by Mark Stone
Jessie found Roman at a little table at the far end. Taking a deep breath, she moved toward him. The stuff her mother said dangled in the forefront of her mind for a second, hanging like a troublesome vine that she had to slap away. Her mother, of course, was being ridiculous. There was nothing between her and Roman. Even if she were to admit that she might have looked at him a certain way in high school, which she was absolutely not doing, that was a long time ago. They were both grownups now. They were partners, and she wasn’t about to let her mother’s romantic delusions get inside her head.
As she neared the table, she saw an older woman sitting across from Roman. She looked vaguely familiar, with a graying bun tied in her hair and huge earrings dangling from her ears.
“There she is,” Roman said, standing as he caught sight of Jessie and moving to pull her chair out.
“What are you doing?” Jessie asked as she neared the table, looking at Roman and the chair quizzically.
“Offering you a seat,” he answered before moving back to the other side of the table.
“Trying to impress our guest, I see,” Jessie said, giving the older woman a polite nod.
“I just figured I’d try being a gentleman for once. You know, just to see how it felt,” Roman said.
“And how did it feel, Mr. Parks?” the older woman asked, smiling lightly with both hands cupping her coffee mug.
“So far, pretty uncomfortable,” Roman admitted. “Jessie, you remember Delores Edwards.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Jessie said, offering the older woman her hand to shake.
“That doesn’t surprise me. You were always pretty well behaved,” Delores said. “For whatever reason, it’s the troublemakers who always seem to remember me. Isn’t that right, Mr. Parks?”
“What can I say? It must have been all that extra time in detention,” Roman replied, smiling himself.
“Mrs. Parks!” Jessie said, her hand flying up to her mouth as she recognized the woman. “From high school. Of course. How are you?”
“Not as well as I’d have hoped, unfortunately,” Delores said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jessie said, shuffling in her seat as she made the connection about the reason Roman asked her to come here and what happened yesterday. “Lara Edwards,” Jessie continued, swallowing hard. “I take it she was your daughter?”
“My niece,” Jessie's old teacher said, looking down at her coffee, her hands still wrapped around the mug. “She had been living with me for the last few years, though, so she was certainly like one of my own.”
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Jessie said softly, waving the waiter away before he could ask whether she wanted anything. “If it makes you feel any better, she went quickly. I doubt there was much pain.”
“Yes. Roman did tell me that,” Delores said. “At least that’s something.” She looked up at Jessie. “He also told me that you were the last person to see her alive, the last person to talk to her. Can you tell me what she said? Do you have any idea what happened?”
“I’m afraid we’re still trying to work that out,” Jessie said, her heart aching as she saw the older woman’s face fill with pain. “I just want you to know that I’m looking into this personally. Roman and I are very good at what we do, and I promise you, we will not rest until we find out who did this to your niece and bring them to justice.”
“Justice that love gives is a surrender,” Delores said. “Justice that law gives is a punishment.” She smiled just a little. “That’s Gandhi.”
“I know,” Jessie said. “I know because you taught me that. I’m not sure what you mean by it, though.”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing,” Delores admitted. “I dive into the familiar when I’m feeling uncomfortable. Gandhi is familiar to me, and I’ve never felt more uncomfortable than I have in the last few days.”
“The last few days?” Jessie asked. “What happened, Mrs. Edwards? When was the last time you saw Lara and what were the circumstances?”
Delores blinked hard. “I guess we’re just getting right into it then,” she muttered.
“No time like the present,” Jessie said. “The future depends on what you do today.”
“Gandhi again,” Delores said, smiling just a little.
“Like I said, I know because you taught me. Even if I didn’t remember you at first, I remember the lessons,” Jessie replied.
“I suppose that’s what’s important,” Delores said with a sigh. “She was angry with me, Lara. She had just gotten fired a few weeks beforehand, and I got her an interview with a new school. Her track record wasn’t the best in the world, but one of my old students was the principal there. So, he was willing to do me a favor and consider Lara for the History teacher position that had just opened up.” She took a small, slow sip of coffee, leaving her hands in the same cupped position they had been in since Jessie got there. “I was thrilled. Lara had just been a mess since she got fired. Like me, teaching had always been her passion, but unlike me, she had trouble holding down a job. I’m not sure why, because she was a hell of an educator. I think it might have been her attitude. She didn’t work well with others, especially other women, and like anything else, teaching is a lot about being a pleasant and likable person.”
“She didn’t strike me as a particularly difficult person,” Jessie said. “Though, she did kick me in the face. So, there’s that.”
“I thought she would be ecstatic,” Delores said. “But when I told her about the interview, she got so upset with me. She told me I didn’t have any right to interfere with her life or business. She went into her room for two days after that. When she came out, it was with a suitcase. She told me she was going to see her friend Ginger in Colorado and that she’d be staying there for awhile. I asked her not to go, even told her she didn’t have to worry about finding another job right away. I couldn’t change her mind, though. She left before I could stop her. A few days passed, and I tried to call her, but she wasn’t answering her phone. So, I dug up Ginger’s number, and as it turned out, she wasn’t there. She never had any plans of going to see Ginger. It was all a lie to cover up what she was really doing, whatever that was.”
“Does the name Mickey mean anything to you?” Jessie asked, keeping her voice low and flat.
“Not that I can think of,” Delores said.
“And what about Roman here?” Jessie asked, motioning to her partner. “Is there any reason you would have told Lara to come see Roman?”
“I thought Lara was headed thousands of miles in the other direction, and forgive me, but I don’t keep up with former students in that way. I had no idea what either of you were up to or where you were in the country before Roman called me to tell me what happened to Lara. So, there was no reason for me to tell her to look for Roman. I had no idea either of them would be here.”
“Okay,” Jessie said, nodding. “What can you tell me about your niece, Mrs. Edwards? Do you know of any enemies she might have, anyone who might wish her harm?”
“Like I said, she didn’t get along with people.” Delores sighed. “I’m sure some of her friends up in Savannah might be able to help you, though. I could talk to them and see if they’d reach out.”
“Savannah, Georgia?” Jessie asked.
“Yes,” Delores said. “I’ve been living there on the coast since I retired. Lara moved in with me a few years ago. She seemed to really fit in well. I just . . . I would have never imagined this.”
“I’m sure,” Jessie replied. “And once again, I’m sorry. We might have to take you up on your offer, though.”
“Offer?” Delores asked.
“Of talking to her friends,” Jessie replied. “Though I think we’d better do it in a more personal manner.”
“Road trip?” Roman asked, his eyebrows arching up as he looked over at Jessie. “Do I need to pack a toothbrush?”
“Unless you want coffee breath,” Jessie answered. “And yeah, I think we need to go to Savannah and check t
his out firsthand. But first, there’s something else we need to check out.”
“Yeah. You’ve got a hardcore look on your face,” Roman muttered, studying his partner’s face. “I’ll pack an extra pair of socks, too.”
9
Jessie pushed the door of the hotel room where Lara had been staying open and stepped through the threshold. Jessie had never been much of a ‘hotel’ person. As it turns out, when you live in a place that’s basically paradise, you don’t feel the need to travel too much. To her inexperienced eye, though, it seemed pretty standard. A pair of twin beds with musty floral comforters sat in the center of the room. A nightstand with an old looking phone and even older looking lamp was between them. The curtains had been drawn and the box of an air conditioning unit hummed peacefully against the wall under the window.
“No one has been through here since the room was sealed off?” Jessie asked, looking back at Roman as he followed her into the room, ducking under the caution tape that Jessie had almost torn down on the outside of the door.
“That’s what I’m told,” Roman answered, settling beside her. “They dusted the place for prints last night and went through everything already, though. I’m not sure what we’re doing here. We know who she is and we know where she came from. It seems to me like our energies would be better used in Savannah.”
“We know who she is and where she came from, but we don’t know what she was running from,” Jessie said. “And whatever that thing was, it found her here. That means if there’s any evidence about who did this to her, I think we’ll find it here.”
“That seems like a stretch,” Roman said, stepping around the room with the sort of loose direction that detectives had when they knew they were looking for something but weren’t entirely sure about what that something was. “I mean, sure, she was obviously running from someone, but she was running from Savannah. It would stand to reason that whoever she’d pissed off enough to kill her would be up there.”
“Maybe,” Jessie admitted. “But this is connected to us, too. It’s connected to you, at least.”
“I still have no idea why she was looking for me or why she checked into this room using my last name,” Roman said, pulling open the drawer on the nightstand and finding a Bible inside.
“Obviously, it didn’t come from Mrs. Edwards. She was clear about that,” Jessie said.
“If she was telling the truth. She could be lying, for all we know,” Roman said, shrugging.
“She wasn’t,” Jessie said quickly and flatly.
“You seem pretty sure about that,” Roman said as Jessie walked around the room in a similar fashion. Other members of the police department had been through this room already, but they had to have missed something. She saw the log this morning, going through it before her mother woke up to take her to Naples. They found nothing of merit. A couple of pairs of shoes, a duffle bag with a pair of jeans and a shirt in it, and a toothbrush and razor didn’t add up to anything Jessie could use. But it also wasn’t enough. There had been no identification on Lara’s body, no cash, no credit cards, and no way to buy anything at all. She had no phone, no computer, and the hotel records said she hadn’t made a single call from her room since she got there.
So how was she talking to people? How was she eating? How was she getting the money to pay for the room? The manager said she paid in cash every night, but there was no sign of where she might be getting that from. And the question of what she might be looking for with Roman still hung heavily in the air. Now, he was wasting their time inferring that Delores might have been lying. Jessie knew better.
“I know what that kind of grief looks like,” Jessie said as, for the first time in a while, her brother’s face flashed before her eyes. “It’s gutting and surreal and almost impossible to fake. She wasn’t lying, not about any of it.”
“If you say so,” Roman said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that people have already been in this room. They combed it from top to bottom and didn’t find anything. We have an actual lead, a promising one.”
“We have a hometown and a backstory. I figured she had both of those the first time I ever saw her,” Jessie said, though she was more dismissive than she meant to be.
“She didn’t want to take a new job,” Roman said. “A job that her aunt, who you just got finished telling me was probably the most honest person in the world, told me had always been her passion. That means she had something holding her back or pulling her away. This might have been where she made her last stand, but Savannah was where it all started. I don’t know about you, but I like hearing a story from the beginning, especially if I’m part of it.” Roman muttered the last part.
“I understand that,” Jessie said. “And I agree with it, but that doesn’t change the fact that something was missed here. It had to be,” Jessie said, settling in front of the room’s singular window. She pulled the curtain and looked out. The motel might have been lacking, but the view sure wasn’t. They were up a couple of stories and she could even see a sliver of the Gulf through the tree line. “She didn’t come here for nothing, and there has to be evidence of that somewhere in this room, whether the other officers found it or not.”
Jessie took a deep breath as the hum of the air conditioner continued in the background. As she listened to it, though, she heard something strange. There was a rattling of some sort happening inside the machine.
“Do you hear that?” Jessie asked, looking over at Roman.
“What?” he asked, walking near her.
“There’s something inside this air conditioner,” Jessie said, crouching and preparing to pull off the standard plastic covering.
“Wait!” Roman said, reaching out to stop her. “Shouldn’t we call someone? What if it’s a bomb or something?”
“This unit is buzzing and shaking like an old dryer,” Jessie said. “If there were a bomb in here, it would have already gone off.” She pulled off the covering and leaned her head down. There, stuck in a crevice in the unit, was a cheap burner phone. “Bingo,” Jessie said, grabbing the phone and popping back up.
“Look at that,” Roman said, a smile moving across his face. “You think it’s Lara’s?”
“Absolutely,” Jessie said, flipping the screen open and revealing an unread text notification on it. “This is an address and a time to meet.” Jessie turned to Roman. “And it’s from a man named Mickey.”
10
“You sure this is the place?” Roman asked, looking over at the closed down gas station they had been sitting in front of for the better part of an hour. This place was down a dead end road on the mainland in a spot where there was very little traffic. In fact, in all the time they had been sitting there, not a single car drove by.
“This is the address,” Jessie said, looking at the phone again to double-check the text, making sure the time was correct as well. “This is where Mickey asked to meet Lara.” She shook her head. “At eleven thirty.”
“It’s almost twelve thirty, and there hasn’t been a sign of anyone here,” Roman said, telling Jessie as though she didn’t already know that. “Maybe whoever Mickey is heard about Lara. If he’s so much as turned on the news at any point today, then it would make sense that he would have. No need in keeping an appointment with a dead woman.”
This had, of course, already crossed Jessie’s mind. Still, this was a lead, and it was worth following, even if following it did lead them down a very literal dead end.
Jessie ran a hand through her hair, sighing loudly and looking at the gas station. She got the same feeling she had back in the motel room, like she was missing something, like there was a piece of this puzzle that wasn’t quite on the board yet.
“I want to go look at it,” she said firmly.
“What?” Roman asked, leaning forward. “You want to look at what?”
“That,” Jessie said, pointing to the closed down station in front of her. “Even if the meeting is off, there has to be a reason Mickey set it up here. I need
to know what that is. It might help us understand what happened.”
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” Roman asked, his face turning downward in disgust as he looked at the old building. “Looks like there could be snakes or something in there.”
Jessie looked over at Roman, unable to stop herself from laughing loudly in his face. “It’s Florida, Roman. There are snakes everywhere.”
“There’s also disease everywhere. Doesn’t mean I have to go searching it out,” Roman said.
“Well, I mean, if you want to stay here, by all means, it won’t bother me,” Jessie said, pushing the door open. “Or better yet, I can drive you back home and you can have a drink on the porch while I crack the case.”
Roman glared at Jessie, smirking just a little. “It’s gonna be like that, is it?”
“It’s already like that,” Jessie said.
“You know something, Jess? Half the time, I don’t know whether you’re the best or the worst,” Roman grumbled.
“The next time you’re confused, let me know. I’ll clear it up for you,” she said, stepping out of the car and closing the door. As she crossed the dirt road, she heard Roman catch up to her, huffing as he stuffed his hands into his pockets.
“Your mom invited me to dinner. Did I tell you that?” he said, looking down at the road.
At once, Jessie’s heart skipped a beat and her stomach turned. “Seriously?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
“Seriously,” he said. “She told me it was your idea, but I know better than that. The only meal you’d have with me would be my last one.”
“That’s . . . that’s not exactly true,” Jessie said, shaking her head as they walked into the long brush that led to the gas station. She took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts and not come off as too cold on one end or too emotional on the other. She opened her mouth to continue, unsure of what she was going to say. As it turned out, Roman beat her to it.
“I had such a crush on you in high school,” he said simply, laying it out there as if he were telling her his lunch order or something.