The Ringer (12 page)

“You—” He pointed at her. “—are going to get it!” He made a lunge for her, but she faked left to dodge his grab. “Oh, after one session with Maxie you’ve got skillz.”

“Please.” She waved him off. “I had these types of skillz way—”

Jax was on top of her before she could finish. Lane curled into a ball as he worked his hands under her shirt. He committed one of the worse transgressions to her body one could ever imagine.

Jackson Thornbird tickled her sides. She wiggled and moved but could not out-maneuver the dexterity of his nimble fingers. Close to giving up Lane heard the Skype alarm go off on his laptop. A reprieve. She slipped from beneath his weight. Gasping for breath, she fought the urge to pass out. “Later,” he threatened as he twisted her over the desk and hit accept on his laptop.

“Jax.”

“Raff,” he called out, still under the spell of laughter. “Talk to me.”

“You’re in a good mood,” his partner responded dryly.

“Would you prefer if I were cradling a box of Kleenex and rocking back and forth?” he asked once he got his humor under control. She half listened to the detectives’ conversation while she began to categorize the files they had gone through.

“I’ve got something,” Raff said. “Johnny Mac, the one who got shot in front of Lane, his name was Joseph Morgan, a former oncologist.”

“Why former?” he asked.

“The board revoked his license to practice medicine. It appears Johnny fell in love with his morphine and couldn’t have cared less about his end-stage cancer patients.”

“But who would want him dead, I mean besides his wife?”

“Ex-wife,” she told him. “The woman left well before Lane got the fake call from Honey Pots. I have no idea who would want to kill this guy. Whoever caught the case made sure to list the victim under his nickname. This might be the reason no one has claimed his body from the morgue.”

“Or it’s the reason why no one
has
to claim the body from the morgue,” he told Raff.

Jax was on to something about her dead mark, but what? At first, she’d determined he was an innocent bystander in all of this, but since he wasn’t married, or innocent, she wasn’t so sure.

“How about that for research?” Raff bragged.

“Part of the puzzle I suppose.”

“How are things going? Or better, how’s the grenade?” Raff joked.

Offended by her unofficial title, she stomped over to the computer. “For your information, I am not a grenade. Maxie told me—” The sound of gritty laughter stopped her cold. She couldn’t in good conscience quote a car thief to a cop.

“A grenade quoting a grenade doesn’t count,” Raff said.

“Hey, is your brother wearing my clothes?” Jax interrupted Raff’s humor at her expense.

A man walked behind Raff. He wore an open cotton robe, boxers, and nothing else. Oblivious that everyone could see him, he continued to eat straight out of the ice cream carton.

She turned around. “Damn it, Ralph!” his partner screamed. “What did I tell you—”

“My favorite robe,” Jax muttered to no one in particular before the screen went black.

“Hey,” Lane said. “How about we take a break?” She blocked the laptop screen with her head, managing to finagle a smile out of him. “Kinda like the one your parents are taking?” Out the door with the knowledge the cop was right behind her, she ran faster than she ever had before.

***

Night fell fast in Colorado. Usually autumn brought leaves and cool breezes to most states, but Colorado was different. A phenomenon to visitors, but anyone who made money off of the white season hoped and prayed for snow. The earlier the better.

After dinner, where his parents had giggled and flirted the whole way through, Jax made sure Lane’s room had everything. She insisted on sleeping separately with his parents around.

Jax hated to point out he was at least upfront about his relationship. His parents, on the other hand, could be considered ninjas at the art of deception. But regardless, he gave in to her demands, unwilling to push the disagreement any further.

“Jax,” his father called from the master suite.

Full-on ambience and romanticism, Jax figured it was exactly what his father had in mind when he’d built the cabin with his brothers.

“Close the door,” Truman told him. It was the largest bedroom in the house, one of his father’s designs. He walked by the priceless, custom pine bed placed opposite of a crackling fire.

“What’s up, Pops?” He asked, hopeful his dad had some news.

Truman hung up his cell phone and slipped off his glasses. “You’ll never guess who just called.”

“Please don’t make me.” He huffed. Jax had had enough surprises to last him a lifetime, forget the rest of the week. He took a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs across from his father.

“Governor Jones. It appears he had an interesting evening.”

“Interesting how?” he asked, perking up at the prospect of a good lead.

“He was at a memorial downtown. It appears the mayor, commissioner, and your captain had a pow-wow with a journalist.”

“About?” The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

“The governor watched Julian go up to the cigar room, and after a few minutes, the journalist came down. Being nosey but affable, they chatted for a while. Eventually, the reporter got around to asking about you,” his dad told him.

“Me?”

“Yeah, he got a good tip from a source about you, so he tried to put the squeeze on your captain.”

“Humph,” he grunted. Jax found the information interesting but not exactly helpful.

“There’s more.”

“Building suspense or burying the lead?” he asked his father, who always drew the anticipation out to the very last drop. A great technique when he read them
Make It Snow
as kids on Christmas Eve, but in this very moment Jax wasn’t impressed.

“Parker Lockland joined the group a bit thereafter. The journalist had already left by then, and the governor said Parker walked straight into the steakhouse and made a B-line to the cigar room.”

“So Parker wasn’t lost.” He tried to process everything his father had told him, since nothing added up or made sense. A lot of loose pieces still floated around.

“I don’t think the key to unlocking this mystery is in any of those boxes downstairs. It’s Lane. What’s her story?”

Jax shrugged, unable to think of anything useful. “I pulled her file the first night we met, and before Chicago she lived in Seattle. She owned a semi-successful coffee shop and took a few classes at the University. Considering the curriculum, a hodge-podge of aesthetic, I assumed she made a hobby out of it. That was about it before she married Parker.”

“Ding ding ding! There’s your thread. It’s time for you to stop assuming, son. Perhaps it wasn’t one person who was set up to die in the alley the other night, but three. And you have to admit, she’s not exactly Parker’s type.”

Jax chuckled. He had said as much to Lane since he found it hard to fathom the sexy woman with the blond version of Jughead. “You’re right. I guess I’m going to have to find out,” he told his old man. Whether he liked it or not, he needed to start asking the tough questions.

***

They had made pretty good progress. Lane and Dottie had separated the piles of police reports that were ridiculously similar into separate stacks. Natural deaths went to the left and accidents went into another. By morning, they would be halfway done. In the meantime, they had forged a comfortable camaraderie over wine, a warm fire, and police reports.

“Tell me, dear, how did you and my boy meet?” Dottie asked from her research station. Jax’s mother had been humming to herself on and off ever since she’d come back from her afternoon break.

In the not so distant future, Lane believed she would get one of those naughty breaks in the woods.

“Men’s room at the fundraiser for the Daughters of the American Revolution,” she admitted. The urge to lie came to mind since it wasn’t a classy story, but she had found the truth far easier to remember.

“Oohh juicy and strange,” she cooed, “but mainly juicy. I met Jax’s father at the Playboy Mansion.”

“No way,” she said, shocked. Even though she suspected by Dottie’s strong resemblance to Barbie Benton, spectacular rack, and easy attitude she could have been a Playboy Bunny, she hadn’t wanted to assume.

“Yeah,” Dottie admitted with a hint of a smile. “At The Playmate of the Year ceremony, and I could have sworn I was going to win.” His mother grabbed a box to move it out of her way. “After all, my issue did sell out. Miss September 1966.”

“I take it you lost,” she egged her on to spill her story, ignoring the voice in her head to be polite.

“Allie something-or-other won, silly poser.” Dottie waved away her loss. “After she won, I wanted to get out of there fast, until I almost knocked over Truman Thornbird.” A crimson blush heated her face when she spoke about her ex-husband. “We closed the place down.”

“What about you?”

“How did you?”

Dottie pointed at her ring finger before she grabbed another box turning the question around on Lane. “Tan lines.”

“Uh, yeah.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and considered a new subject, but decided she would need to cop to it sooner or later. “Parker Lockland,” she offered.

Dottie dropped the box she held to the floor. “You’re kidding.” She laughed. “You’re not close to his type.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” She wanted in on the big secret. More than once, the niggling thought Parker could be gay had crossed her mind. Sex had not been a frequent activity in their household. She believed he’d intentionally done it wrong so he wouldn’t have to do it anymore.

“Oh, honey, I shouldn’t be telling you this.” Dottie frowned.

Lane assumed she was looking for an assist, but nothing happened beyond her unwavering stare.

“Fine. Parker and Jax went to school together, middle school, all the way to high school. There may have been a small scandal, and when I say small, I mean his parents swept it under the rug.”

“A good trait of the rich,” she muttered.

“An excellent trait of the rich. They do it well.” Dottie licked her lips and glanced around the room—probably for a way out of the conversation, Lane figured. “From my understanding, Parker got this girl pregnant. His parents ended up having to pay the family off.”

“I’ve heard worse,” she said with a sigh of relief.

“Thirteen,” Dottie blurted out. “And he was a senior in high school.”

“Oh, God!” Lane choked.

“Yeah,” Jax’s mother rushed to explain. “Devastated that her parents wanted her to get an abortion, she kept trying to contact Parker. When the rich close ranks, it is damn near impossible to penetrate the fortress and….” Dottie took a deep breath. “The young lady ended up killing herself.”

Hot acid inched up her throat. “You’re kidding me,” She covered her mouth in horror. An instant whirl of thoughts went on a merry-go-round ride in her mind.

“Parker has done an excellent job hiding his, uh…proclivities,” Dottie continued. “Anytime there’s been an event or any social function, he makes sure he’s escorted by a grown woman. Of course his dates have always been flat as a board, short-haired waifs who resembled—”

“Thirteen-year-old girls,” Lane blurted.

“Yeah,” Dottie agreed. “See why you were such a surprise for everyone. I mean, you’re a w-o-m-a-n. With all those curves, you should have been on the front cover of Playboy, not on the arm of Parker Lockland.”

Try as she may, Lane had a heck of a time staving off the urge to puke.

“How did you and Parker meet?” Jax asked from the doorway.

Embarrassed, Lane wanted to rail against him for not telling her about Parker and his sick inclinations. But if the shoe was on the other foot, she wouldn’t have said anything either. Swallowing hard, she worked herself toward an answer. Fire rose in her belly while misdirected blame found a victim in Jackson Thornbird.

In a matter of minutes, her world had turned on its axis and decided to careen into the opposite direction.

“Uh, I met him on one of those online sites, Luv.com. I wasn’t having much success between running the coffee shop or classes. I didn’t have time to meet anyone…decent.” She pushed down the humiliation at how desperate she sounded.

“Did you post a picture with your profile?” he prodded.

“Sure, it’s mandatory.” Lane stood, hoping the ill wave of nausea would leave her soon. From the corner of her eye, she caught Dottie giving her son a small nod.

“You look a tad green, hon, are you okay?” Jax’s mother laid the reports on the desk and crossed the room to comfort her. “In my experience, people can never hide their true selves for very long.” Dottie grabbed her shoulders and guided her to the couch. “I’m sure there’s something Parker did to make you wonder.”

“Well I…. We….”

“Sex?” Dottie pushed.

She nodded. “So awful it had to be on purpose.”

“What about your looks?”

Lane had been so focused on Dottie and not humiliating herself further, she hadn’t realized Jax had made his way closer to her. With that familiar expression of determination on his face, he stood in front of her. At least it was better than pity. Pity from Jax would have completely undone her.

“Uh, yeah.” She bit her lip and tried to recall. “He wanted me to lose weight.”

“How many pounds?”

“About thirty, but said forty would be better. He signed me up at the East Bank Club for personal training and Pilates. I pretended to go but almost always ditched for the bookstore or the movies,” she said, chagrined at her own laziness. “I put on more weight by avoiding the workouts altogether.”

Dottie’s laughter lightened the tension in the room by a degree. The sound reminded her of bells, and helped ease the knot curled within her shoulders.

“What about your breasts?” He pushed. “Did he want you to get a reduction?”

“He may have….” Lane blew out breath before she answered. “Mentioned it a few times.” She started to remember.

“Hmm,” he groaned. Jax rubbed the side of his face as his eyes took on a faraway look. She could tell by his grimace a spark of an idea had started to take shape in his head. Too overwhelmed at the moment, she didn’t bother to ask what he had come up with.