The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (2 page)

I nodded. “I get that.”

“Oh, there’s one more thing.” Nate leaned forward again, reaching into his other back pocket. He pulled out an old, warped paperback and set it carefully on my desk next to the photo. I peered at the cover:
Sunset Dies
, by J.P. Hashly. “I, um, think my father wrote this book.”

“Okay...” Not what I was expecting to hear. I picked it up, thumbing through the pages.

“I don’t have any proof or anything, but the book is about a guy who gets married pretty young to a woman named Sarah, and they live in Chicago and have a baby. Some of the details” – he blushed – “match some of what my mom told me about her and my dad and why they split.”

I flipped to the cover page. Published by a company called Savvy Publishing here in Chicago, two years after the divorce. That fit with Nate’s timeline.

I looked up at the kid. “How did you get this?”

“One of my mom’s friends gave it to her. Tom and I found a copy with her stuff after she died.” He shrugged. “I think maybe she was saving it for me, for when I got older. Or in case I wanted to find him.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Nate, if your father really did write this book, I’m not sure you need me at all. You can probably just call the publishing company and track Jason down through them.”

He was already shaking his head. “I tried that already. The company went out of business five years ago, and I haven’t been able to find any sort of contact information for any of the employees. And there are no other books by J.P. Hashly.” He smiled, for the first time since he’d entered my office. “I called the Library of Congress.”

I thought for a moment, while Nate waited patiently. Sometimes I wish I had a mustache to twirl for moments just like these. Bryce was right – this was a strange case, for being so typical. I’ve tracked down parents who didn’t want to be found before, but it was usually the other parent who wanted to find them, or maybe an adult child. Working for a teenager felt...off.
 

“Okay, Nate,” I said finally. “I’m happy to take the case, if you’re sure you want to hire me.” He nodded eagerly. “However,” I cautioned, “The first thing I’d need to do is talk to your stepfather.” Nate opened his mouth to protest, but I held up a hand. “Please don’t take offense, but I want to make sure he knows that you’ve hired me and we’ll be working together. I’m guessing I may need to talk to him about the financial arrangement. It’s pretty unusual for a minor to hire a private investigator. Not illegal, but unusual.”
 

Nate shook his head, and his voice was firm when he said, “He’s not available.”

“Then we can wait until he is,” I said easily.

“I want to find Jason now,” Nate said, desperation bleeding into his voice. An imaginary red flag popped up above his head. “It’s important.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said. “But I need to speak to your guardian before I take this case.” I saw the kid’s eyes swipe toward the door, and I added, “Any other investigator is going to say the same thing.”

Nate’s fingers drifted up to push his lower lip between his teeth, and he chewed it for a long minute, looking uncertain. I studied him. Was he lying about the stepfather’s knowledge? Or was he just afraid of finding out something embarrassing, or criminal, and that I’d report it back to Tom? “Nate,” I said, more gently, “Checking in with Tom first is vital. But you’ll be my client. As long as nothing illegal’s going on, and you’re not in danger,
you’re
my client. You can trust me.”

I saw the boy take a deep breath and make a decision. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll ask him.”

“Okay.” I leaned back. Jeez, why did that have to be so hard? “Can you call me tomorrow and let me know when we can meet? I’ll start to dig into the publishing angle right away, so tomorrow I can update you both. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good.” The kid looked unburdened and resolved, like now the die was cast, one way or another. It was a little weird.

“Can I borrow this book and the photo? I’ll return them to you.”
 

He bobbed his head. “Yeah, I figured you would.”

“All right, then.” I stood up and Nate took my cue, shaking my hand over the desk. Now that we were both standing I realized the kid was as tall as my 5’8,” although I had no idea if that was average for a fourteen-year-old boy. I circled my desk so I could walk him out.
 

Alone again, I sat back down at the desk and spun the chair around in circles for a while as I thought about Nate and his case. Toby said once that spinning in circles at work is the most childish thing he’s ever seen, but I maintain that it’s my best thinking aid. Besides, I do plenty of things that are way more childish. Toby doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
 

Toby.
Holy shit, I’m pregnant
, I remembered. I leaned forward and started rummaging through the trash bin under my desk for the pregnancy test. Maybe in the last forty minutes it had changed its evil little mind. Years earlier, I’d had a false-positive on a pregnancy test. Could that still happen with the electronic kind?

“You know, if I were a detective, I might find this behavior kind of suspicious.”

Crap. I looked up, narrowly avoiding smacking my head on the desk, to see Bryce leaning in my doorway, watching me dig through the garbage. “That’s it. I’m gonna put a cowbell on you,” I declared.

“Well, we can always use more cowbell. You lose something?” Bryce strolled across the room to plop in the chair that Nate Christianti had just vacated. I sat up.

“Don’t you have things to do?” I said pointedly. “If you’re looking for work you could always start cataloging all the archived intake files.”

“That’s not funny,” Bryce intoned, wrinkling his nose. “I
wanted
to tell you about the photos Ruby just emailed.” He paused, mostly just for dramatic emphasis. Ruby was Bryce’s misanthropic little sister, who did some freelance surveillance work for me. She was the opposite of Bryce in almost every way, but a damn good photographer all the same. “But I would be happy to go back to my desk if you can give me a good reason for going through your own office trash with such” –he widened his eyes dramatically –”
urgency
.”
 

I’m a great liar when I have time to plan my story in advance, but I’m absolute crap at on-the-spot lies, which Bryce enjoys terribly. “I accidentally threw away my credit card,” I tried.

“Uh-huh. Not buying it.”

“I dropped a piece of gum in here this morning, and I thought there might be a little chew left in it.”

Bryce raised a single, perfect eyebrow, probably because he knows how that makes me jealous. “That’s just stupid.”

I sighed. “Fine.” I retrieved the pregnancy test from the bin and tossed it unceremoniously on the desk in front of Bryce. He leaned forward to see, not touching it, and looked up at me immediately, shocked.

“Whoa.” Bryce blinked rapidly a few times, looking staggered. I was right there with him. “So? What’s the deal? Were you and Toby trying?”

I blinked. “You’re awfully nosy for an employee.”

“But I’m just nosy enough to work for a PI,” he reasoned. “You know you raised me to be inquisitive.”
 

I sighed “I guess that’s fair. No, we weren’t particularly trying. Toby does not know yet. I didn’t even know until about half an hour ago.”

“Oh.” He paused for a moment, and I could see him mentally sorting his questions out into appropriate and inappropriate categories. Finally, he settled on, “Are you excited?”

“Yes. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it too much. I had the pregnancy thought, took the test right away, got into this meeting right away, and now here I am.”

“Is...is Toby going to be happy?”

“Will he be happy that I’m pregnant?” I repeated. “Yes. Definitely.” Bryce looked at me inquiringly, but I just shook my head.

2. Clutch the Pearls

I decided not to go straight home, because in many important matters, I am a coward. Instead, I texted Toby to let him know I was stopping by what we lovingly refer to as the family business.

My mom died when I was little, so my sister and I grew up with just my dad, who had owned a comic book store in downtown Chicago for more than 35 years now. Great Dane Comics has never been incredibly successful, but it had never struggled much, either – my dad had a unique knack for bringing new people into the many worlds of comics, and this gift kept a steady stream of new and regular customers to the shop.
 

Which is nice, because they pretty much made up all of Dad’s contact with the world, besides his daughters. To his credit, Dad was never fazed that fate gave him two little girls to raise by himself. Even when we were little, long before anyone dreamed up the word “fangirls,” he taught us to love comic books. We’re even named after his favorite female comic characters, if you account for some creative spelling. My full name is Selena Kyle Dane, whose secret identity is Catwoman. My big sister is Aurora Munroe, the alter ego of Storm from the X-Men comics. I know the whole thing seems a little weird to new people, but when you’re born with a poster of Spiderman hanging above your crib, having a comic book name never really seems that strange.
 

Besides, we’re both just grateful he didn’t try to actually call us Storm and Catwoman.
 

Great Dane is located in a small afterthought of a building, attached to a row of brownstones in the Humboldt Park neighborhood downtown. I fought through a brief amount of dense traffic and made it to the store ten minutes before close, driving around the building to the two reserved parking spots behind the store. My sister’s minivan was in her spot, but Dad’s was empty, so I swung my beat-up little Jeep into the slot. Then I walked around the outside so I could go in the front door.

A familiar, ancient bell chimed as I went in. My sister was perched on a stool behind the enormous counter just inside the entrance, but she didn’t even look up as I entered. The store was deserted, and her nose was buried in an issue of something Joss Whedon-y. Rory’s a comic book reader in a brainy, intellectual kind of way.
 

I went around the counter and kissed her cheek. “Hey, Ro.”
 

She smiled at me without looking up from her page. “Hey, little sister.”

I dropped my carry-all bag behind the counter and pulled myself up onto the second wooden stool by the cash register. “Where’s Dad?” Our father still lived in the cramped two-bedroom apartment upstairs where Rory and I grew up. He was almost always in the building somewhere.

“He left early for a doctor’s appointment.” She twirled a pen absently in her long fingers, which are just like mine. Rory and I look a lot alike, with brown eyes, pointy chins, and long legs. But her long hair is chestnut instead of blonde, and she carries about twenty pounds that I don’t, a vestige of her two kids and her too-busy lifestyle. Today she was wearing her square-rimmed reading glasses and her usual mom clothes – a cream-colored turtleneck under a green cardigan, and prim ankle-length jeans. The whole thing was probably from Eddie Bauer. At 34, Rory is fully on board the Mommy bandwagon. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’s driving the Mommy bandwagon.

“Was it just a checkup, or is something going on?” I asked.

“Just a checkup on his heart and man-parts and stuff-”

“Ew.”

“But I think he was gonna run some errands after,” she continued, ignoring me. “We don’t have any shipments tonight. I sent Aaron home 45 minutes ago.”

“Cool.” Aaron was one of the few teenagers who had successfully sweet-talked Rory into letting him work part-time at the store. “So, Ro,” I began, reaching over to tug lightly at a strand of her dark hair. Her eyes were still on her page. “I need to talk to you about something. Actually, I need to talk to
someone
about something, and you’re my second or third favorite person in the world, so I’ve chosen you.”

She looked up for the first time since I’d walked in, her eyebrows rising quizzically. “Who’s first? Toby?”

“Most of the time.”

“Did I beat Dad?”
 

“It’s neck and neck, and it all rides on whether or not you have any pretzels under the counter right now.” Rory rolled her eyes, tugging her hair out of my hand, and reached into a cupboard under the cash register, tossing me a half-full bag of pretzels. I did a fist-pump and pulled out a handful. I was starving.

“Okay,” I said around a mouthful of salty goodness. “You’re number two.”

“Wow. Your affection comes at so cheap a price,” she said wryly. “What do you need to talk about?”

“Well, please don’t freak out on me, okay, seriously. Really.” I hesitated for a second, but I knew I had to tell her. “But I’m sort of, a little bit...pregnant.”

“
What
?” My reserved, serious sister, who had been giving me half her attention at best, jumped up and threw her arms around me, knocking the bag of pretzels to the floor and almost knocking me off the stool. Jeez. For Rory, that’s pretty much the equivalent of running down the street naked. “
Omigod
congratulations! When did you find out?”

“About an hour and a half ago.” I pried her arms off and said, “Dude. You’re going to squash the baby.”

Ignoring this, Rory picked up the bag of pretzels, handed them to me, and settled back on her own stool. “Oh man, I have
so
much baby stuff I can give you. Were you guys trying to get pregnant?”

I blanched. “Why is that everyone’s first question? Rude. But no, not really.”

“Did you tell Toby yet?”

“Not yet. Just Bryce, because he saw me with the test.”
 

Rory paused in her jubilation and eyed me suspiciously. “Okay. So why aren’t you rushing home right now to tell your husband?”

“I...kind of don’t want him to know,” I confessed.

Rory gasped, gaping at me. “You
are
planning on keeping it?”

I rolled my eyes. Clutch the pearls, Rory. “Yes, yes. I know, I have to tell him eventually.”

“So...?”

I ate a few more pretzels and thought about the question for a moment. I didn’t quite know myself, honestly. Why was I so hesitant to tell my adoring husband, who desperately wanted kids, that we were going to have one?