by Diane Capri
“Right.” Jordan nodded. She took one last look at Tom in time to see him eye Theresa, raise his eyebrows, and point his finger at her as if to say she was the next stop on his tour.
Jordan rubbed her hands together and leaned towards Theresa. “Looks like you have the fortunate pleasure of being graced with his company next. This guy knows how to make the rounds.”
“Just—y’know what?” Theresa grinned in Jordan’s direction. “Just—just shut up, Jordan Fox. Your friend Claire here is right. Stop thinking! You’re not at work tonight. You’re off tomorrow, too. Re-freaking-lax.”
Jordan breathed deep and a little wobbly. They were right. Stop analyzing. Just be. Just be you.
Next thing she knew, Tom pulled a barstool up to their round table, directly across from her, as Claire and Theresa scooted closer to Jordan from either side. His casual confidence held her attention too long and shriveled her tongue.
She looked down and fumbled her phone to check her email or something. Nervous habit.
Jordan! Stop it! She set the phone on the table and glanced up at their visitor. He smiled directly at her, and all her judgments sank fast and deep like an anchor tossed off a skyscraper.
So this was Tom Clark. One-on-one, he was pleasant, likeable. Adorable, even. His pale, soft face said, I’m a simple guy. You don’t have to like me. I’m friendly regardless.
Maybe it was the beer talking, but she was pretty sure she also saw his face saying, I forgive you for everything you haven’t even done wrong yet. He was like a puppy dog, except professional. A hard-working puppy dog. Does it get any better than that?
Now his blue collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up looked like something she would have picked out for a boyfriend she might have.
“Jordan?” Theresa said.
She’d been staring. And yet she hadn’t even realized he was extending his hand.
“Tom!” Too much. Cool it. “Jordan. Jordan Fox. Nice to meet you.”
She reached out and grasped his hand with her cold, wet palm. She turned her face to the side, trying to hide at least one of her burning cheeks. Did she really just introduce herself with her last name, like a reporter on assignment?
He nodded, still smiling at her, but not condescendingly as if he recognized her nerves. His nod was knowing, like he accepted her for whoever she was and he wouldn’t judge her for it. “Nice to meet you. You and Theresa have run dry. Can I get you a beer?”
“What do you recommend?” Jordan asked.
Tom grabbed a laminated beer list from a nearby table and laid it in front of Jordan. “I’ll tell you my favorites, but here’s a list of all the options. You ever been here?”
“No, it’s my first time.” Claire muffled a snicker and Jordan realized how she’d sounded. She felt like the new girl at the newsroom afternoon meetings all over again.
“Well, if it’s your first time,” Tom said, “I would strongly recommend the El Jefe brew.”
He pronounced it like HEFF-ay. Similar to heifer, a young cow.
“Are you calling me fat?” Jordan quipped and instantly regretted it.
God. She knew jefe meant chief. At Infidel Brewery, El Jefe was probably a sly nod to Fidel Castro’s nickname, too.
Apparently this is what happened when she tried to flirt after too many drinks. She turned stupid.
He didn’t laugh. He grimaced and pressed two fingers against his brow and she thought maybe he felt sorry for her. “No, not heifer. It’s a little loud in here. I’m sorry, I should’ve—” Tom squirmed, stammering for the right words.
“No, I know, I know. I get it.” Jordan shifted in her seat. She had to stop digging herself into a hole immediately or she’d be forever trapped. “El Jefe. Sorry, I was trying to make a joke. But I don’t know you well enough to—”
Jordan clamped her mouth shut right there. She swallowed hard and counted to five before uttering another stupid word.
In the short silence, a pint of El Jefe magically appeared in front of her. That’s something that happens, apparently, when you sit with the owner of the brewery.
She took a big swig.
“Banana and clove,” Tom said. “You like it?”
Jordan tasted it in her nose, and didn’t know beer well enough to know if that was a good or bad thing. “I do. I love banana.” Oh no. Jordan. Shut. Up. And don’t you dare get into the roofie dude thing, either.
She caught Claire stifling laughter again as her cheeks warmed again to the temperature of hot coals.
Theresa took over, telling Tom about how Jordan just got back from Haiti and what a go-getter she was to score that assignment. Jordan flashed an easy smile of gratitude toward her friend. She could talk about work forever, even under the influence of El Jefe.
Two beers and ninety minutes of easy conversation later, Jordan’s phone lit up and buzzed the table. The screen read: 1 New Text: Clayton.
“Clayton, huh?” Tom smiled and checked his watch. “At what—ten-thirty? That your boyfriend?”
“He wishes,” Claire blurted out.
Crisis control. Enact crisis control. Jordan was liking Tom more and more. She wasn’t about to let Claire and Clayton ruin the moment.
“No, no, no, he’s just a friend.” Jordan tossed her phone in her bag without checking the text and clasped her hands together tightly so she wouldn’t snatch it right back out again. “Not even a friend really. He’s a guy at the police department who helps me out sometimes.”
And he’s really hot, and good at keeping me safe…but no. A cop and a reporter? Together? Drama overload. Besides, it was too soon. To date anyone. Even Tom.
Remember how much you hate men, Jordan?
She tried to summon that feeling…but bad memories of her ex-fiancé were slowly fading even without the El Jefe to wipe them out completely.
Jordan gave Claire The Look that meant it was time to go. “Is it really ten-thirty? I should get going.”
What was Clayton’s text about? What if he had new information on her mother’s murder? Yeah, right. The case was nearly five years old.
Memories fade, time marches on, and cold cases remain frozen.
CHAPTER 5
“Let us know when you get home safe.” Jordan closed Theresa into the backseat of the taxi outside Infidel Brewery. Claire and Jordan waved as they watched the cab pull out onto the busy street ahead.
“Thanks for offering to drive tonight.” Jordan walked with Claire to her Pepto-Bismol-pink little Volkswagen sedan in the corner of the parking lot under a streetlight.
“No problem-o,” Claire said, as Jordan pulled her passenger’s door handle. Jordan heard a gasp, froze, and saw Claire wide-eyed and pulling her hand to her mouth. She was afraid to ask.
“What. The-hell-is-this?” Claire bent to waist-level. “Somebody freaking keyed my car.”
Jordan ran around to Claire’s side and bent in close. The damage wasn’t hard to see. Excessive swirly lines were scratched into Claire’s perfect paint. Jordan bent closer. “Are you sure it wasn’t there before?”
Claire put her hands on her hips. “Are you kidding? I would have noticed this.”
“Maybe because you’re right under the streetlight you’re just now noticing it?” Jordan cringed. The hypothesis was a long shot.
In slow motion, Jordan turned to meet Claire’s eyes. Claire said what they were both thinking. “It had to be the roofie guy.”
Jordan nodded. “He must have seen us moving in on him and that’s when he slipped out. How’d he even know this was your car though?” Jordan pulled out her camera and snapped a few pictures of the scratches. You never know.
“Lucky guess?”
Jordan shook her head. “Had to be more than luck. This is easily the girliest car in the parking lot.” And we were the only table of girls when he arrived. She shuddered. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait. Tom’s still closing up. I think we should go tell him.” Claire took a couple of steps toward the brewery, bu
t Jordan’s voice stopped her.
“Can you call him tomorrow instead? I cannot risk saying something utterly humiliating again.” Jordan was already trying to squash all evidence of their awkward meeting. She opened the passenger door and put one foot inside.
Claire looked at Jordan and walked back toward her car. “I sure don’t need a claim on my insurance right now, though. You wouldn’t believe how high my deductible is.” She slid into the driver’s seat.
“Anyway, you did great for the last hour or so.” Claire buckled up and pulled out of her parking spot. “It’s been a little too long since you’ve tried to date, huh?”
Jordan leaned her head back on the seat and cupped her head. “Did I embarrass myself terribly?”
Claire’s teeth sparkled in the reflected streetlight as she laughed. “You like him, don’t you?”
“So that’s a yes. I made a total fool of myself.” Jordan closed her eyes and popped them open again when the car started spinning. “I should’ve stopped at one beer. I’m not a drinker. I can’t keep up with Theresa.”
Claire’s attention was on her driving, but her tone was more sympathetic when she said, “You did fine.”
“I don’t think he’ll call.” Which reminded Jordan to check her text from Clayton. If she could find the phone. Where did she put it?
Claire had stopped at a light, waiting to turn left. “Tom’s hard to read because he’s so friendly to everyone, you know? But he definitely seemed fond of you.”
“Fond of me. Great. That’s like something my dad would say about some woman at church.” Jordan sighed. “It’s for the best though. I can’t date right now.”
“Of course you can.” Claire’s optimism was really starting to grate on Jordan’s slightly tipsy nerves.
She’d found the phone and clicked open her text from Clayton. It was short enough to read in an instant, except she couldn’t get her eyes to focus on it. After a moment or two she made it out:
Evan Groves is an alias.
Jordan’s heart rate jumped ahead like a jackrabbit. “Oh my god.”
“What is it?” Claire finally had the green arrow and made the turn, eyes focused on the road ahead.
“Clayton.”
Claire wagged her head. “He asked you out? What timing.”
“No.” Jordan needed caffeine or something to clear her head so she could wrap her mind around this. “It’s about that case I was working on when I got back from Haiti. The guy they arrested in the Ruby Quinn murder. His name’s not actually Evan Groves. That’s an alias.”
Claire shrugged. “So? People use aliases all the time. My email name is PainterGirl. Nobody is really themselves anymore, are they?”
Jordan felt like her brain was wrapped in a dozen layers of cotton. She talked it through as much for herself as for Claire. “Well, why would he use an alias? It probably means he has more criminal history than we knew. And that explains why nothing but his job as assistant coach for the Plant University soccer team came up when I researched him online.”
“Did Clayton give you his real name?”
Jordan was feeling less thick-headed and dizzy. Maybe Claire’s driving was improving. Or maybe the El Jefe was wearing off.
“I’ll look it up myself in the court records. Hang on.” Jordan clicked and tapped her phone, her legs bouncing as she waited for the page to load. It seemed to take forever. “He’s not Evan Groves. He’s freaking Aaron Robinson.”
“Do you know him?” Claire made the last turn before Jordan’s street. The cobblestone roads in this part of town bounced her little car uncomfortably.
“I bet my mom did.” Jordan talked her thoughts out loud. “Amy said Evan went to Riverside Middle School. Where mom worked. But I thought Amy was wrong after I looked him up in the school yearbook and he wasn’t there. Well of course he wasn’t there. Because Evan Groves wasn’t his name back then.”
Jordan clicked on her phone to search news articles about Aaron Robinson in Tampa. Dozens of results came up. How could there be so many? She clicked on the headline:
Fourteen-Year-Old Arrested in Tampa Cat Killings
“The guy was arrested at age FOURTEEN for killing FOUR CATS.” Jordan’s hands trembled and her neck stiffened at the same time her stomach did a triple sickening summersault. “Aaron Robinson laughed when he talked to the arresting officers about the best way to kill cats and dissect them.”
A new thought popped into her head. “So if he was fourteen, he would’ve been a high school freshman…Oh thank god. He wasn’t at my mom’s middle school then.” Jordan’s eyes scanned the rest of the article. “Wait. It says he was a middle schooler. At age fourteen?”
“He was older than his classmates. Maybe he was held back a year.” Claire had slowed and pulled into Jordan’s driveway. “So what happened about the cats? Did he go to jail as a juvenile?”
“Dunno. Still checking.” Jordan had opened up a more detailed article and scanned it as quickly as she could. What she read next chilled her entire body like a flash freeze. “Not for the cat killing, I guess. But he was sentenced to four years a few months later because he was involved in a car wreck where someone died.”
Her hands were still shaking. She’d never thought of her mom’s job as dangerous before. She’d been such a kid back then, she probably hadn’t thought about her mom’s work at all.
“What a creep.” Claire put the car in park and turned toward Jordan. “But you know Clayton would want you to call him tonight.”
“You, Claire Stone, are trying to create man drama. I’ll call him tomorrow. Text me when you’re home safe.” Jordan gathered her belongings and opened the car door. “And I’m really sorry about your car. I feel like that’s my fault because I’m the one who made such a big deal about the roofie guy.”
Claire shrugged and smiled weakly. “It could have been worse, I guess.”
Jordan leaned over for a quick hug before she stepped out into the sticky night air, closed the car door, and walked to the little place she and Nelson Fox called home.
Now that she knew who Aaron Robinson was, she had a lot more to do tonight.
CHAPTER 6
It was past 11:00 p.m. Her dad would be asleep, but he’d left the kitchen light on for her, as always. Jordan tiptoed into the silent house, took off her shoes, and dashed into the guest bedroom.
She’d find Aaron Robinson’s middle school face and make sure he was the same guy as Evan Groves first. Then she’d deal with her irrational fears about his connection to her mother. After that, she could move to the next thing on her list.
She wasn’t sure why the possible connection between Robinson and her mom scared her, but it did. Robinson couldn’t hurt anyone now and certainly not Brenda because she was already gone.
So why was Jordan’s entire body vibrating while her stomach flopped around like a half-dead fish?
Jordan closed the bedroom door and turned on the light. This closet held Brenda’s belongings that Jordan and Nelson couldn’t part with but couldn’t bear to see daily. Brenda’s favorite gardening gloves with the little red roses, her childhood dollhouse, and countless other mementos.
And yearbooks from each of the twenty years her mom had worked as a guidance counselor at Riverside Middle School.
She hefted a big cardboard box and placed it on the floor behind her. Then she pried the lid off the plastic tub that contained the books.
The year she wanted was 2005-2006. The school year that ended a month before Aaron Robinson’s final felony arrest for aggravated animal cruelty. The four convictions that sent him to jail for four years. Not nearly long enough, as far as Jordan was concerned.
It was the fifth book from the top of the stack.
Jordan sat cross-legged on the floor and held the thin white hardback in her hands. She ran one finger along its narrow spine, feeling the embossed gold letters proclaiming this the Riverside Middle School Footsteps 2006.
A relic. A solid symbol of one year of her mo
ther’s life.
Three years before her last.
Jordan had looked at the 2006 Footsteps when the man she’d thought was Evan Groves had been arrested. She’d found nothing.
That night, she’d been infused with adrenaline, too.
Now, an unnatural stillness settled over her and the book itself seemed almost alive with both her mother’s life and Robinson’s evil.
This time, Jordan knew she would find Robinson’s picture. And when she did, she couldn’t let it ruin her memories of her life with her mom that year.
She closed her eyes and pulled the book in close and hugged it.
Aaron Robinson’s criminal behavior wasn’t the whole of Brenda’s life. Not for one year. Not for any year.
Jordan’s dad had said it best when he’d hugged her tight at her mom’s funeral. “We all live in the world with evil, Freckles. Your mom came too close to it somehow and it got her. But she was close to the good things, too.”
Before she lost her nerve, Jordan opened the 2006 Footsteps. She flipped past the staff and faculty pages. She moved past the sixth graders and onto the seventh graders and reached the eighth grade class, picking up speed with each turn of the page.
Her fingers traced the last names in alphabetical order, faster and faster as she got closer to Robinson. P…Q…R. Ri-Ro. Robinson. Aaron Robinson.
Right there. No question. It was him.
Staring at her.
Straight hair hanging down his forehead almost to his narrowed eyes and cunning face. The same smile described in the news articles she’d scanned in the car as “sly.” Under his photo it said “Soccer Team, Computer Club.”
They could have added more. Liar. Cat killer. Drug Dealer.
Jordan closed the book and held it to her chest. She rocked back and forth and blinked constantly to keep her tears from falling.
Finding Robinson’s picture hadn’t made Jordan feel better. Just the opposite. She felt like crap. Tense from the end of her spine all the way up her neck and into her skull. Queasy, too.
Jordan fished around in her bag and found her phone. Claire was probably still driving but almost home. She answered on the second ring but Jordan couldn’t speak. Her vocal chords were as tight as her body.