by Kylie Logan
She couldn’t worry about it. “The two of them will figure it out for themselves,” she told Nick, and reminded herself. “Right now…” She remembered what Matt had told her back at the amusement park. Low lights, champagne, and—
This was not the time and place to think about it.
This was really not the person to think about it with.
Jazz shrugged. “I guess it’s going pretty well.”
“I hear dating can be really nice sometimes. I mean, the right kinds of dates with the right kind of person.” They were at the street and they waited for a bus to rumble by, then crossed to the sidewalk in front of a funeral home. “I mean, sometimes two people can actually spend time together and get along. In fact, I remember—”
She remembered, too. Exactly why she cut him off. “Are we searching, or what?”
He knew a brick wall when he saw one. “Lead the way.”
Jazz looked up and down the street. In one direction was a hardware store with a wide-open parking lot and beyond that, a white-frame house and a car dealership. In the other direction, an abandoned building that might at one time have been a bank, an Asian grocery store, a bar.
“What does your experience tell you?” she asked Nick, because she realized when she looked over the area it was through the eyes of a trainer and the dog at her side. Where would the scent be the strongest? Where were they most likely to lose it? Nick’s take on the scene was completely different. Like all police officers, Nick had started his career in uniform and on patrol. These days working in homicide, he saw the aftermath of life’s tragedies and he worked to right its wrongs. But when he was on the streets, he’d seen those disasters unfold. He fought to stop them.
“If I was a ten-year-old girl and I didn’t want anyone to find me…” He scanned the area. “I’d go where it’s easiest to hide. And if I was someone who hurt a ten-year-old girl, or wanted to, I’d do the same thing.” He eyed the parking lot of the hardware store. “Too much empty space over there. Let’s head in the other direction.”
Together, they turned toward the bank building next to the funeral home. It had once been an imposing presence in the neighborhood. These days it was simply sad. The building’s two-story stone facade had been whitewashed. The front door was painted green and scrawled with graffiti. The windows were boarded.
Because they were in the city and Jazz didn’t want to take a chance with traffic and Luther running loose, she’d hooked him to a long leash. She unreeled it, swept a hand at her side. “Find Henry!”
Luther thought he was just being taken for a walk. Hearing it was time to get down to work, his ears pricked, his eyes flashed. In an instant, he took off down the alley between the abandoned building and the Asian grocery store.
Jazz kept her distance, allowing the dog to make his own decisions. He skirted three garbage cans stacked near the back door of the grocery store, sniffed a door stoop and turned away, jogged through what had once been a backyard where now there were waist-high weeds, discarded beer bottles, old tires.
“I don’t want him to find anything.”
Jazz didn’t even realize she’d said the words out loud until Nick looked her way.
“I don’t want him to find anything, either, but I’m glad he’s here. It doesn’t hurt to cover all the bases.”
Finished with the yard, the dog made a U-turn and came back up the alley. He sniffed his way around to the front of the building, with Jazz and Nick hanging ten feet back.
“So what do you say?”
Since Jazz wasn’t sure what Nick was talking about, she could be forgiven for wrinkling her nose and looking up at him as if he’d started speaking the exotic and indecipherable language on the sign in the front window of the building. “What do I say about what?”
“About dating.”
She’d always been a sucker for his blue eyes, for his lopsided smile. Jazz had to remind herself to keep her eyes on Luther. It was the only way she could control the sudden erratic beat of her heart. “Dating you?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not exactly going to fix you up with someone else. Though there are plenty of guys who are interested. Remember O’Halloran?”
“The big guy with the beard?”
“He asks about you all the time.”
She watched the dog disappear around the corner into the alley between the grocery store and the bar. “What do you tell him when he does?”
“That you’re spoken for.”
“Even though I’m not.”
“A man can dream.”
It was a mistake to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “And what is it you’re dreaming about?”
They turned to the right to follow Luther, and she was just in time to see that old, familiar smile flash across Nick’s face. “At this point, just a date.”
“Just a date.” It wasn’t a question. It was more confirmation. More assurance. More verification that they weren’t talking about him having her house key and her having his.
“I was thinking…” At the back of the building, they watched Luther pick his way around the area where people came out of the back door of the bar to smoke, and Nick went on, “Well, see, the way I figure it, we moved too fast last time.”
That was putting it mildly.
He must have remembered. It would explain why he dipped his chin and looked her in the eye. “See, I was thinking we could start over. If we just had … I dunno … one date a week?”
“You mean like real people on Saturday nights?”
“Hard to say. I mean, about Saturday nights.” They stood and watched Luther nose around a dumpster, and when the dog slipped around to the back of it, too interested in something, Jazz held her breath.
Nick must have done the same, because when Luther finally emerged without barking, he sighed. “I don’t exactly have a real people job. Not one with dependable hours, anyway.”
“And Saturdays during the day are out because you’re here coaching baseball.”
“And Sundays are out because you’re training the dogs.”
It was the same old stalemate, and now, like always, the reality of it settled somewhere deep inside Jazz, cold and uncomfortable.
Avoidance seemed the only appropriate response.
“Have you found out anything?” she asked. “About Florie?”
Maybe he was just as relieved as she was that the subject had changed. Maybe that explained why some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.
“It’s a tough case.”
“There was something going on with her.”
When Luther darted up the alley and back to the sidewalk, Nick and Jazz followed, and Nick said, “How would you—”
“I’ve talked to a couple people, that’s all. Florie was flunking out of school.”
This was not a surprise to Nick.
Jazz knew she should just leave it at that, but something deep down inside her just wouldn’t let go. The way she figured it, she was still stinging from the embarrassment of accusing Tate Brody, still trying to make sense of everything she’d heard from him. About him. That was the only reason she went on. “She only got one good grade this semester. An A from Tate Brody.”
Far be it from Nick to ever give too much away. Still, his eyebrows rose just a fraction of an inch. “Tate? What, you two are BFFs now?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s married. I met his wife.”
“Looks like you’ve talked to the good instructor.”
It was the way he said good that made her take notice.
“You think there’s something fishy going on with Brody, too.”
It wasn’t a question, but she hoped he’d answer.
“I think…” Nick kept his eyes on Luther. Whatever he was going to say, he brushed aside the thought. “I wonder if you’re hearing what I’m hearing. All that bad stuff about Brody. I wonder if you’re hearing it from the same person I’m hearing it from.”
“Grace Greenwald.”
“Cons
ider the source. And maybe…” He hesitated, but Nick had never been one to keep his opinions to himself. The details of his job, absolutely. The way his mother had spent the last thirty-three years cutting his heart to pieces, sure.
But an opinion?
Never.
It was one of the things Jazz loved about him. One of the things that drove her crazy.
“Maybe you should just mind your own business,” he said.
Outside the front door of the bar, she locked her legs. “I am minding my own business. I knew Florie. Hell, I’m the one who…” The words caught in her throat. “I’m the one who found her.”
“And I know that’s not easy, but—”
“But nothing! It’s not like I’m stepping on your investigation, Nick. You didn’t even know I was asking around.”
“And what have you found out?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she’d pretty much determined only that she was a horse’s ass, but since she was afraid he might agree with her, she said, “She was desperate for money.”
“Because she was desperate to stay in school.”
“Except her grades stunk. Which is why she was desperate to bring them up out of the gutter. Which is why I figured she was sleeping with Brody.”
There. She’d said it.
And Nick didn’t laugh at the absurdity of it all.
In fact, he twitched his shoulders. “I thought the same thing.”
Encouraged, she stepped closer to him. “And they were together the night of the murder.”
He slanted her a look. “You know that, too, huh?”
“He says he met his wife for dinner right after. She confirms it.”
“She does, and so do the people at the restaurant where they had dinner. They sat together at a table near the window. And yet…” As if searching for the truth, he scanned the street, his shoulders set, his expression so intent, she found it hard to believe he didn’t bust every perp in the city all by himself through utter willpower.
“I wish we could find Florie’s phone,” he grumbled.
“I wish I understood why Florie and Grace hated each other so much.”
“I wish I had answers to what Florie was doing in that building. If Brody really did leave right after they were done filming, why did she hang back?”
“I wish I could understand what she was up to with the costumes and the clothes changes and the kid next door.”
“I wish—”
Nick’s phone rang. When he answered, Jazz tensed. Please, please don’t let it be about Samantha.
But it was.
He jammed the phone back in his pocket. “They found her,” Nick said. “Samantha’s fine. She told Santiago she was mad at her grandmother and she hid when Grandma showed up to get her so that Grandma would get worried. She’s been inside the equipment room in the rec center the whole time. Matt and Buddy tracked her down.”
Jazz let go a breath that felt as if it had been trapped behind her heart. Her shoulders relaxed. She reeled in the dog.
“Good boy, Luther! Come!” And when he did, she got a treat out of her pocket for him. “You did good work.”
“He did.” Nick squatted down to play with the dog. “There’s nothing I like better than a happy ending. I couldn’t take another bad one today.”
The comment was so offhand, Jazz’s blood turned to ice. “Another one what?”
His hand stilled over the dog’s ears. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something.”
With a sigh, he stood.
“You said you wanted to start over,” she reminded him. “All right, start over. Last time, we didn’t share.”
“You mean you never shared, not even about the old man you found dead in the snow.”
“And you never shared, either. Not about…” As if it explained it all, she waved an arm toward the neighborhood around them. “Not about anything.”
He studied the sidewalk, then raised his chin, his jaw tensed, his mouth set in a thin line. “I had to visit a mom not far from here early this morning to tell her that her fourteen-year-old son was shot dead on a playground last night.”
She didn’t know how it happened, she didn’t mean to do it, but she wound her fingers through his, offering what little comfort she could in a situation that was beyond reason to a man who thought it was his responsibility to keep the world safe. “I’m sorry.”
“Senseless.” The lines deepened at the corners of his eyes. “Senseless, senseless violence.” Because he had no choice, he shook away the thought. “But we’ve got a happy ending here. That’s something at least.” He started across the street.
Jazz held back and when she pulled on his hand, he stopped.
“Just once a week?” she asked.
His mind was other places, but she knew when it came back to their earlier conversation. That would be when he smiled.
“Like Tuesdays. How do Tuesdays sound?”
“Coffee?” she suggested.
He nodded. “Coffee on Tuesdays.”
Jazz couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth. But then, she couldn’t believe the warmth that gathered inside her when she said them, either.
“It’s a date.”
CHAPTER 16
Thirty hours and seventeen minutes.
Not that Jazz was counting or anything, but she glanced at the clock. Again.
In thirty hours and seventeen minutes, she was meeting Nick for coffee at a nice little place out of her neighborhood and nowhere near his.
Neutral territory.
They would drive separately. They would leave separately. There would be no exchange of intimacies.
She had it all worked out.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
When Sarah Carrington zoomed into her office, Jazz flinched. If she’d been paying more attention she would have seen Sarah coming and avoided her the way she’d been avoiding her all that Monday. Not avoiding the detailed retelling (in full living color) of Sarah and Matt’s date. That was bound to happen no matter what.
Avoiding spilling the beans about Nick.
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” she told her friend.
Uninvited, Sarah plunked down in the guest chair in front of Jazz’s desk. She was on lunch hour and she’d brought along a plate of lentil-and-quinoa stew. She lifted a forkful of it to her mouth. “You weren’t here before the first bell this morning.”
“Gretchen Turk called in sick and they needed help out in the parking lot with drop-offs.” Gretchen was the chemistry teacher and it was the first time in years she’d taken a sick day. It had been the perfect excuse for Jazz to make herself scarce.
Jazz looked at her friend. She wasn’t sure if it was the blue-and-yellow madras plaid of Sarah’s skirt and yellow necklace, the smear of green oil paint on her chin, or Sarah’s mile-wide smile that shone brightest. “I’ve got news.”
“You went out with Matt.”
Sarah’s smile wilted. “He told you.”
“I’m psychic.”
“Aren’t you dying for the details?”
Jazz hated to admit it, but she was. Well, maybe not all the details, just the salient parts. And definitely not the details of her own upcoming date. She wasn’t ready to share that information.
“Drink after work?” she suggested to Sarah.
“You, girl…” Sarah pointed with her fork. “… are reading my mind.”
They agreed on Grumpy’s Café just up the street, because it had a parking lot, and Sarah could drive and leave for home right from there.
Until then …
Jazz watched Sarah sail out of the room, and once she was gone, she knew she had to keep herself busy.
The St. Catherine’s monthly newsletter was finished. She’d logged in all the girls who’d been called in as sick that day. Tuesday’s morning announcements were printed out and already waiting on Jazz’s desk.
If she didn’t find something else to occupy her
time, she was pretty sure she was going to obsess about what was going to happen in … she looked at the clock, then grumbled a curse … thirty hours and thirteen minutes. If she didn’t do something, she was going to lose her mind.
To that end, Jazz logged into the class-scheduling program.
Just as she thought. Dinah Greenwald was at lunch.
Yes, Jazz had told herself she was done poking and prying into Florie Allen’s life. But desperate times, desperate measures. And she was desperate to keep her mind off Nick.
The last time Jazz had been in the cafeteria, it was to talk to Loretta Hardinger and it had been late in the day. Then, the lights were low, the cafeteria quiet. Now, when Jazz pushed through the double doors, it was the height of lunch hour, and a Monday. The energy in the room—not to mention the noise level—was off the charts.
At one end of the cafeteria, a group of seniors was programming music into the sound system, jabbing and pushing at each other the way girls in high spirits do. Close to the door, three sophomores chirped about an encounter over the weekend with a group of guys at one of the boys’ schools in the area. All around her, girls sat in tight circles, their salad bowls and lunch trays between them, their heads together, their voices sharp and high, pinging around the room, punctuated with laughter.
Dinah Greenwald was at the table farthest from the door. In the seat farthest from the aisle. Alone.
“Hey, Dinah!” When Jazz sat next to her, Dinah flinched and stuck a finger into the book open in front of her. “What’s up?”
“Up?” Dinah dragged a bookmark over, put it where her finger had been, and closed the book, then pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. There was a carton of yogurt, an apple, and half of a ham sandwich on the tray in front of her, untouched.
“Not hungry?” Jazz asked.
“Oh, well, I am.” As if to prove it, Dinah picked up the sandwich and took a bite. “I just forgot, that’s all. I’m reading Jane Austen. When I read, I kind of get lost in the story, you know?”
Jazz didn’t. Not that she had anything against reading or the people who did it, but she could never sit still long enough to do any reading.
“You always eat alone?” Jazz asked her.