by Ladew, Lisa
“No! I would never do that. But Lucy and Kevin? You have to admit they are strange names for dogs.”
“Well, once you hear their original names you’ll probably like Lucy and Kevin.”
“You changed their names? Why?”
Zane made a face. “It’s a long story and one I really didn’t want to share on the first date.” His face softened. “But I might as well get it over with. I’ll tell you when we get inside, OK?”
Kara looked up. They were here already. “OK.”
Zane parked, patted his keys three times, then pulled them out of the ignition. Kara watched him with the observation skills of a cop and decided not to comment on it. So he had a quirk, so what? He’d only done it twice. That wasn’t too weird … yet.
He got out of the truck and ran around to her door, but she was already out before he could open it for her. He closed it behind her and motioned for her to follow him into the bar. From the outside, it looked like a small place. A brick building jammed in between the restaurant on one side and a real estate office on the other, with barely enough room to walk between, plus a small, understated sign reading Wednesday’s above the door.
He held the door open for her and as she walked in her eyes scanned the room. Every table was full. It looked like they were going to have to sit at the bar, but the bar was jam-packed also. She wondered if he would want to take her somewhere else.
The hostess, a tall blonde wearing all black, smiled artificially at her, but when she saw Zane sunshine lit her face. “Mr. Rowe, I’m so glad you could make it. We saved a special table for you.”
He nodded and smiled at the hostess and she led them to a dark corner of the room. The table was perfect; close to the band, but not close enough that they wouldn’t be able to hear each other speaking. She sat down, then looked around, taking everything in. The music was acoustic and soothing with a solid beat. She eyed the band, wondering which one was Zane’s friend. The lead singer reminded her a bit of the dark-haired guy from Savage Garden, which was interesting since the music was similar to Savage Garden's also.
The waitress materialized at the table immediately, wanting to take their drink orders. Zane looked at Kara pointedly and she asked for a beer. Zane smiled at her order, then ordered a beer and a water and asked the waitress to bring the house appetizers. The waitress seemed almost star struck and called Zane Mr. Rowe, just as the hostess had done. Kara raised an eyebrow, then noticed the waitress’ puppy dog eyes. She was looking at Zane intently like he was her long-lost crush from high school. Zane thanked her kindly and she finally scurried off. That was weird, Kara thought. He must be a regular here, and apparently at least one waitress had the hots for him.
The song finished and the people in the audience began to clap. Zane slammed his hands together as hard as anybody and let out a piercing whistle. He leaned in to Kara and said, “That’s my buddy, Clint,” while pointing to the lead singer. “He’s really good. He just turned down an offer to sign with a record label because he’s trying to stay indie for the fans. I’m hoping to convince him to start his own record label.”
Clint waited for the applause to stop and then started talking, his eyes sweeping the audience, his gaze finally stopping on Zane and lighting into a smile. Kara listened to hear what he was saying.
“Thank you so much for coming out to hear us tonight. And while I’m thanking people, I need to thank our sponsors that make the music possible. There’s one sitting over there. Zane Rowe of Rowe Construction. Stand up, Zane.”
Zane look at Kara and shrugged, then bounced to his feet. He waved at Clint and Clint said, “Thanks buddy, we couldn’t have done it without you.”
Zane popped both thumbs out and the crowd laughed in approval. Zane took a bow, then waved a final time and sat down again. Kara was struck by how natural he seemed in the limelight.
“You have a construction company?” she asked.
“Yeah, I bought it six years ago. We’ve got a lot going on right now, in fact that afternoon you saw me at my neighbor's house I had just come home from a meeting. I landed the job of the century. My company will be putting up the new McLean Building downtown.”
Kara whistled. She had heard of the McLean Building. It had been a controversial project from day one as the state and the city fought on opposite sides and the billionaire Harvard McLean pushed to allow it to move forward. It was supposed to be a billion-dollar project. She felt deeply impressed and suddenly a little bit nervous. Was Zane rich? What was he doing with her? She pushed the thoughts aside. She was smart, cute, and hard-working. Just because she wasn’t rich didn’t make her less of a person. He started talking and she struggled her attention away from her pep talk and back to him.
“Yeah, I think that’s what gave me the confidence to ask you out,” he said.
Kara started to laugh but then saw the dead serious look on his face. She pursed her lips and looked around for her drink, something to cover the awkwardness of the moment. Luckily, the waitress was quick and she was right there, stepping in between Zane and Kara, giving Kara a moment to think about her answer.
When the waitress left, she took a sip of her drink and then said, “You don't strike me as a guy who lacks confidence.”
“You’d be surprised,” he replied, and then he winked at her.
Kara’s eyebrows furrowed. What he said was in stark contrast to what he did. For a second, she saw the cocky grin reappear and she was entranced by his incongruence. The band started playing again and Kara let her attention wander for a moment. Zane also watched the band and tapped his feet along to the music.
She leaned over to him. “So the McLean Building, how did you get the contract?”
Zane turned to her and she saw a new light in his eyes. His work was definitely one of the loves of his life and she was fascinated by the liveliness in his face and manner as he talked about it. Within moments though, the story fascinated her even more. It gave her an insight into his life and his drive that she wouldn’t have been able to see any other way.
“That’s a long and boring story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
She nodded.
“I started working on him three years ago. Harvard McLean, I mean. This was when the controversy first started around the building he was planning to construct downtown. At that time, I was struggling. I had just gotten my contractor's license and we only had a few jobs around town. I could barely pay my employees. I saw the story in the newspaper about the opposition to the building and I read between the lines that it was going to take a while for him to get approval from the city and the state to put his beloved building up, so I decided right then that I was going to get his attention and be the one to put it up for him. He had a contractor all picked out but I thought if I could get close to him I could change his mind. I did some basic research on him and found out where he keeps his yacht. That and his office building seemed like the best places to be in his face but not stalking him, if you know what I mean.”
Kara jumped at the word stalking but raised a hand to her hair and patted it, trying to cover up the movement. She hadn’t thought about the mess she was going through for at least an hour or two now, and that was good. She turned her full attention back to Zane.
“I decided to try the Marina. I contacted the general manager and asked him if he needed any work done on the Marina itself. I volunteered to do anything for free, all he needed to do was buy the materials. He was suspicious and he didn’t seem to want any part of it at first, so I had to come clean and tell him I was trying to impress someone. He seemed to understand that so he went along with it.
The first thing I did was hand most of the general operations of my business over to my second-in-command and then I spent every day sprucing up the Marina. I painted the docks, I sanded and replaced loose boards, I hand-tested every slip for buoyancy and things like loose nails. I paid one of the valets twenty bucks a day to keep an eye open for me and call when Mr. McLean dropped his car off. That way I could
be near his slip when he came in. Every day I saw him I respectfully said hi, and once he considered me a fixture, I started asking him if there was anything I could do for him. He always said no, but one day he seemed angry about something.
I offered to help him as usual, and he hesitated. I stepped forward and told him anything he needed me to do I would do it, and it turned out he needed someone to drive two states over to retrieve his daughter’s cat from a friend of hers who had taken the cat because she was mad at the daughter. I did it for him and after that he started inviting me on his yacht and asking me to do other jobs for him. When he found out I was a contractor, he looked at me slyly, like he knew exactly what I had done, but he didn’t order me to get away from him. Instead he continued our work relationship, and then one day he asked me what made me think I had the ability to do a project as big as the ones he worked on. I’d been waiting for that moment. I pulled out my plans and showed him everything that was wrong with his current operation and what the contractor he had lined up frequently made mistakes with and how I would fix those issues. He told me he would consider it. On Friday, he called me into his office and said the old contractor was out, and I was in.”
Kara leaned back in her chair, esteem in her eyes. That was as good of an any rags to riches, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own bootstraps story she’d ever heard. This was a man after her own heart.
Chapter 9
Sergeant Aria Gale dropped her face in her hands and rubbed her temples. It had been a long day. She liked to work on Saturdays because it was easy to find people at home. Today had been mostly fruitless though. First she had tried to interview the family of Tiffany Stewart’s boyfriend. His mother, a heavyset woman wearing a greasy shirt and a baseball cap had kept her on the porch, refusing to invite her inside. Yes he was still missing, no she hadn’t heard anything since the last time she had talked to the cops, and no she didn’t know anything else. She’d yelled at Aria for doing nothing but eating donuts all day and not finding her boy eight years ago, then stepped inside, slamming the door behind her.
Aria had wanted to ask several other questions, but it was obvious the mother was a dead end. She hadn’t been able to turn up any other family so she had decided to head out to the prison. There were several people in the prison she needed to talk to regarding the case.
The first one was Margaret Timmon’s boyfriend, Peter Stevens. Peter was serving the last six months of a four year sentence for three counts of burglary. Stevens had been convicted on the counts of burglary because the stolen items had been found in his car and in his house, and he had been unable to provide a satisfactory alibi during the times of the burglaries. The guard said he was a decent prisoner, never one to start trouble. He did have a bad habit of bitching about how he was innocent, but so did ninety percent of the inmates in the Worshaw prison. The difference was, when Stevens got started, he worked himself into a frenzy and frequently had to be placed in confinement until he calmed down.
When she’d walked into the interview room, Stevens had been sitting calmly at the table, watching her closely.
“Mr. Stevens, I would like to talk to you about your allegations that you are innocent and you were set up.”
Stevens had leaned forward, bitterness and anger on his face. “I’ve been in this hellhole for over three years, and now someone comes to see if I'm really innocent or not! When I only got six months to go? You gonna bust me outta here early?”
“That depends, Mr. Stevens. What kind of evidence can you provide to corroborate your statement-”
“Evidence! I can't provide any fucking evidence. That’s your job. You're the cop!”
“Calm down, Mr. Stevens, I am trying to help you. Just answer my questions and we’ll see where we can go from there.”
She had asked him about Margaret and about Margaret’s stalker. He didn’t remember much and got angry at her several times for the questions. He had demanded to know why all she wanted to talk about was Margaret. Did she think Margaret was the one who had framed him? Why would Margaret do that? Aria had shaken her head and tried to deflect the questions and keep him on track. When she asked if he ever had any idea who Margaret’s stalker might have been he finally became suspicious. And when she had asked if Margaret had had any friends or past love interest that had expressed a desire to get back at him for dating her, she had seen the light bulb go off in his head.
“That’s who did it! The same guy who was stalking Margaret! And you mean to tell me that you guys haven’t been able to find him after all this time? What kind of a McDonald’s operation are you running in Westwood Harbor? You cops couldn’t find your own asses with both hands in broad daylight!”
After that the interview had devolved to such a point that Aria had left, knowing she wouldn’t get any more out of him. But he was tapped out; he didn’t know anything else anyway.
Her next stop had been to see Dawn Reinold about her hair. She had to leave the men’s facility and walk across the street to the women’s facility. When Aria arrived, Dawn was waiting in an interview room, her shirt folded up to show her stomach and her arm draped casually over the back of the chair. Aria surveyed her. Her hair was still quite short, and seemed uneven on one side. Her eyes jumped in their sockets and her skin looked sallow and pale. Aria shook her head. Apparently Dawn could find drugs, even in prison.
She had sat down and tried to interview Dawn anyway, but hadn’t come away with much. Dawn claimed she didn’t remember anything from that night but she thought her cellmate, Tita, had been the one to cut her hair off because they didn’t like each other. Aria had tried to determine Tita’s real name but had come up empty. Even asking the guards had yielded nothing. Aria wanted to speak to the guards who had been on duty that night, but the sergeant on duty couldn’t find the roster. He said he would put a request in with Human Resources to see if they had a back up, and he would get back to her.
Aria ground her teeth in frustration and sat down at her desk to search the alias computer for Tita. She immediately came up with hundreds of results. Apparently Tita was a Hawaiian nickname meaning tough girl. She sighed and began to weed through them, crosschecking the names of each woman to see which ones had been in prison when the incident had happened. After an hour, she had only gone through eighty-four names. She really needed an assistant, she thought, laughing at the concept. Would she trust anyone to do this job? It was tedious and boring and easy to make a mistake, which could leave the entire investigation at a standstill. No, she was better off doing it herself.
Her mind flashed to Officer Price. She bet Officer Price would do this job well though - she seemed like an extremely hard and efficient worker. Aria would have recognized herself in Officer Price five years ago, but now she had no ambition left. At this point, all she wanted to do was keep plodding on and not spend any time thinking about her life. A promotion right now would mean nothing but heartache, especially when the chief and her coworkers noticed that her husband didn’t come to the ceremony. But she wouldn't think about him right now. She wouldn't think about what her jilting husband and betraying sister had done. She couldn't afford to think about it. If she did she would spiral down into an aching black hole of misery that no one would ever be able to pull her out of. She'd had a tiny taste of what being in that hole was like and she could never go back there. She would die if she did.
Aria set the steel in her spine and turned her thoughts back to the case. She hoped this Tita would be her big break. If she could find who put Tita up to it, she could figure out who this guy was. The sooner she found the guy the better; she had a bad feeling that the stalker and Officer Price were going to personally clash somehow, and it was going to happen soon.
Chapter 10
Kara leaned forward, watching Zane’s dark eyes closely. She had so many questions about him. She felt drawn to him, like he’d been a part of her life for a long time, but somehow she’d forgotten him.
“Have you always worked in construction?”
He shook his head and took a pull on his beer. “No, I was in the Army from 2001 to 2004. I did one tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. When I came home I wandered around aimlessly for a while and dealt with some depression issues and then my dad’s buddy hired me to help him in his company as a favor to my dad. I didn’t have any construction experience so he started me in the office, coordinating the crews and their workloads. I started working with a carpenter, learning the trade. I was good at it, but I was always better at leading the crew, solving problems, and brainstorming better ways to do things. Over time, my boss let me take over his job with the assistance of one of his contractors. He wanted out. Eventually he let me buy his business. I went to contractor’s school and the rest is history, as they say.”
“Wow,” Kara breathed. “Did you ever think that’s what you would end up doing when you were a kid?”
Zane smiled at her, the cocky smile, and the light she saw in his eyes charmed her.
“No, when I was a kid I wanted to be president.”
Kara’s eyes widened. That was one of her most secret dreams, but one she had never shared since she’d been seven years old and had to write an essay on what she was going to be when she grew up. She had written that she wanted to be president, and a few of her classmates had snickered. She had turned around to see who was laughing and it was most of the boys. Reggie Bryant had actually said, “Girls can’t be president.” Kara had looked to Mrs. Cash to refute that statement, but all Mrs. Cash had said was, “According to the Constitution, girls can be president. It just hasn’t happened yet. Maybe in forty or fifty years.” Kara had felt immediately conflicted. The first part of Mrs. Cash’s words should’ve made her feel better, but the tone with which she had said them had been completely hopeless. That had been the beginning of Kara realizing how things were different for her because she was a girl. She had vowed to herself to always do what she wanted to do, girl or not, but her dream of being president had partially died that day anyway. For now, she would just set her sights on chief of police and see where that took her.