The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (4 page)

It was nearly eleven when I finished skimming through the book. I hadn’t really found anything that would lead me in a particular direction. There were some details about “Caleb’s” life that may or may not have applied to Jason: he’d been a college athlete, he’d been in a nasty car accident as a child, his own father had died in prison, that kind of thing. That information might help me confirm that I had the right guy when I did find him, but it was all too tenuous to follow up on, unless I got really desperate for leads. Otherwise the book was a bust.

I felt weary and depressed with the whole endeavor. Needing to shake it off, I rose, stretched out my stiff legs, and padded to the living room, where Toby was, predictably, fast asleep on the couch, stretched out on his side. His knees were bent at a right angle, and Toka was curled up in the crook, wound into a happy little dog-knot of muscle and fur. I smiled and draped myself across the back of the couch, displacing Toka and wiggling down in between the couch and Toby. I snuggled against his back, and he mumbled nonsense at me.

“Toby,” I sang, “it’s bedtime.”

“Sleep here,” he muttered.

“Nope, no go. It’s time to get up and get into bed.”

“Tired.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I
will
shove you off this couch,” I said gravely.

He woke up enough to form a cohesive statement. “You wouldn’t dare.”
 

Yeah, right. I braced my shoulders against the back of the couch and pushed, dumping my semiconscious husband on the ground.

“You’ll pay for that, Dane,” he growled, and I scrambled over the back of the couch, laughing, and raced into the bedroom with Toby and Toka at my heels.
 

Nate Christianti let himself into the still house a little before seven. It had taken four buses and almost two hours to get from the PI agency back to the Christianti house in Brookfield, but Nate had used the time for homework and a little light forgery. He need signatures on a permission slip for an upcoming class trip to the Field Museum, a note from the principal’s office about Nate’s new habit of sleeping in class, and a letter from Child Services regarding the status of Nate’s future care. Tom would have signed the permission slip if he’d asked, but since he was committing forgery anyway, he didn’t bother asking.

Nate seriously doubted anybody would bother to compare the signature with older forms from Tom, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Using one of Tom’s old check stubs, he’d painstakingly retraced the signature on each form, taking care to lift his pen every time the bus jolted to a stop. On the third bus an older girl, probably a college student, noticed what he was doing, but she just smirked knowingly, in a “been there” kind of way, and Nate gave her a sheepish smile back. Let her think he was trying to avoid getting in trouble. As explanations went, it was far more fun than the truth.

As he finally walked in, the whole house seemed humid with the heavy atmosphere of sickness: a creeping, growing fog that gained a little more ground every day. Nate paused in the foyer to pick up the casserole dish that Mrs. Lipinski had pushed through the doggy door. Their dog Rufus had been dead for three years, but the door had found new life and new purpose since Tom had gotten sick and Nate had worked out an arrangement with the elderly Lipinskis. The sticky note on top of the casserole lid instructed him to microwave it for two minutes if he got home after six, but Nate simply carried the dish through the living room into the kitchen. Since Tom had gotten sick, Nate had instinctively limited his movements to a few areas of the house: kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, foyer. While those rooms gathered the grime and debris of constant use, the rest of the house seemed like a museum display, dusty and frozen.
 

In the kitchen Nate took a dirty fork out of the sink, wiped it on his shirt, and dug in. He was almost a third of the way through the pan when he heard the weak tinkle of the bell from upstairs. Nate hastily pushed the casserole dish into the fridge and hurried back to the staircase in the foyer. Taking the stairs two at a time, he paused outside Tom’s door, collected his game face, and crept in.

His dad – his
real
dad – had once been a big man, hale and hearty with that extra layer of fair-skinned fat that seemed unique to Midwesterners. Now, though, the slight beer gut and cheerful ruddiness had vanished, and Tom’s skin seemed to have stretched inwardly into his body, erasing flesh and muscle and pulling Tom smaller and smaller into himself. Nate had a recurring nightmare where Tom just shrunk until he disappeared completely.
 

The bedroom was tidy but cluttered with the evidence of cancer: tissues and wastebaskets and rows and rows of pill bottles. Nate knew the name and purpose of every instrument, every medicine. On good days, Tom could still get up and move about the house: watching television, fixing himself cereal, and doing very light housecleaning. Today was not a good day. Nate moved closer and grasped Tom’s hand, squatting on the small stool next to the bed.

“Hey,” Nate said softly. “Do you need something?”

Tom grinned weakly up at him. “Not really,” he rasped. “I heard you come in, wanted to see how it went. How was the investigator? What was she like?”

Nate considered the question carefully. “She seems tough. She’s friendly, and smart, and pretty cool, at least so far. But she wants to meet with you, to talk to you about, um, Jason.” He still felt awkward mentioning his biological father.

“Okay,” Tom said gently, “that’s fine. Why don’t you ask her over for tomorrow after school?”

“Are you sure?” the boy asked, worried. “I don’t want to tire you too much. And if she knows, she could tell someone.”

“We can handle it.” Tom reached up to tousle his hair, and Nate’s heart ached. “It’ll be okay, pal.”

Nate said goodnight to Tom and returned downstairs to retrieve his backpack. He’d gotten his reading done on the bus, but there was still Algebra, and Nate couldn’t afford to fall too far behind, lest someone start to worry about him at school.
 

Bag in hand, he locked the front door, trudged up the stairs, and for the third night in a row, fell asleep fully clothed, a textbook spread out beside him on the bed.
 

4. A Sad Case

I am not a morning person. In fact, I hate mornings. If it were up to me, every workday would start at 11 AM, and no one would ever pick up a phone or ring a doorbell before ten.
 

Toby, however, feels differently. He’s not exactly a morning person, either – we wouldn’t have gotten past the third date if he were – but he can shove aside things like sleep in the interest of discipline. For the last month, he’d decided that we needed to quit our sporadic, hit-and-miss workout schedule and start hitting the gym each morning before work. And as it turned out, no amount of whining, bickering, or ignoring on my part would change his mind.
 

That Wednesday was no different. Once we got to the gym, Toby kissed my head and made a beeline for the weights, leaving me to relax into my own routine, which has been the same, more or less, since I realized in high school that organized sports were not the best match with my personality. I’m not a runner, and I don’t have the patience or tranquility for yoga. I hate swimming, and I’ve just never been able to stand martial arts – the names make me giggle. So I found a good gym, worked the front desk to pay for training, and took up boxing.

As it turned out, I was pretty good. I’d never be able to go pro or anything, but I was fast and dogged, and wasn’t afraid to take a punch. I competed a little, won a few trophies, and kept myself in fighting shape. We’d picked our gym, O’Doyle’s, because it was one of the only ones in Chicago with a real boxing program, not just group classes with kicking set to techno music. The owner was an ex-middleweight champ, and he kept a special room filled with bags, jump ropes, and even a battered old ring. A handful of clients – me included – were allowed to come in and practice with the boxing gear whenever.
 

That morning, I said hello to Danny, the boxing coordinator, who was crammed into his tiny glass office outside the ring, and headed over to the mat to stretch out. I jumped rope for fifteen minutes, hit the speed bag for awhile, and coaxed Danny to come out and hold the heavy bag for me.
 

“Have you given any thought to my suggestion?” Danny asked me, bracing his knife-thin body against the bag as I struck it. A lithe Hispanic guy who looked more like a ballet dancer than a boxer, Danny Cicero had once been the Midwest Featherweight Champion for four years in a row. He won’t spar with me anymore since I broke his nose two years ago. Totally unintentional.

He’d also been bugging me to join his kickboxing classes. I stepped back, breathing hard. “Never gonna happen, Danny.” I punched the bag extra hard on that, and danced back a few steps as sweat swam down my neck into my shirt.

“Okay, okay,” Danny held up his hands in surrender, and I playfully tapped the bag forward into his stomach. “I know you think it’s beneath you, but you should still keep it in mind. It’s a great workout, and you never know when you’ll need to kick someone in the face.”

I grinned and moved back in, hitting the bag at face level with a familiar rat-a-tat sound that made my blood sing in response. “Yeah, but Danny, the other kids don’t like to play with me now. I’ll never make any friends if I start kicking people in the face.”

“You could always just charm them with your sparkling personality,” he joked, and I pretended to swing for his nose. Danny never thinks that’s funny. He immediately feinted with his right hand towards my midsection, faking a brutal gut shot. Without thinking, I gasped, stepping back and covering my stomach with my hands.
 

Oh, God, the baby.
What if he’d hit the baby?
 

The thought ripped into my mind, exploding into panic and anxious frenzy. My breathing became short bursts, and I sat down on the floor, head between my knees, trying to slow my breath.

“Lena?” Danny asked, concern in his tawny eyes. “What’s the matter? Charley horse?”

“Yeah,” I managed, avoiding his eyes. “Cramp in my stomach.” Danny stood in silence for a long moment while I relearned breathing, and then he reached down, grabbing my glove and pulling me up.
 

“You okay?” he asked. “You look a little...I don’t know, freaked out.”

“I’m good,” I said, bobbing my head reassuringly. “Never better. I think I’m done for the day, though.” Crap, crap, crap.
 

Maybe for the next nine months.

I peeled Toby off of a squat machine and we jogged the five blocks back home. He took Toka for another walk while I showered (stomach showed no signs of expansion) and picked out a dark blue button-down shirt, nice jeans, and my leather jacket, along with my shoulder harness and the Browning. When I’m not around clients I usually wear sneakers to work, but it was a client day, so it was a boots day. Boots or sneakers: my big concession to business formal.

I arrived at work early enough to tidy up a bit before the Emersons arrived. I said hello to Bryce, trotted into my office, and started squirreling papers and clutter into various drawers and cupboards. I’m not a messy person, I promise. It’s just that messes sort of find me.
 

Finally, I pulled out the Emersons’ file to review. It was a sad case. Alicia and Roland Emerson, an African-American couple in their late forties, had hired me to find out who had attacked their fifteen-year-old daughter, Carolina. Six months ago, Carrie had been walking home from the video store when she inadvertently witnessed two people running out of the liquor store they’d just robbed. They’d seen Carrie, too, and had beaten her nearly to death before bolting.
 

Carrie had spent the last six months in the coma unit at Saint Joseph Hospital. Theoretically, she could wake up at any time, but the doctors weren’t hopeful, and every week that she stayed in the coma her chances dropped a little further. To make terrible matters worse, if Carrie did wake up she would most likely be in danger from the assailants – if she remembered what had happened, she might be able to ID them.
 

When the police officers investigating the assault got nowhere, one of the detectives on the case had recommended me to the Emersons. Alicia was a high school English teacher, and Roland worked part-time for an art gallery and did freelance graphic design for ads and event posters. Even with a sliding scale, they couldn’t really afford a PI, but Carrie was their only child. “A miracle baby,” Alicia had told me tearfully. So in order to pay for my services, they’d emptied their savings account and dipped into Carrie’s college fund. And after four long months of investigation, now I had to tell them that I had nothing.
 

There are parts of this job that I hate.

Bryce ushered the Emersons into my office promptly at 10:00, and I rose to shake both their hands and offer beverages. They declined, two sets of deep brown eyes fixed on me. Alicia was beautiful, with long willowy limbs and neat shoulder-length cornrows. She looked like the high school teacher she was, wearing a polite ankle-length skirt with tiny blue flowers, sensible low-heeled pumps, and a cream-colored cardigan set that made her dark skin glow from within. Despite her age, I was willing to bet that she was the crush of every boy at her high school. Roland was a little heavy for his medium height, but he exuded a warm, genial manner even when discussing such a serious topic as his daughter. We’d spoken on the phone once or twice a week since I’d been hired, but I hadn’t seen them in person in nearly a month. Alicia had lost weight, and they both looked softer and more fragile, and anxious for me to give them news,
any
news. My stomach twisted, knowing I had none to give.

“Alicia, Roland,” I began, “I’m so sorry, but I think I’m going to have to discontinue the investigation.” I handed each of them a printout I’d worked up the previous morning, a list of the steps I’d taken to find their daughter’s assailants and the results of every lead I’d followed. As I walked them through my investigation, Roland’s face crumpled into itself, and for the first time since I’d met him he looked broken by the tragedy. Alicia reached over wordlessly to grasp his hand as it lay awkwardly on his knee, and Roland squeezed and held on. Roland was big and charismatic and instantly likable, but it was Alicia who was made of steel.