Love Rekindled

by Serena B. Miller

  “What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.

  “We just got a phone call,” Darren said.

  “We get a lot of phone calls.” Joe was cleaning the grill. “It’s closing time. Tell them it’s too late for us to do a takeout order.”

  “That’s not the kind of phone call we got.” Darren’s voice was shaking.

  “Is Dad okay?” Joe stopped in mid scrape and focused on his brother.

  “That wasn’t about Dad,” Darren said. “That was Kris Burkshire’s assistant on the phone.”

  Rachel and Joe looked at him blankly.

  “Kris Burkshire,” Darren stated again. “You know. The chef?”

  Rachel and Joe still didn’t get it.

  “Chef Burkshire walks into restaurants that are about to close and gives advice on how to turn them around, financially and food-wise. His show is on TV.”

  “So?” Rachel said.

  “His home base is Columbus. Someone told him about us, and he drove in tonight to check us out. I was so busy in the kitchen, I didn’t even see him. His assistant said that he thought the story behind Home Plate—how a baseball legend and his brother with no experience had started a successful hometown business—made for good TV. If Joe’s Home Plate was doing well, he intended to do a story on what was working in this start-up business. If it was having troubles, he’d do a story about helping it become a success.”

  “So which did he decide?” Joe was holding his spatula in mid-air, waiting to hear.

  “Neither,” Darren said. “He wasn’t particularly interested one way or another. He wants to interview our pie maker.”

  “Aunt Lydia?” Rachel said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And by ‘talk’ he means…”

  “He wants to bring a TV crew to film her technique and recipes for making pies.”

  “She would never allow herself to be filmed,” Rachel said.

  “I know,” Darren said. “I told him that she was Old Order Amish, but Rachel… now he really wants to talk to her.”

  Chapter 27

  There was a Starbucks that Cassie visited every workday morning as she walked from the parking garage to her office building. Her order was always the same; a Venti Caffe Latte. That large shot of strong espresso with a froth of milk each morning booted up her brain and kept it running at maximum speed well into the afternoon. She had become such a known regular that the barista had memorized her preference and began to create it every day the moment she walked through the door—and that made her happy.

  “Here you go, Ma’am.” The handsome barista handed it to her with a flourish. “Your usual. Just the way you like it.”

  “Thank you, Jeffrey.” She stuffed a nice tip in the jar. It was worth every penny for the small ego stroke of having everyone in line—many of whom were employees of Blackwell, Hart & Cooper—see that she was a favorite with the staff.

  In her early days of working here, Michael had gently pointed out that it would be less expensive to bring a thermos of coffee from home, which he had calculated would mean a saving of several hundred dollars a year. He even offered to fill the thermos for her each morning.

  What Michael did not realize was that walking through the door with a leather briefcase in one hand and a large Starbucks coffee in the other was a sort of badge of honor. It subtly signaled the same thing as rolling up one’s sleeves might have meant to a different generation. Bringing homemade coffee in a thermos just didn’t cut it.

  Her mind flickered on Michael for a moment, and then she pushed the thought away. Last night was not something she wanted to think about—at least not now. It took all her focus to succeed in this high-powered place, and she couldn’t allow Michael to distract her. His reaction to her coming in from her ridiculous date with Bradley still stung.

  She stepped off the elevator and used her keycard to go through the bulletproof door. It had been installed after one of the lawyers had been physically threatened by a former client.

  “Good morning,” Sophie Jamison, the middle-aged assistant Cassie shared with two other attorneys, handed her a sheet of paper. “Your schedule for the day.”

  “Thank you,” Cassie said, as she juggled her coffee long enough to glance at the sheet. As usual, the day was packed. First thing on the agenda was a meeting in the conference room in ten minutes.

  She barely had time to take off her coat and drop her briefcase in her office before heading toward the conference room. It would be nice to have time to visit the bathroom, but there wasn’t. She would simply have to hope the meeting wouldn’t last too long. She also hoped that, when she saw Bradley, things wouldn’t be too weird.

  The deep maroon carpet in the hallway leading to the conference room was one of Cassie’s favorite things about the upscale law offices where she worked. There was a richness to it that made working there feel like a luxury. Everything was topnotch in this office building. Even the elevator seemed to glide more smoothly and more quietly than other elevators. Cassie breathed in a feeling of stability and security every time she entered the building.

  Bradley was already sitting in his usual place at the head of the conference room when she arrived. Unfortunately, they were the only ones in the room. Maybe she should have made time for that bathroom stop after all.

  “Good morning.” She seated herself at her usual place beside him.

  “You are feeling better?”

  “I am,” she said. “Much better.”

  “Good. Shall we try it again New Year’s Eve?” he asked. “I’ve been invited to a charity fundraising event and I need a dinner date. It’s black tie. You might need to purchase a nice gown for it, unless you already have something appropriate.”

  The invitation came as a surprise, especially considering his reaction to her illness last night. Still, she wasn’t as blindsided by his invitation this time.

  “Thank you,” she said, with a conciliatory smile. “I’m flattered you’d even ask me after what happened last night, but I’ve been thinking… perhaps it would be best if we didn’t go out anymore under the circumstances.”

  “Oh?” Bradley raised an eyebrow. “What circumstances?”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot to sort out with your children after your recent divorce, and I’m not entirely sure what’s going on between me and Michael. For now, it’s probably best for you and I to just have a working relationship.”

  “It’s only a charity dinner, Cassie,” Bradley said, peevishly. “I need to take someone who’ll make a nice appearance. It isn’t like I’m asking you to marry me, for Pete’s sake. Why make such a big deal about it?”

  Cassie felt herself flushing from his dismissive tone.

  Two other associates came through the door and found their seats, cutting off Cassie and Bradley’s private conversation.

  He began shuffling papers, preparing to head-up the meeting. She fought down the feeling of embarrassment their conversation had left her with. Her momentary embarrassment would go away, but continuing to go out with Bradley was unthinkable. Besides, in a few days or weeks, he would have already set his sights on someone younger and more malleable anyway. At least, she hoped so.

  The day continued and she didn’t see Bradley again. She was a little more tired than usual, but she chalked that up to what had happened the night before.

  Lunch was a sandwich that Sophie ordered for her. She ate it at her desk while working her way through business emails, making every minute count, as usual.

  Dinner was Chinese takeout, which she picked up on the way home. It was dark before she made it back to her apartment. As she walked through the door, she noticed a blinking light on her landline answering machine.

  She expected it to be a telemarketer. Calls on her landline were rare. She pressed “play” and went to hang up her coat. Instead of a telemarketer, it was her gynecologist’s nurse. She paused in the action of hanging up her coat and listened. The nurse was asking her to call the office.

  That was a little
disturbing.

  Probably nothing.

  And yet, she had trouble concentrating as she watched the news on television, and she had little appetite for the excellent General Tso’s chicken she’d brought home for supper.

  It was too late to call the doctor’s office. They would have closed hours earlier. She put her barely-touched supper in the refrigerator, turned off the television, and tried to apply herself to the work she had brought home. Her powers of concentration were strong, but not quite strong enough to quiet the fear niggling at the back of her mind.

  The doctor’s office opened at nine o’clock in the morning. She intended to be the first call they received.

  Chapter 28

  Rachel was no expert on gangs but, when she was working in Cleveland years earlier, she’d had some brief dealings with the Heartless Felons. They had come out of the juvenile detention system almost twenty years earlier. The Heartless Felons were highly organized and they were deadly. They also had a strictly-enforced code of ethics. It involved only one principle. They must have absolute and unquestioned loyalty to the group.

  “Do you remember what our youth minister, Scott, told us about his experience while he was working in the juvenile detention system?” she asked Joe, as she broke four eggs into the butter sizzling in a cast-iron skillet on the stove.

  Joe glanced up from buttering a piece of toast. They were enjoying the luxury of an early breakfast together while Bobby slept in from his late night at the restaurant. It was a rare opportunity for them to talk without being interrupted by their son’s almost constant questioning.

  “Scott had a lot of experiences there.” Joe rose and selected a jar of Mrs. Miller’s blackberry jam from the refrigerator. “Which one are you talking about?”

  “It was at last month’s potluck. He was describing the hold that gang leaders have on their followers.”

  She brought the skillet of eggs over to the table and divided them between their two plates. It was useless to save any for Bobby. He would want toaster waffles with peanut butter, which was his latest food craze.

  Joe reached for the salt and pepper. “Remind me what he said.”

  “Scott said they had a Heartless Felons leader in their detention center for a while. He said the kid was a great student. Brilliant, actually. He never got in trouble for anything the whole time he was there. If I remember correctly, Scott said he was quite a likeable kid. Quiet and unassuming, but he had such total control over the others that all he had to do was look at some kid and nod, and his minions would be all over him. Scott said that they preferred the odds of six on one. A classroom could erupt without warning, and six young men would begin beating up one unsuspecting youngster. The eighteen-year-old ‘godfather’ would just sit back, cross his arms, and watch it all happen.”

  “How did Scott even know for sure this godfather was the one causing the fights?”

  “Scott said he got to talk with some of the boys while he was tutoring them one-on-one for their GED tests. Two of them trusted Scott enough to privately tell him about the control the boy had over the others. Those two were scared to death of the kid. There was nothing Scott could do about it. If he said anything, it would have gotten the other boys in trouble. Possibly even killed. The irony was that the Heartless Felon godfather got out early for good behavior.”

  “Scary stuff,” Joe said.

  “An old police buddy of mine tells me that there’s a white version of the Heartless Felons called Ghosts Inc.”

  “And how does this affect your Jane Doe case?”

  “Mabel says the baby’s father, Tony Maddox, is her next-door neighbor, and also the godfather of Ghosts Inc. He does not yet know what happened Christmas morning. I think I’m going to have to go back up there, knock on his door, and tell him that his girlfriend died two days ago, but his baby survived.”

  “Does he have a legal right to take her?”

  “He does. Paternity rights carry weight, even if the couple was never married. With no criminal past on record, and only rumors connecting him to the Ghosts Inc. I’m afraid it could be a slam-dunk for him… assuming he wants her.”

  In the end, she did not have to go back to Cleveland to talk to Tony after all. She was at the police station, still discussing her visit to Mabel with Ed, when her cell phone rang.

  “Rachel here,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  There was a slight hesitation before a low voice said, “I’m Tony Maddox. My neighbor says you have Lily’s body?”

  “I do.” Rachel’s mind raced. What had Tony, or one of his henchmen, done to Mabel to get her to tell him? Was the old woman okay? “Can you come identify the body?”

  Another pause. “Yes. I’ll identify her.”

  She gave him the address. “Tell me when you’re coming and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Two hours.” He hung up.

  She stared at her phone.

  “What?” Ed said.

  Rachel glanced up. “It looks like I’ll be meeting the Ghosts Inc. godfather in two hours at the morgue.”

  “Want me to go with you?” Ed asked.

  “Tempting, but I don’t think I want two alpha males in the same room under such emotional circumstances—especially if one is a criminal and one is a cop.”

  “I’m an alpha male?” Ed seemed pleased at the label.

  “Tony’s coming of his own free will, and I have no reason to arrest or accost him in any way,” Rachel said. “But it might be wise to have some backup.”

  “I’ll go,” Kim looked up from some reports she’d been working on at her desk.

  Kim was the opposite of an alpha male, and quite lovely. She had grown a lot as a cop over the past three years and, in Rachel’s experience, was probably much better at defusing a tense situation than Ed.

  “I’d appreciate that, Kim,” Rachel said. “We’ll leave after lunch.”

  “Got it.” Kim went back to her work.

  Visiting morgues was something Rachel dreaded. It was always so hard on the people she had to accompany, and their fear and nervousness bled over onto her. There was no way to lessen the emotional impact. Some people were stoic, some were highly emotional, and some passed out.

  She was grateful Tony had called though. Maybe he would be willing to share some information about the young woman’s family. The best-case scenario would be that Lily had some loving grandmother waiting in the wings to take over the baby’s care, and that Tony was willing to let her.

  But first, she needed to check on Mabel.

  “Hello?” It was interesting the amount of suspicion and distrust the old woman put into that one word.

  “This is Rachel. Are you okay?”

  “Tony called you,” Mabel said. “Didn’t he?”

  “I’m supposed to meet him in a couple hours to identify Lily’s body. What happened, anyway? You warned me not to even tell him about Lily and the baby. How did you come to give him my number? Did he hurt you in some way?”

  “No,” Mabel said. “He didn’t have to. I know better than to lie to Tony. He saw you coming to my house. He saw your Mustang the first day, and then saw the old truck there the next. He doesn’t miss much. He asked me to explain what was going on… so I did.”

  After a quick lunch at Joe and Darren’s restaurant, she finished some paperwork, then she and Kim headed on over to Dover, where Union Hospital had the morgue that Tuscarawas County used. On the way there, she filled Kim in on everything that had happened so far.

  They waited in the parking lot near the outdoor entrance in her squad car until she saw Tony and another young man emerge from a late-model black SUV and walk toward the door.

  “That’s him,” Rachel said, nodding.

  “And who is the human refrigerator standing next to him?” Kim asked.

  “I have no idea,” Rachel said. “As big as he is, it looks like he might be a bodyguard.”

  It was not hard to recognize Tony. He was tall, well-built, and was wearing a black leat
her jacket and jeans. Now that she could clearly see his face, he looked a few years older than she thought when she’d first seen him on the street. She now judged him to be mid-thirties. That was ancient by gang standards, where young boys assumed they’d be dead by twenty.

  As she approached him, he looked her up and down, then treated her to a flat-fish stare. Tony’s friend, or bodyguard, or whatever position the young man held in the gang, was as tall as Tony, but much more muscular and about a hundred pounds heavier. He had the bulk that only dedicated bodybuilders… or prison inmates trying to survive… ever achieved.

  Even with Kim along, she was grateful for the reassuring weight of her Glock tucked into the back of her slacks beneath her coat.

  “Mr. Maddox,” she said. “I’m Officer Rachel Mattias. I was the first officer at the scene of your girlfriend’s accident. This is Officer Kim Whitfield. Thank you for coming.”

  Tony showed little interesting in either of them. There was no warmth of greeting in those eyes—not that she’d expected any. She waited to give Tony a chance to introduce the man standing behind him. He chose not to. So be it.

  “Shall we get this over with?” she said.

  “Suits me,” Tony said.

  The refrigerator guy standing next to him blinked once, but was otherwise expressionless.

  She didn’t need to flash her badge at the middle-aged coroner. She’d been here before. He knew her by sight. She was surprised when, instead of taking them to the back of the morgue, he led them out back to a trailer with the words “Disaster Relief” on it.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “We had to borrow a casualty trailer from the Department of Health. It’s for overflow. I didn’t have room in the morgue for all the bodies.”

  She was surprised. “But we haven’t had any disasters.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “I had to call for this rig just last month. Our facilities weren’t built to handle Carfentanil.”