by Nicole Baart
The ring. Suddenly Lucas was gripped by the certainty that he hadn’t looked into it enough. He hadn’t given the piece of jewelry much attention—mostly because he harbored the hope that it was Angela’s until the moment she dismissed that notion. But maybe it wasn’t a common Black Hills gold ring at all. Maybe the ring was the key, not the woman.
It felt strange not to have the ring in his pocket, and he battled a brief regret that he had given it to Angela. MKD could stand for dozens of different things, but it was possible that if he could trace the origin of the ring, he could find out who had bought it. Or, at the very least, where her story began.
A few minutes later, Lucas tore a sheet of paper fresh from the printer and shot Angela a text as he swung out the clinic door. He would fly out to the farm, maybe ask Mandy to rearrange his schedule a bit for the afternoon . . .
But he didn’t make it out of the office parking lot.
“We’re playing today,” Alex told Lucas, slamming his car door just as Lucas dug his keys out of his pocket.
Caught off guard by Alex’s sudden appearance, Lucas shook his head determinedly and folded the piece of paper in his hands. Stuffed it into his back pocket. “Racquetball? Is that today? Can’t do it. Too busy. Too much going on.”
In spite of their hectic schedules, Lucas and Alex tried to meet at least once a week to play racquetball. It began as a way to work off a little aggression, a midweek release that kept them fit and focused. When Angela showed up in town, Lucas begged off their regular court date for a week. Alex let it slide once, but apparently he wasn’t going to forgive a second time.
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” Alex grunted. He threw a duffel bag at Lucas, and the nylon bundle slammed into his chest.
“Uncalled for.” Lucas glared at the police chief, but it was hard to be mad at Alex. Especially since he was trying to be a friend.
“Shorts, T-shirt, tennis shoes . . .” Alex ticked off all the necessary items on his thick fingers. “I even remembered your ugly brace thingy.”
“It’s a safety strap for my glasses,” Lucas told him, bending to retrieve the duffel. He unzipped it to make sure that Alex hadn’t tampered with anything.
“My condolences.”
“Because I wear glasses?”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in that ridiculous stretchy doodad.”
“Doodad?”
“Four-eyes.”
“You’re infantile,” Lucas complained. “And you have glasses, too, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Shhhh!” Alex shot Mandy a quick look. She had pulled into the parking lot during their exchange and was making her way slowly toward them. “I don’t want Mandy to know I’m not perfect in every way.”
“Let me refresh your memory,” Lucas said in a stage whisper. “You wear bifocals. For reading. Because you’re an old man, Kennedy.”
“Shut up.”
“He’s old,” Lucas told Mandy, jerking a thumb in Alex’s direction and shaking his head as if it was a sorry thing indeed.
Mandy laughed. “You two are worse than kids. You’re worse than my boys, and they’re downright primitive. Neanderthals, I swear.”
Alex winked. “Caught me.”
“Stop flirting with my nurse.”
Mandy consulted her watch. “You’ve got just under an hour,” she said, ignoring Lucas’s comment. “Have fun.”
Lucas grabbed a handful of his friend’s shirt and dragged him toward his car. “Fine,” he said, certain that if he refused Alex would know that something was wrong. “Let’s go.”
“You’re playing? It’s because I packed your duffel, isn’t it?”
“You got my bag out of the trunk of my car. Remind me never to leave my keys in the ignition again.”
“Oh, but you didn’t. I used the extra set you hide in that magnetic case under the wheel well.”
The lone racquetball court in Blackhawk was in the basement of the community center. A heavy, double door opened on a low, narrow hall with a popcorn ceiling that more likely than not boasted enough asbestos to turn their lungs black with cancer. The lighting was limited to sparse sunlight that filtered through the frosted-glass window in the door, the floors were sticky, and the walls seemed to ooze a shade of orange that always made Lucas feel like he was descending into the belly of a beast.
It was a far cry from the streamlined, modern gyms that Lucas enjoyed during his school years, but there was something masculine and inviting about Blackhawk’s version of a fitness center. Since it was so decrepit and unkempt, Jenna and her ilk avoided it as if it were some seedy bar. But for Lucas, it was veiled in mystery, dark and secretive—the perfect place to say things that couldn’t be voiced in the comfort of a warm kitchen or beneath the glow of a sunlit sky. Over the years, he had admitted many things to the concrete walls of the racquetball court. And Alex, always the friend, promptly forgot them the moment they emerged from the dark.
Sometimes Lucas thought of the racquetball court as his own confessional, and Alex was as tight-lipped as a priest. It was healing somehow to say aloud the things that ate him alive, and then forget that they had ever been given breath. No matter what Lucas voiced—I don’t think I want another baby; I think something’s wrong with Jenna; I think something’s wrong with me—Alex let it bounce off him like the ball careening from wall to wall. The police chief returned each hit with a deadly slice of his racquet but offered little commentary on all the winged words that the good doctor loosed. Yet when Lucas missed the ball, or tried to hide things that his friend knew he needed to say, Alex was merciless. Occasionally he even aimed for Lucas’s back instead of the front wall, and the welts he inflicted had nothing to do with punishment and everything to do with distraction.
Lucas knew that Alex’s presence at the clinic and his insistence on playing in spite of everything that had happened was all about turning his head. If Alex had a personal motto, it would be “Let it go,” and the chilly court seemed to echo with that mantra as he warmed up. He was all fire and jazz, bopping across the court like a man ten years his junior. It made Lucas laugh, and that was the point.
“Thank you,” Lucas said when he was queued up in the service zone, ball in hand.
“For what?”
“Getting me out of the office.” Lucas bounced the ball and caught it, then surveyed Alex as he stood center court, ten feet behind the short line. The police chief was squatting, arms out and ready, paunch hanging over the waistband of his shorts. “You got me out of the office, remember?”
“Shut up.”
“You look ridiculous, by the way.”
“Serve the ball, moron.”
The play was fast and frenzied, and though Alex managed to maintain a lead, it was slight. He had a killer backhand and could put a spin on the ball that had the capability of leaving Lucas with rubber burn if he got in the way. Though he couldn’t hit as hard, Lucas was faster and willing to dive for balls that were out of his reach. All said and done, they were pretty evenly matched.
As they sprinted and lunged, cracking the ball off the walls in their echoing cave with dizzying speed, they spat out conversation in bursts of ricocheting dialogue.
“How’s she doin’?” Alex grunted.
“Angela?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Lucas rallied a low-flying service.
“Jenna?”
“Fine.”
They played in silence for longer than usual because the presence of the Woman was heavy and unspeakable between them. Alex had nothing to contribute but conjecture and frustration, and Lucas hardly trusted himself to acknowledge the company of her ghost while maintaining the lie of omission he had guarded since taking her ring. But halfway through the first game, the space was so filled with her presence, it began to feel like a stifling tomb instead of a racquetball court.
Lucas took a deep breath and dove in. “Tell me about the investigation.”
“You know I can’t.”
“That hasn’t stopped you so far.”
Alex sighed. “Nothing to tell. You know that. The dental records were not a match; the body isn’t Angela. So that’s a dead end. It’s not like there’s some dental record database that we can consult.”
“There isn’t?”
“Dentists keep dental records,” Alex reminded him. “The only way we could find a match is if we could find the woman’s dentist.”
“And you’d have to know who she is to figure out who her dentist is.”
“You see our dilemma.”
“What else?” Lucas asked. “There has to be more that can be done. More tests or something.”
“What would you suggest? There are no fingerprints to match, no evidence that survived the years between the crime and our discovery of it, nothing identifying on the body at all.”
Lucas cringed inside. Opened his mouth to say, “There is . . .” But he couldn’t do it. Though Lucas had a hard time imagining that he had much in common with Jim Sparks’s long-lost daughter, there had been some unavoidable thread of commonality in the car earlier that morning, a mere suggestion that was compelling enough to make him feel safe handing her the ring and confessing exactly where he had gotten it. But standing in the sobering reality of the derelict racquetball court, his friend across from him looking skeptical and frustrated, Lucas’s confusion was compounded. He hoped Alex couldn’t read the doubt in his face. And he hoped that his furtive research of less than an hour ago would turn up something. Anything.
“Do you know how many people go missing every day?” Alex questioned.
After all his research, Lucas had a pretty good guess. But he shrugged and played dumb.
“Two thousand three hundred.”
“Are you kidding me? Do you mean worldwide?”
“In the U.S. alone. The National Center for Missing Adults tracks about forty-eight thousand active cases.”
It was a staggering thought. She, whoever she was, was nothing more than a number in the midst of those statistics. A small white hand waving in surrender—but who could see it among the press of people? Lucas felt something coil deep in his abdomen, a cool snake of regret that curled up in some hidden place where guilt took quiet root.
“The interviews?” Lucas asked hopefully.
“Ongoing.”
“Forensics?”
“Her neck was broken. Badly. But they’re having a tough time determining exactly what could have caused that sort of damage. There are a lot of potential scenarios.”
Lucas tried not to let his mind consider the possibilities. “I thought you found buckshot in the barn,” he said.
“There was some. But it’s impossible to date and scattered everywhere. Jim was probably shooting at pigeons. She didn’t have any gunshot wounds.”
They broke for a sip of tepid water from the antiquated drinking fountain after Alex won the first match by two. Lucas thought they were on safe ground, well past the perplexing conversations about Angela, Jim, and the body beneath, but Alex didn’t seem to agree.
“Seriously,” the police chief asked, leaning against the fountain as Lucas bent for a drink. “What’s up with Angela?”
Lucas stood. Swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“For starters, why’s she still here?”
“Collecting evidence.”
“Evidence?” Alex pulled up his nose as if the very thought was ludicrous. “She’s a kid. What’s she gonna find?”
“She’s hardly a kid.”
Alex swept his hand as if batting away the reminder. “Sorry, she’s frozen in time for me. But that’s irrelevant. We’ve scoured that house. She’s not going to find anything.”
“Look, she’s going through his papers with a magnifying glass, but I don’t think she’s found anything,” Lucas said. “Jenna believes it’s nothing more than a way for her to deal with what’s happened. She’s putting her story to rights, then she’ll go back to California and leave it up to DCI.”
“It’s always been up to DCI.”
The second match was a fast game, too frenetic to allow much room for conversation. Lucas threw himself into the game with complete abandon, and managed to squeak out a win near the end when Alex was breathless and unable to keep up with his partner’s intense pace.
“I guess you let me win?” Lucas asked after Alex lunged for the ball on game point and missed.
“Nah. Fair and square,” he conceded. Lines of sweat made twin trails down the sides of his face and he was breathing heavy, but he smiled all the same. “Good thing I have one more chance to redeem myself.”
They paused for one last drink break, even though it meant that their final game would most likely have to be cut short. But as soon as Lucas threw open the glass door of the racquetball court, he heard the distinctive ring of his cell phone. When he bought the phone a year earlier, Jenna had downloaded a hip-hop tune and set it as his ring tone for a joke. It made her giggle every time he got a phone call because it was so incongruous with his straitlaced personality. Lucas hated the obnoxious tune, but it was a small thing that made his wife happy. It was worth it. And he probably would have ignored it when it rang in the middle of the match, favoring a quick drink and a final, tie-breaking game, if Alex hadn’t covered his ears and complained.
“That’s downright painful. Answer it or turn it off!”
Lucas dug through his duffel and grabbed the phone. It was Angela.
His heart thudded dully, but he tried to act natural. “Dr. Hudson,” he said.
“Oh, that’s so formal. Hello, Dr. Hudson. Do you sign your letters like that? Does it say Dr. and Mrs. Hudson on your address labels?”
“Angela. Come on.”
“You recognize my voice. That’s sweet.”
Lucas felt Alex’s eyes on him and he tried to turn his back to his friend discreetly. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the Central Café. Did you know they have free Wi-Fi here? Seriously. I was blown away.”
“Uh, can I call you back later?” Lucas asked, peeking over his shoulder at Alex and arching one eyebrow as if to say, “Crazy girl.”
“No,” she said so forcefully Lucas pulled the phone away from his ear. He quickly replaced it, afraid that Alex would be able to overhear their unexpected exchange. “No, you can’t call me back,” she continued. “I followed your text and I actually found something.”
Lucas drew a shallow breath. “What do you mean?” He wanted to race up the stairs and have this conversation in private, but then Alex would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that something was up. Instead, he tried to relax his shoulders, look nonchalant. “What about it?”
“You were right. It’s not Black Hills gold. There’s no MKD in the Black Hills gold market.”
“I know.”
“There’s Stamper, that’s STMP, and Black Hills Designs, that’s BHD, and Landstrom’s—I can’t figure out if they have a logo—but no MKD.”
“I know.” Lucas braved another peek at Alex and wasn’t surprised that his friend had settled himself against the wall, arms crossed over his chest so he could observe the entire one-sided interchange. The two men smiled at each other thinly. “So what?” Lucas said, turning his attention back to the phone.
“So I kept refining your searches.”
“Are you sure this can’t wait until later? I’ll be home around suppertime.”
“No,” she said as vehemently as before. “I’ll cut to the chase: I found it. A jewelry company called Matthew Kane Designs.”
Lucas went still as he waited for her to continue. “And?” he prompted.
“And he’s an independent jeweler in Omaha, Nebraska. He specializes in earth-themed jewelry . . . leaves, branches, trees, flowers . . . Lucas, I went to his website and his stuff looks just like the ring you gave me.”
There were a dozen things Lucas wanted to ask her, but every question seemed to give too much away. In the end, the only thing he could safely say in front of Alex was: “Uh, good. Tha
t’s good. Let’s talk about it tonight, okay?”
“You’re not alone,” Angela surmised, dropping her voice. “Okay, I get it. I’ll let you go. But this is it, Lucas. And you need to take the day off tomorrow. I made an appointment for us with Mr. Matthew Kane himself. You’re my fiancé and we’re shopping for engagement rings.”
A little moan of surprise escaped his lips before he could contain his shock. He tried to cover it with a forced cough and said into the phone, “Uh, okay. Great. Thanks for calling. We’ll see you later.” He clicked off before she could say another word.
Lucas held the phone for a moment, pretending to change one of the settings as he attempted to come up with a convincing excuse for his bizarre chat with Angela. When he finally turned back to Alex, he could tell by the police chief’s face that no matter what he said, the man leaning against the wall would be utterly unconvinced.
“Found something?” Alex asked, arms tight across his chest, well-defined muscles in his forearms bulging. He was soft in some places, fit in others, and he liked to pretend he was intimidating even though he knew he was anything but.
“It’s, uh, personal. A personal discovery. She’s making peace with her past.”
“Lame, Lucas. You can do better than that.”
Lucas raised his hands, palms up, and struggled for words. “I don’t know what to say. It’s complicated.”
“I’ll bet.”
The two men stood silent for a moment, staring at each other without the benefit of words to soften the sudden edges between them.
Lucas moved first. “You know, I’d better get going. I have an appointment at one and I really need to shower.”
“Yup,” Alex nodded, reaching for his own duffel bag and slipping the head of his racket into the open zipper. “We’d better get going.” He brushed past Lucas on his way to the stairs, but stopped in the archway of the narrow hallway, blocking the way up. “I need you to promise me something first.”
“Okay,” Lucas said without hesitation, but he wondered if it was a promise he’d be able to keep.
Alex leveled a finger at his friend’s nose. “You’d better promise me that you’ll be careful with the Sparks girl. I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel trouble in my bones.”