a few pieces of paper in it. There was a federal and a state tax form and another form with a copy of Tess’s driver’s license and Social Security card attached. A.L. made a note of both numbers. There was an insurance enrollment form for herself and one dependent, Marnee Lyons, female, age twenty. The final piece of paper was an emergency contact form. It listed Scott and Terrie Willow with one phone number for the both of them and a street address in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The space to identify their relationship to her was blank. A.L. copied that information, as well.
“I think that’s her parents,” Clark said. “Sometimes she would mention going to Milwaukee to see Mom and Dad.”
“Do you know anything about Marnee Lyons?” Rena asked.
“She’s a sweet kid. Did some filing for us in the summer. She’s at college in Eau Claire. I saw her when I visited Tess after her surgery. She was really torn up about her mom.”
Again, Hampton sounded legitimately concerned. Rena decided to forgive him for the other girls comment. “Are you aware if Tess Lyons was seeing anyone romantically?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. And if she was, I’ll bet her accident ended all that.”
“Because she was disabled?” A.L. asked, his tone sharper than Rena might have expected.
“Because she was pretty damn depressed,” Hampton said.
“Has anyone else been here recently to ask questions about Tess?” A.L. asked.
“Not that I’m aware of. And I think if anybody was nosing around, asking questions about her, I’d have been told.”
“We’re going to ask that you keep this conversation to yourself, Mr. Hampton. Please don’t tell your other employees. Don’t tell your family. We aren’t able to give you much other information besides what we’ve already shared, but please understand, your confidentiality is really important.”
Now Hampton looked offended. “I’m in the title business. I know about significant real estate transactions well in advance of the general public. Nobody has ever had any reason to believe that there’s any confidentiality risk in doing business with Hampton’s Title Company.”
It dawned on Rena that the title company’s involvement in real estate transactions might have been how Tess Lyons had come to sign the petition to save Gizer Hotel. Perhaps she’d heard about the potential sale to the Poisen Group at work. Or maybe she’d been buying flowers one day at the Petal Poof and heard Jane Picus talking about it.
Any way it had happened, she’d simply had the bad luck to sign on line number sixty.
“We appreciate your understanding of the importance of confidentiality,” Rena said. She gave him a business card. “If you happen to think of anything else that might be helpful to us as we attempt to locate Tess, please give me a call.”
“I will. I hope she’s okay.”
* * *
“We could call her parents,” Rena said when they were back in the car.
A.L. shook his head. It was an option but not the best one. “Not the kind of conversation I want to have on the phone. I’m leaving really early in the morning to visit my sister in Madison. Hopefully, she’ll let me take her back to Chicago. From there, I’ll drive north to Milwaukee and talk to them.”
“Our idea of a decoy isn’t looking so good right now,” Rena said.
That plan had gone to hell. Tess Lyons had lost an arm. Given that Perp knew who his next victim was going to be, well in advance, they had to assume that he had some knowledge of Tess. Maybe he’d watched her walk her damn dog. Knew about the arm. Would immediately know that something was very wrong when a woman with two arms answered Tess’s door.
“Maybe Tess could do it?” Rena said.
The only way for that to work was to tell the woman the truth. She’d have to act as if she had no idea that a maniac was closing in. How many people could pull that off? Would some small tell tip the creep off and they’d be right back in the shit?
He needed to think this through. Before they did anything else. “Listen, Traci is in the class play, and they’re doing a dress rehearsal for family members and school faculty tonight.” His kid was pretty damn talented, if he did say so himself. And he intended to have a conversation with her about Golf Course John. “I’m going to go.”
“You should,” Rena said. “We need to make a good decision here.”
She understood that sometimes he did his best thinking when he was doing something else. “Important when a lot of the puzzle pieces are still missing.” They knew the next victim but Perp was still a big mystery.
“I’m going to city hall tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going to dig into who might have lived at the Gizer Hotel.”
“Good,” he said.
“Now, I guess I’ll head home. I’ve got pork to roast,” she added. “I figured I’d be doing it at midnight so it will be nice to be able to start it a little earlier.”
He frowned at her.
“Gabe’s brother is having a birthday party for his oldest son on Saturday. I told him that I’d bring the pork barbecue.”
“Can’t you just buy that stuff?” A.L. asked. It seemed to him that Rena was putting ten pounds in a five-pound bag all the time. Maybe that’s what made her eyes dark.
“Of course. But Gabe’s mother would sniff that out in a minute.”
“When you’ve been married for a few more years, you won’t care about impressing your mother-in-law anymore.”
Rena just smiled. She’d picked up her cell phone and was scanning emails. “We got the contact information for the Poisen Group. Corporate offices are in downtown Chicago.”
“Yeah. This is working out okay. I can fit in a visit to their office tomorrow.”
“What if you can’t talk Liz into going back?”
He knew that she was afraid that he was going to be disappointed. “I have to try,” he said.
“I understand. Just don’t beat yourself up if she doesn’t want it badly enough.”
The it was to not be a drunk anymore. How could Liz not want it? “I’ll keep you in the loop.”
She nodded. “Good luck. In all ways. And maybe we’ll get lucky with the case. Tess might be staying with her parents.”
“That would be lucky.” His didn’t generally run that good.
A.L. pulled up next to Rena’s SUV in the parking lot of the police station. He deliberately did not shut off his vehicle. If he went back inside, he’d end up getting delayed and potentially missing the play. Traci would be disappointed, and Jacqui would make sure he knew that she’d noticed.
He wondered if Jacqui and Craig Olson would be cozying up to one another tonight. If so, that would be the first time that he’d run into that situation. But they’d been divorced for five years. It should have happened way before now.
He guessed wishing Olson good luck would be poor form. But maybe he’d do it, anyway.
Eleven
Rena put the pork roasts in the o
ven and checked her watch. A half hour ago, Gabe had sent a text that he’d be home in twenty. She’d sent one back. I got Chinese and it’s a Good Time.
Which really meant, Get home, eat your egg roll and cashew chicken and fuck me. Because the environment up there is hospitable to your swimmers. It would be that way for a couple days, while she was ovulating.
He hadn’t responded. That was all she needed for her imagination to prove that it, too, was in superfertile shape. Within seconds, she was envisioning all kinds of responses. Sorry, not interested. Please, not again. Try me next month. Fuck yourself. Try harder the next time to pretend that you liked the pearls.
When she heard his car pull into the drive ten minutes later, she felt her muscles tense, as if she was preparing for a fight. But he came in as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Tossed his keys on the counter, gave her a smile. “Smells good.”
“I’m roasting pork for the weekend.”
“Can’t you just buy it?”
She shook her head. “Did you see my text?”
“Yeah, about the Chinese. Sounds good. I didn’t get lunch.”
Had he not read the whole message? “It’s a Good Time,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. Saw that. Good.”
Really? “I thought maybe we should take care of that first. I know...you’re not crazy about having sex on a full stomach. That it gives you heartburn.”
“I didn’t have any lunch today. Might be good to eat first.”
She grabbed two plates from the cupboard and set them on the counter, a little harder than necessary. She forced herself to take a breath. To not rip open the unsuspecting square white cardboard containers. When she had everything open, she got silverware out of the drawer and filled her plate. She sat down at the table.
He did the same. He was probably a third of a way through his plateful when he looked up. “How was your day?”
“Good.”
“Anything on the serial killer?”
She nodded. “A little progress.” She wouldn’t offer up any details, and he wouldn’t expect any. That was a detective’s life. “How was your day?”
“Fine. Busy.”
“Yeah, no time for lunch?” Had he been busy with a blonde instead?
“Meetings and stuff,” he said. He looked around the kitchen. “It seems so quiet after having the boys here last night.”
That’s how their house would sound in the future. Noisy. Fun. “The pork needs to cook for two hours.” She pushed aside her plate. They would have plenty of time to do it. She got up and put away the leftovers. “I’ll be in the bedroom.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll be there in just a minute.”
She got naked and lay down. Then got right back up and dabbed some perfume on her wrists, the backs of her knees, her stomach. She stared at the television on the bureau. They had some porn they could watch. But she didn’t want to turn it on, didn’t want him to think that she needed that.
She waited fifteen minutes before she got out of bed again. Walked out to the kitchen. He was still at the table, but he’d pushed his plate aside and his head was now pillowed on his folded arms. He was asleep.
She could not fucking believe it.
The hormone-hyped crazy part of her wanted to shake him awake and demand that he do his part. The more reasonable part rationalized that he was tired. That she should let him sleep.
She went back to the bedroom and pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants. She set the alarm on her phone for two hours so that the roasts didn’t burn. Then she lay in the bed and closed her own eyes. If she didn’t get pregnant this month, it would be his fault.
Forty-five minutes later, he poked his head into the bedroom. “Still awake?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. I was just really bushed.”
“I understand.” He was a smart guy. Did he not get that there were only so many optimal hours?
He came into the room, undressed, slid into bed. Turned on his side and ran a hand across her stomach. “You’ve got too many clothes on.”
“I was naked earlier.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. Any chance of that again?”
Hell, no. But it was a Good Time. She pulled off her shirt and her sweatpants.
“That’s better,” he said. Then he bent down and took her nipple into his mouth.
Sex with Gabe had always been so good. He could make her come with his cock, his fingers or his mouth. He trailed his fingers across her abdomen, then lower. She spread her legs. This wasn’t about her coming, but he’d always been a considerate lover, making sure that she was satisfied first.
She thought of the porn they’d watched together a few weeks before. Wondered if he was thinking the same thing. But decided it didn’t matter, because it was doing the trick. She felt her body relax, open up.
And later, when he pushed into her, she felt her need gather. She used her own fingers to push herself over the edge. He rode through it, then pumped twice before coming.
Swim, baby, swim.
They would be okay. She would get pregnant and the pressure would be off. This month for sure.
* * *
A.L. drove to his apartment and didn’t bother parking in the garage behind the eight-unit building. He simply used a visitor’s spot. He was going to be here only long enough to shower and grab a quick sandwich.
And maybe give Felix a treat. If the cat bothered to look up when he walked in, of course. He’d found Felix outside his apartment over a year ago. The orange tabby had been hungry and full of attitude. A.L. had knocked on doors for a week, trying to find the rightful owner. Had put an ad in the paper. That had cost him twenty-five dollars and netted him nothing. In the meantime, he’d had to feed the damn thing, and that had evidently helped the cat decide that he wasn’t going anywhere.
He picked up his mail from the slot in the lobby, then walked down the short hallway to unit 6. He unlocked his door and stepped inside. Tossed his sport coat onto the back of a kitchen chair. Took a side glance at the window Felix had claimed and saw the cat give a big stretch.
“How was your day?”
The cat jumped down and rubbed himself on A.L.’s ankles.
“That good, huh? I guess mine was okay.” In truth, he was feeling better about the search for Tess Lyons than earlier in the day. They’d found her parents. They would find her.
Shark bite. That image had knocked around in his head for a bit when Clark Hampton had been talking. Lost part of her arm. How much? had been his first thought. Elbow down? Like the gory details were important. They weren’t, but it was, in their little universe in Wisconsin, unusual.
Sadly, he was aware of two other amputees in Baywood. Both were young men who’d lost limbs in Afghanistan. But maybe they knew of some support groups.
Some people dissed those kinds of things. But for a couple years, AA had kept Liz sober, until she’d met Tom.
He dumped some food into Felix’s bowl and refilled the water dish. Then he scooped up shit and clumped-up litter into a plastic bag. The cat taken care of, he started pulling off clothes on his way to the bathroom. Then it was a quick shower and into khakis and a cotton shirt that he buttoned but didn’t tuck so that he could cover his waist holster.
He grabbed two PowerBars and the plastic bag on his way out, tossing the bag as he detoured past the trash Dumpster on the side of his building. He was halfway to Baywood Community High School when he remembered flowers. He thought about the Petal Poof but knew they’d be closed by now. Anyway, he wasn’t ready to see the sad faces of Jane Picus’s coworkers. He swung his vehicle into the grocery store parking lot and picked up a twelve-dollar bouquet from the display at the front of the store. Then it was back in the car. He turned on Jimmy Buffett tunes and unwrapped the first PowerBar. By the time he pulled into the school’s parking
lot, he’d eaten his dinner and decompressed as much as he ever was going to.
Baywood High was a new school, now just seven years old. Ten years ago, taxpayers had seen fit to pass a referendum, accepting that higher taxes were the price to be paid for their kids to have access to a building that didn’t leak and where students didn’t freeze in the winter and suffocate from heat in September and May. The high school he’d attended had been torn down, and in its place was this behemoth of air-conditioned rooms with energy-efficient windows, cool science labs and a music room with good acoustics. There was a pool for the swimmers, art rooms with natural light for the dreamers and an auditorium with padded seats for eight hundred where the class play would be delivered.
He took a seat in row M. There was nobody on either side of him. He saw Chad Borham and waved. He and Chad had played football together in high school, never dreaming that twenty some years later their daughters would be best friends. Jessie was a good kid and fun to have around. When she used to sleep over at the house, he’d make her and Traci pancakes in the mornings. Jessie could deliver a monologue worthy of a late-night talk show.
The McKittridges and the Borhams used to have dinner together regularly, but when he and Jacqui had gotten divorced, Chad’s wife had sided with Jacqui, and there’d been no more dinner invitations. He and Chad still managed an occasional lunch. He suspected Chad never mentioned those at home.
Maybe Chad and his wife were entertaining Jacqui and Craig Olson now. And speak of the devil...there she was. Row E. Aisle seat. She’d probably gotten here early. The seat next to her was taken, but not by Olson. It was the woman she played tennis with twice a week. Mary Jane somebody. For a short while after the divorce, when Jacqui’s tennis game had seemed to be picking up, he’d wondered if she’d changed teams.