Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Gage
P op took an easy job and doesn’t need me, and I’ve been tailing Zarah for the past couple of days. I’d rather work on finding a missing gang kid who’s probably dead in a gutter somewhere than sitting in my truck watching her through binoculars while Baby sits next to me and barks at every goddamned bird that flies by. That’s what I try to tell myself, anyway. I don’t want to admit I’ve become protective of her. Not because of Max’s request, and not because I think she’s in any danger, but she looks so fragile and I hate the thought of someone hurting her anymore than she already has been.
Today she comes out of her shrink’s office, and she looks shaky on her pins. I did a little digging to find out what business she would have in this part of the city and found it’s a swank psychiatrist’s building. Probably why she looks white as a sheet—she spent all her time crying and drudging up godawful memories.
The driver who was absent the day the paparazzi decided to hound her is at the curb, standing by a black town car, but she speaks to him briefly and starts walking down the sidewalk. The older guy wearing a black suit looks undecided and eventually pulls a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and places a call. He listens for a second then hangs up, climbs smoothly behind the wheel, and drives away. Zarah’s halfway down the block by then, and I meld into traffic.
Maybe this is more of their experiment, giving her time on her own. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I was always pushing Pop’s limits. Mom never cared where I went so long as I didn’t bother her, but Pop set curfews and boundaries—physical ones. He didn’t want me going farther than a mile away on my bike. Still had a lot of freedom but I was always itching for more.
I guess that’s how Zarah feels. Like a little kid. She wants her freedom, but it’s a scary, thrilling thing when she’s granted it.
She stops in front of the café I took her to the other day.
Huh.
She must have liked the coffee.
It’s hard for me to imagine that a woman who has her kind of resources would appreciate anything I have to offer. Even if it’s only my favorite coffeehouse.
There’s no parking on the street, of course, and if I want to follow her inside, I’ll have to leave Baby in the truck and use the parking ramp again. I idle at a stoplight and wonder if it’s worth it.
I could bring Baby into the café—I have a vest that identifies her as a service dog if I work a case where she’s helpful—but I park in a dark corner of the ramp and tell her to go to sleep. I don’t have anything to say to Zarah Maddox, and I doubt I’ll be more than half an hour tops. Baby will be okay, and it’s cool inside the truck.
Her soulful eyes watch me.
“I’m not meeting a woman.”
She stares.
“I’m not.”
Baby doesn’t break eye contact for one second.
Sighing, I say, “Okay, I am, but no one could ever replace you.” I rub her ears and she licks my hand. I’m forgiven. For a little while.
I step inside the café, and Zarah’s nowhere to be seen. I swear under my breath. I spent twenty bucks on parking for nothing.
Sierra scoots behind the counter and grins. “Hey, hot stuff.”
“Hey. A little brunette didn’t come in here, did she?”
“Yeah, she’s in the restroom. Meeting her?”
“Not really. Kind of.”
“Do you want a coffee while you ‘kind of’ meet her?”
She’s teasing, smiling, maybe flirting a little, the tip of her tongue licking her upper lip as she waits for my response.
“What’s she drinking?”
“What you ordered her the other day. The hot malt.”
“I’ll have one, too.”
I pull my wallet out of my back jeans pocket to pay, but Sierra waves me off. I met her on a job some time back, when her old man hired mine to look into who ripped off his store. The cops didn’t care about a dry cleaning place that got robbed in the middle of the night. They made a few noises, filed a report, but nothing more. We found him, and the asshole was wanted in two other states for armed robbery. Shipped his ass outta here. And now Pop gets free dry cleaning he doesn’t use.
“I can pay.”
She shrugs and starts steaming the milk for my latte. I ask her to bring it to me, and I find Zarah sitting at the same table we did before. Our positions will be swapped—she’s in my seat looking over the coffeehouse and she sees me the second I step around the corner. Her eyes widen and then she looks at her bowl, the mountain of whipped cream at a more manageable level.
“Hi,” I say, approaching her table. If she wants me to leave I will, but I don’t lie to myself. If she doesn’t let me sit down, I’ll be disappointed.
After a moment, she meets my eyes. “Hi.”
“Can I sit?”
She lifts a shoulder, and I wait her out. I’m not going to join her if she doesn’t want me to.
Zarah finally realizes this, drawing in a breath when I don’t pull the chair out and sit without her permission. “Okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s okay.” She presses her lips into a thin line.
Sierra serves my coffee and scurries away.
“Is she your girlfriend?” Zarah blurts out, then hides her face behind her hands.
I wait until she looks at me to answer. “No. My dad helped hers once and we stayed friends. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
Her shoulders hunch, and she stares into her half-empty coffee bowl. A notebook sits beside the saucer, and a list I can’t read upside down runs down the page.
“Working on something?” I ask to start a conversation.
She’s going to be a tough nut to crack, and while I’ve been watching her, I gave this a lot of thought. If what Max says is true and the Blacks aren’t done making her life a living hell, I’d rather us be on talking terms than strangers if I ever need her.
For information.
What did you think I meant?
Zarah covers the notebook with her arm, her fingers and wrist bare. She doesn’t wear rings. In fact, she doesn’t wear any jewelry. Her clothing and purse are the best of the best, but no gold anywhere.
“Not really.”
I sip my coffee. It’s strange barely speaking to the person I basically forced myself on to, but funnily enough, it’s okay. She has a calm I can appreciate. It’s probably not calm as much as it is wariness and a lot of suspicion thrown in, and maybe she’ll become a Chatty Cathy if I can convince her to relax around me, but for now, this is nice. The silence.
She slides her hand into her lap. “My therapist asked me to write a list. Ten reasons why a man would want me.”
“A self-esteem exercise?”
“Something like that.”
“Can I see what you’ve got?”
“I’m not—”
“I’m a man. Maybe I could offer an opinion?”
A hint of a smile plays with her mouth, and Jesus Christ if it doesn’t feel like it’s Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one.
She turns the notebook and stares into her coffee bowl as I read.
It’s supposed to be a list of attributes a man would want her for, but from one to ten all she wrote was “money” in capital letters.
I nudge it back to her, my hand shaking, and instead of leaving it on the table, she tucks it into her large purse.
“Only money?” I ask when I can speak.
“She said I couldn’t write down sex.”
Fury rips through me. Not because she thinks so little of herself, but because Ashton Black taught her to do it.
I don’t want her scared of me, and reining in my temper, I force myself to smile. “I should go.” Before I say something I shouldn’t.
“Do you have plans?” Her cheeks pink again.
She had the audacity to ask me a question. I don’t suppose she talks to too many people anymore and she’s not used to having a conversation, being allowed a give and take.
“I left Baby in my truck.”
“You have a baby? And you left it alone in your truck ?”
Her outrage confuses me, and I blink until her words register in my brain. I laugh. “No. I have a dog, and her name is Baby. I came in to talk to you, and I left her in my truck. She’s not used to being by herself for too long, and I should go.”
Zarah straightens and her eyes light up. “Can I meet her?”
“Yeah?” She doesn’t seem like the type to like dogs. I could just imagine Baby farting on Zarah Maddox.
“Please?”
I shrug. “Sure. Do you want me to give you a lift home?”
“Oh, well. I live—”
“I know where you live, Zarah. I don’t mind or I wouldn’t have offered.”
“I have to text . . .”
“Let your driver know you have a ride.”
“Okay.”
She quickly sends a text, and we leave our unfinished coffees behind. Sierra smirks. I flip her off on the way out the door, and her laughter follows me onto the sidewalk. My hand brushes Zarah’s back as we cross the street, and we stand in the little glass elevator as it carries us to the fourth floor of the ramp. She doesn’t stand close to me, but she’s not backed into the wall, either. Maybe I’m slowly earning her trust. My truck’s parked in the shadows, but Baby knows I’m coming. Her head pops up and her tongue flops out of her mouth.
I open the passenger side door and try to think of a nice way to tell Baby to sit in the extended cab. I didn’t have to worry. Baby licks Zarah sloppily across her face, and instead of being disgusted or angry, she laughs and throws her arms around Baby’s neck.
“She’s gorgeous,” Zarah says around a face full of fur.
“She’s part husky and—”
“German shepherd. I can tell. We have two I walk with all the time.”
Trying not to be too touchy, I wrap my hands around her tiny waist and give her a boost into the cab, and Baby lays down and rests her head in Zarah’s lap. I slide behind the wheel and get a big lapful of dog butt. She better not fart.
Zarah tells me her address, and I plug it into my phone’s GPS. I know the general direction of their home, but I’ve never been out there. The estimated drive time is fifty-five minutes. Zarah watches out the window petting Baby just like she loves it between her eyes and down to her nose, and she doesn’t say one word the entire way.
The driveway itself is at least a mile long, the house set off the main highway. The crushed rock crunches under my tires, but the gravel is frozen and we don’t leave a dust trail in our wake.
“This is a beautiful property,” I say, the first words out of my mouth since we left the city.
Baby sits between us, her eyes lighting on the squirrels and bare trees. And, oh Christ, the birds. She’d have herself one helluva time out here if I could set her free without her leash. She might never come back.
“It’s Stella and Zane’s.”
I tilt my head, acknowledging the distinction. “You don’t live here?”
“I do, but one day they’ll get tired of me. Zane says they won’t, but they will. Eventually they’ll want to be alone.”
She swallows, her delicate Adam’s apple bobbing in anxiety. She’s scared of what she’ll do if that happens.
“What if one day you don’t want to live here?” I ask as their enormous house comes into view. “What if one day you get better and want to live on your own?”
“That will never happen.”
“What won’t? That you won’t get better, or that you won’t want to live on your own?”
“I’m stupid. I’ll never be able to live on by myself.”
“Zarah . . .”
I stop near the house, and her brother steps outside.
Shit. It didn’t occur to me that I’d have to meet anyone. I’m not intimidated, but I’m sure I’ll be put through a vetting process worthy of a presidential candidate if it looks like I’ll be spending any time with Zarah. Especially alone.
I kill the engine.
Zarah’s out the door and I can’t say anything more. Baby follows her, of course she does, and I have no choice but to get out and face Zane Maddox.
The drugs haven’t made Zarah’s manners disappear, and she’s a polite hostess when I meet them on the bottom step of the gigantic porch. “Zane, you remember Gage, Max’s brother? Gage, my brother, Zane.”
It’s been a year since I’ve seen Zane. In person, anyway. He and Stella still pop up in the news—a night out, or a fundraiser. Sometimes on a slow news night they’ll dredge up what happened a year ago. Max’s death, too.
“Davenport,” Zane says, reaching out his hand.
“Maddox,” I say in return. I could hold a grudge, refuse to shake his hand, but Max has been dead for a year and deep down, I knew he made his own decisions and investigating what happened to Zane and Zarah’s parents was his own choice. I feel like shit I was so angry. There was no specific reason, and there’s nothing I can do about it now except apologize.
“Thanks for the ride,” Zarah says, and she hurries inside the front door.
Baby whines.
“You’ll see her again,” I say, then stop. That sounded way too fucking presumptuous, and knowing it, Zane lifts an eyebrow.
“Second time you’ve bumped into my sister this week,” he says, leaning against the porch rail.
Zane’s maybe five years younger than me, but he looks ten years older, strain and stress lining his lean face. He’s got more money than I would ever see living a hundred lifetimes, but I don’t think I’d trade places with him. He carries a lot of guilt, and no amount of money can erase it. When he looks at Zarah, what does he think? What does he feel? Everyone knows he was the whole fucking reason she was locked up in Quiet Meadows. Everyone knows—the tabloids never quit until they did—that on a silver fucking platter he handed power of attorney to Ashton Black, her supposed fiancé, because he was too heartbroken over Stella’s alleged betrayal to pull his head out of his ass and look around at what was going on.
Though, I guess if I believed the love of my life left me for another man, I wouldn’t feel very good, either. On top of losing my parents. I can’t imagine living without Pop. Besides Baby, he’s my best friend.
Yeah, I guess I can give the guy a break. A small one.
I don’t say anything, just pass him the note Max left me I still carry everywhere.
Zane doesn’t say anything, either, only pulls the paper from my fingers and reads it, the thin sheet fluttering in the chilly breeze.
It’s quiet out here. We’re far enough off the highway I don’t hear traffic rumbling past. Only the clattering of the bare branches, the birds. There’s a hint of woodsmoke in the air, and I don’t know if it’s coming from the house or a property nearby. The sky is a pristine blue, and the sun’s bright. Snow’s holding off for now, but if we don’t get some in the next few weeks, we might be celebrating Christmas without any. It’s not unheard of in Minnesota, but rare.
Baby inches away from me to sniff at the steps and Zane’s shoes. She has to make friends with everyone and headbutts his leg. I expect him to rebuff her, but he sits on the porch and digs his hand into her fur.
I don’t know why I’m expecting the worst out of everyone. So far, all Zarah and Zane have shown me is the severe loss they felt when Max passed away and an easy acceptance of me even though I was a dick.
Zane folds the letter and holds it out to me. “Has Zarah seen this?”
“No.” I hadn’t thought about showing it to her, and I feel like an asshole. Of course she would want to see how much she meant to him, right up until his last breath, spelled out, literally, in black and white. Well, blue and white, but now isn’t the time to be glib.
“Might help her a little.”
“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t give it back and shove it into my pocket. It’s the last thing I have of my brother’s—excluding all his things I have yet to go through in his apartment—and I don’t want to lose it. If I gave it to Zarah, she’d want to keep it. “She miss him?” It’s a stupid question, I know, but why not ram more splinters under my fingernails.
Zane sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Stretch your legs?”
“Sure.”
He heaves himself off the step and jerks his head for me to follow him. “She won’t run away?”
“Nah. Baby’s trained. She helps me on jobs.”
Zane leads me away from the house. It’s impossible to know who’s home. A six-stall garage sits off to the side, but the only vehicle visible on the property is mine. Zarah’s driver is nowhere I can see. I’d like to meet Stella. There’s been so much said about her bravery and courage and her role in bringing down Black Enterprises. I’d like to meet a woman who has her pluck. I bet she doesn’t tolerate any shit. I bet she’d be a good PI.
The house is a good hundred feet behind us when he speaks. “Zarah’s on a lot of drugs. Still. And to answer your question, she misses Max. He was one of the first people to reach her besides Stella and Lucille, our housekeeper. He was patient. Her mind couldn’t cut through the chemical haze and he’d talk her through simple things. We’re weaning her off as aggressively as her body will allow and she’s better in a lot of ways, but until she’s completely free, we won’t know how much of the damage is permanent. And that’s only the drugs. The mind has its own way of dealing with trauma. Memory loss, PTSD. She might always have anxiety.”
The lines on his face deepen. There’s no doubt he claims responsibility for Zarah’s state.
“What do you think of Max’s note?” I ask.
He pauses and watches Baby nose around the yard. “At this point, I believe his fears are unwarranted. Ash and Clayton are in prison. So are the men who paid Ash for the privilege to abuse her. Quiet Meadows is shut down.” He frowns. “I’m not sure what Max was referring to when he said they weren’t done with her. If he found something while he was digging around, he didn’t share it with me. The FBI and the DA’s office have been all over the Blacks’ shit like flies on roadkill. I can’t imagine there’s anything left.”
That’s what I was thinking, too, but I feel just the smallest hint of disappointment. Zane’s essentially telling me I don’t need to watch out for Zarah at Max’s request, and if there’s no reason to watch out for her, there’s no reason to see her. That hits me just a little harder than it should. We’re talking about her being in love with my brother, something she probably still is. I’m not interested in being her rebound guy.
We wander farther from the house, Baby sniffing at the grass like a druggie snorting a mountain of cocaine. She must smell the other dogs. Then again, living in the city, she doesn’t have a chance to play in the grass much. I try to bring her to the park whenever I can, but the city has leash laws, and it’s not the same as being out here without restrictions.
Zane doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, his hands shoved into the pockets of a leather jacket similar to mine. Maybe we could have been friends, but we don’t have anything in common and his lifestyle isn’t something I can relate to.
“You’re saying I don’t need to keep an eye on her.”
“Do you want to?”
“She was in love with my brother.”
He stops and stares at me. His eyes are a hard brown, unforgiving. And not blind. Not anymore. He sees everything, assesses everything that could hurt his family. His girls.
“Max was patient, he cared about her, and according to the note and the last words he said to me, loved her, but Zarah was drugged up and confused. She met him just hours after I discharged her, and her mind was a muddled mess of emotions and feelings, not to mention fear. Fear of freedom, fear of Ash. Fuck, she knew it was my fault she ended up where she did, and she was afraid of me.”
“She wasn’t in love with Max?” I ask, and I hate I need the answer so badly.
“She probably did love Max, but she could have loved any man who showed her patience and kindness at that time in her life. I let them get close, and that was a mistake. She wasn’t ready for the kind of relationship he gave her, or wanted to give her.”
I want to take umbrage on Max’s behalf. He was a nice guy and any woman would have been lucky to have him, but I also understand what Zane is trying to say. That maybe Zarah thought herself in love because of the kind of man he was, not because she had truly fallen in love.
This is none of my business. I’m grasping at straws to keep Zarah in my life, but she doesn’t belong there. She was my brother’s lover, and that’s the only connection to her that I have. That’s not a real connection. Despite what Max’s letter said, there’s no reason for me to protect her. Max has been dead for a year, and Zarah’s been fine. Zane learned from his mistakes, and no one will hurt his sister ever again. I’m not needed. I have to put it away, stop following her, and live my own life. Ask Mom to set me up and find a woman who won’t care if Baby crawls into our bed every once in a while.
The thought curdles my stomach.
“I understand you’re concerned about her, but she should be focusing on healing and putting the past, maybe not behind her, but she’s going to need to learn how to live with what Ash did to her. And we were still processing our parents’ deaths when all this started. She has a lot to deal with. Maybe it’ll be easier as she’s weaned off that crap, but maybe it won’t. She doesn’t need any more obstacles.”
Don’t get in the way . I can read between Zane’s lines.
“You’re right.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do. I just don’t feel it’s necessary.”
I can’t argue when I agree, and I nod. “I’ll let her be.”
“I think it’s for the best.”
Another thing I can’t argue with. I hold out my hand. He shakes it in a firm grip, and I can read into that, too. Goodbye.
I whistle for Baby, and she reluctantly heads my way. I leave Zane standing in the middle of the yard, his shoulders weighed down by the past, and as I pass the house, curtains flutter on the top floor. Looking up, I meet Zarah’s eyes through the glass, and I raise my hand. Tears glisten on her cheeks as if she, too, knows we won’t see each other again. She lets the curtain fall, and I continue on to my truck.
Alone in my apartment, I burn Max’s note using an old book of matches I lifted from a bar a few years ago. The flames eat the paper, and when Max’s words are nothing but ashes, I rinse them and my budding feelings for the heiress down the drain.
Pop and I rent a little office space in a strip mall not quite on the wrong side of the tracks, but close enough we both belong there. It looks as seedy as it sounds, but we’re not glamorous PI agents and I don’t need any hands to count how many times I’ve needed a suit to work a job. Pop has a penchant for noir detective movies, and I don’t need any more hands to count the number of times a dame has walked into our office and said, “I’m in trouble.”
Mostly, we’re people’s last resort if the cops won’t help, but hey, we get plenty of business that way and we don’t complain. Their money spends just like the rest and we’re good enough at our jobs the cops don’t mind us sticking our noses into the cases they don’t want.
While I was wasting my time on Zarah Maddox, Pop traced a kid to Milwaukee. He wanted to get away from his violent old man, and Pop didn’t blame him. Said the trail ran cold, took the money for the billable hours, and left well enough alone. Sometimes we do that. Make a tough call. Milwaukee’s better than dead, a sure thing if Pop would have hauled his ass back to King’s Crossing. Lost a finder’s fee there, but he saved a life and sometimes losing is winning.
That’s the lesson I apply to Zarah. Lost her, but I won. Now there’s a dame who spells trouble.
Pop’s sitting behind our desk, a sleek Mac desktop taking up most of the surface. A Keurig sits behind him on a table that’s full of pods, fancy creamer, and swizzle sticks. We spring for the good stuff because sometimes we do have clients who will meet us here. Not everything can be conducted over email.
Baby curls up on her cushion in the corner, and I plop my ass down in a chair in front of the desk. “I’m off the case,” I say and try not to feel too shitty that a guy five years younger than me and a fucking bazillion dollars richer put me in my place.
“So there’s nothing to look into?” Pop hits a button to print something, and the schoot schoot schoot as the paper runs through the printer interrupts my answer.
“I talked to Zane. Wanted to get a feel for what I should be looking for, but he told me there’s nothing. Max was paranoid. In no uncertain terms he told me to leave his sister alone and said ‘Don’t let the door hit ya.’”
“And that’s it?” Pop asks, stapling the papers together and shoving them into a manila envelope.
“There’s nothing else. It’s been a year and she’s been okay.”
He doesn’t say anything about my reluctance to tie up Max’s estate or clean out his apartment. Paying another couple months’ rent isn’t going to hurt anybody. The landlord sure doesn’t give a fuck as long as he gets his money.
“What’s next?” I need something so I don’t think about the fact I won’t be seeing Zarah again. She crawled under my skin like a rash. Prickly, uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be scratching an itch with her, anyway. I already said she’s not my kind of woman, and I’m not her kind of man.
“Got a call today, but I’m not sure what to think of it.”
I straighten. Those are the best kinds of jobs. The, “Everything looks right, but my gut tells me something’s off,” kinds of cases. Kind of like Zarah’s situation, but in that case, there really is nothing wrong. Just a lot of fucked up history that will need years to right itself.
“What’s up?”
Pop nudges today’s paper toward me. I have to admit, me reading the paper was another thing that fell to the wayside after Max’s death. I was proud of him, big-shot reporter. I couldn’t handle not seeing his byline anymore, and I avoid the paper whenever I can.
The article he’s referring to isn’t above the fold. The front page story always pertains to what the Blacks have done. If anything, the Blacks gave the King’s Crossing Chronicle fodder for years. No matter how many reporters they have on staff, they’ll never run out of shit to print.
No, this story is little, just barely an inch.
QUIET MEADOWS’ PATIENT DIES
JodiAnne Donnelly passed away in her home surrounded by loved ones on November 5 th of natural causes. A former client of Quiet Meadows, Donnelly was a resident at the assisted living facility when Ashton Black’s involvement in the sanatorium was discovered. Since the closure of the facility, the American Psychiatric Association has been working closely with the FBI to measure extent of damages. Donnelly’s death is not connected to her stay at Quiet Meadows, and no further investigation will be forthcoming.
“This is our job? An old lady who died of natural causes?” Doesn’t seem like much of a job, and Pop doesn’t pick up a case just to keep his hands busy and bill the hours. If it’s not legit, he passes it by. We aren’t fraudsters.
Pop tapes the envelope closed and scrawls an address on it. “Except she wasn’t old.”
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Zarah’s age.”
Pop throws the envelope in a pile of outgoing mail. We don’t have a scale in the office, and we’ll need to stop by the post office later.
He doesn’t say anything and I ask, “Who called you?”
“Her mother. She thinks something isn’t right. Besides her mental health issues, why she’d been in Quiet Meadows in the first place, she was healthy.”
“Why did she call us? I mean, us specifically?”
Pop huffs a laugh. “She found our website online and apparently we have good Yelp reviews.”
I don’t find it as amusing as Pop but anything that will keep us in jobs I can’t complain about. “When are we going to see her?”
“This afternoon. JodiAnne’s funeral’s in a couple of days and her mother wanted us to start sniffing around before she’s buried.”
“Sounds like she has a brain in her head.”
“Or she’s suspicious by nature.”
We’ve had those jobs a time or two, where people are bored and they make shit up, or they want to be in the middle of something to feel important. They don’t feel important after they get our bill in the mail. They feel broke. We’re not raking in the dough, but after hourly and expenses, we’re not cheap, either.
There’s nothing else to do but wait, and I poke around online doing some busywork for other cases. Usually that’s Pop’s wheelhouse, but I’ve got nothing else going on and help him out. For a late lunch, we bring Baby to the park and buy hotdogs from a vendor near the entrance.
“Your mother called looking for you. Not answering your phone again.”
“I don’t have anything to say to her.” Can’t get any truer than that. You might think it’s because Max was her favorite and we don’t have a relationship, but if I agreed, that wouldn’t be fair. She loved us equally, and not many siblings who have both parents in common can say that, much less brothers who have different dads. Mom doesn’t hate Pop, she only admitted this was all he wanted to do with his life and she wanted more. She married a politician instead, and the life she lives as the wife of Senator Rourke Cook, R-Minn, is more her style.
He lives part-time in DC, she lives it up full-time in King’s Crossing, and everyone’s happy. Since Max’s death, he’s been spending a lot more time in the city, and I avoid her to avoid him. Rourke’s okay, but he’s not Pop and never tried to be. We’re polite acquaintances at best, and at worst we don’t talk to each other. No one complains.
“She misses you.”
“Because Max is gone.”
“That’s not true. You should go see her.”
“Maybe.”
Pop grabs Baby’s leash and lets her lead him to a small pond where she noses around the weeds and cattails scaring some ducks. The water’s starting to ice over. My breath blows white in the chilly air, and I sit at a picnic table keeping an eye on our bag of hotdogs and scrolling through the news and social media on my phone. The Maddoxes dominate King’s Crossing’s gossip, a lot of it focusing on when Stella and Zane are going to get married. Zarah’s the most eligible bachelorette in the city, and everyone is always speculating who will tear down her walls. Truth or Dare is crass enough to name names.
I think of her silly list. That kind of money causes more problems than it solves. I mean, she wouldn’t be in this mess if her parents owned farmland in Nebraska. I don’t know Zane and Stella personally, but if I can believe half the gossip about them, he sure took her on one hell of a ride before it all settled down. Doing a woman wrong like that, and so many times...you know she loves you irrevocably or she would have said fuck off a long time ago.
Max had that kind of patience, but I wonder if Zane’s right. If Zarah would have fallen for the first guy who had shown her kindness no matter who he was. I feel sad for Max, if that’s the case. Once she’s off the drugs, maybe she wouldn’t have needed him anymore.
No use guessing and Truth or Dare is placing enough bets, but I think of who Zarah’s next lover will be and if it will be a forever kind of thing. I fantasize spreading her legs, revealing her glistening pink pussy ready for me, and my cock hardens.
No, that’s not how it would go.
She would need to be the one in control. One hundred percent. She would need it to mean something, and she would need to know the man she gave herself to loved her just as irrevocably as Stella loves Zane, or she wouldn’t take off her clothes.
“You’re thinking about sex,” Pop says, sitting across from me and reaching for a hotdog.
I cover Baby’s ears. “Shh. Not in front of the children.”
Pop laughs. He has a sense of humor, I gotta give him that. If he didn’t, stakeouts and all the other shit we have to do as part of the job would be boring as hell.
“Thinking about Zarah?”
I scowl. “How did you know?”
“Call it father’s intuition.”
“I thought only mothers have that.”
“Dads, too. How else do you think I kept you out of trouble when you were a kid? Your plans had a stink I could smell a mile away.” He bites into his dog and chews.
He’s not wrong. He thwarted many a plan. I never thanked him, but he probably saved my life a time or two. But to be honest, how many teenage boys never do anything stupid? It’s like a rite of passage to risk permanent bodily injury at least once a week. It’s why at thirty-six I can still hop a fence chasing a meth head who did a little B & E for some cash. Or, you know, beat the shit out of some guy who kicked the crap out of his dog. I wanted him to know how it felt. Broke the asshole’s jaw, and I sent the dog to live with a second cousin twice removed or some shit in North Dakota. He’ll never touch another animal as long as I’m alive.
I keep in shape to teach fuckers like that a lesson, and I owe it all to fucking around the city instead of sitting on my ass gaming the hours away.
“My stinky plans turned me into the man I am today.”
“You’re a good kid.”
We fall silent before we get too mushy. Pop and I are close, and I’m grateful. Not much comes between us, and when it does, it blows over pretty quick. I have a feeling Zarah’s going to be an issue, and it’s not going to blow over as fast as I’d like. Pop liked Max. Admired and respected him. If Pop’s and my relationship had been any less solid, I might have gotten jealous, but Max was a good guy and Pop knew it. Now Max asked me to do him a favor, and in my eyes, that favor is paid up.
In Pop’s, not so much.
He’ll bring up sex and marriage, even babies, and he’ll bring up Zarah, not because she has money, but because he sees the same thing I see whenever her picture flashes on the TV screen.
A young woman needing a second chance and no one around to give her one.
The Donnellys are wealthy and live in a gigantic house in a rich part of King’s Crossing.
I forgot the clients or their families had to be richer than fuck to afford care at Quiet Meadows.
They don’t live far from the divorcée, but the gated community is definitely bigger and brighter. More yard, larger houses. Swimming pools that are a waste because in Minnesota, we have exactly two months of decent weather to enjoy something like that. I picture Zarah sunbathing by a sparkling pool, a muscled dude rubbing coconut oil into her supple skin. Sipping a Sex on the Beach. And not in Minnesota either. Someplace else. Hawaii.
The problem I have thinking about Zarah is, in my head, I give her a normal life, but the last thing she’s going to do is lie by a pool in the summer, or anytime for that matter. She’s too busy worrying about her murky future to care about her tan.
Thankful my truck is in good shape, I turn into their driveway and park. A vehicle wouldn’t dare drip oil on the pristine concrete.
I slide out and adjust my clothes. I didn’t wear dress pants, but my jeans are clean and look new, and I put on the same dress shirt I wore to McClennan’s office. Pop’s dressed the same way. Respectable, like we know what we’re talking about. If Mrs. Donnelly hires us to snoop around, this could be a good paying gig.
We stand on the brick porch and I ring the doorbell. It chimes, and we wait in the cold for an answer. They’ve already strung Christmas lights in the hedges that border the house, and a hollow deer stands next to me, the white-wired strings of bulbs creating a weird kind of skeleton. Maybe it would look pretty lit up at night, but in the daytime it’s creepy and not festive at all.
Pop and I don’t make a big deal out of the holidays. He’ll come over or I’ll go to his place and we’ll eat a meal that’s not takeout and watch football. Sometimes for Christmas if I know he’s got his eye on something he wouldn’t buy himself, I’ll pick it up and maybe wrap it. We don’t get very sentimental. Holidays are for children. I’ve never been sad I don’t have kids, but maybe this year I’ll feel a bit of something when I don’t have presents to put under a tree. Or a tree.
Footfalls sound behind the door, and I expect a maid to answer and let us in, but it’s a middle-aged woman, maybe about the same age as Pop, and she’s dressed in slacks and the kind of cardigan set my mother favors. “Mr. Davenport?” Her gaze swings between us. We’re both Mr. Davenport, and it’s always an issue.
“Call me Gage, Mrs. Donnelly,” I say, holding out my hand. “Things will be easier.”
“Thank you. I’m Paula, but I prefer Polly. Come in.” She shakes Pop’s hand and opens the door wider.
We follow her into a foyer that could easily fit my whole apartment inside it. The tiled floors gleam, and trinkets cover a lot of table and shelf space. I imagine the Donnellys keep their whole lives in this house.
“My husband, Lionel, doesn’t approve of me hiring you,” Polly says, leading us through the first floor and into a library. Bookshelves are jammed with hardcover books, first editions, I bet, if I could look, and a stone fireplace is built into an entire wall, its flames creating a cozy atmosphere. A coffee tray sits on a coffee table, and she motions for us to sit.
I stand—it’s just the way I am—but I tug off my jacket and drape it over the back of the couch. Pop sits and shrugs out of his jacket, too. He looks relaxed, like he’s come over for a cup of coffee and a chat with an old friend, but his eyes will catch anything of importance. Like the fact that so far, I haven’t seen one picture of JodiAnne.
“Black?” she asks, sitting opposite Pop and pouring out of a silver carafe.
“Please,” Pop says. He leans back and hikes his ankle onto a knee.
“Same, thank you,” I say, and wrap my hands around the sturdy white mug she offers me.
The coffee is hot and rich, but I expect nothing less from a family who can afford to live in a house like this.
“What does your husband do for a living, Polly?” Pop asks to start the ball rolling. Some people need to be eased into questioning, even though they’re the ones who called us.
“He’s the COO of BankOne,” she says. “When all those horrible things started coming out about the Blacks, we were never so grateful we didn’t depend on them for our livelihood.”
“But you did do business with them,” Pop says.
“We did, on occasion. You couldn’t be in business in this city without having to work with Clayton Black, or Kagan Maddox, for that matter. But fortunately, Lionel wasn’t involved in his underhanded deals.”
She speaks clearly and meets our eyes. Either she’s telling the truth, or she thinks she is. But that’s not why we’re here and it’s no concern of mine or Pop’s if Lionel was doing dirty business with the Blacks. He’d be in prison if he was a client of Ash’s escort service, so Polly does have that going for her.
“That’s true,” Pop says easily. “The Blacks had their slimy tentacles everywhere, including Quiet Meadows. Did you know Ashton Black bought the facility after Zarah Maddox was admitted six years ago?”
“No, we had no idea, and we were shocked when that piece of information came out. We knew Quiet Meadows was privately owned, and that was a plus as far as we were concerned. Public sanatoriums have such a reputation, don’t they? I have to admit, I’m a big Batman fan, and when I think of state mental facilities, I think of Gotham’s Arkham Asylum, full of violent lunatics. JodiAnne could be violent, and she was just as crazy. I don’t say that as a woman who didn’t love her own child. Her official diagnoses was schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. She was suicidal and was prone to anorexic lapses.”
I turn toward the window to hide my smile. It’s not often I meet someone who compares an aspect of their lives to a comic book, and I’ve seen pictures of Quiet Meadows. No one would equate a classy facility like that with one of the dirtiest, darkest sanatoriums in fiction.
“I guess mental health facilities in general have a bad reputation,” I say, inserting myself into the conversation.
“Even more so now that it’s come out Quiet Meadows’ clients were not treated properly.”
“Do you believe all their clients were mistreated? I thought only Zarah Maddox was a victim because of who she was, and who she was to Ashton Black in particular.”
“That’s for the investigators to figure out, I suppose. During the years JodiAnne received treatment there, she didn’t make any progress, but I didn’t expect her to. We were surprised Quiet Meadows closed, and it put us in a pickle as the saying goes. We had to move her home, and that was something Lionel did not want to do. She was dangerous, to herself and others, and I can’t say I blamed him any.” She looks at my dad. “I pray you never know what it’s like to be scared of your own child.”
I lift my eyebrows at Pop. She does know she just implicated her own husband in JodiAnne’s death, didn’t she? Maybe not. Maybe she’s too na?ve to consider it.
“How did you provide care for her here?”
Polly stands. “It was to be temporary, until we could find a new facility to admit her. Our top choices didn’t have any availability, and we were reaching out, out of state, I mean. I didn’t want her too far away. We visited regularly, but we were getting to the point we would have put her in a facility in Timbuktu if that’s what it would have taken to find her adequate care. I’ll show you her bedroom.”
“What did the other families do?” I ask. Quiet Meadows was home to over a hundred patients.
Polly looks over her shoulder as she leads us up a wide staircase. “I have no idea. We were too busy dealing with our own situation to be concerned about anyone else.”
She opens a door to a sparse bedroom. A plain bed without a headboard or footboard is pushed against the wall under a window, and a very plain wingback chair sits in the corner. There’s no dresser, no clothing or hangers hanging in the closet. Polly could have cleaned out her daughter’s room already, but I suspect Polly didn’t want JodiAnne to have access to anything that could hurt her.
“JodiAnne attempted suicide on a handful of occasions, and if she could get her hands on something sharp, she was prone to self-harm. We paid a nurse, a male nurse,” she says, looking at me out of the corners of her eyes and assessing my size, “someone who could restrain her if necessary. A psychiatrist contacted us and offered her assistance, and she spoke to JodiAnne twice a week and regulated her medication.”
Pop asks the hard question. “Why do you think JodiAnne was murdered?”
Tears fill Polly’s eyes. During our conversation, JodiAnne’s mother was calm, almost stoic. Now a bit of emotion seeps through, and I relax.
She closes the door to her daughter’s room and leans against it, tears clinging to her black eyelashes. “The afternoon she passed away, we were walking outside. It was warmer, and she was having a good day. Lucid. Or so I thought. She told me the doctors at Quiet Meadows had been experimenting on her. I asked her how, and she said they gave her drugs that made her forgetful.” She draws in a breath.
“What did you say?” Pop asks, his voice low.
“I said of course they were experimenting. That’s all mental health management is, experimenting with drugs, finding the right combination, the right dosage. Even the therapy is experimental. One-on-one therapy, group therapy, music therapy, art therapy, aromatherapy. Finding a delicate balance among it all to achieve the slightest results. Each person will have different needs, different responses, and it’s a juggling act. She thought I didn’t believe her, and she attacked me. Her nurse had to pull her off. He gave her twenty minutes of CPR, but she was dead.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Pop says, holding his ball cap in his hands.
Polly leads us to the foyer. “She’s in a better place.”
She gives Pop a list of medications JodiAnne was taking at the time of her death and the names of her nurse and psychiatrist.
He and I are usually on the same wavelength, and I could tell by the slump of his shoulders on the way back to the office he was thinking the same thing I was. There was no case in what Polly Donnelly told us.
JodiAnne’s mind was a mess, and her body, after fighting for so long, gave out. Emotional strain wore down the physical, and she succumbed.
Polly and Lionel Donnelly should be thankful God put an end to their daughter’s suffering and that they’re free to live out the rest of their years in peace.