by Jayne Denker
“I did. I want to hear it from you.”
“He accused me of drinking all the wine in the sample bottles at the tasting counter!”
“Well, it doesn’t move otherwise.”
Paulie’s wine was notoriously awful, and everyone knew it. During the summer and fall, he managed to sucker enough innocent tourists into trying, and occasionally buying, his stuff, but once the nonnatives decamped, he was left high and dry. Literally.
“I didn’t touch the stuff—I’m not stupid. It’s his grandmother. I caught her more than once.”
“I know. She’s a lush. Everybody knows.”
“Except Paulie.”
“Except Paulie.”
“Dude, that is messed up.”
“So what happens now?”
Grumble.
“Jordan?”
“I don’t know, all right? I’ll . . . think of something.”
“Sure. At least tell me your community service is working out.”
Will had found Jordan another assignment, albeit a temporary one, helping Marisol in the high school office for a couple of days.
“Yeah, it’s great.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Uh oh. He knew that tone; it effectively communicated everything was most definitely not fine. “Tell me.”
“Nothing to tell! Everything’s great. I swear.”
“Okay. I’m coming to the school tomorrow, so I’ll just check on you then.”
“What? Why?”
“Don’t sound so panicked. Not everything is about you, you know.”
Chapter 19
“How’s it going?”
Jordan jumped at the sound of Will’s voice, so low and so close. She looked up to find him leaning over the high countertop above her desk, watching her closely with those lively blue eyes of his. She was so glad to see him.
“Hey! Good,” she lied. “Piece of cake. Which we also have. Want some?” She offered up a hunk of somebody’s birthday cake, the butter from the frosting seeping into the rough paper towel it sat on.
“I’ll pass.”
“Officer William Nash! Step away from the new recruit!”
Marisol Otero had come out of nowhere and stood in the middle of the school office, feet planted wide apart, fists on her broad hips. She looked vicious, but there was a twinkle in her eye that didn’t escape Jordan’s notice. It was the first time all day Jordan had seen the more human side of the office secretary. Until this moment, she’d been all business, scaring the bejeezus out of just about everyone, including administrators who outranked her, the football coach who was more than a foot and a half taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than she was, cocky students who suddenly became far less cocky in her presence, and the random parent who happened to come to the school for one thing or another.
“Marisol, I hope you’re being nice.” Will crossed to her and gave her a hug and kiss on the cheek.
“I’m never nice,” she snapped, even though she was beaming.
“Yes, you are. You don’t fool me.”
“This one, with the flattery,” she said to no one in particular.
“How’s our girl doing? She behaving herself?”
“You bet. I make sure of that.”
“Everything seems peaceful.”
“You’d think so, right? But watch, mijo. Give it fifteen seconds.”
“What happens in fifteen seconds?”
But Marisol only gave him an enigmatic smile and pointed at the wall clock. When the minute ticked over with a loud thunk, the bell rang to change classes, and students filled the hallways. Suddenly the office was flooded with five or six gangly teenage boys. Jordan had been hoping this passing period would be different, but nope. They milled around, looking out of place, casting furtive glances over at Jordan every few seconds.
Fighting to keep a serious look on her face, Marisol confronted them brusquely. “What do you boys want? You gotta get to class. Campbell, Tyler, you’ve got computer lab—you’ll never make it and Ms. Ainslee will have your hides. I don’t wanna see you back in here after school for detention.”
“That’d be all right,” one of them said, with another glance at Jordan, and the entire group laughed.
“Do you or do you not have business here?” Marisol demanded. When none of them could come up with a believable answer as they blushed, scratched their ears, and shuffled in place, she herded them toward the door. “No more!” she shouted after them. “Nobody comes in here unless they’ve got a pass from a teacher. You hear me? Tell your friends too. Get!”
One of the boys got brave just as they were all shoved out into the hall; as the door swung closed, he turned and shouted, “Jordan, will you go to the prom with me?”
Will raised an eyebrow at her and, although inwardly she was mortified, she casually leaned back in her chair and said, “Yep. I’ve still got it.”
“Has this been going on all day?”
“All day,” Marisol answered. “I’m not sure how much longer I’m gonna be able to keep her. She’s disruptive.”
“I am not! The horny boys are.”
“Then you’re a distraction,” Will said, but Jordan just made a face. “Well, before you get booted from this job too, I need your help.”
“Very funny.” She paused and looked at him suspiciously. “What with?”
“Just . . . come down to the detention room in about ten minutes.” Will turned to Marisol. “They know already?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“You need my help busting some heads?” Jordan grinned.
“Police officers do their best not to bust heads—especially teenagers’.”
“Pity.”
“That’s what you think of these students already? You haven’t been here that long.”
“I’ve seen things, man. You don’t know.”
Will laughed outright, and her heart lifted for the first time in more than a week.
Ten minutes later, Jordan was in the hallway outside the detention room, back against the wall, eavesdropping. She had no idea what was going on or why Will wanted her there, but she couldn’t get any clues from outside the room, so she took a breath and walked in, head high. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her. Ah, some hard-ass girls. They gave her cold, assessing stares, and she gave a cold, assessing stare right back. They looked familiar; Jordan figured she’d seen them in the halls—the school population was small enough to make everyone recognizable on some level—yet there was some other memory attached to them that she couldn’t dredge up just yet.
Will spoke up. “Jordan, thanks for coming. Meet the girls: Skylar, Danielle, Sydney, Grace, and Destiny.” He rattled off their names so quickly, Jordan wasn’t sure which name went with which teen. She wasn’t sure it mattered. “Girls, this is Jordan Leigh. If any of you know Holland Leigh, Jordan is her granddaughter.”
“I thought the pretty one was Mrs. Leigh’s granddaughter,” a girl with blue-streaked hair, a gray knit cap, and way too much eyeliner said.
Jordan bugged her eyes at her, ready to retort, but a dark-skinned girl with luminous green eyes spoke up.
“You mean the princess? Celia Marshall? The one who hooked up with the movie star over the summer.”
“Right,” the first girl said. “Lucky. Bet she gets to go to all the cool parties in Hollywood now.”
A third girl, so tiny she looked like she’d wandered in from the elementary school, said, “You think she’s friends with Beyoncé now?”
“So who are you?” the blue-haired girl demanded of Jordan.
“The astoundingly attractive—and younger—other granddaughter,” she snapped. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Will biting his lip. At least someone here was amused.
“Yeah, you look like you just graduated from high school. Did you?” an alarmingly thin girl asked; even though she wore a giant sweatshirt, Jordan’s attention was captured by her bony wrists poking out of the sleeves, and she couldn’t
help but wonder if she just happened to be naturally skinny or if she didn’t get enough to eat.
“Actually,” Will cut in, before Jordan could say something she’d regret (or maybe he’d regret for her), “I wanted all of you to see your potential future.”
“Oh, you are not going there,” Jordan muttered, but stopped protesting when Will gave her a surreptitious wink. What was he up to?
“Jordan is an ex-con. She has a record. She has a shady past. Right, Jordan?”
“Can’t really deny it,” she said through clenched teeth. Talk about nerve. She started looking around for something to throw at him, saw plenty. Start with a book? Or maybe the scale model of the Coliseum on the shelf over there? Nah, she wouldn’t be able to get to it in time before he took her down. Although that might have been fun too.
“And if you keep this up, you can be just like Jordan.”
A large girl with tiny glasses studied him with her even tinier eyes. “Keep what up?”
“Vandalism. Of Ray Dubois’ print shop.”
There was a moment of heavy silence as this accusation sank in. Then it was replaced by a cacophony of denials—“Don’t know what you’re talking about!” “Can’t blame us!” “Weren’t even there!”—before Will held up a hand. The last protest was “Not even vandalism!” which got a huge shush from Blue, the apparent ringleader. Because it was pretty much an admission of guilt.
Now Jordan remembered where she’d seen them before—in front of Ray’s, when he was having his meltdown on the sidewalk. Had it been just like on a police procedural TV show, the perps coming back to the scene of the crime to gloat?
“Don’t even bother,” Will said when the girls were done fake-freaking out. “I know you did it, because I have a secret weapon.”
“Drones?” the green-eyed girl asked sarcastically.
“Better. The other reason I asked Jordan to stop by today—besides acting as a cautionary tale for all of you—is because I wanted you to meet the person who outsmarted you. Ladies, it was Jordan who figured out it was you.”
“I did?”
Will ignored her as he said to the girls, “It was Jordan here who realized Nate, who isn’t exactly athletic enough to actually vandalize Ray’s shop himself, must have hired someone—or several someones—to do it for him. Those several someones turned out to be you.”
Okay, now she was flattered, so she joined in. “I can spot delinquents a mile away.”
All five girls hooted at her, shouting variants of “What did you call us?” and “Oh hell no!” but they didn’t scare her in the least. Will was right—she had been them, not much more than a decade ago.
It was Blue who tried to knock over the whole house of cards. “You’re guessing. You don’t have any proof it was us.”
“Security cameras,” Jordan blurted out.
Will looked just as surprised as she felt. She knew there weren’t any, and so did he. Marsden certainly didn’t have any trained on the streets. Really, there never had been a need, even if they had the money in the budget, which they didn’t. But she could bluff as well as these pipsqueaks—no, better, because she had plenty more years of experience.
So she went on, “Yeah, what if we told you we’ve got security camera footage?”
“This could get messy, I’m not going to lie,” Will added. “We’re talking fast track to juvie.”
Faced with the one-two punch of two adults laying it out there, no hesitation, the girls grew uneasy. Then their remaining feeble denials faded into the background as all Jordan could think was Oh God, look at him. Will was perched on the edge of the teacher’s desk, not looking any different than he usually did, but suddenly Jordan’s brain was on repeat: Hot. Hot, hot, hot. Hot. The usual complacency and deference he displayed while talking to his neighbors was gone, replaced by total confidence. And it was, well, hot. She’d always thought he was very do-able, but right now she was on the verge of pushing these annoying girls out of the way and . . .
“However, I’m willing to offer you a plea deal. I’ll go easy on you if you tell me who Ray hired to pull the pranks on Nate.”
More protests, these of the “how should we know” variety. Will waited patiently, but none of the teens was willing to take the bait.
“Okay, why don’t you go away and think about it? You give up the other person’s name, and we’ll talk. But don’t take too long.” He paused. “You can go back to your classes now.”
With much grumbling and shuffling, the girls gathered their things and trudged out of the room, too upset to even lob any parting shots at Jordan. They’d forgotten she was there.
When they were gone, Will stood and crossed to her. He said quietly, with a small smile, “There’s no security camera footage.”
“I said what if we told you we had footage. I never said there was.”
“Highly unorthodox, Jordan.”
“Hit ’em where it hurts, Officer—plant a seed of doubt. You know that. Say you have a secret weapon, even if you, um, shade the truth a little bit, just to knock ’em off balance. Next up: Haul ’em in for something else, like shoplifting. Then bring up the vandalism again. They’ll give up the dirt pretty fast—if not on themselves, then on each other.”
“How did you know they—”
“Did something else, probably lots of somethings? Are you kidding? I know them. You said it—I am them, a dozen years later. Thanks for the advance warning about me being exhibit A, by the way.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t mind.”
She shrugged. “It’s the truth. No big deal.”
“But you’re not like that anymore.”
“Do I have to remind you I’ve been busted so recently I still have an indentation from my oh-so-stylish arrest accessory on my ankle?”
Will rubbed her arm sympathetically. “I have a feeling that was your last hurrah.”
“Then you have a better opinion of me than I do.”
“You’re right, I do.”
Jordan shifted, uncomfortable. Will was looking at her—really looking at her. As he did sometimes. The staring and the assessing and the thinking—it got to her. Less so than it used to, but still. She wasn’t used to being studied. When Will realized his hand was still resting on her arm, he flushed a little and pulled it away, propping it on his belt instead.
Ignoring the hammering in her chest his touch had incited, Jordan asked as casually as she could, “You do this often?”
“What?”
“Try to negotiate with terrorists.”
“They’re not terrorists. Or criminals—yet. We try to have a safety net for them, keep them from going down that road. It doesn’t always work, but we do try to look out for the at-risk kids.”
“Who’s ‘we’? The police department?”
“Police, social services, the school, the churches. My sister-in-law, Summer, is head of an after-school program out of the Church of the Arts. She spends a lot of time with this gang. Freaking Nate and Ray,” he muttered, almost to himself, “sucking everyone into their feud. They’ve gone too far if they’re pulling kids into this, so I want to put a stop to it right now.”
“So what rival gang is working for Ray?”
“I don’t know yet. I really need the girls to tell me.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Jordan paused. “Okay, then. I’d better get back before Marisol comes looking for me.”
“You do know how they think, don’t you?”
“What, the girls? Well . . . yeah. Why?”
“Mm, no reason.”
Jordan didn’t believe that for a second. Will always had a reason.
It was surprising how tiring just working in a school office could be. Sure, it was an early start in the morning—why they made teenagers, who seemed to be built to sleep till noon, start their day so early Jordan had no idea—but it was also an early finish in the afternoon. Although Jordan had only been sitting around doing office-y things, by the time she picked up her takeout dinne
r from Nora’s on the way home, she was already dreaming of a few hours of mindless games on her phone and an early bedtime.
She slid behind the wheel of her car, admiring the Christmas lights and decorations all up and down Main Street, luminous in the darkness that fell so early at this time of year. Dipping into the Styrofoam box for a couple of fries while they were still hot, she absently wondered if she should get Will a Christmas present to thank him for all his help lately. She didn’t have anyone else to buy for, except Holly, and maybe Mac, and they were easy—scotch for Gran, and a cardigan for Mac. He loved cardigans. She should probably send something to her parents as well, but she didn’t know where to send it. It was a very strange realization. Maybe she should—
“Why haven’t you returned any of my calls?”
Jordan let loose a very uncool shriek, and the fries went flying. George leaned forward from the back seat, frowning accusingly at her.
“What—the—ever—loving—fuck, George?”
“Answer my question: Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
“Because you’re acting like a friggin’ stalker, that’s why. Who hides in somebody’s car, huh? This is real life, not a horror movie.”
“I told you I needed to talk to you—in not one, not two, but five voice mails. And I don’t know how many texts.”
“Seven. Seven increasingly hostile texts. Can’t imagine why I didn’t answer you.”
“Now you’re going to drive me home, and we’re going to talk on the way. You know why you’re going to drive me home? Because I don’t have a car.”
“I said I was sorry. I said I’d pay you back. What more do you want?”
“Drive.”
With a sigh, Jordan put her car in gear and eased out into Marsden’s version of rush hour, which was entirely unlike any rush hour anywhere else in the country, as it involved very few vehicles and no traffic jams. “Okay, I’m driving. Now what do you want?”
George hesitated, then said, “I want you to come back to work at the inn.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But . . . you fired me.”