by Julie Chase
“Lacy Crocker,” I answered. “How’d you know it was me who called you?”
He shoved heavy glasses up the bridge of his crooked nose. “Everyone else is deep in conversation, absorbed in whatever’s happening at their table. You two were obviously looking for someone. Why not me?”
“Why not?” I said. “This is Detective Jack Oliver.”
Jerry looked confused. “I don’t normally work with the police,” he said. “I know how they can be.”
“Watch it,” Jack warned.
Jerry lifted his palms in peace. “I’m just saying is all.”
I sipped my drink while the men sized each other up. This was my chance for a direct conversation with the man Mr. Becker had hired to search for his blackmailer. Excitement rolled over me until I couldn’t wait any longer. “You knew Wallace Becker?” I asked.
Jerry swung his gaze to mine, reluctantly taking his eyes off of Jack. “Who?”
I set my drink down and leaned in the PI’s direction. “We know he hired you. My dad’s being investigated for his murder, and I think you can help me.”
Jerry fell back, stupefied, and scrubbed beefy palms over his face, knocking his glasses around in the process. “Jeez, lady. You lied about being followed? You could’ve just made an appointment at my office for this.”
I scoffed. “I didn’t lie. I am being followed, presumably by the same crackpot who tormented Mr. Becker.” I presented him with my cell phone and brought up the photos I’d taken of the ones left on my car this week. “Someone sent these to me.”
He performed a low whistle at the ones of me in a bikini, then flipped slowly between pictures of me with Jack and me with Chase. “Whoa, buddy.” He looked at Jack. “Tough luck, yeah? Caught cheating.” He shook his head in dismay.
“I wasn’t cheating.” I snatched my phone back. “It’s complicated. And irrelevant. The photos are misleading.” I trailed off, feeling ridiculous.
Jack twisted the lid off his water. “We need to know what you know about Wallace Becker’s blackmailer.”
Jerry kept his attention on me. “Hey, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s none of my business what you’re up to. I have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions. Making inferences is part of the job. You kids these days are what the media calls progressive”—he made finger quotes around the last word—“with your relationships and things. I’ve seen daytime TV. I get it.”
“I’m not progressive.” My thick Southern accent soaked through each word. I barely stopped myself from declaring I was a Crocker, a proper Southern lady, or some other line my mother had spent my formative years ingraining on my psyche.
He cast Jack a funny look. “Touchy.”
Jack stretched onto his feet. “Mr. Gates, this place is more public than I’d prefer for our discussion. Maybe you can accompany me to the station. It’s private, and we can control the spectators.”
“No.” Jerry answered quickly, refocusing on the couple he’d followed into the bar. “No. This is fine.” He lifted a finger at the barkeep.
The man delivered a tall glass of amber liquid to the space between Jack and me. He dropped a cherry onto the top.
“Thanks, Miles.” Jerry left several folded bills on the counter in exchange for his drink. “I’m a regular at most of these places, but no one wants to give me a tab. Go figure.”
I tapped my nails on the bar. “You were saying?”
He plunged a straw into the glass and paddled the cherry around. “Wallace hired me to find out who was blackmailing him.”
“When was this?” Jack asked.
“A couple of weeks ago. We met a bunch of times to go over details. His suspicions, likely suspects, the usual. He never wanted to tell the whole story at once. It was easier for him in little jags, I think, so he could pretend he wasn’t telling me everything. He kept saying it was important to keep the circle small. The fewer people who knew about things, the better. He led up to his big secret like he’d committed a murder or something.” He winced. “Sorry. Bad choice of words. Anyway, I told him it was no big deal. Everyone’s got an illegitimate child somewhere.”
I made a face at Jack.
“I don’t,” he said.
Jerry tented his brows. “Oh, yeah? How can you be sure about that?”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Back to Becker. What’d you find out during your investigation?”
He slurped his drink with a groan. “I never started. The guy kicked off before I got any further than reviewing the notes.”
I curled my hands on my lap. “You didn’t even start on his case?”
“Hey, I can’t help it if New Orleans is a busy town for thefts and cheating. That’s my bread and butter, and I’ve got a full plate these days. I barely squeezed in all those meetings of his.”
“Did he mention a yellow Tonka truck or anyone named Sage or Tabitha?” I asked.
Jerry made a face. “You expect me to remember? That guy said a lot of stuff.”
Jack dug a business card from his wallet and handed it to Jerry. “I’m going to need those notes.”
“Sure thing.” He backed away in a hurry. “See you later. Take care.” He tipped his floppy brim in my direction and hustled through the room, regaining his tail on the couple he’d followed inside as they made their way through the lobby.
The awkward trio cut a path to the elevators. One man and woman kissing as they stumbled along in the lead, and Jerry taking pictures of them with his cell phone from ten feet behind.
I shoved his abandoned drink out of the way. “He invited us to his stakeout.”
Jack’s plate of crawfish beignets arrived in a puff of buttery steam. He pushed them between us. “The bread will absorb the alcohol.”
I tore one in half and blew across the top. “You’re the one who was plying me with spiked tea.”
“That was before I knew we were going out. No one told you to order a Sazerac.”
“I like watching them make it.”
He laughed. For a fleeting moment, his crystal-blue eyes crinkled at the edges. Too soon, his lips fell back into their usual firm line. His eyes, now clearly troubled, focused tightly on me.
I fidgeted with my beignet, not quite sure I could eat it. The look in his eyes worried me, and I had the distinct feeling that this was where he pushed me out of his life for good. “Jack?”
The muscle along his jawline ticked. Whatever he was thinking about was big, and the longer he stared, the more anxious I became. I shoved a tuft of fluffy dough between my lips and chewed slowly, unable to look away. “Everything okay?” I mumbled.
He paid the bill and climbed down, his beignet forgotten. “Yeah. Are you ready?”
“Okay.” I followed Jack onto the sidewalk. “Hey.” I grabbed his hand. “I know something’s wrong. What is it?”
He answered me with a regretful look, then raised his arm for a cab. “I think we need to talk.”
* * *
Jack lit a fire in the fireplace and sat with me on the couch. He hadn’t said much since leaving the Monteleone, and my shaken nerves had churned the pizza and tea into sickness, not to mention the beignet. What had happened? What could have driven him to leave the bar immediately and insist on this discussion?
He turned his back to the couch’s arm and locked a worried gaze on me. He could have been facing a firing squad.
I held perfectly still.
Deep lines gathered over his brow, and he curved his hands together. “I’m done running from you.”
I let the words settle in. “Good.”
“You told Gates that the surveillance pictures were complicated. That they were misleading. I think they’re pretty darn accurate.”
I rubbed my palms against goose bumps rising on my arms. “Yeah?”
“I realized something during the holidays, back when everyone was still helping you get around with your cast. I didn’t like it. It seems like whenever we’re together, you talk and I listen.”
“Sorry,
” I answered on instinct, suddenly guilty for filling our time together with my ramblings.
“No.” He smiled. “Don’t apologize. You never expect anything in return. You don’t pose insensitive questions. Don’t ask for more than I’m willing to give. That kind of relationship is great, and it normally works well for me”—he paused—“but it’s stopped working for me with you.”
“Oh.” I kneaded my hands against my lap. “Is that why you quit coming around for so long?”
He bobbed his head. “I tried redirecting myself. I worked extra hours. It didn’t help. You stayed on my mind. Things you’d said. Secrets you’d shared.”
A strange pressure centered in my chest. What had I said? Had I offended him? I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from asking. To give him time to say what he needed.
“I know a lot about you.” He gave a small, guilty laugh. “I pulled your record last summer when you showed up at my crime scene. I asked around about you after that. Since then, you’ve told me more than I’ve ever thought to ask. I’m sure there are some things you regret telling me, and there are some I wish I didn’t know.”
I held my breath, uncertain and a little frightened about what those things might be. Maybe he hated that I’d been mugged at gunpoint in Arlington before we’d met. That night still haunted me, but the memory had company now. Maybe he wished I hadn’t told him I’d kissed Chase or that I tried veganism once. Honestly, who knew? I couldn’t possibly because he refused to open up and say what he meant. I curled my hands into fists. Whatever Jack was getting at, he’d finally started to let me in, and I wouldn’t let him push me out now.
“I promised myself at Christmas that I’d stop running from you. You’ve never run from me. It’s only fair.”
I blinked, stunned. A bevy of emotions tumbled through me. Fair was of the utmost importance to Jack, and he wanted to be fair to me. “Okay.”
“So ask me anything you want to know.” He grimaced. “You’ve earned my trust over and again. It’s time I said so and returned the favor.”
A slow smile spread over my face. I had endless unanswered questions about Jack. Where to start? I sought the most basic ice-breaking question I had. “Why’d you come back to New Orleans?” It was the thing that puzzled me most about him. “You grew up abroad, served in the military overseas. You have enough money to start a life anywhere you want. Why’d you come here?”
Jack went pale, his face as heartbreaking as anything I’d ever seen. It was as if I’d asked the worst possible question or kicked him in the chest. He rubbed his hands on his thighs and blinked grieving eyes. “I was in a car accident in Austria. My fiancé and I.”
My heart hammered. My mouth went dry. I could see the loss in his eyes, in the set of his lips. He’d lost her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I waited, hungry for more about his life before me.
“We were driving home from dinner. We’d been celebrating our engagement with friends from school. We were all so young. Fresh from college, ready to take on the world.” His voice cracked, and he stopped to clear his throat. “I’d had too much to drink, so she drove. She fell asleep at the wheel.” He lifted his eyes to mine. Shame creased his face. “She was tired a lot then. And she wasn’t drinking.”
“Oh, no.” He didn’t have to say it. I knew. “She was pregnant.”
His eyes glossed with untold years of guilt and pain. “Not far enough along to share the news, I guess. I found the positive tests in her apartment weeks later, when I was released from the hospital. They were all wrapped like gifts. Four of them.”
He hadn’t even known. The knot in my chest tightened. I set my hand on his.
“I joined the army then. Spent eight years fighting my own demons along with a few tangible ones. I did three tours in the sandbox. Kuwait. Bosnia. Afghanistan. It took me that long to let her go. To accept that I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t save her. Them,” he corrected. “When my time was up, I came home. Unsatisfied but done fighting. I took the civil service test and went to the police academy.”
“Became a fierce crime-fighting detective.”
He faked a laugh. “Yeah, I’m so great I can’t keep one former debutante out of harm’s way for more than five minutes.” He turned his palm over beneath mine and entwined our fingers. “I’ve never told that story. The people who knew us know about it, of course, but I haven’t been back to Europe, and I don’t talk about it, so if there’s anything else you want to know on the matter, now’s the time to ask because I left that life far behind.”
I squeezed his fingers. “I won’t tell anyone, and I don’t need to know anything else.” I raised careful fingers to the pattern of tiny white dashes on his cheek. “Your scars.”
He pressed rugged stubble against the tender skin of my palm. “Shards of window glass,” he whispered.
I finally understood why he was so rarely clean shaven. The stubble hid those scars from nosy strangers. And himself.
He released my hand and wrapped his arms around my back instead, winding his fingers into the length of hair over my shoulder. “You shouldn’t be alone tonight. Give me a chance to find out who sent those photos.”
“Okay.”
“Stay with me,” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Furry Godmother’s key to avoiding scandal: Stop breathing.
“Nothing happened,” I repeated to Scarlet. “There’s nothing to tell.” I’d slid out of work early to prepare for Dad’s dinner and made the mistake of returning one of Scarlet’s two dozen missed calls while driving. I took the next corner a little too quickly.
“Your car was outside Jack Oliver’s house when I jogged past at five this morning. There’s definitely something to tell.”
Why was this district so small? “You should be sleeping at five AM, not out gallivanting around the neighborhood.”
“Tell me that story after you have four kids,” she chided.
If I had four kids, I’d be in the loony bin, but I didn’t see the point of telling her. “I slept on the couch. He slept on the floor. It was all very innocent and lovely. We talked until we both fell asleep in front of the fire.” The bourbon had probably helped.
“You talked.” She said the words as if they were filth on her tongue.
“Yes. Grown people do that. He’s stayed at my house before. You never assumed the worst then.”
“Honey, I highly doubt what I’m suggesting would be the worst.”
“Scarlet,” I scolded. “Really.”
“Yes. Really. Now if you don’t start telling me what I want to know, I’m going to have to find another way to get the information. Maybe I’ll call him.”
“Do not.”
“I can hear you smiling.”
“Cannot.” I pulled into my driveway with a grin. “He finally opened up to me about his life. He gave me a chance to see who he is behind the badge and all those personal barriers he insists on keeping up. He said he trusted me.”
“I’ve got to give it to him. The guy’s smooth,” she said. “Every woman wants to be the one he lets in.”
“It was nice. He was real, and I felt honored. When he asked me to stay, I didn’t even have to think about it. I didn’t want to leave. What kind of message would that have sent if I’d left after he finally opened up?” I locked my car and hustled up the drive to my house. “I almost forgot. I went over there because I got another set of photos last night. Pictures of me and Jack. Others of me and Chase.”
“Yikes.” Her voice jumped an octave. “Now that’s blackmail.”
“Yeah. No wonder he didn’t want me to leave.” No sooner were the words off my tongue than the weight of them had settled on my heart. “Do you think he only told me those things about himself and asked me to stay so I wouldn’t insist on going home?”
“No.” She was quiet for a long beat. “Hey, even if that was the reason he wanted you to stay, it’s not like anything happened between you guys. Allegedl
y,” she teased. “Maybe this little scare was the push he needed to finally tell you how he feels. It’s good karma. You’re a great person, and even the bad things turn around in your life. As they should.”
I set my alarm and flopped onto my couch. “I’m not sure karma is that simple. Imogene says there’s a black cloud over my head.”
My phone buzzed with an incoming call from my mom. Imogene was right. “I have to go. Mom’s in meltdown mode about Dad’s recognition dinner tonight. I left work early to get ready.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me about your mother. Why do you think it’s so quiet over here? Your mom hired a sitter to play outside with my kids so I could call everyone on her invite list, whether they’d RSVP’d or not, and thank them personally for supporting your father.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I’d answer her call if I was you, or she’ll show up at your door in ten minutes.”
I shot upright, adrenaline lighting fire in my bones. “I don’t have anything to wear!”
Scarlet groaned. “She’s calling me now. I have to take that.”
“Good luck.” I disconnected and set Penelope free from her carrier. “I’m in big trouble,” I told her. I filled her dishes with fresh food and water, dropped a dehydrated shrimp bit into Buttercup’s bowl, then dragged myself into my bedroom for a faceoff with my pastel-depleted closet.
The phone rang. Jack’s face appeared on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” His voice was low and careful. “How was your day?”
I twisted the hem of my skirt around my finger. “Good. Yours?”
“Okay.”
I waited through an awkward pause.
“Scarlet called,” he said.
I nearly dropped the phone. “What?”
“Your dad’s dinner is tonight. I told her I’d be there, but the truth is that I picked up the Becker file from Jerry Gates on my way home this afternoon, and it could take a while to weed through it all.”
“It’s okay if you can’t come.” Unexpected disappointment colored my voice. “He’ll understand.” I deflated at the idea of not seeing Jack in a few hours.