Lexington Connection

by M. E. Logan

  “Calm down, Jessie,” Julie soothed as she stroked Jessie’s hair.

  Jessie shook her head. “You don’t know, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand you’ve had a shock,” Julie spoke quietly, soothingly. “I understand you’re upset.”

  “Upset!” Jessie raised up to stare into Julie’s face. “Upset? I’m upset when I can’t find my car keys, I’m upset when I spill the milk, I’m upset when I’m overdrawn at the bank. This is way past upset.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Julie repeated.

  “No, you don’t.” Jessie leaned back against the wall. “You don’t understand about Czar Randalson. He’s had his fingers in every piece of criminal pie in the entire region. Drugs, gambling, prostitution, trafficking. You name it, and he’s into it or behind it or bringing it here.” She shuddered at her contact with it. “We’ve been after him for years but he’s always had slippery lawyers, or scared off witnesses, or paid people off. We’ve been thwarted at every turn.”

  “But that’s him,” Julie pointed out carefully. “We’re dealing with Diana.”

  “It’s the same thing!” Jessie got to her feet, shaking in her emotion of mixed rage and newfound fear and even shame of her association with Diana.

  “No, it’s not.” Julie got to her feet and still faced Jessie.

  “Are you defending her?” Jessie challenged her.

  Julie looked confused. “Not exactly,” she said. “But yes. For as scary as Diana is, she is the one who took us out of Waldo’s clutches. She didn’t have to, not if she’s as terrible as you say her father is.”

  “We take a dim view of cop killers,” Jessie said menacingly.

  “He wasn’t going to kill you, Jessie,” Julie said slowly. “And I’m not a cop.”

  “What!” Jessie gasped, unable to believe that Julie knew. Diana had said she wouldn’t tell her. Did she lie about that too?

  “They threatened me with a lot of things, but they assured me they weren’t going to kill you.” Julie swallowed, paused in an effort to regain some composure. “I think Diana can be scary as hell when she wants to be, but I don’t think it’s in her nature. She came in and got us both away, not knowing for sure if she could cross her family. Even now we’re sitting in her safe house, hiding from everyone, your people and her people. That doesn’t sound like her father to me.”

  Jessie refused to even think there might be something good. “We’re just bargaining chips!”

  “For what? With whom?”

  Jessie made no response. She had no answer.

  Julie went to Jessie and put her arms around her. “Jessie, I know you feel betrayed. I understand that. I would be, too. But I’m not sure Diana’s betrayed you. Yes, she didn’t tell you, but what would you have done if she had?”

  Jessie tried to think but she couldn’t, not coherently. “I don’t know.” She was calmer now, at least if she tried to think of Diana and not her father. Right now, she didn’t want to think. If she thought, all she could see in her mind’s eye was Diana, bigger than life.

  “Come, sit down,” Julie coaxed. “You need to absorb this.” She looked. This room didn’t have many chairs, which meant the library or the kitchen. Margaret decided for her when she came to the door.

  “You need to come in here.” It didn’t sound like an invitation.

  Jessie shook her head. Margaret’s attitude was probably going to change now. She’d really screwed it up this time, but maybe it was just as well. It would be hard to be treated as a “guest” with the way she was feeling about Diana.

  “Come sit down,” Margaret ordered, pointing to the chair at the table. There were already two mugs waiting for them. “I brewed tea, lemon balm, soothing. Relaxing. You need it.”

  Jessie sat down, not sure about Margaret’s changed attitude. Maybe she needed to check the tea for poison. No, the way she felt right now, she’d drink it.

  “You too,” Margaret pointed to Julie. “Have some tea.”

  “Where’s Diana?” Julie asked.

  “She had some things to take care of.” Margaret looked at Jessie but she spoke to Julie. “She tells me her papa is dying.” When Julie made no response, Margaret turned to look at her. Jessie even turned to see what her answer would be.

  “Is that true?” Jessie demanded.

  Julie opened her mouth but said nothing, shook her head. “I can’t say,” she said finally.

  “That was not a question. Diana said it was so.” Margaret leaned back in the chair. She didn’t look displeased. “That means changes.”

  “Yeah.” Jessie sat up, still upset, but the ramifications sank in. She looked at Julie, back at Margaret.

  “I know you are upset with Diana,” Margaret said slowly. “That’s how I felt when I found out about you.” Jessie bristled. “I thought you would get my Diana killed.” She looked Jessie over. “Now, how many years later, I still have the same fear.”

  “Look,” Jessie protested. “I never put Diana in danger.”

  Margaret stared at Jessie for several minutes. “You listen,” she said finally. “You don’t hear.”

  “Damn it!” Jessie shot to her feet, glancing at Julie. Diana had told her the same thing. Julie had even said the same thing. She was tired of hearing this. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She glared at Margaret. “If you’ve got something against me, then spit it out in plain language. Maybe I’ll hear it then.”

  Margaret didn’t even look perturbed. “Against you? I could write a book, but I’ll start with the simple things so even a smart cop like you can understand.” Her sarcasm was scathing.

  Jessie drew back, surprised at the depth of Margaret’s animosity. Julie caught her by the arm. Margaret saw and didn’t even blink. “You got a warning that your undercover role was blown, a big risk to Diana. And did you listen? No, you knew better. So how did you like the months in the hospital? Surgeries?” She sneered. “Maybe you still have nightmares from it. Maybe you see the whole thing again. Maybe even today, you wake up in a cold sweat.”

  Jessie fell back into the chair, unable to comprehend what Margaret was saying. “Diana?” Julie looked from Margaret to Jessie, but Jessie couldn’t drag her eyes from Margaret’s face. She shook her head. “No,” she said in disbelief.

  Margaret watched her. “She told you point-blank, ‘Don’t go. You’ve been made.’ Did you listen?” Margaret shook her head. “No. But Diana knew. She knew you. So she goes to see for herself. She loses all common sense when you’re involved.”

  Jessie was stunned into silence.

  “I couldn’t believe it when she disappeared that day,” Margaret went on. “She’d never done anything in the field before, a babe in the woods. And hit men like Kaplan never leave witnesses, no matter who they are.” She continued to glare at Jessie. “As soon as I heard, Kaplan killed, female cop in the hospital, oh, I knew, I knew then where she was.” She glared at Jessie. “Such a risk, she didn’t even know how big a risk. For you.”

  Jessie reached out to take hold of the table. She had to hold on to something solid. All of it came flooding back, the informant, the familiarity, the little things she couldn’t put together. She had had the idea it might be Diana. She found nothing to prove it. Or disprove it. “Margaret, I didn’t know. Really.”

  Margaret folded her arms. “She warned you.”

  “I didn’t know where it came from.”

  “You were warned?” Julie burst out as she finally realized what they were talking about.

  “It was an anonymous tip,” Jessie said as an aside to Julie.

  “Did you really expect a name and address?” Margaret mocked.

  Jessie searched Margaret’s face. She had to be lying, but how could she be? Who knew? “Then she was the one who tracked down the inside leak, Henderson, the dirty cop,” Jessie said suddenly. “How did she do that? What did she know?”

  “My Diana, she knows a lot,” Margaret started.

  “Margaret!” A cold, emotionless, ha
rd voice from the hallway door. They all jerked around to see Diana there, an angry Diana who fastened her equally cold gaze on Margaret. “You talk too much.”

  “Maybe you don’t talk enough.”

  “Is that true?” Jessie stood up, just as much to deflect Diana’s anger from Margaret as to elicit more information. “Were you the woman in the clearing?”

  Diana never took her gaze from Margaret, who didn’t move. “Yes.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I would have believed you.”

  “You don’t think I was taking enough of a risk that I should reveal my identity to someone in a department where there was a leak?” She finally looked at Jessie. “God, Jessie, get real.”

  “I wouldn’t have identified you.”

  “Well, I figured what you didn’t know you couldn’t say.” She looked back at Margaret. “Not like some other people.”

  Margaret braced herself. Diana looked over at Julie, who looked from one of them to the next, completely confused.

  There was a moment’s silence when no one spoke and they all stood looking at each other, waiting. Then Jessie managed to put things together even more. “You used my gun.”

  “I didn’t carry a weapon then. It wasn’t until after that I thought it might be more prudent on occasion.” Diana came on into the kitchen, walked by Margaret and opened the cabinet for a glass, opened the refrigerator for the pitcher of iced tea. “A lot of things changed after that.”

  “You killed him,” Jessie repeated, still trying to put the final pieces together.

  “Considering he was standing right over us, I didn’t have many options.” She took a drink, turned around to face Jessie. “You think I had any other choice?”

  Jessie shook her head. “I—I couldn’t remember, just him asking what you were doing there.”

  “Yeah, he was a little surprised.” Diana drank the tea. “Then you were bleeding like mad, your backup wasn’t anywhere close. Thought Life Flight would never get there. I was never so happy to hear sirens in my life, before or since.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  “First one there must have been a rookie. Put him on you so you didn’t bleed to death. Told him I’d direct the others in. Pointed them in and walked into the trees. Guess I got lost in the confusion.”

  Jessie shook her head. Every time she thought she knew everything, something else was revealed. “You could have gotten killed.”

  “It never occurred to me.” Diana looked directly at Jessie. “Remember, I have tunnel vision.” Margaret made some unintelligible sound.

  “Why did you do it?” Jessie asked in bewilderment.

  Margaret made some sound of disgust as she got up and even Julie looked at Jessie in amazement.

  “And what was I supposed to do?” Diana asked. “Let them kill you?”

  “You could have—” Jessie started her stock answer of calling the police but stopped before she finished it. Diana raised her eyebrows and shook her head. Jessie collapsed back into the chair. “I didn’t know,” she said weakly. She buried her face in her hands.

  Her mind was a whirl, she could not take it all in. First, Diana’s father. She still couldn’t get a grip on it, like someone beloved turned into a monster right in front of her. Then right on the heels of that, the monster turned into the guardian angel. How was she supposed to cope?

  She listened to Margaret and Diana talk in a low voice, felt Julie’s hand on her back. She stood up. “I need to—” To what? she thought. The four of them were in this house. There was no place to get away.

  “The exercise room,” Julie suggested.

  “Yes,” Jessie agreed. “That would be good.” Julie started to get up and she laid her hand on Julie’s shoulder. “No, I need to be alone. For a while, work this out. I’ll be all right.”

  ***

  The treadmill was not the same as an open run, and that was what she wanted. She wanted to run away. When she went into the closet, she found the gloves, and she glanced at the punching bag. That was something she usually didn’t do, but today, maybe.

  Hitting something felt great even if it hurt, even if she wasn’t clear what or who she was hitting. Czar Randalson’s daughter was a nice target. Why hadn’t she mentioned that little fact? Why had she hidden it? Well, duh, that was a stupid question. Hey, lover, even though you’re a cop, how would you like to meet my dad, the kingpin of crime? That would go over well.

  Jessie shivered. She could have lost her life. She could have lost her career. Just being remotely associated with anyone from the mob would have cast shadows on her reputation. After just two more punches, she clung to the punching bag, leaning her head against it, smelling the leather, her sweat, a faint fragrance of Diana’s perfume.

  She wanted to cry. She’d almost died, she would have without Diana there. How was she supposed to deal with that?

  She sat down and cried, not even sure why she was crying. What had she lost? Diana had been gone for a long time, it wasn’t like they were still lovers. Her career was intact. Diana had saved her not once like she thought, but twice. How could she be angry with her? Why did she feel like she had lost something precious, that something she remembered as so good never was?

  She went upstairs, showered and changed clothes. She was clearer in mind now, almost crystal clear. She came back downstairs to find everyone in the kitchen.

  “We need to talk,” she was able to say, calmly fastening her gaze on Diana.

  “All right.”

  Margaret half turned, but Jessie forestalled her. “I’m not angry. I’m not going to do anything rash. I just want some answers. I think I deserve that.”

  Margaret and Diana exchanged glances and Diana nodded. Jessie looked at Julie and she appreciated her concern more than she could say. “I’m all right,” she told her. “I just need to do this.”

  When Diana started for the kitchen door, Jessie stopped her. “Can we go out front? I know Margaret’s going to watch, but I’d rather her not be hanging over my shoulder.”

  Diana changed course and went through the living room and out the front door. Jessie followed, pausing at the bar long enough to pull out a bottle of Seagram’s and two shot glasses. She had the feeling they might be needing it.

  Diana sat down on the top step and Jessie came down to sit beside her. “I’m not going off the deck,” she protested in anticipation of Diana’s warning.

  “I know.”

  They sat there, side by side, looking down the drive through the trees in silence for a few minutes. Neither one spoke and the sounds of nature were their only background.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Jessie asked finally, never looking at Diana.

  Diana shrugged. “About what? My Family? At first, it didn’t matter. Brief encounters. By the time it mattered, it was a little late to say anything. I mean, what was I supposed to do? ‘Hi, Pops, here’s my lover, and oh, by the way, she’s a cop.’ That would have gone over big.”

  Jessie didn’t turn to look at her. She couldn’t argue. As she had figured this out downstairs, she had envisioned an almost identical introduction.

  “So that was really you who called in the tip and then at the clearing?” she asked without turning around. She could deal with all this information if she didn’t have to see Diana, watch her formulate an answer, see whatever emotion she was hiding. She didn’t want to see if she was lying.

  Diana picked up the bottle and broke the seal. She filled both shot glasses. “Yep,” she answered like she was confirming a mail delivery.

  “You saved my life.”

  “Someone had to. You didn’t have anyone else at your back.” She handed Jessie one of the glasses.

  Jessie knocked it back. She should have had one of these earlier instead of the tea. She swallowed, examined the glass. “The follow-up calls, you stayed around to check.”

  “I needed to cover some tracks, and I wanted to know you sur
vived.”

  “Wasn’t that a little dangerous?”

  “As compared to what?” Diana drank her shot a little slower. “That was a piece of cake. Tracking down Henderson was the dangerous part. There, I went poking into areas I really didn’t have any business in.”

  So many questions, Jessie thought. “Do I want even want to know what your business was?”

  Diana chuckled. “The dull part, I kept Papa’s books.”

  Simple enough, into nothing and knowing everything. “So how’d you find out I’d been set up?”

  Diana looked down at the steps. “Papa wanted me to attend this party. I didn’t want to go. He did some arm twisting. I kept wandering around the fringes trying to escape. Overheard Sticks and Monahan talking about this guy they brought in from out of town, setting up this Lexington female cop. It pinged my radar. I started snooping around, figured out it had to be you.”

  Jessie thought about it, the clearing, the bad feeling she’d had coming through the trees. It would have been a fatal shot if she hadn’t turned around; wouldn’t have turned around except someone, Diana she now knew, had yelled at her. She calmed the flutter of panic in the pit of her stomach. “You could have gotten killed yourself.”

  “Never occurred to me. Not until about six months later, then I had a panic attack.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie agreed, “sometimes it’s like that. You’re not scared until everything’s over.”

  Jessie looked out over the trees, trying to incorporate all this new information. Diana was the daughter of Czar Randalson, she kept his books, but she had tipped Jessie about a deal destined to go sour, had been there to save Jessie’s life, had exposed a leak in the department and then disappeared again. Jessie rubbed her temples. “Tell me something.”

  “If I can.”

  “When we first met, there at the Bungalow, were you there on Family business?”

  Diana hesitated. “No, not exactly. Papa was using me but I didn’t know that, not until later. He asked me to do him a favor, just go and sit in on this trial that was going on. Seemed harmless enough.”