by Kylie Logan
“Great makeup.”
“Oh, that’s not makeup. That’s how he always looks. But hey, what can I say? He’s my go-to guy. You know, when I have questions about anything to do with blood and gore.”
“So Florie’s reputation and talent, her memory, they get sacrificed on the altar of making Laverne’s rent and Billy’s … what?”
“It’s not just them.” Paul slugged down another mouthful of coffee. “We’ve got investors who’ve sunk a whole bunch of money into the festival. We can’t let them down. I can’t let them down. We show our first movie two weeks from tonight and we haven’t sold nearly enough tickets.”
“And you’re hoping the more you hype Florie’s murder, the more people will notice what you’re up to, feel all creepy and horrible, and buy tickets.”
His shrug was as pathetic as his plan. “Hey, you work with what you’ve got.”
“And Florie’s work?”
He yanked open the top drawer of his desk. “You know, the cop who came to talk to me asked me all these same questions. Don’t cops talk to the family of the person who got killed?” He pulled out a manila folder and plopped it on his desk.
Jazzed leaned forward and saw Florentine Allen on the folder tab.
She leaned forward a little more when Paul pulled a slim stack of papers from the folder and paged through them.
“She was here for…” He looked at the printout of a spreadsheet. “A couple months. She gave us maybe…” He counted low under his breath. “Sometimes fifteen, sometimes twenty hours a week.”
“That’s a lot of time for a kid who’s in school.”
“Was she?”
The question was too casual.
Jazz stepped closer to the desk. “How well did you know her?”
“Florentine?” Paul’s laugh was forced. “Now you do sound like that cop. Maybe you’re going to be like him and ask where I was the night Florentine died.”
It wasn’t like she was investigating, she reminded herself. But she was invested. In Florie’s years at St. Catherine’s and now in her death. She pinned Paul with a look.
“Where were you?”
He tapped the papers in front of him into a neat pile, tucked them back in the folder, and shoved the folder in the drawer before he folded his hands on the desk in front of him. Paul’s fingers were short and fat, like pork sausages. He wore a simple gold-band wedding ring.
“Atlanta,” he said, his voice locked as tight as his fingers. “My wife’s nephew got married. And no…” He rose to his feet. “Don’t you dare ask to see hotel receipts. The cop, he did that, and I had to show him. But you’re just a friend of the girl’s family. You have no right.”
“Her family has the right to know about her life.”
“There’s nothing I can tell you.”
“Did you ever see her outside of work?”
His jaw twitched. His lips pressed into a tight line.
She stepped back. Reconsidered. Decided what the hell.
“Florie needed money. Did she try to get it from you?”
A muscle bunched at the base of his jaw. “She wasn’t the nice kid you think she was.”
“I never said I thought she was.”
He dropped back in his chair. “I’m sorry the kid is dead. Really. And believe it or not, I do understand how her family wants to gather all the memories they can and hold on to them. I’ve got daughters. Three of them. I’d want to do the same thing. But those people, they don’t have to know that Florentine and I had a little fling.”
The news stung like a slap.
“It didn’t last long,” Paul told her. “A couple weeks. A couple drinks together. A couple … well, you get the picture.”
“I do.”
“Then you should also get this … after we were together a couple times, after…” A color like blood rushed up his neck and into his doughy cheeks. “After I was stupid enough to think she actually enjoyed being with me, that’s when she told me she was going to tell my wife what was going on between us.”
“Did she?”
“No. But only because I paid what she asked.”
Jazz sucked in a breath and swallowed down the sudden sour taste that filled her mouth. She’d known Florie was desperate for money, she’d just never imagined …
She shook her head to clear it.
“Did you tell the cop?” she asked him.
“You think I’m stupid? That makes me look like a suspect, doesn’t it?”
“Except you were in Atlanta.”
“I was.”
“And there’s a whole wedding full of people who can vouch for you.”
“They can.”
It was warm in the office. That must have been why Jazz felt suddenly as if she were an ice cube in the sunlight, melting by the moment, getting smaller and smaller.
“I appreciate your honesty,” she told Paul.
“And will you…” There was a pad of paper and a pen on his desk, and he straightened them even though they didn’t need it. “Will you tell her parents what I just told you?”
Finally, they were back on solid ground; she didn’t need to lie. “No. There doesn’t seem to be anything to be gained from them knowing. I think it would be best if we kept this our secret.”
The word reverberated in her head as she made her way downstairs.
Secrets.
Florie had secrets.
And now Jazz did, too.
She was so preoccupied, she’d already pushed out of the back door when she remembered Billy DeSantos. As luck would have it, he was nowhere to be seen, and Jazz scuttled out of the alley, grateful to be away from the monster on the poster and the ugly truth of Florie’s past.
It wasn’t until she crossed the street and was headed back to St. Catherine’s that she felt a chill skate across her shoulder blades.
Like someone was watching her.
CHAPTER 10
As the daughter of a firefighter, Jazz had experiences kids with parents with nine-to-five jobs could never imagine.
She had played in and around fire trucks for as long as she could remember. Early on, she discovered the comfiest recliner in the firehouse TV room, and she raced Hal and Owen to it when they visited and she won every time.
By the age of six, she knew holidays weren’t dates on a calendar, but the time spent with family. Often, her dad—and now, her brothers—had shifts on holidays. Sure, when she was a kid, she had been envious when her friends talked about how they tore open their gifts on Christmas morning. Jazz and Hal and Owen sometimes had to wait a full twenty-four hours after Santa brought them to open their gifts, but if anything, that only made the holiday more delicious.
She treasured the times her dad would call from the station to ask if her homework was done and wish her sweet dreams, and the times he came home smelling like soap and aftershave and the ashy aroma of smoke.
She knew time spent together was a rare and wonderful thing.
Which was why she was caught off guard that Saturday night when her doorbell rang and Luther shot off the couch and to the front door.
Both Hal and Owen were on her front porch.
“Hey, guys!” When they stepped into the living room she gave each of them a quick hug, no easy thing since Luther was so excited to see them, he ran in circles and demanded attention.
“You didn’t tell me you got a dog!”
Hal should have known better. At least that’s what the look Jazz gave him said. “It’s Luther. Greg’s dog. His mother had a stroke in Florida.”
“Jazz is babysitting,” Owen added and scratched the dog’s ears. “Haven’t you talked to Mom? Mom knows everything.”
She did. She always did. Though she either didn’t know or didn’t bother to mention to Jazz that both her brothers had the night off and were planning on stopping over.
Jazz closed the door and glanced from one brother to the other.
Hal was the oldest and looked so much like their father, a catch of e
motion hitched Jazz’s breath every time she saw him. He was over six feet tall, just like Michael had been, and he had the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, the same square-cut jaw that made him look fierce and determined even when he was doing something like Hal was now, wrestling on the floor with Luther, laughing like a kid.
Owen, three years older than Jazz, took after their mother’s Polish side of the family. He was shorter than Hal and bulky, like Grandpa Kurcz, with gray eyes and a round face and honey-colored hair that, growing up, Jazz had always wished she’d gotten instead of her ordinary brown.
She stepped around the dog and Hal, still on the floor, and toward the kitchen. “You want beers?”
“Oh, no.” Owen grabbed her arm. “We’re taking you out.”
“Out? As in—”
“Out.” Hal jumped to his feet and ruffled a hand over Luther’s head. “You know, it’s what people do. Well, some people who aren’t you, anyway. They go to places where there are other people. They sometimes even talk to those other people.”
“And they drink beer there,” Owen told her.
She was wearing her oldest jeans and because it was a chilly night, a blue sweatshirt with a red block C on it, the symbol of the city’s baseball team. “I’m not exactly dressed to go out.”
“We’re not exactly going anyplace that you have to get dressed up for,” Owen told her.
“And Luther—”
Hal cut off her protest. The dog’s leash was nearby and in a flash, he hooked it on Luther’s collar. “We’ll take him for a walk while you do…” He waved a hand at Jazz. “While you do whatever it is girls need to do before they go out.”
“And speaking of girls…” Instead of heading upstairs to get ready, she tipped her head and crossed her arms over her chest. It wasn’t that she was sorry to see her brothers. She loved them to the moon and back. But on a Saturday night?
“Where’s Kaitlyn?” Jazz asked Hal. Kaitlyn, an RN who worked in the burn unit of a local hospital, was Hal’s girlfriend. The family hoped she’d soon be his fiancée. “You can’t leave her alone on a Saturday night, not when you’re actually off.”
“Bachelorette party,” he informed her. To prove he was footloose and fancy-free, Hal threw his arms out at his sides. “That means I can do whatever I want tonight.”
“And you want to spend time with me?”
“Go get ready.” Owen gave her a nudge toward the stairs. “We’ll walk the dog and be back in five.”
She switched the sweatshirt for a gray sweater and put on a pair of jeans that were less threadbare. “We’re walking?” she asked them when they returned with the dog and she got a treat for him from the bag on the kitchen counter.
“Is there anywhere to park in this whole neighborhood?” Hal’s question was rhetorical.
“Looks like you found a spot.” When they locked up the house and stepped onto the porch, she eyed up his black Jeep, squeezed close enough to kiss her SUV in the driveway.
Hal went to the car, opened the back door, and took out a brown paper shopping bag, then joined Jazz and Owen on the sidewalk, the bag tucked under his arm. He ignored the questioning look Jazz gave him, looping his free arm over her shoulders instead. “Let’s go.”
They walked up Jefferson, not toward La Bodega, Jazz’s favorite sandwich spot, which was a shame, because for the first time in the week since she’d walked these same streets with Luther to test his HRD abilities, her stomach rumbled with hunger.
If she had to guess, she’d say they were headed for Pulaski Post 30, home of the Polish Legion American Vets and dollar draft beers, where they’d play pool and buy bags of potato chips that hung behind the bar, but they walked right by.
“Prosperity?” Jazz couldn’t help but be surprised when they stopped outside the Prosperity Social Club, another hipster oasis in a neighborhood that was all about cool. “What?” She looked from brother to brother. “Did you two win the lottery or something?”
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud.” Owen opened the door and stood back so she could go inside. “And since we didn’t win the lottery, don’t order anything top-shelf!”
As she expected for a Saturday night, the place was hopping. Still, they were seated quickly in a relatively quiet corner—Hal and Owen on one side of the table with that shopping bag tucked on the floor between them, and Jazz on the other—and had beers in front of them in a matter of minutes. Nothing made Hal and Owen happier than the fact that Cleveland was the center of a craft-beer renaissance, and they each ordered the latest and what their waiter assured them was the greatest. When it came to beer, a can of Labatt was just fine with Jazz.
She popped the top on the beer can and emptied it into the frosty glass the waiter had provided. “What are you two up to?”
“Working mostly.” Owen sipped, nodded his approval of the IPA he’d ordered, and passed his glass to Hal, who’d just sipped his lager, nodded his approval, and did the same thing. Done sampling and with his IPA back in front of him, Owen looked over the appetizer menu while Hal braced his elbows on the table and leaned forward.
“We haven’t seen you in a while.”
It was true, and it was a shame. They were best friends, all three of them, and there was a time growing up when they never would have imagined spending days, and even weeks, without communicating.
Best friends did not need to ease into conversations. They didn’t need to lie, either, or to talk their way around subjects that others might find too sensitive, too personal.
She looked from Owen to Hal, then back again to Owen, because when it came to things like this, he was always the first to cave and tell the truth. “You think I’m depressed.”
“Are you?” he asked.
“You mean about finding Florie?” She took a sip of the icy beer. “No.”
“Are you depressed about anything else?”
Owen could be her strongest ally. He could also be as dense as one of those black holes they’re always encountering on Star Trek. If he wasn’t, he never would have had the sense to ask.
“Why would I be?” Jazz countered.
This time, it was Hal who spoke up. After he gave her a shrug. “It’s not every day you find a body.”
“You guys do. Well, maybe not every day, but you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, but it’s our job.” Owen ran a finger through the ring of condensation left on the table by his beer glass. “We know what we’re getting into.”
“Just like I do when I take out a dog to search for human remains.”
“Yeah, but…” As the oldest, Hal refused to let down his guard, but Jazz knew better—of the three of them, he was the most sensitive. She’d seen him go to pieces the night he’d worked a fire that took the lives of three elderly people. She’d seen him cry openly after coming to the aid of a family at the mall and trying, unsuccessfully, to dislodge a grape Tootsie Pop from a kid’s throat. “It’s never easy,” he admitted.
“I’m not saying it was.” In an effort to convince herself that maybe she was wrong, that maybe finding Florie’s body wasn’t all that different from training a dog to search for the bits and pieces of people who donated their bodies to science, she sat up and sat back and did her best to look and sound confident. “I accept it as part of my volunteer work.”
“Which you weren’t doing at the time, not officially.” Owen wagged a finger in her direction. Back in the day—and she wasn’t proud of it even though at the time she felt she was completely justified—he’d pulled that move on her one too many times and she’d grabbed his finger and bitten it so hard, she left teeth marks. “When you and your team are called out on a search, yeah, then you know there’s a possibility of finding a body. But getting blindsided like that…”
“It was a shock.” She would admit that much. “I’ve told myself that if I just figure out what Florie was up to, just understand what she was doing and how it happened—”
“Oh!” Hal’s howl was half disbelief, half
laugher. He crumpled in his chair. “So now you’re what, Jessica Fletcher? Or is it Sherlock Holmes? Out solving murders!”
“I’m not.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I have no intention of solving anything. I’m just asking questions.”
Owen poked Hal in the ribs with one elbow. “She’s just asking questions. Must have learned that from Nick.”
If she didn’t have more than half of her beer left to drink, she would have gotten up and walked out. Hal and Owen had always been on Team Nick. While she and Nick were dating, that was great; it was nice to have their support, great to have them include Nick as part of the family at parties and holidays. But after what she had of a relationship with Nick fell apart, they should have known better than to even mention his name.
There was something about being with her older brothers that made it only logical for Jazz to cross her eyes and stick out her tongue.
“Very mature.” Owen flagged down the waiter and ordered appetizers—potato pierogies and pita nachos.
“Does that mean you haven’t talked to Nick?” Hal wanted to know.
Before she could stop herself, Jazz slapped the table with one hand. “Why is everyone so concerned about who I talk to? I haven’t talked to him. I don’t want to talk to him.”
“That’s not what he told me.” Smugness did not become Hal. “I saw him downtown. He said he stopped by your place the other evening and—”
“And I told him to get lost. Did he happen to mention that?”
It would take longer for the pierogi to sauté along with the onion, but the waiter brought the nachos over. Then again, maybe he, like Jazz, felt the electric current that buzzed around the table, sibling to sibling, and hoped that a plate of food might help discharge it.
Hal handed around small plates. Owen dug right in. Jazz wasn’t sure she was hungry anymore. Then again, she was a sucker for feta and Kalamata olives.
Making sure she got her share of the roasted red pepper aioli drizzled over them, she grabbed a few pita chips along with the cheese and olives.