Licensed for Trouble (29 page)

April 1961

Sunny is beautiful. She has her father's green eyes, and they light up when he comes into the room after his long days, and sometimes nights, of training. The Army is more difficult than he anticipated. Hugh is changing. I expected his joy, and instead, he treats me with a sort of fear. He asked me to write home to my mother, to tell her where we are, but I can't. He doesn't know that my mother already found me. Sent me a telegram, telling me that unless I return home, there is no forgiveness waiting in Kellogg. I threw it away. I have Sunny. And Hugh.

March 1962

I think I will die if I don't hear from Hugh. Nine months is too long to wait for a letter, a note, a call. And worse, they won't tell me where they sent him. I know he's not safe, and at night, the fear chills me. Sunny had her first birthday, her first tooth, calls me Mama. He is missing his child's life, and the ache burns in me with every silent day. My mother wrote again. I have her letter in my bureau next to the bed.

February 1963

It's been three weeks. Three weeks since the knock on the door. MIA. I know he isn't dead—I would feel it.

Come home to us, Hugh.

A thump on the stairs. PJ stilled, her pulse ratcheting high.

Another thump and squeak.

PJ put her thumb in the diary, then pushed the covers back and stepped lightly on the floor.

She eased the door open. The moon turned the hall milky from the tiny window over the stairs. Tiptoeing out, she closed the door behind her and crept down the stairs.

Connie stood bathed in the cold light of the open refrigerator. PJ watched her sister take out the orange juice, pour herself a glass, and then sit down at the table with a magazine.

“What are you reading?” PJ whispered.

Connie jerked, spilling her orange juice down the front of her. “What are you doing? Are you stalking me? Good grief.” She swiped up a couple napkins and dabbed the front of her pink silk bathrobe. “Now I'm all sticky.”

“Sorry. I didn't want to wake Jeremy.” She pointed to the closed door of the office.

“If he's even sleeping. From the look on his face when you went upstairs to bed, I half expected him to be sitting on the bottom step or pacing the hallway.”

“Maybe he's taking a break.”

“Poor guy. It's not easy to be in love with PJ Sugar.” Connie winked at her.

PJ slid into a chair at the table. “He's not in love with me. I'm more like his worst nightmare.”

“I disagree. He never took his eyes off you all night.” She sighed. “Boone never looked at you like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Boone always had a half smirk on his face—well, when he didn't look like he wanted to strangle you. There was a sort of amusement there. But Jeremy—he looks completely undone when he sees you. As if you scare him to death, but with a sort of confusing admiration. Like the way he stood at the bottom of the stairs and just watched the empty space after you left as if he might be waiting for you to materialize.”

“I do scare him to death. Especially after tonight. ”

“You scare all of us. Hence, why I'm up in the middle of the night—”

“Reading a baby magazine?” PJ flipped the pages to the front cover. “
Baby Today
?”

“Hey, it's the only time I get to read the contraband.”

“Contraband?”

“It is according to Vera and her silly superstitions. I'm not allowed to buy myself anything for the baby until after it's born. The entire layette—we'll have to stop off at Babies and Baubles on the way home from the hospital.”

“Why?”

“She says we don't want to tempt fate.”

“That's completely morbid.” PJ reached over and took a sip of Connie's juice.

“Well, not if you think about their sketchy medical care over there. Anything they can do to give their baby a fighting chance for survival. I can't cut my hair, sit in a draft, eat spicy foods . . .” She lowered her face into the crease of her magazine. “I'm losing my mind.”

PJ rubbed her sister's neck. “It'll be worth it. At least you don't live with our mother.”

Connie turned her cheek on the magazine. “Who called, by the way, and said she'd be back tomorrow night. She said she has a surprise for us.”

“Shirts that say, ‘My mother went on an awesome cruise without telling me and all I got was this lousy T-shirt'?”

Connie grinned. Sat up, began paging through the magazine. “So what are
you
reading?” She gestured to the book in PJ's hand.

“The journal of Prudence Joy Barton.”

“Oh, let me at it. That sounds much better than
Baby Today
.”

PJ handed it over. “It is. Joy ran away with Hugh because she was pregnant. He joined the Army—I think he must have been in special forces or something, because they didn't tell her where he went, although I have a feeling it might have been Vietnam.”

Connie paged through the journal. “I read an article about how there were Green Berets training the South Vietnamese long before Kennedy sent troops in. There were MIAs and POWs before we even admitted to being there. ”

“I think maybe Hugh turned out to be one of them. He went MIA in 1963.”

“So what happened? Did Hugh die?”

“Probably. I haven't gotten that far.”

“That's so sad.”

“Yeah. That could be why she came home and married Clayton Barton. She needed a father for her child.”

Connie read an entry. “Do you think she still carried a torch for Hugh? Maybe Clayton got jealous.”

“Of a dead man?”

“Oh, believe me, dead men have more power than you think. Just ask Sergei. He could look at Davy and see Burke if he chose to. But he doesn't—he sees a little boy that belongs to me. He sees the boy that's becoming his son.”

“So your previous marriage never bothered him?”

“There were questions. But we decided we could have something much better. Knowing the betrayal I'd had before made him want to heal that for me. He wanted me to see that this time, it could be different. He proves that to me every day.” She ran a hand over her tiny belly. “But some people just can't figure that out.”

PJ nodded. “Maybe Clayton couldn't move on.”

“Or Joy couldn't. Not everyone is able to recover from their first love.”

PJ sank her chin into her hands on the table. “Jeremy thinks I can't move on either. He believes Boone and I are over but I can't let go of the past. He thinks I'm holding on to the name Trouble because it makes me feel safe. That if I'm trouble, then I can't expect anything more from myself.”

“Hmm, sounds like something someone
wise
might say to you.”

“I remember, Connie; you get full credit.”

“Well, your Jeremy is a good PI to figure it out too.”

“It's a good thing one of us is . . . because I think all my supersleuthing just might get Max killed. If someone from his past tried to kill me tonight, then he
is
in danger. And I caused it. What Jeremy doesn't get is, any way you look at it, I
am
trouble. It's not a brand; it's a fact. And one of these days, someone is going to get hurt.”

Connie took a long breath. “You're not trouble. But I do live in fear. I wish you'd drop this.”

“I have to finish it. Find out if someone is after Max, and stop them.”

“I think you should leave that to Boone.”

“No—I've dragged him and Jeremy and even you and your family too far into my world. I gotta fix this.”

“You're starting to scare me. I'm waiting for an ‘and then what?'”

PJ sighed. Closed her eyes. And then maybe it was time to leave town and take trouble with her. Away from the people she loved. She lifted a shoulder. “It would be better for Jeremy if I wasn't here. All I do is remind him of his greatest fears—seeing someone he loves get hurt, even killed.”

Connie wrapped her hand over PJ's arm. “What does Jeremy have to say about that?”

PJ drummed her fingers on the counter. Behind her, she heard a creak, the groan of the wood floor under shifting weight.

Jeremy stood in the foyer, wearing a pair of Sergei's running pants and a gray T-shirt. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. . . .”

Perfect. “Jeremy—”

He held up a hand. “Listen, I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I'll see you in the morning.”

He moved into the office, closing the door softly behind him.

Chapter Seventeen

“What do you think you're doing?”

PJ had been asking herself that for the better part of ten years. Usually at the beginning of every crazy job she'd landed, from the time she spent the summer scrubbing pots in a Russian-language immersion camp, to her gig as a large-animal feeder at the San Diego Zoo, to her longest job—a two-year stint learning how to jump out of flaming buildings. She'd been a bicycle delivery girl—well, a delivery girl of all sorts, really: pizza, newspapers, flowers—and a waitress, and of course, she'd managed a gig at a gym, handing out keys.

Which came in handy when faking a lost health club pass.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” PJ yanked her wrist from Jeremy's grip as he bent down by the pool, after grabbing her between laps. “Swimming. I should ask the same thing about you. What have you been up to? I woke up at Connie's and you'd split. Not even a note.”

“I had things to do, Princess.” He gave her a splash. Smiled as if he hadn't been standing in the hallway last night, overhearing her comment about their doomed future. And how she planned on doing her own split, right out of his life.

“Since when do you swim laps?” He took off his sunglasses, and already a line of sweat trickled down his face from the heat of the indoor pool. Leaves tapped against the bank of windows behind him, trying to get their attention.

PJ shot a look across the pool, through the wall of glass, to the workout room, where Randy Simonson, aka Ratchet, hoisted free weights onto his shoulders, now doing squats. “Since the guy I've been tailing all day works out at the weight room and pool. Good thing I still had some clothes in the Vic or I would have had to swim naked.”

“I don't want to speculate on whether you would have gone that far.” Jeremy glanced at the weight lifter. Ratchet packed the muscle into a sculpted package, all curves and sinew.

“Does he have a tattoo?”

“Yep. Just like Max's. I think this guy might be the Lyle Fisher we're looking for.”

“Wait a second—I thought Max was Lyle. At least Bekka's mother says so.”

“No, Max is Owen . . . or . . .” She shook her head. “Okay, yes, I don't know who Max is. But put a baseball cap over his red hair and Ratchet certainly could have been the one outside arguing with Bekka before she died.”

“Then who rented the house in Hopkins and threw Max into the lake?”

“Ratchet—as Lyle Fisher.”

“Then who's the Lyle in the picture?
That
Lyle looks just like Max. Are there two Lyle Fishers?”

“Okay!” She held up her hand. “Point taken. We're just missing something.”

“Yeah, like someone with a memory of who he is. I hate this case.” He reached out a hand and she took it, letting him haul her from the water. “When I got your message to meet me here, I have to admit, I thought maybe you'd decided to live on the edge, attend an aerobics class. I couldn't believe it when I saw you in here doing laps. Have you been following this guy all day?”

She walked over to her towel and began drying herself off. “Started at his garage, watched him work on high-end imports, then over to his apartment in St. Louis Park, then here. I wanted to see if he had that tattoo and maybe get close enough to ask him a few questions. Pry his past from him.”

“I don't even want to know how you planned to do that.”

PJ gave him a smile, all teeth. His mouth tightened to a disapproving scowl.

“I'm just trying to get some answers and do my job.”

“And what
job
is that?” Jeremy said, purposely running his gaze down her body and her one-piece swimsuit.

She hooked her finger under his jaw to raise his gaze back to her eyes. “The one that will prove that Max is innocent and figure out who tried to kill me last night. And the person who tried to kill Max and possibly killed Bekka. The someone who is still after Max, I think.”

“I know. I heard you last night.”

She didn't want to ask what else he'd heard. “So have you been out saving the world? You don't
look
like you've been in a brawl.” She gave him a mock pout. “What? No knock-down-drag-outs for breakfast? You must be heartbroken.”

“I could work one in now if you're interested.” He gave her a smirk that suggested he'd like nothing better at the moment.

“Hah.”

“I'm a little surprised to see you in a pool today, after what happened yesterday.” He gentled his voice. “You okay?”

PJ pressed the towel to her face. Yeah, diving into that water had nearly sucked away her breath, made her launch to the surface with a scream.

But it also made her feel . . . less like a victim. “I've decided that swimming is a lot like skydiving.”

Jeremy sat on the diving board, twirling his glasses between his fingers. “How's that?”

“The weightlessness. And diving in is a lot like throwing yourself from an airplane. Breathtaking.”

Wow, he had beautiful eyes, and they seemed to twinkle now. “Yeah. I guess it is. Breathtaking.”

The way he said it made her wonder if he wasn't exactly talking about skydiving or swimming. But she'd just have to learn to be immune to that devastating smile, the way he looked at her as if she might be a mystery he'd like to solve. They had too many empty, black holes between them and a happy ending. Holes in his life that he didn't want her to see, holes in hers that he could too easily trip in and get hurt.