by Kylie Logan
Even though she hadn’t meant it to, her expression must have revealed exactly what those two years at Little Tots were like, because Loretta grinned.
“That place was too noisy for me,” Jazz confessed. “Too much wailing. Too much drama.”
“And the fire department, that would have been nice and quiet and boring?”
Jazz grinned. “These days if I had to choose, I’d probably join the department no matter what Mom said. But if I had, I might never have time for the dogs. I started with search and rescue, because that’s what my dad did. Then I moved to human-remains detection.”
A shiver cascaded over Loretta’s shoulders. “You don’t need to say another word about that.”
Jazz wasn’t surprised by her reaction. Plenty of people weren’t comfortable talking about what Jazz did in her free time, or the locked ammo box of human remains (bodies donated to science) she kept in a fridge in her garage.
Jazz looked over at Loretta. “How did you come to St. Catherine’s?”
“The hard way.” Loretta stood, and when she did, she towered over Jazz. She grabbed both Jazz’s cup and her own from the counter and held them in one meaty hand. “Washing dishes, mopping floors. I was working over at that retreat house on the west side when I met Sister Eileen. We got to talking and she, well, you know the woman’s mind works in mysterious ways. She offered me this job and I’ve never looked back.”
“And we’re lucky to have you.” Jazz meant every word of it. “But what does that have to do with Florie and Grace?”
The tiny smile that played around Loretta mouth wasn’t so much about amusement as it was forbearance. “You know all about the Greenwald family. Grace’s little sister, Dinah, is a sophomore. Their daddy is on the board of trustees. And their mother, she heads the big fall fundraiser. Does everything from sell the tickets to hang the crepe paper.”
“Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Greenwald are among our biggest supporters.”
“Uh-huh.”
And with that, Loretta turned and went into her office. She closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER 6
She recognized the sound of Luther’s husky barks when she was still down the street.
Squirrel, Jazz told herself.
UPS guy, pizza delivery nearby, cloud floating over the house.
Dogs were dogs, and dogs heard things and smelled things no human could imagine.
Luther was just being a dog.
Only from the sound of things, he was pretty serious.
Jazz hefted her tote bag up onto her shoulder and quickened her pace, crossing to her side of the street where Jefferson met the parking lot of the old Tremont School. Once upon a time, the building was the largest elementary school in Ohio, built to serve the needs of the immigrant population pouring into the area. These days it housed a Montessori school in one portion of the building and miles of empty hallways in the other. Not that Jazz was complaining. Usually the school crowd had come and gone by the time she got home from work, and that meant she and Manny had often gone to the empty parking lot to toss a ball around or work on training commands.
A mostly empty school was a good across-the-street neighbor.
Except for that afternoon, when Luther’s rough, demanding barks pinged back at her from the brick walls like rifle shot.
Jazz got out her house keys and scrambled around her SUV parked in that most prized of Tremont real estate, a driveway. Back when row upon row of workers cottages had been built, there were few cars around. These days properties with driveways were golden, putting parking at the nearby restaurants and bars at a premium. Jazz never failed to thank her lucky stars that she not only had room for her car, but a tiny backyard where Manny used to romp, protected from the traffic out on the street. She rounded the SUV, headed for the back door, and just where the porch steps met the sliver of lawn in front of the garage, she stopped, stunned and disgusted at herself for letting it show.
As if he had every right to be there, Nick Kolesov strolled into the yard from the far side of the house. His hands were in the pockets of his pants. The knot of his green tie was loose. A breeze caught the front of his navy sport coat and blew it open to reveal the shoulder holster and gun he wore on his right side and the badge clipped to his belt.
“You are home!”
Jazz looked to the house, and yelled, “It’s all right, Luther. Good dog!” before she turned her attention to Nick.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Your car is here. I figured you were home. I thought maybe you were avoiding me.”
“So you decided the way to make me not avoid you was to creep around my yard and look in my windows?”
She was pretty sure she didn’t even want to hear whatever excuse he was going to come up with, so she climbed the three steps to the back door. As hints went, it was about as unsubtle as they came.
Nick ignored it completely.
He stood at the bottom of the steps and eyed her on the pint-sized porch, his head tilted back, his eyes impossibly blue in the late-afternoon light.
“I wasn’t home.” She squeezed her eyes shut, annoyed at herself for even trying to explain. “I just got home. I walked to work.”
“That explains the car. It doesn’t explain the dog. Luther, right?”
“You looked in the windows!”
“Hey, I’m curious. Comes with the territory.”
“And I’ve got to take Luther for a walk.”
She unlocked the door and went inside for dog and leash, and whatever she was hoping, those hopes were dashed when she got back outside and Nick was still there.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“Of course you will.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Luther?” Jazz looked down the leash. “Looks like he’s peeing on the pansies Sarah brought over last week and insisted on planting even though she knows every living plant dies in my yard.”
“Yeah, that, but I mean, what’s he doing here?”
She’d planned to walk the other way, the longer way around the block, but at the sidewalk, she turned to her right. It wasn’t fair to shortchange Luther and go back inside immediately, but she wasn’t about to prolong this particular encounter with Nick, either.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I was in the neighborhood.” He sidestepped a broken bottle on the sidewalk. “I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”
“Really?” She thought about asking why he hadn’t cared in over a year, but there was no use in pointing out the obvious. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.”
“If you expected me to be fine, why did you have to stop by to ask how I was?”
“Like I said—”
“Curious. Yes, I know.”
They turned the corner. Here there were modest, working-class houses on both sides of the street, the slate sidewalks overshadowed by oaks and maples that in a few weeks would burst into shades of green after the long, dull winter. Like in other parts of the neighborhood, many of these houses had been scooped up by young professionals, painted in coordinated colors with names like slate and antique gold, sage and sand, decorated with seasonal flags and fountains and metal sculptures, and one of those caught the last of the afternoon light and winked at Jazz.
Some of the other houses along the street—like the one Jazz owned, which had once belonged to her grandparents—had been in Tremont families for generations. They might not be as color coordinated, their gardens weren’t as pristine, but there was history in every board, and thinking about it always made Jazz feel like no matter how many millennials flooded in, Tremont would always be the same, rock solid and hardworking.
Luther stopped to sniff the trunk of a maple tree.
“Want to explain what you’re doing here?” Jazz asked Nick.
“Working, of course.”
“On Florie’s case?”
“Oh, so now you’re interested?”
She was. Too interested. Jazz reminded herself to cool her jets. There was nothing to be gained from Nick knowing she’d been asking questions. Especially since before she left school that afternoon, she’d sent an email and agreed on a time to get together with Grace Greenwald later that evening.
“Of course I’m interested.” She kept her gaze on Luther, and when he spotted a cat across the street, she gave him a little tug, all the reminder he needed that what he was thinking was unacceptable. “I knew Florie. She went to school at St. Catherine’s. She was on the cross-country team.”
“That’s why I thought I’d give you a heads-up before tomorrow’s paper comes out.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Jazz.
It wasn’t the first photo she’d seen of Florie in the days since the murder. The story was on the front page of both Sunday’s and Monday’s Plain Dealer. By Tuesday, it had been relegated to the second page, along with a story about how the police were looking for leads and hoping for leads and following leads. Nick had been quoted once.
“We’re making progress on the case.”
Only something told her if they were, he’d have better things to do than lurk in her backyard.
The stories Jazz had seen in the last two days had all featured the same picture of Florie, the same one Jazz had found in the yearbook. This photo, the one he said would be in Wednesday’s paper, was different—Florie in pallid makeup, her eyes rimmed with black, her lips painted purple, her nose pierced.
“Where did you get this article?”
“I’ve got connections.”
Jazz didn’t mean to do it, but she couldn’t help herself. She glanced at the byline on the story. Tamara Starks.
She bit back the question she was tempted to ask about how connected the connection was, exactly, and skimmed the story instead.
Her eyes caught on a phrase and her head came up. “Cleveland Horror Film Festival? Florie worked for a horror film festival?”
“She did.”
Her gaze slid back to the pretty face that was nearly unrecognizable beneath the makeup.
“Well, that explains how she looked, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“What did she do for them?”
“It was part-time, temporary work. The festival kicks off in a couple weeks, so until then, they’re doing all sorts of promotional events. It’s a low-budget organization, this is their first year, and they’re actually going to have movies playing in theaters throughout the area. There’s a skeleton staff, no pun intended, and Florie was what they called their ‘brochure bitch.’ It’s what the guy at the festival told me! She handed out flyers and schedules, tried to spread the word.”
“And she dressed the part.” Luther pulled at the leash, and Jazz started walking again, thinking through the implications of what she’d just learned. “You think the clothes she was wearing were more of a costume than a fashion choice? Does that mean she was working the night she was killed?”
“Maybe you’re the one who should be the detective.” Nick didn’t dole out compliments often, but Jazz knew better than to be waylaid by the warmth that curled through her insides at this one. Maybe he knew better than to expect her to; maybe that’s why he stopped, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a photograph. When she stopped, too, he handed her the picture.
“That was taken by the cameras outside the casino downtown,” he explained and pointed to the figure near the center of the picture. The photo was grainy, but Jazz clearly saw that in the midst of the crowds crossing Public Square, the four-block open plaza in the heart of the city, there was a slim woman dressed all in black, a streak of color like blood in her hair.
“Florie.”
Nick nodded. “According to Parker Paul, the executive director of the festival, her job Saturday evening was to stake out Public Square and hand out as many brochures as she could. It makes sense that she’d be all dressed up.”
“Which means she wasn’t some kind of weirdo.” For some reason the words were reassuring, though Jazz couldn’t say why. Maybe she just wanted to remember Florie the way she’d been back in school, to think of her not as hungry and desperate as Loretta pointed out, not as strange and spooky as the newspaper wanted the world to believe, but as sweet and talented and funny.
“This picture proves she was on Public Square at…” Since Nick had already taken back the photograph, Jazz had no choice but to lean closer to him to get a look at the time stamp. She told herself there was no way the aroma of his aftershave—tobacco and cedarwood—could make her dizzy, and just to prove it, she breathed in deep and stayed strong. “Five fourteen. We know she was downtown then.”
“And dead by the time you found her just a little before nine.”
“So how did she get to Tremont?”
“She didn’t own a car,” he told her. “And so far, we haven’t found anyone who loaned one to her.”
“That means she took public transportation. That shouldn’t be hard to check. She was young and pretty and she’d be tough to miss in that outfit.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. But we canvassed the buses and the Rapid. Nada.”
“Then she walked. It’s what, about three miles from downtown over to Tremont? Not exactly close, but she was young and fit. Although in boots with heels that high…” The thought made Jazz’s feet ache.
“I wondered about that, too. I had a couple officers knocking on doors all day today. No one between here and there claims to have seen her.”
“But she had to be somewhere. What did she do between leaving Public Square and showing up at that old building? And what was she doing there in the first place? I had a key. She—” Jazz thought back to Saturday night. “That door that was open at the back of the building? Do you think Florie got in that way? Seems weird that she’d even want to be in that building when there was nothing inside but dirt and decay.”
“The media’s going to make a big deal out of the horror connection,” Nick said, sidestepping her questions in a way that said more than any real answer could. “You know how it is when it comes to these sorts of stories—the more sensational, the better. I was just wondering if maybe there was more to it for Florie than just working at the festival. Can you think of anything you saw Saturday night, any sign of … I don’t know, something weird that would show she was doing more than just dressing the part for her job?”
“Pentacles painted on the walls? Black candles? Guys in hockey masks? No. There was just Florie. If there was anything else, your guys would have found it.”
“Unless you didn’t want them to.”
She had started walking again and was just about to step off a curb, and Jazz froze and spun to face him. “You think I tampered with the crime scene?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He scraped a hand through his hair. He’d gotten a trim since Saturday and it was, apparently, a natural and immutable law that even when he mussed it, his hair ended up looking as good as it had before he touched it. “You know how it is, I have to cover all my bases. I don’t believe you’d ever do anything like that, but I’ve got to make a note on my report that I asked you about it. My lieutenant dropped a few heavy-handed hints. She thought—”
Jazz pinned Nick with a look. “She thought what?”
“She knows you work at St. Catherine’s and I might have mentioned how much you love the place. She thought if you saw anything that connected Florie to something that would shed a bad light on the school—”
“Like what? We sacrifice chickens in the basement?”
“Hey, the woman’s got a job to do. And so do I. You know what I mean.”
“I know you can sometimes be a total jerk.”
“I know it, too. Hey, it’s one of my charms. At least I’m self-aware.”
“So self-aware, you didn’t think it was any big deal to come over here and accuse me of tampering
with evidence.”
“It was only for my report. Only so I can say I asked. So I asked. I actually came over here because the Cleveland Horror Film Festival has offices next to the ice-cream place over on Professor. Like I said, I was in the neighborhood and—”
“And you just stopped by to say hello and ask how I’m doing and insult me while you were at it. To question my professionalism and my ability to handle a crime scene.”
“It’s all part of my job.”
“Yeah. Your job.”
Her heart beating double time and her blood whooshing in her ears, Jazz broke into a run and, thinking it was all part of the fun, the dog loped along at her side. Nick’s job had always been the problem. His job. His long hours. His mule-headed commitment to finding the truth and giving perps their due. Sure, it was all admirable. It made him a sort-of superhero.
But it was hell on a relationship.
She was already back at her driveway, running a hand along Luther’s back and fighting to catch her breath when she heard Nick call to her from across the street. “You know I didn’t mean it that way. I have to get my ducks in a row.”
“Your ducks are jerks. You’re a jerk,” Jazz muttered.
Nick trotted up the driveway and leaned against the SUV. “You know I didn’t think it was possible that you touched anything. Hey, maybe I just wanted to see your reaction when I asked.”
“Because you couldn’t predict my reaction.”
“Sure I could.” A smile tickled the corners of his mouth. “I just like to get a rise out of you.”
“It worked.”
“It did. So now I can complete my report. I’m thinking of adding something like, ‘When the witness was asked if anything at the scene was touched, her answer was—’”
“Hell no.”
“Can I quote you?”
“Absolutely.”
“And now that we’ve got that out of the way, can I apologize for having to ask? I was thinking of dinner tonight.”