by David Archer
She had seen that look on his face before. He’d be a while before he came home, but that was just part of being Mrs. Chance Reddick.
Chapter 4
Grandma had made dinner, and she and Gabriella sat down with the boys at the table as they ate, even though she insisted she wasn’t hungry. She had tried calling Chance to see if he wanted her to hold dinner for him, but he’d said they were going to be tied up a while and to go ahead.
“Just save me a sandwich,” he said. “I might be late, we have to work out how we’re billing this case. The Willets family is paying for our assistance, but Pete and I agree that we should discount the rate since all of us are working on it. Might take a while to work it all out.”
“Okay,” Gabriella said with a sigh. “I’ll see you when you get home.”
Tom and Andy had asked her to watch a movie with them, but then Max had called. When they were younger, Max and Gabriella had been close, and he seemed to be trying to recapture that feeling. He often called when Chance was working late, but this time he could sense something in his sister’s voice that didn’t sound good.
“Gabby?” he asked, using the nickname that only he was permitted to use. “Something bothering you, chica ?”
“It’s not important,” she had said, but she’d known that wouldn’t satisfy him. He’d pressed her to talk, but she didn’t want to say anything with Grandma sitting only a few feet away. “Hey,” he’d said after a couple of minutes. “Let me come and grab you, we can go get a bite to eat or something. Just you and me, okay? We can talk without anybody overhearing anything.”
She’d asked Grandma if she’d mind watching the kids a little longer, and the old woman had told her to go and have some fun with her brother. She went upstairs and changed into casual clothes, and Max showed up twenty minutes later to pick her up.
“Okay, so talk,” he said as they drove away from the house. “What’s bothering you?”
“I never said anything was actually bothering me,” Gabriella replied. “It’s nothing, really, Max. Just let it go.”
“I really can’t do that,” he said. “You may have forgotten, baby sister of mine, but I'm the one you always used to come to when something was eating at you. I got used to it, and to making you feel better. Come on, talk to me.”
She shook her head and looked out the window of the car as the scenery rolled by. Max tried a couple more times, but then he let her keep her silence and drove to a small restaurant. When they were seated inside, she finally said, “I wonder if I'm making a mistake.”
“In what way?” Max asked as he looked over the menu.
Gabriella was quiet for a moment, looking at her own menu, but then she put it down. “I wonder if I should have not made Chance let me work with him. I wonder if maybe he thinks I'm invading something that was his territory, or shoving my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Max set his menu aside and looked at her, but the waitress appeared before he could speak. They placed their orders and she walked away, and then he looked at his sister again.
“Has he said anything to make you feel that way?” he asked.
She pursed her lips. “No, nothing,” she said. “But he and Pete, they’re very good friends, and sometimes I feel like I'm in the way. Like now, in this case. They’re letting me sit in and act like I'm some seasoned investigator, when all I’ve ever done is follow shoplifters and cheating wives. I don’t belong on this case, but they let me sit there like I'm really one of them, and it doesn’t feel right.”
Max shrugged. “Sounds to me like you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. If they didn’t want you there, don’t you think they’d tell you?”
“No. I think Chance would let me sit there anyway and pretend like something I say is important, even if we all know it’s stupid. He loves me, I know that, and I think he’s not willing to be honest because he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.”
Max screwed up his face and thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Chance is pretty blunt-spoken,” he said. “I think if he had something to say to you, he’d say it. Hasn’t he always in the past?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think so, but then I remember times when I wanted something that turned out to be dumb, and he never said a word. Maybe that’s what he did when I said I wanted to work with him. Maybe he just gave me what I wanted, even though he thought it was a bad idea.” She paused. “I—I’ve been getting a bad feeling the last couple days.”
Max’s eyes widened. “A bad feeling? Like, that other time?”
Gabriella frowned and shook her head. “Not exactly,” she said. “More like maybe there’s just something bad coming our way, but I don't know what to do about it. Maybe that’s why I think Chance doesn’t really want me at PDI.”
Max searched her eyes for a couple of seconds, then shrugged. “I don’t think he’s that way. Carol says you really have a knack for this kind of work, and I can guarantee you she won’t sugar coat anything. She tells me real fast if I say or do something stupid, and I'm sure she would for you, too.”
Gabriella grinned. “Puts you in your place, does she? I’d like to see that. You, dear brother, can be pretty arrogant sometimes.”
“I'm arrogant all the time,” Max said. “You only notice it sometimes, that’s all.”
“I notice, but I pretend not to. Like, back when we were kids, you were always the one who got us in trouble. Remember the time you told me Mama said we could eat all the cajeta ? You got me so sick I didn’t go to school for two days, and Mama whipped me and said I was lying when I said it was your idea. You told her it was mine, didn’t you?”
Max chuckled. “Yeah, I think I did,” he admitted. “I was paying you back for the time you got me to take you down to the river and Papa beat me for it...”
Too late, he realized he’d brought up the wrong topic. The river had been a taboo subject ever since Annabelle had killed herself by jumping from the bridge during the spring flooding.
Gabriella had loved Annabelle, and the news of her death—especially by suicide—had devastated the ten-year-old girl. She had sunk into depression and still had minor panic attacks when she saw a flooded waterway.
Her eyes were close to tearing up, Max saw, so he quickly changed the subject. They talked about living on the farm down in Texas when they were young, and Gabriella relaxed and brightened as they remembered riding the horses their father had always kept. He hadn’t bred them for sale, but there were always a few around the place, and one of the few things he never seemed to mind was when the kids would take them out to ride.
And then, as it always seemed to do, the conversation turned to Annabelle herself. Gabriella loved to hear stories about her sister when she was a little girl, before the teenage years that had seen her become rebellious and hateful to their father.
Before she had decided to leave her little sister behind to deal with everything alone.
* * *
Chance and Pete had given it up at just after ten, sending Carol home and then going their own ways. Josie had hung out with them, so she and Pete got into his Crown Victoria and pulled away while Chance got into his Charger. He fired it up and pulled out of the parking lot, then followed Pete’s car back toward Henderson.
He pulled into his driveway a short time later and parked beside his old Chevy truck. As he always did, he promised himself that he’d get back to working on the old monster one of these days, but working with Pete had turned into a full time occupation. He hadn’t meant for that to happen, but working as a PI meant he would often find people who needed his brand of justice, and the killer they were after at the moment certainly fit the bill.
He went inside and found Gabriella sitting on the sofa, smiling up at him, so he sat down beside her and pulled her close.
“Have I told you today that I love you?” he asked her, and she smiled.
“Mmmm,” she said. “You just did. Let’s go upstairs so I can give you a proper
response.”
* * *
None of them had noticed the old van that started up and drove away after they left the PDI office. It was somewhat beaten up, but seemed to run okay as it moved out of the spot where it had been parked all evening.
Chapter 5
The whole team arrived at their office precisely on time at seven the next morning. They were all hoping to come up with some sort of lead that day, but they knew they were facing an uphill battle. Since it was obvious the killer would be taking another victim soon, they were fully aware that they were racing against time, but absolutely none of them had any idea where to start.
The first thing they did was sit down and go over the questions that each of them would need to ask during the interviews with the victims’ families and friends that day. They had gone over the original interviews the LVPD had conducted, and it was clear that none of these folks had any clue who might have committed the crimes. Their goal was to learn everything they could about the victims and the way they lived, to try to get some sort of thorough understanding of who they were. That would hopefully give them enough insight to begin to develop theories about who the actual target might be, and that could lead to the killer.
They drove to the substation and met with the detectives again, looking for any advice the detectives might be able to give them. As they were preparing to leave to go and initiate their own interviews, Jake slipped away to the break room in search of a cup of coffee. He had developed the coffee habit while he was in college, and didn’t know when he might be able to have another cup so he wanted to “fuel up” while he could.
He found a Styrofoam cup and quickly poured the apparently freshly brewed coffee into his cup, tearing open and pouring in a half-dozen packs of sugar. A moment later, he picked up six more packets of sugar and began tearing them open. The coffee was some of the strongest and most bitter he had ever tasted, and it was going to need a lot more sweetener before he could handle it.
Someone else walked into the break room, and Jake caught a brief glimpse of long, reddish-brown hair before he turned back to stirring his coffee, trying to work up enough courage to taste it again. He closed his eyes and raised the cup, and that was the moment when the woman in the room with him bumped his arm.
"Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry," she said, and Jake’s eyes went wide as he turned to see a young woman standing beside him. She was about five feet tall and very attractive, with the athletic build of a high school cheerleader. Her auburn hair was long enough to hang to the middle of her back, and Jake was struck by how pretty she was.
"Hey!" she exclaimed when she noticed him staring at her. "You're one of the Dixon guys, right?"
"Um, yeah. I'm Jake Claridge," he said. “Have we met?”
"Oh, I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm Angela Lambert, Detective Lambert is my dad.” She smiled and held out a hand, and Jake shook it. When he let go, she turned back to where she was setting up a second pot of coffee.
Jake kept his eye on her for a few seconds, his face screwed up as he tried to figure out why she was making more of the disgusting stuff when there was already a full pot sitting there.
"Can I ask you a question?" Jake asked. Angela smiled and nodded as she looked at him over her shoulder. "What are you doing here this early? Don't you have school or something?"
"Actually, I have a job,” she said with a laugh. “I usually just stop here to grab a cup of coffee before I take the bus to work."
"You stop by the substation before going to work?"
Angela nodded.
"Every day?"
She nodded again.
"Why?"
"My dad," she answered sadly. She looked contemplatively at the counter before turning back at Jake. "When I was about eight years old, I got in this big fight with my mother over what I had to wear to school one day. I don’t remember most of it, but I know I stomped off to school and told her I hated her.” She let out a sigh. “A couple of hours later, my dad showed up at school to get me, and told me that my mother had been killed in an accident.” She looked away. “A car wreck, they told me at the time, something that happened so fast she couldn’t avoid it.”
“I'm so sorry,” Jake said.
“Thanks, but it was a long time ago. I mostly got past it, but ever since then I try to make sure, every day, that my dad knows how much he means to me. I couldn’t handle it if I lost him one day, and hadn’t told him that I loved him." She blushed. “I'm sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“Why not?” Jake asked. "You're worried about your father, and that’s easy enough to understand, considering what he does for a living. You’re doing exactly the right thing, Angela, because it’s not good to keep things like that bottled up inside. You’d be very surprised just how much damage it can do to you, both physically and emotionally.”
She laughed softly. “I don’t think I’d be all that surprised,” she said.
"Well, it’s good that you understand it and can communicate with your dad,” Jake said. “I'm really sorry about your mother, that has to be tough to live with." Jake paused and looked at her, and suddenly caught the anguished expression that had appeared on her face. "Sorry, I guess I don’t always know when to shut up," he said nervously.
“No, it’s not you,” she said. “It’s just that—well, like I said, at the time they told me it was a car accident. It wasn’t until a few years later I found out my mother had actually been murdered. I guess they thought it would be too much for me, if I knew the truth back then.”
“Oh, goodness, I'm so sorry,” Jake said. “Was the killer brought to justice?”
She shook her head. “No. My father tried for a long time, but the case finally went cold.”
Something in her face made Jake wonder about that statement, but he kept the thought to himself. “Maybe I should just stop talking,” he said.
"You’re fine," Angela said, smiling as she turned back to the fresh, new pot of coffee.
"Why did you make an extra pot of coffee?" Jake asked, and wanted to bite his tongue as soon as he had said it.
Angela chuckled, and then pointed at the pot of extra strong coffee that had been sitting there when he arrived. "Because that stuff was made by Station Commander Motley."
"And?"
"And Station Commander Motley, though I love him like family, couldn't make a decent pot of coffee if his life depended on it."
Jake let out a chuckle of his own before glancing at his own Styrofoam cup full of the awful liquid that had come out of that pot. Angela followed his eyes, and then snatched the cup out of his hand.
"Hey," Jake began, but she cut him off, ignoring him completely as she poured the terrible coffee down the sink. The young psychologist stared in surprise as the stuff circled its way down the drain, but then Angela grabbed her freshly made pot and refilled Jake's cup before handing it back to him.
"There, try that," she said proudly.
"Well," Jake said. He hesitated for a moment before putting down the cup and grabbing the sugar again. He started ripping open another half-dozen packets of sugar and dumping them into his cup.
"Wow," Angela muttered, the smile clear in her voice. "You really like it sweet, don’t you?"
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I guess I got that from my mother, she always put a lot of sugar in her coffee, too.” He took a sip, then his eyebrows rose. He took another sip and nodded, then smiled at the girl again.
"Told you it was good," Angela said, grinning.
"Hey, Jake," a new voice called out. Angela and Jake turned toward the entrance to see Chance coming in, with Pete right behind him. "I hate to break this up, but we're leaving now to interview the families."
"Oh, yeah, of course." Jake threw away the styrofoam cup and turned back to Angela. "Thanks for the, um, coffee," he said with a small smile.
"No problem,” Angela said, biting her bottom lip and smiling at him. “See ya later, Jake."
With that, Jake left the break room and followed
the rest toward their cars. Pete and Chance exchanged a look, but said nothing about Jake or Angela. Chance, Carol, Tina and Gabriella stared at their young coworker, a big smile on all four of their faces. Jake simply tried to stay as small and quiet as possible. He knew it would be a long time before his team let him forget about this.
“So,” Chance said, catching up to Jake as he hurried toward the car. “Who was that?”
“That, uh, that was Detective Lambert’s daughter,” Jake said.
“Yeah,” Chance said. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
Not as pretty as Tina, Jake thought. “Is she? I guess I didn’t notice.”
Chance burst out laughing and then walked on toward his own car, where Gabriella was waiting.
Chapter 6
Tina and Jake made their way to the dormitory where they knew Zoe's friends and family would be waiting to speak to them. Tina took the wheel, driving just over the speed limit, but handling the car like a pro. Jake sat quietly on his side of the car, just staring out his window. He was certain that Tina was dying to ask him about his meeting and conversation with Angela, but he was doing his best to ignore the glances she was throwing his way.
"So," Tina began finally, her eyes staying on the road in front of her. "You kinda like that Lambert girl, do you?"
Jake let out a sigh and looked over in her direction, trying not to blush.
“Angela? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
"Oh, come on," Tina said, a smile spreading across her face. "You and that girl seemed to be hitting it right off. You did notice the way she was smiling at you, right?"
"Who? Angela?" Jake asked, innocently.
"Yes!" Tina said. "So, what’s going on there?"
Jake shrugged. "Nothing, I assure you. Nothing at all."
"You really expect me to believe that? I saw the way you two were looking at each other. Smiles that big don’t come along every day, Jake.”