LOVER COME HACK

by Diane Vallere

  He nodded along with me as if he understood how I felt. “How about we start with what I know?” he said. Before I could answer, he continued. “I know you and Jane Strong weren’t as close as other people seem to think. I know you had no legal right to enter her place of business today. I don’t know what it was you were looking for, but I’ll figure that out.”

  “Me? I wasn’t looking for anything,” I said. “Jane and I were supposed to collaborate on a project. I went there to retrieve our files.”

  “Ms. Night, I think it’s time I cut to the chase. I have witnesses that put you every place I need you to be in order to build a case against you for Ms. Strong’s murder.”

  “There were no witnesses,” I said. His expression changed, and I backpedaled. “What I mean is we were alone. The DIDI offices were closing for the night. The receptionist left right after I dropped off my application. When I went looking for help, there was no one.”

  “I have a witness that places you in the building,” the detective said.

  Immediately my mind flew to Delbert Manning, the security officer.

  “Talk to the security guard,” I said. “He knows I left for a few hours and came back.”

  “Ms. Night. I have witnesses that places you on the twenty-third floor, in the powder room, at the time Jane Strong was murdered.”

  “Detective Henning, I appreciate the lengths you’ve gone through to put a scare into me, but whatever it is you expect to gain, you won’t. You know what I know. Someone wanted Jane Strong dead and it wasn’t me.”

  “I think you’re lying,” he said. He stood up. “I’m going to leave you alone to think about what you might know, and maybe when I come back you’ll be ready to talk.”

  “And if I have nothing to say? You can’t keep me here against my will, and you haven’t read me my rights so I’m not under arrest.”

  “Actually, you signed away those rights with Officer Doyle.” He leaned close and smiled. “It pays to read the fine print, Ms. Night.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  There were no clocks in my little room. No indication of the passage of time. No offers of a cold soft drink or pop-in checks to see if I’d cracked. Whatever game Henning was playing, I was simply along for the ride. And sadly, since my knowledge of what was to happen to me at this stage in his game was limited to what I’d learned from movies and television, I knew my knowledge came at the expense of reality. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

  When the door to my small room opened, it wasn’t Detective Henning on the other side. It was Officer Clark. I’d forgotten that he transferred to this station but was overjoyed to see a familiar face. I stood up and threw my arms around him. Awkwardly, he patted my back until I let go.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. “Is Detective Henning coming back? Am I being booked for something? Henning wouldn’t tell me anything. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Come with me,” Clark said.

  I followed Clark through the hallway to the front desk. Officer Doyle had been replaced by another officer, this one a portly Mexican who looked about the size of Clark before his weight loss. His nametag said Martinez. He had my handbag next to him along with a copy of the paper I’d signed.

  “Sign at the bottom,” he said.

  “I’d like a copy of that paperwork before I leave.”

  Martinez looked at Clark, who shrugged. “Sure,” Martinez said. I signed the paperwork and Martinez pushed my handbag toward me. I pulled out my phone. Dead.

  Martinez fed the paper through the copier behind him and handed me the duplicate. “Souvenir?” he asked.

  I gave him a tight smile. “I doubt I’ll need a souvenir to remember today. Good night, officer.” I pulled the blanket from around my shoulders, dumped it onto the counter, and followed Clark out front. A small black Ford Focus with the Lyft logo on the inside windshield was idling in a visitor space by the front door. I turned to Clark, not sure what to say.

  “That’s my buddy. He’ll take you home.” He pointed to the car. “Henning went to the judge to get a warrant for your arrest, but the network is still sluggish from all the new antivirus software. Technically Henning can hold you for up to twenty-four hours, but if that warrant doesn’t come in during that time, he blows any credibility he might have with a jury. You better leave while you can.”

  “I can just leave?”

  Clark looked uncomfortable. “You were here voluntarily. You could have left at any time.”

  “That’s not how it felt.”

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to feel.” Clark looked down at his feet and then back up at me. “The hacker has everybody freaked out.” He pointed to the police station over his shoulder with his thumb. “This whole place runs on computers now. Everybody does. If we get hit, who knows what could happen.”

  “But you use keys to lock the cells, right? It’s not like the doors would pop open and the prisoners could walk out.”

  He dropped his voice. “We need every cell we have for convicted criminals. You got lucky tonight, but I don’t know how long your luck is going to last.”

  “Detective Henning said something about a witness. There’s no point denying that I was at Republic Tower, because I was, but who fingered me? I thought the building was empty.”

  “Building security was there. So was the head of the DIDI, Gerry Rose.”

  “He’s the one who carried Jane down to the lobby. He’s her ex-husband. Why is he without suspicion?”

  “Surveillance camera in his office shows he was at his desk the entire time. The guy who owns the coffee shop under the store verified it too. Said he closed up early so he could deliver a decaf latte to Rose’s office before he left.”

  “Paxton was there?”

  “He didn’t want to implicate you,” Clark said. “You didn’t hear this from me, but he mentioned seeing you on his way into the DIDI offices and Henning went after that detail. Paxton tried to backpedal but Henning didn’t give him a choice.”

  “Yes, Henning does seem to have a one-track mind.”

  “It’s not Henning. It’s the way investigation works. There are a lot of clues pointing your direction.”

  “Do you think I killed Jane Strong?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am.” I smiled at that small victory and approached the black Focus. “Madison,” Clark called out behind me. I turned and waited while he came closer. “There was somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “Henning’s not saying. But he has a witness who placed you inside the ladies’ room at the exact moment Jane was murdered.”

  I froze, my hand on the top of the car door, one foot on the floor board. The ladies’ room had been empty, or so I’d thought. I’d written off the closed bathroom stall door to an out-of-order commode. I’d looked under it for feet and had kicked on the door to see if someone could have gotten help. There had been no answer. But if someone really had been in that stall, then she not only knew I hadn’t killed Jane, but she very well might have been the one to do the deed herself. Which gave her a very good motive to lie about me.

  The Lyft driver dropped me off at Thelma Johnson’s house about fifteen minutes later. The ride had been conversation-free, something I hadn’t realized I wanted. I thanked Clark’s friend and climbed out. His taillights had faded into the darkness before I reached my front porch steps.

  It was after eleven. I’d forgotten all about the flowers Effie had dropped off on the doorstop until I saw them. Soft, grayish lilac roses, splayed out in a cut crystal vase with ferns and baby’s breath. I unlocked the door and Rocky raced outside. He bumped the vase and it tipped precariously. I bent down and caught it before it fell. The card jiggled loose and landed by the toe of my muddy brown loafers.

  With the neck of the vase in one hand, I scooped the card up with the other. Rocky, who must have expected me hom
e hours ago, ran directly to the corner of the garden and did what he needed to do. When finished, he took off into the yard and ran to the Japanese maple and back several times. He’d had the run of the house interior all day, but I didn’t reign him in. Freedom felt more precious than usual tonight.

  As Rocky raced around in the dark, I set the flowers down and opened the card. The message inside sent a splinter of cold fear directly down my spine.

  Hope you decorate better than you negotiate – Sterling

  I stared at the words on the card and then anger bubbled up within me. Sterling Webster, the cocky house-flipping jerk. The man Hudson had sold the building to without telling me. The man Tex was silently backing in a competition against me. The man who pretended to be Kip in order to play a joke on me. The man who’d written the manipulative letter to The Dallas Morning News about the tragedy of Jane’s death that would sway the judges in his favor.

  I snapped.

  I screamed, the sound piercing the dark, still night. I picked up the glass vase with the purple roses and slammed it onto the patio. The glass shattered on impact. The violent act felt good but only took a slight edge off my anger. I needed to break something else.

  Outside of Thelma Johnson’s house was a set of storm doors that led down to a cellar turned fallout shelter. The house was built in 1925, and what had started out as a naturally cool place to store pickled jars of food had turned into possible protection from the threat of an atomic bomb. Texas soil was soft and didn’t allow for the most stable of cellars, but when this house was built, the architect had seen fit to pour concrete in a level below the house and stabilized the space with thick, wooden beams.

  None of that mattered to me tonight. What mattered was what I’d found the first time I’d explored that part of the property. Thelma Johnson liked, among other things, to grow and bottle tomatoes. And she’d done her work in the quiet cellar. When the house transferred to me, I’d inherited a wall of empty, dusty mason jars waiting to fulfill their tomato-storing destiny.

  Screw tomatoes.

  I flung the storm doors open and climbed down the concrete stairs. A single lightbulb overhead threw off enough illumination for me to find the wall of jars. I grabbed as many as I could and slammed them onto the concrete slab floor. Crash! Crash! Crash!

  Before long, the shelves were more empty than full, and I was surrounded by sharp pieces of the wreckage. It was that moment that I realized I wasn’t alone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The silhouette of a man, backlit by the moon, stood on the stairs that descended into the cellar. Even with his face in shadow, I knew it was Tex. My anger was mostly spent, but he was the last person I wanted to see, and I told him in so many words.

  “Get off my property,” I said. “I’ve had a very bad night and I don’t particularly want to talk to you.”

  “Too bad, because you don’t really have a choice.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. I moved toward him crushing pieces of glass under my feet and pushed him out of the way. Rocky sat on the porch step. I opened the front door and after the furry rascal and I were both inside, I locked the door behind me.

  Tex pounded on the door frame. “Open up and let me in,” he demanded.

  “Why should I let you in? You’re not even supposed to be here.”

  He rattled the door frame again. “I’m not playing, Night. Open up.”

  I glared at him through the glass. “No,” I said. “I’ve had enough of you and your kind to last me a lifetime. You want things from me just like everybody else. Things I can’t give you.”

  “Night, you’re fifty. I figure the ship has already sailed on your virginity.”

  Oooooooh! I opened the door.

  “I knew I could get you to let me in,” Tex said with a grin.

  “You’re not coming in, but that comment deserves a response.”

  “What’s that?”

  I slammed the door in his face.

  Tex opened the door and followed me into my kitchen. “There’s a certain honesty in a slammed door. God knows I probably deserved more of them than I got.”

  “Go away, Captain. I don’t want you here.”

  “Well, see, Mrs. Yoder called in a disturbance from next door. And it’s my job as a cop to check it out and make sure everybody is okay.” He set a large flat box on my kitchen table and knelt down to ruffle Rocky’s fur. “Are you okay, little fella? The big mean lady in the funny outfit didn’t tell you to go away, did she?”

  Rocky yipped.

  “It won’t work, so just stop it. Stop being nice to me, stop being nice to my dog.”

  “You really want to be alone? Because I’ll leave. I just came by to drop off your birthday present.”

  “You gave me six months of peace. That’s what I wanted.”

  “I decided that was a dumb idea, so I got you something respectable to wear in public.”

  “You bought me clothes? Are you insane? Get out!”

  Tex turned around and headed to the door. He appeared to think twice about leaving and turned back toward me. “I’m not looking for love in all the wrong places. I’m done with that. I have a life. I have a good life. I have Wojciehowicz and a cold beer waiting for me when I get home every night. Tell you the truth, I’m even learning to like the lilac and yellow spare bedroom.”

  We stared at each other. Everything Tex said was negated by the fact that he was a silent investor in Sterling Webster’s VIP entry. I knew he was entitled to do whatever he wanted to do with his money, but tonight the battle of the sexes was too much for me to handle.

  “I can’t do this,” I said.

  “Night, I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t know what triggered that outburst in your storm cellar, but I do know one thing. You have a darkness in you, just like me. A need for justice. I don’t know if you had it before you moved here from Pennsylvania or not, but it’s there. I’m a cop. On some level, I want to save people. And if I can save you from that darkness, then I’m good.”

  “I’m only one person.”

  “That’s enough for me.”

  It was the most unexpected thing he could have said, and it broke my heart to say what I had to say next.

  “I don’t trust you anymore,” I said quietly. I braced myself for Tex’s reaction. Rocky, who seemed confused by the tension in the room, ran back and forth between our ankles trying to get someone to pay attention to him.

  I raised my eyes from Rocky to Tex. The lines of his face were hard, his jawline rigid. He turned around and grabbed the box he’d set on the kitchen table and left, this time slamming the door behind him without my help.

  I turned back in to the cheerful yellow kitchen and stomped through the living room to the stairs. I was halfway up when I heard the front door slam again.

  Adrenaline from the fight with Tex mutated to fear. I ran the rest of the way up the stairs and secured Rocky in the bedroom. Footsteps sounded after me. I turned around as Tex advanced toward me.

  “Sterling Webster sent you roses? Are you kidding me? You’re supposed to be deciding between me and Hudson James, not entertaining a third option. This is like a bad episode of Moonlighting.”

  “What are you still doing here? Get out!” I said.

  He reached the landing and pointed his finger in my face. “You owe me an explanation and I’m not leaving until I get it.”

  “I am so mad at you right now I could hit you.”

  “Assaulting a police officer.” He shook his head. “Not a good idea, Night. That’s the kind of thing that could get you arrested.”

  My eyes went wide. “What do you know about me being arrested? Hudson was right. You do have a cop code. You helped Henning. I can’t believe anything you say every again!”

  Tex’s eyes flashed midnight blue, pupils dilated. “I don’t know what you’re talking ab
out. I don’t know why you won’t trust me. What I know is there’s a dozen sterling roses strewn about your patio. Only one person I know sends sterling roses to his conquests and that’s Sterling Webster. That man is a player, Night. Don’t let him play you.”

  I slapped his hand away from my face. “I bet you know all about Sterling Webster. Two peas in a pod, right? Just like me and Jane. Well, guess what. I already know the truth, Tex. You’re just like Sterling. You’re so like Sterling you’re his silent partner! Well, I have a silent partner too and if you think I can’t play dirty, just you watch me.”

  I did a one-eighty and went into the closed bedroom. Aside from the dent Rocky had left in the middle of the comforter, my bed hadn’t been slept in for two days. The mere sight of it, quilted pink cotton coverlet with scalloped edges, gingham pillow shams, white pillows trimmed in lilac, yellow, pink, aqua, and mint green ribbons, was like being told I could have ice cream after I finished my homework.

  Unfortunately, my homework followed me into the room. “What are you talking about?” Tex asked.

  “Cut the innocent act. I know you invested in Sterling Webster’s VIP entry. You’re the competition, Tex. But you didn’t tell me. You went behind my back and kept it a secret and I never would have known if your computer hadn’t been hacked.”

  The expression on Tex’s face changed from frustration and anger to confusion. “Where did you hear that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters, right now, is that I don’t think I can do this. You and me. Every single time I think there’s the tiniest chance we can find common ground, something like this happens. I’m too old, too tired, and too stuck in my ways to change, so just leave me alone.”

  “I can’t do that, Night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Whoever’s been feeding you information just brought me into their game. You said you don’t trust me, but who’s your source, Night? I have no ties to Sterling Webster other than a couple of bar tabs we split back in the nineties. I sure would like to talk to the person who told you I did.”