Saints and Secrets

by Mark Stone

  Saints and Secrets

  Jessie St. James Adventures Book 2

  Mark Stone

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  The End

  Prologue

  Sanibel Island

  Twelve Years Ago

  Jessie St. James absolutely did not want to do this. Picking up rash on the side of the highway was something people who had to do community service were forced to endure. It was for criminals and the like, and she was certainly not a criminal. Because of that, one might ask why this straight A student with near perfect attendance and the sort of personality that parents would kill for was wearing an orange vest and stabbing at errant paper cups on the side of the road.

  The answer was standing right behind her.

  “Dad, how much longer do I have to do this?” Jessie asked, turning to her father with an exasperated look on her face. “I honestly feel like I’m being punished.”

  “You want the true answer?” Clint St. James asked, his five o’clock shadow working overtime even though it was only a quarter past three.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “That depends on how bad it is. I know you want to look good when you run for the sheriff election, but I didn’t know it would go this far.”

  Clint chuckled hard, but Jessie knew her father well enough to know that there was something deeper behind that chuckle. It wasn’t a light laugh. It was a meaningful one.

  “You think that’s what this is?” Clint asked, shaking his head. “Jess is, if I can’t win an election without putting my daughter on the side of the road for a photo op, then I don’t deserve to be sheriff. This is about you. It’s about making sure you’re on the right path.” He walked forward, pointing in front of Jessie and settling beside her. “You see that boy? Do you recognize him?”

  Jessie looked, and in horror, she noticed that the boy Clint was pointing at, a boy who was also wearing an orange vest and also stabbing at trash with a stick, was none other than Roman Parks.

  “Oh no,” Jessie muttered, wanting nothing more in the world than to shrivel up and die at that moment. She hadn’t seen Roman since prom night, since he ditched her, leaving her a puddle of tears and self doubt. She thought a lot about how she’d tell him off should their paths ever cross again, and given that Sanibel Island wasn’t exactly Manhattan, she knew they would. Still, in none of those fantasies was Jessie ever dressed like this. More than that, now that she was looking at the boy, she didn’t want to tell him off. All she wanted to do was run.

  She took a couple of steps back only to find her father’s hand there, bracing her and holding her in place. “Dad, I don’t want to see him. I just-” Swallowing hard, a thought crossed her mind. “What is he doing here? What did he do to deserve this?”

  “That’s really none of your business and it’s not the point,” Clint said. “I brought you here today because things that have happened recently have made me rethink a lot about life, about the way kids grow into adults, and how perilous that can be.”

  Jessie took a deep breath. “Is this about B-”

  “This is about you,” he cut her off. “I love you and I want you to grow into the kind of woman I know you’re capable of being. You deserve a father who does everything in his power to make sure that happens. That’s why i’m doing this to you, why I’m doing it for you.”

  Jessie blinked hard. “So, you’re making me pick up trash on the side of the road as a favor to me?”

  Clint ran a hand through his hair. “You asked me how long you had to do this and then you told me you felt like it was a punishment,” he said. “Sweetheart, you’re here until it doesn’t feel like a punishment anymore.”

  Then he turned and started to walk toward the others who were working.

  “That doesn’t make any sense, you know,” Jessie shouted at her dad.

  “I know,” he answered. “But, if we’re both lucky, one day it will.”

  1

  Jessie sighed loudly as she stepped out of her car and onto the lawn of yet another house. It was her third one today and the seventh in the last two weeks. As it turned out, finding a house wasn’t easy, even in a place as wonderful as Sanibel Island.

  It wasn’t that Jessie St. James was being picky. She wasn’t that type of woman. You know, the kind that looked themselves up and down in the mirror all day and couldn’t go out unless their hair was perfectly so. She was a decidedly low-maintenance, no-frills type of woman. It was just that none of the houses she had looked at since she’d decided to move out of her parents’ house a few weeks ago felt like home, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

  “You hate it, don’t you?” Katie asked, looking at her best friend with eyes that had seen nearly everything Jessie had been through in her entire life. To say that Katie knew her well was like saying peanut butter and jelly just kind of belonged together. Of course, that also meant that Jessie knew Katie pretty well, well enough to know Katie’s patience was running thin with her.

  “It’s not that,” Jessie said, looking at the blue painted beach house with white shutters and a wraparound porch. “It just doesn’t feel like home, you know?”

  “Home?” Katie asked, chuckling and shaking her head. “Of course, it doesn’t feel like home. You’re only just now seeing it for the first time. Home is a feeling that you earn. It’s not something that smacks you in the face from the front yard.”

  “It is for me,” Jessie said, shaking her head and remembering the last time she’d picked out a place to live. “When I moved to Chicago, I thought finding an apartment was going to be the hardest part about it. Mom just kept telling me that I needed to live in a good neighborhood, that I needed to be somewhere close to a police station and a church.” Jessie chuckled loudly, sort of like she was reliving the conversation in her head. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to find something like what she wanted that was also in my price range.”

  “Your price range?” Katie balked. “You were a bigtime lawyer back then.”

  “I was an assistant district attorney,” Jessie corrected her friend. “That doesn’t pay the sort of money that being a private lawyer might. Besides, things were very expensive in the city and I was just getting my feet wet. Trust me, money was definitely an issue.” Jessie ran a hand through her hair. “But when I walked into that place on Vineland, the place where I ended up living, I knew it was exactly where I needed to be. I could just feel it, the warmth, the possibility. It felt hopeful, and I knew it was where my future was.” Jessie shrugged. “At least for a while.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll get the same feeling when you walk into this house. Who knows? Maybe, the second you walk through that ugly blue door, you’ll see the future or whatever Hallmark Channel garbage you just said to me.”

  Jessie looked over at her friend, pursing her lips. “You really think the door is ugly?”

  “It’s not my favorite, but who cares what I think? I live in a shoebox apartment above a fish market. I’m hardly the opinion you want or need in this situation.” She wrinkled her nose. “Whi
ch is why I’m so confused that you asked me to come.”

  “You’re my best friend,” Jessie said. “Who else would I ask?”

  “How about your mom?” Katie asked. “She’d be a reasonable choice, especially when you consider the fact that she has the most impeccable taste of anyone I’ve ever seen.” She shook her head. “That woman could make a trash bag look like an Oscar gown.”

  She was right. Jessie knew that. In addition to being impossibly beautiful in a sort of Grace Kelly way, Jessie’s mom had an effortless style about her. She just seemed to know what looked good, what was good, and what was worth her time and money. She would have been the perfect person to come along with Jessie on this particular endeavor, save for one very troubling reason.

  “She doesn’t want me to move,” Jessie said.

  “What?”

  “She says I just got back and she missed me so much while I was gone that she doesn't want me to leave home right yet,” Jessie said. “She’d never give me her honest opinion about this, and even if she did, it’d be tainted by how much she wants me to stay.”

  “Oh, boo-hoo,” Katie said, shaking her head and scowling at me. “I’m not gonna feel sorry for you because your mom loves you so much she doesn’t want to see you go.”

  “I didn’t ask you to,” Jessie said, grinning as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you could feel sorry for me because I’m a woman in her thirties who still lives with her parents.”

  “First,” Katie started, throwing up one finger to symbolize that she had several points, “you don’t still live with your parents. You live with your parents again. There’s a big difference. Second, haven’t you been watching the news or, like, any talk show, ever? Lots of people our age have moved back in with their parents. It’s not a big deal anymore, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re some kind of failure or a pathetic overgrown child. Thirdly, and this is the most important one so I’m gonna need you to really listen, your mom is an excellent cook. I mean, she’s pretty much world-class. She does your laundry, she makes your bed, and she tells you how great you are, even when you’re not being so great.”

  “When am I ever not being great?” Jessie asked, arching her eyebrows.

  “I could tell you, but I’d need a lot more fingers,” Katie said, smiling and making her hand into a fist.

  “Very funny,” Jessie said. “I get what you’re saying. I do. I’m lucky to have a family who wants to keep me and who’ll do all this stuff for me, but the thing is, I don’t want them to. Or at least, I shouldn’t want them to. I was the assistant district attorney of Cooke County, Katie. I was a big deal. I was engaged to be married. I was a grownup, for God’s sake.”

  “You’re still a grownup,” Katie said, patting her friend on the shoulder. “You’re just a grownup who gets tucked in at night after her bedtime story.”

  “Shut up, you loser,” Jessie replied, pulling away from her friend. “I just don’t want to get into a rut. I’m comfortable at home, but comfortable can be dangerous. It can stop you from growing. I don’t want that in my life. I came back home to the island to be the person I always knew I was supposed to be. That person is independent. That person doesn’t rely on her mother to make sure her linens are clean or need to check in with her father when she’s on a date too late at night.”

  “He’s still doing that?”

  “I would assume,” Jessie said. “I actually haven’t been on a date since I came back.”

  “Dry spell?”

  “Not really. Alex Marks asked me out last weekend, but I’m just not looking right now. I’m still getting settled in. You know?” Jessie said.

  “Alex Marks looks like if Ryan Gosling had a brother who was somehow even more brooding and sexy. I wouldn’t care what I was getting settled into if he asked me out. Unless it were him, of course. If you get what I’m saying.” She nudged her friend’s elbow.

  “I do get what you’re saying, and I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say it,” Jessie answered. “The point is, I’m doing this. I’m finding my own place because I feel like it’s what I need to do in order to move forward.” She shook her head. “Now, let’s walk into this crap hole so I can be disappointed one more time before lunch.”

  “Whatever you say, Ms. St. James,” Katie said, following her friend to the aforementioned ugly blue front door.

  “It’s Detective St. James,” Jessie replied.

  “I never understood that,” Katie said as Jessie leaned down and plucked the key from under the mat, exactly where her real estate agent told her it would be. “I don’t call myself Stylist Katie. Why do I have to call you Detective St. James?”

  “When it’s commonplace for someone to shoot a gun directly at your face first thing in the morning, you get to call yourself whatever you want,” Jessie said.

  “Fair enough,” Katie said, shrugging as Jessie slid the key into the door and pulled it open.

  The pair walked into the house. It was bright on the inside, but Jessie didn’t think it was anything too spectacular. The staircase that ran up the side wall looked both worn and unused somehow, and the wallpaper, a blue background with pink flowers, peeled at the top.

  “What do you think?” Katie asked. “Is this place slapping you in the face?”

  Before Jessie could answer, a woman came running into the foyer from the other room. She had a wild look on her face and a gun in her hand. She pointed it right at Jessie and Katie.

  “Well,” Jessie said, taking the frantic woman in. “Not really.”

  2

  As Jessie looked at the woman, her blue eyes bulging and her dark hair stringy and unkempt, all she could think about was the fact that she wasn’t carrying her gun. How stupid could she possibly be? Even before she became a cop, her father had always told her how important it was to keep herself armed. He’d told her how dangerous the world was and how a woman, even a woman as resourceful as Jessie was, needed to make sure she had a way to defend herself.

  Jessie had to imagine that when her father said that, he was talking about protecting herself from men and the dangers that certain types of men might present. Still, as she looked at this woman and the barrel of the gun pointed toward her and her friend, she figured it would have been better to listen to her father just the same.

  “What are you doing here?” the woman asked, swallowing hard, her hands shaking so furiously that the gun jostled up and down. Instantly, Jessie knew how dangerous that was. This woman, who didn’t look like she was in the best mental state anyway, had her finger on the trigger. Any gun owner worth their salt knew that you don’t put your hand on the trigger and point at something unless you intend to shoot it. With the way this woman was shaking, she could easily discharge that gun by accident, and then either Jessie or her friend would be in for a world of hurt.

  “Calm down,” Jessie said, holding her hand out in front of her, palms forward, to let this woman know that she didn’t mean her any harm. She nudged Katie, letting her know to do the same. Without her gun, Jessie needed to use her wits if she was going to stop this woman from shooting either of them, and that meant trying to keep her calm and get a handle on the situation.

  “I asked you a question! Why are you here?” the woman screamed, her hand shaking even more as she took two sharp steps toward them.

  Katie yelped as the woman came toward them, and in an act that came as second nature to her, Jessie stepped in front of her friend to block the woman’s path to her.

  “If you’ll calm down, I’ll answer your question,” Jessie said in a flat but authoritative tone. “Waving that gun around isn’t the way to go about this.” Jessie took a deep breath. “There’s no big conspiracy here. I’m not here to hurt anyone. I just came to look at the house because I’m in the market for one, and this falls into my price range.”

  “Price range?” the woman asked, narrowing her eyes as though she were confused about the statement.

  “The real estate agent left a key for me und
er the front mat. She told me it would be fine to come in and take a look around. You know, see if the place appealed to me. She told me it would be empty. Obviously, that isn’t the case,” Jessie continued, her hands still placed in front of her. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but honestly, it’s not my first priority right now. My friend and I were just looking around. We can go now.”

  “A real estate agent?” the woman balked, shaking her head tightly. “You can’t buy this place. This is Mickey’s house. It’s not for sale. You can’t—” Her face seemed to steel over as newfound anger flashed through her eyes. Suddenly, the shaking stopped and her body tensed up. The barrel of the gun pointed directly at Jessie’s face. “Who are you really, and why are you lying to me? Did he do this? Did he send you looking for me? How did he know I was here? I was so damn careful.”

  “No one sent us for you, ma’am,” Jessie said. “I promise you that. If someone is after you, though, you should let me know. I can keep you safe.”

  “Keep me safe?” she asked, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “Is that a joke? Look at you. You can’t even keep yourself safe. I move one finger and your brains are all over the carpet.”

  Jessie heard Katie yelp again from behind her. She stepped back and onto her best friend’s foot, applying some pressure to it in an attempt to hopefully send a signal that she had this under control regardless of what it might look like right now.

  “Be that as it may, I’m not without my talents and connections,” Jessie said. “My name is Jessie St. James, and I’m a detective here on Sanibel Island.”