by Amber Malloy
Jax shrugged, unable to think of anything useful. “I pulled her file the first night we met, and before Chicago she lived in Seattle. She owned a semi-successful coffee shop and took a few classes at the University. Considering the curriculum, a hodge-podge of aesthetic, I assumed she made a hobby out of it. That was about it before she married Parker.”
“Ding ding ding! There’s your thread. It’s time for you to stop assuming, son. Perhaps it wasn’t one person who was set up to die in the alley the other night, but three. And you have to admit, she’s not exactly Parker’s type.”
Jax chuckled. He had said as much to Lane since he found it hard to fathom the sexy woman with the blond version of Jughead. “You’re right. I guess I’m going to have to find out,” he told his old man. Whether he liked it or not, he needed to start asking the tough questions.
***
They had made pretty good progress. Lane and Dottie had separated the piles of police reports that were ridiculously similar into separate stacks. Natural deaths went to the left and accidents went into another. By morning, they would be halfway done. In the meantime, they had forged a comfortable camaraderie over wine, a warm fire, and police reports.
“Tell me, dear, how did you and my boy meet?” Dottie asked from her research station. Jax’s mother had been humming to herself on and off ever since she’d come back from her afternoon break.
In the not so distant future, Lane believed she would get one of those naughty breaks in the woods.
“Men’s room at the fundraiser for the Daughters of the American Revolution,” she admitted. The urge to lie came to mind since it wasn’t a classy story, but she had found the truth far easier to remember.
“Oohh juicy and strange,” she cooed, “but mainly juicy. I met Jax’s father at the Playboy Mansion.”
“No way,” she said, shocked. Even though she suspected by Dottie’s strong resemblance to Barbie Benton, spectacular rack, and easy attitude she could have been a Playboy Bunny, she hadn’t wanted to assume.
“Yeah,” Dottie admitted with a hint of a smile. “At The Playmate of the Year ceremony, and I could have sworn I was going to win.” His mother grabbed a box to move it out of her way. “After all, my issue did sell out. Miss September 1966.”
“I take it you lost,” she egged her on to spill her story, ignoring the voice in her head to be polite.
“Allie something-or-other won, silly poser.” Dottie waved away her loss. “After she won, I wanted to get out of there fast, until I almost knocked over Truman Thornbird.” A crimson blush heated her face when she spoke about her ex-husband. “We closed the place down.”
“What about you?”
“How did you?”
Dottie pointed at her ring finger before she grabbed another box turning the question around on Lane. “Tan lines.”
“Uh, yeah.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and considered a new subject, but decided she would need to cop to it sooner or later. “Parker Lockland,” she offered.
Dottie dropped the box she held to the floor. “You’re kidding.” She laughed. “You’re not close to his type.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” She wanted in on the big secret. More than once, the niggling thought Parker could be gay had crossed her mind. Sex had not been a frequent activity in their household. She believed he’d intentionally done it wrong so he wouldn’t have to do it anymore.
“Oh, honey, I shouldn’t be telling you this.” Dottie frowned.
Lane assumed she was looking for an assist, but nothing happened beyond her unwavering stare.
“Fine. Parker and Jax went to school together, middle school, all the way to high school. There may have been a small scandal, and when I say small, I mean his parents swept it under the rug.”
“A good trait of the rich,” she muttered.
“An excellent trait of the rich. They do it well.” Dottie licked her lips and glanced around the room—probably for a way out of the conversation, Lane figured. “From my understanding, Parker got this girl pregnant. His parents ended up having to pay the family off.”
“I’ve heard worse,” she said with a sigh of relief.
“Thirteen,” Dottie blurted out. “And he was a senior in high school.”
“Oh, God!” Lane choked.
“Yeah,” Jax’s mother rushed to explain. “Devastated that her parents wanted her to get an abortion, she kept trying to contact Parker. When the rich close ranks, it is damn near impossible to penetrate the fortress and….” Dottie took a deep breath. “The young lady ended up killing herself.”
Hot acid inched up her throat. “You’re kidding me,” She covered her mouth in horror. An instant whirl of thoughts went on a merry-go-round ride in her mind.
“Parker has done an excellent job hiding his, uh…proclivities,” Dottie continued. “Anytime there’s been an event or any social function, he makes sure he’s escorted by a grown woman. Of course his dates have always been flat as a board, short-haired waifs who resembled—”
“Thirteen-year-old girls,” Lane blurted.
“Yeah,” Dottie agreed. “See why you were such a surprise for everyone. I mean, you’re a w-o-m-a-n. With all those curves, you should have been on the front cover of Playboy, not on the arm of Parker Lockland.”
Try as she may, Lane had a heck of a time staving off the urge to puke.
“How did you and Parker meet?” Jax asked from the doorway.
Embarrassed, Lane wanted to rail against him for not telling her about Parker and his sick inclinations. But if the shoe was on the other foot, she wouldn’t have said anything either. Swallowing hard, she worked herself toward an answer. Fire rose in her belly while misdirected blame found a victim in Jackson Thornbird.
In a matter of minutes, her world had turned on its axis and decided to careen into the opposite direction.
“Uh, I met him on one of those online sites, Luv.com. I wasn’t having much success between running the coffee shop or classes. I didn’t have time to meet anyone…decent.” She pushed down the humiliation at how desperate she sounded.
“Did you post a picture with your profile?” he prodded.
“Sure, it’s mandatory.” Lane stood, hoping the ill wave of nausea would leave her soon. From the corner of her eye, she caught Dottie giving her son a small nod.
“You look a tad green, hon, are you okay?” Jax’s mother laid the reports on the desk and crossed the room to comfort her. “In my experience, people can never hide their true selves for very long.” Dottie grabbed her shoulders and guided her to the couch. “I’m sure there’s something Parker did to make you wonder.”
“Well I…. We….”
“Sex?” Dottie pushed.
She nodded. “So awful it had to be on purpose.”
“What about your looks?”
Lane had been so focused on Dottie and not humiliating herself further, she hadn’t realized Jax had made his way closer to her. With that familiar expression of determination on his face, he stood in front of her. At least it was better than pity. Pity from Jax would have completely undone her.
“Uh, yeah.” She bit her lip and tried to recall. “He wanted me to lose weight.”
“How many pounds?”
“About thirty, but said forty would be better. He signed me up at the East Bank Club for personal training and Pilates. I pretended to go but almost always ditched for the bookstore or the movies,” she said, chagrined at her own laziness. “I put on more weight by avoiding the workouts altogether.”
Dottie’s laughter lightened the tension in the room by a degree. The sound reminded her of bells, and helped ease the knot curled within her shoulders.
“What about your breasts?” He pushed. “Did he want you to get a reduction?”
“He may have….” Lane blew out breath before she answered. “Mentioned it a few times.” She started to remember.
“Hmm,” he groaned. Jax rubbed the side of his face as his eyes took on a faraway
look. She could tell by his grimace a spark of an idea had started to take shape in his head. Too overwhelmed at the moment, she didn’t bother to ask what he had come up with.
“Okay, enough.” Dottie patted Lane’s knee before she left her on the couch. “Lane can’t keep working after such big news, and I’m only pretending to push around papers. So why don’t we all get some shut-eye and start again in the morning?”
“Goodnight, honey.” Dottie gave her a comforting kiss on the cheek and then did the same for her son. “Goodnight. Don’t lose too much sleep over this, Lane. You did what’s best for you. It’s all any of us can do.” She gave them a wave on her way out the door.
No one uttered a word after his mother left. The sound of the crackling fire took over the room as Jax stood in front of her.
“I’m such a ridiculous fool,” she confessed.
“Don’t,” he said.
“How desperate do I look to meet a stranger online and marry him?”
“I’m sure it didn’t go like that.” He chuckled. “I’m sure a date or two fit in somewhere.” He knelt in front of her.
“Parker took me out a lot the first month. He would fly into Seattle just to wine and dine me but claimed the distance was a problem. I figured he wanted to break up. Instead, he proposed.” She gave Jax a weak smile. In retrospect, she’d had an idea something was off about Parker, but desperation had made her blind. “We got married. Cut to six months later, and I’m hiding in the men’s bathroom after serving him with divorce papers.”
“It could be worse.” He took her hands between his and planted a tender kiss on her knuckles.
“How so?” she wondered aloud, impressed by how Jax’s thoughtfulness made her almost forget about his stern cop exterior.
“You could be dead.”
Taken aback, Lane swallowed the part of her pride that wanted to attack him. After all, he was right. “Parker wanted me dead, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” he told her. “Now we just have to figure out why.”
Chapter Eighteen
A steady amount of snow fell to the ground. Morning had come fast; Jax had burned the midnight oil, trying to study the evidence with a new eye. Early yet, he waited for Raff to get back to him.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” his mother sang with his father close on her heels. “Did you get any sleep?”
His parents were happier than he had ever seen them. Even his father exuded a subdued joy. Dottie stepped around the desk to give him a warm hug.
“No,” he told her. “Not much sleep at all.”
“We’re heading out before the storm hits,” she said. “Stu will be here with the helicopter.”
He glanced out the window. One heck of a blizzard would be rolling in soon. But he found no difference in the weather from the time he’d popped his head out of the paper hole an hour ago.
Dottie ruffled his hair and pressed a kiss to his forehead, much like she used to do when he was a kid. “Come on, I’ll fix you a good breakfast and you can see us off.”
“Sure,” he mumbled, still distracted by all the new information he needed to assemble. “I’m just waiting to hear back from Raff.”
“Is she going through Parker’s financials?” his father picked up a few of the reports he had already combed through.
“No, why?”
“It bears checking into.”
“You think the Locklands would risk their kingdom for something illegal?” Jax asked, surprised his father even had this much information. Old school wealth would go to their grave holding onto the illusion of money, whether they still had it or not.
“Rumors about bad investments here and there, even word about Bernie Madoff made the rounds.” His father shook his head. “They took a hit like everyone else with Wall Street. What’s the youngest Lockland’s name?”
“Dustin,” Jax offered.
“Yeah, some financial genius, huh? He ended up being the opposite of useful. Their medical facility is now the Lockland family’s only source of income, and at one point, even that was bleeding money.”
Nothing could be ruled out. While Jax digested the meager facts his father had laid out, he tried to ignore the sensation of itchy rocks in his eyes.
Truman set the papers down. “Your mother told me about Lane. I hope she didn’t take it too hard.”
“Not sure.” He took off his glasses and tried to rub the sleep away to no avail, so he gave up. “She went to bed after she got the news.” He leaned back into his seat. All I need is a good few hours of rest. A straight week would be better.
Jax shut his eyes for a moment.
At least he believed a couple of seconds had passed when he jerked awake to an empty room. The smell of freshly fried bacon and eggs wafted into the room.
“What!” His heart almost beat out of his chest. Jax scrambled to put his glasses back on and yanked at a Post-It his father must have stuck to his forehead.
This name seems familiar! His father wrote, Find this kid’s name and look into his medical records.
Groggy from lack of sleep, Lane made her way down the cabin’s curvy, tree-trunk staircase and prayed for caffeine. All night she had tossed and turned. Thoughts of Parker marrying her for some nefarious reason had kept her awake. After some consideration, she doubted Johnny Mac was the only intended victim of that hit.
Lane shuffled into the den, positive that was where everyone would be. But she found an easel with a beautiful oil painting of the Thornbird cabin in the middle of the room.
In the picture, snow fell upon a majestic house, while a brilliant full moon brightened the whole wonderful scene. She plucked a note off the easel.
May you forget the past and focus on the brave new future…love Dottie.
When Jax mentioned his mother dabbled with colors, she hadn’t imagined anything this grand. Better than Thomas Kinkade could come up with. Lane admired the painting in front of her.
Touched by the sentiment, she choked back tears. A deep-seated urgency to find Dottie overwhelmed her. Lane snatched open the cabin’s back door and watched the snowflakes fall at a quick clip.
Covered in only her warm thermal pajamas, she walked into serene silence, which encapsulated the land. She basked in the wonder of it all as the sound of steel cutting through air told her where to go.
“Dottie, Truman!” She ran toward the cleared off landing.
A helicopter lowered down at least a football field away from the house. White fluff twirled around her as she closed the gap between her and the couple. Right before they boarded, Lane gathered Dottie into a fierce hug and held on tight.
“Why did you break up?” she said into the older woman’s ear. She needed confirmation of love since the couple made so much sense together.
“Rich people,” Jax’s mother told her. “I wanted to love my man and my kids on my terms. I didn’t want to follow anyone’s made-up rules. Damn near thirty years later, I can say not only was I stubborn but wrong to allow them to push me out.” Dottie kissed her on the cheek before she left. “Take care, dear.”
Truman grabbed his ex-wife’s hand with an endearing smile and helped her onto the bird. She backed away as blustery weather mingled with the snow. The fast moving blades whipped everything into a frenzy.
Lane stumbled.
She almost fell but he caught her. Jax pulled her away from the strong winds of the helicopter and closer to him.
Together, they watched the aircraft hover off the ground and lift into the snow-covered sky above.
***
“A steady stream of mild snowfall for the next couple of hours will change to whiteout conditions….” Jax listened to the radio while he loaded the dishwasher with the breakfast dishes. He wanted to get some target practice in with Lane, but after his parents’ departure, she had disappeared somewhere inside the house.
From the beginning of their odd journey, he had yet to witness her in a bad mood, but today Lane seemed a bit off. She hadn’t eaten much for breakf
ast and said even less. Jax decided she could use something to lift her spirits, and shooting at stuff usually did the trick for him. Maybe he could get her to relax and talk about her past.
The notification for a face to face on his laptop chimed. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and reached over the counter to hit the accept button for the chat.
“You look like shit, Thornbird.” Raff eyed him through the computer screen.
“Being on the run from the law has its downside.”
Raff chomped on a shiny Granny Smith apple while he complained.
“I got to tell you, Jax, if you want to stay on the lam for a while longer, Ralph and I have no complaints about the amenities.” She looked behind her at his firehouse. “Nate did one hell of a job designing this place. If he ever gets tired of being a lawyer, I got this guy.”
Too tired to finish the joke where she didn’t in fact have a guy, he allowed the awkward silence to grow. Raff’s delicate but worn face slipped a notch, showing the true weight of her worries.
“You really do look like shit,” she repeated.
“Flesh wound,” he muttered. “I’m a smidge raw and red, but everything is in working condition.” He gave his partner a half-smile while he tried to convince her it wasn’t too bad. “How’s Sherman?” In previous conversations, he had taken great pains to avoid the topic, afraid the news would be something he wasn’t prepared to deal with.
“No change. He’s still in a medically-induced coma.”
Jax wasn’t sure how he felt about his initial diagnosis but decided to settle for the simple grace that Sherman was alive to fight another day.
“Give me time and I should know something about his shooting, at least I hope.” Raff shrugged. “And now that we’re done with the pleasantries, do you want the bad news or worse news?”
He didn’t want either. “Lay it on me.”
“Well, I did what you asked and checked for any missing persons who worked for Lockland Medical Group.”
“And you got a hit.”
Raff pulled a flyer in front of the screen, a hard-to-make-out black and white.